Fastest Man Alive

"Mr. Parker," Peter and MJ both stopped looked over to see Alice standing near the door that led back into the hotel. "We really need to discuss getting E.D.I.T.H back from the government."

"I thought you were going to do that in the morning," MJ pointed out, her arms still around Peter and Peter's still around her.

"I've since gotten new information," the lawyer replied. "It's likely that we won't be able to get it through normal legal channels."

"So we'll have to what, get Nick Fury involved?" Peter asked.

"I'm not sure that Fury will be enough to persuade British intelligence to return the device. They're probably trying to hack it as we speak."

"So what should we do?" He couldn't let EDITH fall into the wrong hands again.

"You may have to take it yourself," Alice replied.

"What? You mean steal it? I just got out of jail! If I try to steal EDITH back I'd be right back where I started two months ago except this time I'd actually get convicted."

"I know it's not ideal Peter, but we can figure out ways to keep you from getting caught. The fate of the world is on the line. I know what those military intelligence types are like. If they get into the EDITH system…"

Peter could understand what she was saying, but something still didn't feel quite right. He wasn't feeling the Peter tingle just yet (he really needed to come up with a different name for it), but he could tell something was wrong.

Apparently so could MJ who asked suspiciously, "Why do you care about that? I thought you really just cared about doing your job well and getting paid… And since when do you leave a sentence unfinished?"

Now Peter felt the tingle and not a moment too soon. Almost as soon as he began to move him and MJ out of the way, Alice dropped her expression and drew what looked like a remote control. Only, it wasn't a remote control, it was some kind of gun that shot out darts, darts that Peter and MJ only barely managed to avoid and were probably poisonous to boot. "So much for that idea," Alice muttered, only it didn't sound like Alice anymore, it sounded almost masculine and vaguely Russian.

"Who are—" Peter had to interrupt his own demand as the man-Alice began firing darts at them again. As fast and agile as Peter was, whoever this was had him on the ropes, even with his tingle. He knew they had to get out of there but the man-Alice was blocking the door. How else were they supposed to get out? If it was just him he could…

MJ's gonna kill me.

"MJ," Peter said, maneuvering them toward the roof's ledge as they continued to avoid the projectiles.

"What?" she asked when they'd reached the edge.

"Hang on tight."

"Oh no you dooon't!" MJ's protest turned into a scream as Peter grabbed her and stepped backward off the ledge.

Peter didn't have his web shooters, but he could still cling to walls. The air swept past the two of them as the plummeted down the side of the hotel, MJ's hair whipping around in his face as she clung onto him for dear life. When Peter figured they had gone far enough, he reached out with his hand and grabbed the wall of the hotel. The impact and strain on his shoulder and wrist were jarring but he still hardly felt the pain through the adrenaline rush. In any case, a little bit of pain from straining himself was better than whatever the man-Alice was going to do to them.

Peter looked up and saw the man-Alice peering down at them. When he saw the figure move, Peter didn't waste any time seeing if the man-Alice was attacking again or simply going down the stairs. Instead, Peter pushed off forcefully from the building, spinning in the air as he did so and landing squarely, and less painfully, on the wall of the adjacent building. They continued their descent until they were finally on the ground and MJ let him go.

"I'm so sorry MJ," he said apologetically. "But—"

"Hey, don't apologize," MJ interrupted, still trying to catch her breath. "It's just… I realize you were just saving our lives and all but…"

"You're never doing that again?" Peter finished for her, surprised that he was smiling.

MJ just nodded. "So, what do we do now?"

"I don't have any of my gear, or anything, and we don't know what that was all about so we should probably try and get help."

"Okay, sounds good, but, I left my phone on the roof so I can't call anyone."

"And I left mine in my room…"

They paused for a moment before simultaneously saying, "I bet we can borrow one in the lobby."

"So who you gonna call?" MJ asked.

"I don't know, Fury probably."

"Should probably let everyone else know that your lawyer just tried to kill us too."

That gave Peter pause.

Was that really Alice though?

"I'll let them know," he said as they stepped through the doors to the lobby. "But I don't think that was Alice."

"Sure looked like her."

"Yeah, but it didn't sound like her," Peter replied.

"Sound like who?" Peter's head whipped around and he found himself face to face with Nick Fury.

"Oh, thank god," he sighed in relief. "We were just about to call you."

"Oh?" Fury asked, quirking his right eyebrow over his eyepatch.

"This is Nick Fury?" MJ asked.

Peter nodded. "Yeah, we were just attacked by this…" Peter trailed off when he noticed something very wrong with Fury.

"Attacked by what Parker?" Fury asked.

Peter had been thinking of some kind of lie, something clever that they could use to salvage the situation and get inside so they could call for help. But when Peter felt the tingle, he knew that whoever it was that stood in front of him had already realized he'd been figured out. So instead, Peter only said, "Run."

He grabbed MJ's hand and pulled her back through the door after him, several darts flying past them into the street. They wove through pedestrians and traffic and streets and alleyways. "Peter!" MJ shouted over the din, struggling to keep up with him. Peter thought one pedestrian with red hair looked oddly familiar but he didn't give the other person much thought as he continued to run.

"What's going on?" MJ asked.

"I don't know but that wasn't Nick Fury!" Peter called back.

"But I thought you said—"

"I was wrong," Peter replied. "Just keep running. I think that's the man-Alice!"

"The man-Alice?" Peter could almost hear the snark through the panic.

They ran for several more minutes before they found themselves in an alleyway that dead ended. Peter knew that they had to have lost the man-Alice by now but for some reason the tingle just wouldn't go away. As it happened, they hadn't lost him.

"How did you know I wasn't Fury?" the man-Alice asked as it stepped slowly toward them, once again sounding vaguely Russian.

Peter wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. He could climb the wall behind them, but with MJ, he wouldn't be able to go fast enough to escape the darts. So instead he answered, hoping to buy time until either he or MJ could think of something. "The eyepatch," Peter replied. "It's on the wrong side. Fury's blind in his left eye, not his right."

The man-Alice tutted. "Of course, there's always something isn't there." Peter saw the man-Alice fiddle with what looked like a wristwatch before his face seemed to shimmer and suddenly the eyepatch had switched eyes.

"Who are you?" MJ asked.

"Are you one of Beck's people?" Peter added.

The fake-Fury laughed at that. "That group of wounded egotists?" he asked incredulously. "Please, they're little more than children trying to get mommy's attention. There would be nothing in it for me to join them. Though I will confess that I can understand why you'd think that, given my holograms."

"What do you want then?" Peter asked.

"I want your help, Mr. Parker. I've been contracted to acquire EDITH and you're going to help me get it. I had hoped to simply fool you into stealing it for me and then letting you take the fall, all with the help of my disguises, of course, but it seems that that's no longer an option." Fake-Fury pushed a new cartridge into his dart gun and aimed it at Peter and MJ. "But it seems like I'll have to do this the old fashioned way. You'll get me the device and be my fall man, or your girlfriend and everyone else you love dies."

"That'll only work until we're all dead," MJ pointed out.

"What?" Peter hissed. "Don't help him."

MJ just shrugged. "I can't help it, it's true."

"She's right. That is true. I don't think it will come to that but if it does, I can still threaten Peter himself, and if I need to kill him as well, then I'll just start over with my disguises on someone else who's close to the device. How does that phrase go? 'Rinse and repeat' until I have EDITH"

Peter gulped. Whoever this person was, was clearly determined to get his hands on perhaps the most dangerous pair of glasses in the world. Peter knew he couldn't let him have them, but at the same time he couldn't let this, man? hurt his friends.

"So what do you say, Spider-man? EDITH or everyone you love, and then you, and then some other poor sap and everyone he loves, on and on again until I get what I want."

Peter frantically tried to come up with an escape plan and as he glanced over to MJ, he knew she was doing the same. They were both failing spectacularly. Peter was about to give in, to stall for time if nothing else, when he felt the tingle again. As it would turn out, he wouldn't need to say anything to the fake-Fury/man-Alice.

There was an unnatural gust of wind and a barely perceptible blur of color that shot past him. It took only a moment and both he and his attacker had been momentarily disoriented by the occurrence. Peter had only just noticed MJ was no longer standing with him when the gust returned, only this time, he felt something unnaturally fast grab him and carry him bridal style so fast he had to close his eyes to protect them from the wind generated by his motion.

When he finally came to a stop, whatever had grabbed him set him down and Peter wobbled uncertainly for a moment before taking in his surroundings. It looked like they were clear on the edge of London which, given how long it took him to get there, was impossibly fast. The acceleration both at the start and stop should have also given him whiplash and smashed all his internal organs into the side of his chest. But there he stood, just fine.

"What. Was. That?"

Peter broke out of his daze at the sound of MJ's voice. "I don't know," he replied, looking around for whatever it was that had just saved them from the man-Alice. But there was nothing to be found.

The two of them eventually found their way to a functioning pay phone and let Happy know what had happened. They got a cab back to the hotel and Happy met them and paid the driver before taking them back inside. Once everything had settled down and Happy let him know that he'd called Fury and that he was having people investigate, Peter and MJ walked back to their rooms.

"So… I guess that wasn't really much of a second date," Peter said awkwardly.

"I thought it was okay," MJ replied, surprising Peter. "I mean, apart from the almost getting killed, falling off a building, almost getting killed again, and then winding up on the other side of London."

Peter couldn't help but smile and he was thankful that MJ returned it, albeit nervously. "Good night," he said, which she returned before making her way to her room. When Peter pushed open the door to his, he noticed that it was well after midnight and he now felt truly exhausted. He collapsed on his bed, hoping to get to some much needed sleep before he had to discuss getting his things back with real-Alice in the morning. Unfortunately there was no such luck. He heard a knock on his door and Ned's voice coming through it. "Hey dude," he called. "We gotta figure out who this speed guy is."

Peter groaned. "Go to bed Ned, it's late. We can do it in the morning."

"But dude, you actually saw him. You gotta tell me everything before you forget."

"It's not like I really saw him Ned, he was going too fast." Now that Peter thought of it, calling, whatever that had been, "him" didn't really make sense. "How do you even know it's a guy? Or a person even? I could be some kind of high-tech super-fast experimental drone. Or an alien."

Peter sat up when he didn't hear Ned's reply. He started slipping back into high alert, wondering if something had happened to Ned. Only, he didn't feel the tingle. Then he heard his lock click and the door swung open to reveal Ned with an odd device in his hand. Peter had a pretty good guess as to what it was supposed to do. "Ned," Peter sighed. "Did you just hack the lock to my room?"

"Yeah, this stuff's important!"

"Go to bed Ned."

"Okay, fine, but first look at this." Ned whipped out his laptop and opened up a YouTube video that consisted of various clips from the Battle of London pasted together.

"I've seen this Ned, we were there, remember?"

"I know, but look closely." The next clip was a slowed down version of the preceding one which had been caught by someone recording the battle on a high-speed camera. The image was blurry, but Peter could see a blur that looked like it could be vaguely human. It rushed into the frame, grabbed a bystander and then made off with him. A few frames later, what had to be a mere fraction of a second in real time, a chunk of rubble crashed to the ground on the spot where the bystander had been.

"Is that…"

"I know, right. It's so cool."

Peter glanced to the title of the video. "The Blur: Fastest Man Alive"