Ok, I'm back. I'm still alive. It's been awhile since I've gotten around to updating this. I've been trying so hard for the last week or more to just sit down and write, but the universe seems to have some sense of irony in that it won't ever let you do what you want to.
Ah, well, such is life! Anyway, one interesting point of interest that I feel I should share is that I'm officially eighteen! My birthday was November 1st! Aka Spider-Man video release date! Coincidence? I think not! ^_^
Anyway, here you go! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Spidey still isn't mine! No suing allowed!
Spiderman's eyes widened in fear as the immense bulk of the spider creature dropped from its place on the ceiling. Cast in the dim green glow of his night vision goggles, Spidey could clearly make out the monster's twitching mandibles pulled back flat against the sides of its round, humanoid head. From out of the black gap on its face, that was its mouth, the creature's high pitched predatorily scream cut the air like a knife. All eight of it black and red patched legs slashed the air beneath it as it fell down onto the two intruders that had stumbled into it lair.
With no spider-sense to guide him except for primitive instincts, Spiderman quickly dove towards the female commander's still entrapped body at his feet.
All in one move, the masked superhero snaked an arm around the startled woman's slim waist and forcefully retched her body free from the cocoon of steel like webbing. Immediately cradling Audrey's body against his own without even giving her time to cry out in surprise, Spiderman jumped straight up in the air to grip the ceiling above just as the creature hit the ground below where he had been only seconds before, its claws slicing the vacant spot like scythes. Even from above, the masked man could feel the vibrations of the impact vibrate up through the walls and up through his fingertips and toes.
"Hold on!" he cried to the commander who had wrapped her arms around his neck for dear life as she dangled from his arms ten feet or more off the ground, suspended from the ceiling only by Spiderman's secure hold around her waist. Below them, the spider creature crashed against the wall in a massive bundle of twitching legs and claws.
Swiveling his hooded head over his shoulder to steal a glance at the creature below, Spiderman heard an agitated howl of rage after its escaped prey. He needed to get out there, quick. He had absolutely no advantage there in that enclosed room trying to fight his immensely powerful genetically altered clone in the dark.
Plus there was the liability of the commander and the countless victims that hung from the walls of the underground room in nets of webbing. They were all in danger as long as he kept the creature there and tried to fight it.
In the few seconds needed for the wall crawler to process the situation and decide a course of action, the humanoid spider creature had recovered from its attack. A feral hiss cut the air as it quickly tucked all eight of its slender legs underneath its segmented body and suddenly sprang like a coil up towards the ceiling hugging superhero and the helpless commander from where Spiderman struggled to hold her aloft as he gripped the stone ceiling with his toes and only one set of fingertips.
"Shoot," the web swinger cursed as he quickly kicked off the cold ceiling to dodge the creature's swatting claws that batted at him as though he were a brightly colored piñata. Unfortunately, Spidey's efforts were not good enough and as he twisted in the air to avoid the thing's legs, one of the creature's claws connected with the wall crawler's shoulder.
Screaming out in pain as the creature's leg ripped a long cut down from his shoulder across his back to his waist, Spiderman felt himself lose his grip around the commander's body as the floor rushed up to meet them.
Crashing onto the rancid, slime covered floor in a heap of twisted and contorted limbs, Spidey moaned in agony as thick blood seeped from the deep gash across his back. Tumbling wildly through the air, Audrey cried out as she too collided harshly with the cold concrete floor of the room a distance from where her companion had fallen. Instinctively shooting out her hands to catch herself, Audrey yelped loudly as her right wrist exploded in pain, it bending unnaturally to the side as her weight came down onto it.
Immediately gripping her other hand around her waist to try to stop the pain, the commander gingerly probed the throbbing joint. As more pain exploded under her gentle touch, the young woman growled in agitation. Her wrist was broken. And to make things worst, it sounded like her masked compatriot had also been injured by the pained groans that echoed back to her from nearby in the darkness.
"Spiderman, are you ok?" she called out painfully between gritted teeth out into the pitch blackness that swallowed her on all sides. The creature had knocked out her flashlight when it had attacked her, leaving her as good as blind and just as helpless at trying to defend herself in those lightless subterranean sewers. Sharp insect chirps filled the air from some somewhere nearby as she pulled herself to her knees and gripped her wounded wrist.
"I've been better," was the wall crawler's muttered reply as he forced himself to his feet, dark red blood dripping down his back in small rivulets, "That's twice that thing's gotten me. If I keep this up, I'll have to change my name from Spiderman to the Human Scratching Post…"
Swallowing the searing pain that spanned across his whole back, Spidey prepared for another charge from the creature that stood like a cat ready to pounce on its prey only fifteen feet or so away on the opposite side of the room.
A dangerous hiss emanated from behind the thing's snapping mandibles. It's head bobbed gracefully from side to side as if in indecision about pressing another attack or not. And for whatever reason, it made no move to advance on the wounded web slinger and stood where it was, its many legs nervously treading the floor beneath it as the creature gave another hiss of warning, it agitation abundantly clear.
"What's going on?" Spiderman heard Audrey whisper from nearby, her voice tight and almost frightened in her helplessness to see anything. Through his sight giving eyewear, Spidey could clearly see the commander subconsciously reach for her gun that should have been in its holster at her hip, but had probably been knocked away somewhere when she had been attacked by the eight legged humanoid monster.
"I don't know," he answered in a hushed voice of confusion, "It's like it's afraid to attack me again."
Uncomfortable with his genetically altered clone's unblinking sliver eyes that stared back at him through his glasses, Spiderman subconsciously took a step backwards, his eyes warily locked onto the unmoving creature for fear of a sudden charge.
As his heel slowly lowered back onto the ground behind him, Spiderman was momentarily startled as he felt himself step back onto something thick and squishy that shifted under his weight like half congealed gel covered by a thin fleshy skin. Beneath his weight, he felt something scuttle away from under his foot, reminding him of the time he once stepped on a crab at the beach. From across the room, the monster suddenly screamed a sharp cry, it looking like it was about to rush the web swinger at any second but for some reason, stayed where it was.
Immediately jerking his foot back from the mysterious mass and wheeling around on his heels, Spiderman beheld in the green glow of his goggles a massive mound of fleshy looking material. The creature's insect like clicks cried a plaintive song as Spiderman stood frozen where he was, half of him trying to keep an eye on the genetic abomination and his other half both screaming curiosity and revulsion of the strange membranous heap.
The creature's vocalizations became a dangerously angry hiss as Spiderman slowly stooped to inspect the fleshy mass that stood to the middle of his tight.
"What the hell are you doing?" Audrey hissed from off to Spidey's side, her eyes vainly squinting out into the inky darkness at the creature's growls and sound of its pointy feet scuffling on the floor.
"I'm not doing anything," Spiderman answered in bewilderment as the spider monster danced agitatedly in place and gave another round of sharp chirps, "But it gets really ticked off every time I get close to this weird ball of skin over here."
"Oh my god…" Audrey murmured to herself in realization. Even though she couldn't see anything through the darkness, something by the creature's snarling and its nervous pacing told her that Spiderman was standing beside the creature's egg that was bulging with unborn spiderlings. The creature wasn't attacking because it was trying to protect its young.
"What?" Spiderman demanded in confusion at the tone of the commander's voice.
"Don't move, bug-boy," she ordered in a whisper, "I don't think mama likes you by the little ones…"
Spiderman's breath caught in his throat at her words. Looking down at the twitching mass of flesh at his feet, the young superhero now noticed through the green glow of his glasses the hundreds of squirming bundles of legs just beneath the thin membranous skin of the egg sac.
"Oh, great. I guess I know what it feels like to be a grandfather now…" he muttered softly to himself with sarcasm to hide his uneasiness.
"Spiderman, we need to destroy the egg sac before those things hatch. It looks like they could break out any minute," Audrey said.
Glancing back at the creature that hissed dangerously at him from across the room, Spiderman knew she was right. They couldn't let any of the creature's young escape into the city. New York would be swarming with hundreds of man-eating spider creatures just like the one that stood before him within weeks. But how was he going to destroy the egg sac with the creature there protecting it?
"Audrey, what other do-dads do you have in that jacket of yours? Anything we can use to distract this thing?" Spidey asked tightly as the creature's agitation became too much for it and it took a pace forward before again halting, its mandibles snapping together with angry claps in the center of its face in a standoff with the wall crawler. Almost moving away from the egg sac instinctively to get out of the monster's way, Spiderman consciously had to force himself to hold his ground beside the membranous mass of squirming spiderlings.
"Uh uh uh," Spiderman tisked warningly to his cultivated blood sample as he gently placed a hand on the side of the egg sac to demonstrate his intentions, "The kiddies are with me right now. I don't think you want me to do anything to them,"
The spider creature snarled a venomous hiss at the masked man who dared touch its young, but reluctantly backed off several shuffling paces, its round head bobbing warily from side to side. Spiderman momentarily lost himself in awe at how the genetically cultivated creature seemed to analyze and think out things . Who knew how intelligent that thing really was.
"Do you have anything?" Spidey repeated to the commander urgently. He didn't really know how long the creature could be held off before it finally charged him.
"I think I still may have a flare," she answered through darkness as she slowly reached into her somewhat tattered Kevlar SWAT jacket with her good hand and produced a slender object the size of a ruler.
"Good. Give it to me," the wall crawler said as he warily knelt down beside the large egg sac with one hand still touching the thing to keep the nervously dancing creature at bay. "Roll it on the ground towards my voice."
Doing as he said, the commander set the flare beside her on the uneven concrete floor and aggressively thrust it across the ground in the direction Spiderman's voice had just come. The flare scuttled away from her where she heard it suddenly come to a halt several feet away from where she was.
"What are you going to do?" she asked in a cold whisper to Spidey through the darkness. What was that immature boy in tights doing now?
"Something really stupid…" he answered tightly with no hint of sarcasm in his voice, "Get to the side because I'm going to have one ticked off mama-spider on my hands in a few seconds."
"Spiderman…don't you dare do it," she hissed with fear in realization of what the web swinger was about to do.
"I'll lead it out of here. Call your team and get them here to get these people out of here," Spidey called out before a sudden burst of light exploded in front of the commander's dilated eye, the web swinger quickly snapping the cap off the end of the flare. Shielding her face with her good hand from the bright light, Audrey pressed her back flat against the cold wall behind her as an angry, inhuman scream sliced through her eardrums.
Blinking back the light and looking through stinging, watering eyes, the commander could now make out Spiderman's bright colored costume illuminated by the reddish glare of the sputtering flare in his hands. The creature's insect like jaws snapped furiously as its bobbing black and red head reared back from the sudden assault of light on its sensitive compound eyes. Strange shadows flashed across the walls and sickly faces of the entrapped victims as the creature's legs nervously danced across the ground, shifting the massive bulk of the animal sideways in a strange skittering motion.
"Audrey, get above ground and call for backup! I'm gonna need it!" Spiderman called out loudly before he suddenly whirled about on his heels and threw the flame spurting stick at the egg sac beside him. As the flare connected with the membranous skin of the egg sac, a huge billow of flames quickly rushed over the whole surface of the mass, the material of the egg sac strangely flammable.
As the large flesh covered mass of twitching spiderlings quickly erupted in a burst of flame, the creature violently reared back on its last two set of legs, its head almost scraping the ceiling of the underground room, and screamed an ear splitting howl of rage. The wall crawler and the commander were momentarily paralyzed as they clamped their hands around their ears from the deafening roar.
As the fire hungrily ate away at the small bundles of un-hatched spiderlings, Spiderman could make out the flaming outlines of the tiny creatures writhing violently in agony through the orange glare of the bonfire as the billowing tongues of fire turned their round bodies and slender legs into indistinguishable husks of burnt flesh. He swore he could hear small squeaks of pain emanating over the crackling of the flaming mass. He almost felt a twinge of guilt and sorrow well up in his chest as the soft but plaintive cries slowly died away, the charred corpses of the spiderlings dropping to the slimy floor in waves as the fire began to die down in intensity, their pencil thin legs curling up tightly under their bodies in death.
There was a moment of ensuing silence in the room before a loud rattling hiss vibrated the air. Looking over his shoulder, Spiderman turned to find the creature towering over him, its slender insect mandibles shaking in pure rage under huge rounded eyes that glowed in the smoldering light of the fire that had by now totally consumed the extremely flammable egg sac and turned it into a massive heap of smoldering ashes.
"I guess this would be a good time to run, huh?" Spidey muttered under his breath as he stared up at the enraged mother spider. As if in answer, the artificially created animal's compound mouth whipped open and a shrill livid scream almost buffeted the wall crawler right of his feet by its intensity. If his spider-sense had been reactive to his altered clone, Spiderman was sure it would have been vibrating through his brain with enough force to give him a headache right then.
"That's what I thought…" he murmured before quickly kicking off the cold concrete of the subterranean room and rocketed towards the entrance to the tunnel he had entered through before with the speed of a racecar.
Another predatorily cry sounded behind his fleeing form before the creature took chase. Forgetting the wounded commander, the creature leapt towards the entrance it prey had just escaped through, it's sights locked onto the one that had killed its young. Squeezing through the narrow doorway of the underground room, it disappeared into the darkness of the labyrinth of endless tunnels, on the hunt for the fleeing superhero.
******
Commander Audrey Lee stared transfixed at the exit the creature and Spiderman had just disappeared through. In the far distance, she could her the faint echoes of the enraged monster's predatorily screams vibrate down the length of the stony tunnel. As the shrill cries slowly diminished into the background over the thundering of her own heart in her ears, the young woman heard the last part of the barely audible muffled taunts of Spiderman and he led his genetically altered clone away from its lair
"Come on! You're gonna have to do bettter then that! You must be from the shallower end of my gene pool! I know you're still ticked off about that whole fire thing but….."
And then his voice disappeared in the distance, leaving only the unnerving silence of the room of death to sting the commander's ears.
"Good luck," she whispered softly after Spiderman as she heaved her battered body onto wobbly feet and surveyed the quiet room. Tucking her broken wrist protectively against her body, Audrey hissed a sharp intake of breath as the searing pain of her injury faded away into a tolerable throb.
For a moment, the commander felt a twinge of concern for the fleeing superhero that was running headlong down the darkened sewers of New York with a deadly monster trailing close at his heels. But she couldn't worry about Spiderman right now. She knew he could take care of himself. It was time for her to do her part.
Surrounding her on all sides of the room, hung tens of lifeless bodies in massive webs of steel hard strands of webbing, the exposed faces of the unconscious victims glowing a dim greenish tinge in the dying smolders of the fire that had incinerated the creature's egg sac.
In the flickering shadows of the dying embers of the fire that Spiderman had used to destroy the hundreds of un-hatched spiderlings, Audrey scowled the room with the eyes of a hawk for any sign of the flashlight she had lost. She was going to need it to find her way to the surface.
Slowly circling the room, she finally saw the dark outline of the flashlight she searched for laying on far side of where she stood, directly across from the single entrance of the subterranean room. Hurrying towards it, Audrey grabbed it with her god hand and snapped the switch. Bright light poured out from the flashlight, casting a large circle of yellowish white against the other side of the room.
"Looks like someone up there's looking out for me," the commander sighed in relief as she swung the beam of light to shine on doorway. Even with all her training, the young woman doubted she would have been able to find her way to the surface if her flashlight wouldn't have worked. But luckily, she didn't have to worry about that.
Turning towards the exit of the creature's lair, Audrey hastened her pace to a quick jog to escape the eerie room of death that still sent chills down her spine. Reaching the threshold of room, the commander paused for a moment, looking back at the poor boy that had begged her to rescue him. He still hung in his cocoon of webbing that wrapped around his emaciated body from the wall, his head hanging down the center of his chest and eyes closed tightly in a pained grimace.
Narrowing her eyes in determination to do what she had promised the boy, Audrey wheeled on her heels and sped from out the room. She needed to contact her team so they could retrieve the creature's victims and get them to a hospital.
Sprinting down into the tunnel that joined up with the main branch of sewers, the young woman spotted in the distance in the jumping beam of her flashlight, a metal rung ladder spiraling upward into a round, vertical passage that lay in the ceiling of the underground tunnel. Grabbing the highest rung she could reach with her good hand, she gripped her flashlight sideways between her teeth and let her broken wrist go unused as she heaved herself up the ladder using her leg muscles to propel her upwards. Scurrying up the ladder as fast as her feet and hand could move to the next rung, the commander winced as her injured joint throbbed in sharp, blinding intervals even as she tucked her right hand to her side protectively.
Several minutes later, Audrey could make out small pin pricks of dim light filtering down onto her face between the holes of what looked like a manhole covering several feet above. The faint rumbles of early morning, New York traffic drifted down to her ears as she paused at the top of the ladder.
Catching her breath from the exhausting climb, the commander gritted her teeth together in pain as she wound her injured arm around the top rung of the ladder to steady herself on the slippery cold rungs of metal. Reaching up with her good arm, she heaved a strained grunt as she slowly pushed the manhole cover up and to the side, letting a flood of early morning sunlight pour down into the tunnel.
Blinking back the brightness, the commander realized that she and Spiderman had been wandering through the sewers of the city for the better part of five hours. It had to of been at least seven in the morning and she hadn't even realized so much time had passed since the night before. Pulling herself up to sit on the edge of the sewer hole with her legs still dangling down into the ladder tunnel in the very middle of a Manhattan side street that, luckily for her, was not high in traffic, the young blond let the flashlight that was gripped between her teeth fall into her lap.
Cradling her broken wrist against her chest in pain, Audrey Lee reached her other hand up to rip her black mercenary helmet from her head. Tossing it to the side carelessly and running her fingers quickly through her disheveled hair, the commander then tapped the black radio link earpiece that was nestled within her ear.
"Spiderman? Spiderman, do you copy?"
There was no sound over the link, only dead air. The commander frowned at what that could mean. She had hoped she would have been able to now get some response from him and get his and the creature's current position. But there was nothing over the line. Nothing. Only empty silence.
He may still be underground, out of reach of the radio link, she kept telling herself. That was the only explanation she could think of. Either that or the creature may have finally brought down that intolerably immature masked man that Audrey had had to subject herself to working with. But if he was so intolerable, why then did she find herself worrying about him?
Shaking the morbid thoughts from her head, Audrey swallowed hard and again tapped her earpiece. She needed to contact her team before she worried about the wall crawler. There was a moment of soft static over the link before an electronic click sounded and a male voice called over the line, "Commander? Is that you? Over."
"Commander Lee, reporting," Audrey called back over the line, grateful that the radio link was again operational since she had reached ground level, "I need all teams to central Manhattan. Now. Trace my signal to the location. Air and ground support needed to retrieve and transport estimated twenty-five or more civilian casualties. Medical attention will be needed. Do you copy?"
"We copy, Commander. All teams are being deployed now," the mercenary on the other end of the link affirmed, "Where is target now? Over."
Audrey paused for a moment, a strange tingle of dread stirring in the pit of her stomach, before she replied tightly, "Target last seen in pursuit of Spiderman. Backup needed immediately to assist him..." She trailed of slightly before adding reluctantly, "Spiderman's radio link is currently unresponsive and untraceable. Ground teams may be needed to track Spiderman and the creature or…to retrieve his body. Over."
*******
'I want to go home,' Spiderman thought miserably to himself as he ran at breakneck speed down the dark underground tunnels of New York city, a very livid spider monster close on his heels, 'This was not how I was planning to spend my Saturday.'
Swerving into another branch of tunnels off to his right, Spidey had to let himself take some feeling of victory as he gained a small distance on the pursuing creature since it had not anticipated the wall crawler's sudden change of course and overshot the tunnel mouth by several feet before quickly recovering and agilely maneuvered its massive, eight legged body into the new sewer line. Snarling a nasty hiss, it continued after the fleeing superhero, now only a mere five feet behind Spiderman, its clawed legs swiping viciously at the wall crawler's ankles.
'I have to get into an open area,' Spiderman thought desperately, 'I can't keep this up much longer. This thing's fast. It'll catch me soon or later if I don't get out of these tunnels.' His lungs burned like fire in his chest for air and his legs felt like jello from running and jumping to avoid the creatures attack, but somehow he managed to keep his tiring legs pumping under him in desperation to gain more distance from between him and the enraged animal.
Skidding into a new branch of tunnels, Spidey felt his feet slipping out from under him on the water slicked concrete floor. Close behind him, the creature let an ear piercing scream slice the air at the sight of its prey's possibly fatal stumble. Catching himself from falling with a quick handspring, Spidey kept his legs moving as he hit the ground and immediately felt the air behind him whistle, the creature managing to quickly close the gap between it and its prey and slashed at the masked man's head.
"Sorry, but I just had a haircut," Spidey quipped between ragged breaths as he barely managed to dodge the claws and pushed more effort into his already stinging leg muscles and pulled away from the creature. Another scream buffeted his back as he felt his genetically altered clone resume its chase, the sharp scrapping of its eight legs echoing off the cold walls of the tunnel.
Scanning the narrow tunnel through the green glow of his night vision goggles that were perched on his nose and hugged his face tightly in search for any exit, Spiderman saw up in the distance what looked like a heavy metal door. Sucking more air into his starved lungs, the wall crawler pushed his battered body to the breaking point as he leapt for the door.
Using his shoulder like a battering ram, the masked superhero slammed against the door at full force. He had no time to try the handle that looked rusted beyond use. Crumbling under the power inflicted upon it, the door fell forward. Before the door even hit the ground, Spiderman had already hurtled over it and into a sudden wall of blinding light.
Yelping in surprise, Spiderman immediately ripped the goggles from his face. Blinking back the water that had welled up in the corners of his eyes, the young superhero became suddenly aware of the flurry noise that sounded from all sides.
Whipping his head around in confusion, Spiderman became aware of the deafening roar of nearby subway cars rumbling by, the unintelligible murmurs of people talking, and the low hiss of an angry monster from behind him. As the room came into focus, Spiderman realized that he stood in one of New York's many brightly lit subway stations.
"Oh no…" he muttered under his breath at the sight of the crowded station. Countless civilians swarmed around him; some ignoring him like stereotypical New Yorkers too busy getting where they were going to be delayed for even a second while others stopped to outright stare at the wall crawling superhero.
A crowd of startled, early morning business commuters jumped back in surprise as they turned to face the masked man that had suddenly appeared in their midst when he had slammed through a hidden maintenance door off to the side of the subway platform. Even a small tour group of Japanese tourists clad in "I Love NY" t-shirts joined the amassed group and began to excitedly snap pictures of Spiderman in a flurry of flashes and clicks with the cameras slung around their necks.
But before Spiderman could warn the curious commuters that gawked at him in his bloodied and tattered costume to move back, he heard from behind him a soft crescendo of insect like clicks. Whirling around on his heels, the masked man felt his stomach drop to his feet as a red and black, bobbing round head emerged from the dark void of the maintenance door that led away into the maze of tunnels he had just escaped from, its large silver eyes glinting like mirrors in the light.
Slowly squeezing its shoulders and slender legs between the narrow doorframe, the creature gave a dangerous hiss as the crowd gathered around Spidey immediately backed away from the spider monster. Frightened screams rang out over the platform as the crowd cringed from the spider monster. Swinging its round head from side to side, the genetically altered clone's compound mouth twitched agitatedly against its face, sharp clicks emanating from behind the snapping mandibles.
'I got to get it out of here. There're too many people down here and it's too cramped to try to fight this thing,' Spidey thought to himself as he looked around the subway platform swiftly for any sight of a staircase that lead up to the surface, 'Once I get it above ground, then I can find someplace without too many people. Then I'll worry about figuring out a way to deal with this thing…'
"Hey, ugly, over here!" Spiderman shouted loudly to get the creature's attention, giving a little jump in the air and waved his arms frantically in front of the confused animal that sang its insect clicks as it paced nervously on its slender legs, obviously perturbed by the loud noises and bright lights of the crowded subway station.
Locking its silver compound eyes on the brightly garbed man before it, the creature reared back on its last two sets of legs beneath its wasp like waist, it towered over the young wall crawler with its other clawed legs pumping the air angrily. Obviously, the creature hadn't forgotten what Spidey had done to its young.
Seeing he had succeeded in grabbing his genetically altered clone's attention, Spiderman whipped around on his heels and bolted for a staircase situated nearby. To the frightened on-looking commuters that had cowered away from the enraged monster, Spiderman looked like only a blur of primary blue and red as he sped past and flew up the stairs two at a time.
Screaming another ear piercing cry, the creature torn across the platform in pursuit of the web swinger on all eight of its spider legs. Clattering to the bottom of the stairwell, the creature paused as it gave a low hiss and craned its head on its slender neck to look up the stairs after its fleeing prey that had just disappeared from sight by sharply turning onto the next flight of steps that led to the next level. Snarling, the genetically mutated abomination leapt like a cricket with its muscular back legs up to the platform that stood at the top of that set of stairs in two fluid leaps. Cutting the corner close, the creature spun to face the next set of stair where it repeated another set of jumps.
Already at the top of the second set of steps, Spiderman heard the creature coming after him fast, its predatorial screams echoing off the tiled walls up the stairwell. Running against a steady flow of oblivious commuters going down the stairs to take the subway, Spiderman yelled loudly between ragged gasps of air, "Everybody! Clear the way! Very ticked off mother spider coming through!"
Irritated mumbles from the faceless blurs of civilians sounded around Spiderman as he pushed past the early morning commuters and barreled up the stairs towards ground level, desperately pushing his stinging legs to hurry as they flew up the stairs beneath him. Mere seconds later, those muttered curses turned to screams of terror as a living monster crashed onto the platform that separated the last set of steps from the next then turned to bound up the next flight after its prey.
"Have to…get…to street level…" Spidey coaxed himself between desperate gasping breaths, "Need…to get…away from people." Sweat stung the masked superhero's eyes as he vaulted over a set of turnstiles where he earned a few startled yelps of surprise from the token booth attendant and numerous subway patrons.
Taking the last flight of stairs that separated him from ground level, Spiderman heard a loud crash and more terrified screams as the creature barreled across the turnstiles close on his heels. Looking up as he ignored the searing pain in his tired legs, Spidey almost laughed out loud with joy as the first few rays of early morning sunlight filtered through the subway entrance onto his hooded face. He had never realized what it felt like to be underground in the dark for so long before.
Eagerly covering the last six steps with one giant leap, Spiderman broke out into the open sidewalk. Skidding to a stop several feet from the subway entrance, the wall crawler spared half a second to let the cramping in his legs to fade away. "Well, on the bright side, it looks like I won't have to do my Stairmaster today," Spidey quipped to himself softly as the burning in his lungs also slowly tapered away. But he knew he couldn't live his small victory for long. The creature was still close on his tail and out for his blood. He could hear the creature's agitated hiss wafting up the stairs to him. It would hit ground level any second now.
Swinging his head in a wide arch around from where he stood to decide his next course of action, Spiderman felt his blood run ice cold at what he saw. All around him shined bright, multicolored lights that dazzled his still unadjusted eyes. Huge moving pictures and advertisements towered above and all around him from the fronts of the surrounding buildings. The deafening roar of exhaust spewing cars filled the air as they sped by the frozen superhero. Hundreds of voices assaulted Spidey's ears as he scanned the crowded street in disbelief.
Spiderman stood in Times Square; one of the most congestive centers of activities in all of New York city, it already teeming with hundreds of morning commuters traveling to their day jobs or wherever else they had deemed important enough to wake so early from their beds.
"No!" he cried in distress just as a hot, sticky breath buffeted his back and a feral screech broke through his thoughts. Looking over his shoulder, Spiderman saw the creature's head slowly rising out of the wide hole in the ground that made up the subway entrance, its silver eyes almost glinting with rage in the early morning light. The first few shrieks of surprise and horror rang out from the civilians around the exhausted costumed crime fighter as the creature gracefully slipped from the mouth of the subway entrance and fanned its eight legs out beneath it.
"No!" Spiderman cried out again as though his stubborn refusal to accept the situation would actually change what was happening. How could he have led this thing to one of the most crowded areas of the city, Spidey chided himself. There were countless innocent people there that could be injured or killed if he didn't act fast and move the enraged monster away from the mainstream of civilians.
Several cars had already stopped dead in the middle of the street to rubberneck at the supernatural creature that was facing off with the city's costumed superhero, creating a massive road block in the very center of Times Square. A wave of irate horns blared from within the clogged mass of stopped cars, only managing to add more confusion to the scene then make the blocking cars actually move. Several dozen pedestrians had also stopped to watch Spiderman and the frightening monster.
"OK, bright eyes," Spidey muttered to the spider creature that hissed at him dangerously, "This is where it's all going to end." As if understanding his threat, the creature sprang at the battered web swinger, its feral cry screaming for Spiderman's blood…
Hahaha Another infamous cliffhanger! How I love keeping all my glorious readers on the edge of their computer chair seats! *laughing evilly to herself* Anyway, the fic has at least one, if not two, chapters left to go. We're winding down to the final stretch so don't go anywhere or you'll miss the conclusion! So until next time, I'm signing out
-LAXgirl
P.S. Do I really need to beg a review from you? :P