The next few days were quiet, Psycho-wise, which was mostly because Spidey was keeping a noticibly low superhero profile. He had an assignment, and God save him if he died before JJ got what he wanted.

The concert was in Central Park, and it was a good thing, because the crowd was huge. Peter Parker had shown up a full two hours before the event, press pass in hand, and had to fight his way through a sea of early attendees, most of whom were already giddy with excitement. He'd come to the swift realization that in order to get just the right angle - for the kind of exclusive, mind-blowing, awe-inspiring photos that no one else would ever get, the kind of photos any newspaper would kill to print, the kind of photos JJ would call "mediocre crap" - he was going to have to do things only a spider could.

So Peter discreetly left the concert, and an hour later, after the sun had gone down and the artificial lights had gone up and hiding at the top of one of the towering floodlights became easy, Spider-Man showed up with his camera.

Now, he was perched in relative comfort, taking pictures and blessing the paycheck that had purchased his new telephoto lens, even if it was hell to properly focus through his mask's eyes. The first few acts had been largely forgettable, but the featured band - some all-girl group he vaguely remembered - was actually pretty good. They scored points with him for holding true to their '80s pop roots as far as wardrobe and stage design went. The audience sure loved them; he could barely hear the music over all the screams.

And he had to admit they did a very credible rendition of the Moody Blues' "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock and Roll Band)".

Spidey got a few more pictures of the band as they launched into a song involving the phrase "Who is he kissing?" repeated several dozen times. Then he swung his camera around, looking for a good shot of the crowd, which appeared to be grooving right along en masse.

But not all of them. A scuffle near the base of his floodlight caught his eye, and he aimed the lens down on the theory that concert riots were always newsworthy.

"-excuse you, freak," a scornful voice said, somehow surviving the screams and the speakers long enough to drift up to Spidey.

"Oh, sorry," another voice hissed, with far more threat than the first one had been able to muster, "I wasn't watching where you were going!"

Spidey lowered his camera quickly, setting it to automatic and webbing it securely to the floodlight even as the scuffle below erupted into something nastier - namely, the jerk getting flung several dozen feet by none other than Spidey's newest playmate, who was going sans mask tonight. The hapless guy crashed into a bank of speakers, knocking them over and sending a loud feedback squeal throughout the rest of the audio system.

The band stopped playing, looking over at the toppled speakers with confusion. So did most of the crowd; a fearful murmur ran through the packed mass like a wave, rippling out from the point of origin.

The concert, Spidey realized with a tinge of regret, was effectively finito.

Mindful of potential camera damage, Spidey bounced to another floodlight before he called out, "Hey, Psycho - nice to see your smiling face again!"

Psycho, caught in mid-advance toward the toppled speakers, whirled and looked for him. Spidey waved to help him out. "Spider-Man!" he snarled, red eyes glowing. "Too bad you're already here. I was looking forward to causing some mass destruction."

Spidey hadn't moved yet, mostly because Psycho hadn't, and he wasn't getting suckered into approaching the guy again. He propped his chin on one hand and said, "Hmm... good delivery, bad line. Do all of you people use cliches, or is that a New York speciality?"

"Who said I was from New York?"

"You've got the attitude, and you sure look like you've been hanging out in the sewers with the radioactive ooze."

"Okay, that's it," Psycho said, pointing up at Spidey with his normal hand. "I'm turning you into spider paste!"

"Many have tried, chief, many have tried." He tried to say it with the indifferent air of a seasoned superhero, instead of the (relative) rookie he was, and judged himself to be only halfway successful.

But it was apparently all the goading Psycho needed, because he growled and charged at the the floodlight, sending panicked concert-goers fleeing out of his path.

Spidey waited until he was almost to the floodlight, then pushed off and executed a very nice flip that took him one floodlight closer to the stage - the stage being the area with the least number of bystanders.

"Stay still!" Psycho snarled.

"So how's Skeletor treating you guys?" Spidey asked, conversationally. " 'Supervillain lackey' - does that come with good dental? Because, you know, I've been thinking - this 'fighting crime, trying to save the world' thing is all well and good, but a little moonlighting never hurt."

Psycho flipped his claw out and snapped it a few times. That sent the crowd into full-blown terror, and all of a sudden the concert grounds got a lot emptier. "I'll make something hurt, don't worry."

"Hey, that's right - of course it comes with good dental. You're living proof, huh?"

"You better be glad I don't have a gun," Psycho told him, snapping the claw in his direction.

"Promises, promises," Spidey said, and flipped to the next light, which was actually the bank of lights hanging above the stage. He glanced down; the lead singer, pink hair neon-bright under all of the lights, was the only one left on the stage. As he was looking, a man with dark hair came running from the wings and grabbed her, pulling her towards a relatively safer spot.

Celebrities. Give them a microphone and they thought they were invincible.

He shifted his attention to the edge of the stage, where Psycho was hauling himself up. For a moment, the gunman's attention was on the logistics of climbing, and that looked like a pretty good time to do something.

"Geronimo," Spidey said to himself, fired a webline, and swung down at just the perfect angle to knock Psycho halfway across the stage.

Unfortunately, Psycho got right back on his feet and calmly made his way over to Spidey, saying, "Is that all you can do, bug boy? Throw sucker punches?"

"Well, you know, it was working for me, so yeah," Spidey said, and ducked a punch. "But I guess that train has sailed."

"You bet it has!" Psycho said, evidently missing the mixed metaphor completely. He did not, however, miss a second later when he swung the claw at Spidey's side, and the impact was jarring, to say the least.

Spidey was thrown to the stage and slid several feet on his shoulder, meaning that now both sides of his body hurt. Psycho wasted no time pursuing the opening, running at Spidey with the claw out and snapping. Spidey kicked out with one foot and caught the claw, which went flying - as did the thug attached to it.

Spidey got his feet under him again and sprang backwards, gaining a little breathing space even as Psycho came back for more. 'Psycho' is frickin' right, he thought sourly. Strung-out crackheads give up faster than this. "You know, you remind me of a line: 'One may smile-' "

" ' -and smile, and be a villain'," Psycho finished for him. "Yeah, yeah."

"I'm shocked," Spidey said, pressing one hand to his chest in melodramatic fashion. "You know Shakespeare?"

"Come on. How could I not know that one?"

And then it was back to fighting. Spidey was careful not to underestimate the guy's speed and agility this time, but it was still difficult to score a good hit. Psycho wasn't the sharpest cyborg in the drawer, but he was talented at what he did, and he clearly had more experience than Spider-Man did. After all, Spidey had only one knock-down, drag-out fight with an equal opponent to his name, and then he'd been much more strongly motivated to win. Psycho could kill him, but the Goblin would've killed MJ, and Aunt May, and God knew who else.

But Spidey wasn't exactly thinking that today was a really good day to die, so he didn't plan on rolling over and giving up.

He blocked a particularly savage strike at his face, another at his torso, and somehow, somehow, completely missed the one coming at his knees. In a fraction of a second, his legs were knocked out from under him, and he got the gut-wrenching, sinking feeling that he'd just blown it big time. The feeling was not helped when Psycho's claw suddenly clamped around his neck and lifted him off his feet altogether.

Psycho slammed him into a steel support column, servos whirring, and, a little too happy for Spidey's taste, said, "And when I woke up this morning, I thought it was gonna be a slow day."

Spidey strained against the arm, to no avail. He was afraid he knew where this was going and tried to stall with, "What do you have against me anyway?"

"Me? I don't have anything against you. At least I didn't before you started shooting your mouth off," Psycho said, grinding out the last sentence in true annoyance. He punched Spidey in the stomach - a good, solid, spiteful blow that did nothing to help Spidey feel more comfortable in his current position. "All I know is, someone's paying me a whole lot of money to bring 'em your head on a pike."

"Go, capitalism," Spidey got out. His mind, despite everything, got stuck on the phrase "head on a pike." He'd heard that recently, but where...

I don't care if it's his head on a pike. You have until Friday to get some results.

Harry. All the pieces fell together and made a picture horrifying in its clarity. Harry had hired Psycho to kill him.

I hate outside contracts.

Spidey felt like he'd been punched in the stomach - again. This was not unexpected, but that hardly made the bitter taste in his mouth go away. Why, he wondered, why was he always so surprised when an Osborn tried to turn him into a gooey red spatter? Because Norman had been a surrogate father? Because Harry was his friend?

Harry was Peter's friend. He didn't know Peter and Spider-Man were two sides of the same web. He didn't know the guy he hung out with was also the guy his father had died trying to destroy. Ergo, he had no problem calling out an assassin.

"- and I always meet the demands of the highest bidder," Psycho was saying, clearly relishing his moment of triumph. "So say goodnight, gracie."

Spidey, however, didn't get a chance to say anything, because the claw tightened further. All of a sudden the world narrowed down to a single focus: the unbreakable band constricting around his throat, crushing, cutting off his air, cutting off his blood supply... His pulse pounded in his ears, a rushing, roaring noise that began to dim - along with the bright glint of the metal, and the glow of Psycho's eyes. Stars exploded, blotting out everything in random color before black fuzzed at
the edges of his vision.

All this time, he was fighting - desperately scrabbling for a handhold, a grip, any little advantage that he could use to save himself. But not even his strength could pry the claw loose.

And then, just as Spider-Man was consigning his soul to Whoever watched after stupid teenagers trying to be comic-book superheroes, a brilliant light enveloped him.

The pressure at his throat abruptly vanished. Spidey dropped to the stage and sucked in sweet, sweet air. Nevermind that it hurt his throat, and it was the same polluted stuff he gagged on daily - it was the best lungful of air he'd had in a long, long time.

"Spider-Man!" someone called out; a woman's voice, high and melodic. "Now's your chance!"

Spidey looked up (a little too fast, because his vision swam) and saw Psycho staggering around, hands over his eyes.

"What the hell was that?" Psycho shouted, angry. With his hands over his eyes.

Spidey agreed with the woman: this was his chance. So he forced his poor, abused body to get off the floor and charged Psycho in an inelegant display of strength that nonetheless knocked Psycho off the stage altogether. "The power of prayer, Gracie!"

Psycho hit the ground and smacked into some of the barricades that surrounded the stage. Spidey winced; the metal-on-metal screech was almost worse than getting choked to death. But he wasted no time jumping down after him and kicking the living daylights out of him.

There was a time for finesse and wit, and there was a time for beating people to a pulp with blunt objects. Spidey felt that this particular moment fell in the latter category.

He was not - he was NOT - letting Psycho up to fight again.

But a metal hand clamped around his ankle and threatened to both pull him off balance and pulverize the joint. The balance won first, and Spidey tumbled.

"Are we having fun yet?" Psycho rasped out, dragging himself to his feet.

"A million laughs a minute," Spidey said from the ground - his own voice was a little on the hoarse side - and fired two streams of webbing right at Psycho's face.

The gray-white mass stuck to metal. There was no pulling off a face this time. And while Psycho got busy trying to tear away the thick, gluey blindfold, Spidey launched himself off the ground feet-first and aimed those feet right at the hitman's big, pearly-white, omnipresent smile.

It was like kicking a steel-reinforced cement wall. Spidey felt it all the way through his bones, and in his injured throat, and in his still-pounding head.

He heard something snap, feared it was his leg, then feared it was Psycho's neck, and then realized it was a row of oversized teeth splintering.

Spidey backflipped off the kick and stuck to the stage supports just as Psycho hit the ground. And finally, FINALLY... he stayed down.

One of the cracked teeth broke off and fell to the dirt with an inaudible thump.

"Yeah," Spidey said, breathless but triumphant. "Who's smiling now?"

He slumped back against the stage supports, noticing for the first time that what was left of the crowd was cheering madly for him. He also noticed that the police were hanging back - out of respect or fear, it didn't matter - and nodded at them, gesturing for them to do what they would with Psycho.

And then he webbed away, snagging his camera in one pass and swinging like he was hell-bent on getting out of there... but then dropped behind the stage's background and found a nice, quiet truck to lean up against. From this spot, he had a fairly unobstructed view of the police, but from the lack of clamor from his spider-sense, he doubted they could see him.

"That was some show," a woman said nearby, the same one who'd called out to him earlier, and Spidey looked up, managing a tired wave. He wasn't entirely surprised to see that the woman was the lead singer, fluffy cloud of pink hair and spangly '80s outfit included.

"Anything for charity," he said, coughing.

The cops, moving at top speed, got Psycho restrained and shoved him into the back of a truck. Five SWAT guys climbed in with the unconscious thug and the doors were slammed shut.

Spidey mentally heaved a sigh of relief. Glad THAT'S over. It really wasn't, of course; he still had to deal with the repercussions of knowing Harry was behind the attack. But the physical, fighting-for-your-life part was done, and he was inclined to be grateful.

Closer at hand, the rest of the band appeared behind the singer, exclaiming over the fight and blocking out the glare from some of the stage lights.

Which reminds me... Spidey thought, turning so he could look at them all. "You ladies wouldn't happen to know what happened back there, would you? With the bright light of my dreams?"

The lead singer glanced at the others, who all started giggling. "It was... one of our special effects. We hoped it would distract him, and thankfully, it did."

"Yeah, he wasn't ready for showtime!" one of them added, eyes dancing. She had red hair, but the color clearly came from a bottle, unlike MJ's hair.

For some reason, the statement earned the redhead an elbow in the ribs from one of the others. Spidey shook his head, feeling twinges of pain from his neck, and decided not to worry about it. "Well, this is a little weird for me, you know, not usually being the person saved - but thanks."

"Anytime," the lead singer said, smiling a wide, gentle smile. Red star earrings flashed amidst all the pink hair, sparking a memory of another woman with a nice smile, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the only person backstage that had two identities. "And Spider-Man?"

"Yeah?"

"Could we have your autograph?"

Note: The line, "And when I woke up this morning, I thought it was gonna be a slow day," was originally spoken by a character on the new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon (coughTrapjawcough). The line, "that train has sailed," is paraphrased from the first Austin Powers movie.

If you didn't figure it out, the band is The Holograms and the lady with the red star earrings is... Jem! "Showtime" is part of the phrase Jem uses to activate holograms: "It's showtime, Synergy!" (Synergy being the computer behind it all). Synergy's tricks got Jem and friends out of many a bad situation. Jem and The Holograms are rightfully owned by Hasbro, which apparently has forgotten that it even has such a delightful property.

So now you know - it was really a three-universe crossover. And knowing is half the battle! :)