A/N: Spidey gets more than she bargained for… :)
Thanks ShadowShock and Lesera for your reviews - as long as I'm not writing into a void, I'm happy! I'm also glad to know it reads well. Writing this seems so self-indulgent at times, 'cos I'm enjoying it too!!
Cheers,
Apteryx
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Chapter 26: Party Time!
By now it was very dark; the moon had set and there were still a few hours before the first glimmer of dawn showed in the east. Shadows were converging on a building, large and low, surrounding then entering it. Two of these shadows used grappling hooks and rope to scale the walls to the roof, were they checked the area thoroughly. Satisfied, the let themselves down again, and also entered the building in the wake of their comrades.
Not long after, a different shadow came, this time from above, and landed lightly on the roof without the need for hooks and ropes. Spidey gave herself a little pep talk as she travelled along the roof-top to the bank of clerestory windows, pausing there to check that she had the right cartridges loaded into her web-shooters before taking a squiz through the glass. 'There's three of them,' she thought, spying their forms in the faint light cast by one of their torches, 'Where's the other one? Oh well, I'll worry about him later. Time for the host to join the party!' Silently, she removed the metal-edged window out of its frame, and dropped the twenty metres down to the floor.
Instantly she was on her feet again, standing in front of the three, warily waiting for her spider-sense to buzz in warning, but they made no move, only stood there, silent. 'Well I guess talking to them won't do any harm,' she thought, 'it's not like they're going to talk back though - I'll have to do that too.'
" 'How do you do, Mr Spider-Man?' Fine thanks, so glad you could make it. 'No trouble at all, our pleasure.' I'd like a conversation with you if I may. 'Certainly.' Howzabout you start - what's the deal with the tongues?" Spidey carried on both sides of the exchange, changing her voice for the other part.
One of the figures moved forward slightly into the light. It was old Beak Nose. His eyes glistened in the shadow cast upwards by his large nose, as with deliberation, he raised his arm; hand to mouth, hand to chest, in that odd salute Spidey had witnessed before. The other two shadows, one small in stature, moved, copying the salutations. It was a signal.
Suddenly, all three rushed Spidey; her sixth sense flared and she instinctively somersaulted high above their heads and landed in a crouch behind them.
"Hey, that was rude! Keep a civil tongue in your head, why don'tcha!" Immediately her sense flared again, she flipped and bounced off her hands, figuring that it was the final member of the quartet, but received a shock when she became upright and saw not one, but six more of the untongued coming out of the shadows for her. 'Oh, poo.'
So far, not one blow had been exchanged, but she knew that was going to change very shortly, with the nine Untongued malevolently converging on her. The darkness would work in her favour at least. She'd have to think fast as well as move fast…
Spidey waited until the two nearest reached her, then swiftly leap-frogged over them, fists connecting hard with their heads as she did so. They dropped to the ground, out for the count.
"Sconed! Piece of piss." Seven left, but openings like that would be harder to get. They were surrounding her now, with a couple of them outside the inclosing circle, ready for her. With a sigh, she bounded out of the circle, but not before one of them managed to land a savage blow to her ribs.
She felt a surge of pain which immediately died down, only to return each time she moved. 'The bastard must've broken a rib,' she thought, as she gritted her teeth and ignored the pain; the adrenaline helped. Spidey quickly grabbed him from behind and swung him around to sweep another two off their feet; she threw her captive into the chest of another who was running up to help. She then bounced amongst them as they attempted to regain their feet, throwing punches at them to keep them off-balance and perhaps keep them down.
"Whassa matter? Have I got too much Weetbix for you?" she quipped, keeping her tone as light as she could.
She felt a tingle, and neatly flipped back, to avoid Mouse who had tripped over a jagged piece of metal protruding from the floor in the darkness. As she landed, she had to twist to avoid the same bit of metal - the tingle grew more urgent, but slightly unbalanced herself, she couldn't dodge the lowered head of one of her assailants, butting her in the stomach.
"Ooffh!" Spidey exclaimed, as she doubled over winded and in pain from her rib, and flew backwards, with Midge's arms now wrapped around her, trapping her arms to her sides. Her head hit the concrete floor, and for a few seconds the interior of the warehouse became even blacker.
Midge on top of her was tightening his grip; Spidey found it hard to breathe, the pain from her broken rib was intense, and she could feel the rest of her ribs bending inwards with the pressure exerted on them; her head started to spin. 'I've got to do something fast…'
She could hear soft scrunching of footsteps as the two remaining Untongued approached them, and twisting her head, saw the beams from their torches shine in her eyes, picking out the silent figure of their associate holding Spider-Man pinned and helpless.
With a small moan, Spidey suddenly went completely limp; Midge gave her inert form a small shake, then after a pause, let her body slump onto the grimy floor as he stood up. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small black knife, while Beaky and another came and stood over Spidey as well.
Slowly, with the knife held out in front of him, Midge knelt down, hand hovering over Spidey's chest, directly in the centre of the spider insignia. The point of the dark blade scarcely touched the fabric, then sliced it, gradually and deliberately piercing the flesh beneath. A round blob of blood pooled up around the edge of the knife, and dribbled in small rivulets along Spidey's front like legs, looking as if a small, bizarre, blood-red spider had landed on her chest.
Midge grunted, a small sound of satisfaction as he sat back onto his heels, lifting the knife away and brandishing it for the men standing over them to see. Their attention was totally on the knife Midge was holding, with their beams of light glinting off the fresh blood at the tip of the blade. They didn't notice, in the half-darkness, Spidey's fingers start to curl; specifically, her two middle fingers…
With an abruptness and speed that startled them all, Spidey rolled away and twisted up into a crouch, arms out and a spray of webbing aimed at the three closely grouped figures. "Ha! I pulled a Hollywood!" taunted Spidey. She had given herself a wee bit of time to recuperate, to clear her head and let her ribs settle down; the small flesh wound was minor.
The two standing took a while to recover their wits, but by the time they did it was too late, the webbing had had it's effect; the antidote had worked and they were cocooned and helpless. Midge, however, had managed to escape; being closer to the ground, he only had a small amount of the webbing reach him, and was able to tear it off himself before he was disabled. He was unaware of the effect of the webbing on the strength of his colleagues. 'That's one advantage of them being speechless - they can't warn each other.' Spidey thought. But now, she still had Midge to deal with - and he was uninjured. Getting him angry worked last time…
Spidey hopped towards the pool of light made by the discarded torches of the two webbed-up villains. She snatched one up and shone it directly into Midge's face, standing an arm's length away from him.
"You haven't grown since the last time we met - didn't the growth hormones work?"
Midge took a roundhouse slug at her; she gave a little jump back. Staying in theoretical reach of him, but never allowing his blows to touch, Spidey zoomed and capered about like a demented fire-fly, mocking and scoffing the while; "Did ya have a fight with a lawn-mower? I've heard of flymo toe, but flymo tongue is ridiculous… Mind you, it sure cut you down to size." She kept moving while waiting for an opening. "You don't just telegraph punches, you send them by Morse code…"
Spidey could see her strategy working - Midge was all but foaming at the mouth in impotent rage; she could also hear movement from the group she had clobbered earlier. She paused, as if in thought, "…or is it a shortened form of semaphore?" Midge took this opportunity to charge her, which was exactly what she wanted. When he was virtually onto her, she crouched spider-fashion with her body almost level with the ground, dropped the torch, then seized his feet, sprung up and flipped him heavily to the concrete floor, as if she were a basket-baller slam-dunking a ball in the net. Just for good measure, she gave his recumbent form a kick in the chest before webbing him up securely. "That's for sticking me with your knife - do you have any idea how long it takes me to sew up tears in this costume? Shesh!"
Spidey stood there breathing hard for a moment; she could feel a scraping in her chest every time she moved her torso, or took a deep breath, but she knew she wasn't finished yet… Her spider-sense gave a twinge, reminding her of the other Untongued now on their feet again. She turned slowly, her white eye-pieces seeming to glow in the faint light, and advanced toward them.
"OK, you pernicious race of odious vermin, come 'n get me… if you can."
Advancing still, into the blackness, she noticed them glance at one another, unsure. It seemed as if they were willing to give up, if given that choice individually, but as a team, as part of a greater cause, they chose to continue their fight. One, very tall and dark, responded by laying into her immediately, but his flailing arms met with no resistance; Spidey was already gone.
"Up here. If you can reach." Nearly impossible to make out, apart from the eyes, was a figure clinging lightly half-way up the wall ten metres away. She waited as the three men ran towards her, then sprung unexpectedly onto the shoulders of the tall guy. Before he could react and reach for her, she had already pounded him on the head, hard enough to hear a crunch as vertebrae compressed. She vaulted off him as he fell, reached out for an iron pole, guided by her spider-sense, and swung around it, doubling back with legs outstretched to slam into the back of one of the remaining two men still standing. Springing clear, she twisted, seized the other by the arm as he took a swing at her, and threw him against the wall. He was older and slower and slightly more thick-set then most of the Untongued, but he was also tougher - he slumped for a moment, then heaved himself up and went for Spidey again.
"You're a wee battler," she began, as she ducked under a kick, then leapt up to avoid a back-handed blow, "a tenacious bastard, but you're slowing down a bit now. Don'tcha think?" She landed and tilted her head, considering. He feinted with one hand, then uppercut with the other, hoping to catch Spidey off-guard, but her preternatural reflexes meant she dodged easily.
"See? I told ya," she said, and with a quickness that blurred the senses, she returned two rapid punches of her own, one after the other, delivered to his solar plexus. She stepped back, making room for the pole-axed man to fall forward and added a clout with the side of her hand to the back of his neck as he did so.
Standing, surveying the nine Untongued, now all contained in webbing and saturated with the antidote to their strength drug, Spidey silently thanked Peter for his insistence on her taking the antidote with her. As Spider-Man, he may not have needed to use it, but this was her toughest fight yet, as well as being unexpected.
Climbing up the wall, and along under one of the over-hanging beams that ran beside the narrow windows, Spidey retrieved her camera, and a small webbed package she had placed there earlier. Before arriving at the warehouse for her rendezvous with the Untongued, she had paid another visit to Beak Nose's apartment, figuring that he would already be on his way, and his PDA and other information about the operations of the Untongued would be there; they seemed to go into action with no other items on them other than the small black knives. It didn't take her long at all to find them, all neatly filed, but she didn't have time to read them through; just to collect them together.
Now, she took the package and climbed up through the clerestory window she had entered. She stood at the edge of the roof and facing the street, activated the spider-signal so it brightly illuminated the walls of the surrounding structures. She changed over web-cartridges as she waited, and shortly after heard a high-pitched whistle. Releasing a web-line she swooped down into the street below, and alighted on the pavement, just as Sargent Hudson and another cop got to the spot.
Hudson's eyes widened at the sight of her - the front of her chest was covered with blood, although the wound had now almost stopped bleeding; Spidey also had a hand clutching at her opposite side, and had rather laboured breathing.
"What happened to you!?" exclaimed Hudson.
"They couldn't get to my tongue, heh, so they tried to cut my heart out instead - I'm sure you can understand that…"
Shaking his head in bemusement, Hudson asked, "Do you need any medical attention?"
"Nah, a Band-Aid will do. Here, I've got this package for you - and nine more inside…"
"Nine!?" Hudson looked at Spidey in wonderment. "How did you ever get out of there alive, man? You should have called us earlier."
Hudson's partner's jaw dropped, and she said quietly, "God…"
He turned and introduced her to Spidey. "This is Detective Mila Kysela - she was first on the scene at the CNN reporter's homicide... it was her sister, Zelenka."
"Hi," she said, shyly.
"Hey, that would've been tough…" Spidey responded sympathetically. Then, changing her tone, "C'mon inside. I'm afraid you missed all the party games, but there are some leftovers for you to enjoy…" She turned and bounded to the small door set in the large loading bay door, flung it open and hopped in.
Hudson murmured into his RT, and almost immediately, a couple of police vans appeared around a corner and drew up to the loading bay. Several police jumped out and followed Spidey inside. Out of his pocket, Hudson pulled out a fuse, and fitted it back into the box inside the door; the lights blinked on.
Spidey was crouching by the bundles on the floor. She was talking to the captive cult members. "…known it was so dingy, I would have held it someplace else…" she turned slightly as the policemen approached, closely followed by Hudson and Kysela. "Here are the folks to take you home; don't forget your party bags!" Several sets of eyes glared at her.
Hudson stifled a chuckle.
"All yours," said Spidey to him, jumping up, "Watch this one though," she nudged Beaky with her foot. "His tongue's so sharp, he'll cut his own throat. I hate to be a party pooper but… I'm pooped!" She shot out a strand of web to the ceiling and swung up to the small windows and out.
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