Part Three

            "I've got to move." Peter murmured under the darkness of the debris. He had been lucky; the impact had only knocked him out for a minute or two giving him a few dozen sore muscles but not putting him out of commission for good. Ock had underestimated how resilient Spider-Man really was. Nevertheless, the beams didn't even budge from his attempts to lift it. "Come on, I've got to get back up!"

            Peter pressed his hands against one of the steel beams that lay across his face, "Christ, I can't let this end here!" He had bruised a rib, it irritated him even now. "Too many people are counting on me; I can't afford to just stop!" He pushed, blocking the pain out of his mind, "Move!"

            "Ding dong, the witch is dead. Which old witch? The witch is which!" Otto left the central building with a smile that seemed to stretch on forever. He adjusted his black-tinted glasses and noticed his own fingers quivering with joy. "Miss Stacy?" He called out making his way to the forklift, "Your time of incarceration is at end as is, I'm afraid, your old boyfriend."

            Using his powerful tentacles he dragged the forklift away and lay his eyes upon the young lady, "Allow me." Otto remarked and removed her gag and bonds with mechanical ease.

            "Where's Peter?" She asked the moment she was free to speak again. "What did you do to him?"

            Otto smirked, "It is my honor to officially inform you that I've ended the miserable existence of that arachnid." He took a step away from her via his tentacles. "And as a man of my word I will free you." Otto reached out to her wrist with one of his tentacles in order to help Gwen back up to her feet.

            Suddenly, a web-line attached itself to Otto's back and he was thrown violently into the side of an old run-down car a few feet away from the forklift. "What? How can you be alive? It's impossible!" Otto screamed desperately seeing the figure of Spider-Man standing in the field letting go the line. The entire right side of his costume covering his torso was shredded with only patches holding on by mere strands of fabric.

            To Peter, the doctor's helping tentacle had seemed like an attack directed towards Gwen and he himself had wasted no time in acting. "Let me give you a piece of advice, Ock, next time if you're going to start a fight with someone remember not to leave unless you're certain they're dead." He jumped over one of Otto's tentacles as it swung by, "Otherwise it's just not polite."

            "Why are you still alive? I've gone beyond the limits of madness in my efforts to destroy and still you live!" Octavius screamed and raised the car he had slammed into above his head with him immensely powerful tentacles. "You should have stayed down, Spider-Man. Especially when I've already so completely bested you!" He roared before throwing the car like a toy.

            Peter's spider-sense warned him of the explosives inside the car and that Otto was already reaching for the detonator. He jumped away from the automobile as it came and unleashed a spread of webbing that enveloped it moments before the vehicle exploded. The webbing contained the force of the blast barely shaking the ground when it was all over. "Did Osborn give you a discount on bombs or something?"

            Otto didn't stop to respond and immediately charged forward. Peter was taken back by the speed with which the doctor moved. He dodged the first but the second immediately clipped him across the jaw forcing him to roll across the ground even as another tentacle grasped for his feet.

            Flipping back up was no hard task, ducking in time to avoid one of the tentacles taking off his head was. Peter escaped Otto's initial strike but a second one landed a blow to his ribs. Otto took the moment to rub his nose of blood while Peter groaned and struggled to stand, "Why are still moving? What does it take to kill you?"

            "Oh, I don't know." Peter replied barely managing to stand, "Probably whatever animal it is you eat for lunch."

            Otto entered, thrashing into battle. Peter somersaulted onto the side of the chain-link fence. One of the tentacles grabbed the edge of the fence and shook it with such force that Peter was thrown off with stunning force only to be knocked back down with a tentacle.

            He picked Peter up and wrapped one of his tentacles around Peter's neck, "No more jokes, no more insults, now it is only your flimsy throat and hard metal!" Otto declared strangling Spider-Man to death.

            "T-That." Peter couldn't even mumble a reply; his body was in no shape to be deprived of air. The pressure with which Otto was strangling him made it feel like his head was going to explode. He tried to kick at him but he was too far, everything was fading into a black abyss.

            Without warning a brick slammed into the side of Otto's head forcing him to lose his grip on Spider-Man's neck. Peter immediately capitalized and fired a spray of webbing into the doctor's eyes.

            Otto went into an immediate frenzy. He swatted Peter away and immediately sent a tentacle hurtling towards his attacker. "Who did that?" He asked ripping the webbing away, "One of your friends from that blasted superhero community, Spider-Man? I thought you understood that this was supposed to be a strictly personal confrontation." He asked even as Parker was trying to get back up to his feet and turned to the individual who had dared to interrupt his moment of triumph. "What?"

            "No." Peter stammered; his left eye visible through the shattered lens. "No; not you, Gwen."

            She hung off the ground, suspended in the air by Otto's tentacle that had impaled her. "Pe…Peter…" Gwen struggled to speak, her lungs felt as if they were becoming heavy "…L-love you."She was gone, a victim of fate as much as trauma.

            Otto seemed to have shattered. His expression was that of somebody who had just run over their own dog. "W-why did she get involved?" He asked himself, praying that somehow she could be saved, "I wasn't going to hurt her; she was in no danger."

            "Why would she do such a thing and risk her own life?" Otto seemed to be questioning not Peter but himself, "What have I done." The tentacle seemed to glow with the crimson stain of blood on it, "God, no."

            Peter lashed out at Otto with a primal rage fueling the surging adrenaline in him, "You monster! You killed her!" He landed another strike across his jaw forcing Otto to the ground, "All she ever did was make the mistake of getting involved with a guy like me and for that she deserved to die?" He raised Otto off the ground by his collar and retracted his fist for the death blow, "How do justify that?"

            Otto's face was a bloody mess, he reeled his head back, "Do it, Spider-Man, kill me; I don't deserve to live!" He screamed, "I'm a mockery of myself, do not prolong this any longer and finish me!"

            Just a second of rage is all it would take and he'd be dead, Gwen would be avenged.

            "Do it!" Otto roared, "Kill me!"

            Peter cringed with tears running down his face. Then what? What would killing Otto in cold blood bring; he looked at the poor fool and saw his future, a fate full of fear and regret at his own sins, terror at the idea that one could never make up for what they had done, and the loss of redemption. Peter didn't want that, he wanted a life, a chance at it with Mary Jane; he needed her more than anything. With a heavy heart he dropped Otto to the ground, "No."

            "What?" Otto asked, stunned, "I killed her; I deserve to pay for what I've done! How can you presume to let me live? It's your duty to execute me for my crime."

            "Do it yourself!" Peter replied, "Being alone and realizing what you are and what you can never get back, Otto, that's punishment enough. I don't need to kill you, I've already beaten you. Where's the Goblin, where has he taken Mary Jane?"

            Otto wept pitifully into his hands.

            "Answer me!" Peter roared.

            "Osborn?" Otto said lost in his own grief, "H-he took her to the Brooklyn Bridge. He said she had to pay, she and your child both had to pay."

            Peter walked away from Dr. Otto Octavius, a broken shell of a man consumed by his own self-loathing and desires for vengeance. He walked away from Gwen Stacy, an old lover, a friend, a person that had been caught up in the storm that was his life and suffered needlessly because of it. And he walked towards Mary Jane and a monster that dared to cover his true self behind human warmth and compassion, a creature out on his own quest for retribution, and most of all he walked towards his destiny.