y'know what makes me smile? yellowcard makes me smile. that one song. so summery and pritty. in fact it's so happy happy that i believe we'll kick off with da spidey. yeah why not.
Part Five- Parts We Play
'Somebody help me!!'
The young woman backed down the narrow alley, hugging her leather clasp bag to her front. Up above, flapping flag-like shapes of clothes hung from the many washing lines that strung between the two buildings, obscuring the afternoon sun and muffling her screams.
'Somebody, please!'
'Shut up, lady!' It was the largest of the four men who spoke, his words as forceful as his gang's slow advance. 'Won't do no-one no good raising hell, no-one's gonna hear you.'
'Shoulda picked a safer route, kitty.' said another, who looked like he'd been behind the door when dental care was explained. 'Now give us the bag.'
'Don't make us get nasty, lady…' said a third, sliding a hand inside his shirt. It came out holding something small, which gleamed.
'Oh God…please don't hurt me!' The young woman stumbled on her high heels, falling against the brick wall at the alley's end. She was trapped, and her voice rose hysterically as she realised it. 'Don't touch me! Please!'
'We said shut up!' snarled the fourth man. Closing in, he dragged the bag from her arms, drew back a hand-
-and vanished.
Open-mouthed, the rest of the gang turned to stare at the place where their associate had been. The one with the knife stepped forwards, his weapon hanging limply from his fingers.
'What the f-OOOOMPFFF!'
A scarlet-sheathed foot, travelling with about the same speed and force as a small car, slammed into his stomach. He shot backwards, hitting the brick wall and raising a cloud of mortar dust.
Releasing the web-line that had carried him down from the rooftop, the red-and-blue shape of New York's superpowered protector dropped out of his arc into a neat landing between the woman and her attackers. The impression of streamlined power was only slightly reduced by the addition of a bulky one-strap bag hanging from the hero's shoulder. Peter had been halfway to the Daily Bugle offices with his latest photographs when he'd heard the scream.
The thieves backed off, uncertain of this new development.
'It's that Spiderman!' said the youngest, stepping hastily over his fallen friend, who was lying crumpled against the wall uttering a number of words which his mother would probably not have appreciated. 'Let's get out of here!'
The leader, however, was made of stronger stuff. Well, thicker stuff, anyway.
'No damn web-slinging freak does that to a Python.' he growled, and charged.
Peter ducked his clumsy blow. 'Hey, I'm sorry I crashed your little party, guys.' he said, catching the thief's arm and spinning him back until they were face to face. 'But don't worry, I brought punch!'
WHACK.
As their leader sagged, the two remaining men exchanged panicked glances, and edged towards him, fists at the ready. Balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, Peter waited for them to get closer…
BeedeebeediddlebipBIPbip.
Distracted, Peter mistimed his shot, and the blast of web missed the youngest thief by inches. Behind them, the man he'd kicked into the wall was just struggling upright when the renegade web slapped into him, glueing him to the brick.
BeedeebeediddlebipBIPbip.
The thief on his left, a tattoed hulk in a faded blue baseball cap, threw a punch. Peter blocked it with one arm, the other hand scrabbling in his bag. After a second, he found what he was looking for, and with a quick cross kick, he sent the man flying into his partner. As the two fell like dominoes, he clicked open the small black device he'd found, punching a button.
Beedeebeediddle-
'Hello?'
'Peter?'
Peter smiled, albeit nervously. The men were still moving. 'Hey.'
'Are you busy?'
Behind him, the snared man finally managed to break out from under his restraint and began to look around for his weapon. Peter leapt and tackled him, knocking him out with a elbow to the neck. Discarded, the phone dropped, forcing him to perform a rib-stretching lunge to catch it before it hit the floor.
'I'm kinda in the middle of something right now, yeah.' he managed.
MJ's voice was exhillated, ecstatic. 'I'm sorry, I just had to call you! Remember that audition I did a couple of weeks ago, for the Orpheus Theatre on Second Avenue? Well, they just rang me, and-'
'Wait, weren't they the idiots that turned you down like, three months ago?' Under the material of his mask, Peter frowned. MJ had been upset for days after that audition.
He was listening for her reply when every sound was drowned out by a familliar sensation, as if someone had grabbed a tuning dial in his brain and dragged it through an ocean of white noise to a new station. Throwing himself flat, he felt more than saw a bright hum cut through the air where his shoulderblades had been. The youngest thief had found the knife.
Not for the first time, Peter felt a burst of gratitude to the spider that had gifted him with its precognitive senses. Flipping into the air, he kicked the weapon out of the man's hand, sending him stumbling into a pile of garbage bags, and shot a low stream of web fluid at his legs to keep him there. The knife leapt like a salmon, landing point down in the black plastic bag an inch from the young thief's hand, where it stuck, quivering almost as much as its recent owner.
'When will you kids learn not to play with those things?' said Peter, mostly to relieve his own shock. That had been dangerously close.
He realised MJ was still talking. '…broke her ankle, only a week to go till first night, and they remembered me! They say if I can learn the part in a week, I'm in!'
'What?'
MJ sighed, making the phoneline crackle with static. 'Peter, did you hear a single word I said? The Orpheus Theatre! A Midsummer Night's Dream! Hermia! I got the part!!'
'You got the part?' Peter's eyes widened beneath the mask. 'You got the part! That's wonderful! Okay, I…I'm coming back to the apartment right now, and then we're going out to celebrate! We can-'
Baseball Cap picked himself up, looking around the alley in disbelief. Slowly, his gaze lifted from the unconscious bodies of his gang to Peter. His mouth was hanging open.
Peter couldn't help a grin. '-Actually, I'll be a couple of minutes. I've, uh, got something here I need to wrap up.' He clicked the phone off, but a wave of soaring elation had risen in his chest, leaving him unable to switch back into combat mode.
'She got the part!' he yelled at the stunned would-be-mugger. The man stared at him.
'Tell her congratulations.' he mumbled, and ran for it. Peter stood there for a few more moments, vaguely watching him go. Finally, a thought emerged through his happiness that there was something he should be doing at this point.
'…Oh yeah.' he said, and flung his arms out after the running figure, his middle fingers slamming back towards his wrists. A hundred yards down the alley, the last thief was momentarily aware of a sharp whispering sound, before two balls of web fluid smacked into the back of his head. The impact was so hard that he turned a forwards somersault and landed on his back, out cold.
Peter remained long enough to reunite the shellshocked woman with her bag, then ran along the alley wall and shot out a line of silvery web that pulled him up, up into the bright New York sky, his heart singing inside him.
The rusted iron manacle squealed in protest as it was bent back on itself, forced open by the massive strength of the claw that gripped it until what had been an 'o' shape was reduced to a 'w'. The length of chain fell to the floor, and Escher stepped over it, rubbing her wrist.
'Don't try to run.' said Doctor Octavius. The girl looked up at the arm that had freed her, watching it sway slightly as it tracked her movements, bunched power in every curve.
'You're kidding, right?' she said.
Otto smiled humourlessly. 'Smart girl.'
'Escher.' said Escher. After a few moments of silence, she felt compelled to add 'That's my name. Like the artist.'
Doctor Octavius walked away from her. The sun had replaced the moonlight falling through the gaps in the far-off roof, dappling the dark greeny-grey folds of his coat as it flapped around him. Where they struck the tentacles, the sunbeams bounced and glittered off the dull refractive surfaces of each segment, flashing across the walls and floor like dozens of lightbulb-crazy fireflies. Slowly, picking her way over the splintered boards and other debris, Escher followed him.
'Well, you know mine.' he said, somewhat sourly. 'Everyone in this city does.'
'"Doc Ock"' said Escher, with a bunny-ears gesture she knew at least one arm would see.
'If you like.'
'It's weird, though.' She had to pause for a moment, the trailing laces of her scuffed Allstars snagging on a loose nail. '"Everyone in this city"…they were wrong about you, weren't they?'
If Escher hadn't been kneeling on the floor unpicking her laces, she would probably have been interested to see the effect this statement had on her captor. Otto stopped as if stung, although he didn't turn.
'What makes you say that?' he said, quietly, and for the first time his voice was something other than empty.
Escher looked up from her shoe, unnerved by the sudden stillness. Even the four tentacles seemed to be waiting for a reply.
'Uh…because everyone thought you were dead?' she said.
'Oh.' The arms swung away again. 'That.'
He moved on, Escher following tentatively in his wake, towards a part of the warehouse where most of the heavy wooden pillars were still intact.
Glancing back at her corner, Escher realised that this was the approximate place that she'd heard the voice from the previous night. Here, bolted to the wall about two metres off the floor, a battered steel gantry about the size of a large operating table jutted out of the brickwork, the metal black with corrosion. From the look of this area, she guessed that this was the part of the warehouse in which the occupant had really splashed out on home comforts; there was a mattress on the gantry, and an old radio on a crate.
'No-one was more surprised than me, I can tell you.' Doctor Octavius said. 'From what I can remember, I certainly didn't expect to survive.'
'The Bugle said you were trying to make a big fireball thing in some old pier down on West.' Escher wrinkled her nose. When it came to newspapers, her attention span lasted just about as far as the comics page and the Weird News of the World. If it wasn't printed in three-panel format or about rains of fish in Sweden, she found it difficult to absorb.
There had been an awful lot of stuff about the incident that had destroyed Pier 56, however, and some of it had penetrated even Escher's easily-distracted mind. 'Said you were trying to take over the city…or blow it up…or maybe both…Anyway, it said Spiderman basically sank the whole thing into the river, and you, um, went with it. But I don't know.' she added, quickly.
The arms were stirring in a manner which could only be described as aggravated. Their host leaned his elbows on the edge of the gantry, running his hands through his unkempt hair.
'Oh, yes. Nobody knows, they gossip and they wonder and they guess, and then they go and read the papers and watch the news and they believe every word, and they say; oh, how lucky we have these things, to tell us what really happened.' he growled.
Escher was a little frightened by this new, embittered intensity. However, she was also intrigued. As politely as possible, she moved the radio onto the floor and sat down on the crate.
'So what did really happen?'
Otto, still leaning his head on his arms, frowned at the wall. There was nothing he could see to be gained or lost from telling the girl, although his first thought was to pass the subject up on the grounds of caution. Even before, in the days before the accident when his world had been more or less normal, he'd been a naturally introverted man, self-absorbed and private. There had only been a very, very few people in his life who'd been able to draw him out of himself, out of his infatuation with his work. People like…
The smart arm voices clamoured sharply to him. They could tell where his thoughts were headed, and as always they tried to divert his attention. The dry rattle of their movement made the girl lean back warily.
See how she mistrusts, Otto.
It always seemed to Otto that the voices of his arms came from a physical point just above the nape of his neck, inside his head. The effect was not unlike having someone constantly standing right behind him, whispering quietly.
She wouldn't believe you.
On the other hand, this was the first time he'd spoken with another human being for nearly two months. Yes, he had adapted to his enforced solitude better than many would have in his unenviable position, but still…
'You wouldn't believe me.' he said.
Escher shrugged.
'Try me.'
The inky waters of the Hudson River thrashed furiously, under a sky livid with the ragged clouds of an exhausted storm. Tonight, though, this aquatic indigestion had a stranger cause than the usual forces of nature. Tonight, far beneath the churning surface, a small sun was dying.
Shaking the river bed with a series of soundless, angry implosions, the burning orb consumed itself in a desperate search for fuel. It had been self-sustaining from the moment of its first fiery birth, but here in the cloudy water, the energy it radiated in huge looping coils from its surface could not reconnect, and the plummeting temperatures were cooling its white-hot heart.
The end, when it came, was swift. Expanding like a burning flower, the sphere blazed defiantly for the last time, a stupendous final effort which reached the surface of the river, making the pounding waves glow as if made from pure light.
Then it shrank to a point, dwindled, and vanished.
The waters calmed. Downriver, the sediment-heavy waves quickly resumed their normal patterns, curling across the wide river and washing at the sloping concrete banks. After a while, unusually large chunks of detritus began to roll and pile on the surface- splintered timbers and sections of iron girders, originally formed in elegant, curving shapes, but now bent indescribably. Smaller flotsam stacked up against this rubble- bricks, planks, jagged sheets of glass that floated on the tide like plates of ice, and other oddities.
There was no light in which these unknown objects could have been examined. The nearest streetlights or inhabited buildings were hundreds of yards away, beyond the long, desolate stretch of the bank. As far as could be seen, everything was silence, damp, and darkness.
And then…
…there was light.
Something broke the water, just short of the edge. Bathing the surrounding waves with a weak red glow, it turned towards the shore like the periscope of some alien vessel, sending huge, stretched shadows dancing from the piles of debris. Tentatively, it extended a few feet, then slammed down into the wavelets at the edge of the bank. Spray flew and concrete cracked, and the long robotic arm bunched in what appeared to be a random spasm, blueish sparks spitting from every vertebrae-like segment.
Even as the strange appendage slumped, however, another shape snaked out of the water to join it, and another, and another. Anchoring themselves on the slippery surface, they reared backwards, length after length of dark metal rising from the depths until finally the last segments emerged.
And with them, sliding limply behind the four long arms, came a bedraggled human shape.
The smart arms were, quite literally, in shock. They still hadn't fully recovered from the massive voltage which had torn through them. Then, from being in almost total control, they had been forced to perform actions which had made no logical sense, actions which (as had been quite clear at the time) would ultimately lead to the destruction of The Work. The smart arm intelligence had been created specifically to aid the completion of The Work, a purpose which had become intensified to an incredible degree after the first failure. Nothing took priority over The Work. To be asked-commanded! -to destroy it was, utterly, utterly baffling.
And now, something terrible had happened to their host. The smart arms didn't quite understand what it was, exactly, but what they did know was that certain vital things that they had always monitored, that they had learned to monitor to make sure their creator remained able to function, were now unmonitorable on account of there not being, well, anything to monitor.
And the energy, the precious biochemical electricity surplus that his body produced, the energy that the arms relied on for their continued existence…it had gone. The arms could store power, enough to keep them going for hours, but when this backup ran out they needed their host to provide more.
The heads hovered uncertainly over the body of their creator. Organic life forms were such flimsy, delicate things. Their maker needed their constant protection. This, also, was a function of the smart arm programming, and from what they could discern, a major failure seemed to be imminent.
Scanning their memory, the arms located at least three definite examples of humans who had appeared to exhibit the same outward signs as their host was now. They examined the details surrounding each case, the particular scenarios, and the consequences, comparing them against the current situation. It was a complex, involved task, and it took the smart arm intelligence all of twenty microseconds to complete.
death / dE:th / n. 1 the final cessation of vital functions in an organism; the ending of life. 2 the event that terminates life. 3 the fact or state of being dead. (Old English DETH from Germanic, related to DIE.)
Conclusion: Non-viable state.
Action: IMPERATIVE; IMMEDIATE.
If electricity was missing, the tentacles decided, electricity was needed. Carefully, the arm which had first emerged from the water moved in to push against the side of the lifeless shape to which it was attached, rolling it as far over on one side as was possible. Another reached over, pulling aside sodden folds of the charred trenchcoat which draped the figure, revealing bare, blistered skin.
A cold, spitting blue-white glow began to grow in the centre of the first claw, accompanied by a low, urgent humming. Abruptly, the arm swung forwards-
Ka-WHUMP.
Sparks glittered in the smoky night air as the body jerked, then lay still. The hum increased in volume-
Ka-WHUMP.
If the smart arm intelligence had been capable of feeling worry, it would have been almost frantic. The pulses weren't working, even when applied directly to the chest above the settling lump of muscle which seemed to need them the most. All they seemed to be doing was causing superficial surface damage, and consuming huge chunks of the arm's limited energy reserves.
The red lights at the heart of each claw flickering like a faulty neon sign, the arms drained their backup reserves for one last attempt.
KA-WHUMP.
The arms fell, hitting the cracked concrete around their host like a quartet of broken Slinkys. The junk-strewn shore was thrown back into complete darkness as their lights winked out. For a moment, the only sound was the water, washing endlessly against the river's unseen banks.
Then, someone started to cough.
Dark.
Close, warm, dark, sheltering comfort like a favorite blanket. Blanket stitched with purple and gold, she always brought it to the couch when they watched TV together, smelt of her, smelt of warmth and roses. Roses for…
Wake up, Otto.
Flaring light, deep inside. Each pulse a lead weight, slamming into a heart too tired to beat, into lungs too weary to draw breath.
Unbearable. The comforting dark fading away, draining into nothing, leaving only blurry white so bright it was agony and…
…and he was alive.
Otto rolled over, trying to breathe. Every gulp of air provoked another fullisade of coughs, forcing the oxygen from his drowned lungs and making him gasp and cough again. His throat was on fire, and the skin on his chest was raw with scorched arc burns, like that of a lighting-strike victim. Face down on the algae-stained concrete, he spat water and bile and blood, choking over his swollen tongue.
Around him, his metal arms rose into the air, checking and re-callibrating themselves after their temporary shut-down. One of them nudged against his cheek, and its touch was freezing even against his river-chilled flesh. He tried to move, but his limbs were oddly stiff. Rigor mortis, he realised with a dull stab of horror. How long had he been dead?
Not long. Do you remember?
'I…remember.' It was good to hear a voice, any voice, even if it was inside his own head.
'We…we saved the city.'
Yes.
Now he was shivering, shaking with cold and shock as the stiffness left him. Two of the smart arms reached down, wrapping the remains of his coat across his burned chest, while the others elongated and lifted him gently, letting him hang from the spinal brace like a broken puppet. Otto felt rather than saw them begin to move, carrying him up the slope of the bank. He wanted to take command, to direct them…but everything seemed unimportant, somehow. The urgency faded, and he found he didn't care about being in control anymore. He just wanted to sleep…somewhere safe.
They understood. They always did.
Rest, Otto. We will protect you.
Otto felt his eyelids grow heavy…
…and then he felt nothing at all.
Escher swallowed, suddenly aware that she had forgotten to do so for quite some time. It had taken almost an hour for Doctor Octavius to finish his story, from a rough outline of nuclear fusion for beginners, through the accident and his attempts to recreate the experiment on Pier 56, and ending with a more or less blood-free account of his death and resurrection. In fact, he tailored the violence throughout, mainly out of consideration for his young audience.
This didn't include pulling any punches on his own behaviour, however. Escher was bright enough to join most of the pieces he left out, and by the end she was perched on the edge of the crate, her eyes wide and filled with a new expression.
As his words trailed off and nothing replaced them, Otto had to fight the urge to look around at his captive audience. Had he really come across so badly, even in his own words?
Finally, she found her tongue.
'Wow.'
He did turn around, then. She looked…what? Awed? Sympathetic? Certainly impressed, and not, as he'd feared, repulsed.
'Just…wow. With the whole clock-hand-spear-thing…'
'Yes…'
'And what, all the metal? Like cars and things?'
'I think so, yes.'
'Wait, really only twenty-five pounds on the whole planet?'
'Well, less now, of course, but…yes.'
Escher frowned, biting a nail she'd picked ragged while listening. 'That old lady could have died, you know.'
'Yes.'
'And all of those people on that train.'
'Yes, I know.' Otto wasn't about to try to justify his actions. He'd managed to avoid alluding to his own feelings as much as possible while telling the tale, and he didn't want to start now. Possibly because to do so might awaken those feelings all over again, and he certainly didn't want that. He had quite enough emotions to be going on with…
'Wait a minute, what do you mean, you recognised him??'
…such as annoyance.
'I mean, that when he took his mask off, I recognised him.' he said, shortly.
Escher gaped at him.
'But that…that means…you know who Spiderman is.'
'Yes.'
'Oh, my God.' said Escher, in a strangled hiss of excitement. 'Oh, my God.'
'You see, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about!' snapped Otto. Catching his irritation, the tentacles twitched and rose behind him as he continued. Escher leaned back, strongly reminded of the arching tail of an angry scorpion. 'How come the description of my escape from the jaws of death only merits a "Wow", but the fact that I know the identity of that wretched web-weaver is worth two "Oh, my God"s and an expression like a concussed guppy?'
Escher had the vague impression that she was balanced on the edge of some deep, unpleasant mental pit. She decided to change the subject.
'Did it hurt, when you died?' she said, quietly.
For a moment, Otto was taken aback. Then he tried to answer honestly.
'No.' he said. 'But, then, I suppose you could say I didn't really die. And yes, to answer your next question, coming back did hurt. A lot.'
Escher got up, went to crack her knuckles, then thought better of it. Instead, she shook her head, like someone trying to rid their ears of water. 'It doesn't make any sense.'
'What doesn't?'
'Well, if it was you that stopped that thing, if you're the reason New York's still standing instead of being scrunched up in some kind of huge burned-out doughnut around Pier 56, then what are you still doing here?' she said. 'I mean, okay, you hurt some people, but, come on, you saved the entire city! That's…that's hero stuff! What have you been doing for the last two months? And how come you're still doing things like trying to break into the Science Museum? You could be-'
'Young lady, you may be uncommonly perceptive but you still don't know what you're talking about.' said Otto, evenly. 'Two months can be a very, very long time. And as for your so-called "hero stuff"…well, you obviously don't follow public opinion as closely as I do.'
He stepped away from the gantry, one extending tentacle pointing the way to a nearby section of wall. Escher looked.
Her first thought was that someone had decided to wallpaper the brick, and had set about the job with great vigour, far too much paper, and a blindfold. Every inch, in a ragged rectangle about four metres square, was covered in hanging strips, squares and odd shapes of paper.
Then she realised what she was seeing. The paper was newsprint, pages and pages of it, from two-inch columns to full-page front headlines. They were mostly torn from the pages of the Daily Bugle, but here and there spreads and articles from other papers and magazines mingled with the familiar black, white and red layouts.
'It's something of a hobby.' said Otto, with a bright, brittle smile.
And not a healthy one, thought Escher, walking closer to the bizzare display. All of the articles had two things in common- the subject, under whatever name, of Doctor Otto Octavius, and a decidedly negative opinion. On rough estimate, the words 'LUNATIC', 'MADMAN', and 'SUPERVILLAIN' occured nearly as frequently as 'TERROR', 'EVIL', and 'MENACE.' The articles were dated from the time of the laboratory accident, and continued right up until the present- including a crumpled front page from the previous day.
'Heh, that's wrong.' she said, turning to him. 'Technically, you don't have eight arms, you…'
She saw his face, and the words died in her throat.
'…or, whatever.' she mumbled.
'No, it doesn't exactly make for relaxing reading, does it?' said Otto, as if he hadn't heard. He ran a hand over the rustling collage. 'It could probably get to you, if you let it.' His gaze stopped momentarily on a small column headed Mad Scientist May Have Planned Wife's Death.
'Not a happy picture. But, I'm sure you'll agree, a very clear one.'
'People are just scared.' Escher managed. She, too, had seen the small column.
Doctor Octavius let out a sharp bark of laughter. 'Scared? Hah! Well, I suppose they had reason to be. Up until that.' A claw shot out, stabbing a yellowing clipping tacked just above Escher's head. It was the one about the events at Pier 56.
'After that, well, they had their chance to forgive. Just like Spiderman,' and it was amazing how much gall could be packed into three short syllables, 'had his chance to tell the truth.'
'M-maybe he c-couldn't.' stammered Escher. The claw had nearly parted her hair.
'Or maybe he didn't want to!' spat Otto. 'After all, he's got the entire city praising him to the skies, why rock the boat? Especially when he thought I was dead!'
The arms were almost fully extended now, twelve feet or so of tarnished, segmented olive-grey metal arching from the two hem-long slits in the back of his trenchcoat. Escher, who was still trying to understand the relationship between the smart arms and their host, guessed that they probably weren't trying to calm him down.
'I should have known.' he said, stalking off towards the centre of the warehouse floor. 'I thought, perhaps, it wasn't too late to do what I believed at the time to be "the right thing." I lost my resolve...I allowed myself to be persuaded that there might just be something that was more important than what I wanted.'
A tentacle flicked out, a rapid gesture which encompassed the wall behind Escher and the bleak mural of hatred it displayed.
'My mistake.' said Otto.
Harry Osborn was nervous.
Sitting in the chair behind his father's massive antique desk, his hand-crafted leather shoes dark against the tawny yellows of the William Morris carpet, he resisted the impulse to swing them like a little kid. Harmless displacement activity, maybe, but still childish and distracting, and in his current state of mind Harry had no need for either.
The memory of that morning's disasterous meeting still hung like a bad taste in his mind. On his arrival back home, the luxury penthouse apartment where he lived alone since the death of his father, he had gone straight to the study, planning to renew his acquaintance with an old friend, Jack Daniels. After about an hour, however, he had realised that temporary liquid amnesia wasn't going to help this time. The disappointment was still to fresh, too vivid.
Gradually, his slightly woozy thoughts had turned to the culprits behind this new failure. The more Harry ran over the details of the museum break-in, the more he felt that Spiderman had been the main player. Why should he believe that the man that killed his father had tried to stop the robbery? It made much more sense the other way round…that Spiderman had planned it, orchestrated it to ruin him…
But Peter wouldn't do that, he had thought, vaguely, and immediately wished he hadn't. In the two months since the awful revelation, Harry had been unable to act one way or another on the subject of his best friend and his sworn enemy being one and the same. It was like the optical illusions, which, depending on how you looked at it, was either a duck or a rabbit. Try as he might, he couldn't hold both pictures in his head at the same time.
So he'd done nothing, carrying on more or less on autopilot, devoting himself to the success of Special Projects, and avoiding all contact with Peter Parker or anything to do with him. Even so, he'd been uncomfortably aware that this wasn't solving the problem, rather that he was merely putting it off and increasing it as he did so.
The events of that morning had been the last straw. Resentment bubbling to the surface of his thoughts like poisonous acid, Harry realised he was unable to contain his anger a moment longer. He could either do something positive, or go mad.
Harry's ability to charge off on split-second choices had gotten him into a lot of trouble in the past, in particular leading, in one way or another, to his exclusion from three out of five of the best private schools in New York. But with a multi-billion-dollar empire at his fingertips, a hotline phone and a dawning idea, trouble took on a whole new meaning.
It had taken him just under an hour to find the names he needed. His father had built up a lot of contacts over the years, and some of those contacts knew other people, and some of them knew of other people, and some of them had absolutely no idea to whom he was referring, certainly not, but maybe if he, ahem, called this number…
And now he was waiting, the plan in his head growing like a ravenous creature with a will of its own, an ugly plan which had no place in the thoughts of someone so young, a nasty spectre that seemed to stain the walls of his mind even as it took shape.
Spiderman couldn't be killed. Hadn't hundreds tried? True, the majority of them had been hapless amateurs, but nevertheless.
Spiderman couldn't be killed.
But Peter…
There was a knock on the door. Harry looked up, and set down his glass.
'Come in.'
His butler entered, disapproval etched into every line of his elderly face. 'Sir, there are three…individuals here to see you.'
'Show them in.' said Harry, trying to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach. This was it, the point of no return. If these people were eveything their…singular reputation made them out to be, they would not appreciate being screwed around.
The old man nodded and left the room. Footsteps echoed in the hall outside, then three people walked into the room. Harry sat up straight, summoning every last inch of confidence. He guessed that he'd need it.
There were two women, and one man. They all looked about thirty, and they walked with the easy, assured air of people who understood all about power, and how to use it. The man was tall and well-muscled, his athletic build hidden under the faded grey folds of a baggy Judas Priest shirt. His hair was long and ash-coloured, and he had the sort of grinning, unshaven, windswept features that wouldn't have looked out of place on a sunny beach.
The taller of the two women walked close behind him. Her hair was of the same silvery blonde shade, cut short and brushing her slim cheekbones. She was also simply dressed in jeans and a pink t-shirt, and a pair of designer sunglasses perched above her soft, Barbie-doll fringe.
The second woman was short and wiry, her long hair the colour of a raven's wing and tied in a bunch that fell almost to the small of her back. She had long, elegant nails, Harry noticed, and they were painted in the same deep purple shade as her lips.
'Good day to you, Mr. Osborn.' drawled the man. 'It's a fine city you've got here. Been a while since we last took a bite of the Big Apple, ain't that right, girls?'
Harry smiled, welcomingly. 'Thanks for agreeing to come at such short notice. Please take a seat. Uh, I'm afraid you've got me at kind of a disadvantage, Mr…?'
'Yeah.' It was the black-haired woman who spoke, settling herself into an armchair by the empty fireplace. 'And that, Mr. Osborn, is the way we like it.'
'Now, now, Schaf, play nice.' tutted the taller woman, and smiled at Harry. 'We don't really have a name as such, Mr. Osborn.' she said. 'All that "Deadly Viper" type "Charlie's Angels" crap, it's so tacky, don't you think?'
'And you won't get me wearing no damn skin-tight leotard.' said the man, sitting down and leaning back amicably.
'We don't need a catchy moniker.' said the shorter woman. 'We're just Us.' She pronounced the capital letter effortlessly. 'We're the best.' She picked up the half-empty bottle on Harry's desk and snagged a glass off a side table. 'May I?'
'Please.' said Harry, who guessed he didn't have an option.
'Thanks. It was a long flight.'
The other woman snorted. 'We were in the air for about an hour.'
'Non-drinking, non-smoking?' Her companion grinned. 'That's eternity.'
Harry was beginning to feel more at ease, reassured by the relaxed, easygoing attitudes of his legendary 'guests'. Expansively, he waved a hand.
'If there's anything I can do for you-' he began.
The man leaned forwards,
'Well, now, Mr. Osborne.' he said, pleasantly. 'Stop me if I got this wrong, but I think the real question is, is there anything we can do for you?'
um. just for the record, in case there's still any doubt, this is what seems to be known round these here purts as a movieverse fic. very much so. i do like comics oh yes i do, and i have read some spidey, but i didn't like 'em much. too sort of shouty for me.
thanks for all the reviews, 'specially the ooowow long ones. whatever length, they make me feel oddly fuzzy inside, like a stuffed toy moose. and who wouldn't want that?