Mystique stood at the end of the parking garage level, looking at the U-Haul box truck that was backed into a parking spot in the otherwise abandoned building. The levels were ramps, staggered, and the truck was at the bottom of the second level. Mystique took a drag on her thin, expensive cigarette and approached, her coat flaring behind her. She shifted to become a blonde.
She reached the truck. The back was slightly open. She heard a faint groan. Hopping up on the back fender, she maneuvered with her back to the rusty cables that acted as a safety rail. She moved into the back of the truck without having to squeeze past the support pillar right behind the truck.
She saw a figure sprawled on the floor. She moved to touch his leg. It was cold, hard; a mannequin?
The U-Haul's engine rumbled to life, and it was kicked into gear and slammed back. The doors were crushed shut on the support pillar.
"Cute," Mystique muttered, alone in the back of the truck with a dummy.
A walkie talkie flared static. She knelt and picked it up. "Great, Parker," she said. "And for my next trick I'm going to blow you away for this." To emphasize her point, she tugged out her plasma pistol and pulled the trigger. With a hissing whine, it fired out a streak that knocked a volleyball sized hole in the wall, through where the driver's head should be, through some of the steering wheel, the windshield. The hole let a shaft of light in. Smoke from the blast curled in the light as the walkie talkie crackled.
"Thanks for coming," said Peter. "And thanks in advance for helping me get my powers back."
"You're a dead man," she said, her voice cool.
"Well," he said, "since I can't seem to get you to leave me alone, I realized I was going to have to do something more drastic." Another heavy engine flared to life outside.
"I hope you enjoyed your run," she said into the walkie talkie. "I'm about to cut a hole out of here, reload, and vaporize you."
"Big talk," Peter said. With a clang, a pre-cut oval of truck roofing fell down into the interior. Mystique blinked at it.
Then the concrete truck's chute lined up over it. Her eyes widened and she jumped back as wet concrete slopped down the guide ramp and slapped down on the floor of the truck in a thick, fast column. She fired, blasting the guide ramp to fragments. The concrete still poured out, slathering the roof of the truck, and pouring in at about the same speed.
She blasted a hole in the wall of the truck, and poked her head out. She saw that the truck had backed up on the higher tier of the parking garage, lined up with the truck top on the lower tier. Clever. She didn't see Parker. She pulled her head back in and stepped to the middle of the truck. Two more blasts made a hole big enough for her to leap through as a diver, after the metal had a few seconds to cool. She holstered the gun and readied herself to spring.
Peter stood up from under where she'd shot her holes. She whipped out her gun, lined up on him--
Peter tucked the stock of the shotgun into his shoulder and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The solid slug tore out of the shotgun and blew clean through the plasma pistol's trigger guard, shattering the gun and Mystique's hand and forearm. She let out a piercing shriek and tumbled backward, landing heavily at the edge of the piling mass of concrete in the truck. Blood sprayed.
Peter dropped the shotgun with a clatter and started dragging something heavy and metal. Mystique rolled up on her knees, cradling the steadily gushing stump of her arm. She tried to talk, but the pain was simply unbearable, and she struggled to seal the wound by shapeshifting. Violated flesh trebled the pain, trying to respond. All she could manage was a thin whine of absolute agony.
"Thought you might try that," Peter said mildly. "You just sit tight now." He hauled up a thin sheet of steel and banged it against the hole she had shot. He quickly clamped it in place and lit up the welder he had brought along.
Mystique choked on the thick concrete dust in the air, the acrid stench of the welder, the coppery stink of her own blood. Her eyes were burning, her flesh on fire with pure pain from her shattered arm. She struggled with the walkie talkie with her remaining hand. "Let's talk about this," she gasped as the welder burned the plate to the side of the truck, over the hole.
"What," Peter said, "You going to offer to walk away again? We tried that. Didn't work for me, you came back and took my powers away. You're too costly to me. You cost me my woman, you almost cost me a mentor, you've put me in a lot of tough spots. Now I'm usually willing to let bygones be bygones," he said as he finished half the weld. He started on the other half. The plate wasn't coming off.
"But you see, now you've taken my powers," he said, shaking his head. "You shouldn't have done that. I'm going to stop you now. Don't worry about the police showing up. The buildings on this block are pretty much abandoned; anybody who heard anything didn't hear anything, if you take my meaning."
"Why not just shoot me?" she asked.
He laughed. "I wanted to give you a chance to tell me what you told Fisk."
"How about something I didn't tell Fisk?" she asked desperately.
She heard him moving something outside. "Getting warmer," he said.
"I know how you got your power," she said quickly.
"Oh, that again. Never mind," Peter said. He clambered up into the cab and slapped a plate up over the back of the driver's compartment where she had blasted another hole.
"I did intelligence work for the Third Reich during the Second World War," she said quickly.
Peter did not begin welding. He scooted the plate to the side. "How old are you?" he asked.
"I was working for Hitler directly," she said. "I spent much of the war behind Allied lines gathering intelligence and conducting espionage. I should have recognized your powers sooner. If I tell you the rest, will you let me go?"
"Only if you help me get my powers back," he said. "After that, we'll be even and if you think you need to come after me then it's your funeral. We're not messing around here anymore," he cautioned her.
"I gathered," she said dryly. "Will you stop the cement?"
"No," he said. "Talk fast. And don't lie to me."
"No need for that," she said wryly. "In this case, the truth is much too entertaining."
From the other end of the parking lot, Ledge opened up the channel to Fisk's office and aimed the listening device.
Mystique focused for a moment. Her skin rippled blue, her hair straight and crimson. When she opened her eyes they were pale and empty. "Please excuse me," she said, "I need the energy to prevent bleeding to death. Now, Der Fuhrer was livid towards the end of the war. Captain America was making a real mess of things."
"There really was a Captain America?" Peter said, his voice hushed.
"Oh yes," Mystique nodded. "He was a monster. He could pound through twenty men armed with machine guns, using nothing more than his shield. One blow from him could cripple. I never had the misfortune to confront him directly, but I spent some considerable time and energy cleaning up after him and assisting in efforts to resist him." She glanced over her shoulder at the building tide of concrete.
"To make a long story short," she said, "Hitler collected to himself a large number of artifacts reputed to have some magical properties, and he had mystics and scientists working around the clock to figure out how to make him super soldiers, weapons of mass destruction, whatever. Any edge to win the damnable war. At the time the focus was on building a super soldier to do what the Red Skull could not; stop Captain America and put one of ours, much like him, on British or American soil."
"I still can't believe you're a Nazi, for real," Peter said.
"Don't make me prove it," she murmured, her eyes narrowing.
"No no, go on," Peter said.
"Doctor Rhalladon swore he succeeded in building a super soldier for the Red Skull," Mystique continued. "Even I do not know where it came from, but he managed to find a rock he called a Darkstone. The more prolonged the exposure of a mortal creature to it, the more it warped them and gave them power. His initial test subjects grew very powerful very quickly then went utterly mad."
Peter felt cold as his mind began to grasp what she was implying.
"Rhalladon was in the second phase of testing as the war was grinding to a halt," she continued. "Petrol had run out, and the armies were being driven back. The allies were within Germany's borders. Rhalladon was oblivious. He discovered that by putting the Darkstone with an animal, then allowing the altered animal to bite a human, the power was transferred in a more stable way. The power was less, but the subject did not go stark screaming mad."
She sighed. "A handful of soldiers that had been bitten by an altered wolf attacked the Allies, caught them off guard and did untold damage before they were gunned down. There simply wasn't enough time to put the animals with the stone, because only one animal at a time could be with the stone or they tore each other to pieces, restraints or no."
She
flicked her hair and looked him right in the eye. "I know this
story so well because I was a part of it. I was assigned by the
Fuhrer himself to keep an eye on the project and steal it when it was
complete, for otherwise he knew the Red Skull would take that power
for his own and possibly wrest control of the Third Reich to himself.
Those days stank of desperation and gunpowder and shattered concrete,
dull roar continual in the background from bombers, riots, fighting
in the streets, artillery. Rhalladon put the Darkstone in a puzzlebox
with a false bottom, and he put a spider in the box. A few days would
have to do, and the resulting bitten soldier could possibly save
Rhalladon himself. I was positioned to make my move."
She
frowned. "Before I could get the box, a double agent who had
infiltrated the Red Skull's retinue shot Rhalladon in cold blood
and escaped with the box and the stone and, incidentally, the
spider." She looked Peter in the eye. "His name was Forrest
Parker."
"Wow," Peter said softly. He tried to imagine having a grandfather who had infiltrated the mythical Red Skull's organization and stolen a human weapon project.
"I thought he passed the box off to Army Intelligence, so I went after the Intelligence agent. The fool was killed by shrapnel and before I could reach him his body fell into the river. I searched for the puzzle box, all while Forrest Parker was busy escaping with it. He must have known we couldn't let him live after that. He shipped the box home, and a top secret package to Army Intelligence. We intercepted the top secret package, and within was nothing but some battle plans and film."
She shrugged. "By the time the trunk reached America the war in Europe was over and Hitler was dead. Our power in America was fragmented at best. I got to America as soon as I could extricate myself from other difficulties, but the trail was cold. No one knew what happened to the trunk that was sent to his military base. That's because it wasn't sent there, he sent it to his son. And of course no one knew of the Darkstone. The Red Skull had disappeared and his files were burned behind him. It simply wasn't worth it to me to try to break into Army Intelligence for the information. So," she said with a nod, "to be honest with you, over the decades I forgot about it."
"Until now," Peter breathed.
She nodded. "Until now. Fisk did a background check into your grandfather. I asked a friend of mine to monitor a certain number of files in the Pentagon when I got into a position to ask for such things. Forrest Parker was a red flag. It wasn't complicated to put 'Forrest Parker' and 'Peter Parker' together, realize the connection of the 'spider ghost,' as you put it. When we conducted the experiments, one or maybe two traits were passed along." She eyed him carefully. "Your spider stewed with the Darkstone for decades. And look at how magnificent your power is now."
Peter disappeared from view, and she heard him move around the truck and dump the welding gear. Then he scrambled up to the next tier and shut off the flow of concrete. It had flowed into the truck, a sloppy tide less than a foot short of where she was backed up to the wall. Peter appeared at the roof oval that was cut out.
"Wade over here and I'll pull you out," he said. She slogged through the concrete, and reached up with her remaining hand. He reached down and grasped her arm, then hauled with all his might and pulled her out.
They sprawled on the roof of the truck, both amply smeared in wet concrete.
"This is disgusting," Mystique said, looking down at herself and at Peter.
"Best I could come up with on short notice," Peter shrugged. "Why did you stick around? Was there something else you were supposed to do to me, or were you just planning to gloat?"
"I don't feel I need to grace that with a response."
She inspected him. "I would not have guessed that you are the Nazi super soldier designed to take down Captain America."
Me either," Peter said, and he jumped from the roof of the truck to the ledge of the higher level, then climbed down to the side of the U-Haul. Mystique followed.
"I still can't get over the idea that my power is evil," Peter mused.
"Have you not felt urges, compunctions that were… a bit dark?" she said, remembering long ago.
"I have fought them," he shrugged. "I am in control. Everybody fights dark urges." He looked at her. "Did your powers come from this experiment?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I told you, I was already working for the Third Reich long before this whole experiment cropped up."
"So how did you come by your abilities?"
"Nosy boy, quiet," she said. "None of your business."
Peter scratched the back of his head as he surveyed the mess. "I called the cops and told them the vehicles were stolen," he said. "Let's just leave this mess here."
"Good plan," said Ledge. He stepped out from behind a column forty feet away, between them and the exit. "The concrete is a nice touch. I hate to admit this, but I'm supposed to take the pair of you alive. So you'd better surrender. Right now."
Peter dove for the discarded shotgun, but Ledge moved faster. He flicked his hand, and a weight the size of a roll of quarters hissed through the air and caught him behind the ear. It rebounded almost straight up as Peter crashed to the ground and slid, unconscious.
"Ouch," Ledge winced with a bit of a grin. "Okay, toots, you were in the attic. You got the Darkstone. I bet you have it on your person right now, don't you." He walked closer, within fifteen feet.
She glared at him hatefully for a few seconds. "It… It's in a protective case," she said.
"Hand it over," Ledge said, his voice cold.
She fumbled in her coat with her one hand, then slid a box that looked like a ring case to him. He knelt and picked it up. Smiling to himself, he tilted it open.
The flash popped at painful intensity and he swore as he dropped the case, feeling like two hot skewers had been stuffed through his eyes. Mystique was moving. She had Peter Parker, and she darted to the edge of the garage. Only the second floor. She guided their fall, crashing down into a bush. Torn and bleeding, they tumbled out, Peter reviving in a concussion stupor.
Less than thirty feet to reach her car. She slung the half conscious Peter into the car, hopped in, fired it up, and roared away. Ledge took some pot shots at them from the balcony, but trying to see was pain. He roared frustration as they drove out of range.
"Whuzza plan?" Peter managed.
"Once I get your powers back I'm free of you," Mystique gritted out, fighting the pain of driving with one hand. The jarring impacts and muscle use were not doing her shattered gun arm any favors. "A man named Harlan Faber stole your powers. You have to be unconscious, then he does something, then you gain or lose access to your powers."
"It is reversible then?" Peter slurred.
"He did it to me," she said grimly. She glanced over at him. "You sure you want your evil Nazi powers back?"
"Yeah," he said, leaning back. "I'm sure. How are we going to find Faber?"
"I gathered that he doesn't spend all his time with Fisk," Mystique said, "And I'll bet he's a listed number with an address in the phone book." She pulled over to a curb where there was a phone book.
Sure enough, he was.