He was roaring with energy, his returned power surging, his wounds webbed shut. "I am enough to face you," he said through clenched teeth as he whirled up the side of Fisk's fortress. Needles of sleet lashed the city but he barely noticed. "It's time for a reckoning."
Peter cleared the top of Fisk's building and slithered down the inner courtyard, ignoring the ice. He found the door, the door that he knew led directly into the complex, to Fisk's office; this was the door they had thrown Beck from.
Peter ripped it off its hinges and sent it spinning through the air, down the long drop into darkness. He dropped into the room, surrounded by swirling sleet, his suit tight and black, his eyespots almost glowing.
A security guard stood in the corridor, waiting for him, hands out to the side. "Mister Fisk will see you now," he said, a little rattled but keeping his cool.
Peter followed him, but the moment he set foot in the cross hallway his senses screamed, and he bounded back reflexively. What!?
The explosions of a fully automatic heavy weapon tore the quietness of the place, and the guard was spattered, blown to pieces by a gun emplacement at the end of the hall. For just a moment, Peter stared at the remains of the dead guard. He heard a laugh from the end of the hall that could only come from Ledge.
Fifty caliber jacketed slugs, his senses helpfully informed him. Then, with a tink, a grenade banked perfectly off the doorframe and landed at his feet.
We should jump.
Peter bounded off the floor, moving high, touching the cross hallway wall with his foot and lining himself up—
The concussion grenade went off, and Peter rode the force, sailing down the hallway; he fired a glob of web that moved faster than he did, slopping across the gunbarrel of the M-60 mounted at the end of the hall. Ledge lay behind sandbacks, an M-60 propped up on a stand. He was in classic shooter's position, prone.
Peter whipped over Ledge's head and landed lightly behind him, unhurt.
Ledge did a kippup off the ground and slid two guns from their holsters, but fast as he was, he could not match Peter's speed. The guns were slapped out of his hands. Peter yanked the ammo belt out of the M-60 and lashed out at Ledge with it; Ledge parried with his forearm but the heavy ammunition folded over his forearm and delivered a heavy slap on his head and neck. Peter jerked the belt, and the tips of the bullets and their connectors left cuts as the belt slid back into Peter's control. Ledge yanked out a knife while Peter's hands were full. He was fast, damned fast, and his blade licked out and cut Peter's ribs even as Peter hopped out of the way.
For a long second Ledge stared at Peter and Peter stared at Ledge.
"You cut me," Peter said. He dropped the ammo belt with a clatter. Ledge whipped out another knife and twirled the first, grinning, his face freely bleeding.
"Mommy mommy there's a big scary bug," Ledge said through his grin.
"Oh, a clever one," Peter sighed.
Peter bounced up, his feet poking out, and kicked the knives out of Ledge's hands. As he landed, he drove a two palmed strike into Ledge's torso.
Ledge went airborne; he landed almost lightly considering he was still being propelled backward by incredible force. He slid through the remains of the dead security guard, a solid fifty feet down the hallway. He stopped himself by dragging his boot along the wall, then he did a kippup and stood ready.
No skill would help him breathe right now, though. His air was gone.
"Time to finish this," Peter muttered. "It's time for a demonstration," he said to Ledge as his senses kicked into overdrive, identifying and placing every mote of dust in the air. "I'm not just going to beat you. I'm going to school you. So next time you'll know better. If I just kill ya," he added, "ya won't learn nuthin."
Ledge wanted to say something witty in return, but he couldn't breathe. So he moved instead.
He whipped out shurkien and whirled them, four at once.
Peter snagged two out of the air, letting the rest sail harmlessly past. He stuck the throwing stars in his mesh. Peter breathed out. He stood forty feet away from Ledge.
Ledge blinked. He pulled out two throwing knives, settled into a stance, moving his arms, then threw them at an unpredictable moment.
Peter snagged them out of the air, still walking towards Ledge. Peter stuck the knives in his mesh. Ledge was thirty feet away.
Ledge tossed out a handful of caltrops. He managed his first sucking breath. Then he sent two weights whirling at Peter.
Peter stopped each with an adhesive fingertip, and he coiled them into his hands, weighting his fists. Twenty feet.
Ledge managed a hoarse yell and he sent a barrage of pointed and blunt projectiles whirling down the hall, throwing everything he had in his belt. Peter dodged some, caught the rest, and then lightly bounded into the midst of the caltrops without stepping on any.
For a second Ledge's wide eyes locked with Peter's eyespots.
"What the hell are you?" Ledge breathed.
Peter nodded.
Then in a blur of motion he returned Ledge's projectiles. The weights bounced off his kneecaps, shurkien slamming into his shoulder joints, knives into his hips. The rest of the projectiles thudded into his elbows, wrists, ankles. Ledge couldn't scream as the projectiles drove him back against the wall at the end of the hallway. He passed out from shock and slumped to the ground, senseless, punctured, broken.
But alive.
Peter turned his back on him.
"Fisk!" he shouted.
The doors at the other end of the hall creaked open. Peter approached, wary.
A board room.
Peter's senses were taut. Something huge. Something huge lurks in that room. Peter approached, taking a deep breath.
At the far end, something stood looking through the wall of windows at the sparkling city below. It could have been a man, but it was over seven and a half feet tall, easily that wide or wider, almost that thick. The man was almost cubic, but he wore an expensive suit and he smoked a cigarette in a holder; no mere cigarette could be handled by his vast hands. His fist was the size of Peter's torso.
"Where is Fisk," Peter demanded.
"You must be the inestimable, redoubtable Peter Parker," Fisk murmured, his voice like a live thing stalking through the room. "I would say I have you at a disadvantage, but that would be an understatement as well as blatantly obvious."
Peter recognized the authority this man radiated. "You are Fisk, aren't you."
"You don't disappoint, Peter Parker," Fisk said, still not turning. "You have demonstrated considerable prowess, as well as cunning and determination. And a talent for savagery, but that's neither here nor there. No matter what façade we erect," he continued, almost to himself, "there is something bestial in each of us."
"I'm not interested in your job offer. Perhaps none of your flunkies, freaks, and goons managed to get that message through," Peter said.
"Name calling?" Fisk mused. "From a man in tights?" Fisk dropped his cigarette and casually stepped on it. "The clock is almost unwound. It is time."
Liquid fear ran through Peter in the face of Fisk's composure. He let out a burst of breath. Okay.
Let's go.
"You aren't afraid of me at all, are you," Peter said. "I down Lincoln, Voorhees, Beck, Mystique, and Ledge, and you're still not one bit nervous."
"No terms I offer will interest you in employment," Fisk noted.
"And nothing I say or do will make you leave me in peace," Peter added.
Fisk turned to face him. "I would have liked to have done this differently, upon reflection. I had no idea how talented you were. How gifted."
"I never would have worked for you anyway," Peter said. "You are a bad man." His senses played over Fisk's huge bulk, looking for weak spots. It was not a comforting exercise. They didn't find many. His pressure points and nerve centers were buried under slabs of muscle, sheer tonnage of flesh. "I was going to let it go after Beck failed. I gave you one last chance."
Fisk tilted his head slightly, and his neck cracked. The deep popping snaps reverberated in the room. Peter imagined that's what he would sound like if Fisk got a grip.
Well then, we just won't let him get a grip.
"Men in my position get there and stay there because they do not fail, they do not lose," Fisk said. He shucked his jacket. "Had you seen fit to honor my most generous offer, then everyone you love would not have to die. You see, I must now choose between your well being and mine."
"You have the standard bad guy flaw," Peter said as anger rose in him. He could picture a thug kicking down the door, shooting Aunt May. And he didn't even want to think about what would happen to Mary Jane. "You talk too much." Peter settled into his stance, ready to fight.
Fisk smiled at him, feeling the thin, fine, heady heat of rage that he normally kept clenched deep in his chest rise. He felt his muscles ready for the battle. His fingers itched for the feel of mesh, and under it fragile bone joints crushing to powder in the sack of meat Parker would become.
"You're mad all the time, aren't you," Peter said, watching the horrific expression creep across Fisk's face. "I'm just the hammer that dropped on that big ole bullet of mad you got in you every day. Huh," he reflected, his mouth running to draw his attention from his nerves. "A man that fat should be jolly."
"Can you do more than prance and babble?" Fisk asked, raising his voice to what would be speaking level for him. The air itself shook. "Come show me. Show me how, exactly, you beat Lincoln."
"What, Count Chalkula? Well, it was a big beam of sunlight, hit him right in the chest," Peter prattled, feeling himself steeling for the coming pain. "Just a big ole Mack truck sunbeam."
Peter popped off a blob of webbing at Fisk's face, but the big man was ready for it; he caught it on the back of his hand and took a step forward, spinning, like a huge graceful dancer. His backhand tore through the air with incredible force, and Peter slid back effortlessly out of the way.
Peter put all his strength into a blow, leaning forward and lashing down at Fisk's knee. His fist buried itself to the heel of his hand, and he felt the force dig in. The knee made a dull cracking sound. Peter lightly hopped back.
Fisk snatched up two of the office chairs around the table. He swung one of them, and Peter sprang up on the table, not seeing the other chair flying at him until it was too late.
One of the wheels of the chair caught him on the forearm, he darted his head to the side to avoid another one smacking into his face. The force of the thrown chair carried him off the table, across the room in an arcless flight, smashing into the wall and dropping. Peter lightly regained his feet and scampered around the table. Fisk re-oriented to face him again.
"Like a big stump," Peter mused, "and I'm like a squirrel that hates big stumps." He bounded into the air, ran along the window perpendicular to the floor, and slid through the air to land on Fisk's shoulders. He pounded a blow home on Fisk's skull, and as Fisk reached for him he scrabbled around Fisk's shoulderblade and slammed a hit down over where his spine was buried in flesh. Slithering around Fisk's ribs, he headbutted him in the teeth. Fisk drew his arms together, trying to trap Peter in a bear hug, and Peter leapfrogged over him by adhering to his face and swinging himself up. He landed on Fisk's back, not noticing how Fisk had turned until the huge man simply leaned back, trapping Peter between his bulk and the window.
Fisk dug in his feet and pushed back, enlisting his vast weight and muscle to pin Peter.
"Urg," said Peter wittily.
Fisk smiled.
Peter adhered to the glass and simply pulled himself up so Fisk was leaning on the glass with no one in the way. From above, he slammed a kick down into Fisk's face, knocking his head back into the glass. Then another. And another. Peter kicked as hard as he could. Fisk's head rocked back hard, smacking into the glass.
On the third kick the glass cracked a little.
Fisk roared, moving faster than Peter realized he could. He snatched Peter's leg and swung him, ripping the skin of his fingertips that he had been adhered to the glass with as he yanked him clear. Peter slung out full length and smacked into the glass, his whole body a contact point. Fisk was already swinging him around to the other side. Peter shot out a webline at the blurring spin of the room, catching the far wall just as he was smashed into the window on the other side. The webline caught, and Peter tried to pull himself clear.
Fisk squeezed.
Peter let out a scream as he felt his ankle bones shift together, then crack. Fisk reached out and almost gently wrapped his hand around Peter's torso, getting most of it in his grip. His hand was hot, hard, a huge muscle. Peter knew that even his tough bones and flesh could not survive a grip like this.
He fired web up into Fisk's face as he tugged on his poorly planted webline across the room as hard as he could. In just the perfect moment when Fisk shifted his grip, Peter slithered free and slid across the table as Fisk clawed the webbing off his face.
Fisk stood staring at Peter, who stared back at him.
"What do I have to do," Peter said. "What do I have to do to be free of you? Kill you?"
"I'll relieve you of your worries," Fisk said. He brushed his hands together, and Peter realized he was missing the leg of his mesh from the knee down. His mesh was in poor shape, after dealing with Ledge and after this tussle. He glanced back up to see Fisk was moving.
Peter flipped back and landed upright. Fisk plowed into the boardroom table and flung it, tearing it off the floor where it was bolted. It was a single easy sweep of power for him. Peter stepped forward and put the force of his blow into the center of the table as it rushed towards him. He broke it in two and shoved it out of the way like two vast double doors.
"I am enough to beat you," Peter said quietly. "Let's finish this.
Fisk lumbered forward, favoring his injured knee. He snatched at Peter, who spun away, favoring his crippled leg. He made another grab.
This time Peter put the flat of both hands against the back of Fisk's fist as he slipped out of the way. He spun, and levered all his strength.
In a surreal moment, the wiry little man lifted the entire bulk of Wilson Fisk and hurled him down the center of the wrecked room. Fisk slammed into the wall thirty feet away, upside down. He slid to the ground and then rolled to his feet, vibrating in raw fury.
"It hurt so good," Peter said, adrenaline rushing through him from the excitement. "I just tossed the fat man." He grinned. "You have GOT to be getting this on tape," he said, glancing around. He saw the security camera. He walked over to it.
"See," he said to the camera, "I'm just the guest star. The staple of your programming is a fat, uncouth, ugly slug of a lardbag puswallow who thinks it's okay to put little old ladies in the hospital, condone the rape of college women, wreck people's cars on purpose, get innocent young men evicted, and so on. He even took away my spider senses so I, if you can believe it, failed a calculus test. Me! Not just a B. No. An F. I flunked a calculus test because he stole half my brain. He is a bad man. Fortunately I got better. His list of crimes is long but distinguished I'm sure. Right now, he's getting his butt handed to him by his latest pet project." Peter glanced at where Fisk stood, cold and silent, waiting. "Intermission over. I gotta get back to this thing." He smiled and waved at the camera, then returned his attention to Fisk.
Fisk stood, the vast bellows of his chest rising and falling, his face a dark mask of insane rage. His suit hung from him in tatters. The room was dented and bent in several dimensions; nothing seemed quite square. Fisk said nothing, he simply stood breathing and staring in hatred at Peter.
"Ready for some more whuppin?" Peter asked. "I brought my extra family sized can all for you. Let's go."
Fisk waited. He raised a slab of a hand, and beckoned.
Peter shrugged. "You asked for it," he said, and he sidled in with a crablike hop, not putting weight on his crushed ankle. Peter rolled across the cracked floor and popped up with a solid fist blow to Fisk's injured kneecap, hitting him with enough force to total a car. The kneecap cracked. Peter rolled to the side and drove a kick into Fisk's hamstring; the blow went deep but didn't find what it was after. Peter did a half a kippup, keeping one leg clear. He bounded up and drove a blow into Fisk's ear. His retreating fist was followed by blood. That was a sensitive spot.
Fisk stood and took it.
Peter moved up to the wall behind Fisk, and from there he drove a blow down on the top of Fisk's head. Then he put a hand on Fisk's shoulder, calculating the angle to swing down and bury his heel in Fisk's sternum.
Fisk's hand whipped up and clamped down around Peter's skull.
Peter felt Fisk breathe out with dark joy, and he knew he had a quarter of a second to act.
Everything snapped into slow motion as his senses, encumbered by Fisk's hand, guided a nearly impossible shot.
Peter's fist whipped out, middle knuckle extended, and punched directly into Fisk's right eye. Desperation drove the blow. Peter felt the eyeball warp, then pop.
With all his strength, Peter drove his fists into Fisk's wrist just below the heel of his hand. One found tendon, the other found bone. Fisk's grip relaxed just a moment, enough for Peter to flip clear and land with nothing worse than a throbbing headache from the exchange.
Fisk stood cupping his hand over his eye, a thick runnel of blood pouring down past his wrist. His eye was destroyed, Peter sensed that instinctively.
"Okay, Fisk," he said. "This seems as good a time as any to talk this through. Allow me to propose a business arrangement. You leave me and mine alone. I let you keep your eyesight. You mess with me one more time, one more of my friends or family gets mysteriously ill or injured, I come back here for your other eye." He thought for a minute. "And your tongue."
Fisk stared at him.
"Or I kill you," Peter said, his voice hard and cold. He did not add anything to the statement. Nothing needed to be added.
Fisk recognized that coldness. It was a coldness of a man with something to lose, a man who would do anything to keep what he had. He slowly smiled as he realized he forged the blade that was now at this throat, that he was the one that granted Parker the resolve to do this.
"I could have you killed," Fisk managed, his voice hoarse.
Peter cocked his head. "Ever hit a spider in your bedroom, but not hard enough? Seen it crawl away into the woodwork? In the room where you sleep?" He shook his head. "If you get me, then it's not my problem anymore. But if you strike and miss? Let's not be cute. Let's not imply anything. I'll be very specific. I won't come back here twice. If I have to come back here, I'll kill you, Wilson Fisk. If you can't drop this, then I'll work my way through your army of flunkies and gunbunnies and your freaks and madmen. Then I'll sit down to a Buffet du Fisk and when I've had my fill I'll load up my freezer at home with steaks from what's left. You understand me?"
"You talk. A lot," Fisk said.
Peter narrowed his eyes, his anger building again. "Consider this a warning. Before tonight we operated through proxies. Here I am in the flesh. I reject your offer of employment. I advise you that removing the death mark on me is in your optician's best interests. I've beaten you. Let's do this gracefully."
With a ragged roar Fisk scooped up two chairs and hurled them at Peter. Peter bounded out of the way, and the chairs smashed into the wall behind him and stuck. Peter whirled out of the way as Fisk charged, and some detached part of his mind was working fast and furious.
He understood Fisk.
Fisk had too much at stake; everything. His position, his health, his very life depended on winning this fight. Peter saw that now. He tumbled out of the way as Fisk swung half the board table, sweeping the room in a vast display of raw power. Fisk could no more concede than Peter could.
Something in Peter still shied away from killing.
There has to be a way out, Peter thought. Then the idea dawned on him.
Fisk would fight to the death because he had no way out.
What could Peter do to give him one?
As his brain whirred away, Peter rolled in close. The grip was the dangerous thing on this behemoth. Peter snatched his pinkie finger and brought his knee crashing up into the joint in the middle. The finger snapped at an unnatural angle. Peter scrambled across Fisk's back as the big man whirled. Peter snatched the index finger on his other hand and hauled back with all his strength. It cracked at the first joint where it met the hand. Peter dove between Fisk's hands as the huge man grabbed at him, some of his fingers flopping uselessly. Peter pounded a blow, his toughest, at the back of Fisk's hand. A metacarpal bone crunched.
Fisk grunted. Peter tossed a heavy blow under Fisk's chin in his moment of distraction. Peter backflipped away. Now that he was past his intimidation he was fighting smarter instead of harder. And it was working. A piece at a time he was reducing the mountain of his foe.
Peter realized that in a way he had been fighting his own fear.
In that moment, he won. He looked at Fisk, who stood blearily staring at him. Blood oozed out of Fisk's face. He looked somehow tired. Peter understood that they both knew that Fisk was beaten.
"Okay, Fisk," he said. He reached up and tore off his mask. "I'm sorry I wasn't good enough."
Fisk stared at him.
"I couldn't pass your tests," he said sorrowfully, shaking his head. He looked Fisk in the eye. "Please, please give me another chance to work for you? I know I blew it this time, that I couldn't make the cut. But next time I'll do better. You gotta give me another chance!"
Understanding dawned in Fisk's remaining eye. He was not, after all, a stupid man.
His face shifted to a grimace, and for just a moment Peter thought he saw a glimmer of something like gratitude in the big man's eye.
"You lack… the talent… to work for me," Fisk forced out, his voice weak. "You're too lippy to be a footsoldier and too damned stupid to do robberies."
"Pretty please?" Peter said. "I had to fight you to MAKE you give me a second chance!"
"Get out of my sight," Fisk breathed. "I never want to have to look at you again. You have failed, spider ghost. I have better thugs knocking over liquor stores. No violence," he said with a gleam in his eye, "can replace cunning, thinking on your feet, improvisation. You're a one trick pony."
Peter nodded curtly. "Well I'll just be going then." And with that, he limped out of the room, down the hall, through the crossway, to the missing door that led out into the night.
Peter Parker was free.
For a long, long moment, Fisk stood alone in his boardroom not even seeing the mess. He was fully grasping what had just happened. He almost chuckled.
From the hallway, Ledge groaned.
"Time for some new talent," Fisk rumbled. His mind ran over some of the dossiers he had received in recent months. There was that fellow who had those gauntlets, that manipulated sonic energies. And the other man, something about electricity. Fisk limped to the intercom.
"Please send a medical team to my office," he grunted. Then he leaned against the wall.
"A hiccup, nothing more," he murmured to himself. He half smiled. "I think that's the last we'll see of Peter Parker." Who saved his life and his honor both. And, with a little judicious editing, he had proof of his defeat of the spider ghost on camera.
Fisk decided to let Peter Parker live.