Hi! Managed to get rid of my writers block long enough to type this up. However, chances of the next update coming soon don't look too good, I'm afraid. :(
This chapter is dedicated to my mum, because it's her birthday today! No, I'm not going to tell you how old she is; I really don't think she'd appreciate it. ;)
As always, please read and review!
Surprise, Surprise!
Part 9
Peter winced as he scraped against the side of a building, grazing his right arm. He was swinging as fast as he had ever gone before, which was a considerable speed, across the city to the Bugle on his mission. He was extremely worried about the plan, and as a result, kept forgetting to look where he was going.
After narrowly avoiding a truck for the third time, he decided to keep his mind more focused on the task at hand, not what was to come.
But he found he couldn't. His mind kept drifting off to anything and everything- collage, work, but mostly the plan. He ran through all the little details repeatedly, not that there were that many details, the idea was beautifully simple, but then, the best plans were.
Clever MJ. His clever, beautiful, witty MJ had thought it all up. It wasn't like it was incredibly difficult or scheming, just in, out, and that would be it. But in his shock and confusion his brain had gone blank and for a moment he couldn't think. He was just filled with a mindless terror in the face of danger, and in hindsight he berated himself for that. What if the danger hadn't been the threat of his identity being revealed to the world? What if it had been a burning building, a car crash, with defenceless people, mothers, fathers, children, trapped inside? What if he'd just frozen then? What if those innocents never made it out alive because of his moment of panic?
Realising he was getting depressed, Peter shook those thoughts off, after all, it was an entirely different situation. He shouldn't, couldn't, blame himself for something that hadn't even happened, he was getting ridiculous.
Allowing his mind to drift back to MJ, he sighed. He shouldn't have snapped at her. All of this wasn't her fault. She wasn't to blame, she'd just been trying to help, and he'd shouted at her. Peter nodded decisively to himself as he decided to make it up to her; just as soon as he'd saved his anonymity.
---
He'd nearly made it to the Bugle, he was almost there, just a couple of hundred metres, when fate and karma decided to intervene. Damn fate and karma, Peter cursed, as he looked upon the wreckage of a fiercely burning building.
Knowing he'd never be rid of his guilt if he just swung on by, he flipped off the end of his web and went to get a closer look.
---
Karyn Hamil stood outside her home, tears of anguish streaming down her face in torrents, her throat red raw and her voice hoarse from screaming. She was being restrained by a fire fighter, one strong arm around her waist to stop her from running into the building, fire or no, to try and save her two children, and most likely get herself killed.
She knew the man was right, she'd never make it out alive of that hell hole, and she hated him for it.
"NO! Let me GO!" She yelled but the fire fighter only looked sadly at her and shook his head. She continued to pound on his arms but he didn't give, and soon she had worked herself into exhaustion. She just watched in horror and felt all hope shattering along with the windows as they blew outwards and onto the road. The man had been right; if he'd let her in she'd have been toast by now.
Karyn sank down in defeat, sobbing uncontrollably, onto the floor, grieving the loss of her two daughters, when a blue and red blur flashed by her head...
Her sobs abruptly ceased and she stared in wonder as the blur more commonly known as Spider-man jumped into the building, cursing under his breath all the while.
"...damnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnit..."
Karyn stood up slowly on shaky legs, her hands over her mouth, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she prayed. The seconds seemed to last hours, the hours turning into days, then...
"...damnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnit..."
Her eyes flew open and she had just enough time to glimpse the blue and red blur disappear into the horizon, still chanting his mantra. Then she looked down when she felt something tug on her skirt, and there standing before her, a little worse for wear but smiling, were her two children.
"Mummy!" The youngest cried, and Karyn bent down and hugged them close to her, tears of joy now filling her eyes.
---
Peter kept up his muttering all the way to the Bugle, where he thought that being discreet was the best way to go about things. He quickly landed on the long side of the triangular building that didn't have any windows for curious workers to pop their heads out and see him. Very carefully, he made his way to the printing room, where Jameson usually stored the negatives from photos to be used in the paper, and the future copy of the newspaper itself. All the important newspapers and top-secret issues were stored in that room, and Peter knew good old predictable Jameson would keep the evidence of Spider-man's identity all in one place and under lock and key, not trusting even the security of his own home enough to leave copies there.
Prising the window open, he grimaced as it made a loud creaking noise, and paused for a few seconds to see if anyone would come running. No one came, however, so he quickly and quietly slipped through the foot and a half gap between the ledge and frame.
It was quite a long drop to the floor so instead of jumping down and risking making a noise, he crawled down the wall and tiptoed onto solid ground, wincing whenever one of the musty old floorboards creaked.
Jameson really needed to redecorate, Peter thought absently to himself, as he began to move previous headlines and clouds of dust billowed up in his face. Luckily, his mask protected him from the worst of the dust, but he still had to cover a cough.
"...And so then, I say to Billy..."
Peter shot straight upwards and stayed crouched on the ceiling as two ex-colleagues of his entered the room, laughing and joking.
Trying to stay completely still, he watched as they made their way across the room and fished a stack of papers out from the rest of the pile, then left as soon as they'd come, with Ted finishing telling the punch line to his joke so that Tom laughed out loud before slamming the door.
Peter breathed a sigh of relief and crawled back down to the floor, so as not to cause any more noise. He again crept over to the stack and hastily rifled through, ignoring the multiple paper cuts that came from being careless.
He barely managed to restrain himself from shouting aloud in frustration when he found the paper and negatives weren't there, and instead let out a string of colourful curses, the worse of which was 'Damn it', in his mind.
Speeding through the piles again, he once more came up with nothing. Nothing. What now? He thought in desperation, what the Hell do I do now?
Peter leapt out the window as the door swung open again and sat under the sill, listening.
"What a stroke of luck in finding that Brock kid," there was a pause then gruff laughter that identified the speaker to Peter as Jameson. "Parker won't know what hit him." Jameson said smugly, and stood looking proudly around the cluttered newsroom for a minute before the slam of the door signified that he'd left.
---
Peter dejectedly swung home, wallowing in his self pity he kept his head down and went much slower than usual, to avoid becoming a pancake on the front of a passing bus or truck.
He didn't much feel like going home to a frantic MJ who would surely freak out at the news that the brilliant plan had gone awry. Not so brilliant anymore, Peter thought wryly. She's gonna either smother me in pity or have a fit. Hmm, tough call, he thought absently, but I'm gonna go with the pity party.
A flash of colour and a familiar face caught his eye and jerked him out of his melancholy. Releasing the end of his web after he'd swung a semi-circle, he went back to investigate. He silently perched on the wall above the newspaper stand and tilted his head to read the front page of the Bugle's afternoon edition.
There, plastered across dozens of copies, was a photograph of him, in full Spider-man attire.
Except for his mask.
He scanned the front page and saw the photo was accompanied by a snappy headline:
"SPIDER-MENACE REVEALED!"
End of Part 9
Dum, dum, DUM! Nice little cliffhanger there for you all. See how I got round whoever-noticed-it's point that there would be several copies of the photos? Ok, I admit I didn't think of that, but it was pretty clever making Jameson too paranoid to even take the photos home. Even if I do say so myself. ;)
Sorrow1: You'll see soon enough. And when did I write Jameson leaving his office with a copy of the newspaper?
Brynn: Did you get my e-mail?
Mary Jane Watson-Parker: Well done for the A!
Gloomie daImproved Pot: Eddie followed Peter when he came out of the Bugle and took a photo of him changing... I think it's in chapter 4, I didn't directly say he took photos but I left it to peoples imagination.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed, reviews make my day! :D (review more, I wanna be happy ;) )