xXx

Peter sat in the passenger seat next to Natasha, who cruised the car slowly past the unoccupied cop car. Looking up, they saw flashlights played around on the roof. A SWAT van rumbled to a halt across the street, followed by a crime scene unit.

"There," Peter said, pointing at the alley. "Then up on the roof next door."

Logan rolled down the window and sniffed.

Natasha glanced around. "That dojo," she said. "That's Ken Hyabusa's dojo."

"Who?" Peter blinked, even as the spider ghost ferreted the detail out of its store and slid it to his conscious mind.

"He just won a martial arts tournament in New York," Natasha said.

"You know him?" Stark asked as they turned at the corner and headed down a side street.

"No," Natasha replied with a faint smile. "But my training encourages me to pay attention to the news and remember it. Hyabusa won the tournament this weekend."

"I wonder," Peter murmured. "Hyabusa won a tournament. The three SWAT officers that were killed." He closed his eyes, casting his mind back. "The week before, last Wednesday, they were decorated for their bravery in assaulting a drug house."

"Maybe our hunter just wants pedigreed targets," Logan said. "Some nutjobs go on safari just so they can shoot at things that are dangerous enough to fight back if things go wrong."

"That's why I suspected Kravinoff at first," Peter nodded. "But it wasn't him. There's something else out here."

"It might go after Hyabusa again," Logan muttered blackly, looking out the back window of the sedan as they turned to head back to Stark's complex.

"I can watch him," Natasha said. "I'll keep tabs on his movements."

"Well," Peter sighed, "I suppose I can swing around and see what I can find from a rooftop angle. This hunter seems pretty confident on rooftops."

"Let me know when this thing is watching Hyabusa," Logan said softly. He tucked a cigar in his mouth, ducked to light it, leaned back taking a drag. "I'll beat Hyabusa."

"What?" Stark said. "How is that—ah. So you figure if you beat Hyabusa, then the hunter will think you're a better target."

"Bingo," Logan nodded.

"I should do it," Peter said. "I've been taking martial arts classes. And face it, bub, I'm a hell of a lot faster and stronger than you are."

"Exactly," Logan agreed. "That's why you gotta stay loose to chase this bastard if he runs, or to stop him if he tries to kill somebody else. We don't know a damn thing about this hunter except that he is really strong. You're better suited to adapt if something unexpected comes up."

"You got this all worked out, don't you," Peter grumbled.

"That's what I pay him for," Stark smiled. Then he frowned, and dug out his vibrating pager. Natasha slid hers off her belt and glanced at it.

"Alarm at the complex," Stark said quickly. "The hangar."

Natasha stepped on the gas, and the sedan lunged forward and expertly nosed through a gap that appeared a bit too small for it. She swooped around one car, slung across two lanes of traffic, drew sparks from the curb as she rushed the car down a wide alley.

"This is why she gets to drive," Stark confided as Logan gripped the seat and the door. "I may drive race cars," he continued, "but she's got me beat in street driving like this. Don't ask how we know." He grinned fondly.

"We're gonna die," Peter said simply, and Natasha grimly bared her teeth as they screeched out of the alley and roared across an intersection, zipping through interlaced traffic. Stark's complex was in sight.

The car skidded to a halt as the doors popped open. The four of them raced for the gate, Stark punched in the code to open it. They sprinted past the guards, towards the hangar. Stark was in good physical shape, so he still had the stamina to bark questions when they arrived. "What happened?" he demanded. "An intruder?"

"Yes sir," a nervous guard replied. "Something got over the fence, into the hangar, and stole the body that you ordered us to guard. See, when the alarm went off, we hadn't had time to get a coffin yet. The body was on a gurney, we were getting ready to put it in the walk-in refrigerator. Then the skylight busted. We stowed the body in the fridge, then we fanned out to search the place. A team discovered the fridge had the door ripped open, the body was just… gone. We had all the doors covered, sir. I have no idea how this could have happened."

"I'll look around the roof," Peter muttered, and he ducked away from the group. Stark nodded to the guard, who let him go.

"I'll go check the security tapes, examine our countermeasures, see what I can figure out about our stealthy giant," Natasha sighed. She headed for the control center.

Logan started walking away, and Stark stepped after him. "Logan? What are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna sniff the body-snatching son of a bitch out," Logan growled.

Stark let him go.

It was simple enough for Logan to catch the trace of Kravinoff's scent, shaded by death. He followed his nose around the side of the building, and squinted; an oblique path could lead a fast runner to the fence with a minimum of exposure to lights. Much easier now that two of the lights seemed to be burned out, or broken. Logan squatted, touched tracks. Big tracks. Frowning, he jogged towards the fence, the scent still firm in the light breeze.

He got to the fence, looked up. Four meters, barbed wire. But it didn't look like it had been climbed, or anything had been thrown over it.

"No way," he muttered. "No way it could have cleared that, carrying Kravinoff to boot."

With a ringing slit, he popped three blades through the flesh of his hand as they unsheathed from his forearms. He swept his claws down through the chain link, and the fence tore open in a burst of sparks. Logan ducked through, but there were no tracks on the concrete. He picked up the stronger, peculiar alien odor of the hunter under the smell of Kravinoff's body.

Across the street, up the fire escape. Logan paused as he saw the crumpled body bag, tossed aside. He proceeded to the edge of the roof, and looked down at five lanes of traffic.

A dizzying swirl of scents, most of them industrial and acrid, swarmed up from the street. As Logan looked around, he knew that crossing this concrete canyon was better for masking a scent trail than running water would be. He clenched his jaw, frustrated.

Then he felt it. Eyes, upon him. He stood, peering around intently, knowing he was observed as though he had seen the one watching him.

"Not yet," he whispered. He backed away, then turned and trotted across the roof to the fire escape.

"You're not getting away with this," he muttered through gritted teeth.

Behind him, lost in the tangle of light and shadow, eyes flared.

xXx

Peter slowly let himself in, closed the door, and crossed the room. He sank down on the couch as Mary Jane came down the hallway, crossed to the kitchen, and got out the first aid kit.

"How bad is it?" she asked matter-of-factly as she carried the kit over to the couch.

"Not a scratch," Peter said quietly. "I was wrong. The killer wasn't Kravinoff. But he was hunting the killer, and… now he's dead." Peter looked up at Mary Jane, a profound weariness in his eyes. "Kravinoff is dead."

She sat down, not sure what to say.

"I'm working with Logan, Stark, Natasha," Peter went on. "We're going to try to trap the hunter, finish him off before more people can get killed. Kravinoff was a friend. We won't let this hunter get away with killing him. My job is going to be finding the bastard, keep him from getting away."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Mary Jane asked. "With Aunt May in the shape she's in?"

"I can't do anything about her," Peter said, staring at the floor. "At least I can stop this hunter. At least this is something I can punch." He sighed deeply, and rubbed his eyes. "I'm tired of losing people, Mary Jane. I'm tired of going to funerals."

"Things will look better in the morning," Mary Jane suggested. "Look, you do what you have to do. I'll be waiting for you when it's over." She touched his knee, unsure why it felt wrong to pull him into an embrace. "Have you eaten?"

"I'm headed back out," Peter said, rubbing at his face briefly and rising. "I just stopped in to get another suit. We figured out who the hunter is after, and we're doing stakeout duties."

"The others can't handle that tonight?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

"And I need some time to sort things out in my head," Peter admitted. "If I just sit around and brood on it, I'll go crazy. And I just… can't… go to the hospital… again, not right now," he managed.

Her smile was crooked. "The world is in peril, my mighty hero. Go save the day."

He kissed her, and she kissed him back.

xXx

By the time the spider ghost reached Hyabusa's dojo, the police were firmly entrenched. Men were tugging off hazard suit gear, it seemed the crime scene had been analyzed and they were packing it in. Peter noticed two detectives, Brilhart and Vine, in deep conversation with the crime scene technicians. He wondered how Stark's people were doing with the sample of the green stuff he had found earlier in the evening.

Easily vaulting the street, the spider ghost landed on the roof that had recently been vacated by the crime scene workers. One policeman stood guard, and the spider ghost easily ducked behind him, unseen. Peter looked around.

"Okay," he muttered. "Do your thing." His spider senses unreeled, brushing across the roof, absorbing minute details. Some subconscious mechanism sifted and sorted at unreal speeds, taking in a mass of data and combing it for significant connections and details.

The fight. Seems Kravinoff was hurled up to the roof, a shallow indent on the roofing like a heavy man falling. Then some blood; Kravinoff hit it in the alley and it was already bleeding, he hit it again. The fight moved; the spider ghost paced it, eyes half closed. Kravinoff was back-handed into a wall, here, the wall was cratered inward with broken brick where the big man had been fired into it.

A skirmish, blood on the walls and floor. Then Kravinoff flung this way. The hunter that he had been fighting must be tremendously strong, Peter realized as he trod out the space that Kravinoff had been airborne. Then he landed, fell, rolled, leaving blood smeared behind him. And he dove to the side.

Dove to the side? Peter squinted over at where the hunter would have been, where Kravinoff had been. Maybe it had shot something at him. He turned, gazing along the trajectory, saw an air conditioning unit on the adjacent building. He sprang to the other roof, then prowled to the unit.

Sure enough, it had been holed. Peter poked his fingers into the rent, found metal, tugged.

His eyes widened as he examined the blade he held. It was shaped something like a wicked tuning fork, like some sort of spear tip. He let his senses play over it. Wasn't steel. Something else. And sharp. Very sharp.

For a long moment, Peter debated what would do the investigation the most good. Turning this over to the police, or having Stark take a look. Then it was decided, and he slipped the spear tip into his mesh.

Still. It was time to have a chat with Brilhart. Peter didn't have the heart to pace through the rest of the short battle. To kneel where his friend had been murdered. Tightening his jaw, he sprang across the street and dropped into an alley. He saw Brilhart tossing his coffee cup in a trash can, and he hissed at him softly: "Psst."

Brilhart hesitated, and turned. All he could see of the spider ghost was two pale eye-spots hanging in the dim shadow of the alley. The rest of the suit blended in. The detective blinked, glanced over his shoulder, and stepped into the alley.

Brilhart was a man whose face was younger than his eyes. He wore a trench coat, and he seemed to have a solemn expression engraved in place. "Spider ghost," he said. "I was hoping you'd involve yourself in this one. Any idea what's running around our fair city?"

"We're beginning to," he replied. "I've brought in friends on this one. I know, not my usual style, but… the man that was killed on the roof had a lot of friends."

"We didn't find the body," Brilhart observed. He lit up a cigarette. "Any idea who it was?"

"Just between us, it was Sergei Kravinoff," Peter replied, wincing at the slip. "He was an illegal alien hiding out in the United States. He hunted down menaces and killed them. Came after me once. He was good. Damn good. But this thing butchered him."

"What happened to the body? We could get some forensic evidence from it," Brilhart said.

"The hunter figured out where we stashed it and waltzed off with it. We think he's making trophies. That's why he was here," the spider ghost explained, pointing at the dojo.

Brilhart's eyes narrowed. "Decorated cops. Martial arts champion." He winced slightly. "That's not good."

"We're going to sort this one out Special Crimes Unit style," Peter said. "We've got this plan to have one of our number fight and defeat Hyabusa when the slasher is watching. So it'll target him instead of the teacher. Then we'll take him on, track him to his lair if need be, and finish this out however it's got to go."

"There are a lot of guys on the force itching for revenge," Brilhart observed. "They want to personally kill this thing while it's resisting arrest. Whether it's from this world or not."

"What would you rather have?" the spider ghost asked. "Bravado, or a solution?"

"I want it sorted out quickly and quietly, same as you. At least this thing just attacks in hand to hand, doesn't seem to be a sniper."

"Let's not jump to conclusions. We don't know that much about it yet," Peter said. "We'll let you know how it turns out after we've cornered and defeated it."

"And after you've beaten the tar out of some martial arts champion?" Brilhart mused. "You aren't gentle with those you help."

"That's the way the world seems to work," Peter shrugged.

"Your friends, are they like you?" Brilhart asked as his mind worked.

Peter smiled under his mesh. "Not even a little bit. You don't want to know who's helping you. I'll just bring you up to speed on the slasher's status when it's all sorted out."

Brilhart took a deep, deliberate drag on his cigarette. "I guess that's all there is to say," he reflected. "Best of luck. I don't want to find any more skinned or decapitated corpses. Let me know if you need anything."

He didn't have to look up. He knew the spider ghost was gone. Turning, he trudged out towards his squad car.