A/N: Happy Birthday a couple days late to our dear friend, Jenn1! If you aren't reading it, please go and read Brother: Love and Adversity. Show the Spider-Man love!

The Devil You Don't Know

Chapter 10: Preparations

"Jarvis, have you seen Tony?" Peter asked stepping into the main living area of Stark Tower with Felicia a few steps behind him.

Jarvis quickly replied, "I believe Master Stark is in the lab."

"Thanks."

Jarvis stopped them as they left. "Master Parker, how goes the search for May and Ms. Watson-Parker?"

Peter released a sigh and faced him. "We haven't found them, at least not yet… but we know who took them. That's why we need to see Tony." Putting both of his hands on Jarvis' shoulders, Peter continued, "We'll find them, don't you worry about that."

"I know you will, sir," Jarvis said with a smile, lessening Peter's anxiety as well as his own.

As they rode the elevator down to the lab, Felicia asked. "So… Jarvis. He really cares about your aunt, doesn't he, Peter?"

Peter nodded. "It's nice to see Aunt May has someone special in her life again."

They were both silent for a moment. Then Felicia added, "And… 'Tony?' I didn't know you were on a first-name basis with the billionaire playboy." She looked at him, interestedly, waiting for the answer.

Peter froze. He had forgotten about the fact that, although many people suspected that he was still the "man in the iron suit," Over the years, Tony Stark had been steadfastly denying that he was Iron Man. He had even deployed a few remotely controlled robots to perpetuate the illusion.

"Well, um," Peter stammered. "He does fund the Avengers and was gracious enough to allow my family to live here. There are no secret identities among the team and its sponsor."

"Uh huh," she said, with a trace of a smirk.

"Tony and I also have more in common as far as scientific interests than the rest of the team… so we've become pretty close. He designed my new threads, you know."

Thankfully Felicia didn't push the conversation any further. As the doors to the lab opened they found Tony Stark hunched over a workbench, busying himself with Iron Man's armor.

"Tony, do you have a minute?"

"I'll be with you in a second, Peter," replied Tony. He noticed the Black Cat beside Peter. "Ms. Hardy." His eyebrows raised a fraction, but he explained. "Iron Man asked me to run a diagnostic on his armor." He quickly typed a few commands on the keyboard. "There, all done. What can I do for the two of you?"

"Would it be possible to outfit the waldoes on my costume with sonic disruptors?" Peter inquired.

Tony contemplated Peter's question for a few seconds. "That shouldn't be a problem. But why do you need sonic disruptors anyway?"

"Venom," Felicia answered.

"Venom…" Tony repeated as he pondered Peter's unusual request. "Is that the one who…"

"Who grabbed Mary Jane and Aunt May?" Peter interrupted, "Yes."

"He has been masquerading as the Dark Crusader," Felicia added with more than a hint of anger and bitterness. Peter put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, knowing that she was having a tough time dealing with it.

"The Dark Crusader? Who's that?" Tony asked.

"A 'new' superhero I ran into a couple of weeks ago. He seemed nice enough. In the last several days, we spent a lot of time together… righting wrongs… stuff like that." She paused, looking chagrined. "But things weren't adding up. His aversion to heat, for instance, and knowing Peter a lot more intimately than he should have." She faltered briefly before regaining her composure. "There were other things too, like his quick changes and his need to hide behind a mask …" She looked away, clearly angry and upset at being duped. "That bastard played me like a fool, and I didn't even see it coming."

"I see," Stark replied, not completely without sympathy.

"In the end, we both figured it out," Peter added, sympathetically patting her on the back. "He led us on a merry chase through the city until we lost him. The next time we meet, and I know there will be a next time, I want to be ready for him."

"All right, why don't you assist me so that you'll know how to operate the waldoes. Then I'll contact Captain America and the other Avengers…"

"No!" Peter interjected urgently. "If Gargan sees every Avenger, he'll get spooked and disappear. And that's the last thing I'd want."

"Fair enough. Let's get to work on those modifications."


The deeper into the bowels of the building they ventured, the darker it became. They had to search for lights every time they found another floor. Mary Jane was beginning to feel like a lab rat, trapped in a maze. Feeling more and more claustrophobic, she tried to keep her breathing even as her hands trailed against the rough wall. Her fingers stopped on a rough edge. It felt like… a crack in the plaster, right above a sill of one of the filled-in windows. "May," she called out. "Have you found the lights yet?"

"Not yet, dear," May whispered, trying to contain her own anxiety. "I'm getting close to where they were located on the last floor, though." MJ could hear May's feet shuffle across the floor. "Oh, here they are, Mary Jane…" Click.

Nothing.

May clicked them back and forth several times, just to be sure. "Oh, dear. They don't seem to be working."

To Mary Jane, the sensation of walls pressing on her suddenly got stronger. "That's okay," she said bravely, feeling nothing of the sort, "Can you make it over here? I think I found something."

May started to move toward Mary Jane. "That's it," M.J. encouraged. "I think we're at the other end of the hallway…" Suddenly, a loud clunk made them jump.

"Oh!" May yelped. "Sorry – I kicked something on the floor."

"Wait a minute, May. Can you pick it up?"

"I'll try…" Her hands cautiously felt around for whatever it was she had kicked. "I think it's a piece of wood."

In the darkness, Mary Jane smiled. "Bring it over to me, if you can."

After a few moments, MJ felt the gentle tap of the wood against her arm. She grabbed it, and carefully traced its length with her hands. It seemed to be about a half a yard long, mostly smooth, like a piece of a two-by-four. But even if she had no clue what it was, that didn't mean she didn't know what to do with it.

She felt along the wall for the crack in the plaster she had found, and took a few steps back. "Be careful, May, I'm going to try to crack the plaster off of one of the windows with this."

She hammered the blunt end of the board into the wall ahead of her. Once. Twice. Again, as hard as she could. She couldn't tell if she was making any progress in the blackness. Wiping sweat from her brow with one arm, she took a quick breather.

And then she heard the trickle of powdered chunks hitting the tile floor. Feeling renewed strength, she whacked the wall 10 times in quick succession. A tiny hole let a beam of bright light into the hallway. She began working on the hole, making it larger and larger, until it was a foot in diameter.

"It looks like we're a couple floors up," MJ informed the other Mrs. Parker. "I can see a streetlight, about twenty five or thirty feet down. Let me see if I can make this opening a little bigger."

She slammed the two-by-four into the edges of the plaster repeatedly, but once the hole was about the width of the window, her strength had failed. "Why don't you…" she breathed heavily, "…go and check the stairwell door."

But May had already explored that possibility. "It's locked, Mary Jane. I think that window might be the only way out of here." Her worried face, smudged with a little plaster, came closer as she stood beside MJ again. She turned to look out of the window. "How many floors up do you think we are?"

"Two… or three…" she panted.

"Here, let me, Mary Jane." May gestured toward the board, which was now on the floor.

MJ could only nod.

May reared back, and with every ounce of strength her frail body could muster, she broke the window with a mighty wallop.

MJ laughed through her exhaustion. "You go, girl!"

The older woman seemed a bit shocked. "I didn't know I had it in me!"

Together, they cleared the sharp edges away. Feeling better, MJ put her head through the opening and looked down to the street below. She could see that they were on the second floor, but it was still too high up to jump.

The street below them seemed totally deserted. Their kidnapper had picked his location well.

Mary Jane was at a loss as to what to do next when May suddenly spoke up. "Dear," she began, "those 'shooters' you have… could they make a rope? I don't think I could handle swinging down. But maybe we could try climbing?"

Mary Jane placed her hands on May's shoulders, and kissed her happily on the cheek. "That's brilliant! Why Peter didn't tell you about his 'other life' years ago, I'll never know…"

Mary Jane worked as quickly as she could, well aware that Venom could show up at any moment. Even though she had practiced using them with Peter, it took her several tries before she was able to fashion a rope that looked strong enough to hold their combined weight. After lashing the webline to a protruding beam and testing its strength, Mary Jane carefully climbed over the edge of the hole and slowly moved downward, hand over hand, locking the line between her feet to keep from slipping. May followed suit, cautiously inching her way down. When M.J. came to within five feet of the sidewalk, she dropped, bending her knees upon landing to absorb the shock of the impact. As soon as May was within reach, M.J. quickly helped her down.

"Do you know where we are?" May asked tentatively.

"The buildings around here are a little too tall for me to see any landmarks," Mary Jane replied as she, surveyed the scene. "But we should be able to flag a taxi down or something. Let's just get out of here as quickly as we can."

They headed down the street as quickly as May could move. Minutes passed, and they never saw a soul. No people, no cars…

But directly ahead, a pay phone. "Thank God!" Mary Jane ran to yank the receiver off of the hook. She punched zero for the operator with a jab. "Hello? A collect call for Stark Tower…" She rattled off the number for the private Avengers' friends-and-family line. No sense messing around. "…from Mary Jane Watson-Parker."


As Peter was putting the finishing touches on his suit, the phone interrupted him. "Hello?"

"Master Parker." Jarvis' voice was professional as always, but was now tinged with urgency. "I am putting Ms. Watson-Parker through now..."

Mary Jane, thank God! Peter thought, overwhelmed by a huge sense of relief. "Okay, Jarvis." I hope she's all right.

"Peter?" his wife breathed anxiously. "It's MJ. Are you there?"

"I'm here, sweetheart. Are you all right? Do you know where Aunt May is?"

"She's right here with me. We're both fine," she assured him. "Thank God we found a telephone..." She hurried on, "I don't know how much time we have before Venom figures out that we escaped."

"MJ, do you know where you are?"

"I've been trying to figure it out for the last few blocks. No street signs... I can't see any landmarks... And we can't find anyone around to ask..."

"That's alright, MJ. I'm tracing the call right now and once I know where you are, I'll pick the both of you up in no time."

Her voice became even more breathless. "Hurry, Peter. All I could think about this whole time was--"

"I know what you mean. That's all I thought about too and I want--"

"--I didn't mean to say--"

"--to make things right between--"

She laughed. "Oh, Peter. You know I lo--" The line went dead, mid-word.

"MJ? MJ? Are you still there?" Peter exclaimed with worry.

"Peter…" Felicia began.

Peter interrupted her, exclaiming, "Damn it!" He slammed down the receiver, shattering it to pieces.

"What's the matter?"

"The phone line went dead. I just hope we talked long enough for the trace to work," Peter replied, frustration tingeing his voice.

"It'll work. By the way, what was all that talk about 'I'm' going to get Venom? What about me? I have as much at stake as you do in this."

"I know you do Felicia, but I've always thought of Venom as being my problem. It's extremely dangerous dealing with him and I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Thanks for your concern," she said, determined. "But I want to help, and if that means getting my claws a little dirty now and then, so be it. We're in this thing together, Peter."

A beeping sound was heard and Peter went over to the computer to check it out.

"Yes! We got a location on where MJ and Aunt May are," Peter said excitedly. "Hopefully with the additions to the suit we can tackle Venom with little to no problem."

He memorized the location from the computer screen, stepped into the lab's bathroom, and emerged fully garbed as Spider-Man.

"Come on, let's move!" Peter barked as he headed out of the lab, "Before anything else happens to them."

Felicia drew a quick bead on the location of Mary Jane and May. "I'll meet you there. I think I have an idea… Don't start the party without me."


Suddenly, something yanked the receiver from Mary Jane's hand. She jerked back as a glob of whitish-gray webbing tore the entire telephone from the apparatus. The two women shrieked in surprise and fear.

Venom towered over them, chuckling darkly. "Well, we should have known Parker wouldn't shack up with a brainless twit. We didn't think we'd need it for the two of you, but luckily, we still have some sedative left…"

Mary Jane did the only thing that came to mind. She quickly aimed and shot twin lines of webbing at his face. Unfortunately, they sputtered out and fell short of their target. Damn! I knew we used too much on that rope…

"Nice try, cupcake." He wrapped them both up easily in his own webbing. "But you're not going anywhere."