DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN SPOODER-MAN(SPIDER-MAN) OR OTHER MARVEL CHARACTERS
EDITS 4/27/18 Cause HaywireEagle's comments made me self conscious of my writing(wait should "self conscious" have a hyphen between the words FF says it's right but Google says otherwise. Dammit what about Darkforce/Dark-Force/Dark Force and Webware)
Peter Parker, New York on the runway(in his plane obviously, he's no MJ)
"Great the paparazzi are here",Peter drawls out to himself, putting heavy emphasize on the word great. Seeing dozens of photographers and reporters around the car where Harry is waiting for him was annoying to say at least.
'At least I only showered my photography skills on myself'. Peter thinks to himself. 'My longest career, if you could call it that, was selling photos of Spider-Man to my good old semi stepbrother J. Jonah Jameson. I'm going to have to check up on him soon, see how he's holding up.'
"Lets get this over", Peter motivates himself, steeling himself for the massacre that is about to begin.
Once the plane is done taxing to where he can disembark, he exits the plane and is bombarded by tons of questions.
"How does it feel to be a regular person again?
"Do you have any comments to your employees around the world?"
"What project was Parker Industries working on that blocked off Manhattan?"
"Did Parker Industries provide any kind of support to Hydra?"
Peter decides to simply ignore any queries given to him by both photographers and reporters, and focus solely on getting to the car where Harry is waiting for him. His glances at various people in the crowd confirm the vicious animal like fever they have in trying to catch a break and make it big. However it isn't for a righteous cause, but for building their career on the crumbling of his. As he enters the car, breathes a sigh of relief and readies himself for a ton of work.
"How does it feel to be infamous Pete?", Harry asks him in a slightly good natured tone obviously trying to calm Peter's nerves.
"We're like a modern Enron, except we used to sell products.", Peter returns sarcastically with a solemn face.
"Hmm I guess in a way that makes sense, are you losing your humor already?", Harry asked cautiously.
"I'm a little out of it, a lot on my mind, a lot to deal with. How are you holding up?", Peter replied lazily.
"I'm actually doing very well, besides the headache you brought on all of us. That bubble let me spend more time with Liz and the kids, ended up being a good thing in a way." , Harry said with a faint smile. As Harry continues his story of how him and the others who were locked out from the world coped with the situation, Peter gets some relief that no one he was familiar with was hurt significantly. However it brought up an important question to Peters attention that could turn things around for Parker Industries.
"Has any progress been made by Anna regarding the Darkforce energy force field and the destroyed Parker Industries building?"
"Well, some proof was found at the scene of the destroyed building to prove that it was Hydra agents and Doctor Octavius. Many Hydra agents were captured during the roundups and a few could be tied back to night the building was demolished. It took some time considering people were being brainwashed by Hydra water, but we should have enough to slow the traction of lawsuits. Surprisingly the insurance policy we had on the building went through no problem once we had proof of Hydra's involvement. Regarding the Manhattan problem, well I couldn't understand much of what Anna has been working on, maybe a meeting with her will bring you up to speed. There may still be a light at the end of the tunnel."
With the good news bringing some hope to Peter, he decides to take up Harry's suggestion and heads over to the Baxter Building where some Parker Industries employees are still surprisingly working. Harry tells him that there was some disruption, but since Manhattan was effectively isolated the offices are almost undamaged or disturbed in many places. With pristine offices also came a huge amount of prototype hardware that wasn't hooked up to the Webware services meaning they still worked. Most of it was relatively obsolete, but it still had some use. Even more technology and prototypes are going to come from Horizon University soon. They would have even more to work with and it'll give them the edge they need to stay afloat.
Outside the Baxter Building
As Peter and Harry pull up in front of the Baxter Building, Parker Industries New York HQ, they see groups of laid off employees and protesters angered by the events that have unfolded. A few people had signs ranging from Peter Plumber with a turd over Peter's face, to Hydra Scum with Peter in the middle of the Hydra emblem and color scheme. There were even a few of Spider-Man and the association with Hydra was disheartening. Peter and Harry quickly got out of the car and rushed to get into the Baxter Building. Thankfully the police had a small path between the groups of protesters ready for people entering and leaving. Even has they were passing in between the groups Peter was looking back and forth between the people yelling at him and seeing the uncensored hate they had for him. Once they enter the building and both breathe a sigh of relief they continue to talk about their predicament.
"Harry, we need a way to cool down peoples tempers. And I know just the way we can do this." Peter declares.
'Why is Harry looking at me like a grew a second head and set of arms. Maybe hes surprised.'
"What's your plan Peter?", Harry skeptically asks.
"It's simple, I still have friends at the Daily Bugle, I can ask them if they want to do an interview so we can clear all of this up and set the facts straight."
"YOU'RE A GENIUS! But you and Anna need to find a way to prove us innocent of the Manhattan bubble. Right now were only clear on the building collapse. You also need to provide an explanation on why you locked everyone's Webware and basically killed the company. We can still function for a little while with the reserves we have, but I can handle that. YOU need to go do see Anna. And also tell Spidey to lay low for a bit, things are enough of a mess for us already.
Harry hurries up to the express elevator to get to his office and start working again. Peter decides to roam around the first floor asking the few employees still here how they are holding up. Answers varying from okay to worried about those who had to be left go because they were non-essential. Everything was being run by the barest amounts of people mainly those who were the most experienced. Peter had prided himself on being there for many of his employees regardless of their abilities, but this time helping all his employees wasn't possible. He could see with Harry if they could spare any more money on severance pay to help financially, but their lives would always lead back to Parker Industries and be a badge of shame to some. To protect the world he had to throw his people under the bus and turn the Parker Industries logo into one that stands for disappointment. A disappointment, but not a complete failure, Peter still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Baxter Building, Basement
Peter knew that all the prototypes were housed on the basement level, so he took the elevator after it had come back down from Harry's trip up. He readied himself because Anna was not a person to mince her words or avoid speaking her mind. When he arrived Anna immediately spotted him and asked him a pointed question.
"Did you blow up the London building YOU put me in charge of ?!" Anna asked him obviously peeved that the HQ she was in charge of nearly crushed her.
"Octavius obviously." Peter responded. Anna was a little surprised since she believed he was long gone.
"How, what what?", Anna asks flabbergasted.
"He was able to get a hold of a perfect clone of my clone Ben and aligned with Hydra to get back the company. But enough of that, Harry told me you're working on something."
Anna refocuses again and starts telling Peter what he plan was.
"Well since you killed all the Webware products we had, along with the software we used to manage our security and other systems, I wanted to try and recompile our code and try to decrypt the secure data backups we have."
Anna's plan was one Peter was banking on. When he made the decision to tear down the Webware infrastructure, he was hoping the back up system to store critical information worked. Once the green light was given, all Webware products and systems that were locked up would send their information to the nearest HQ they were able to reach for secure underground storage that was off the books and not accessible directly from the HQ's. The information was stored on traditional non Parker Industries equipment, however the information was encrypted and could only be properly retrieved by Webware type software and hardware.
The different Parker Industries HQ's would be symbolic hubs for different regions. The London HQ served the European and African regions, the Baxter Building the Americas, and Shanghai the Asian and Middle Eastern region region. What was needed now was retrieval of all the data banks so they could be decrypted. The Shanghai data was going to come over soon, while the London data was stalled slightly arriving due to diplomatic concerns regarding Hydra. However the status of the backups hidden near the Baxter building was uncertain. The Darkforce bubble effectively blacked out half of Manhattan in an extra-dimensional bubble, and it was pinned on Parker Industries. Since the Darkforce energy fed on any kind of light or "good" based energy, electronics were useless in the area and people could die due to over exposure. This also meant the backups most likely weren't even up since the fail safe wasn't triggered until after the bubble was put over Manhattan.
"Did the backups even work once the bubble went over Manhattan?" Peter asked Anna.
"Since the Baxter building was effectively cut off, the system should have diverted them to the other HQ's. Even then we should have the synced cloud data from when users last synced since those systems were all in means we should have something backed up at least."
'Hopefully that's the case, Americans can be lawsuit hungry sometimes. This could get us some wins.'
"Welp, I'm all in, lets get started we have a lot of writing, soldering, and troubleshooting to get through."
And so begins a long day and night of two geniuses rushing through to save something from the company they've both worked hard.
AN:
So this chapter ended kinda of abruptly, but my plan is for the next chapter to be more dialogue heavy with Harry and Anna and also bring in Johnny Storm and Miles Morales to liven things up and bring Spider-Man into the fold. I'm also gonna have to level up my humor game a bit, don't want this Peter Parker being to boring. Also it feels like I'm injecting too much of my seriousness into this. Gotta let the creativeness flow, maybe some dank memes or bro moments with the Johnny Storm(gotta research more on him since all I really know at this point is that he lights himself on fire, used to bang Medusa, and used to be played by Chris Evans).
So a little detail that may peeve you if your super into Marvel and read EVERYTHING and cared about Secret Empire, is that Peter Parker was already in country when Hydra fell. He went back after the Shanghai battle. However considering a lot of Parker Industries tech was effectively bricked(the current Spider-Mobile is kinda sorta still alive), I'm not sure if the SpiderJet or whatever its called is functional nor do it know if it is confirmed to still be around. Even if it was I don't think Hydra helicarriers and other SHIELD assets they took over would be unable to detect him. So that means this story is predicated on the idea that Peter Parker DIDN'T and COULDN'T travel back to deal with Hydra and the Cap, but also its not like it mattered cause they just used the cosmic cube(spoiler but whatever) to fix that so it doesn't matter in this story. Things like what was stated above this will be par for the course in this story.
Please leave comments, if you can, on anything you feel regarding this story or other things.
And my first review….so sad, kinda true, but I still believe he runs from it in some form. There are instances in the current run of ASM where Peter consciously decides to neglect to be either person when there is a reason he should be in a certain persona so in effect he is being irresponsible. Or on the rare occasion where he does nothing which is straight up cowardly.