DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY MARVEL CHARACTERS OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES USED IN THIS STORY
Writing started February 5th, 2018
Ended February 7th,2018
Peter Parker, Baxter Building Basement Level, 8am
Peter and Anna had probably achieved the single greatest one night feat in their lives. They had successfully rebuilt and compiled the necessary software to decrypt the data backups and also pieced together a make shift Webware terminal to test it. The prototype hardware they had on hand was extremely obsolete compared to the newest devices, but it got the job done.
Their great accomplishment, however, left them extremely tired. They hadn't finished until 6 in the morning and promptly crashed in randomly places. Anna had intelligently used a pile of unfolded cardboard boxes and as her impromptu bed. While Peter somehow ended up on the floor using a mouse pad as a pillow with one hand and cuddling with a Spider-Man plushy with the other. Anna was sleeping quietly while Peter was mumbling.
As they were soundly asleep Harry decided to check in on them, wondering why they hadn't left. He even brought breakfast for 3 if they were still down in the basement. Exiting the elevator Harry stares that their sleeping forms.
"Damn you two look more wasted than a bunch of college frats." Harry declares.
Anna is still out cold and Peter's sleeping mind decides to start drolling and mumbling "adaduhduh".
After seeing this turn of events Harry decides to place the food and drink down before risking any pain from waking them. First he lightly shrugs Anna who is still out of it but does acknowledge Harry and his declaration of food. Peter would be the difficult one. From experience he knows how hard it is to wake him when hes passed out. As he shrugs Peter and lightly kicks him Peter responds.
"eh heh" Peter mumbles out.
"Come on Tiger time for your Frosted Flakes" Harry teases.
"ehm juh?" Peter mumbles inquisitively.
"Yup and I want you to get up, its time for breakfast."
After a few more soft kicks Peter wakes up looking and feeling like a zombie.
Groggily Peter responds to Harry, "At least the hair color is almost a match, kind of a dick move don't you think."
"Not Harry's fault that he knows you too well Pete.", Anna intercedes slightly amused at their exchange.
"Ugh need food need eating." Peter says imitating Hulks voice and going for the bag of food.
"Manners Pete, ladies first." Harry says intercepting the bag and getting Anna her breakfast, a lettuce wrap. Anna silently cheers and looks forward to devouring the fresh wrap. Harry then grabs Peter's breakfast a hefty breakfast burrito was egg, potato and sausage and tosses it at Peter. Peter catches it with his mouth and thanks Harry.
"You're a life saver Harry." Peter says.
"Well Aunt May is very convincing for making sure her nephew is at least eating."
"You only listen to her because she'll take care of the boys every now and then".
"Guilty.", Harry responds with an embarrassed smile.
As the tail end of eating their breakfast and drinking their coffee comes around all three prepare for another day.
"Anything new on your end Harry?" Peter inquires.
"I didn't have the time to call the Bugle like you planned, but maybe that's for the best right now. You two look tired, a press conference explaining science and bits and bobs isn't the smartest thing right now." Harry explained.
"We made a breakthrough last night and can get information from our disabled systems and even customers device data. But since were using the beginnings of Parker Industries tech it'll be slow going through all the data." Anna states.
"The equipment from the other sites will speed things up, but we'll still need to tinker with the hardware to get it into working condition." Peters adds.
"Peter and I can deal with that, but what about the lights? How long can we keep things going?" Anna asks.
"We have enough cash reserves to keep going for a few months, but we do have some debts that are due to be paid soon. The accountants that we still have are still crunching some numbers and checking best and worst case scenarios for how much money we can get selling certain assets. The Chinese government and other Asian companies were generous in how much they gave us for our assets in Shanghai. That money should be coming soon along with the beginning of payments from insurance on the London HQ." Harry explains.
Peter decides to ask, "Any way we can help our ex-employees with more severance?"
"Already ahead of you on that. A chunk of the Shanghai liquidation will be taken to provide for our ex-employees over there. Same with London HQ. Not sure exactly what we'll have left. But it also brings us into the area of lawsuits. Many of them were filed on the idea that we unfairly locked people out and stole their personal information. Some even say we did it in tandem with the Hydra takeover which means were treading on the line of a terrorist supporting entity. And your aid and Spider-Man's involvement in Symkaria pissed a lot of people off in the US especially SHIELD before they collapsed. If you and Anna could find proof of Hydra doing this to frame us, then we'd stand a good chance at getting the severe ones thrown out." explains Harry.
"And with what we did last night, we have the ability to get peoples personal data back in their hands although a little slowly. We could still get those thrown out, especially if we can say it was national defense. We prove Hydra did this and that we defended ourselves and our customers then the current US government and foreign governments would need to give us a pat on the back." analyzes Peter
"Exactly, your getting used to these type of situations aren't you Petey".
"Part of the job description."
"Well that's nice and all but I want to get some sleep guys, we'll talk more later." Anna decides she needs more sleep before she can get back to work.
"That's alright get some rest Anna, what about you Peter you going to crash somewhere?"
"Not sure yet I might decide to make a few calls and see where that takes me. Can you email me any updates so I can look over them."
"All right but don't go disappearing on us, need you close by in case something new pops up. Talk to you later."
"Got it, thanks for the breakfast."
After this Harry decides to go back to his office to keep things running and sifting through any new updates he receives. From here Peter decides that a good shower and a change of clothes would be in his best interest. He didn't have an apartment to go too, but he had stashes around different Parker buildings just in case his civvies or other equipment got worse for wear. Included were a few of the MkIV Spider-Armors, but with the Webware shutdown many of its advanced features weren't usable, but they were still a solid platform if he needed a super suit real quick.
However after cleaning up in one of the full equipped bathrooms he decided on his classic costume and a fresh pair of clothes. Thankfully the stash had some deodorant so he'd be good for a while.
After that he decided to make his first call to Johnny Storm.
"Hey Peter whats up."
"Nothing much, just keeping my company afloat."
"I bet, you should see a lot of the headlines on the news and newspapers."
"Great, more press and stress, but that can wait. You up for lunch today, I'd like to talk to you about a few things."
"Sure, not much going on since Hydra was brought down. Meet you around noon."
"Ya that sounds like a good time, and Panucci's sounds like a good place."
"I'm down for a slice, see you then Peter."
Spider-Man, Baxter Building roof
Since it was only 10 in the morning Peter decided it would a good idea to do a small patrol before lunch so he changed into his classic costume and used a Parker Industries branded backpack to hold his stuff. The roof of the building was the perfect place to get a lay of the land and plan his movements.
"Good 'ol Manhattan island. So whose going to be the lucky winner of the Spidey lottery."
About 6 blocks down Spider-Man spots a car swerving through traffic and the figure of a man looking out the passenger side shooting a gun trying to get the slowly approaching cops to back off.
"Looks like we got one. Gotta do this one quick before someone gets shot or ran over."
As Spidey leaps from the Baxter Building he gains speed and fires of line of webbing into the building across and in the direction of the chase. As he is swinging over the street at well over 60 mph he sees that their are 3 people in the feeling vehicle and plans for a way to apprehend them safely. Figuring it out he goes into action.
First he swings above the passenger side and shoots webbing to yank the gun out of the active shooter's hands. Then he mounts the top side of the car and reaches through the driver side rear window to get the odd man out through it and throws him up sticking him to a light pole with webbing binding him hands. From here he goes on the hood of the car to go into the final phase.
On the hood he greets the two passenger.
"Congratulations you've won an exclusive timeshare to a 10 x 4 apartment here on the island of Manhattan."
The men inside were bug eyed and unsure of what to do since they didn't have anything to shoot Spider-Man with. So Spidey took the initiative and maneuvered back to the window he punched out and got himself on the inside of the car to take control. In a position that only an acrobat could hope to take up Peter is sitting on the center console splitting the two front seats.
"Now come on now this is a deal can't let slip through your fingers. Your other friend seems fine taking my offer."
The man in the passenger seat decides to pull out his pocket knife and Spidey kicks his plan off by moving the drivers foot from the gas to the brake pedal and steps on his foot. Simultaneously he webs the knife wielders eyes to disorient him. As he smacks the knife out of the guys hand he sees the car is going to crash into a car and quickly steers the car into the clear lane as the driver is screaming from having his foot stomped on.
The car safely comes to a stop, with the traffic from behind screeching to a halt. Peter brings his other leg over himself and kicks the driver door out while dragging the driver out and webbing him up around the dislodged door. Obviously the car was placed into Park before releasing the brake pedal.
"You don't even have to worry about being tied up in those horrible contracts. You can use the apartment for months even years at a time."
As he looks back in the car Spidey sees the passenger has gone out his door and ran into the alley with holes in the webbing around his eyes. Spider-Man jumps into the alley and starts crawling on an adjacent wall, catching up to the crook. When the crook passes in front of a trash container, Spider-Man is already caught up with him and directly across him hanging from a fire escapes scaffolding. Spider-Man simply fire a few web shots and sticks the man to the trash container.
"You guys really are scared of timeshares. Don't worry you don't have to go alone you can enter in a partnership and share the apartment. But that also means you need to share the exquisite floor plan."
"Go Fuummmmm yassuuuuuff." The man muffled out as his mouth was webbed shut.
"That's not nice, be grateful this isn't a 5 hour presentation and tour."
Looking back in the direction of the stopped car Spider-Man notices cop cars pulling up next to the stopped vehicle and know he should continue his little patrol.
"Welp the cops are here, Toodles." And with that Spider-Man is off continuing his journey.
Peter Parker, Outside Panucci's 12pm
After a the car chase Peter was successful in helping a few ladies cross the street and saving some kittens in a tree. Then he changed from his Spider-Man costume into normal clothes and entered Panucci's where Johnny was already waiting for him.
"Sup Pete, hows it going."
"Its going good so far Johnny."
"That good you ready for some prime pie or what."
"Can't go wrong with a nice pizza."
ORDER NUMBA 20 READY! was yelled out by the owner
"Don't worry about the pizza, it's on me you already have enough crap to deal with than having to pay 10.77 for a good pizza."
"Thanks, been a while since I had a god slice."
As they were eating they discussed little things like the Spider Mobile getting beat up by Doc Ock or how they dealt with the whole Hydra situation. As they were finishing up the pizza, Peter decided to talk to him about the situation with the Baxter Building.
"Johnny I promised you that I would take care of the Baxter building until the Reed and Sue came back, but right now that's in jeopardy. We can keep the company alive for a few months, but were getting bogged down with lawsuits and a lot of bad press."
"I get it, the Baxter building is in the best hands it can be right now, but you don't know if it'll last forever."
"Thats why I wanted to talk to you, if things go even further down hill I'm wondering if you'd be willing to use some of your money to help keep it in safe hands."
"I'm not sure, I have a company of my own and I even bought the Avengers Mansion to work out of it. I'd love to promise you, but right now I gotta take care of what I have. Maybe I can work something out, but I need time to work out the details."
"Thats all I can hope for. Right now I'm trying to get as many people I know to maybe help with this mess I got the company in, because I know I can't go it alone I need help."
"I'll do my best to help you out with your back up plan, but you're gonna have to deal with the people eventually you know. The press is all over you right now, trying to dig up and say anything to bury you even further."
"I know, thankfully I have a plan for that too. Good thing nobody recognized me here."
"YOU AINT INVISIBLE SON. YOU DONE WITH YO PIZZA NOW? GET OUTTA HERE I GOT MORE CUSTOMERS."
Panucci's owner roared after he heard what Peter said. Johnny and Peter looked at each other and decided to leave. They gave their thanks to and once outside said their goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. Peter decided to head over to a familiar place with a familiar name and meet another old friend. He had a lot of things he needed to work out to somewhat fix things.
Chapter End
AN: So this chapter is the longest so far, but I really need to get better at dialogue especially the whole "Peter said" "Harry said" pieces and choreograph my fights a little better. In terms of length I think 2k-3k per chapter will be fine for now, I'll be able to focus on specific things this way without over reaching to other things. I also introduced Johnny Storm which boosts our portfolio of characters to a whopping 4. Now I can start building some dope hero moments as Spider-Man with homies and force my idea for how Parker Industries should "exist". It's a fanfic I can force somethings, hopefully in a believable fashion. Maybe force something else I've been hoping for a long time, but that will have to wait until after Amazing Spider-Man Issue 797. Dan Slotts run as writer of Amazing Spider-Man is coming to an end so their is hope he'll leave with something big, we'll have to see. Hopefully its not trash and not too similar to everything I've thought of, especially with Marvel's Fresh Start around the corner not sure what the new status quo is going to be for many characters. Do you guys think Fresh Start will work?
Again, please comment if you can and provide any feedback regarding my writing, use of source material, or your opinions on things.