AN: Sorry for the longer wait! Chapters might start slowing down as school kicks into high gear. If you'd like to support the continued creation of this adaption as a reader then by all means show your support with a review -heart-. The more people that I know are reading, the more I will prioritize updating for you guys~
Things are beginning to pick up hoho. Once again a lot of Miguel's thoughts have been indirectly changed to be incorporated into the narration.
Slight Warning: Attempted character suicide.
Spider-Man
Alchemax Genetics Department...
Everything was off. The world was wrong. Out of whack. Dark was daylight. His body tingled with an all-encompassing numbness that drove Miguel to distraction. Similarly, it was like his mind had shut down. There was an ambiguous buzzing in his ear. An after-effect of the explosion? Aaron Delgato speaking to him? Miguel's subconscious screaming at him? He couldn't tell or care. So strange was Miguel's eyesight that he stared down at his hands without really seeing them. Unable to react. Numb.
There was that sound again. Miguel quirked his head to the only other human in the room. Delgato, yelling his name, maybe? Miguel turned and attempted to focus on him as if noticing him for the first time again. It was... challenging. He seemed huge and distorted. Everything did. The man looked like he was scared stiff, and was that a gun he was holding? Since when did he carry one of those?
"G-Get back! Keep away from me O'Hara!"
"Aaarrrr-on."
Even talking was damn-near impossible. He could hardly get a single word out. The "aa" sound was simple enough and the "rr" came easy, but after that the second syllable was a struggle. On top of that his mouth felt different, dry from the explosion, and somehow more full and heavy.
"KEEP AWAY!" Delgato screeched, firing the weapon that turned out to be a gun after all.
On instinct Miguel dodged. Though he was still dazed and disoriented, he was able to duck a shot from practically point-blank range. If his mind had been working right, that might have been impressive to him. As it was though, he was only operating on some primitive part of his psyche compelled to keep him alive.
Another, more miniature explosion tore holes through the damaged machinery behind him. Slowly, Miguel's mind started to come back to him. Was this man insane?! He was going to kill both of them shooting up the place like a maniac.
"Aaarrrron! Stop!" Miguel was forced to dart aside to avoid another blast. Delgato's aim was awful, and further handicapped by his fear, but he was close enough to Miguel that those factors didn't much matter to the overall danger level of the situation.
"Sssssstop!"
"I won't let you kill me! I don't care what you've mutated into! I won't let you kill me!"
Those screaming words combined with the gunshots were too loud for Miguel to tolerate. His ears were ringing and stinging, just about unbearably. One blast came far too close, missing Miguel's head by mere inches. He had to get some distance, that or get the gun away from Delgato before he blew the whole place sky-high. Taking a chance, he backed up to a wall and with a running start took a leap at his subordinate.
Miguel started to snarl mid-leap, "Will you... ssshut the ssshock up for one ss-"
Letting out a cry at Miguel's approaching proximity, Delgato shot wildly. He misfired by a mile, and one of the blasts hit a major power generator instead. Miguel never saw it happen, but what happened next nearly shook his body apart. Just feet from Delgato Miguel was thrown to the side from the force of a shock wave. Flames licked his skin but luckily didn't catch. His sense of balance and gravity were fucked. He didn't know which way was up or down, but in his flailing through the air he managed to grab hold of something important. It was Delgato. The two of them slid across the floor and nearly outside the new hole that'd been blasted out the side of the building. It was Miguel that saved them from falling to an unfortunate death. He slapped a hand down to the ground and it somehow slowed them to a stop. The two of them were just barely clinging to safety, Miguel horizontally laying down and hanging on to some debris shoved through the hole, while also holding onto Aaron's arm.
He'd survived a second explosion in the same day, somehow. Aaron was alive too. The discharge must've consumed multiple levels, because Miguel could see floors above and below him in the gaping wound of the skyscraper's side. Said cavity was spewing forth flames and pitch-black smoke that choked Miguel. He was thankful to be so close to the outer air, even if they were caught between a fiery hell and the edge of a building. To say the least, they were in a precarious spot.
"YAAAH!" Delgato screamed, eyes wide as he dangled between life and death.
"Hold on, Aaron! I... got you!" Miguel grunted. He adjusted his grip on him with one hand since his other hand was dedicated to maintaining an anchor point. For now he could only spare the single hand to keeping hold of Delgato while still keeping himself from falling forward, but that seemed to be enough. Miguel attributed his newfound strength to the wonders of adrenaline, but at the moment, he wasn't about to question it too closely.
"Pull me up! Pull me-" Writhing in agony, Aaron suddenly screamed. "Eeyyaa! Hurts! It hurts! You're killing me!"
"Killing you?! You moron, I'M SAVING YOU! STOP SQUIRMING!"
"My arm! YOU'RE RIPPING MY SKIN OFF. STOP IT! LET GO! LET GO LET GO LET-"
Miguel tried to reason with him, grasping harder onto the heavier-set man with two hands now. Each time he tried it got harder to hoist him up. "Aaron! We're a bazillion stories up! Stop fighting- AARON!"
His efforts to bat Miguel away compounded with the sudden ripping of his lab coat sent Aaron Delgato plummeting. He pinwheeled away, eventually disappearing into some clouds, smog, and smoke. Miguel screamed after him, calling his name. Abruptly ill, he heaved over the side of the mangled building, vomiting violently. He brought his hands up, imaging the human that had once depended on those hands a little more than a minute ago. How long would he fall before he met solid, unforgiving ground? Would he go all the way downtown? Would they even find his body?
"Wh- why was he struggling? I wasn't hurting him! I was holding him as tight as I-" Miguel's voice croaked out, puttering into silence. He looked at his hands again. "I-" Finally he was starting to grasp what had happened to him. "...Oh, no. Oh no!"
Embedded on his bloodied fingertips was half of Delgato's lab coat, and poking through the tattered remains were pointed... prongs. They brought to mind Conchata's spikey little tarantula toes, and what they didn't stick to they shredded. Slowly, Miguel stood, pulling the coat free and unconsciously wrapping the fabric around his naked body. Had the air temperature just dropped ten degrees?
"Through here! The blast originated through here!"
"Take it slow!"
Miguel had company. Emergency workers. Armed Public Eye people in full body outfits and clear gas masks, like sleek hazmat suits. Miguel could discern their affiliation because of the Public Eye logo on their shoulders, an "e" forming an eye with a pupil. At first they just seemed confused, but at seeing his shadowed and smoke-obscured figure they started to form organized ranks. They're here for me, if I don't move, part of him realized, but whilst in the middle of his own crisis he paid them no mind. Despite all his smarts, Miguel found that he couldn't process all the information swirling through his mind.
"My hands... what's happened to my hands? What's happened..." Miguel muttered shakily to himself, as though if he asked somebody would give him answers. Deep down, Miguel already knew the answer, he just couldn't accept it. It was all dawning on him, on just how fucked he was. The officers were getting closer, drawn by his keening, and Miguel half-turned to eye them. "-to me?"
"There's somebody up ahead! Shine the lights over there!"
Hurt by the brightness, Miguel threw up his arms and backed up. The Public Eyes were transformed into menacing silhouettes against the back-lights and drifting vapour. Talons...
"You! Put your hands over your head!"
Heightened vision...
He edged further away. Someone hollered, "HANDS. UP."
Leaping like a spider...
Miguel thought of poor Mr. Sims and felt sick to his stomach all over again. It occurred to him that the machine was irreparably damaged, the one thing that could possibly fix this. He swallowed, a foot brushing empty air. God, what did the rest of him look like?
"Hey! Step back!"
It all bubbled over into a yell. "I'M A FREAK! HE MADE ME INTO A FREAK! I'd rather die!"
They were peppering the air with stunbolts now, but it was too late. Aaron Delgato had had the right idea. Shock this shit. His life was already over, he might as well end it now. Without further ado Miguel flung himself free from the newfound horror that was his existence. He was falling fast, but not fast enough. His vision could somehow see all the way to the bottom, an ever-present reminder of what had been done to him, and what was about to come.
"Let it end!" His wail was lost to the wind. He tumbled head-over-feet, back almost brushing against the building. "Let me just..." Terror, stronger even than what he'd felt moments ago at discovering his mutation, consumed him. Wait! every molecule of his being seemed to shriek. We don't want to die! "Just... What am I nuts?!"
Desperately lashing out, Miguel latched his hands onto the skyscraper. The talons on his fingers dug into the metallic material like it was soft butter, gouging tracks. In a frenzy Miguel scrabbled at the surface with his feet before he lurched to a stop. His fingers alone hadn't saved him. Apparently there were identically angled talons on his toes as well. Now that he'd stopped, another immediate problem greeted him. There he was, suspended at thousands of metres above the world and with only empty space to greet him below.
"HEEELLLP!" was the first word out of his mouth, but the plea fell on deaf ears. It was only him. Over the course of a few seconds Miguel took many deep, flighty breaths. The wind was whistling through his skimpy cloth covering, threatening to blow it off his arms and waist. There was only one thing to do, if dying was officially off the table. Eyeing the tracks his talons had produced in the wall, Miguel began to mentally coach himself for the upcoming marathon ahead of him.
Okay... okay... whatever happens... Don't look down. Loser move. Don't look down- jammit- JESUS. Okay... whatever happens... don't look down again.
The first step was terrifying. Lifting even a single limb from the security of the edifice was panic-inducing. Miraculously, though, Miguel didn't slip even once. That was how he progressed, one hand in front of the other until he built up enough confidence to pick up speed. Miguel could hardly believe it; he was actually crawling a wall. He almost wished this was another Rapture hallucination.
Eventually Miguel made it to a ledge where he could clamber up and take a breather. The whole time he muttered to himself, occasionally staring at at the Public Eye and fire fighting squads swarming around the site of the accident. They'd be after him soon if he didn't get moving. At best the Public Eye had presumed him to be a firebrand-arsonist. At worst, they suspected him of being a meta-human. If they hadn't made that assumption, then Alchemax would soon. The purpose of the machine in that room was a fairly big correlational indicator that could not be ignored in this case.
All he could do was curse Aaron Delgato, the dead bastard. "You had to try and do it, didn't you Delgato?" Miguel panted. He shook from a variety of factors: exhaustion, cold, the injustice of it all. But most of all, Miguel just felt... nothing. Empty, numb, accepting, like when he'd first come forth from the wreckage of the machine.
"Had to try and booby-trap my attempt to shake the Rapture out of me. Try and kill me by combining it with the spider program. Delgato, you idiot. If you were going to attempt murder, the least you could have done was do the damn job right." He deflated further. If anyone was deserving of a good mope-moment, it was him. Miguel O'Hara: god damn coward. "Instead you left me like this... And I haven't got the guts to finish the job for you. Don't know where I was running to. Public eyeballs will be here in a second. There's nothing for me to do now but-"
"REPENT!"
Bewildered, Miguel brought his eyes up to the source of the call. Looking like an angel sent from on high, a man in a heroic cape and costume descended through the hellish plumes of smoke, sunlight at his back, attached to a hang glider. To Miguel, he practically was an angel. A Thorite. A Thor worshiper and imitator, clinging to the old days. Only those fanatics would be so foolhardy as to brave a megacorp's wrath, especially in the middle of a serious disaster that could prove dangerous. Airborne proselytizing wasn't exactly what Miguel would call a sound conversion strategy, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Repent, all of you! Repent, tyrants of Alchemax! A new day is dawning! Our lord Thor will be returning, and he will smite down the frost giants of industry!"
The man wore a black, sleeveless tunic that left his arms and most of his legs bare. On his breast were four circular, metallic studs. An impractically long cape fluttered at his heels, its colour a washed-out red. Held in his left hand was humongous hammer that was strapped in place to his wrist. To complete the look he had a wig of long blond locks tucked under a winged helmet with flight goggles. Miguel had only seen a picture or two of the supposed Norse god of Thunder, so he couldn't compare for accuracy.
"Repent! Repent tyrants of-"
"Hey! Hold on!"
"Huh?"
As the Thorite looped around he finally got a good look at the near-naked figure trying to get his attention. His eyes were puzzled little pinpricks behind his goggles, but Miguel could see every detail of him with freakish perception. Miguel made a mighty leap at the glider, and most importantly, its pilot. Not knowing his own strength, he almost overshot his target altogether. Still, he was able to hold tight to the Thorite with his arms, using his hands as little as humanely possible.
"Hang on, Thorite! You're getting company! Just have to be careful I don't rip your skykite to shreds."
"By Odin's beard!" The Thorite started to descend, both by choice and because of the extra weight. "What manner of being are you?!"
"Come again?" grunted Miguel. At present his focus was on keeping himself alive instead of the man's deliberately odd dialect.
"I said 'WHO THE SHOCK ARE YOU?!'"
"I dunno," Miguel said with a stale tone of voice. Unbidden his eyes rolled to the sky. As if he would give his name out to this complete stranger. "The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Spider-Man, take your pick."
"Sp-Spider-Man?!" It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Miguel that the Thorite would latch onto that answer. To these people, the old heroes were a sort of revered pantheon, with Thor often at the top of the hierarchy as a literal god... ostensibly. And Miguel thought his mother's Catholicism had been outlandish as a child. "One of the legendary allies of Thor! At last! The stage is being set! The moment is surely at hand! All hail Spider-Man! All hail the Harbinger of Thor!"
"I should have just let them shoot me," Miguel muttered, tossing an anxious look over his shoulder. The Alchemax building was still a looming presence in the background, but at last it seemed the Public Eyes sweeping it were not an immediate threat. Facing forward again, Miguel was immediately slapped back into his unrelaxing reality. "Steady! STEADY! You're coming in too f-"
The two passengers of the skykite let out grunts as they were slammed into an empty walkway. The glider itself was mangled from the landing, and it took a moment for Miguel to untangle himself from it. The Thorite appeared okay. In fact, he couldn't have looked happier. By nature Miguel was perturbed by his glee, wary of it.
"Sorry I wrecked your skykite pretty good. Maybe you can... I dunno... sew it back together or something," Miguel told him half-apologetically. Truthfully he was just thankful to be alive and not in a cell.
Adjusting his helmet, the Thorite passed Miguel a large stretch of the glider's light-byte material. Ironically enough it evoked the aesthetic of a spider's-web for Miguel, with its nigh-invisible translucency interjected with thicker, overlaying strands. The Thorite thrust it into his hands when he hesitated, instructing him, "Take the cloth with you and use it to mask yourself. The Spider-Man must be masked."
"Good idea. I don't think any of the Public eyeballs saw my face. Best thing to do is cover up before any further risks. Thanks for the lift."
Miguel accepted the man's gift and started to walk off, wrapping it around his head in a sort of high-placed scarf. His newfound "friend" saluted him with a few pendulum swings of his hammer over his head. Hey, he may have been ridiculous, but Miguel couldn't be more grateful for the timing of his appearance.
"It was my honour! And remember! Thor is coming!"
"Yeah swell. I'll set an extra place for him at the table."
/
About an hour later...
On the ground level of the Alchemax building final evacuations were taking place. There were only a few late-night employees lingering behind after the day shifts, so it went smoothly enough. The only problem came from the fact that Alchemax's head quarters were so extensive that it was difficult to find and ferret out everyone. Floating fire control airships drifted by like blimps, hosing down the stubborn, furious flames that remained. At this point the fire was under control and there was little chance of another outbreak or a breakdown of structural integrity. In fact, the evacuation had another purpose entirely.
"Go on about your business! Move along!"
"There's nothing to see here!"
The Public Eye officers on the ground were directing foot traffic, aggressively keeping them clear of the building. Curiosity couldn't beat a lack of bravery, so most onlookers complied. The less spectators that got close, the better, and that included employees. No one could know what had happened here if at all necessary. It wasn't so much a matter of saving face for the company, so much as it was about keeping secret a new, possible asset. Legally the resource was already Alchemax property, evidently created with Alchemax technology, assuming it still existed. All they had to do was retrieve it, lure it out without causing too much of a ruckus.
But then again... a little ruckus might be mandatory. There were no clean victories in war.
A certain, few, privileged individuals had stayed inside Alchemax. They were on the top levels, secure in their position in the company, literally and figuratively. The waning fire was of no concern to them, especially since they had escape contingencies in place in case it spread. One of the individuals left to his devices was Tyler Stone. He sat at his desk, in the middle of a two-way communication with a competitor on his computer.
"You failed again, Stone. This is all that remains of your assassin."
Stone didn't even flinch at the sight. They would just have to use better people next time they tried something so bold in a foreign country or corporate boundary.
"Alchemax standards seem to have deteriorated since my employment in the elite."
"My dear Tiger Wylde, officially Alchemax denies any connection to the alleged assassin. Your long-ago departure is of little concern to the firm."
"Don't patronize me, Stone. Your board of directors is very concerned about Latveria, and don't lie. If Alchemax wants war, I'll gladly oblige, and I'll take great satisfaction in personally grinding you into dust."
"Tiger Wylde, your threats don't..." Stone blinked, his screen briefly going black. The dictator of Latveria's side of the broadcast wasn't receiving or transmitting anymore. Wylde had hung up on him.
"Damn the man!" snarled Stone. He slammed a hand onto his desk before he switched to watching a video feed on the slim screen of his computer. It was live of the lab that had been destroyed, the former home of O'Hara's "little" genetics project. Nothing substantial could be salvaged from the ruins, but perhaps another prize had survived the catastrophe. A Public Eye forensics team was presently in the middle of an investigation, which Stone took to spectating whilst yelling into a microphone.
"Mabel! Tell Dr. Crane to get his scrawny posterior up here! And where's Venture? I summoned him an hour ago!"
"Venture is in the building, Mr. Stone. He's inspecting the damage site."
Somewhat assuaged, Tyler turned his attention fully to his screen. The statement proved accurate when Stone saw Venture appear on the scene. Venture was an assassin, a hired hunter, and among many other things, a cyborg. He was grizzled looking, with prominent stubble on his jaw. His bandana and stetson hat gave the impression of a cowboy, but it was flawed by the visible cybernetic additions that were visible on his exterior. The most notable enhancements were on his eyes, one appearing as a half-goggle focal lens that helped him to follow targets, and the other being a long, rectangular scanner that was at the most basic level an infrared camera. Its functions were far more advanced than that, however, and it primarily assisted him in tracking body signatures. Under a brown trench-coat and slacks his metallic arms were mostly hidden from view. Who knew which half of him was more dominant: human or machine. Venture's weapons of choice were a type of machine gun on his back and a strange staff at his side.
"Excuse me, one side, please," Stone heard Venture say. There was a sort of tinny, robotic quality to his voice that clashed with a subtle southern accent. The bounty hunter strode through the Public Eye ranks like they were rats underfoot. Their reactions to him varied from awe to downright hostility. At that point Stone screwed his scrutiny to other matters, confident that the man would do his job and do it well.
"What are you doing here, Venture?" asked someone at the site.
"Your job." Venture ignored everything else in the room, gaze inhumanly locked on the hole in the wall. BLAST EFFECT T17º. FOOTPRINT AFTERIMAGE T17.3º. A heat record of events was being deciphered in his brain. A few nearby Public Eyes interfered with the picture he was beginning to form, but not enough to ruin the interpretation. PRONE BODY H.M. T20º. He leaned out and looked upwards along the building's facade. Within seconds, his robotic components broke down the story that the Public Eyes were trying to decipher.
One officer grasped his gun close to him. "Just stands there, staring. All these "elite" guys give me the creeps."
"Quiet, I bet he can hear you no matter how you whisper," another shot back.
"You'd win your bet," said Venture in parting. The humans in the room showed noticeable signs of relief at his departure. The atmosphere of normality restored, the Public Eye forensic and clean-up crew proceeded to return to their work.
It wasn't long after that Venture came to Tyler Stone's office. Stone appeared to be in the middle of some disciplinary business, so Venture loitered in the doorway to keep from disturbing them. And in any case, he liked to hear a human get chewed out.
"Our spy in Latveria was detected and disposed of, Doctor, despite your assurances to the contrary."
Across from Stone Dr. Crane shivered. "Disposed of? But... but the personal armour we provided should have protected him from-"
"You can take consolation in the fact that from what Tiger Wylde showed me, the armour appears to be in one piece. The occupant, however, is no longer with us," Stone sneered. "I suggest, Doctor, that your future contributions to the Alchemax Intelligence Program be of higher caliber... or there's every possibility that you will no longer be with us as well."
Stone glanced away from the overwrought Doctor as Venture chose that moment to make his entrance. His annoyance was not exclusive to Dr. Crane, as evidenced by his tone when next he spoke. "Ah, Venture. You've arrived, finally."
"I do everything finally."
"Do you have a track on our late-night guest?"
"Yep." Venture never used more words than he had to. Though emotionless, everything he said oozed self-assuredness and an utter confidence in his abilities.
"Are you going to show us, or would you like an engraved invitation?"
Silently, Venture pulled a tiny drive from the metallic components that made up where his ear should be. He uploaded its contents onto a computer, not the small, personal one that Stone had at his desk, but a full-screen behemoth. It took seconds for the reconstruction he'd created from the clues he'd gathered to come up on-screen. On it, a model of a 5-6 foot male human was shown in a variety of overlapping poses in front of the explosion-created opening.
"There's your boy. Everything from before the explosion was wiped by the heat of it. My reconstruct has him lying on his belly first. Whether he was trying to stop your other man from falling, or whether he was trying to shake him loose, can't be determined. Now he's standing, facing your boys..."
"And then he went out the hole, I know. The question is, where did- ah."
The simulation went through the hole and to the other side. Stone couldn't help but smile at the next set of poses that Venture showed him. The 3D figure fell for a time, stopped, then climbed all the way up and past the hole until it was out of range. Stone had suspected as much, but to have it confirmed was a delight. Not only was the mystery individual not dead, but he had ascended. After the heroic types died out just about all at once, recreated metahumans had become an invaluable resource in the corporate wars that each company engaged itself in. It was no easy task to make them and make them useful to boot. Hell, even naturally occurring X-type mutants were nearly an extinct species. Those that claimed to be a part of that minority did so out of a desire for status these days, ironically enough. Times had certainly changed since the "hated and feared" days.
"Now isn't that... interesting. This has definite potential. Too much potential to trust to the Public Eye. This must be handled with delicacy. Can you find him for me, Venture?"
"Make it worth my while, Stone... and I'll drag his butt back from the moon if I have to."
End of Chapter
As a note "jammit" is another 2099 slang alongside "shock". Shock will be alternated with it's f-counterpart here and there depending on the context. Might throw in the infamous "son of a glitch" for the heck of it.
Remember to review, readers! -huggles- Until next time!