The Spectacular Spider-Man
Issue #3 – Tangled, Part Three written by Zak Chambers
His head was pounding in time with his heartbeat, forcing a tinge of pain through his entire body upon every beat. He tried to open his eyes and felt woozy, dizzy, and unbalanced all at once. It felt like a steamroller had driven back and forth over him until it had run out of gas, and he was sure he had the bruises to prove it.
He didn't know where he was, but he could tell he was hanging over a city street somewhere. Below him there was a gathered mob of people, citizens of New York, all of them screaming and pointing in several directions. He felt the wind blow harshly against him and wondered just how far off the ground he was.
Peering through the white lenses of his mask, Spider-Man gasped when he realized that he was hanging by his own weblines over Madison Square Garden. He struggled to break his bonds, but found that he had no leverage. He was stuck, for the moment. His blurry vision finally began to clear up and he looked around to see if there was any way to free himself.
Instead, Spider-Man saw the angered form of Mysterio float down past him atop a fluffy cloud. He knew that the cloud was nothing more than an illusion, but to Mysterio's credit he was getting better and better each time Spidey encountered him. He remembered being snagged by the villain on the rooftop adjacent to his own building and how his spider-sense had failed to warn him.
Looking back in his mind's eye, Spider-Man remembered seeing the gnarled, grotesque feet of another party that had stepped out of the shadows just before he lost consciousness. Who was it? Mysterio was a bit of a loner but he had been known to work with kindred spirits when it suited him.
"I see you have awaken," a raspy voice said behind Spider-Man.
Spidey struggled again against his bonds, but to no avail. The voice had startled him, and along with the increasing panic in the crowd below, the whole scenario was getting out of hand. He was hanging from the huge digital screen on top of The Garden, which meant that whoever had spoken behind him must be sitting in the recesses of the framework.
"Not that you were ever really asleep," the voice continued on. "Little man…soon I will use your mind to return home, where I truly belong."
"Not big on the Big Apple, huh?"
The raspy voice nearly choked on its own laughter. "Compared to where I come from its size is infinitesimal. Your mind is unlike most I have encountered."
"You were with Mysterio," Spider-Man said. "You're behind all this. Behind someone impersonating me."
"I am…but what is it exactly that I am behind? Do you even know? No, I doubt you understand what is happening here, but soon enough it won't matter."
Spider-Man struggled uselessly against his own webbing, but for some reason couldn't muster the strength to break free. After pausing in his efforts to gasp a mouthful of fresh oxygen, his eye caught something moving within the crowd. One of people below had stolen the attention off of him, including Mysterio. The villain floated faster and faster down to the crowd, waving an arm frantically in the direction in which he flew.
He saw a man bound out of the crowd and launch something at Mysterio. It collided with his glass helmet, cracking it. The man who had thrown it then, amazingly, gripped a street light and hung to it without changing his expression, which was stark.
"Whoa," Spider-Man said as he let out with a breath. He focused on who the person was and realized that the man wasn't holding to the street light, he was clinging to it, using nothing more than his own touch to adhere to the metal pole.
The man, whom he was surprised he had not recognized all ready, was the exact same man he had seen in his apartment the night before. The man that had his own face, his own clothes, his own mannerisms. Peter Parker.
"Ah, yes," the raspy voice said. "The other end of the equation has appeared. Soon I will be free, and you will be lost forever inside your own mind."
"Peter, get down now!" the newspaper reporter, Ben Urich, yelled over the growing alarm of the crowd.
Peter Parker clung to the lamppost, but he had no idea why he had done so. He saw the shattered camera he had thrown at Mysterio, not even remembering that he had thrown it, and cringed. If he had been trying to get the villain's attention, he had certainly succeeded.
He was still shocked to see that his skin helped him cling to the lamppost. What was happening to him, and what was the strange tingling sensation burning in the back of his skull?
Mysterio had grown close enough to launch an attack at him, and the buzzing suddenly erupted inside his brain, concentrated mostly on his right side. Despite the protests from Ben, despite the roaring mob of New Yorkers surrounding him, Peter crawled up the length of the street light and jumped, catching the outstretching part of the lamp where the bulb hung. He curled around it and swung his legs down, displaying an impressive amount of agility that he never knew he had, and began to swing up and over the lamppost.
He released his grip as he swung under the light, and let the momentum carry him through the air. He headed directly for the hovering Mysterio, who was apparently too shocked to retaliate yet. His feet connected with Mysterio's chest, knocking him clear off his cloud, which Peter landed on gracefully and found that it was actually a flat disc that sported vents with plumes of white smoke coming out.
Somehow, innately, Peter knew what he had to do. He looked at the hanging form of Spider-Man, who seemed to be roused now as his head was bobbing back and forth, and leaned to one side to try and guide the flat hover disc through the air. Mysterio slammed to the ground and was instantly surrounded by the gathered crowd, but that didn't stop him from screaming his discontent at Peter.
Unsteady at first, Peter soon gained control of the disc and began to soar toward the giant digital screen hanging over Madison Square Garden. It approached quickly, much faster than he had gauged, and he nearly collided with the hanging Spider-Man. He leaned away on the disc and succeeded in slowly himself down, now only nudging the structure behind Spider-Man once he arrived.
"I'd ask who the hell you are, but that wouldn't really change anything right now, would it?" Spidey asked.
"Probably not," Peter responded as he pulled at the webbing that had lashed Spider-Man down.
"We're going to need some wire cutters, or a chainsaw, or the Thing to get me lose. I've been trying—"
SNAP!
"Or…you could just use your apparently huge muscles."
Peter looked almost as shocked as Spider-Man. He obviously hadn't expected to break the weblines, which had stood up against people much stronger than him, with his bare hands. He kept going, snapping away each webline with ease and letting Spider-Man slouch back down to the crossbeams beneath him.
"Maybe we need to have a little talk," Spider-Man said as he rubbed his wrists to get the blood circulating again.
"Yeah, maybe," Peter replied, but he never got the chance.
Instead a cloud of darkness spread over both of them, choking all of the light from the vicinity. Peter gagged as the cloud engulfed him, and the taste of it made him want to vomit instantly. His vision left him entirely and he fell to his knees beside the gasping Spider-Man.
"Whoever you are," Mysterio screamed as he returned to them, you have just sealed your own fate!"
The blackness swallowed Spider-Man whole. The inky void surrounded him completely and he pulled in a sharp breath at the last second, just before the cloud overtook them. His mask filtered out some of the black smog, but it clung to the lenses of his mask instead, making it impossible to see. He heard Peter gasping and choking beside him and knew that it would now be up to him to save them.
He felt for Peter and wrapped an arm around his waste. He blindly shot a webline out of his wrist and felt it latch onto something beneath the screen, away from the open street and back underneath the roof of The Garden. Back where he had heard the raspy voice emit from.
Spidey yanked back hard on the anchored webline and pulled both him and Peter to safety, pulling them away from the black void Mysterio had unleashed. Peter gulped down the fresh oxygen, as did Spider-Man, and they tumbled together in a mess of arms and legs onto the wood flooring.
Spider-Man rubbed the lenses on his mask and looked around, seeing that they were now underneath the roof of The Garden where workers would probably come to do maintenance on the giant digital screen. There was a layer of dust over most everything, with stacks of crates and steel crossbeams randomly placed throughout the floor.
"You okay?" he asked Peter, who coughed an affirmative. "Good. We have to move before—"
"Your demise will not be as theatrical as I had hoped, Spider-Man!" Mysterio bellowed as he strode through the dense blackness. "But nevertheless, I shall be content to hang your corpse for all to see!"
"Mysty, I know I've told you this before," Spider-Man responded as he stood up, fighting the urge that his bruised legs gave him to just sit back down, "but no one in their right mind is going to take you seriously when you have a fish bowl on your head."
Mysterio lashed out with his arms, sending a dozen white orbs toward the wallcrawler which promptly exploded in bursts of bright light. His eyes still adjusted to the relative darkness that the cloud had brought, Spider-Man found himself dizzy from the spiraling lights that danced in front of him. He threw himself to one side and landed perpendicular to the floor with his feet clinging to a support beam.
Spots had been burned into his retinas, but they were all ready beginning to fade. He saw the blotchy mass of green and purple that was Mysterio and aimed his wrists, firing off a pair of weblines toward the villain. The webbing splashed against Mysterio, who, with a wave of his hand, wiped the sticky strings away clean.
"Did you think that I had not learned from our previous encounters?" Mysterio said, and Spidey could tell that beneath his cracked bowl he was sneering.
"Always have to do things the hard way…" Spider-Man whispered as he sprung back into action.
The wallcrawler pushed off of the support beam and sailed through the air, the great strength in his legs catapulting him toward his enemy. He stretched his arms out in front of him in order to collide with Mysterio, but he found himself only falling back to the wooden floor in a heap. He pushed himself up and saw that he had only jumped a few feet as opposed the whole way across the floor.
"Confused?" Mysterio asked with a laugh. "Your powers are failing you! Give up, Spider-Man."
It didn't make any sense. Why had he been able to do what he normally did the evening before, using his powers to their full extent, only to now have them fail him? He couldn't even break his own webbing, and now he lacked the proportional strength that he was so accustomed to.
Memories of his powers failing him in the past flooded him. It hadn't been that long ago that his powers had become faulty under specific circumstances. Was it happening again? Was this a relapse? Had he not solved the problems of his own biochemistry?
Then there was Peter. Peter had easily been able to snap his webbing. But was it Peter? It was impossible for him to think that his own alter-ego had not only been in his apartment, with a baby he had thought deceased, and was now in the thick of a fight with him. Of course, there had to be explanation, but he couldn't think of what it was.
Unless cloning was involved. Again.
Feeling the pang of his spider-sense, Spidey rolled to the side and narrowly avoided the stab of a giant knife. The blade, easily as big as him, floated in the air as it was extracted by an invisible hand from the wooden floor. Splinters were pulled out with its tip, spreading across the floor haphazardly.
"Your own mind will be your downfall, Spider-Man!" Mysterio bellowed as he made a dramatic gesture that seemingly controlled the giant knife.
The blade swung horizontally through the air, threatening to slice through anything that got in its way. Spider-Man, happy that his agility still remained, ducked under the blade and then flipped backward after it passed over him, landing steadily on its flat edge.
He fired two weblines at the hilt of the giant knife and then jumped off, swinging his weblines behind him. The blade, caught in his web, flung to the side and smashed into the wall where it chipped and shattered.
Spider-Man leveled his gaze at Mysterio in a silent challenge for him to make his next move. "What else ya got, Mysty?"
"Enough!" the raspy voice from before spoke, the soft acoustics traveling easily throughout the floor.
Mysterio paused, seemingly hung in midair. Spider-Man looked around, pivoting back and forth, but all he saw was a frozen Mysterio and a curious Peter Parker, who was also looking around to spy the newfound voice.
There was a thick tension held in the air. Spider-Man could sense that something was wrong, inherently wrong, but it had nothing to do with his spider-sense. The roaring from the crowd outside was gone, replaced by a blaring silence. Mysterio hung in space like a paused video tape. As odd as the scenario had become, there was still just something that didn't seem right about the whole situation.
Mysterio was known for his parlor tricks and Spider-Man hadn't discounted those illusions just yet. It wouldn't be the first time that all his senses would tell him one thing when in actuality a completely different thing was transpiring. More often than not he would find himself surrounded by Mysterio's false hopes when the truth lay buried under mounds of lies. It was disconcerting, but he had overcome the illusions before. He just had to focus.
"Still convinced that the costumed villain is the main source of the problem?" the raspy voice inquired. Peter jumped slightly from how close the voice seemed to be. "What makes you think you are experiencing an illusion?"
"Why don't you come out of hiding and tell me," Spidey said coldly. He hated being set up. He also hated being powerless. Until the mystery player showed his hand, he was chasing shadows in the dark.
"There is no need to present myself. My domain is all around you, Spider-Man. I must admit, when I first came to this place I was unprepared for what I found. It seems the amount of stock you place in your own duality is ill-advised."
What was that supposed to mean? Duality? Spider-Man looked at Peter, who was slowly inching his wall against a wall. The question still remained of just who this person was. It couldn't be Peter Parker, could it? Wasn't he Peter Parker?
"I think we better get out of here," Peter said.
"No," Spider-Man said. "No, we can't. Something's not right here."
Spider-Man stepped forward, intending to walk to Peter and rally their efforts to find a solution, or at least part of the truth of what was happening to them. He managed to take one step before an invisible barrier held him in place. He pounded against it, but again, his strength had either failed him or was useless against whatever halted his movements.
"Peter!" he called out, catching the worried look of Parker.
"Haven't you figured it out by now?" the voice asked mockingly. "You cannot win! Not here, not where I rule!"
"Peter, listen to me! You have to ignore him and get moving! You can't stay there!"
But Peter wasn't paying attention. Behind him Spider-Man could see a dark shadow creeping out from behind the support beams. It had to belong to the mysterious raspy voice, now apparently formed into a physical being. Whoever this person was, he was sneaking up behind Peter.
Peter matched Spider-Man's intense gaze but remained too afraid to do much of anything. None of this was making sense! Why couldn't Spider-Man figure it out? If Peter, who was supposed to be him, was displaying his powers then why wasn't he doing something to help? To fight? He pounded against the invisible barrier again as the darkness drew ever closer…
Struggling wasn't working. Trying to fight physically wasn't going to cut it here. This place, wherever they were, was not New York. The people outside, who had for some reason become as quiet as a muted television, weren't real. Mysterio, frozen in time, wasn't real. Spider-Man closed his eyes and concentrated. The awareness he experienced about his surroundings was false information. He had to shut it all out and focus.
"A dream," he mumbled. "This is all a dream."
He opened his eyes again and saw the dark void slowly closing around Peter. Carefully, cautiously, delicately, Spider-Man placed a hand against the invisible barrier and pushed through it with an effort of will. It fought him at first, putting up just as much resistance as before, but soon enough the barrier melted away until it was completely gone and he began walking toward his alter-ego again.
"What's going on?" Peter demanded in a frightened voice. "What's happening to me?"
"You…me…we…we're dreaming," Spider-Man replied. "This isn't real. None of it is."
"Oh, it's real enough!" the dark shroud said with a reverberating voice.
The black inky shadows stabbed into Peter's shoulders and he screamed as relentless pain poured through him. Spider-Man stumbled in his footsteps, as the pain struck him as well. He was so close now, close enough that he could almost reach out and touch Peter. But the unbearable pain was too much for him to concentrate. He was losing focus again, unable to think straight. Flashes of red pain was all he could see now.
But then a hand wrapped around his wrist and the pain seemed to subside. He looked up to see Peter grasping his arm tightly, and even though he looked as scared as ever, there was a sense of resolution in his eyes.
Determined to not let the opportunity slip away, Spider-Man placed his other arm on top of Peter's. There was a flash of bright white light and the darkness seemed to shy away.
Peter found himself lying on a rooftop, wearing his Spider-Man costume. It was wet and sticky, probably because of the puddle he was lying in. The night air clung to him as tightly as the wet suit, and he pushed himself up, pulling in a sharp breath as a cold breeze washed over him.
He looked around and recognized the roof as the one across the street from his apartment. It had been here that Mysterio had captured, although had that really happened? It seemed like that moment was so long ago now, separated from the present by a thousand years.
He heard a wheezing noise from somewhere behind him and became alert. He sprung up flipping over in the air to land gently on the edge of the roof, aiming his webshooters in the general direction of the noise. He saw a mangled form lying just a few feet from where he was, gasping for air. He immediately realized that it was the same person whose feet he had seen after Mysterio attacked him. His entire body was made of a thick hide, that gleamed in the moonlight and looked like gnarled tree bark. His fingers and toes were sharp and twisted and his face only roughly displayed a mouth and eyes.
"Who are you?" Spider-Man demanded to know. "What were you doing inside my head?"
"I…I come from the Mindscape," the being replied between gasps of breath. "I was using your mind to find a way to return. I was imprisoned in your world by a twist of fate, brought by an enemy that lost track of me."
Spider-Man stepped off of the ledge. "I don't get it. What were you doing messing with my head like that?"
"Your sense of…sense of duality would have reopened a door to the Mindscape for me to escape through, had you remained docile. I have never encountered such a unique presence. It is if…as if your mind is divided into two aspects. The spider and the man."
"So Mysterio attacking, MJ freaking out." Spider-Man took in a breath before saying his next thought out loud. "My daughter. They were all part of a dream you were using to screw with me?"
"Yes," the creature replied. "I entered your mind while you slept and was able to begin manipulating you the following night. I thought that if I spread confusion throughout your mind that I would more easily be able to use it as a gateway."
"Well, now you're going through the gates at Ryker's," Spider-Man said. "Maybe the Vault, once I place a call to the Avengers. Or maybe the Fantastic Four. One of them will cart you away."
"No, I think not," the creature said as he began to fade away. "I will not forget this encounter, Spider-Man. I know your secrets. Some day I will return to destroy you in retaliation for fighting back and forcing me to dwell in this purgatory. I am Cobweb, and your dreams will never be safe from me…"
Spider-Man shot a webline at the fading Cobweb, but it struck the roof instead. The dark creature from the Mindscape was gone, leaving Spider-Man alone with his sense of torment from having been invaded in a way that was new to him.
"They always get away!" Spider-Man declared, frustrated. "As if my own collection of baddies wasn't enough, I have to deal with new ones! Haven't I paid off my cosmic karma quota by now?"
He rubbed his head, still feeling the agony of his mental ordeal. Whoever this Cobweb was, he was gone for now. He could deal with the repercussions later. Right now all he wanted to do was go home and find his wife. MJ, who for a brief moment he recalled the dream that concerned her, was waiting for him with a thick book back at their apartment. She always read while she waited up for him.
He wanted nothing more than to crash, fall asleep, and recuperate. But the dream he had experienced had been so real, so lifelike. He wondered how long it would take Cobweb to recover and come after him again. Even still, if he did return soon, Spider-Man would be ready for him this time.
That was one thing he had learned over his years of being a hero. He would forever be a target, but he could handle it. He had made a promise long ago, one that he attempted to keep no matter what, and no matter who, crossed his path.
He hopped back up onto the roof ledge and shot a webline to swing back to his apartment building. The responsibility he felt obligated to fulfill would never go away, no matter the circumstances.
Next issue – Enter the Lizard!