As Peter's eyes slowly began to flicker, he could also hear a persistent sound coming from nearby. He couldn't quite focus on it at first, but after a moment, his mind cleared up and the room came into view. He then realized that the noise was his phone ringing, so he reached over and grabbed it off his nightstand. It ended up being none other than his fiancé; if it had been almost anyone else, he probably wouldn't have bothered to answer.

"Hello?" he questioned as he wiped his eyes sleepily. What time had he even come home last night anyway?

"Are you taking the day off?" Mary Jane asked.

"What?" Peter asked, confused.

"Well, given that normally we need to leave any minute now, I guessed you weren't going in today or you overslept," his fiancé explained.

Peter then pulled his phone back in front of him to see that it was indeed well past the time his alarm normally went off; in fact, it was barely two minutes until the time he and M.J. were usually headed out the door for him to walk her to the bus before heading to the Bugle. He then quickly shot up, running over and scrambling to get some clothes on.

"Sorry!" he called out as he hurried through his closet, "I'm so..."

When he reached out to grab his clothes, Peter observed that the red and webbed glove of his suit was still on. He then felt his head, realizing that his mask was still on as well. He yanked it off quickly and looked at himself in the mirror, finding that he had indeed fallen asleep in his costume.

"Oh man," he muttered, already dreading how his suit was likely to smell down the line. It wasn't too bad though, and he hadn't done a quick morning patrol in a while...

"What is it?" M.J. called out from the phone.

"Oh, yeah," he said, quickly putting the phone back to his ear. "I just, uh, I think I'm going to swing there. "I'm already in my suit anyway, so I might as well get a quick swing in to get there on time."

"Oh... okay," M.J. said. "I mean, I was hoping we could talk this morning."

"We'll talk later," Peter assured her as he stuffed his clothes and some other essentials into a gym bag, throwing them over his shoulder. "I promise!"

"Okay," M.J. replied with a sigh. "Have a good day. I love you."

"Love you too!" Peter said before slipping on his mask. He then turned and leapt out the window, soaring through the sky as he fired his first web of the day. Within a few swings, he'd seemingly discovered some well of energy inside himself, becoming more and more intense and enthusiastic in his swinging.

"WOOHOO!"

Yep, this was just what he needed this morning.

Peter walked into his boss's office.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes, Peter," the man said, ceasing whatever work he was doing on his computer to turn and properly address him. "I just wanted to check in and see how Eddie had been doing? I tried calling yesterday, but he never got back with me."

"Oh, uh, he's doing okay I guess," Peter remarked, not surprised but still somehow caught off guard by the question. "As good as anyone could be in his situation. He's spent most of his time staying at the hospital with Anne."

Robbie nodded, looking away contemplatively.

"I just know that something like this can hit a man really hard," he said. "You know him better than anyone else here, so if there's any way that you think we can all help him right now, just let us kn..."

The man's gaze suddenly shifted past Peter, prompting him to turn around as well. To his surprise, he saw none other than Eddie, who was moving at a fast, aggressive pace straight for the office. He marched right in, immediately offering his and Peter's boss a printed piece of paper.

"Here."

Robbie looked at him, surprise, curiosity and concern all written in his eyes.

"What is this?" he asked as he took the paper, slipping on his glasses as he began to examine it.

"You wanted me to write an opinion piece on Spider-Man," Eddie answered. "Well, this is it."

The opinion piece? Now? Peter couldn't believe what he was hearing; nevertheless, he turned to Robbie, all but holding his breath as the man poured through it, giving no physical indicators as to his thoughts on the matter. Eventually, the man removed his glasses, setting them back down on his desk calmly before looking back at Eddie.

"I can't print this, Eddie."

Peter turned to his friend, who had a look of frustration on his face.

"Why not?" he questioned. "You wanted my opinion on New York's favorite superhero, so there it is."

"I can't print this because this article wreaks of ideas and things that I will not allow to come out of this paper," Robbie responded, his voice remaining steady but firm.

"What are you talking about?" Eddie asked.

"Well, to start, we never advocate for someone to kill people," Robbie replied.

Peter's eyes widened as he turned back to Eddie.

"You said that?" he questioned.

"I didn't," Eddie affirmed.

"Eddie, at one point in here you say, 'If Spider-Man is going to try and sideline the good people of this city, then he needs to be willing to go to greater lengths to ensure that we are all safe as we walk the streets or even rest in our homes.'" Robbie explained. "I'm pretty sure that most people can read between the lines here."

"Are you censoring me?" Eddie asked, visibly upset.

"You're not okay, Eddie," Robbie replied, "and right now, it shows in your work. Go be with your wife; you still have plenty of paid leave left, and if you have need anything, then let us know."

Peter watched as Eddie's fist clenched tighter, but the man ultimately said nothing else, storming out of the office. He quickly caught up to him.

"Dude, did you seriously write that?" he questioned, getting no response from the man. "Why?"

"Because he overstepped his bounds last night," Eddie said, coming to an abrupt halt and turning right to Peter's face.

"What do you..."

"I found the guy that attacked me and Anne, Peter," Eddie explained. "Spider-Man caught him, but then he whisked me away from the scene just to give me a lecture on how I need to 'stay out of the way' and let him do his thing."

"Yeah, and he's right," Peter said instantly, the words coming out so fast that they almost caught him off guard. They drew Eddie back in too, even as he'd already turned to walk away.

"Well," Eddie said, his tone laced with an invisible venom, "since you have such faith in the guy, perhaps you should know that, since he didn't let me testify, the guy he supposedly could get incriminated for me ended up getting out of jail just a few hours later."

"What?" Peter questioned, having not expected that twist. He'd thought for sure...

"Yeah," Eddie replied, "one of my contacts at the police station said that his phone and everything came back clean, so whoever this 'LTL' person is, it seems that he has some contingencies in place that even the all-knowing Spider-Man didn't think about."

Peter wanted so badly to say something back, but he knew that he'd been beaten. He felt so dumb; Wilson Fisk used to have connections in the police force and other places to keep his guys out of jail and prison; why had he not suspected that the same potential thing could happen here?

"That still doesn't mean that Spider-Man should just start, you know..."

"If he's going to take the law into his own hands like he does, then he clearly needs to do something different," Eddie countered. "You know, I did some research when I first took that assignment; even after all these years of your guy being on the scene, crime hasn't gone down all that much; in fact, there have been times where it has actually gone up."

"He can't kill people, Eddie," Peter reiterated, refusing to back down. "As soon as he starts doing that, he becomes just like them."

Eddie just shook his head before inching it slightly closer to Peter's.

"You know," he whispered, "maybe if Ol' Spidey had actually taken things up a notch or two, your first girl would still be alive."

Without hesitation, Peter grabbed Eddie by the front of his shirt, moving back and pinning him to the wall. The man struggled against his grasp but found that he could do nothing.

"HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO ME!" Peter shouted at the top of his lungs, his blood hot with rage at the mention of Gwen's death. "You think you know so much about it, but you don't know ANYTHING!"

"What's going on here?" came the voice of Robbie as he came up to the two of them.

"Oh, nothing much boss," Eddie replied. "Peter and I are just having a little disagreement."

Peter could only stare at the man, who matched his gaze with equal intensity.

"Peter," Robbie said softly but firmly, drawing his attention. "Let him go."

Looking back at Eddie, he hesitated to comply at first.

"Peter, let it go."

Finally starting to settle down a little, Peter relented, setting Eddie down. His coworker straightened his shirt before taking his leave, maintaining eye contact until he made it to the doorway to the stairs. Peter then took a couple of breaths; he looked down at his hand, seeing that it was visibly shaking.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Robertson," Peter apologized. "It's just that he..."

Peter's boss cut him off by putting his hand to his back, gently ushering the two of them out of the room and away from the prying eyes that had surrounded the scene.

"I'm not going to defend whatever it was that Eddie said to you any more than what Jonah had said the other day," Robbie assured him once they were more in private, "but in both cases, I would have normally expected you to be the bigger man, Peter. I don't know what has been going on with you recently, but something has been off for a few days now."

Peter thought back on the last seventy-two or so hours, his mind slowly recollecting his more out of character moments. He'd blown up on Jonah, Eddie, and even M.J. He also blatantly ignored and had been distant from his fiancé as well; now that he thought about it, she seemed like she'd really wanted to walk and talk with him this morning, but he'd completely blown her off.

"You're right," Peter said as all these occurrences hit him like a big tidal wave. "I haven't been myself."

"I'm not sure what's been going on, if it's the wedding, what's going on with Eddie or something else entirely, but you need to figure out what it is," Robbie added. "I'm not just telling you this as your boss, but as your friend, Peter. Whatever is going on is clearly eating at you, so do what you need to do to work through it, and if there is anything that you need from me, just say the word."

Peter still couldn't even look at Robbie, his mind reeling.

"Actually, uh, can I take the rest of the day off?" he asked, barely making eye contact.

"If that's what you believe you need," Robbie replied.

Peter barely nodded at his boss before quickly leaving the scene, not even going back to his desk to get anything. He stumbled out of the building and just started walking, his body seemingly on autopilot as his brain worked overtime. Really, they were just all little things, small occurrences, but still, the fact that almost everyone kept pointing these things out to him, some of them multiple times, was finally starting to make him realize that something wasn't right. He couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something was just...off.

His thoughts kept coming back to M.J. He needed to see her, so he made his way quickly across Manhattan without even thinking about it. By the time he arrived on the block that her store was on, he felt almost like he was at war with himself. He quickly entered the building, his head practically on a swivel as he searched for his fiancé. Finally locating her near the back center, Peter made his way through the crowd. She'd just finished up with a customer before turning to face him, her eyes widening in surprise.

As M.J.'s fiancé came up to greet her, she could tell quickly that something had happened.

"Peter?" she questioned. "What are you doing here?"

"I needed to see you," Peter replied in a hurried tone. "Something's wrong; I don't know what it is, but something's..."

"Excuse me," a customer interrupted, coming up to M.J.

"CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I'M..."

Peter cut himself off abruptly, spinning away from the two ladies. M.J. was a little embarrassed, but more than that, she was now significantly more concerned.

"I'm sorry," she said, quickly turning to her customer, "I just need to take care of something really quick; Kennedy over there can help you with whatever you need."

Ignoring the concerned expression on the lady's face as she walked in the direction of the worker, M.J. turned and ushered Peter to the back room with her. Once they were in private, she turned to him.

"Okay, what was that?" she asked.

"I don't know," Peter said, already getting a little worked up. "Something's going on, I just..."

Grabbing his frantic and shaking hands, M.J. gripped them gently but firmly, looking her fiancé in the eye.

"Easy," she said in a soft tone. "Take a breath, relax."

Peter seemed to take her advice, closing his eyes as he drew in a deep breath before letting it right back out.

"Alright," M.J. said. "Now, tell me what happened."

"I had a run in with Eddie last night," Peter began. "Not as me, but as you-know-who. We'd both found the guy that attacked him and Anne, and he was going to shoot Eddie before I stopped him. Once I did, I got Eddie out of there and told him he needed to stay out of this."

"Okay," M.J. said, uncertain of what the especially big deal was so far.

"It wasn't just that though," Peter elaborated. "I all but snapped at him; I basically told him that he didn't belong out there and all he did, all any normal person does when they tried to help me is get in my way. I'd wanted to try and deter him from going back out there, but I... I really went overboard. I didn't even let him go back down to testify to the cops about the guy, and Eddie told me today that he was let out of jail already."

"What?" M.J. questioned.

"Yeah," Peter nodded, becoming a little more animated again. "He came by the Bugle today; I guess last night's run in gave him all the incentive he needed to write that opinion piece on me."

Uh oh.

"What did it say?" M.J. asked.

"I didn't exactly get to read it, but basically Eddie questioned whether I should be doing 'more' to keep criminals off the streets if I'm going to take the law into my own hands."

"Wait, you... you're saying that Eddie was..."

"He tried to deny it; maybe he didn't even know for sure what he meant," Peter reasoned. "Anyway, I followed him back out of Robbie's office, and we got into it. I doubled down on things, he said something about Gwen, and then I... I just got so angry."

The look on Peter's face sent a haunting feeling down M.J.'s body.

"You didn't hurt him, did you?"

"No," Peter said, "but I wanted to, and if Robbie hadn't come by and got us to cool down, I might have."

He then grabbed M.J.'s upper arms, not in a threatening way, but in a way that made her feel like she'd just become his life raft.

"M.J, I don't know what's happening to me, but something's not right."

"Okay, calm down," M.J. said, putting a hand on his chest to try and ease him. "You're stressed; your worried about Eddie, our wedding's coming up, plus everything you already deal with on the regular..."

"It's not just that stuff though," Peter said, shaking his head and releasing his grip on her. "Every time one of these little blow ups happens, I just basically forget about it; it wasn't until Robbie pointed out all the little things that have happened recently. Jonah, Eddie, even with you, every time something weird happens, it's like I just push it off to the side, like my mind is being pulled back in another direction. It's almost like..."

"What?" M.J said, approaching him again. "Like what?"

"Like something else is making me," he explained, his words filled with dread. "The shuttle, they said something about some black, gooey alien like the one the other Peter talked about. But that can't be it though; I would have seen it on me by now if that were the case. Something happened to me though, I know it did, I just can't figure out what."

M.J. then walked back over towards him; she wasn't sure what was going on with him either, but she could tell that he needed her. She took his hands in her own, drawing his attention again.

"Here's what we're going to do," she said. "We're going to leave and go back to your place right now; I'm going to call May and have her meet us there..."

"No, I can't disrupt your days like that," Peter tried to reason.

"And we're going to figure this out together," she finished, ignoring his objection.

"It's just that, I've been so unpredictable recently," he explained. "If something happened and I ended up hurting you..."

M.J. once again put her hand to his chest.

"Hey," she said softly, "I know you, and if there is one thing that I know that you aren't capable of, it's hurting me."

For the first time since he'd arrived, Peter allowed himself just the thinnest of smiles to come over his face, which reassured M.J. more than she would have expected.

"Come on," she said.

Hammerhead opened the door, entering the room to find the three Enforcers. The big guy was punching against a wall and had clearly been for a while, with holes and indentions littering the area he was standing in. The ninja one was practicing his moves, while the third one, Montana, was sitting at a table, tinkering with something. He approached the third one.

"As I understand it, the deal was that we brought you and your men in to go after Spider-Man and take him out," Hammerhead explained.

"You did," Montana replied, not even turning to look at him. This invoked an anger inside Hammerhead, but he restrained himself from acting on it, continuing:

"Well, my boss and I would like to know why you let a whole night go by without even so much as going out there to try and find him?"

"Our first night taught us a lot about our target," Montana elaborated. "For instance, his senses are clearly heightened somehow, as he always seemed to know when we were coming for him. So, we had to come up with a way to hopefully neutralize those pesky super senses, which is why I had this brought in."

Montana then stood up, taking the weapon that looked like an obscenely large blaster of some kind. Hammerhead observed as his client pressed a button on the side, the device making a charging noise as it seemed to roar to life.

"This handy gadget emits high frequency sonic blasts," Montana explained. "With any luck, it should not only mess with our spider's senses a little but do some more damage as well."

Montana then turned and aimed the weapon, firing it and sending a blast of sonic waves that tore clean through a table that had been turned on its side about twenty feet away.

"Don't worry, boss," Montana spoke up. "Tonight, the Enforcers will finally eliminate that long standing bug problem of yours."

Thank you again to all who have supported this series. Merry Christmas!

Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy... and warm!

"'Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.' Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.'" Luke 2:11-14