Lying Heart
Two weeks before Christmas is the first time Peter is ever hit on while wearing his Spiderman attire. He's playing with his cell phone, listening to the police radio on a volume so dim that only he could hear it, when a woman sidles into the alley dressed in what appears to be a push up bra and the tightest, most unflattering shorts Peter has ever seen. He takes a step back in surprise—he heard her coming, of course, but wasn't expecting a full-on hooker, and now he's beet red and stumbling out of the shadows and as embarrassed as it gets.
The woman looks equally shocked for a moment as well, but then her upper lip curls up like a cat's, and she walks over to Peter with grossly miscalculated confidence.
"Hey there, big guy," she purrs.
Nobody has ever called Peter "big guy," at least not in a non-sarcastic way.
Peter gulps, taking a step back. "Ma'am," he says, in the deepest voice he can muster. He immediately feels like an idiot, but he's never really talked to anyone but Gwen or the cops or other criminals while he was in the suit, and for some reason he wants to give off the image that he's older than he is to fend her off. As she advances on him he knows it would have been safer not to bother.
She laughs at him. Cackles, would be a better word. "My, oh, my," she says. "Spiderman's just a kid, huh?"
Peter feels the back of his neck starts to sweat. He tries to think of a moment in his life more awkward than this one, but he's pretty sure this takes the cake. "Are you, uh. In need of assistance?"
She smirks. "You bet I am, hot stuff." Suddenly she's mere inches away from him. Her breath smells stale and he tries not to take another step back so he won't look like a total coward.
"Um. Not like that," he says, hopefully with more confidence.
"You're just playing dress up, aren't you?" she says. "Little boy wants to play superhero for the night, so he goes around the city dressed as the Spiderman."
Peter doesn't say anything. He desperately wishes she would just go away.
"I can play dress up, too, you know," she whispers, leaning in to touch his mask.
He darts out of her way. "That's enough," he says, and simultaneously he hears the radio frequency calling all available units to Times Square, that the unidentified technological threat has returned. He leaps up to a fire escape above him. He is only a few blocks away.
The hooker gasps. "Are you—you're the real—?"
"You should leave this area immediately," says Peter. He points in the direction that will take her furthest away from Times Square. "Go."
He doesn't wait for her to answer. He soars through the city streets fast enough to suck all the air out of his lungs. He saw the way that thing decimated all those officers last time, and he knows that given the chance it will do a lot worse, especially in the most populated area in New York at this time of night.
It takes less than a minute for him to arrive. For a second he can't even see it. He scans the area, seeing people screaming and running in so many directions that he has no idea where exactly they're running from, and has no clue where to look. Then a bright light flashes across the sky and sizzles noisily as it hits the cement; Peter looks up, and there it is again, but so much worse than before.
It appears to have armor now. Whereas before its circuits were exposed, now it looks finished, protected by artfully designed armor made of something that looks impenetrable, and eerily lifelike. It looks like an overgrown, metal human.
An overgrown, metal human that has now shifted its attention to Peter alone.
"Come and get me," he yells, wondering if it can even hear him. Regardless, it seems to know that he poses a bigger threat than the officers whose bullets are ricocheting off of it uselessly. Peter notes that there are a lot fewer officers responding to the call this time, but he can hardly blame them, considering how fast it killed their comrades the night before.
His first thought as the robot comes after him is to let it chase him to a less populated area, but it's catching up to him way too fast. He swings higher and higher, as far from the ground as he can get. The thing is repeatedly shooting at him again, and the only reason Peter is able to dodge is he can hear the deadly whizz of noise behind him just after it releases another shot.
He reaches the top of one of the taller buildings and sees an entire crowd of people partying on a hotel rooftop, and immediately changes course, hearing drunk people scream behind him.
If he can't go up or down, he'll settle for sideways. It shoots at him again as he changes course and accidentally puts himself right in the line of fire; it burns straight through his arm and for a few seconds he is so stunned by the suddenness of the pain that he lets himself fall an unintentional hundred feet before getting his wits back about him and aiming a web toward another building.
He sticks to a side wall of a building when he senses it getting too close to him and just shoots webs at it for all he's worth. He feels stupid, feels incompetent. He's really not doing anything but distracting it, and while it's enough for the time being, it won't be enough in five seconds when this thing blows him to smithereens. It lifts an arm at him, and Peter sees that it is gearing up for a blast much larger than all the previous ones, so much so that it seems to be taking a few extra seconds to power up. Peter starts shooting webs into the massive hole where the energy is building in its hand, but it does absolutely nothing to deter it. In a split second, he peeks through the windows of the building; empty. He waits until just before the thing shoots, and he throws himself out of the line of fire.
Where the hell did this thing even come from? At least with the Lizard there was an explanation for it, a tangible person he could blame. If he lives through the night he'll ask Gwen about those lasers. It would have been the responsible thing to do in the first place. If he just hadn't been so intent on avoiding her—
"Shit!"
It has hit him again, this time right near the original shin injury. The pain is white-hot and crippling. He thinks of Gwen's extra antidote, tucked away under his bed—will he even make it home to use it? Will he ever see home again?
No. No. This is not the time to be pathetic and feeling sorry for himself. There is a time and a place for that, called high school, and he'll be damned if he doesn't get rid of this nuisance and get back there.
He rounds on it, more determined than ever to find some sort of weak spot. He checks the devices on his arms and sees both warning lights are on. He grits his teeth and decides he'll hope for the best.
Just as the thing starts to look like it's gearing up to murder him, Peter hears a voice on a megaphone he can only assume is directed at him: "Lead it down here so I can get a better shot!" a man's voice commands.
At first Peter ignores it, assuming it's an overly-confident police officer.
"If you want everyone to live, lead it down here, now."
This catches Peter's attention. He stares down at the direction where the voice is coming from. In the dark he can't see much of the man addressing him, but he has what appears to be a giant bazooka gun in his hands. This seems reckless. But Peter is completely out of options, and if this man has even the slightest inkling of what he's doing, he's a thousand times more capable of doing something about this than Peter is.
Peter tears off in the direction of the voice, hearing another command: "Hurry." Peter tries not to roll his eyes. Has he not been taking care of this stupid thing for the past ten minutes? Where was mister hot shot then?
As soon as they're in range, the man yells at Peter to get out of the way, then blasts the loudest shot Peter has ever heard come out of a weapon. It hits the robot dead on. Peter sees now that it wasn't a bullet at all, but some sort of device, which has planted itself onto the robot's chest and seems to be causing quite a mechanical stir. The robot shakes and rattles in vain, like a dying animal, then plummets to the ground with a loud crash.
Peter lands beside the strange man, staring at the felled robot in awe. "What did you do?" he can't help but ask.
"It's an interference reactor. It will disable it for the time being," the man says shortly.
"Wow," says Peter, almost laughing with relief. It looks so harmless down there now, just a chunk of useless metal. "And you're going to—what, dismantle it?"
"That's the plan."
"Alone? Cuz I can help you—you really got me out of a tight spot back there—"
The man rounds on him. His face is completely in shadow, which only serves to make his words all the more harsh and disorienting. "I am not your friend, and I was not here to help you tonight," he says sternly. "I have no idea what you are, but in my experience, anomalies like you only bring trouble."
Peter is taken aback. At first he feels like he's being scolded, like a naughty kid in grade school. But just as quickly he is furious. How dare he talk to Peter like that, after he has risked his life twice in the past week to save people from this thing?
The man is walking away from him.
"Hey," Peter calls after him angrily. "Where were you the past few days? I might be an anomaly, but at least I was here, trying to help. And you, who seem to have a suspiciously good understanding of what this thing is—where were you, huh? Where were you when those twenty six cops died?"
He is trying to hit a nerve, but it is apparently not working. The man stops but he doesn't turn around.
"You're just a kid, aren't you?" he asks. Peter thinks of the hooker in the alley, just fifteen minutes before, asking the same thing. This man does not seem at all sympathetic to him, though. If anything, discovering that he's younger only seems to make him more resolved to doubt Peter's intentions. "Stay out of this. You've done your bit, you've had your little hero parade, but this is way over your head."
"What?" Peter splutters. "This is not—not a hero parade. You don't get to show up here days too late and condescend me like I'm just some stupid kid." The man doesn't seem to have any intention of responding to him, and it just irks Peter even more. "How do I know you want what's best for this city? I have just as much reason not to trust you as you have not to trust me. You haven't said a word about who you are or what you want."
"It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is that I'm the only one who knows how to stop this, the only one who knows who is behind it."
"Then tell me," says Peter emphatically. "I can help you."
The man starts walking toward the disabled robot, leaving a bewildered, angry Peter in his wake.
"No."
SHOCK! A plot! I'm trying, folks. You know, when I'm not focusing on how gosh-darn adorable Peter is. BIG PLANS IN STORE. Thanks so much for the reviews, guys, they really make my day and I take to heart what everyone suggests and comments on. I tell the picture of Andrew Garfield I keep by my bed just how much the reviews mean to me before I fall asleep at night.
Just kidding.
Except I'm not.