CHAPTER 30
The Adventures of the Spectacular PTSD-Man
Last time, Peter has finally returned home to the present with the hybrid girl, Stella. Having finally cured his girlfriend, Felicia Hardy, alias the Black Cat, from a terrible curse, Peter has begun his tale of his bizarre adventure.
"…and then we returned here."
You shrug, ending the story on a bit of a weak note. Johnny looks pretty excited and in awe, while Felicia and Sue seem rather pensive. Stella heard it all before, but she seems interested to see things from your point of view, so she's listened pretty attentively. DOOM is rather unreadable behind his mask. Sitting there, you try to remember anything you might be forgetting…
"Crap! CARNAGE said something about a father and daughter being murdered in a forest sometime soon after I disappeared! If that's the case, the main place that could be called a forest around here is Central Park…"
Snapping your fingers you let out a curse. "Earlier this we-today, rather, there was a girl and her father. I gave them a wave and the father took some photos of me. If Carnage was focused on me- then maybe there's some sort of lead so that they can be found before CARNAGE gets to them".
"That or I stake out Central Park, but that requires the assumption that he hasn't already killed them by the point the killer gets there…"
The room draws rather quiet. Felicia looks rather bothered but DOOM nods his head. "DOOM will look into things. You have done enough for one day. Take a day or two to rest, nobody will blame you."
You shake your head. "No, I've got to see things settled myself."
You draw quiet as you recall the horrors- Gwen's face twisted into something cruel. The frantic chase from the unkillable monster. A world in ruins. Flash's final moments…
"..ter? Peter?"
You shake your head. "Sorry. But I have to make sure with my own hands that the future's CARNAGE doesn't happen."
You don't have a phone and you're pretty tired after dealing with your exit from the past. You could probably change out of your Spider-man clothes into street clothes and have Sue sneak you, Felicia, and Stella outside.
But that's also a good point. Where should Stella go?
You glance over at Sue and Felicia. "Sue, could you get Felicia and Stella out of here in secret? I have some work I need to do. I'll meet up with you two later, alright? Be sure to grab my bag, please."
Sue nods but as she looks at you, it's almost like she's staring past you and Felicia. Stella looks over at Felicia nervously before nodding. Felicia stares at you for a long moment. "..Alright, but we're going to have to talk later."
You nod as you ruffle Stella's hair as you put on your mask and head towards the window. As you head out into the evening, seeing the sky clear, you pause and stare for a moment. You take a deep breath and exhale.
And then you're off.
The first place you think of going is Central Park- it'd probably be easy to scout it out at night. Maybe you'll get lucky and see the killer skulking around, scouting out where to put their 'masterpiece.' As you swing around, you notice there seems to be several police cars headed somewhere.
As you go to swing from your right arm, your spider-sense flares. Managing to slow yourself with your left arm and land on a building top, you sit down to look over at your shoulder- the shirt your wrapped around it has begun to stain red though it. Yeah, you aren't webslinging on that anymore tonight.
Great, you could just spare some extra blood after getting yourself drained. You lean over the roof and hold your head, feeling nauseous. When was the last time you ate a real meal?
God, you miss the symbiote, it made all of this weariness fade away. It's only gotten worse since it's gotten off of you.
You sit on the roof- head swimming and like you're falling apart. But damn it- you need to save those people from Carnage- their lives are in danger.
Leaning over, you hurl, feeling your empty stomach protest- you wipe at your mouth as you look around. Still nowhere near Central Park and doubtful you'd be able to catch carnage- not without him or her stopping you and getting away first.
You lay down for a moment, away from your vomit and rest your head against the cool rooftop. Taking a deep breath you try to think. CARNAGE has said the murder was right around your disappearance- assuming it wasn't Gwen, other than your family the people who would notice your disappearance would probably notice it Tuesday after you missed school Monday- today's still Saturday.
And Central Park's massive… if it's even Central Park. If your disappearance was noticed, then it means that it would be someone close by- FOREST HILLS, QUEENS. Could it be? Is the killer really lurking that nearby all this time? Besides, you only met the family this afternoon, assuming that it wasn't immediately uploaded because it was on a camera then the afternoon would be the soonest time the image could have been uploaded.
If it was this evening- then the Killer hasn't had the time to locate them, let alone plot their scheme without being caught!
If it's taken you this long to puzzle all of this out, then you're really in bad shape. Not to mention, you turned down DOOM's help- he probably has more he can do to help than you can. He's the leader of a country, after all. Not to mention you left Felicia alone right after getting back and Stella, too.
Shit, you screwed up. You get back up, arms shaking. You need to get to Felicia and Stella. They're family, you need to take care of them
You have to rely on one arm for Web-slinging- it's hard on you and your arms are shaking but you just suppress it all. Don't feel it, you're Spider-man. You can get to them in time. You can do it.
In about three times the amount of time it would normally take you, you land roughly in an alley near Felicia's home. Leaning against the alley wall, you take several deep breaths to steady yourself before looking around. Taking off you mask and jacket, you ball it up and march to her place, shivering in the cold.
You ring the doorbell, leaning against the door- newly replaced it seems- until it opens- a concerned Felicia looks at you, then your shoulder. "Hey, sorry about being so stupid, earlier…"
You try to give her a positive smile as your legs give out. She quickly helps you to your feet as you lean against her. She helps you to the chair as you feel something cold against your forehead. She's saying something, but it sounds muffled and distorted.
"-urning up-"
With your last efforts, you grab a pen and write three things.
Pictures Spider-man Park Girl
Forest Hills Queens
Sorry
"-ter? Wha-"
You underline the -Forest- and scribble -name- next to girl, an arrow pointing from -name- to -girl-
"-rother!"
And then you move to circle -sorry- but you hand refuses to move. Your vision is fading...
"-TER!"
Everything fades to black.
You don't know how long it takes you to get from being asleep to awake, but everything's heavy, feels like even your eyelids are made out of lead. Your breathing is slow, and your throat feels raspy. Eventually you find the willpower to force your eyes open. Well, eventually.
Cracking your eyes open you glance around.
You're in a familiar room- Felicia's- tucked into her bed. Stella's laying on the bed next to you and the door is open. You try to force yourself to sit up, but you lack the strength.
Stella's sleeping rather soundly- even your raspy voice can't wake her. As you look at her, you see her eyes are rather red and puffy looking even when closed. Biting your lip you force your body to move- as careful as you can not to disturb Stella you roll out of bed before pulling yourself up.
Limping over to the living room, you see Felicia in a reclining chair asleep, a blanket on top of her. Next to her is your note- the barely legibly handwriting is sitting on top of her laptop next to her on the table along with some writing.
You hobble over to the notes and pick them up. There's yours, of course, and then Felicia's handwriting- two names and an address- Anya and Gilberto Corazon. They've been identified- Felicia figured out your note and found out who they are.
Thank god.
You breathe out a sigh of relief that quickly turns into a hacking cough. Today's Sunday. Looking closer, there seems to be a phone next to Felicia, too.
You pick up the pen and write her a note below you original notes. "Thanks, Felicia. I love you."
And then you set it down and head to the kitchen. Carefully and slowly drinking a glass of water, you then head back to bed.
They're safe. Even if the killer isn't caught, the girl and her father are safe.
That thought helps you drift off to sleep.
OO
The figure scrolls down the news, looking for anything interesting. Tapping the finger against its chin, it raises an eyebrow at the first entry.
Oscorp Break in baffles police.
Last night, several artifacts were stolen from the Oscorp Public Museum. The objects stolen were several old primitive weapons found on a dig and put on display in the museum.
They have no stated monetary worth other than as collectibles, however this display was right across from a gem display worth several hundred million in total, which was left untouched.
No suspects have yet been found.
Shrugging the individual refreshes the page and freezes.
/CARNAGE KILLER TURNS SELF IN/
/You have one unread message/.
End
To be continued
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Publisher's Note:
Now about the title, for those of you who did not know and were confused...
PTSD: Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) may develop after a person is exposed to one or more traumatic events, such as sexual assault, fighting in a war, sustaining a serious injury, or the threat of death in which they experience intense fear, horror, or powerlessness.
Now I'm going to answer some reviews now...
Romez: Thank you, I'm glad you think so too Romez. Also Peter and Felicia's ages are the same, they are both 17 still in their teens. To help you out more Romez and anyone else, since there weren't any birthdays found for Peter, only speculations, Cosgrove just made it August 15. The current year in the story is 2013 and right now Halloween is coming right around the corner.
Future Agent Venom dying: Some people mailed me asking why the Future Flash, wearing venom died or why he got beaten easily. It's simple basic math really if you think about it. Carnage was possessing Gwen who was already a superhuman because she had the Spider-Powers like Peter, combine that with a symbiote who can augment your base abilities than you go beyond that. Flash on the other hand was still a human, and combining Venom with him would only had made him superhuman on par with Peter using his Spider-Powers. If you read the Spider-Man comics or watched the shows or movies with Peter fighting Venom you can understand the difference in power, in each of these fights Peter just barely comes out as the victor, and the Venom in those confrontations was only a human using a symbiote. Agent Venom simply did not stand a chance, it was simply overkill for him.
So a really short chapter, yeah I know. The reason this chapter was so short was because the majority of players argued almost throughout the entire Quest thread, because they disliked the choice they themselves picked which is mentioned below.
Peter Not thinking, resting and going after Carnage: To be fair, spending a week in a post apocalypse hell future does that. The fact that "this is what happens if you don't stop carnage ASAP!" Has been burned into players in the quest mind pretty hard lately especially Peter. Peter should have instead focused on planning and resting, we understand this, but understand he was in a traumatized, dehydrated mindset, especially after getting a good amount of his blood drained along with taking off the symbiote suit, which leaves you even more drained and exhausted when you withdraw it, he wasn't really in a state where he could think clearly.
And then a lot of the players felt the plot threads were getting too rapid, so they felt they didn't have the TIME to take a break.
This is also the reason a number of us wanted to prank in the quest so far. To lighten the mood and try to burn off some of the pressure. But the "always serious and grim" crowd of players voted so hard to not to do this, as a result we never got to drop the tension.
Also the players and I were fine with just restarting the whole thread (meaning this chapter)before in order to fix our mistake of going after Carnage without a plan, but we also liked the dramatic tension of Peter realizing he's close to burning out. Peter's not invincible- he has his limits like everyone else. After all, it wouldn't have been realistic if Peter can fix any problem like it is nothing. Also if you watched the show series or read the comics you MUST know that Peter just has the worst luck in the Marvel universe, just look at the previous chapters which leads to him having to time travel in the first place (That Parker Luck). The way we play him, he's his own worst enemy... Also we thought it would be good character development if Peter had owned up to how he rushed out without thinking and realize he just can't do everything by himself, no one can, after all he had to rely on the symbiote just to stand even with Carnage.
The Players should have just focused on making a plan. Instead of complaining, they should have figured out how to salvage the situation (which is what happened so far, thank God) instead of blaming it on the Game Master for their mistake. So basically we focused as much as we could right now on what we could fix, so we all ignored what could have been, and focused instead on what can be. So yeah, I guess we ALL got some character development from this not just Peter.
They than apologized to everyone in the quest for how they acted in the thread afterwards. I was not around during this thread session that time but regardless I too apologize for the majority of the players mistakes if you did not find this chapter satisfactory as well as having it cut down to a short chapter.
Anyways this will not end Peter Parker Quest, we'll be set back on course in the story, until than see you next time.
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