Publisher's Note: I would like to introduce a one-shot story Cosgrove did with another Quest Master AzureEarth involving the previous chapter. It's a Crossover parody/humor of Peter Parker Quest with Hollow Quest Redux which you can find in my profile which is titled as Hollow Peter Parker Quest Redux (I know so original).
Well I will repeat this in the bottom, you'll need it by the time we're done with this chapter.
CHAPTER 47
Hostile Situation
You wake up in the morning, feeling tired but less so. Heading downstairs, you find that Stella has apparently gone out to play with some friends. Well, it's a nice change of pace, anyway.
It's been about a three days since you started working on your new costume. Keeping an ear open with your police scanner, it seems like all's quiet on the western front so far. As such, you've been under the eye of Aunt May, so mostly you've been good and acted like someone who is getting over being really sick. Stella's been hanging around you and playing games with you.
Flash has been busy with family stuff and has been putting off tutoring, you're a little worried. But then again, you seem to be having a lot of trouble with friends. In the meantime, you've barely managed to get the headset done, but like the goggles, there's a lot of work for improvement to be done.
In the meantime, you worked on brushing up your skills.
You've generally been trying to get a bit more in shape, as well as work on your people skills by talking with Aunt May and her friends when they came over. Well, not that it was really an option for you.
However, you managed to get some time to work on your metal-working which should decrease the amount of time you have to spend on projects drastically, while catching up on your schoolwork and furthering your attempts at programming. You've not tested yourself, but you think you're pretty good at it now.
Sitting downstairs watching daytime TV with your Aunt, she pauses as you hear the mailman drop off mail. Getting up, you go get the mail for her, flipping through it for anything for you. You pause as you see a red letter in the mail, addressed to you.
In gold ink, you can see that the sender is Stark Industries.
"Peter? Did you get something?"
You stare at it in shocked silence as your trembling hands give your aunt the rest of the mail. Sitting down, your Aunt sits next to you as you carefully open the letter, your Aunt seemingly as tense as you are.
"Dear Mister Parker.
You have been selected to visit STARK INDUSTRIES for an exiting new opportunity. This event is highly confidential, so no details can be released at this time, however as you have been forwarded as someone of note by your school, your grades have made you an eligible guest.
If you would like to attend, please take the enclosed ticket and come to the Stark Industries New York Headquarters on…"
Skimming it, it seems to have an address to go to as well as a time. Seems like its this Wednesday, with today being Saturday. School starts the week after this, so that won't be an issue.
At the bottom there's obviously handwritten, is Tony Stark's signature. Behind it is a ticket to enter Stark Industries premises, with note that an ID will be required. Swallowing nervously and trying not to squeal, you look at your Aunt, who seems to be crying. Dabbing at her eyes, she smiles at you with relief.
"Peter, that's wonderful! Are you going to attend?"
You nod without even a moment to think about it. "Yeah, it's an opportunity that probably won't come twice, you know?"
Whatever this is, you don't regularly get these sorts of invitations. Movement to your side reveals a giddy Aunt May grabbing her purse and coat. "I have to go tell Anna, Peter. I'll be back. Some day this week we'll go shopping. Have to have you look your best!"
As she heads out the door, you look down at the letter again, and check it more closely this time. There's the ticket, the letter and envelope- no hidden text on the back, nothing hidden in the envelope. You're not sure how to respond other than you have a chance to meet Tony Stark. Tony. Stark.
Its like a geekgasm in your brain place.
You sit there and wonder. What could it be? An internship? A secret way of meeting you? Does he know you're Spider-man? No, he doesn't seem to be this subtle, from what you've seen. Regardless, your exhaustion seems all but gone in wake of this letter's arrival.
Leaving a quick note for your Aunt that you went out to celebrate, you head downstairs to the basement and bag up your costume, prototype upgraded mask and all, heading on out, you go out to somewhere out of the way where camera and people won't see you- a back alley of some buildings with no windows- and change. Putting the mask on, you take a few minutes to boot it up.
The lenses start up and it's a bit disorienting to see all the information pop up in front of your eyes as a HUD. Turning on the audio aspect, you switch it to the police scanner from the phone setting and listen in. As you begin to move around and get your bearing with your new equipment.
Seems like there's a car chase in progress- someone's speeding and not pulling over, and there seems to be some sort of disturbance a couple of blocks away with a police dispatch on the way.
It's probably best to let the police handle the car chase, you can already imagine what would happen if you tried to web up a car- a total disaster. But the disturbance could be worth looking into.
Heading towards the disturbance, you find that it seems to be coming from a small suburb home. There's screaming and yelling as you arrive on a nearby rooftop and see the situation. Seems like there's a bunch of neighbors gathered around as there's a bunch of personal belongings in the yard.
Seems like you're arriving as everything's coming to an end as you see a man in a tattered lab coat with no right arm leave the house, a bag in hand. As he steps out onto the front porch he glances back as a woman, and a small boy behind her being held back from rushing towards the man. The woman seems to be in tears as the man shakes his head and walks off as you hear the boy crying for his father.
Looking at the man, you remember his face and distinguishing characteristic- he's obviously seen better days- but this is Doctor Curt Connors.
The man moves toward the nearby car, which seems incredibly scratched up and gets in and starts it up, leaving as the woman is holding back the child from trying to run towards the car.
As the car leaves, the neighbors begin disbursing as the woman starts yelling at them.
Following after the car, the man drives slowly and carefully to the point that people behind him are honking their horns. As you keep an eye on him you try to work on using the headset and goggles idly- it isn't hard to follow him. If you do this here, a picture can be taken, and if you do that you can switch the channel to phone and back with a slight hand motion.
You don't have 4G-yet- so unless you're on a large WiFi signal or something your goggles won't connect to the internet, so that's something to work on. Maybe have a ton of proxies and the like? Focusing on the issues, there's other stuff like it doesn't track or focus right. You'll probably have to dissect higher quality camera to reverse engineer it. Also, if you could somehow get a tiny, powerful computer installed to your goggles then its functionality would likely improve.
About an hour later, the man pulls into an empty parking lot. Sitting up on a ledge out of the way, you watch the man try to compose himself before he burrows his face into the crook of his only arm, back shaking. Even from this distance, it isn't hard to imagine what the man is doing.
A few moments later and you feel uncomfortable watching the man cry.
Looking the car over, you start to put your mind to work. His car's pretty scratched up, but it seems like its intentionally done. He's from a nice suburb, so its likely not when that happened. Likewise, Oscorp has an indoor parking Garage for most employees. Therefore, whatever happened to the car is likely from someone going after his car.
You can't place what did it, but whatever it was… was nasty.
Furthermore, with the tattered parts of Connor's outfit, it seemed like he's almost been mauled, but you don't see any bloodstains on it or anything. Well, nothing too obvious anyway.
Liekwise, it seems whatever happened between him and his wife was a fight and he's separated from his family now. Was it intentional?
You aren't sure.
Getting down, you approach his care carefully and rap on the windshield- due to only having a left arm, it seems like he drives a modified car to accommodate his disability. His head shoots up as you see bloodshot eyes narrow in fear, his hand reaching towards the car ignition. Raising your hands peacefully you loudly raise your voice.
"Are you alright sir? You seem to be in distress."
Doctor Connors pauses, his breathing labored as he tries to get his breathing under control. Your camera takes a picture of him silently.
"Are you alright? Were you attacked? Do you need he-"
Approaching the car, you see Connor's empty hand reach for something on the dashboard as his car starts up and he starts driving away.
"-lp?"
A few moments later, you get a report from the police scanner that there was a call of attempted assault by someone in a red and blue masked outfit. Watching the car drive off, fast and erratic, you quickly make yourself scarce.
From a rooftop, you let out a sigh.
Well, things could have gotten worse. Spider-man's technically someone wanted by the police after all, and while you're somewhat famous, you're not like super-man or anything. Well, hopefully Conners will be fine.
Listening in on the police scanner, there's not much going on as you lay low until you hear something interesting.
Listening in, you hear that there is apparently a hostage situation happening just a few blocks to the north. The area's a rather open that was apparently some sort of birthday party mere minutes before.
You near the area and have a high perch in the distance. From what you can see, the police are trying to get snipers set up, but the criminals are holding a bunch of people hostage- including children. They're probably not making a move so that nothing happens to the hostages.
In the distance, you can see that there's about two dozen suspects and about forty people. You press against a part of your outer lens and activate a zoom in as you wait for your vision to focus. Its still blurry, but you can see that there's a familiar head of black hair along the children, a gun pointed at the back of their heads.
…It can't be.
No.
Nononononononononono.
And she can't even do anything as you see one of her friends desperately gripping her arm.
Taking a deep breath, you notice that their focus has shifted as a hooded man is approaching them, the police and hostage-takers all yelling at him as he comes to a stop near a garbage can.
If you make a mistake here there could be many casualties…
You…
You should…
You should wait and see…
You watch as the man raises his hands as one of the hostage-takers approaches the man. As he's within arms distance, the hooded man kicks the garbage can, sending it flying into the man's chest as the lid flies up into his hands. Throwing it with a flick of his wrist, it slams into the chest of the criminal in the back before bouncing forward.
The man has, however, already begun moving forward at an almost inhuman speed as he disarms and breaks the arms of the two men in front before throwing them into two of their comrades and catches the garbage can lid before using it as a shield from the bullets.
Still moving, he uses the shield to take down another man, one after another. The most heavily armed taken down first followed by the rest in such a short amount of time that they couldn't react fast enough in time. One last hostage taker points his gun, shaking, as a hostage, but he's knocked out as the garbage can lid ricochets into the back of his head, knocking him out.
In less than a minute all of the men are out as the hooded man says something and gives a reassuring pat to one of the children, a blonde girl, before looking over the hostage-takers. They're all out for the count and the hooded man is already running off, jumping and rolling past the police and out of sight as the police try, and fail, to stop him.
But that's nothing to the feeling of unease in your chest. Looking back down, you see that one of the hostages is staring up in your direction. With a distraught look and a tear trickling down her cheek, she runs off, her friends calling for her. The police scanner in your ear confirming that the primary target Ana Kravinoff was safe is but background static to you.
She knew you were here.
The zoomed-in lens perfectly capturing the betrayed look on her face for all eternity.
End
To be continued…
Please Review
Publisher's Note: I've reread this thread before many times, and writing it here still puts a bad taste in my mouth.
This was one of the darkest hours for the Peter Parker Quest that it was damn near close to collapsing, everyone was so angry and pissed off that day because of how the situation turned out in the end of this chapter simply because they wanted to be cautious first and wait for an opening. Also Cosgrove was considering then and there to just give up on the quest and restart it all over again. (Which would have aggravated the majority even more considering how far we gotten, what chapter is this? Chapter 47, that's pretty damn long to try to get back up to.)
Also because there were an explosions of arguments because of this chapter Cosgrove could not write an interlude.
The players and Cosgrove both messed up big time on this and here is why.
Players- Simply picked to stay back and analysis the situation (which was not to get involved) but they did not clarify what to do afterwards such as, they were waiting for an opening to strike when the Gunmen were distracted so that they would go down easier.
We didn't want to be passive though. We wanted to wait for a good point to thin the number of people, so that when we started actually fighting, there wouldn't be 24 surprised gunmen with fingers on the trigger and weapons pointed at hostage children. Because here's what most people saw happening if we started fighting.
Peter jumps through window, KOs half a dozen guys
Other guys freak out, start wildly firing
Some shots are aimed at Peter
Most accidentally fired while still pointing guns at kids
Bad End
we threat these things seriously.
Cosgrove- simply mistook the player's choices as being inactive, and even when the Hooded-Man gave Peter an opening, Cosgrove didn't offer the option to join him in the attack once the goons were distracted he just continued writing. Also Cosgrove was having a bad day so he wasn't in a good mind-set to post that night for this thread.
Most of the time Cosgrove is very rational about these things, but as he said himself he was having a bad day. But then again don't we all? Writers themselves have these moments at times, and the best thing to do is to give them a break to get time to think things over and offer support. Also he only writes once a week on Tuesday nights since he has job to do, you to PAY BILLS! players need to stop giving him a lot of crap because at least he stays committed to the story when he can, criticism is alright here and there. But in our opinion if he wasn't feeling well and had other issues to deal with than he could had just avoided writing that night and we could have simply waited another week. Is not like all of us are impatient.
Honestly, it's not just Cosgrove fault that night. A lot of shit has been pushing towards the players being less passive in character, and it seems that finally snapped that night.
I honestly feel Cosgrove doesn't need to reboot this, I think we(the players) have done a fairly decent job. A lot of shit has happened but a lot of good has come of it. Also this Quest has been going on since August 2013 to now June 2014. It would take a damn long time to get back up to this number of chapters. So at the very least I would rather ride this horse to the very end.
Well I might as well introduce a one-shot story Cosgrove did with another Quest Master AzureEarth involving the previous chapter. It's a Crossover of Peter Parker Quest with Hollow Quest Redux known as Hollow Peter Parker Quest in my profile. Read it to get a few laughs in order to lighten this atmosphere.
Until Next time.
Equpiment:
(Fake) Glasses- Hides the fact that your sight is now perfect to the unaware.
Hard drive- a removed computer hard drive. Contains files left by your father, could possibly be unreliable in some cases due to tampering.
Richard Parker's Bag - Has a lock on it. A bag that belonged to your father- holds blueprints and notes on his works, as well as a warning. Missing its security device ink bag's contents, strangely enough.
Spider-man costume (Durable) - You can't wear it under your clothes, but it reduces both your agility bonus and the damage you take by one. It does, however, boost your fellowship bonus by one in the costume. Looks like it could fall apart any time now.
Spider-man costume (sonic-proofed/Agile)- It's too thick to wear under your clothes, but your agility isn't decreased. However, you can't hear anything while in this costume and it can be sweltering during warmer months, but it should protect you from the Hobgoblin's Sonic Laugh. not recommended as modern use.
*Spider-man Costume- (Durable/bulletproof/prototype equipment)[Equipped] The classic Spider-man is back! With prototype smart goggles and comms, he's back and better than ever. He's even bulletproof against small arms (mostly).
Spider Tracers- 3x. These only work within three hundred feet, but you can track anything with one of these on them with your spider sense.
Revolving Webshooters- production type- the streamlined and refined version of your prior webshooters. Minor adjustments have been made, each webshooter can carry a total of six cartridges.
Strong Webfluid x6 - a thicker webfluid, unsuited for webslinging, meant more for restraining and reinforcing due to its thicker, hardier nature.
Standard Webfluid x6
Please Review