Spider-Man: LOUD Season 1 Chapter 8
"The grass is always greener"
The grass is always greener, but the blood is always redder.
Sunday couldn't have come faster, much to Lincoln's dismay. His alarm clock gave an irritating ring throughout his small converted linen closet. He groaned as he hit the button hard, shattering his alarm clock to pieces. He sat up, bags under his eyes and examined his now busted up alarm clock.
He got dressed in an orange button shirt that was unbuttoned, a white shirt underneath, with blue jeans and his white and red sneakers on his feet. He walked down the stairs to an unusually quiet house.
"Sunday morning, no school, and there's nobody here. That's odd." He says to himself.
He hears some rustling over in the garage and goes to check it out. Walking inside of the garage he discovers his younger sister Lana working on the family van.
"Hey Lana." He greets
She looks up from what she's doing and smiles, "Hey Lincoln."
"So, where is everybody?" He questions.
"Oh, they all went to the mall. Something about Lucy growing up and needing more stuff or whatever." The messy girl says. "Alright, now I just gotta put this engine piece back in and she'll be all finished."
Lana walked over to a giant piece of the engine and squatted down to lift it but couldn't even get it off the ground. "You need help with that?" The white haired teen asks.
She backs off and puts her hands up, "If you wanna try then go ahead, but don't complain when your noodle arms give out." The girl joked.
Lincoln walked over and picked up the giant engine piece effortlessly much to his grease monkey sisters surprise. He places it back in the van and dusts off his hands.
"Woah! How'd you do that?!" The girl excitedly jumps up and down asking her brother.
He puts up his arms, "I just used my noodle arms."
"Yeah, but like, me and Lynn could barely lift it out! And then you come in and just put it back in by yourself!" Lana stated.
He put his hands on his knees to get to his little sister's level, "I just used my big brother powers, that's all." He then boops the girl's nose much to her amusement.
He stands back up straight and starts to walk off, "I'll be heading out for a little bit, I'll see you later." He shouts behind him as he walks off into the street.
Spider-Man swung around on patrol, looking for trouble. He stopped the occasional crook or mugger, but nothing big was currently going on, which he was very okay with.
He eventually landed on a smaller rooftop that overlooked a small corner of the city and stood there watching everything going on. That is until he heard something.
"Help! Someone help me!" It sounded like it was a little girl.
He looked down into the alleyway he was standing above and saw a little girl wandering through the alleyway. He jumped down and started to quietly walk up to the girl.
"Hey, hey are you okay?" He says in a calm quiet voice, as to not scare the girl.
She turns around and looks at him frightened. She steps back slowly, her arms crossed across her chest in a defensive pose.
He got closer to the ground to be more her level and stuck his hand out palm up. "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm here to help." He stops a good couple of feet away, as to not scare her too much.
She looks him up and down, as does he. He comes to the conclusion that this girl was no older than 8 years old.
"Hey, what's your name?" He asks.
She again looks him up and down before speaking quietly, "Megan." She mutters.
"Where are your parents Megan?" He asks.
She slowly comes forward a little, "I, I don't know. They just went under the floor."
Spider-Man tilted his head in confusion, "What do you mean they went below the floor?"
"Something grabbed them and pulled them beneath the floor." She looked at him, fear still plaguing her eyes.
"Wait, under the floor? They must be…oh…" He thinks.
"Do you have any grandparents, or aunts and uncles you stay with?" He asks.
She simply nods. "Can you bring me to them?" He asks again.
She slowly walks over and extends her arm, holding his hand. She looks him in the eyes, her face still frowning.
"Let's walk together, you can show me where they live." He stands up, her hand still in his.
She nods again and starts walking, he follows in suit. They come out from the alleyway and start walking down the sidewalk, people taking pictures and videos of what appeared to be Spider-Man walking a little girl down the street.
"Do you know what direction they might be in?" He asked softly, she responded with a nod and pointed forward and slightly to the left.
He simply nodded and they walked off in the direction the girl pointed.
Once they arrived at the house the girl had described and pointed at, he kneeled down to her, "Are you sure this is the place?" He asked. She nodded again, this time giving a small smile.
The house was a dark cyan color with white trims and a sloped tile roof, with a red door. He stood up and walked to the front door with her hand in his and knocked on the door. A few seconds passed before an older woman opened the door, a shocked expression grew on her face as she noticed that Spider-Man was at her door with her granddaughter.
"Hi you may not know me but I'm Spider-Man, and this little girl here claims to be your granddaughter, I found her in an alleyway by herself."
The older woman picks up her granddaughter and hugs her, giving her kisses all over her face.
"Oh thank you, thank you so much Spider-Man!" The older woman replies.
"No problem really. It's just what I do." He responds.
She looks away from Megan and back to the masked vigilante standing in front of her, "Wait, you said she was just in an alleyway by herself?"
He nodded, "Yeah, she said something about her parents being under the floor. Are they.."
"Oh no, god no. Her mother just called yesterday." The woman replied.
He took a step back with a bewildered expression. "What? Um, nevermind. Have a good day!" He leapt up on to a tall lamppost situated across the street and sat there.
"How could her mom have called her yesterday? I thought they were dead…" He asked himself.
"No use questioning it now. It's just something I'll have to research later."
He leapt into the air and shot a web out, pulling himself across the suburban skyline.
Jordan and her mom had stepped inside of the jail Adrian was being held in. They walked up to a person sitting behind a desk.
"Hello, we have an appointment to see Adrian Toomes?" Jordan's mother asked the person.
The person looked up from the book they were reading and stared at them. The way she stared made it very clear that she wasn't very interested in being here. She pressed a button on her desk and spoke in a very monotonous tone "Mac come down here, some people wanna see an inmate." After doing so she returned to her paper.
Jordan and her mother were brought to a room with a wall that was occasionally broken up by glass panels and perpendicular walls breaking up each glass panel. The officer named Mac stopped them and pointed at one of the glass panel sections, "That's the one you're gonna be at." The two women walked over to the section of glass.
"I'm not gonna lie, he kinda gave me the creeps." Jordan whispered to her mother.
"Me too honey…me too." Her mother whispered back.
They sat down at the section and awaited Adrian to come in. Once the awaited man came in he sat down across his family on the opposite side of the glass.
"Dad, what happened?" The young girl questioned.
He looked at his daughter with a sorrowful look, "I'm not currently allowed to discuss all of the details, that's gonna have to wait till the court."
The girl looked down in disappointment. Her mother looked her husband in the eyes and leaned in carefully "We'll be waiting for that day, but until then how are we gonna be making money? We have a house, a car, we need food, water…what are we gonna do?"
Adrian looked at his wife sincerely, "I do have something to admit. I hid a secret bank account from you. It should have enough money in it to sustain you until I get out…whenever that is."
She looked at him in astonishment, not only that her husband that she trusted hid money from her, but that it took him getting put in jail to admit it.
"You think that wouldn't have been useful sooner?" She says, her voice getting slightly louder.
"I'm sorry Mary. It was the-" He looks behind him and notices the cop talking to another cop, he turns back and whispers into the mic, "It was the money I was making under the table from some of the people I was working with. Some guy named Tombstone paid me a lot of money to hustle illegal weapons across the border." He leaned back, his face stern, but regretful.
Mary looked absolutely astonished, "What kind of weapons have you been hustling?!" She shouts in a whisper.
"I don't know all of them, there were some electromagnetic gauntlets, some flight tech for military grade gliders, and some other things." He whispered back.
Just then the cop came back in and started to escort Adrian out of the room.
"The login information for the bank account is in my bedside table, top drawer, back right corner underneath a black journal." He quickly said.
Mary nodded and took her leave, bringing her daughter with her.
Lincoln sat at the desk in his bedroom. It was just past lunchtime and he hadn't had gotten anything to eat. He sat at his desk researching any missing parents of a little girl in the news recently.
He scrolled through various Royal Woods news websites and articles. "It looks like a lot of people have gone missing recently." He said quietly to himself.
He scrolled and scrolled for what seemed like hours but in reality was only minutes before hearing a buzz come from his phone on the desk. He picked it up to see a new message from Jordan.
"Hey, you wanna get something to eat with me? I know this is pretty last minute, but I wanna talk with you for a little bit." - Jordan.
He began to type, "Sorry, really busy right now." before giving it a second thought. "Maybe this Spider-Man stuff can wait a little bit longer?" He said to himself.
He deleted the previous message and began to type out a new one "Yeah, where do you wanna meet up?" - Lincoln.
"Great! Just meet me at the city park, we'll go from there." - Jordan.
Lincoln closed all of the tabs on his laptop and shut it, he shot up from his seat and began to grab everything he might need, breath mints, his wallet, his phone, and Spider-Man gear just in case. As he goes to leave the house he gets stopped by a familiar rough sounding voice.
"Where ya goin' Linc?" it says to him.
He turns around to find Lana standing behind him, a rag with oil stains on it in her hands. He looked around nervously to see if anybody had come home from shopping yet, only to find that the coast was clear.
"You know that promise you and Lola made to keep me seeing Jordan a secret from everyone else?" He asks.
She nods her head twice.
"Well, I'm going to see her right now. We're having lunch together." He puts his arms up in a defensive gesture just in case.
Lana just simply nods with an approving smile, "Finally taking the initiative huh Linc?"
He puts his arms down and stares blankly, "You know I'm the one who asked to hang out before right?"
"Oh yeah, what did you guys end up doing anyways?" The girl asked.
He rubbed the back of his neck "We just kinda talked about video games and other junk."
"Oh, what a waste." She said.
The white haired boy grew a slightly agitated expression, "What do you mean a waste?"
"You know what boys and girls do when they're alone in a bedroom together." Lana stated.
Lincoln blushed and gained a shocked face.
"They kiss and stuff! But not too much! Because then they have a baby!" She continued.
Heaving out a huge sigh of relief Lincoln turned away and opened the front door, "Well, I'm gonna go now. Later Lans."
"Bye Lincoln!" She replied.
"Go on Tommy, don't be a scaredy cat!" A boy with a blonde combover shouted.
The boy named Tommy stood in front of the opening of a sewer tunnel underneath an overpass.
"C-can't we do anything else guys?!" The black haired Tommy asks.
"We can. After you go in the tunnel for 10 seconds." The blonde boy said.
Tommy looked over to the opening then looked back over to his blonde haired friend, and with a gulp he started to walk toward the entrance. Upon entering he immediately disappeared, enveloped in the darkness.
"Alright Tommy you can come out now!" The boy shouted.
Seconds passed with no response, "T-Tommy?" He said again.
Seconds turned into minutes as the boy never returned out of the sewer, loud screams were heard from inside the sewer, scaring the boy off.
Jordan sat on a park bench underneath a tree, she scrolled through her phone before hearing a voice, "Hey Jordan!"
She turned to see just the person she wanted to see, Lincoln Albert Loud.
She stood up to greet him, "Hi Lincoln!" She walked closer and wrapped him in a friendly hug.
He stood there as a giant blush grew on his face. He wrapped his arms around her, returning the friendly gesture.
After breaking the hug she stepped back a bit, allowing Lincoln to look at her in finer detail. She wore a dark blue short sleeve shirt, tied above her waist just so much that you could see her belly button, blue denim jeans, and black and white high top shoes.
"So, where did you wanna eat?" He asks, breaking the silence.
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that! I just kinda wanted to see you to be honest." She admits with a smile while playing with her braided ponytail.
He blushes and immediately hides his face behind his arm. "W-well, we could still go have some fun…"
"What did you have in mind?" She asks.
He puts his arm down, his blush gone, thinking for a minute. "We could…see a movie?"
"Oh! What movie did you have in mind exactly?" She asks with a quizzical look.
"Well, I didn't exactly think THAT far ahead." He admits.
She giggles at his little joke. "Let's just go to the theater and see what they're playing." She suggests.
"Yeah that sounds like a good idea." He says quickly.
They start to walk down the sidewalk together side by side before Jordan starts talking.
"Hey Lincoln…" She says quietly.
He turns his head toward her, looking down slightly, "What's up?"
"Do you work out?" She tilts her head to the side in a quizzical expression.
"W-why do you ask that?!" He nervously says.
"I have to be super careful about what I say here…if I say one wrong thing she'll know I'm Spider-Man! And she hates Spider-Man!" He thinks to himself.
"I was just wondering, it's just…you seemed really…firm…when I hugged you.." She looks away abashedly.
"Oh! Um…not a whole lot, but I have been doing exercises recently.." He replies.
"Understandable…" She says, still blushing from making the aura around them awkward.
They walk in an awkward silence for a while, trying not to look at each other from sheer embarrassment.
"So…do anything fun recently?" Lincoln asks nervously.
"I got to see my dad today…right before we met up actually!" She says rather excited.
Lincoln immediately looks away again, "WOW, that must be…awesome…" he stares blankly at the sidewalk beneath them.
"Are you okay Linc?" The young girl asks.
Lincoln clears his throat, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just shocked that you got to see him so soon is all."
"Oh yeah. I don't know why they let us see him this early, it's only been a few days since he was put in jail." She responds.
The two teens make their way to the movie theater where they then decide on what movie to watch.
To be continued…