Disclaimers:
All Spider-Man and all its related characters belongs to Marvel Entertainment, which is owned by Walt Disney Company, and the Sam Raimi Original Trilogy belongs to Sony Pictures Entertainment. No infringement of these copyrights are intended, and not authorized by copyright holders.
Inside the First National Bank on Madison Ave, Peter and Aunt May was sitting with a bank clerk to discuss about the loan needed to remortgage their home that was in a detrimental state of falling behind on its bills.
"That's the social security," Aunt May said, as she passed the paperwork to the clerk.
"Yes, I see," The bank clerk nodded.
"My Uncle Ben's life insurance," Peter added, referring to another stack of paperwork that Aunt May also handed in.
"Yes, but I'm afraid it's just not enough to refinance your home," The bank clerk sadly informed, though it sounded less genuine and actually more rehearsed by the tone of his voice, like he was just going by a script he probably practiced many times with thousands of his clients.
"Oh, but I'm giving piano lessons again," Aunt May said.
Peter turned to his aunt with confused eyebrows, clearly not aware of this notion. "You are?"
Suddenly, a loud thud was heard from under the clerk's desk while the said-clerk let out a yelp, as if it was in reaction to the sound. Peter gave a weird look when he realized it was Aunt May kicking the clerk in the shin.
The bank clerk cleared his throat, trying to recompose his professionalism. "We appreciate that you opened up a... new supersaver account with us today. But the fact is, you do not have the assets to justify this loan. I'm sorry," He said, still maintaining that false sincere tone.
Peter and Aunt May looked at each other with defeated looks in their eyes. The latter tried to find the bright side when she took out a newspaper clipping from her purse.
"Well... at least we get the toaster," Aunt May said with at least one more sense of hope.
"Actually, that's only with a deposit of, uh, three hundred or more," The not-so-genuine bank clerk informed.
When Aunt May gave herself a moment to look at the clipping, she realized she did miss that detail. "Oh yes, I see."
"Okay," With a bogus smile, the bank clerk stood up from his seat and walked away from his customer, albeit with a bunt leg he got from the kick.
Peter, despite feeling upset from how the ordeal with the clerk went down, tried to reassure his aunt. "Don't worry, we'll figure it out."
Unfortunately, that's the least of his problems when he felt his senses suddenly warning him of a danger that was about to crash down on him.
Much to his distress and annoyance that this had to happen now of all time and places, Peter immediately saw that a large bank vault door was about to land in between himself and Aunt May. In a last second reaction, he pushed his own seat and his aunt's away with a charged kick to save himself and her from the impactful danger.
The customers inside the bank started panicking in fear when Peter saw the robber, who was wearing a brown leather jacket with darkish-green trench coat on that and sported a pair of sunglasses over his eyes, entering into the wide-opened vault with his four mechanical arms. It was Doctor Octavius.
Even after hearing about the news from Jonah and Robbie yesterday, Peter still couldn't believe that was true. Knowing there's no point in denying the truth now, he quickly got up from his chair and ran away from the scene in a desperate search for a hidden spot to change into his suit.
"Peter? Don't leave me!"
Despite feeling conflicted from hearing his aunt's pleads, Peter knew there's more lives at stake if he sticks around while Otto was left to his felony rampage. He just had to hope he'll be forgiven for abandoning her when this was all set and done.
After almost a minute of searching around, Peter finally found an empty restroom he could use. Already inside, Peter discarded his clothes and left to the side as he was putting on his gloves and pulling his red mask down over his face.
Now in full suit, Spider-Man shot a web at one of the white pillars to pull himself towards the higher ground. With enough distance between the floor and his boot, he swung around the interior to get to the vault Doc Ock was currently sacking the money into the bags.
Little did Spider-Man noticed, one of mechanical arms peeked over Ock's shoulders to see him stalking him from one of the interior's pillars. Taking a moment to act oblivious to his arrival, Doc Ock did a sudden swift turnaround as his mechanical arms threw the coin bags to throw him off.
Feeling the danger already in motion, Spider-Man dodged the bags one by one as he jumped back and forth around the interiors of the bank until he could get a better position to confront him.
Seeing one coin bag being thrown directly at him, Spider-Man caught it with a web-line of his own, then swung it straight back at the four-armed pitcher. "Here's your change!"
The countered coin bag then smacked right into Doc Ock's face, making him loose his footing and impacted a concrete wall near the vault behind him. Seething his teeth in fury as he regained his balance, he retaliated with more of the coin bags grabbed from the vault and threw more of them at the annoying Web-Head.
After Spider-Man jumped around from the large chandelier to dodge more of the incoming bags, he tried to shoot his webs again, only to realized they somehow not working once more at the worse possible timing. "Oh no. Come on!"
Suddenly, Spider-Man let out a painful scream when he got hit by another thrown bag that just exploded upon impact, knocking him off the pillar before making a hard landing on everyone's level, his sight was being obscured by the large amount of coins raining around his surroundings.
Before Spider-Man could get back up, he felt two of his arms were being grabbed by Ock's tentacles before forcing them in a cross position as he was looking face-to-face with him.
"You're getting on my nerves," Doc Ock said, his voice let out a deeply irritated tone.
"l have a knack for that," Spider-Man tried to quip, despite still feeling a little off from the hard landing.
Doc Ock shook his head with a smirk. "Not anymore," Two of his free mechanical arms then wrapped tightly around Spider-Man's head, slowly and painfully crushing his thick skull with its metal claws conjoining together.
In a desperate move to try get himself free from his compressing predicament, Spider-Man squeezed his hands through the mechanical arms and managed to shot webs at either of his sides, each attaching to the bank clerks' desks. Using every bit of his strength, he spread his arms out, pulling the desks towards himself and Doc Ock.
Given only a spilt moment to react, Ock had to relinquish his hold on his foe and used his mechanical arms to cut down one incoming desk. Unfortunately for him, he didn't take notice of another one coming at him from the other side, leaving himself being forcibly knocked out of bank by its trajectory, smashing through a glass window before landing hard against an unoccupied Taxi. He already started to growl in annoyance at the Web-Head's persistence.
Speaking of which, after recovering from that compressive experience, Spider-Man got back on his feet and found Doc Ock out on the street in broad daylight. Seeing his multi-armed foe ripping off one of the Taxi's doors and about to throw at him as he sprinted his way to the smashed window, Spider-Man flipped himself as he jumped over to dodge the incoming. Unluckily, he was left vulnerable to a second door throw, knocking him back inside the bank.
Despite that annoying arachnid out of the way now, Doc Ock turned to the street roads when he saw a swarm of police cars just arrived at the scene in response to his criminal activity, blocking his path of escape.
The cops hopped out of their cars and had their pistols aimed and ready at the four-armed menace. "Freeze! Don't move! Freeze!"
Seeing a crowd of people just gathering outside of the bank, Doc Ock just hurled one of his mechanical arms towards them. The crowd tried to disperse away from its extended claws, but only one elderly woman had the misfortune of being caught in its grasp as she was screaming for her life.
It was Aunt May.
The cops lowered their pistols when they realized the elderly woman was now being caught in their line of sight as Ock's human shield. "Hold your fire!"
"Don't follow me," Doc Ock warned. Now with a hostage in hand, he took a different route and started scaling up the nearby buildings to gain a higher ground for an efficient chance of escaping from the authorities.
Just as they reached to many stories high above the streets, Spider-Man landed just right above them out of nowhere. "Hand her over!" He exclaimed desperately.
"Of course," Doc Ock said, albeit suspiciously too easy-going for the hero's liking.
Regardless, Spider-Man slowly reached out his hand as his aunt, who didn't seem aware of her nephew's presence in front of her, being drawn closer to him. "Easy, now."
At first, Spider-Man felt a sense of relief when she was about at arms' length, but then that same feeling was stripped away the instant Doc Ock just suddenly relinquished his mechanical arm's hold on her, making her scream for her life as she was falling back down to the earth.
"Butterfingers," Doc Ock taunted with an evil smile.
In a moment of desperate thinking, Spider-Man shot a web-line at his air-descending aunt. The web managed to reach to her waist, allowing him to pull her back up and away from her literal ground-breaking demise.
Taking advantage of that moment of vulnerability, Doc Ock did the first strike at Spider-Man's chest, holding him off his footing.
Despite being caught in a conundrum with the four-armed menace, Spider-Man tried to do a last-ditch effort to save Aunt May by lifting her way above his head with his webbing, praying to God she was somehow out of harm's way. After dodging a few more strikes from the mechanical arms, Spider-Man pulled Ock's face in with a web attached to her face, punching him out of his way, allowing himself to be free from his entrapment.
"HELP ME!"
Spider-Man looked back up when he heard May's loud desperate plea. He saw that she was hanging on to a lady statue's stone arm, clinging on for her dear life. "I'm coming!" He exclaimed.
Spider-Man then turned towards the wall he was scaling on and rushed up to crawl as hastily as he could. Just he was about to reach her, he felt a hard grab from one of Ock's tentacles by the shoulder, forcing him to be pulled away. "HANG ON!"
Spider-Man tried to hold on to reach her, but all that effort was proven futile when he was dragged away from Aunt May and was forced in a up-close fist fight with the four-armed menace, the casual Manhattan wind were breezing across their faces as they were slowly falling back to the streets below.
As they managed to halt their descend at just a few floors down, Spider-Man tried to land a few punches in, but the mechanical arms managed to grab hold of his back, relinquishing from Ock's grasp and smacked him against before sending him flying across to the far building, making the Web-Slinger crashed through another window.
Trying to shake his head back into focus to recover from another hard landing, Spider-Man saw himself inside a sewing room that was crowded with seamstresses. When he heard another audible scream from where he was thrown from, Spider-Man instantly jumped to the broken window to see Doc Ock had Aunt May held next to him by one of his mechanical arms.
"Aunt May," Spider-Man muttered, the worry in his voice was invoked by the dangers afflicted to his only family's life.
"You've stuck your webs in my business for the last time!" Doc Ock loudly declared. "Now you'll have this woman's death on your conscience!"
With a feeling of desperation swirling inside, Spider-Man shot two web-lines to both sides of the broken window he shattered through and tried to pull himself back as hard as he could. The seamstresses around him quickly cleared out of the room when they realized what he was about to do; Spider-Man's just slingshot himself out of the building.
Unknown to him, Doc Ock hid one his tentacles behind his back, making Aunt May's jaw dropped in surprise when a long sharp sword-like object emerged from between the claws, preparing a sneaky killing strike on the Web-Slinger.
"Shame on you," Aunt May murmured.
As Spider-Man was just meters close, Doc Ock was about to throw his mechanical arms at the unsuspecting hero, until suddenly, Aunt May just then swung the handle of her umbrella upright towards the face of her kidnapper, smashing the lens of his sunglasses as he was knocked out of his focus.
Just seeing the sharp object just swerving out of the way of its trajectory, Spider-Man used the swinging mechanical arm to propel himself over Ock's head and landed on the building behind him.
Seeing Ock lost control of his balance and dropped Aunt May in the process, Spider-Man leaped off and skydived his way down to her.
Seeing there's a good amount of distance between himself and May, he extended his arms down and shot two web-lines at her body to pull himself closer. Now within arm's reach, Spider-Man managed to grab hold of Aunt May, a loud cry of happiness was heard from under his mask as he was web-swinging away with his Aunt May safe around his arm.
When Spider-Man looked back to see if he could still catch Ock, the four-armed menace already be gone with the money in his mechanical arms. I can catch him another time. He thought.
"There you go," Spider-Man said with relief, settling May down just in front of the park not too far from the bank.
"Thank you," Aunt May appreciated her savior's rescue. "Oh, have l been wrong about you."
"We sure showed him," Spider-Man said amusedly.
"What do you mean, "we"?" Aunt May questioned incredulously.
Giving nothing more than a light shrug at her words, Spider-Man turned and jumped away before the crowd of people could close in around them, web-swinging away peacefully now that the crisis with Doc Ock was over, at least for now.
Words: 2453
A/N: Now with the filler chapter out of the way, the next one will be the big moment for Peter before the turning point of the story we all already familiar with (except for one bit of detail, but we'll get it when it happens).
Anyway, any constructive criticisms and comments would be greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter.
Reviews:
CT311998: Appreciated your kind words again, and yep, I already got something spiced up when Peter and Gayle eventually meets each other at the Planetarium. (Spoiler Alert: It won't be pretty)
TW: Thanks.
DCDGojira: Cheers for the review. And yes, Peter will be a bit shocked at first, but the gutter feeling will go deeper than that when the planetarium chapter rolls out in due time.