Secrets.
At one A.M., Gwen sits up from Norman's bed. The man was asleep as he was done doing what he had to do. Gwen received her payment but was "too tired to move" (She was just tired of facing the reality that her family were dusted). Currently, Norman was on the left, facing the window, resting. Gwen was on the right, facing the restroom and the door, wide awake.
She carefully stands up as to not wake Norman and heads to the restroom to pee. She sits on the toilet and looks around the enormous bathroom. She can see many things out of place but clean as Norman had maids clean his penthouse. She also noticed the sink and even the toilet was green and purple. He must really like those colors.
After using the restroom and washing her hands, she still sees Norman asleep. Gwen had nothing better to do, so she goes to the living room. Gwen noticed the place didn't have any homey effect. The living room looked elegant and has everything a middle-class family wished they had. There was a coffee table in the middle of the living room surrounded by brown couches and florid walls with unique but rare vases.
She walks around carefully until seeing something that caught her eye.
She hurries down the three-step stairs and goes to the coffee table which had an open book with Spiders on one of the pages. She grabs it and closes the book to see the title:
Spider DNA: Spider-Man written by Norman Osborn and Olivia Octavius
Huh. Gwen thinks. Norman had a whole book dedicated to Peter's powers. She could see that he highlighted some paragraphs and had sticky notes on a few pages. Gwen looks through the book and reads:
Spider-Man can walk on walls, and even shoot out webs out of his wrists. Similar to a spider, they have small hairs covered with smaller hairs (setules) which gives them the ability to walk on walls and many other surfaces.
It is believed that Spider-Man got his powers from a visit to Oscorp and got bitten by one of the radioactive spiders but cases proved that was not the case since there weren't any reports about a Spider bite since 2016 when Spider-Man first appeared in New York.
Spider-Man also has superhuman strength and endurance by a YouTube video showing that Spider-Man stopped a high speeding car from colliding with a bus without a problem and flies away using his webs.
Gwen kept reading the pages with sticky notes and ONLY reads the ones that are highlighted.
Strangely, Norman would have a book about Spider-Man and make a conspiracy that Spider-Man got his powers from the radioactive spiders Norman has in his museum. Really strange. He also seemed to have an active part in it since the book was heavily noted and he's the one that wrote it. Gwen could understand Olivia because Olivia is also a scientist but not Norman.
Why is Norman so obsessed with Peter and his powers?
She looks around and notices that Norman wasn't around. Still asleep, she assumes. So she explores more. This is the first time, she even been around somewhere in the penthouse besides his room and the kitchen. She already goes to the kitchen, anyways.
The kitchen is still the same. Had a nice white stove, a wooden dining table with chairs to match and drawers to keep ingredients along with cabinets and the door to go outside the penthouse and into the pool. She goes to the fridge and opens it to see if there were any food she could have and yes, there was.
She could see takeout and drinks such as orange juice, water, and blueberry soda. She assumed the blueberry soda was Harry's since he loves blueberry. She closes the fridge and jumps when she sees Norman Osborn with a big grin. One that almost made her uncomfortable.
"What are you doing up, sweets?" He asks.
"I was hungry." Gwen lies. There was no way Gwen was going to tell him that she only went outside to look around. For some reason, Norman didn't like that when his guests wanted to look around his fancy penthouse. With a house this big, it's expected that people would only want to look around and take in the house.
"Would you like some Chinese?" Norman asked, "I can get some for us if you'd like. Anywhere and no matter the cost."
Gwen shakes her head, "No, Norman it's fine." She answers, "I probably need to get going, I have school in seven hours."
"Do you want me to drop you off?"
"No, I can walk home or take the bus. Wouldn't want to cast attention, right?"
Norman didn't look convinced, "Yes, Yes, I guess you're right. Tell me when you get home, alright?"
Gwen nods and shakes hands with Norman before going to her room and grabbing her things and quickly leaving to text Peter.
Hey, we need to talk.
SENT AT: 2:30 A.M.
-
When Peter woke up, it was midnight and he slept at Gwen's apartment apparently with Harry sprawled next to him, his foot next to Peter's face. He moves the foot and rolls out of the couch and wipes the drool out of his face before grabbing his glasses and going to the restroom, "EDITH," Peter said and Edith shines a bright blue, "Can you do a keyword search on the police band? Search for Hammerhead or Maggia."
"According to the NYPD, there are about only 57 results for the mention of Hammerhead or Maggia, would you like to narrow it down, Peter?"
"Do recently. Like two or three days ago."
Peter sees the results in the lens. Only two popped up. One was about The Bar With No Name and the other was about one of Hammerheads men being arrested. He knew The Bar With No Name is secretly infamous for a get together with thugs and non-thugs alike.
"Okay, Let's go to the bar with no name." Peter decides and goes to the closet to grab his Spidey suit (Gwen said that she washed it) and to his surprise, it was pink.
"Need to teach Gwen about mixing different colors," Peter grumbles and quickly puts on the suit before going to the apartment window and jumping out, on his way to a bar.
-
Peter didn't expect his first visit to any bar to be a superhero outing. Oddly enough, he imagined his mom would be the first to take him to some silly bar on his twenty-first birthday with his family. They'd be dancing, drinking, having fun.
But, he guesses this could be fun, too. Having to go to the bar with no name as a top-secret, extremely confidential job about tracking down villains and people who dropped their credit card.
Peter jumps down and sees the bar with no name. It's extremely discreet. If Peter was dumb, He would never assume the door on the side of a building is a bar. It was just a door and some graffiti. But with Karen, she could see through the bricks and the door and it was deeper than Peter could expect. He twists the doorknob and enters.
He goes inside and already sees a mess. Not the drunken kind when people fight or shattered glass bottles. No, he sees the plaque which said: No guns, No fighting, No punks adorned with bullet holes as it was on the floor and under a blinking light. "This is... brutal," Peter says as he turns and sees the bar eerily similar to the precinct just yesterday.
Bodies were on the wooden floor, he could blood splatters around, pictures and wood on the floor as he sees broken beer bottles. He sees a game of poker or whatever strewed across the floor and tables ripped in half plus a pink neon sign that said Beer!. He could vaguely smell the mixture of corpses and beer. Peter walks around cautiously, not wanting to step on bodies or anything that he'll disturb.
Did Yuri do this?
The rational side said yes. Yes, she committed a crime and yes she did it without any remorse as Peter can tell.
The emotional side said no. She couldn't have done it. Yuri can't do that.
But then he remembers the story Yuri told him. When she interrogating someone and they annoyed her, so she broke their arm. At first, Peter laughed hysterically. She just broke someone's arm because they were annoying. But now after seeing the horrid scene Yuri sets, he thinks about the story differently. His image of the hard-boiled but humorous Captain changes drastically.
She had a short temper now. Anything she didn't like will result in broken objects. The funny stories weren't satire and they aren't far enough from being the truth. Captain Yuri Watanabe was tired of being a good cop so she turned into a bad cop. A bad, corrupted cop.
He hears a phone ring amid the disturbing scene.
Peter nearly jumped to the near but instead runs to where the phone was and picks it up, "Hello?" He asked.
"Yo Gabe! Where are you?"
Peter looks at Gabe. Gabe is dead. "Just... cleaning." Peter awkwardly lies.
"Well, get your ass over here! We have to move the Oscorp weapons!"
"Oscorp... weapons? To where?"
"Jeez, Gabe! Are you really that forgettable?!" The man on the other line asks, "We got to move the weapons to Oscorp before that Captain Watanabe gets us!"
Move the stolen Oscorp weapons to Oscorp?
"R-Right! I'm so clumsy! I'm on my way, but where are you?!"
"Clumsy? Gabe, buddy, how much were you drinkin'? I'm at the Mercy General hospital, I'm getting my brother out."
"Okay! Bye!" Peter hangs up and breathes. God, this was an already stressful day and he didn't even eat.
-
After nearly an hour of talking to the man in Mercy General, he gave Peter the location of where the Oscorp weapons were. And no gasps were shared when he told Peter it was in an abandoned construction site because of course, it was.
So here he was now, saving some henchmen from facing death by drowning in cement with the aid of police officers. He looks to the top of the undone building and sees a glint of a big head and already knew who it was. Why do bad guys even love to do bad things? Peter thinks. He sighs and goes ahead and starts to release webs to help him go up faster.
He jumps and jumps until he lands on an upward metal pipe, "Hello?!" He calls out to the night, "I'm looking for the real-life hard hat but has a hard head and is really ugly!"
Hammerhead comes out decked in completely different attire. Rather than a sky blue suit, it was an indigo suit and had armor similar a man of armor, just less... protective and had no flair of the red and gold but instead white and sapphire. the armor covered him from neck to toe, not head because it was hard.
"Hey, bug." He said.
"Love the rip off of IronMan, give it a six out of ten." Peter quips.
It didn't hurt so much to mention his dead mentor since the therapy chat he had about Uncle Anthony or Aunty Natalie.
"You spoiled my big night, bug. Good job on you but I'm an adapter. Risks of live T.V., right?" Hammerhead and moves his gloved hands towards his armor, "You like? Project hex in action! I fixed the little things while you were saving the pathetic negative henchmen."
Ah.
"I don't think that's crimelords wear in situations like these, Hammerhead. I expect more... flashy or even a little bit of Kingpin, y' know?"
At the mention of Kingpin, Hammerhead rolls his eyes, "That man couldn't even live. Much less, have fashion taste." He said sassily.
Peter just shrugs, "Hate to say it but blue isn't your color. Stick to orange jumpsuits. I hear prisoners love the taste of that and I know prisoners have the most excellent taste in fashion. Even beats Gucci."
Hammerhead obviously didn't want to hear about Peter's opinion on fashion, "I'm trying to revitalize stuff here!"
"And what about it?" Peter retaliates, "You're just a nutty guy trying to seek immortality by becoming a machine and taking over New York. I won't allow it. Even if I'm dead."
"Naw," Hammerhead said, "I'm just a guy who knows a thing or three about P.R. People don't take the Maggia seriously, no more."
"With that grammar, I can see why."
Hammerhead ignores him, "With a little help from my buddies, I'll break you in half and then! They'll take us seriously. For the long term."
Buddies?
Hammerhead sends a pumpkin bomb towards Peter and effectively dodges it. He could see green acid explode and was grateful he had a quick reaction time, "TIME TO END YOU, SPIDER-MAN!"
"SEVERAL PEOPLE TRIED THAT! GET IN LINE!" Peter shouts back as the fight begins.
-
"This is what happens when you decide to go against Mother Nature and Brother Nature." Peter said to Hammerhead.
Hammerhead, who was tired from the fighting (He even bought his own henchmen to fight Spider-Man but of course, Spider-Man wins), looks up at him with a sloppy smirk, "Pal, you didn't listen when I said long term. I have patience. I know just the right time to-"
Hammerhead falls down and Peter's blood ran cold when he had seen the person who made him fall down:
Captain Yuriko Watanabe.
The police surrounding Hammerhead and Spider-Man quickly dispersed as they saw their Captain with a grim expression, walk towards the two superpowered humans as if they were nothing but ants on the ground.
"Yuri?" Spider-Man asked, "What are you-"
He was cut off when Yuri throws a disc and automatically, red electric rope tied him up and electrified him. Peter screeches in blood-curling pain, his fingers bending and falling to his knees as he sees Yuri walk past him. He can hear the policemen beg Yuri to not go any closer as Hammerhead only crawls backward. He manages to turn and see Yuri shoot Hammerheads armor, his armor blinking neon red.
"This is bad," One police officer said but no one did anything. Everyone was stuck in a limbo, not knowing what to do. From what Peter guesses, They knew Yuri's past but he didn't because the Captain is usually secretive of her past but also knowing that Hammerhead is a bad guy.
A good cop turned bad against a crime lord.
Who to stop?
No one knew, so while Peter tried to get himself out of the ropes, the policemen watched as Yuri kicked Hammerhead to the edge of the fence and began talking to Hammerhead, the Oscorp gun touching his cheek and her hand on his neck, "Last time we met," Yuri begins through gritted teeth, "You said something about fear."
Yuri's voice started to shake and Peter could tell it was in anguish and fury, "How do you feel, right now?"
But from the distance, Hammerhead smiles as to prove something along his plan went right, "Just. Dandy." He spits.
Just in time, Peter managed to break the ropes and it was like slow motion.
One second he was throwing a web string to stop Yuri from pulling the trigger, and then next thing he knew was red sparks flew once he took away the gun.
Hammerhead falls limp, his head burning and in front of him was his killer, Captain Yuriko Watanabe. She looked towards the policemen and Spider-Man with a poker face, similar to Natasha's own. Her hair was ruffled on the top and her flannel was messily fixed as some of the buttons were put in the wrong place.
Everyone stood still. Even Spider-Man. No one knew what to do next. The Captain committed first-degree homicide. The Captain who swore that they wanted to do right by New York killed a man who did her wrong.
The sky still was a dark navy as Spider-Man heavily breathes in and out. Yuri only looks at Spider-Man before policemen grabbed their captain and escorted her out, leaving Spider-Man and the dead Hammerhead alone.
Peter swallows down a sob.
I guess this is when you give up on a friend, huh?
Peter looks up to the sky which had so many stars shining on this horrid night. He wonders if his mom and loved ones are looking down at him. But he looks up to the sky anyways. The mask covering his grief-stricken face.
No, he wasn't grieving Hammerhead but he didn't deserve to die.
But he was grieving the loss of a friend. His only friend on the NYPD force who helped him do good and made life easier for almost every officer. "What do I do?" Peter asked the sky, "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it!"
But no answer came.
So, Spider-Man webs away from the scene and to his apartment.
He takes off his mask and slides down on the wall, Odie and some of her pups walking to Peter and comforting him.
Peter can only cry silently in the darkness and ignores the brief notifications on his phone.
Gwen ♡
- Hey, we need to talk [ 2:30 A.M. ]
- It's important, please reply [ 2:40 A.M. ]
- Peter, please. [ 3:24 A.M. ]
- PETER!! [ 3:45 A.M ]