Of Mutants and Madmen

Spidey watched as the goons loaded up the truck, shaking his head. He knew some of the chemicals they were carrying were the kind you didn't want to drop, unless you liked being blown up like Beaker on the Muppets. Well, not that Beaker liked being blown up … In any case, the ol' web-head didn't like being blown up either, and he wasn't going to risk it. He'd wait 'till after they loaded the truck, when the chemicals were all safe and secure.

Then he would start bashing heads in.

He wished he'd gotten there faster, but when you have to rely on second or third(or fourth, or fifth)-hand information, sometimes it was older than one would like. In this particular instance, he happened to have overheard a chat between a crime reporter at the Daily Bugle and one of their informants. It was one of the pluses, Peter Parker had discovered, that came with working for a newspaper (when your hobby is fighting crime, that is).

Note to self: I need a new hobby …

So he followed the reporter to the scene, then tied him up with webbing. Doubtless it would give JJ more ammunition in his war against Spider-Man, but Peter had given up caring. He could save the world all he wanted, and would still always end up looking like a criminal.

No, by now Peter's only lament was that he couldn't take pictures of himself for the Bugle this time. If he did, there would be too many questions as to how Peter Parker came to be there in the first place. He was already treading a thin line with his boss -- the last thing Parker needed was for J. Jonah Jameson to think he was in league with Spider-Man. People could speculate all they wanted about how Spider-Man got past OsCorp security, and what he was doing there. Stopping the Kingpin from getting whatever he was after was more important than Spidey's image.

Finally Kingpin's goons got the truck loaded. They made their way to the front of the vehicle. Spider-man landed a moment later on the hood with a thud.

Whoa, gotta lay off the cheesy-poofs! "Geez, it took you guys long enough to finish! Poor Kingy; it must be so hard to find good help these days!"

Spider-Man shot each of the crooks in the face with a squirt of webbing. While they struggled to get it off their faces, he use a bit more to stick them to their own vehicle doors. He reached into the pocket of one of them and pulled out a cell-phone. When the police answered, he told them in a cheery tone that he had a nice little package waiting for them at OsCorp, then hung up. He tucked the phone back in the man's pocket.

Hey, Spider-Man isn't a thief…

He was about to swing away when he heard a noise. "Oh, wait! I almost forgot! You have a friend in the truck, don't you!"

He threw open the truck's back door, greeting the goon inside with a face-full of web, just as he had the first two, then covered the rest of him in webbing, pinning him to the boxes. He noted with no small amount of scientific curiosity that the guy had a weird get-up, with two metal arms attached to each side of his ribcage. The arms were struggling to get free, so Spidey covered them a bit more, making sure they stuck fast to the boxes around the guy. He sighed with the ease of it all. He couldn't believe his fights were getting so routine that he'd actually almost forgotten one of the crooks!

"I really don't know why I go through the trouble of gift-wrapping you guys for the men-in-just-blue. I mean, if it's the thought that counts, and they never seem to care anyw-"

"Freeze, Spider-Man!"

Spidey turned, hands on hips in astonishment. "Wow, that was fast!"

"I SAID DON'T MO--"

An eager rookie let off a shot. It moved almost as slow as a butterfly to Spidey, who easily leapt out of harm's way, onto the side of a building. He realised much too late that there was more to the danger than just getting shot.

There was a crash, then a loud boom from inside the truck. Fire erupted from the opening in the back. Another boom, then another. The cops ran back from the vehicle, while Spidey swung down by the front. He pulled free one of the crooks, then flipped over the hood and freed the other. They ran off without a fight, understanding that the whole truck was liable to explode at any second. He thought with a heavy heart that it was too late for the man inside, as he himself swung to safety, just in time.

"Heya, Aunt May." Peter half-heartedly greeted his Aunt as he strolled into the kitchen, snagging an apple from a basket. He noticed too late that she had apparently decided it was time to get some nice, decorative wax fruit.

Oblivious to the face her nephew was making on the other side of her paper, May concentrated on the image of him on the side she was reading. Of course, she had no idea it was actually him …

"I don't understand why they don't lock that awful man up!"

"Who, the Kingpin? They have to catch him, first ..."

"No! Spider-Man!"

Peter sighed. His Aunt put way too much faith in J. Johah Jameson's headlines. Instead of listening to Peter, who, as "Spidey's photographer" actually "knew" the wallcrawler and "thought" he was a decent guy, she just started nagging him about putting himself in dangerous situations and scaring her to death. As far as she was concerned, Spider-Man's very existence put Peter's life on the line, whic obviously made him "bad". And the sad thing was, she had no idea how close to the truth she'd hit.

"Listen to this!" she told him. "'Spider-Man has once again put innocent lives on the line with his vigilante exploits. Working off a tip he beat out of one of the Bugle's own reporters, he rushed to what he thought was the scene of a crime, and actually turned out to just be a late-night shipment at OsCorp. Several of New York's finest sustained injuries from an explosion during what escalated into a firefight between them and the webbed marauder. One of the OsCorp employees has gone missing and is presumed dead. Spider-Man is already wanted as a suspect in the murder of Norman Osborn, late founder of OsCorp. It looks like he may be adding reckless endangerment, manslaughter, or even murder to his rap-sheet.' Oh, Peter, thank-god you weren't there last night! Please, why won't you give up taking his picture?"

Peter caught himself almost telling her that he was there the night before. Instead he managed, "I need the money, Aunt May. I have to earn a living somehow until I get out of school, and this has proven the best thing to fit in my schedule."

"But Peter! It won't make a difference how much you make if you end up-"

"Heya!" MJ poked her head from around the corner of the kitchen doorway. "Sorry to interrupt, but the door was open ..."

Aunt May motioned for her to come in, clearly happy to see her. "MJ, you know my home is yours. Maybe you can help me talk some sense into this nephew of mine!"

MJ laughed nervously. "Oh, Pete's the most sensible guy I know! You don't have to worry about him! I came to ask you, Mom wants to know if you would come over for dinner tonight." She looked at Peter. "You too, if you want to, Tiger."

May stepped in front of him and smiled back at her. "We'd love to!" Over her shoulder, she gave Peter a warning glance that he knew better than to argue with.

"Great, I'll go tell her! Now, do you mind if we borrow a casserole dish?"

"Of course not, dear!" May got up and began rummaging through her cabinets.

Peter and MJ shared an uncomfortable look, now that May wasn't looking. Things were still a little awkward between them, since Peter had told her he just wanted to be friends. The biggest problem was that, as much as he had reasoned out that it was better for her if he stay away from her, whenever she was around, he still couldn't keep his eyes off her. It was hard to keep up the friendship pretense when she kept catching him gawking at her. When they both wanted more from each other. They couldn't exactly avoid one another, either; MJ's father had died recently, and she had moved back in with her mother. Somehow, whenever he visited Aunt May, she found a reason to put in an appearance. After a while, he realised he couldn't avoid her entirely without hurting her, too. He'd promised to always be there for her, and be her friend. Sometimes he wondered if his life wasn't really less "comicbook superhero" and more "soap opera".

"I said, do you mind going to the store?"

"Wha?" Peter looked at his Aunt's stance, and guessed she'd probably asked him at least twice already. "I-I mean, what for?"

"Oh, I need a few things, but my arthritis is really acting up. There's more on my list than you can carry by yourself, though, dear. So do you think your mother could spare you a moment?" This last question was directed at MJ.

Peter groaned inwardly. May just wouldn't give up on getting the two youngsters in her life together.

"Sure thing, Aunt May, we'll just run that dish over to my mom, first."

May handed MJ the money and the grocery list, sealing Peter's fate.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fisk, but I don't know what we can do for you. It's not like you had actually paid the money to us yet, so I guess all I can say is that you're certainly welcome to break the contract, in light of what's happened."

Harry didn't want to admit it, but Wilson Fisk scared the tar out of him. Then again, Fisk scared everyone, much in the fashion that a charging rhino would. Harry always made an unconscious effort to remain in view of the massive man, for fear that he might be accidentally squashed like a bug. The only bug Harry wanted to see squashed was Spider-Man.

Which was why he was associating with a known crime lord. Dr. Octavious had explained to him that Fisk had commissioned the creation of a special pestilent, one for spiders. Harry might not be as smart as his father had wished, but he was smart enough to realise that there wasn't really a call for such a thing -- spiders were good for farms. He knew that Spider-Man was a thorn in the Kingpin's massive side -- it must really have been a weapon for fighting him! To the world at large, it may seem like the wall-crawler was being a hero, interfering with Fisk's business, but Harry suspected there was something sinister behind the web-head's good deeds. After all, Spider-Man had murdered Norman Osborn, Harry's father! Why had people forgotten that so quickly? Maybe Fisk was everything people said he was, but if he could rid the world of the web-slinger, Harry was ready to forgive the man anything. Harry hed, by now, even talked himslef into beleiving that the Kindgpin was really misunderstood, like his father, and not a criminal at all. At least enough to help him sleep at night, anyway.

The Kingpin let out a sigh. "I don't know how Otto talked me into his idea in the first place, really. I'll just have to take care of things the old-fashioned way." He put a hand on Harry's shoulder, and the boy was surprised by the gentleness there. No, Fisk really wasn't a bad guy at all. "Don't worry, Harry. We'll get things taken care of, one way or another. In the meantime, OsCorp is doing other things for me as well, so I expect we'll be seeing more of eachother. It really is too bad about Dr. Octavious, though. You say he left no record of what he was working on?"

"No, sir."

Fisk smiled; for all his trust in the man, Harry still got a chill at the sight. "Well, he was reliable, I'll give him that much. I'll be seeing you, Harry."

The Kingpin left Norman's old office, his bodyguards following in his extra-wide wake.

Harry held his head in his hands, elbows resting on his father's desk. How had the man done it all those years? How had he run the business and still found time to actually work on the projects himself? No wonder he'd never had time for his son! No wonder he always seemed more attentive to Peter than Harry. Peter could have helped Norman. What could Harry do but run his late father's business into the ground? Hell, he didn't even know what other projects Fisk was talking about ...

"I'll take care of these ..." MJ told Peter, tearing up the list and keeping half.

He wasn't about to argue. He could thing of about a million things he'd rather do than purchase "personal" items for his elderly aunt. And with MJ down another aisle, there was at least a few minutes he would get this day that were free from tension.

It was a few minutes too long to be away from her, though.

Stop it! Stop thinking about her that way! Honestly, Parker, if you're not off you're rocker already, you're on the fast track to it! It wouldn't work, end of story.

God, you're even lecturing yourself. See, now all you have to do is start saying all this stuff out loud, and you wouldn't have to worry about how MJ feels about you -- she'd think you were as crazy as you really are, and wouldn't ever want to see you again.

Wait, I can't keep track; would that be a good thing?

In the next aisle over, MJ wasn't faring any better.

How surreal is this for Peter? How does it feel for him, thinking about the things he does, while picking out grapes, of all things? None of the people passing him by would ever imagine what's going on in his head, while they're thinking about what to fix for dinner, and wondering which potato chips are the best bargain. Would it help him to know that I know he's Spider-Man, or would it just make things harder for him?

She'd been having this discussion in her head -- or something like it anyway -- every day since she'd kissed him, and realised his secret. If it even was his secret. Maybe she was just imagining things, maybe he really wasn't Spider-Man. Maybe he really didn't like her in "that way".

Relax, MJ, staring at the hygiene products is not the place for deep, philosophical musings or paranoid moments of self-doubt.

She finished picking up the things on Aunt May's list and went in search of Peter. She found him in the cereal boxes. He saw her, and held up a box.

"Hey, look what's inside the cereal Aunt May wants! It's got a Spider-Man 'web-shooter'! Think she'd let me have it?"

MJ almost asked him how he felt about people capitalizing off of him when he had no say in the matter, but instead asked, "Your aunt eats Frosted Flakes?!"

Peter shrugged. "She has a sweet tooth, what can I say? Anyway, she doesn't like Spider-Man, so maybe I should get her something that doesn't have a picture of him on it." He put the box back on the shelf.

He was non-chalant about it, but her heart ached for him. She was sure she detected a note of bitterness. How did he handle it? How did he handle May constantly saying how evil his alter-ego was? How did he handle keeping such a secret from the people he loved?

She picked the box back up and put it in the cart. "If she doesn't like him, then she'll let you keep the web-shooter, won't she? Besides, if she has breakfast with him every morning, maybe she'll come around."

He laughed a small laugh. Well, it was something.

They got in the line, chatting and laughing to hide their discomfort from eachother. It was monstrously long, like always, so it was nearly ten minutes before they were close enough to see who the cashier was.

It was one of Flash's old buddies, John. Peter didn't much want to see the guy, but they had already waited so long, and there were a lot of people behind them, as well as in the other lines. Maybe if he knew how irritated MJ was too, he might have managed a smile, at least.

But MJ was ever the actress she'd always been. When she reached front, John started hitting on her. Rather than being loyal to Flash, he instead took the opportunity he never would have dared when she was dating the dumb jock. She was friendly, smiling and laughing, exchanging small talk.

After a bit, John asked, "You goin' to the POE concert?"

MJ started to say no, but Peter cut in, "Yeah, I'm getting us in on my press pass."

John noticed Peter for the first time. "Whoa, MJ, you aren't dating this freak, are you?"

Peter was afraid his face was going to turn as red as his Spider-suit.

MJ's smile was gone, her expression turned icier than the frozen dinners on the conveyer belt. "First of all, he's not a freak. Second of all, why shouldn't I? I guarantee you he has more of a future than you. And thirdly, should I get a manager over here, and tell him how you're treating us?"

"What's the matter, Parker? Need your girlfriend to fight your battles for you?"

"I should think you would be thankful she is," Peter told him, his tone a perfect match for MJ's. "Or have you forgotten what happened to Flash?"

John did the rest of his job in silence.

Peter and MJ were silent as well as they made their way back to May's house. When they were outside the door, MJ finally found her voice.

"Look, Pete, I'm sorry about what happened back there."

Peter stopped with his hand halfway to the doorknob. "MJ, you didn't do anything wrong!"

"I did! I shouldn't have been friendly to that creep in the first place! You don't deserve to be treated like that! You're more of a man than all the jerks we went to school with combined!"

He was speechless for a moment. Did she still love him? It felt so good to hear her say that, to have her tell him that he was worthwhile. Him. Peter Parker. But did it do any good for herto think that way about him? Well, at the very least, he couldn't let her feel bad about herself.

"MJ, you can't go around feeling bad for being polite or friendly. If John and others like him made half the effort at being nice that you do, the world would be a much better place!" He opened the door and started to walk in. "Besides, it doesn't take much to be worth more than sewage like him, so why should we care what he thinks?"

MJ didn't answer; Aunt May was waiting for them. But she kept what he'd said in her mind, even after she'd left to help her mother with dinner. He had a point. Why was it that, even now that she wasn't seeing Flash or Harry and her father was dead, she was still worrying about how other men saw her? The only man whose opinion really mattered to her was Peter's.

Waitaminute. Did he say he was taking me to the POE concert?? Are we going out on a DATE???

"So does anyone want t' go this Friday?" Theresa asked her fellow X-Men in her faint irish brogue.

"How on earth did y'all manage tickets?? We tried t'get em, an' they were sold out in an hour!" Rogue replied in her Mississippi drawl.

"One of POE's roadies is an old friend of mine. So I guess that means you're in?" Theresa asked with a wink.

"Chere, le's jus' say, if you don' take us, I not be responsible for what ma fille does, nes pas?" Rogue muffled the Ragin' Cajun with a cushion from the couch.

Deadpool spent more time on his cell than he would have liked, but that was the best way to do business in their day and age. Besides, with his healing factor, he didn't have to worry about brain cancer. He'd already done the cancer-thing, and it had left him with a face not even his mother could love.

"Haven't you heard," he asked his latest potential client. "I don't kill heroes anymore, profitable as that may have been." Actually, it hadn't been profitable at all. Pool usually got his ass kicked, then ended up helping the heroes out and didn't get paid. Really bad for the image. And he wasn't pretty to start with.

Thank God for image-inducers.

"Wilson, haven't you read the paper today?" Fisk asked him, his voice cutting in and out with the bad reception.

Pool reflected a moment on how odd it was to be talking to a man whose first name was the same as his own last name. Shaking the random thought -- and probably a few important ones -- out of his head, he replied, "No. The newspaper is for lining the kitty-litter box -- I only read the corner that's peeking out when I'm in the 'loo".

"Well, if you had, you would know that Spider-Man is in rather hot water at the moment for having attacked some men at OsCorp. And he's still suspect #1 in the murder of Osborn!"

"OZZIE'S DEAD?!? When did that happen?!? I just saw him on TV!"

"NORMAN Osborn ... Y'know, maybe I should just forget the whole thing, Mr. Pool, you don't seem to be on your game--"

"Jeez, can't take a joke, can you! All right, since Spidey doesn't seem to be on the side of the angels anymore, throw in some POE tickets, and ya got a deal, fatso!" Deadpool told his cell phone as he kicked back in his ratty old recliner.

Fisk gave a grunt, and hung up.

"Was that a non-committal grunt or a committed one?" Pool asked the dial-tone.