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seriousficI'd say this isn't BryceDallasHoward!Gwen in this chapter, but you know what, go ahead. It's not like she was Topher Grace or anything. Although I think Topher Grace himself could've done a good job if the script were better. You know what, I'll stop talking about Spider-Man 3 now.
Mary-Jane didn’t know how Peter couldn’t get into clubbing. True, he wasn’t the world’s best dancer, but getting out of his apartment for anything besides school and work (and… work) would be good for him. It was like she was in a tug-of-war with Spider-Man over Peter.
Well, not tonight. She was going to slip out of all that nonsense for one night and just have fun. She’d called up Gwen and Liz and they’d agreed to go prowling with her. Club Teevee was one of those dance clubs with pretensions of social experimentation, having hired amidst much fanfare a “TVJ” who manipulated the feeds to a bank of fifty TV monitors on the back wall. The effect was oddly congruous and hypnotic. Still, Mary-Jane ignored it in favor of one hell of margarita and dishing with her girls in a corner booth.
“My dad’s still spending all his time at the office,” Gwen was saying. She was a bit of a daddy’s girl, and this got her a “tish!” from her companions. “It’s not his fault, he’s just more comfortable there.”
”He’s more comfortable around an array of police officers and criminals then among his own daughter?” Liz asked.
”It’s his breed. Leave the parenting to the mother while the man goes out and does manly things to make manly money,” Mary-Jane said.
“What, you think I should stage an intervention? Try to change him? I’m perfectly satisfied with our relationship as is.”
”I can sympathize. I’m happy with my lack of relationship with my father.”
”Mary-Jane, no offense, but your father’s a scumbag,” Liz said. “Did he even show up for your wedding?”
”Attempted wedding,” Mary-Jane corrected, before rotating her drink around morosely in the most blaringly obvious “change the subject” body language she could manage.
”Exactly, it’s not like he missed much.”
”The cake was good though.”
”Yes, very good cake.”
Mary-Jane glanced at the TV bank. Like a picture trying to break through the random feeds, more and more of the channels were showing the same colors. Her suspicions raised, Mary-Jane got up and crossed the dance floor to get closer to the TVs, Liz and Gwen following supportively. It was Peter and Hobgoblin, a fight of theirs, live! The footage, often from competing angles, was spreading over more and more of the local stations and news channels.
”Hey, turn it up!” Mary-Jane shouted to the TVJ.
He saw the image and switched all the pictures to one channel, forming a vast composite over the entire bank of monitors. With another flick of his hand the club’s soundtrack switched from a repetitive techno-beat to the TV sound.
”…fight between Spider-Man and this as-yet-unidentified individual,” the newscaster was saying, “who bears a definite resemblance to the Green Goblin who menaced this city…”
”It would serve that menace right if whoever that green guy is did clobber him,” Liz said. “I hear he’s built a giant web over the Burroughs!”
”Be quiet! Geez, Spider-Man goes out there everyday, fighting criminals with nothing but guts, superpowers… and the cutest butt I’ve ever seen.”
Mary-Jane would’ve shot daggers at Gwen if she weren’t so worried.
On the screen, Spider-Man was being spun around by the ankles by the Goblin. Mary-Jane could hear that shrill laugh even over the drone of the newscaster’s patter. The Goblin spun Peter through a TV aerial… Mary-Jane could imagine the metallic thrashing it would’ve made as it was rended apart, slicing Peter’s skin… and the madman laughed louder as he spun toward a chimney.
“C’mon, Pete, snap out of it…” Mary-Jane said under her breath.
She didn’t imagine he could hear her. She didn’t even imagine he was listening. But Peter shot out a webline which caught on the side of the building, jerking himself to a bone-crunching halt. Hobgoblin was similarly thrown from his glider. They both landed awkwardly on a rooftop, the glider spinning away like a floating top. Hobgoblin touched his head, shook it, then just growled as he dug a pumpkin bomb from his bag and threw it.
Peter jumped away as it exploded, the shockwave catching him in mid-leap! He barely managed to shoot out a webline, swung, had to kick off a wall he was passing by to keep from smearing against it. Then he reached the apex, streamlined himself into a dart, and swung back.
“Yeah, baby!” Mary-Jane cried as Spider-Man swung into Hobgoblin, knocking him for a serious loop.
***
Now they were both falling at an angle towards a window into Grand Central Station. Spider-Man shot a web up to the top of the massive window frame as Hobgoblin flew through it, then swung through it to deliver a cannonball kick to Hobgoblin. They tumbled inside, Spider-Man shooting out a webline to swing onto a pillar, Hobgoblin catching his glider and ascending to Spider-Man’s level.
Far away, Mary Jane noticed with concern that Peter was favoring the leg Hobgoblin had been spinning him by.
“Trick or treat, Spider-Man,” Hobgoblin said.
”Is there really a choice?”
“Twenty paces.”
“Done.”
Spider-Man jumped past Hobgoblin, across Grand Central Station, shot a webline out to catch another pillar, swung around it and started webswinging toward Hobgoblin, who rocketed toward him.
They moved towards each other on a collision course, Hobgoblin on his glider, Spider-Man webswinging. When Peter shot one webline, he didn't grab on to it with his hand, but instead kept extending the line even though it had hit the ceiling, causing him to descend. At the last minute he grabbed it and met Hobgoblin on the upswing, hitting him on the chin with both feet in something like a kicking uppercut. He grabbed onto the glider's head with both hands and orbited it before letting go and sticking to a pillar.
Hobgoblin fell, landing on the Information Booth and smashing the famous four-sided clock to gears.
”Looks like you’ve run out of time, Goblin.”
Hobgoblin pulled out a Pumpkin Bomb and threw it. Peter jumped off the pillar and onto the next one over as the bomb went off.
”You’re okay as a Big Bad, chuckles, but you’ll never be a pitcher in the big leagues!”
”Amusing, Spider-Man. I hope you find the thought of innocent blood on your hands as funny!”
Spider-Man turned to see that the pillar was toppling toward several oblivious people! Spider-Man kicked off his pillar, landed in a roll, came up running. With seconds to spare, he constructed a web between the two pillars on either side of the falling one. The webbing stretched with a thropp, but held. The saved bystanders looked at him.
“How are you not aware that there are two superpowered beings fighting? GET OUT OF HERE!”
While he was busy with that, three transit cops had burst onto the scene and taken aim at Hobgoblin. The villain raised his hands in apparent surrender.
”I confess! I did it! I jumped the turnstile! And I’m glad I did it, see?” His glove blasters began to charge surreptitiously as he offered his hands to be cuffed. “Take me in before I kill again!
Spider-Man tackled him and the Goblin sparks went wild. One cop was hit in the leg by a stray blast, going down as his weapon went off, absolute pandemonium reigning. The superhumans rolled along on the ground until Hobgoblin grabbed Spidey by the neck and headbutted him three times, then rolled over so that he was on top and began choking Peter.
”Today you die, Spider-Man.”
”I oughta make an MP3 of that line, I hear it so much!” Spider-Man heard a train coming.
Hobgoblin squeezed tighter. “That will be the last time you hear anything…”
Spider-Man pounded at Hobgoblin’s back, inconspicuously attaching a webline to the small of his back. “I don't think so,” he said hoarsely. “You see, I've made sure to train for this.”
With his other hand, he shot a webline to the passing train. He clapped his hands together, attaching the weblines. The conjoined webline pulled taut, yanking Hobgoblin away! Hobgoblin’s armor sparked off the floor as he was dragged behind the train.
Spider-Man stood up as the glider flew past him to retrieve Hobgoblin. But he was far too beat to do anything about it. He rubbed at his throat sorely as the remaining cops aimed at him.
”Hold it right there! You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice…”
Spider-Man webbed their guns up casually. “Heard it all before.”
He jumped up onto the stump of the destroyed pillar, then again out the broken window.
***
For the last few minutes, Mary-Jane had watched in breathless suspense as the news copters tried to get an angle inside Grand Central Station, only managing to capture blurs of motion and violence. Finally, Peter reappeared, battered, but alive. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
The variety of news media assembled pointed all cameras at him. Peter jumped down onto a news van, winded, and begins taking several deep breathes.
”The boom mike, the boom mike!” the reporter who’d so recently been in front of the camera said.
His grip held the boom mike up to Peter, who was still breathing heavily.
”Spider-Man, could we have a few words with you?”
"’Brancaleone’, ‘ratty’, and ‘commune’. Enjoy."
”What?”
”Oh yeah. I’m sure you’re going to repay me for saving all your lives by calling me a mutant freak or blaming me for Apollo 13 or whatever. Guy gets a little tired of waiting for the applause to start, you know?”
”Well, no one knows you. You swing around on those webs and you wear that creepy mask…”
”Creepy? I just fought a guy who puts on make-up to fight me. That’s creepy.”
”But who are you?”
Peter paused thoughtfully. “Me? I’m Spider-Man, sent from the planet Arachnitron 7, far, far away where humans and spiders live and mate in harmony.”
Somewhere, J. Jonah Jameson banged his fist on his desk and shouted “I KNEW IT!”
”I was sent to Earth to research this thing you humans call… love. With Julia Roberts. And she is quite a handful in the bedroom, let me tell you!”
Everyone but Mary-Jane gasped. She stifled a giggle.
Somewhere, J. Jonah Jameson asked Betty Brant to dig up that photograph of Julia Roberts in a thong.
Peter shot out a webline as sirens closed in. “Well, looks like we’re all out of time! Next, Hawkeye will be showing us how to make a great soufflé for only four dollars!” He swung away.
Minutes passed as the reporters tried to regain control of the story. Mary-Jane ordered another drink and waited for her cell to ring. It did. She answered.
“Yes?”
”MJ, it’s me.”
”What? I can’t hear you.”
On the other end of the line, Spider-Man pulled his mask up to his nose so his voice isn’t muffled.
”Are you okay?”
”I’m fine, it’s just a little loud here,” Mary-Jane said as she moved to a quieter part of the club. Gwen and Liz had gone back to dancing. The TVJ was playing a pop single about Spider-Man and the whole thing had turned into an impromptu, post-ironic condemnation/celebration of the web-slinger.
”Yeah, well just thought I’d call you in case you saw any of that stuff on the news. You know, I’m okay, you’re okay. Are you alone?”
”No one’s listening in, if that’s what you mean.”
”No. Try to stay with crowds. Hobgoblin knows who I am and I pissed him off pretty bad, he might try something.”
”What do you think I should do?”
”Get a taxi, go to your aunt’s. I’m going to take the fight to Hobgoblin.”
”Come back alive.”
”If you insist. Oh, and I’m not really doing Julia Roberts,” Peter added. “Just so you know.”
”And here I thought I’d been overestimating you.”
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
”Nothing.”
”I could totally bag Julia Roberts if I wanted to.”
”I believe you.”
”But I don’t want to.”
”Of course.”
”She’s not my type.”
”Bye.”
Mary-Jane didn’t know how Peter couldn’t get into clubbing. True, he wasn’t the world’s best dancer, but getting out of his apartment for anything besides school and work (and… work) would be good for him. It was like she was in a tug-of-war with Spider-Man over Peter.
Well, not tonight. She was going to slip out of all that nonsense for one night and just have fun. She’d called up Gwen and Liz and they’d agreed to go prowling with her. Club Teevee was one of those dance clubs with pretensions of social experimentation, having hired amidst much fanfare a “TVJ” who manipulated the feeds to a bank of fifty TV monitors on the back wall. The effect was oddly congruous and hypnotic. Still, Mary-Jane ignored it in favor of one hell of margarita and dishing with her girls in a corner booth.
“My dad’s still spending all his time at the office,” Gwen was saying. She was a bit of a daddy’s girl, and this got her a “tish!” from her companions. “It’s not his fault, he’s just more comfortable there.”
”He’s more comfortable around an array of police officers and criminals then among his own daughter?” Liz asked.
”It’s his breed. Leave the parenting to the mother while the man goes out and does manly things to make manly money,” Mary-Jane said.
“What, you think I should stage an intervention? Try to change him? I’m perfectly satisfied with our relationship as is.”
”I can sympathize. I’m happy with my lack of relationship with my father.”
”Mary-Jane, no offense, but your father’s a scumbag,” Liz said. “Did he even show up for your wedding?”
”Attempted wedding,” Mary-Jane corrected, before rotating her drink around morosely in the most blaringly obvious “change the subject” body language she could manage.
”Exactly, it’s not like he missed much.”
”The cake was good though.”
”Yes, very good cake.”
Mary-Jane glanced at the TV bank. Like a picture trying to break through the random feeds, more and more of the channels were showing the same colors. Her suspicions raised, Mary-Jane got up and crossed the dance floor to get closer to the TVs, Liz and Gwen following supportively. It was Peter and Hobgoblin, a fight of theirs, live! The footage, often from competing angles, was spreading over more and more of the local stations and news channels.
”Hey, turn it up!” Mary-Jane shouted to the TVJ.
He saw the image and switched all the pictures to one channel, forming a vast composite over the entire bank of monitors. With another flick of his hand the club’s soundtrack switched from a repetitive techno-beat to the TV sound.
”…fight between Spider-Man and this as-yet-unidentified individual,” the newscaster was saying, “who bears a definite resemblance to the Green Goblin who menaced this city…”
”It would serve that menace right if whoever that green guy is did clobber him,” Liz said. “I hear he’s built a giant web over the Burroughs!”
”Be quiet! Geez, Spider-Man goes out there everyday, fighting criminals with nothing but guts, superpowers… and the cutest butt I’ve ever seen.”
Mary-Jane would’ve shot daggers at Gwen if she weren’t so worried.
On the screen, Spider-Man was being spun around by the ankles by the Goblin. Mary-Jane could hear that shrill laugh even over the drone of the newscaster’s patter. The Goblin spun Peter through a TV aerial… Mary-Jane could imagine the metallic thrashing it would’ve made as it was rended apart, slicing Peter’s skin… and the madman laughed louder as he spun toward a chimney.
“C’mon, Pete, snap out of it…” Mary-Jane said under her breath.
She didn’t imagine he could hear her. She didn’t even imagine he was listening. But Peter shot out a webline which caught on the side of the building, jerking himself to a bone-crunching halt. Hobgoblin was similarly thrown from his glider. They both landed awkwardly on a rooftop, the glider spinning away like a floating top. Hobgoblin touched his head, shook it, then just growled as he dug a pumpkin bomb from his bag and threw it.
Peter jumped away as it exploded, the shockwave catching him in mid-leap! He barely managed to shoot out a webline, swung, had to kick off a wall he was passing by to keep from smearing against it. Then he reached the apex, streamlined himself into a dart, and swung back.
“Yeah, baby!” Mary-Jane cried as Spider-Man swung into Hobgoblin, knocking him for a serious loop.
***
Now they were both falling at an angle towards a window into Grand Central Station. Spider-Man shot a web up to the top of the massive window frame as Hobgoblin flew through it, then swung through it to deliver a cannonball kick to Hobgoblin. They tumbled inside, Spider-Man shooting out a webline to swing onto a pillar, Hobgoblin catching his glider and ascending to Spider-Man’s level.
Far away, Mary Jane noticed with concern that Peter was favoring the leg Hobgoblin had been spinning him by.
“Trick or treat, Spider-Man,” Hobgoblin said.
”Is there really a choice?”
“Twenty paces.”
“Done.”
Spider-Man jumped past Hobgoblin, across Grand Central Station, shot a webline out to catch another pillar, swung around it and started webswinging toward Hobgoblin, who rocketed toward him.
They moved towards each other on a collision course, Hobgoblin on his glider, Spider-Man webswinging. When Peter shot one webline, he didn't grab on to it with his hand, but instead kept extending the line even though it had hit the ceiling, causing him to descend. At the last minute he grabbed it and met Hobgoblin on the upswing, hitting him on the chin with both feet in something like a kicking uppercut. He grabbed onto the glider's head with both hands and orbited it before letting go and sticking to a pillar.
Hobgoblin fell, landing on the Information Booth and smashing the famous four-sided clock to gears.
”Looks like you’ve run out of time, Goblin.”
Hobgoblin pulled out a Pumpkin Bomb and threw it. Peter jumped off the pillar and onto the next one over as the bomb went off.
”You’re okay as a Big Bad, chuckles, but you’ll never be a pitcher in the big leagues!”
”Amusing, Spider-Man. I hope you find the thought of innocent blood on your hands as funny!”
Spider-Man turned to see that the pillar was toppling toward several oblivious people! Spider-Man kicked off his pillar, landed in a roll, came up running. With seconds to spare, he constructed a web between the two pillars on either side of the falling one. The webbing stretched with a thropp, but held. The saved bystanders looked at him.
“How are you not aware that there are two superpowered beings fighting? GET OUT OF HERE!”
While he was busy with that, three transit cops had burst onto the scene and taken aim at Hobgoblin. The villain raised his hands in apparent surrender.
”I confess! I did it! I jumped the turnstile! And I’m glad I did it, see?” His glove blasters began to charge surreptitiously as he offered his hands to be cuffed. “Take me in before I kill again!
Spider-Man tackled him and the Goblin sparks went wild. One cop was hit in the leg by a stray blast, going down as his weapon went off, absolute pandemonium reigning. The superhumans rolled along on the ground until Hobgoblin grabbed Spidey by the neck and headbutted him three times, then rolled over so that he was on top and began choking Peter.
”Today you die, Spider-Man.”
”I oughta make an MP3 of that line, I hear it so much!” Spider-Man heard a train coming.
Hobgoblin squeezed tighter. “That will be the last time you hear anything…”
Spider-Man pounded at Hobgoblin’s back, inconspicuously attaching a webline to the small of his back. “I don't think so,” he said hoarsely. “You see, I've made sure to train for this.”
With his other hand, he shot a webline to the passing train. He clapped his hands together, attaching the weblines. The conjoined webline pulled taut, yanking Hobgoblin away! Hobgoblin’s armor sparked off the floor as he was dragged behind the train.
Spider-Man stood up as the glider flew past him to retrieve Hobgoblin. But he was far too beat to do anything about it. He rubbed at his throat sorely as the remaining cops aimed at him.
”Hold it right there! You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice…”
Spider-Man webbed their guns up casually. “Heard it all before.”
He jumped up onto the stump of the destroyed pillar, then again out the broken window.
***
For the last few minutes, Mary-Jane had watched in breathless suspense as the news copters tried to get an angle inside Grand Central Station, only managing to capture blurs of motion and violence. Finally, Peter reappeared, battered, but alive. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
The variety of news media assembled pointed all cameras at him. Peter jumped down onto a news van, winded, and begins taking several deep breathes.
”The boom mike, the boom mike!” the reporter who’d so recently been in front of the camera said.
His grip held the boom mike up to Peter, who was still breathing heavily.
”Spider-Man, could we have a few words with you?”
"’Brancaleone’, ‘ratty’, and ‘commune’. Enjoy."
”What?”
”Oh yeah. I’m sure you’re going to repay me for saving all your lives by calling me a mutant freak or blaming me for Apollo 13 or whatever. Guy gets a little tired of waiting for the applause to start, you know?”
”Well, no one knows you. You swing around on those webs and you wear that creepy mask…”
”Creepy? I just fought a guy who puts on make-up to fight me. That’s creepy.”
”But who are you?”
Peter paused thoughtfully. “Me? I’m Spider-Man, sent from the planet Arachnitron 7, far, far away where humans and spiders live and mate in harmony.”
Somewhere, J. Jonah Jameson banged his fist on his desk and shouted “I KNEW IT!”
”I was sent to Earth to research this thing you humans call… love. With Julia Roberts. And she is quite a handful in the bedroom, let me tell you!”
Everyone but Mary-Jane gasped. She stifled a giggle.
Somewhere, J. Jonah Jameson asked Betty Brant to dig up that photograph of Julia Roberts in a thong.
Peter shot out a webline as sirens closed in. “Well, looks like we’re all out of time! Next, Hawkeye will be showing us how to make a great soufflé for only four dollars!” He swung away.
Minutes passed as the reporters tried to regain control of the story. Mary-Jane ordered another drink and waited for her cell to ring. It did. She answered.
“Yes?”
”MJ, it’s me.”
”What? I can’t hear you.”
On the other end of the line, Spider-Man pulled his mask up to his nose so his voice isn’t muffled.
”Are you okay?”
”I’m fine, it’s just a little loud here,” Mary-Jane said as she moved to a quieter part of the club. Gwen and Liz had gone back to dancing. The TVJ was playing a pop single about Spider-Man and the whole thing had turned into an impromptu, post-ironic condemnation/celebration of the web-slinger.
”Yeah, well just thought I’d call you in case you saw any of that stuff on the news. You know, I’m okay, you’re okay. Are you alone?”
”No one’s listening in, if that’s what you mean.”
”No. Try to stay with crowds. Hobgoblin knows who I am and I pissed him off pretty bad, he might try something.”
”What do you think I should do?”
”Get a taxi, go to your aunt’s. I’m going to take the fight to Hobgoblin.”
”Come back alive.”
”If you insist. Oh, and I’m not really doing Julia Roberts,” Peter added. “Just so you know.”
”And here I thought I’d been overestimating you.”
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
”Nothing.”
”I could totally bag Julia Roberts if I wanted to.”
”I believe you.”
”But I don’t want to.”
”Of course.”
”She’s not my type.”
”Bye.”
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Date: 2009-08-31 12:13 am (UTC)And then I nearly fell off my chair.
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Date: 2009-08-31 02:34 pm (UTC)TheLurker
Date: 2009-09-01 03:27 pm (UTC)The spider-interview (spiderview?) was the exact sort of thing that the movies should have had in them, dammit! Your Peter is more canon then the one in comics and movies COMBINED! How i miss my old friend Spidey. Thank you for showing people how a great character Pete can be.