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It was Don Fortunato, back at it again with his criminal activities.
Peter wasn’t sure what was up this time—well, he could take a guess, but the guy was a Don, so anything he surmised would probably be right. MJ had called him about Fortunato, said those exact words, and said she’d fill him in when he got here.
Well, he was here, and she wasn’t. She must’ve pulled an MJ, sneaked past the guards, and gotten herself in without him again.
He shook his head. That was so dangerous, but she never listened to him. He only hoped she’d taken some of the gadgets he’d given her.
He had two options: pull an MJ as well and sneak his way in, or take these guys out first so that he could get MJ out safely later. Technically, there was a third option, to turn back and leave, but like hell was he leaving MJ in a potentially dangerous situation like this—and he didn’t even know what the danger was yet, but with Maggia Dons, there was always danger. At least this wasn’t one of Fisk’s bases.
MJ wasn’t normally wrong about these things, so attacking these guys most likely wouldn’t get him into trouble with the cops—look at him, all these ‘not sure’s, ‘normally’s, and ‘most likely’s. He missed the days where he knew what he was getting himself into.
It was a shipping yard with tall, overhead lights that looked like perfect perching posts, wonderful for hanging cocooned, maggia henchmen—he spoke from experience.
And that he did, taking out four silently and surveying the remaining two in the yard. He was just about to simultaneously distract one and grab the other when the doors burst open violently, cracking against the steel siding with a bang.
A new man burst out screaming, “Intruder!”
The two men in the yard were instantly intrigued, running toward their partner while he went on, “An intruder’s been caught—“ the two men looked up and around, trying to sight Spider-Man—yeah, he was thinking the same, that he’d been the one spotted and the gig was up—and startling when they found their coworkers upside-down—“shit, Marv—“ he addressed one man in particular who in turn gave his full attention, “—send for Fortunato immediately!”
Marv nodded, started for the gate but turned back, “What do I say?”
Pete twisted around, preparing to leap to a different light pole so he could grab Marv on his way out, but he didn’t. The next words were important.
“We caught a snoop, and we need instructions to deal with her.”
Her? They obviously meant Mary Jane! Why was she always getting herself into trouble!?
The man ran off, but Pete wasn’t paying attention to him anymore, needing to find and help MJ. She’d been caught—of course, she’d been caught. When was she not caught?—well, several times, actually, tipping the scale, but Peter was being deliberately negative, so shoo.
How bad of a situation was this though?
The remaining two men ran inside before Pete had a chance to take them out, so he zipped to the roof above them, searching for a vent through which he’d make his entrance. Unfortunately, it was at the back end of the building. However, fortunately, he could easily hear them talking from that vent, so it must be the right option.
He wanted to make a dusty vent pun, but the voices were raised and angry, and he didn’t hear MJ at all. He needed his ADHD brain silent for a moment so he could actually focus.
“Was anything breached?”
“Yessir. The drawer is broken, no clue where the lock is at, probably broken, too.”
“Dammit!” There was a shattering, probably ceramic, a vase maybe? Peter crawled faster, getting closer with every second. “The files?”
A beat of hesitation, and then Peter was there, looking down into the room—yeah, that was a coffee mug in pieces on the floor, not a vase.
“Scattered about, Paul’s figuring out what’s missing, but it looks like it’s all been tampered with.” The speaker was standing by the desk across the room from Peter, who was above the door. The second man had his head in his hands, elbows on the desk, clearly distraught. And MJ—MJ was unconscious on the floor in the corner behind the desk, blood leaking from her temple.
He knew there were seven other men in the building—why were there always so many, did these guys travel in groups?—so he had to maintain his stealth. Nine to one were not good odds. Yeah, he could take ‘em, and he’s fought more before, but MJ was here, and he couldn’t risk her getting hurt.
“So she obviously knows Don’s secrets. Pictures, ya think?” And both men turned toward her, the one arising from the chair and approaching her—approaching MJ, to rifle through her stuff, and she didn’t carry a purse on stealth missions—too easy to bang on things and make noise—so he was going to rifle through her pockets, touch her without her consent, while she was unconscious—and Peter’s blood began to boil.
Anger pumped through his veins, and he didn’t hesitate, didn’t think it through, just needed to stop him from touching her so he leaped from the vent, landing steady and tall on his feet, arm outstretched, and urgently yelled, “Stop It!”
The man stopped—of course, he stopped, Spider-Man just made an entrance from the ceiling—turned toward Spider-Man with wide eyes, as did the other man, and Peter noticed MJ smirk, trying to hide it, but her face still twitched very distinctly—she was faking it this whole time, dammit, and he gave himself away, forfeiting his advantage. She probably had a plan or something, too.
God, MJ, why couldn’t you just communicate!
“You can’t just feel up an unconscious girl. Don’t you know how wrong that is?”
A second later, the door behind him burst open to reveal four men, guns already aiming for his face—great, just great, way to go, Peter, thanks a lot, MJ—and behind him, his spidey-sense warned of another gun, so with legs planted, he twisted his torso to check. Sure enough, another gun ready to fire, but he especially noticed the now wide-eyed and very much awake MJ in the remaining man’s arms—well, to be more precise, arm, singular.
He had one hand taken by the gun he stuck under MJ’s ribs, her arm hiding it from sight, while the other arm held her up, supporting her from collapsing, and as Pete watched, she steadied her legs under her, standing to her full height—haha, that guy was short!—eyes locked on Peter’s—well, Spider-Man’s—well, the suit’s, cause she couldn’t actually see his eyes.
The man spoke as he watched, “Don’t make a move, Spider-Man.”
He didn’t, and he wouldn’t.
“I can hurt her a lot faster than you can take out all my men. So now—”
He interrupted, knowing the man was going to say something like So now, you’ll surrender, and we’ll have both of you in custody. He didn’t want that. He needed MJ to leave. Once the Don discovered that she worked for the Bugle, he’d kill her outright. He’d done that to the previous reporters—well, that’s what Peter had speculated, and considering that MJ was here, she was hopefully onto some evidence of it.
Peter needed to get MJ out of here yesterday.
With no idea where the Don was or how close he was, Peter didn’t really have the time to think up a plan, so he relied on improvisation—he was good at improv, wasn’t he?
“Take me instead!” Or was he bad at improv?
The room was silent for a beat. MJ shook her head, frightened.
Then the man in charge replied with a smirk on his face, “How about we take both of you?”
Um, no, Peter didn’t like that idea. No way would MJ survive the Don.
He didn’t even reply, MJ did, “We all know Fortunato will kill me when he gets here—” Peter shook his head, and then more vehemently as she kept talking—“because I’m a reporter for the Daily Bugle—”
What was she doing giving herself away like that? DIdn’t she know she’d be killed? Of course, she did! What was she doing?
He interrupted hastily, “What are you doing!?”
But she just looked at him with confidence, smirked, and continued, “And Spider-Man will kill you all when I’m dead, cause then you won’t have a hostage!”
The gun pressed harder into her ribs, Pete could see it, could see her wince, and the man behind the gun grunted, unhappy with her words, but believing them all the same.
Pete spoke before that guy could, “Take me instead because your boss will be much happier with me as a captive than a nosy reporter.” Oh, if only MJ could see the look of irritation on his face, but alas, masks conceal.
The room was silent, no one moving, the Big Man thinking, contemplating his choices.
Pete continued, needing this guy to think only what Spider-Man wanted him to, “Just let her go and I will surrender myself.”
Eyes squinted, disbelieving, he replied, “You think I’m stupid? Don’t you? Boy?”
Annoyed at that puny, belittling insult—he’s grown up a lot since he first started this gig, he’s not a boy—he was going to just have to play along. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, what with six guns pointed at him and one at MJ.
The truly unfortunate thing was that they couldn’t see his eyes roll. He’d have to work on ideas about that…
“Give me your word and I will surrender, on my word, because you and I both know that honor is—“
“Deal,” the guy interrupted, “On your knees. Now.”
Well, Pete was going to say that honor was the highest virtue to Fortunato, so if this man went back on his word, he’d suffer worse repercussions than MJ should Fortunato come across him. So, Peter trusted him, hated this plan, thought it was stupid, how did this even happen, but he trusted him, knelt down reluctantly, and put his hands on his head for good measure.
God, this was so humiliating.
“Now let her go.” Was there a pout in his voice? Yes. Yes, there was.
Boss Man just smirked, nodded, and released Mary Jane in the form of manhandling her off to a different Maggia henchman, who in turn threw her out the door saying, “Run before the Big Man shows up, you little skank!”
MJ was finally out of harm’s way, so Pete could relax, let off a little, “Skank? Who uses ‘skank’ anymore? You know this isn’t actually The Godfather, right?”
“Shut up” was the last thing he heard before a bullet shattered his knee, and he fell over screaming.
The sharp agony radiated up and down his entire leg, freezing his toes and melting his hip. His eyes were squeezed tight, his jaw locked shut, and his breath deliberately held until the pain died down and he could hear again, hear something besides his own heartbeat and screams. He couldn’t help it. He could feel the shards of his patella stabbing him in places they shouldn’t be and the sheer wrongness of his entire knee.
The scientist in him knew that it wasn’t just his knee cap that was damaged, because of the force of a bullet at this range wouldn’t just stop at one silly bone. His entire leg was probably out of commission. The human part of him wished he could just cut the leg off because surely, being a leg down was better than this searing pain.
His breathing technique of not breathing at all was disrupted when someone tried to move him, which of course jostled that leg. White enveloped the space behind his closed eyelids, fire engulfed his whole world, wrenching more screams from his throat.
He wasn’t aware of his surroundings really, just aware that his entire leg was an all-encompassing inferno, and he couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t put the fire out because he couldn’t get to it—couldn’t reach it, it was too far away and engulfing more and more and he was losing it—and it was messing his mind up.
He still hadn’t opened his eyes and wasn’t going to until he could get a handle on this, but with—and then he was moved again, his arms forced behind his back and locked in place, arms under his that pulled, and that poor torn-up leg dragged across the floor some more, ripping animalistic howls from his throat.
Peter was half out of his mind when he finally came back to it, the pain dying down to a manageable level, and he realized that his throat was sore when he tried to swallow down more screams.
God, he’d taken bullets before, broken bones, and ripped up flesh from none other than Fisk’s own katana, but combine them all into one and no, he hadn’t experienced this before.
Time passed slowly, yet too fast, but his HUD’s clock showed than an entire half-hour passed before he came back to reality with clenched teeth and an aching jaw.
Reality was unkind, so he burrowed his head against the floor as much as he could to hide his face, even though he knew they couldn’t see it. His arms were tied behind his back, and he didn’t want to even test the ropes right now, didn’t want to think about the state of his leg either. He’d need to drag it around to get out of here, so he had to just ignore it as best as he could, buy himself as much time as he could, give his body that much longer to heal it up—God, no, it’s going to heal all wrong, and wouldn’t it just be his luck that Spider-Man will need surgery on his knee?
He just laid there, waiting, biding his time. Nobody else was in this room with him, but there was a camera in the corner. Didn’t matter much, though. He wasn’t going anywhere for a little longer.
Five agonizing minutes later, Fortunato himself came to pay him a visit. The room was silent as he crouched to get a closer look, but Peter didn’t move, didn’t say anything.
Addressing the henchman behind him, Fortunato questioned, “Why’s one’a his knees out?”
“So he can’t escape, sir.”
There was a beat of silence before Fortunato’s next words, “But why only one? Don’t you know how fast he heals?”
Peter knew exactly what was going to happen next, he didn’t need his spidey-sense to warn him. He lifted his head, eyes wide, and pleaded with broken air, “No, please, don’t—“
But Fortunato stood up, drew his gun, and shot out Peter’s left knee, too.