Ultimate Spider-Man: Run Like Hell

Disclaimer: Still don't own any Marvel property. Don't sue.

AN: As some of you probably noticed, there's some italics formatting missing from the first chapter that makes some things a little hard to follow, I'm sure. I'm still getting used to how files work around here, so I'll go back and fix that ASAP. Also, over 200 hits? Holy crap. That's a lot for a story with little going on right now. Things start picking up after this chapter.

CHAPTER 2

It's busy here, as usual. Although I have yet to hear someone yell “Stop the presses!” or “Copy!” the Daily Bugle's offices are still actually pretty close to what you see in the movies. People don't walk around here. Everyone's always running, always handing off paper to somebody else, always rattling away at the keyboard. It's actually pretty invigorating, even if all I usually really have to do is sit there in the middle of it like a monkey waiting for the newest batch of images to upload to the server so I can code them in. I think Aunt May hopes some of this crazy, can-do energy I'm around all the time wears off on me. I wouldn't mind it either, but I want it to be even faster the next time I have to duck around mechanical tentacles, and she just wants me to clean my room.

Sometimes I don't think I'm appreciated.

Today's been pretty slow for me, regardless of how busy everyone else is, and I feel a little guilty about it. I've been here for over two hours, and all I officially had to do was copy and paste a chunk of tomorrow's headline text into the main body of the website, tweak the display prices a little, and upload and place the newest pictures of Spider-Man – nee Peter Parker – which are thankfully absent of any baked goods, at least for now. I'm on the clock until nine, since it's usually busier on Fridays, so I've spent a lot of time organising the pictures on the server over and over again, first into alphabetical order, then numerical, and finally chronological. By eight o'clock, I'm thinking of changing my secret identity to Unaccomplished Boy.

Mr Jameson storms past, pausing only to yell at one of the mailroom workers for “loitering”, a dirty gray streamer of cigar smoke chasing his back like a viper. If I lean back in my chair a little, I can see Ben Urich leaning against his cubicle farther down, talking furiously into a cell phone while making notes on a little spiral pad. Across the room, Betty Brant is perched on the edge of the coffee table with a stack of files as tall as my hip beside her.

Everyone's got something going on right now except for me.

I'm halfway out of my chair on my way to Mr Jameson's office, daring showing up on his radar to see if he has anything else I can do, when the office line in Mr Urich's cubicle rings.

I don't know why I stop when I hear that, but I do. Some faint tingle of precognition that makes me turn towards him.

For whatever reason, a lot of people don't call the front desk when they call the Bugle. Ms Brant said once that people just start dialing extensions in the hope of getting someone who actually works there rather than the secretary who usually brushes people off. Mr Urich pauses in his notes and frowns down at his desk a moment, before sighing into his cell. “Okay, listen, someone's on my line. I've got to go, okay? . . . yes, we'll talk about it when you get here . . . you too . . . 'bye.” He looks vaguely troubled and annoyed as he drops his cell into his pocket and plucks his desk phone from it's cradle, tucking it in between his neck and shoulder. “Ben Urich.” he says, frowning distractedly at the pad in his hand.

There's that prickly feeling between my shoulders again.

For a moment, Mr Urich says nothing, but the hand holding the pad suddenly drops to his side and his head comes up. His brow furrows, and he turns to look at me. “ . . . what? Yes, he's here, who's . . . yes, right. Okay. Calm down, here he is.” He beckons to me, expression troubled, holding out the phone. “It's for you, Peter. Someone named Mary Jane. Isn't that your girlfriend?”

I cross the distance between us in two leaping strides and snatch the phone out of his hand. Suddenly, my heart is making it difficult to breathe because it's beating in my throat. Mary Jane has never called me at work before, and that look on Mr Urich's face is bothering me. Would he look like that if MJ was just calling to ask if I wanted to go to the mall tomorrow?

He's looking at me like you look at a kid who's just had his dog run over, oh my God, Mary, Aunt MAY . . .

“Hello?” I say, my voice sounding strangled. I'm vaguely aware that Mr Urich is still watching me, and now Miss Brant has turned to frown in my direction too. “Hello? Mary Jane? What's wrong?”

“Peter!” One word, emerging in a gaspy near-scream, and then she lapses into sobs.

I've heard Mary Jane cry before. Once when she fell down the school steps and sprained her ankle, and again when she accidentally ran her bike into her dad's car and broke off the side mirror. But I'd never heard her cry like this before. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone cry like this before.

For a full minute, I only listen, first as she gets herself under control, then as she tells me, in a series of spurts between sobs, what happened. The strangest feeling comes over me, like my body is turning to stone from the bottom up. I look down, half expecting to see my legs gone, and it seems strange to me that they're still there – they're so damned numb.

Miss Brant has come over now, her mouth open to speak, and Mr Urich holds up a hand, cutting her off. I register her expression of indignant anger without caring. “Okay,” I hear myself saying, “just . . . stay there, okay? I'll be there, right away.”

“Pete --” she cries, sounding broken and so damned small.

“I'm coming.” I hang up the phone and spin around to find Mr Urich standing there. My head is pounding, and everything sounds muffled, like I'm wrapped in cotton. “I have to go. My . . . Mary Jane is at the police station. Something happened.”

Miss Brant's eyes widen and one hand rises to cover her mouth. Mr Urich only nods. “Come on. You tell me where, and I'll give you a ride.”

I don't even hesitate. I could probably get there faster by web, but I can't risk getting side-tracked, and a part of me knows it would be dangerous and stupid to be up in the air tonight with my head suddenly a mess. “Yeah. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”

“Betty,” Mr Urich says as he snatches his keys off his desk, “tell Jonah I had to take Peter on a personal emergency, okay? If he's got a problem with it, he can call my cell.”

I don't hear Miss Brant's reply. I'm already out the door and headed for the parking garage.

Mary Jane . . .

*

I can't tell you much about what happened after that because I honestly don't remember much of anything other than the sick throb of horror in the pit of my suddenly empty stomach, and Mary Jane's sweet, innocent face taking up my mind's eye. Distantly, I'm aware of Mr Urich driving maybe a little faster than the speed limit would allow, and if I glance to the left I can see him there in the driver's seat; he looks grim and almost ghostly in the green backglow from the instrument panel.

It's not fast enough. I know Mary Jane is with the police, somewhere brightly lit and full of people, but that doesn't change my fear, my guilt, that she was alone somewhere where another girl, someone just like her, was . . .

Mr Urich takes a corner too fast, and the compact little car rocks slightly on it's wheels, but I barely feel it. All I can think about is Mary Jane Watson, the girl who never hurt anybody in her entire life, running from some maniac.

Running without me there to protect her.

I know she's going to say it's not my fault. And I know I don't have any crazy X-Men mind powers, so I couldn't have exactly called Mr Jameson today to say I wouldn't be in because I needed to hang around my high school and watch out for murders. But it doesn't matter. The media and the public knows it too, and I can already see tomorrow's revised headline in my head, black and white letters towering over me, so real I can see the grain of the paper they were printed on:

QUEENS TEENAGER KILLED IN SCHOOL PARKING LOT, ANOTHER BARELY ESCAPES.
WHERE WAS SPIDER-MAN?

“Peter.”

I actually jump when Mr Urich reaches over to shake my shoulder. Great. Spider-sense and nerves like an old cat, that's me. He doesn't seem to notice, however. “We're here.”

That surprises me again, and I have to look around to verify that it's true. For the first time, I notice the familiar settings around me, the exterior of the local precinct I've walked past on my way to school every day for the past several years. We've made good time according to the clock on the dash – great time – and it occurs to me that he must have broken any number of traffic laws to get me here, and it's a miracle we weren't pulled over. It's about time somebody up there took a shine to me.

I fumble for the door handle and then hesitate, looking back at him. “Mr Urich, I – thanks, um, thank you, you have no idea -- “

He waves me off with a slight smile and nods past me. “You go on to your girl now, Peter.” he says simply. “I'll be here in case you need a ride.”

I could have told him that Aunt May is probably hurtling towards here at meteoric speeds right now with Mrs Watson, but I'm too grateful, and too hurried, to get the words out, so I only nod dumbly and spill myself out onto the sidewalk, taking the precinct steps at a run.

The local station is small. I know in the movies police departments are always these big towering stone edifices, with cavernous offices and marble floors, and big oak desks for the sergeants to peer over like giants, but trust me that that isn't how it goes. Not in Queens, anyway. I've never actually been in here, and the first thing I notice isn't the pokey little desk with the sleepy looking officer behind it or the creaky ceiling fan turning overhead, but the smell of urine.

I hesitate briefly inside the door, looking around, feeling my stomach sink more and more. It seems impossible that Mary Jane could be safe here. The paint is peeling and the ventilation is noisy, and there's a man dressed in rags and vomit nodding asleep on the bench nearest the door. This is where the city's finest go? The man behind the desk looks up at me, eyes bloodshot and shadow stippling his jaw.

“Are you Peter Parker? I'm sorry, but she's gone. There was nothing we could do.”

Except that's not right. His mouth doesn't match what I'm hearing. The world tilts a little under my feet, and I force myself to take a breath. Let's not have a panic attack, Mr Parker. “What? What did you say?”

“I said, can I help you, son?” he repeats, giving me a kindly, mildly exasperated look.

“Peter!”

I turn towards the sound in time to catch Mary Jane as she throws herself at me. I can only catch a glimpse of her wide, shocked eyes and the tear tracks on her cheeks before she buries her face in my chest.

Thank you, thank you, God or whoever, oh my God, Mary Jane . . .

I didn't realise how certain I was that she was going to be hurt bad or gone until I had my arms around her. I felt weak with relief and was almost ashamed at how hard I crushed her against me. It probably hurt – I don't know my own strength these days – but she only cries and hugs me back harder. I run my hands over her back in something like disbelief, trying to make sure she's whole by touch, sliding my hands into the softness of her hair. “I'm so glad you're okay.” I say hoarsely, and she cries harder in response. I can feel her nails digging into my back through my shirt, but I don't care.

“Excuse me.”

Startled, I look up. I don't recognise the man standing in front of me, but I recognise the uniform for what it is, and the badge pinned to his shirt. I look at him critically, openly, and he lets me with a patient expression. He's tall and thin, but his build doesn't suggest frailty to me. He's probably in his forties or so, with more lines in his face than another man of the same age in a different job, and his short, blonde hair is mussed. There's kindness in his face, though, and his blue eyes are clear and steady. If this is the man who was watching over MJ until I got here, then I'm glad.

“Mr Parker, right?” he says. He smiles, not patronisingly, and I like him even more. “She's been waiting for you. I'm Officer Trent. She's had quite the hard night, I'm sorry to say, but that's one brave young lady you've got there.”

Mary Jane only sniffles and doesn't look up. I cradle the back of her head and give her another squeeze, finally feeling my heart begin to slow down. “You don't have to tell me twice.”

He nods and hooks his thumbs into his belt. “We've gotten hold of her mother – your Aunt, too, she insisted – and they'll be here directly. In the meantime, you kids want to step into my office here? Nobody'll bother you.” He pauses and looks past me. “ . . . help you, sir?”

Twisting around, I realise Mr Urich has followed me in. He's standing awkwardly off to one side with his hands in his pockets and gives me an apologetic look, as though he's walked in on something private. “Oh, that's . . . “ I stop short of giving his full name. You don't have to be a genius to know reporters usually aren't welcome around police stations at times like these. “That's Ben. He works where I do. He gave me a ride here from the city.”

Trent smiles at me again. “Got a job? Good for you. Came running when she called, too.” he adds with approval. “Wish my boy was as well-minded as you.”

“You go on and wait with her, Peter.” Mr Urich says. “I'll wait here until her mother gets here.”

I look at him again, feeling another wave of dumb gratitude. Sometimes, adults really go above and beyond, and I can appreciate it even more coming from Mr Urich, because he had no reason to do what he did for me tonight. It seems impossible that he's part of the same species as Mr Jameson, and for the first time I look at him as a friend rather than just another authority figure. He must understand, at least a little, because he smiles and nods a little at me as I lead Mary Jane into the nearby office.

I wait until it's clear Officer Trent isn't going to follow us in before I gently move Mary Jane back a pace so I can look at her. “MJ, what happened?” I ask, keeping my voice low. I know enough about police procedure to know they probably don't want her talking about specifics.

She gives me a miserable look. There are dark shadows until her eyes that weren't there when I saw her after school today, and her skin has a waxy, pale pallor that I don't like. “God, Pete, it was awful.” she whispers, hands clenched together. “You don't even know . . . that poor girl, and I . . . I just hid, and then I ran.” Tears well up in her eyes again, and I kiss her cheek quickly.

“No, MJ, don't. You did the right thing.”

She gives a trembling sigh and rubs her eyes with her fists like a small child. “I don't know. I just . . . I just froze, Peter. Maybe I could have helped her, but I was so scared . . . “

“Hey,” I say gruffly, “I'd be scared too, and you're talking to a guy who's brave enough to wear tights in New Jersey.”

She doesn't smile, but it was kind of a lame joke anyway. “I just keep seeing her.” she says. “That poor girl. I don't even know her name, but . . . God, Peter, I feel like someone just killed my best friend. Isn't that stupid?”

I hug her again, fiercely. “No, Mary Jane. It's not. You're beautiful like that.”

She sighs again and relaxes into my arms a little. I notice, seemingly for the first time, how small she is. It seems amazing to me that she doesn't get carried away by the wind. I take a deep breath and catch the faint scent of watermelon from her skin, some sort of body mist she likes, and suddenly I'm angry. Who would do it? Who would try to hurt someone like this, someone so small and sweet and kind?

As if she feels the change in me, Mary Jane pulls back a little to look up at me. “Officer Trent says the police are already there. I . . . I dropped my backpack, but they found it.” She hesitates, chewing on her lower lip. “ . . . you should go, too.”

“MJ! Forget it. I'm not -- “

“No!” she says, suddenly fierce. She grips my arms with surprising strength. There are still tears in her eyes, but she looks angry now. “No, you don't understand, Peter, you didn't see it. You didn't see her. Someone hurt that girl, and I need to know that everything is being done to catch whoever did.”

“The police -- “

“Yeah, but they might not see things you would.” Her grip tightens and she looks at me pleadingly. “Please, Peter. Just go check it out. It's what heroes do.”

She might as well have punched me in the gut. I actually sag a little. “Okay.” I sigh. “But you have to promise me you'll stay here --”

“I will -- “

“ -- and you have to keep Aunt May calm.” I add grimly.

Someone knocks on the door and we both jump. Mary Jane actually gives a little scream. I hurriedly cross to the door and open it to find Mr Urich standing there. “Sorry.” He says quietly. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything else I could do?”

I hesitate only briefly. “Actually, Mary Jane is starving. I guess she's really worn out. I was going to run to the McDonald's down the street and grab her something to eat. Would you mind waiting with her?”

He frowns a little at me, and I cringe inside. After everything he's done tonight, I feel like an ass for lying to him. “Peter, I don't know that it's a good idea for you to go out alone. Why don't I just -- “

“No, it's okay.” I say quickly. Then, lowering my voice in a sudden burst of inspiration. “She, uh, needs me to pick up some female things for her too.”

It's a stupid lie, but it does the trick. He blinks at me, then sighs. “Your Aunt is going to kill me. Just promise me you won't take any shortcuts through alleys or anything, allright?”

It's easy to promise that.

Why cut through an alley when I can go right up the walls and over the roof?

*

Kids. Ben's never been good with kids. Especially teenagers. Sometimes he suspects they're a whole different species, his own childhood not withstanding.

He sits silently on the bench across from Peter Parker's girlfriend, the sad looking little red-head with the downcast eyes. She must be around Parker's age – what, fifteen, sixteen? -- but she looks so much younger with her hair caught up in those little smiley barretts, and her face scrubbed clean of make-up and puffy from crying. She doesn't look at him, instead studying the scuffed tile floor between her sneakers, occasionally sniffing softly.

Someone just like her, his mind whispers wearily, someone just like her lying dead in a parking lot tonight.

It's a mark of how much his job and this city wears on him that the thought only provokes a distant kind of sadness overshadowed by tired resignation. After all, how many times does this happen in a year in New York? A month? How many little girls snatched off the streets and found in ditches, or, worse, in their own homes? The first time he'd reported on such a case – and God, doesn't that seem like decades ago now? -- he'd been shocked and horrified. He's still disgusted by it, but he's more troubled by the fact that everyone, himself included, seems to have accepted things like this as just another day in New York.

Ben can see it in the eyes of the officers that pass by the room occasionally. Sometimes they glance in, their expressions mildly concerned, but more often than not, they move by without a look. Their faces say, This is nothing new. Their faces say, We've got other things to take care of.

But the worst thing Ben sees in their faces is the look that says We see this all the time.

When did this ever become the norm? He wonders tiredly, taking off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. He can feel a dull ache setting in behind his eyes. When did we ever decide it was okay to live in a city like this? What the hell is wrong with us?

His notepad is right where he always carries it, in the breast pocket of his jacket. Tomorrow, Jonah is going to yell him into the ground for not trying to get an exclusive interview from the broken little person sitting across from him, but Ben can't bring himself to do it. On nights like these, all he wants to do is go home and try to forget about the asylum outside his door for a while. He needs to decompress in the worst way, and wonders if Emily will be home tonight.

“Um . . . “

Startled, Ben looks up. The girl – Mary Jane, wasn't it? -- is looking at him now . . . sort of. Her eyes meet his only briefly before dropping shyly away, and she rubs absently at one arm. “What is it, honey?” he asks. “Do you want me to see if I can find you a drink of water or a soda?”

“No . . . “ she says softly. “I was . . . I was just wondering if you knew a song?”

“ . . . what?” He's sure he must have misheard her for a moment, his overworked brain misfiring and making the wrong connections.

“At least . . . I think it's a song.” Her brow furrows a little. “I've never heard it before tonight.”

Something in Ben's mind wakes up and begins jangling, softly at first, and then louder. Reporter's instinct, maybe, that crazy itch that always lets him know when he's on to something. His fingers twitch, and he curls them into loose fists before he can reach for his notepad. He's not going to do it –n he's not going to be that asshole, asking her probing, vile questions after everything she's just gone through, not tonight, Jameson be damned. “How does it go?” he asks quietly, trying to keep the keenness out of his voice.

For a long moment, she doesn't say anything more. Then she begins to sing in a voice that's barely more than a whisper, soft and slightly unsteady. “Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to . . . to cast me off discourteously . . . for I have loved you . . . something . . . um . . . in your company.” Colour flames in her cheeks and she gives him an embarassed look.

Ben hardly notices. His brain has come all the way awake now, all cylinders firing, all pistons working, Houston, we are a-go. “That's an old song. Old ballad. It's called 'Greensleeves'. Why, honey?”

Her eyes close, squeeze shut, really. “Like . . . a love ballad?”

“That's the theory. Why? Where have you heard it?”

A little shiver runs through her, although to Ben it looks more like a shiver of revulsion rather than a chill. “It's what he sang.” she says, her voice suddenly toneless. “I heard him.

“He was singing a love song after he killed her.”

*

I've never been to the school at night before, and I really don't like it. It doesn't have anything to do with the way the chill in the air is sinking right through my costume as I crouch on top of the bleachers, and surprisingly it isn't even the police cars parked everywhere on the street, alternating red and blue light bathing the brick walls.

The whole building seems different somehow. Everything does in the dark. It seems taller, bigger, like something out of a bad gothic novel. All it needs is a lightning bolt to light it from behind. Below me, I can hear the electronic buzz of radios, and over a dozen men and women in uniforms are moving back and forth, in and out of shadow.

I'm less interested in them than in the outline on the ground at the entrance to the parking lot.

It's just so damned bizarre. The body is long gone, carted off by the coroner, but that outline of white tape is still there like an accusation. The ground is stained red in several places, big ugly splotches like Rorschach images in the dark.

I have to wonder what I'm doing here. I know what MJ wants me to do, but really – what the hell is a teenager in spandex going to accomplish that the forensics team won't? I leap soundlessly over their heads to the top of the gym and crawl towards the back of the building, hugging the cold roof with my body. I don't even know what I'm looking for, nevermind that if I'm spotted things are going to look very bad for me in the public eye.

There's nobody back here yet, around the football field. I guess the police are probably inside interrogating the cleaning crew. The goalposts look like giants in the dark, shadows sliding over them as the moon disappears and reappears from behind the shifting clouds.

Why did he do it, I wonder? Why did he kill that girl? He couldn't have thought she had any money worth taking. I can't wrap my head around it, and that makes it worse. Without a motive, it's just meanness for meanness' sake. It doesn't make any sense. It's like finding a rattlesnake in a sandbox.

I'm trying to think of what to do next – anything that might actually be useful (Hey, it's Unaccomplished Boy again! Welcome back!) -- when I hear the shuffling from my left.

I tense up immediately, but my Spider-sense doesn't react. Still, there's no mistaking human movement right now. All my senses are wired, and now that I'm listening for it, I can hear soft murmurs coming from the little alley behind the school's art building. Moving quickly, I slip across the rooftop and crane my head over the edge, fully prepared to find a maniac disposing evidence.

Instead?

Oh, no way.

I've had my fair share of awkward moments at school. Once, I walked into the boy's bathroom and had to backpedal because there was some guy in there with his hand up a girl's skirt.

This is like that, only a lot weirder.

There's a girl down there, half naked in the moonlight. I freeze as I realise it, the gleam of her white flesh like headlights to a deer. She's still wearing a pair of denim shorts, and there's a flimsy piece of white material on the ground next to her feet that's probably her shirt, but the rest of her is bared to the world. Her breasts are small and high, nipples tiny and erect in the cold, and her whole body seems to have a supernatural glow in the darkness.

She's not alone, of course. I can't see much of the guy she's with other than the occasional flash of some sort of yellow clothing as he shifts in the darkness, standing over her with his hands on her hips, head bent into the hollow of her throat. The shadows make her face seem alien and unrecogniseable, and all I can make out is the curve of her lips, painted a lush cherry red, smiling in the dark.

“Ooh!” she gasps in a high, breathy voice. “Oh, that's nice.” She runs her hands up into the hair of her lover, and giggles when his hands drop down to the swell of her buttocks, cupping them in his hands and squeezing them possessively.

I can't believe it. Maybe I'm behind the times, but I never thought of behind the school at night as being particularily sexy. Especially with a murder investigation going on, although I guess it's possible that they haven't heard anything yet, as far away as they are.

“Oooh, you're bad.” she murmurs as his hands slip down the back of her shorts, disappearing beneath the material. She rocks on the balls of her feet and groans a little. “You like that ass, baby? You want it?” The motions of her hips are lewd, exaggerated lust. She arches her back and it thrusts her breasts into the air, the pale pink of her nipples the only colour on her body, and the moonlight falls across her face.

And that's when I recognise the girl.

At that moment, Doctor Octopus could have walked past me singing Henry the Eighth at the top of his lungs, beaten the snot out of several pedestrians and flipped a car over on me, and I still wouldn't have noticed.

For a moment, I'm sure I must be mistaken. It's just too weird. That feeling of unreality washes over me again – just one of those days I guess – and I wonder dimly if everyone in the city got some sort of memo today to go completely batshit crazy that I missed.

There can't be any other excuse for seeing Liz Allen topless in the alley behind PS 117.

Now that I've identified her, I wonder how I couldn't have seen it was her immediately. I mean, how often do I see that crop of bouncy orange hair every day? Below, she giggles again, the sound high-pitched and breathy. “We're gonna get caaaaaaaught!” she whispers, the sound carrying up to me.

My first thought is, They can't be here. I've got to get them out of here. Whoever hurt that girl could be hanging around.

My second thought is, Mary Jane can never know I saw Liz without her top on, because I will never hear the end of it.

Get out of here! Do you want the next headline to be SPIDER-MAN SPIES ON LOCAL LOVE BIRDS. EXPERTS SAY CREEPY LONER FACTOR TAKES A HUGE LEAP!

But I can't. My limbs feel distant and unresponsive. The shadowy figure – why is that yellow jersey so familiar – doesn't say anything, but hands come up to cup her breasts, squeezing and kneading the pale flesh in the moonlight. Her eyelids drop lower and she giggles again, almost drunkenly, as her small hands come up to rest on his shoulders. There's a slow flush creeping over her flesh.

It's strange. I know it's Liz, but she looks different somehow, changed from the snarky, cute little teen I know from school, the one who has that disdainful nose-wrinkle down to a fine art. The person below me isn't concerned with trig homework or who's wearing what to the dance. The expression on her face is one I've never seen her wear before – hungry and wanting and somehow . . . older. I know, I know . . . sex doesn't make you any more of an adult, but that's the only thing I can think of to describe that look on her face, like a woman who's completely sure of herself and what she wants.

Her lover bends his head towards her breasts, obscuring my view, and her head drops back. The groan she lets out is low and deep but somehow also one of the most feminine things I've ever heard, and it prickles the skin along the back of my neck in a not entirely unpleasant way. Her hips are moving now, still clad in their tight denim, rocking in slow circles against the person bent over her. It's an unabashedly lewd motion, and as I watch she shifts position to straddle his thigh, grinding herself against it with a languid wantonness that's almost painful to watch.

Dimly, I wonder what that's like. Whether her breasts would be cool to the touch from the night air, if they'd feel as soft and pliant as they look under my fingers. Whether I'd be able to feel the heat from her through our clothing against my thigh like that.

I wonder how Mary Jane would look like that, how she'd sound if I had her breasts in my hands?

Mary Jane is going to skin you alive and burn the body, you loser.

I actually gasp a little. It's like being doused in a shower of freezing water, and I'm actually grateful for it. What the hell am I doing? Am I campaigning for Worst Boyfriend of the Year tonight?

They're still at it, but I don't feel that dreamy pull anymore. My face is burning under my mask, and I duck behind the wall, taking a deep breath and cupping my hands in front of my mouth to create a sound baffle. No way are they seeing Spider-Man right now. My life is bad enough without any pervert rumours, thank you very much.

“HEY. IS SOMEONE BACK HERE?”

It isn't exactly the booming voice from the heavens, but it does the trick. Liz actually utters a short, sharp scream of shock -- “Oh my gawd -- ! “ -- and I hear the sound of mad scuffling. I dare a look around the edge of the wall in time to see Liz go running past, her shirt back on, moving like a spooked gazelle. And, after a heartbeat, her friend goes running after her. I can hear him swearing, and he takes one terrified look over his shoulder for any pursuers, the moonlight throwing his face into perfect relief for an instant before he's gone.

For a few minutes afterward, everything is quiet. I stay where I am, leaned against the side of the building, staring up at the sky with it's weight of thunderheads slowly disappearing. Far away, on the other side of the school grounds, the police are still moving around. I can hear the occasional blat of a siren, doors slamming, voices raised.

There's nothing else to be found here tonight. If I could have done it without getting shot at, I would have gone over there and told them that. Whoever killed that girl is gone at least for now and hopefully for good. And, most importantly, Mary Jane is safe. It's a shitty thing to think, especially considering that some other poor girl is gone now, but I'm so glad she wasn't hurt it makes me physically weak.

Back at the station, Aunt May and Mrs Watson have probably shown up by now. As I push away from the wall, I make a mental note to stop at the nearest McDonalds to grab something for Mary Jane to help my alibi. Mary will be disappointed, I know. I could see it in her face when she told me she wanted me to go; she wants me to come back like some knight in shining armor, to be able to tell her I slew the dragon and everything is all better.

I sigh a little, walking to the edge of the building and stretching some lingering stiffness out of my arms. I won't be able to tell her that, but at least the night is over.

And, of course, I can't tell her the other thing either, no matter how funny I might find it.

Flash Thompson groping Liz Allen behind the school?

Yeah. There's definitely something crazy in the water tonight.