Of Love and Man-Spider
Of Love and Man-Spider | |
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Date of Cutscene: | 05 July 2024 |
Location: | Felicia Hardy's Penthouse |
Synopsis: | After taking Mary Jane to a SHIELD safehouse for medical attention, Felicia returns to her penthouse to process Peter's transformation into the Man-Spider |
Cast of Characters: | Felicia Hardy |
Tinyplot: | 245 |
Peter Parker is a spider... man.
Not THE Spider-Man. A spider man. A... Man-Spider.
It still hasn't sunk in completely. Felicia's been so focused on getting MJ to a medical facility that she hasn't let herself linger on thoughts of Peter.
"What do you want, a code phrase?! How about: Open the goddamn door before I kick it down! This woman is one of yours, and she needs help. NOW," Felicia shouts, still holding Mary-Jane Watson's limp body in her arms outside the safehouse door. She's in her full Black Cat regalia, poly-weave black catsuit up to her neck, white gauntlets and shinguards, black mask with high-tech lenses, and white hair up in a ponytail.
With some awkward shuffling, she manages to get the SHIELD badge in her hand pressed against the scanner, and the rest of the transaction is more efficient than she would have expected. The two SHIELD agents inside open the door, take the red-haired and domino masked woman out of her arms, and then close it in her face.
The audacity of these freaking alphabet agencies.
"Yeah, you're welcome," she sighs. "I guess I'll come back during visiting hours?"
But at least MJ's safe. Or, as safe she's likely to be after having both of her arms and possibly more broken by the Lizard's retaliatory swipe. At least she'd had her sword at the ready.
Crap. MJ's sword... she'd stashed it with the laptop she found and the rest of her gear before she left. She still had to go back for it. She still had so much to do before she could let herself fall apart...
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Night has fallen by the time Felicia makes it back to her East Side penthouse, dropping the big duffel back of MJ's gear just inside the door and kicking it closed behind herself.
She'd been out looking for signs of Peter or the Lizard all afternoon. There'd been plenty of sightings, of course, all over ESU campus. After all, how do you miss a giant green lizard-man carrying a piece of medical equipment being chased by a big hairy Man-Spider with giant mandibles in a ripped onesie?
But witness accounts were unreliable at best. Some said they ran off campus. Lots of them said the sewers. In the end, there was nothing she could do except go home and try to... try to think about what to do next -- to try not to dwell on the fact that the man she loved was out running around New York City as an actual big, hairy arachnid.
Ever since Peter had sprouted four extra arms, they'd spread the word to friends not "in the know" that Peter's new girlfriend had spirited him out of town to some exclusive resort island for 'summer vacation.' In reality, they'd been staying in the her Tenderloin District safehouse to lay low while they figured out what to do. And sure, Felicia's mother had shown up unexpectedly, but at least May still didn't know...
Oh, God.
That thought hit her like a truck. May still didn't know. She had no idea what had happened to Peter. She had no idea that right now, Peter was some sort of full-mutate arachnid out crawling around in the sewers... Maybe chasing after the one thing that could turn him back? The Neo-Genic Recombinator that the Lizard took with him? Or maybe he'd turned so feral that he was literally just hunting for prey...
Felicia reaches up to pull her hair out of its ponytail, the glow of the lights of the New York skyline at night shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She needs to clear her head. She needs a shower. She needs a _drink_.
MJ nearly died, tonight.
Peter is...
Peter is...
She stops at the doorway of her bedroom, her eyes falling on a little plastic toy dinosaur sitting on her nightstand, exactly where Peter promised it would be the next time she came in.
'Better than a ring.'
...And she breaks.