Hey, gang, don’t have much time to talk right now, but here’re the basics:

Norman Osborn poisoned most of the students of Midtown High with a Spidey DNA/Green Goblin cocktail, causing all of them to go mad with the combined powers of both Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Luckily my partner in crime, Ben, came up with a cure and we’ve been spending the better part of the night tracking down the kids and curing them before their hearts give out.

Now that we’ve tackled that problem, we’ve got a whole new situation in that Flash Thompson has mutated into a spider creature. I’m not sure how he even got infected, but I know Osborn has to be behind this, too. Once I figure out a way to get Flash back to normal, I am so taking this fight to Osborn . . .

PIECES OF ME

Part V

By Tobias Christopher

Norman Osborn looked out of the window and smiled. By now Spider-Man had no doubt saved his students, and if Flash had undergone his mutation, he’d most likely be cured by dawn. All of it was indeed going to according to his plan. He knew Spider-Man would pull through and save everyone, that’s what made him Spider-Man.

What Peter Parker didn’t realize, however, was that even if he saved everyone, there would still be the fallout from tonight’s events hanging over him. That was what this night had been about: the repercussions of his heroic actions.

Spider-Man and the Scarlet Spider stood in shock as an eight foot spider creature stepped out of the shadows, wearing the shredded remnants of Flash Thompson’s clothes. A few hours earlier, Flash had been injected with an experimental serum by the Hobgoblin, under Norman Osborn’s order.

The serum was an early version of what he would use on the students of Midtown High, and was improved upon in later versions so it wouldn’t turn its subjects into spider creatures. Osborn had one vial of it kept, and ordered it to be used on the person closest to Peter Parker currently.

“Is that . . . Flash?” Scarlet Spider asked as the creature rushed toward them. Both heroes jumped out of the way as the monster swiped at them with his deformed hand.

“I think it is,” Spider-Man said as he started shooting webbing as the creature. The creature just burst out of the cocoon that he’d been wrapped in and shrieked loudly. “We have to take him down without hurting him.”

“And what are the odds that he’ll grant us the same favor?” Scarlet Spider asked as Flash shot his own webbing at him, pinning the hero to the wall.

“Flash, you need to calm down!” Spider-Man shouted as he rammed into Flash, sending him flying back. “You’re still in there, you need to focus and remember that we’re the good guys!”

Spider-Man tackled Flash to the ground, pinning him down. “Flash, it’s me, your idol! Your champ! The guy you’d want to be stuck on an island with!”

Spider-Man heard a disgusting sound coming from the creature’s mouth as it spit at him, dousing his mask with a toxic chemical. Spider-Man quickly pulled his mask off before the acid could eat its way through to his face. As he was distracted, Flash got up and burst through the wall and out into the city.

“We can’t let him get away!” Spider-Man shouted as Scarlet Spider freed himself.

“He’s got the organic webbing and spits acid? What the hell is Osborn doing in that lab of his?” Scarlet Spider asked as a frustrated Spider-Man ran a hand through his hair.

“We’ve got to save him, Ben,” Spider-Man said with a worried tone in his voice. “He’s like family to me.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Scarlet Spider said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But we’ve still got at least half a dozen kids out there who still need this cure and dawn is coming quick.”

“You’re right,” Spider-Man told him. “Let’s get the kids first, then we’ll meet back here to come up with a game plan to find Flash before someone else gets hurt.”

A.J. was stumbling home, not even sure how he’d gotten out of the lab. His mind was a mess, and he couldn’t think straight. If he’d been spotted by a cop, he might have been mistaken for being intoxicated. As he leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, the Hobgoblin wasn’t too far behind, a pumpkin bomb in hand.

“Sorry, kid, this has to–” Hobgoblin said as he realized what he was doing. Was he seriously about to take a life? Something that he swore he wouldn’t do? “What the hell am I doing?”

Not far away, Gwyneth was watching the scene. She knew she couldn’t trust Osborn’s lap dog to finish the job, so she’d have to do it herself. She pulled a revolver out of her purse and calmly walked toward the scene, when all of a sudden Drew rushed to A.J.’s side.

“Alan James Michaels!” Drew shouted as he rushed to his brother’s side, hugging him tightly. “Where the hell have you been!? I’ve been running all over the damn city trying to find you!”

“Drew?” A.J. asked weakly. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just want to go home.”

Drew put an arm around his shoulder to help him walk as Hobgoblin put the pumpkin bomb away, just as Gwyneth slapped him upside the head.

“You were supposed to finish him!”

“I couldn’t do it,” Hobgoblin told her. “I can’t kill a kid.”

“Oh, well in that case,” Gwyneth said as she shot Hobgoblin in the chest, sending him to the ground. “Never send a man to do a woman’s job.”

Spider-Man had just webbed down the last student on the list, and having injected him with the serum, texted his partner.

Got the last one, and not a moment too soon.

Spider-Man looked up and saw the sun rising as he breathed a sigh of relief. Now he just had to track down Flash and hope that a cure could be found. Then Osborn was going to pay for nearly killing everyone.

Scarlet Spider returned to the ESU lab and started work on the cure. As he started mixing the chemicals, a thought suddenly crossed his mind. He grabbed his phone and called Peter.

“Pete . . . what about Drew and A.J.?” Scarlet Spider asked. “What if Flash finds them before we find him?”

Spider-Man heard his brother and realized that he was right. “You just get to work on that cure, I’m going to find them. Call me when you have something.”

Spider-Man hung up his phone and shot out a line of webbing as he heard the ambulance in the distance, coming for the next student.

“I hope those kids have enough sense to not try to face Flash on their own. In his current state, he might not have enough self-control to not harm them.”

“I can’t believe you went to OsCorp all by yourself,” Drew said as he helped A.J. along. “That was incredibly stupid, you could have gotten yourself killed.”

“Something happened there,” A.J. told him. “I can’t remember, but there’s something . . . bad about that place.”

“You’ll remember it in the morning,” Drew said as they got closer to the apartment. “In the meantime, I just want to get you home. You’ve had too much excitement for one night.”

“You do know that I’m sixteen years old, right?” A.J. asked him. “You don’t have to keep treating me like I’m five.”

“You’re my little brother, the only family I have left,” Drew reminded him. “I’ll always be around to take care of you. Not even getting shot in the head could keep me down, remember?”

A.J. smiled as he said that, just as he was hit over the head with the butt of a gun, sending him to the ground. Drew turned to see who did it, when he was struck hard enough to knock him unconscious. Gwyneth stood over the two as she pointed her gun at A.J.

“Nothing personal, kid,” the woman said with an evil smirk. “Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

Gwyneth looked up and saw a moving shadow on the wall. It had to be Flash, having finally mutated thanks to Osborn’s serum. She picked Drew up, putting an arm around his shoulder as she looked down at A.J.

“Why shoot you when you can be torn apart by your teacher?” she asked as she carried Drew away. As she got Drew to her nearby car, Flash saw A.J. laying on the ground and landed on the sidewalk, in front of him.

“According to the police scanner, all of the students made it to the hospital okay,” Spider-Man said to himself as he swung through the streets, looking for Flash. “So at least they’re going to be okay. Now I just have to find Flash, before it’s too late.”

As he got closer, he saw someone taking Drew to a nearby parked car, pushing him into the back seat.

“Kidnapping my students is one thing, but not even buckling him in? Now I’m miffed,” Spider-Man said as he landed on the roof of the car. “Alright, buddy, I don’t know why you’re taking this kid, but–”

As Spider-Man was about to look through the window, an electrical surge was sent through the roof, sending the hero flying off. He hit the ground rolling as the car drove away.

“Looks like spider-proofing my ride paid off,” Gwyneth said as she looked into the rearview mirror. “So long, Spider-freak!”

Spider-Man stood up and furled his eyebrows under his mask. “You’re not getting away that easily. If Drew has his camera on him, I can track him down with the spider-tracer I implanted in his camera, just in case he ever gets into trouble taking pictures for the Bugle.”

Spider-Man extended his hand and shot a line of webbing out as he took off, not realizing that half a block away, A.J. lay unconscious with Flash standing over him.

“Assuming that whatever mutated Flash is also what turned Peter into a spider-monster several years ago, I can make a cure based off of the one that turned him back to somewhat normal,” Scarlet Spider said as he continued mixing the chemicals. “I’m too damn good at this.”

Spider-Man followed the car out to the suburbs, to an old abandoned factory. “What is it with these creeps and factories? Why can’t these guys hang out in toy stores or a movie theater showing that incredible Joss Whedon movie?”

Spider-Man attached him to the wall and started climbing to find another way in besides going through the front door. Inside the factory, Gwyneth put Drew on a table and strapped him down.

“Don’t worry, kid, by the time I’m done, you’re going to be a whole new man,” Gwyneth told him.

The mutated Flash continued standing over A.J., feeling a hunger in his stomach as he started to reach for the unconscious young man. But just as he did, he started to recognize his student and briefly pulled back, fighting for control.

A.J. moaned as he opened his eyes, seeing the monster standing over him. He quickly tried to scoot back as he saw the shredded remains of Flash’s jacket around the creature.

“Mr. Thompson?” A.J. asked as he found himself backed against a wall. “Is that you?”

The creature shrieked as it came closer. It was fighting Flash’s human instincts for control, and the hunger was winning. A.J. got to his feet and slowly stepped closer.

“It’s me, A.J.,” A.J. whispered calmly. “I’m your friend, remember? You took me and my brother in when we needed you? I know you’re in there, Mr. Thompson.”

The creature stood perfectly still as A.J. got closer as the spider-monster grabbed him and roared, getting mucus all over his face and shirt.

“Gross!”

Spider-Man made his way into the building through a broken window on the top floor. He started homing in on Drew’s camera, hoping he wasn’t too late. By the time he got down to the lab, he looked around, seeing Drew on the table.

“Don’t worry, kid, I’m here to save the day again,” Spider-Man said as he saw Gwyneth with her back turned, facing a console.

“Oh, but you won’t save the day this time, Spider-Freak,” Gwyneth said as Spider-Man stopped what he was doing.

“That voice–”

The woman turned around as Spider-Man got a good look at her. She was ten years older, she looked like she’d had some slight facial restructuring, and her hair had been dyed brunette, but… no, it couldn’t be. Could it?

“Gwen?” asked Spidey in a low whisper.

“In the flesh,” Gwyneth told him with a hideous laugh that sounded a lot like someone else Spider-Man had tangled with before: the Jackal.

“You’re a clone,” Spider-Man said as he stepped closer to her. “You’re one of the Jackal’s experiments, you have to be.”

“Oh, I’m much more than one of the Jackal’s experiments,” Gwyneth said as she pulled out a laser rifle and fired at him. “I am him!”

Spider-Man jumped out of the way, his spider-sense making sure he dodged every blast. One of the stray blasts hit a ceiling beam that was falling towards Drew. Spider-Man jumped over the table, pushing the beam out of the path of his student, but it ended up pinning him to the ground as both fell out of Drew’s path.

“I knew that would get you,” Gwyneth told him. “You always were a sucker for risking yourself to save others.”

“You know, I remember the Jackal being much uglier,” Spider-Man told her as he found the laser gun pointed at his head. “What do you want with Drew?”

“I’ve grown tired of living life in this body, it was a . . . last resort to achieve the Jackal’s goals,” Gwyneth told him. “Alas, I too, am just a cloned brain of Miles Warren, placed into this body as a means of survival. But now I’ve got some fresh meat lined up, just waiting to take this big, beautiful brain.”

“Drew? NO!” Spider-Man shouted as he realized what the Jackal had meant. “Let him go, he’s just an innocent kid, he has no business being wrapped up in all of this.”

“Oh, but he does,” Gwyneth said as she kneeled down and pulled his mask off so she could look into his eyes. “You see, Drew is your and Gwen Stacy’s son.”

To be continued…