Authors: Peter David
It was making Peter's head whirl. How could there be
this much confusion over love when Peter didn't even have a
girlfriend and, by the looks of things, Harry didn't either?
Then Peter realized that his head wasn't just whirling. It was his spider sense, kicking into high gear, practically
screaming at him that something was wrong, something was very very wrong.
Mary Jane felt as if she was being pulled along like a
rolling suitcase as Harry made his way through the crowd on
the balcony.
"Ah," Harry said, clearly having recognized a familiar
face, and he brought Mary Jane over to two elderly men, one
of them in a wheelchair. Quickly he introduced them as
Messrs. Fargas and Balkan, although it happened so quickly
that she wasn't entirely sure which one was which. "Have you seen my father?" Harry asked.
Balkan and Fargas exchanged uncomfortable looks. Im
mediately M. J. was cued to the fact that something was
wrong. She knew that look all too well, because she'd seen
it on her mother's face countless times: There was something
to be said which no one wanted to say.
"I'm ... not sure he'll be joining us," Fargas said in a
slightly withering voice. And he gave Harry another look
that Mary Jane again recognized, this time from her father. The look that said,
You are of no consequence. You don't
matter.
It wasn't the way someone regarded the son of a val
ued company head.
She had no idea whether the same things were running through Harry's head, but at that moment their collective at
tention was diverted by a high-pitched whining sound.
Looking for the source of the sound, Harry and M. J. made their way to the edge of the balcony.
It seemed to be coming from overhead. There was only a handful of clouds in the sky, but whatever it was, the sound
originated from there. M. J. craned her neck, shielding her
eyes against the glare of the midday sun. There seemed to be
something . . .
"It's a bird," said Harry.
"No. I don't think so
...
kind of big," Mary Jane said. Fargas and Balkan, along with the other members of the
board, were also gazing heavenward. "A plane?" suggested
Balkan.
"Too small," M. J. said.
The whining of the object was getting louder, as if
. . .
as
if it was powering up somehow. "What
is
that?" Fargas demanded impatiently.
"Must be new this year," said Balkan. There had been
some binoculars lying around the reviewing stand, for getting a better view of the crowd, and Balkan peered through
one of them. Then he let out a gasp of amazement. "What
the devil—? Is that our wing?"
Mary Jane had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. A wing? A wing of what? Like a building wing?
And then a demented cackle floated above the whining
sound. With a rush of air and what sounded like a jet turbine,
the object that was so high up suddenly got much closer,
much faster. It dropped like a rock, but it wasn't in freefall.
Instead it was moving with confidence and assurance.
Quickly it was almost at street level, zigzagging through the floats and oversized balloons so deftly that the crowd automatically assumed it was part of the show. They started ap
plauding.
But M. J. knew from the looks of the others in the re
viewing box that this wasn't remotely intended to be part of
anything.
The flying thing curled back up into the sky, banked and
hovered, pausing to make a dramatic entrance, apparently.
Then it moved right toward the reviewing stand, and Mary
Jane couldn't believe what she was seeing.
It was some sort of large flying platform, crescent shaped,
almost like a bat. Red lights were glowing on the front of it,
with an array of cabling and armature underneath, running between the two wings and connecting to what appeared to be some sort of control sphere. Turbines were powering it
from behind. But even the outlandishness of the device float
ing in front of them was as nothing compared to the rider.
He wore some sort of scaled green armor, glistening in
the sun. It had a ribbed flexible look; in some ways it re
minded her of the skin of an alligator. But it was layered
with all manner of complicated circuitry that M. J. couldn't
even begin to figure out. When he turned, even ever so
slightly, at the arms or waist, there were little whispers of
sound from servos or devices that seemed to be powering it.
But the armor itself was nothing compared to the face. It
was more than a face: It was some sort of mask or helmet.
With its glowing yellow eyes, the pointed ears that swept
back, and the mouth that was permanently frozen into a de
mented grin with pointed teeth running along the top and
bottom, it was the single most horrifying sight Mary Jane
had ever seen.
Down on the stage below, the singer had stopped singing.
The crowd, meantime, was still cheering. They had no idea
that this—person, this creature—wasn't part of the show.
The creature was pulling something from a buckle on his
belt. It was round, small, orange
...
a
...
pumpkin? Mary
Jane wanted to laugh. Maybe this whole thing was some sort
of gag, some sort of lively stunt, after all. Maybe he was
some sort of juggler, planning to keep a bunch of pumpkins
aloft at once....
Suddenly the creature angled down and hurled the pump
kin toward one of the statues of Hercules. And Mary Jane's
momentary laughter disappeared, along with the lower half
of the Hercules statue. One minute it was there, but when the
pumpkin struck it, the legs blew up.
The crowd's cheering and applause abruptly ceased, and an eerie silence filled the air. It was as if people were trying to figure out whether they'd actually seen what they thought they saw. For a moment frozen in time, the statue remained as it was, and then with a crack of stone the damaged mon
ument gave way.
The reviewing stand, five stories up, began to collapse.
The members of the OsCorp board of directors were shrieking and screaming in confusion, tumbling over one another.
Mary Jane was thrown forward, grasping at air, trying to find
something to hold on to. She called Harry's name, but he
was pitched in the opposite direction.
The crowd's uncertainty was replaced with screams of
panic as debris showered down upon them, nearly crushing several terrorized citizens.
The reviewing stand lurched another few feet, and Mary Jane slammed into the dangling balcony balustrade, barely
holding on. She saw Harry trying to get to his feet, to get
over to her and pull her back from the brink. Suddenly real
izing the danger, she tried to shout for him to get back, but
it was too late; his additional weight caused the balcony to
shift. The shift caused the remaining sections of the Her
cules statue to crumble into themselves even more, and the
reviewing stand tilted further, flipping M. J. over the
balustrade. Harry let out a terrified wail, and a five-story
drop yawned beneath Mary Jane's feet. But she hadn't
fallen, not yet; instead she was clinging, batlike, to the edge,
dangling, her legs pumping the air as she tried to find purchase to haul herself back up.
The armored monster swung back around, his demented
laughter ringing in Mary Jane's ears with such force that she felt as if the entire world consisted of nothing but his crazed
cackling. She bit back her fear, didn't succeed, cried out in
panic, and then saw him coming in fast as he hurled another
pumpkin bomb.
This is it, I'm going to die,
she thought, because another explosion would finish them off for sure.
Except it didn't explode.
Instead the bomb landed with a thunk right in front of the members of the OsCorp board. She heard it whirring, mak
ing a metallic sound, and she pulled herself up enough to see
it rising into the air as they stared at it in confusion. None of them made a move to help her. Taking a deep breath, M. J.
gave it everything she had and started to haul herself up.
Suddenly the bomb exploded, but not like the other one
had. This one erupted in a flash of brilliant orange, so bright
and searing that it irradiated half a dozen members of the board. Just as it went off, Mary Jane looked away. Being
mostly blocked by the balcony itself, she was preserved
from harm, but she was nearly flash blinded. And she caught
a quick impression of those board members closest to it
being literally turned into X-ray images of themselves.
The concussion of the blast caused the balcony to sepa
rate even further, and Mary Jane slid back, almost skidding
off the edge completely. Harry was blinking furiously, apparently trying to get his eyes cleared from whatever dam
age the bomb had done to him. He was crawling across the
balcony, trying not to cause it to tilt even further, and he was
reaching out to Mary Jane to try and snag her hand. M. J. stretched her arm as far as she could, her fingers almost
touching his.
Then she heard the roar of an engine, and a blast of heat
from it enveloped her, the air rippling around her. She
twisted and looked over her shoulder, and let out a scream as
she saw the madman rising up on the glider behind her. His
wide grin was solidly in place, his fingers twitching with an
ticipation of doing God-knew-what to her.
The creature mimicked her scream, then let out a bloodcurdling cackle that sounded as if it was emerging from the
bowels of hell....
XVIII.
THE CONFONTATION
... and then he was gone.
Just like that.
But not without help.
For what seemed the umpteenth time that day, Mary Jane
couldn't believe what she was seeing.
At first she didn't understand. All she saw was a red and blue blur slamming into the green armored creature. It was moving so quickly, she couldn't even tell if it was a human
or some sort of missile or what. What she did know for cer
tain was that her attacker was no longer there. Instead he was
falling down, down, knocked clean off the glider by the impact of the ... the whatever it was. The creature plummeted,
landed on one of the passing floats, bounced off it, somehow managed to twist himself in midair, and crashed feetfirst into
a large tent serving Greek food. The armor he was wearing
seemed to protect him from any serious harm.