"What is Power, brother?"
"Money?"
"No, brother. Watts."
A conversation between two students.
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As I mentioned, it began with Felicia's call.
I was still running from one office to another with my tongue hanging out. Even with a law firm's assistance, purchasing real estate proved troublesome. I had to collect a mountain of papers and certificates and complete an army of declarations and questionnaires. I seemed to be assembling a bouquet of phobias. Stairs were already present. Now real-estate agents inspired unpleasant feelings too. I would not even begin discussing officials and bureaucrats.
Fewer than seven days remained before the academic year, and only three before my bachelor's defense. Terrifying. I increasingly regretted that a day contained only twenty-four hours rather than thirty-six. Forty-eight would have been better, but alas. Time was desperately short, and I could not split myself. Well, technically I could, but not in the fashion required.
Fortunately, Curt understood my situation. He stopped burying me beneath gigantic amounts of literature and reduced the hours devoted to practical laboratory work. He did not cancel them entirely, explaining that 'only a little remains, and after your defense we can begin the truly interesting experiments.'
At that moment, I remembered Mayuri Kurotsuchi persuading Uryū Ishida to become his research specimen. Surely that resemblance meant nothing. With his second hand, Doc appeared to have acquired a second wind. Thus, when my phone vibrated and displayed Miss Hardy's number, I was delighted.
Although I had spent the last several days buried in work, I repeatedly caught myself thinking about one blue-eyed young woman. Do not grin and make suggestive noises. Those thoughts were not indecent.
Well. Almost.
I accepted the call and raised the phone to my ear.
"Office of the Dark Lord. How may we assist you?"
Silence ruled the other end for one or two seconds.
"Walter, ambition is healthy, but I believe you're suffering from delusions of grandeur," the phone replied in Felicia's amused voice.
A smile spread across my face by itself.
"I don't suffer from them. I enjoy them," I explained instructively. "But do not worry, my lady. I simply haven't conquered this world yet. I have plenty of time."
If one included the Symbiote, probably a couple of million years. Then, more seriously, I continued.
"I'm glad to hear you, Felicia. How are you?"
We spent another ten minutes discussing nothing important. I took pleasure simply from the sound of her voice. At last, the conversation reached the true reason for the call.
"Tell me, Walter, do you have plans tomorrow?"
I considered the heap of tasks still waiting and answered honestly.
"No. I'm completely free. Why?"
"Wilson Fisk is holding a ceremony tomorrow to mark the reconstruction of a factory, followed by a formal luncheon. Would you care to accompany me?"
I quickly weighed the possibilities. The event was not precisely a date, but the fact that Felicia had called and invited me somewhere was intriguing. I had planned to invite her out only after the semester began; until then, my head was occupied by entirely different matters.
What could the invitation mean?
Possibility one: Miss Hardy had fallen in love with magnificent me and sought any excuse to continue our association. Flattering, but unlikely.
Possibility two: she simply needed a companion to discourage excessively persistent admirers of her beauty. I understood and sincerely sympathized with the gentlemen, but they could have anything except Felicia Hardy. Perhaps she had called the first number she found and reached me. Unpleasant, but entirely possible.
There were third, fourth, and fifth possibilities, but in essence each reduced to the first two in varying proportions.
In any case, abandoning an opportunity to meet influential figures of the city would have been foolish. I could shake a few hands, for example. Spending time with Felicia did not trouble me either.
"That sounds tempting..." I began.
"Excellent. Come to the square in front of the old factory at noon tomorrow. You know where it is? Wonderful. I have to run. Don't you dare be late. Bye!"
The connection clicked dead.
"Heh. We only recently met, and she's already trying to order me around. Charming."
The call improved my mood, but it was too early to relax. Most of the following day would be occupied, which meant I had to work harder today. I arranged with my attorney that he would collect and prepare everything else without me. The man was formidable. While blind, he had managed not only to receive an outstanding education but to enter the ranks of New York's finest lawyers. I removed my hat to him.
Still, I had the feeling I had seen him somewhere—or heard about him. I did not investigate. I lacked the time, and I could easily have heard some phrase containing his name and retained it at the edge of memory. He extracted another two thousand dollars, the miser. After finishing with the bureaucracy, I returned to Connors's domain.
Doc responded sympathetically to my request to be excused from practical work the following day. You have already guessed what the sadist of science proposed. Correct. Why postpone until tomorrow what could be completed today? I had to conduct twice the usual number of experiments. I crawled away from Curt close to midnight, exhausted and deeply thoughtful.
How had things worked before? I studied an organism's properties and capabilities, then used the Symbiote to intervene. That was how I attached the doctor's arm. In effect, I had employed Venom as an exceptionally advanced scalpel. When I captured the homeless man's body, however, I relied primarily on the Symbiote's instincts—more accurately, it had done everything itself—and those instincts transformed the organism faster and more effectively than conscious control.
But that kind of transformation required at least partial Bonding and preferably complete absorption. That day, entirely by accident, I discovered a way around the limitation. I had many practical exercises and little time, so I hurried. During one experiment, I added too much catalyst and the reaction began directly in my hands.
I had no desire to throw away the test tubes and repeat the entire two-hour cycle. Instead, I covered my hands with Symbiote gloves and slipped into the familiar trance, laying associative paths from long-term memory into the present moment. The present moment, however, now contained far more data.
The Symbiote was also studying the reaction and recording it at the instinctive level. More than that, new chains began forming, combining the human memory's understanding of WHAT was happening with Venom's reflexive knowledge of HOW it happened.
Imagining the possibilities, I grinned in anticipation. Well, who was the greatest alchemist now, Brother Elric? No. I still had a long way to go before reaching the Fullmetal Alchemist. Every later experiment passed through the Symbiote. I returned home at around one in the morning.
Yes, home. Although the documents were not yet finalized, I could live in the penthouse legally and peacefully after paying the deposit and advance. I spent the remaining time before the ceremony listening to music and browsing the internet, confirming the address and examining clothing designs.
A leather coat did not fit an official function unless it was a gathering of metalheads. I chose a classic three-piece suit. I approached the mirror and changed my clothing. Not bad. Very good, in fact. But the tie irritated me. After trying several versions of that noose, I abandoned the hopeless effort and decided to go without one. It was not a royal reception.
I reached the square ten minutes before the appointed time.
A considerable crowd had already gathered, though most were merely spectators. In the corner of my vision, I noticed Parker with his employer. Peter had not thought to wear anything more formal than a T-shirt and jeans.
Finding Felicia in the crowd would have been difficult until I remembered the gift I had left on her after our first meeting. Hm. That sounded ambiguous but never mind. The young woman stood with a martyr's expression, listening to a young peacock with an extremely peculiar hairstyle. Looking at the scene made my hands itch to shave him bald—or, better, remove the head entirely so he would suffer no longer. The beauty urgently needed rescuing from the monster. I walked toward them.
"Good afternoon, my lady. I hope I haven't kept you waiting?" I approached and kissed her hand.
She seemed slightly embarrassed by the greeting. Adorable.
"No, Walter. You're exactly on time," Felicia said with a smile.
"Ah... uh..." the monster attempted to contribute.
"Walter, meet Harry Osborn. Harry, this is Walter Mayer," Felicia introduced us.
I examined Harry. Thin, with fairly rough facial features, red hair, and a hairstyle resembling a horrific hybrid between a bowl cut and something beyond description. A severe case. We had little time for conversation. The ceremony began and we took places closer to the central platform.
There was Parker again, pushing forward and photographing everything entering his lens.
Wilson Fisk—widely known in narrow circles as the Kingpin—came into view. Yes, he truly was massive. More than six and a half feet tall, perhaps just as broad across the shoulders, and his weight... if that giant stepped on someone, a crushed foot would be the least of their problems.
Fisk delivered a long, tedious speech whose essence was that he was wonderful, did enormous amounts for the city and humanity, and so on and so forth. The giant had already raised the ceremonial shovel—which, without exaggeration, appeared to be made of actual gold—when a point that had hovered on the horizon suddenly accelerated toward us and attempted to roast Fisk with some enormous futuristic weapon.
The fat man would have become a cutlet if Parker had not selflessly tackled the Kingpin to the ground. I wondered how Peter later explained how a man weighing perhaps one hundred seventy pounds had knocked over a body four times heavier. Meanwhile, the flying creature in the yellow cloak and the mask of an even yellower orc began throwing grenades.
Directly into the crowd.
In American children's cartoons, a fragmentation grenade exploding several feet from a person merely tossed them aside and left a couple of scratches—or knocked them unconscious at worst.
We were not in a cartoon.
People screamed. Bloody pieces of human flesh flew through the air. The crowd panicked and surged across the square. Nearly as many died in the crush as from the flying bastard's gifts. Then a grenade landed near Felicia and me. Harry had vanished by some incomprehensible means. Strange how he had managed it amid the insane crowd.
I acted on reflex.
Knock Felicia down. Feet toward the explosion. Cover her with my body. The shock wave struck me. Several fragments buried themselves painfully in my back. Damn. That hurt. I grimaced and hissed something obscene.
At last Parker had put on his costume and now displayed impressive aerial acrobatics while fighting the Hobgoblin with mixed success. Eventually the pair flew toward a wasteland and vanished among the buildings. I rose and helped Felicia stand.
"An interesting city you have here..."
Then I noticed her condition. She was trembling and clung to my hand with the strength of a drowning person grasping the last piece of wreckage. Then she began crying and pressed herself against me. That was it. $%*&, you were going to die. This was personal now. I thought that while trying to comfort her, with poor results. Then she saw the fragments protruding from my back and turned even paler. I had not thought that possible.
"God, Walter, you're hurt! You need a hospital immediately."
"There's no need. They're only scratches..."
I tried to escape the situation. Why had I not pushed the fragments out immediately and repaired the holes in my suit? Too late now. Felicia refused to listen. Then a woman who appeared around forty ran toward us. Felicia saw her and cried, "Mom!" before embracing her.
"Felicia, darling, are you all right?"
"Yes. Walter shielded me, but he needs a hospital immediately!"
The woman looked at me with gratitude. Damn it. How I disliked that expression.
"Thank you, young man. You saved the most precious thing in my life." Then, changing the unpleasant subject, she added, "I've already called transportation. You'll be taken to the hospital immediately."
"No need—for the thanks or the hospital. I only did what any normal man in my place should have done."
I was still trying to escape both the hospital and the gratitude. I was uncertain which bothered me more.
"No arguments. You're in shock, the wounds may become infected, and the ambulance is here. So march."
Yes. Commanding people apparently ran in the family. We entered the ambulance quickly. Several dozen had already reached the square. Efficient work—though one only had to remember what sort of people had been in the crowd. Felicia refused to leave me and sat beside me while continuing to squeeze my hand. As though I objected to her company. Although perhaps she should have gone home; she had endured enough fear for one day.
During the trip, I had to concentrate on the organism. The Symbiote reflexively repaired both the body and its beloved self, attempting to restore the status quo. I had no desire to explain to the physicians where my wounds had gone or how the jacket and shirt beneath them had repaired themselves. I was forced into masochism—holding the injuries open so they would not close.
It was not pleasant.
The hospital was overwhelmed. Wounded people arrived by the dozen, and the physicians ran from one patient to another. They examined me quickly, injected morphine, removed the fragments, bandaged the wounds, and suggested that I remain for a day or two. When I asked whether I could go home, they permitted it but demanded that I return in several days to change the dressing.
Afterward, I escorted Felicia home despite every objection and declaration concerning my supposedly terrible condition.
"Thank you," she whispered at her door. Then she stepped toward me quickly, kissed me, and vanished just as quickly behind the door.
"You're welcome," I answered the door, slightly stunned.
Hm. I had failed to meet the 'powers that be,' but the day had ended far better than expected. Still, I would have preferred conquering a woman's heart without the assistance of a flying lunatic and dozens of corpses. With those thoughts, I headed home, put on my headphones, and tried to activate the player. More precisely, I intended to activate it. One of the fragments had punched through the celebrated titanium casing and lodged exactly in the center of the phone.
Nooooooooo!
Hobgoblin, you were going to suffer for a very long time.