Infested_DNA

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

Otto pursed his lips. He much rathered the freedom that plain money funds gave him, especially over being given technology. Norman's donations were always so restrictive, much like his desired outcomes. If an experiment didn't show direct results, he killed it. Otto hated that. It was part of the reason he believed Norman had failed to capture Spider-Man or replicate his powers to sell to the military.

Despite his evident distaste, one of Otto's mechanical arms took the thumb drive in one precise movement and held it in front of his face to inspect with another. "So much for Oscorp being top of the line. Norman only now upgraded his system? Then again, the company has been out of balance for years." He balanced the thumb drive on the edge of one of the claws of his arm. "Investments in anything to do with biology, leaving it's robotics to rot." He should know. A failure in Oscorp machinery did this to him. He looked past the thumb drive at Charlie. "Isn't that right?"

A test of her loyalty to Oscorp and therefore Norman or simply the ramblings of a mentally unstable man? Otto's mind was difficult to follow. One moment he was scientifically driven, rational, and even seeking alliances to get himself out from under Norman's thumb, and the next he was violent, raving about whatever irked him in the moment, and burning bridges. He wasn't nice in either of his moods and would still get violent. It was really a matter of the attacks being calculated or impulsive.

"But... I guess I'm a biologist so uh... I've got a bias. I guess." She glanced back, taking a few tentative steps back, "Guess I should go-" She really didn't like Otto. Norman had always warned her to be careful, or at least to not talk for to long. He couldn't have her running off with other villains.

Bane didn't trust Otto either. Well It didn't really trust anyone except Charlie and that only because it could see every racing thought. And they shared a goal of not getting locked in a glass box for presumably the rest of time. It was symbiotic really. Thats what Charlie told herself as a reassurance. It helped her keep her cancer at bay and in return she protected it fiercely against Normans attempts at experimenting with it. Its hesitancy put Charlie even more on edge than usual.

He passed the thumb drive to his hand, in which he gripped it weakly, not that he could muster enough force behind his fingers to hold it any tighter. His robotic limb waved as if he were shooing a fly. "The ever-present work... Ha, that is something I do not miss." Working his own hours produced much more effective results in his experiments. "I hope your bias does not prevent you from realizing that being Norman's yes man will gain you nothing... besides more work of course."

She didn't get her own autonomy, so sarcasm was really her only viable retort, not unlike a child trying to rebel from its parents. If she had it her own way she wouldn't be working for Oscorp. She'd be somewhere in a lab actually creating medicine instead of just saying it publicly. Once Norman finally cracked spiderman's DNA he promised she could work on whatever she wanted. One foot after another she guessed.

Back at the gala, Norman was talking to some of the guests when he felt a buzz in his pocket. It took a few minutes to excuse himself. They were curious as to where his son was. Befriending the heir to Oscorp was a good investment, especially as rumors of Norman's capability to run the business were at an all time high. Explaining that he did not know the whereabouts of his son was a difficult thing to do without making himself sound bad... or worse. Harry had disappeared into the party and taken Peter with him.

Her finger brushed a hard drive that had been plugged in. That was... weird; this was her laptop. Norman certainly didn't need or want anything off it. Nor did anyone else. She pulled it and set it aside. Probably something she did a bit ago and just forgot. That was how things went. "Weird." She looked at it for a moment before dragging herself up. No time like the present to go check on Norman's pet projects. Well it wasn't exactly a pet project- more a series of tests with the Oz compound against Norman's DNA.

The charity gala went about as expected and ended with a speech, toasting to something. Peter wasn't sure. He definitely did not get the reason for this sort of event. Barely anyone spoke of what this was for. It was a bunch of people showboating. That wasn't what he said when Norman asked what he thought of it, but he had said worse lies. It wasn't like he had to attend these for a living. Poor Harry.

It was decided Peter would spend the night at the Oscorp penthouse with the Osborns given the late hour and Harry's insistence to show him a new video game. In the lobby, Norman got a call and stepped off to the side. Harry pulled Peter into the elevator by his wrist, clearly used to Norman's sudden disappearances. Harry was talking eagerly about the trailer for a new horror movie when the elevator doors stuttered, closing before opening again.

Harry's brows furrowed. "Is it not working?" He reached up to press the button to one of the top floors. The doors slid shut, but the button on the panel didn't light up.

"Maybe the light burned out? I mean, there's only so many people that go up there," Peter suggested. He could not explain the elevator doors, but lights burn out all the time. They both stared at the button, awaiting some unrealistic correction of the error. Peter would be more worried, but his spider-sense didn't go off, so the chances of them being in danger were low. His eyes flicked up to the LED display of the floor numbers, noticing they were going down. "Did you hit the wrong button?"

"You watched me hit it, Pete. Why would I–" Harry looked to the LED numbers, then down to the bottom rows of buttons. One was very clearly lit up. "It's the suit! You know, there's a reason that I never dress like this–"

"Aside from the fact that you would look like a dork?" Peter interrupted, earning a snort and an elbow to the ribs. They both waited a moment longer, glancing at the floor number as seconds ticked by. "We were on the ground floor. How many basements does your dad need?" he asked incredulously.

"I don't know! It's a skyscraper, Pete; maybe they need a bunch of basements to keep it from toppling over or whatever! It's probably just filled with pallets." Harry crossed his arms. There wasn't much they could do but wait, and now that the lower floors were in question and they actually took notice of their existence, they were curious.

Finally the elevator door opened. "Or not." Peter's voice echoed in the lab as he poked his head out to look around. Harry walked out of the elevator, looking up at the ceiling of pipes. Definitely not just pallets. It was a whole lab. Now, Peter had bad experiences with underground labs—it wasn't anything that helped Norman's case either—but he wasn't about to let Harry stumble into whatever this was on his own. There was the elevator and likely fire escape stairs at a minimum. There were ways out if this was bad.

The laptop laid on the opposite desk, which had a lovely table cloth of papers, cross referenced with arrows drawn across pages with only scotch tape and sticky notes holding them together, all in a scrawl that defiantly wasn't Norman's refined handwriting. Under this desk, caught up in the wheels of the chair, was Charlie's now long forgotten dress. Her heels in a pile not far from the elevator.

Farther in, past the coalition of desks, lay the lab, The hall opening up into what those in the know considered the beating heart of Oscorp. Charlie considered it more of a giant maze with her as the giant mouse stuck tugging her hair out at little vials and giant holograms, and observing much smaller mice die day after day in a much simpler smaller maze.

They both nearly jumped out of their skin as the bang from Charlie's head hitting the table echoed throughout the hall. They, of course, had no idea what the noise was, but given the abrupt noise and faint muttering, they decided they should keep quiet after sharing a glance. Whoever was there was not having the best time and disturbing them would result in trouble. So would sneaking around a basement they definitely shouldn't be in, but at least they had a chance of not getting caught this way.

Harry spotted the heels and was quick to pick them up, showing the pair dangling off his fingers to Peter. They were really fancy for a pair of office shoes. Peter gestured for him to put them down, and he did on the desk, atop some papers, clearly not half as concerned about what the papers said. Peter sighed and moved the heels to the floor, leafing through the papers on the ground while he was crouched. He didn't know what exactly this project was, only skimming through pages of text and graphs, but whatever it was, he didn't think it was totally clean.

Meanwhile, Harry took to leaning on the desk, observing the screens and what they displayed before it was filed away. He had even less of a chance at following this than Peter, but he still stared intently. He hit Peter lightly with the back of his hand, calling for his attention before the file shut. "Isn't that the guy who attacked Flash? Like chased him to the point he willingly went in a school bus?" he whispered. Flash thought himself too good for school busses back then, even if he was working on not being so mean... not that such a plan worked out initially.

The file was a diagram of Rhino. Peter barely had time to scan the text alongside the image before it was gone. It was enough for him to get a worse feeling than he already had. He merely nodded wordlessly. There was more to it than that, a lot more, not that he should technically know that. Rhino was Alex, a kid who Flash had started bullying once he stopped picking on Peter. Alex was an angry, smart kid, and as Rhino that anger was worse and that brain went to waste while he targeted Flash, nearly destroying his house, and stole the serum that made him the Rhino from Oscorp, or so Peter and S.H.I.E.L.D. had assumed. Why else would he destroy an Oscorp train to get his 'medicines' as he called it. Now, Norman had trust issues and certainly didn't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle the next time Rhino barged in, but this seemed like a lot of information for a precaution.

That was less than great. At the very least, Oscorp was looking into the serum's effects on Alex and seemingly trying to replicate or refine it. Or it was the worse option that Alex was a part of something much bigger. Peter didn't like those implications. His powers came from Oscorp, not that anyone knew, and with their interest in a super strong, resilient powerhouse like Rhino, he felt like the spider that bit him was a lot more than just a one-off. He considered his outcome far from perfect, but compared to some of the other genetically mutated folks, he got lucky, just looking at Rhino, Lizard, and Vulture proved that. However, the latter two were a result of Ock's genetic slurries. The effects were still similar across the board.

And they were underground, in some lab that studied the same quality of weird that he was. Peter looked back at the elevator. What if this was a trap? He could probably fight off whoever wanted to stick something in him or cut him open if it came to it. They weren't deep enough that he couldn't get a signal out, were they? At least it's not under water. Just solid concrete that no one can move through. Maybe water would be better at least he could swim. What if Harry got hurt? Whatever mess this was that Norman was in, Harry wasn't involved and was way out of his depth.

Maybe they could mix the Rhino compound with a strand of the venom DNA? But that could get away from them. She rolled over to the main computer. If the simulation worked, in theory it would be controllable. It could also very quickly become an exponentially growing snowball of a strong, stupid, and unreasonable tool. It was just too… inhuman. Charlie could spend years just trying figure out how to do what Norman wanted her to execute in weeks. The computer flipped through simulations, changing the DNA strands in and out. Fail, fail, fail. She rubbed her forehead. It would never work, if Otto would just share those DNA samples of Spiderman but he had been holding out on them for weeks, much to Norman's dismay. It had gotten to the point where Norman's anger with Otto triggered the Goblin more than Spiderman on some days.

She cross-sampled the tests with the Oz compounds. Just to check, she was just grasping at straws at this point. But... nothing, the were almost completely different strains. She needed to reduce the vitamin B in the compound but if she did it wouldn't work. If she kept it the way it was it would continue to block the neuro pathways, it would continue to make it's subjects' unable to form intelligent thought. If... if Norman were here he might be able to find a way to manufacture a substitute.

But he wasn't. Charlie was alone for the night. She stared up at the pipes, thinking. She could use a different type or vitamin B. But how much of excess vitamin B could Alex take without it permanently damaging his mind? Sure, she could run the test, risk him going down the drain, another brilliant mind broken by Norman Osborn, he wouldn't care. He had thrown a fit when Peter had turned down his internship, Charlie remembered watching from the sidelines as he had brewed silently at his desk only an hour before cheerily greeting Alex, shaking his had and welcoming the boy to the 'family'. No she couldn't let Norman do that. Alex gave her a headache but he didn't deserve that.

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

Otto pursed his lips. He much rathered the freedom that plain money funds gave him, especially over being given technology. Norman's donations were always so restrictive, much like his desired outcomes. If an experiment didn't show direct results, he killed it. Otto hated that. It was part of the reason he believed Norman had failed to capture Spider-Man or replicate his powers to sell to the military.

Despite his evident distaste, one of Otto's mechanical arms took the thumb drive in one precise movement and held it in front of his face to inspect with another. "So much for Oscorp being top of the line. Norman only now upgraded his system? Then again, the company has been out of balance for years." He balanced the thumb drive on the edge of one of the claws of his arm. "Investments in anything to do with biology, leaving it's robotics to rot." He should know. A failure in Oscorp machinery did this to him. He looked past the thumb drive at Charlie. "Isn't that right?"

A test of her loyalty to Oscorp and therefore Norman or simply the ramblings of a mentally unstable man? Otto's mind was difficult to follow. One moment he was scientifically driven, rational, and even seeking alliances to get himself out from under Norman's thumb, and the next he was violent, raving about whatever irked him in the moment, and burning bridges. He wasn't nice in either of his moods and would still get violent. It was really a matter of the attacks being calculated or impulsive.

"But... I guess I'm a biologist so uh... I've got a bias. I guess." She glanced back, taking a few tentative steps back, "Guess I should go-" She really didn't like Otto. Norman had always warned her to be careful, or at least to not talk for to long. He couldn't have her running off with other villains.

Bane didn't trust Otto either. Well It didn't really trust anyone except Charlie and that only because it could see every racing thought. And they shared a goal of not getting locked in a glass box for presumably the rest of time. It was symbiotic really. Thats what Charlie told herself as a reassurance. It helped her keep her cancer at bay and in return she protected it fiercely against Normans attempts at experimenting with it. Its hesitancy put Charlie even more on edge than usual.

He passed the thumb drive to his hand, in which he gripped it weakly, not that he could muster enough force behind his fingers to hold it any tighter. His robotic limb waved as if he were shooing a fly. "The ever-present work... Ha, that is something I do not miss." Working his own hours produced much more effective results in his experiments. "I hope your bias does not prevent you from realizing that being Norman's yes man will gain you nothing... besides more work of course."

She didn't get her own autonomy, so sarcasm was really her only viable retort, not unlike a child trying to rebel from its parents. If she had it her own way she wouldn't be working for Oscorp. She'd be somewhere in a lab actually creating medicine instead of just saying it publicly. Once Norman finally cracked spiderman's DNA he promised she could work on whatever she wanted. One foot after another she guessed.

Back at the gala, Norman was talking to some of the guests when he felt a buzz in his pocket. It took a few minutes to excuse himself. They were curious as to where his son was. Befriending the heir to Oscorp was a good investment, especially as rumors of Norman's capability to run the business were at an all time high. Explaining that he did not know the whereabouts of his son was a difficult thing to do without making himself sound bad... or worse. Harry had disappeared into the party and taken Peter with him.

Her finger brushed a hard drive that had been plugged in. That was... weird; this was her laptop. Norman certainly didn't need or want anything off it. Nor did anyone else. She pulled it and set it aside. Probably something she did a bit ago and just forgot. That was how things went. "Weird." She looked at it for a moment before dragging herself up. No time like the present to go check on Norman's pet projects. Well it wasn't exactly a pet project- more a series of tests with the Oz compound against Norman's DNA.

The charity gala went about as expected and ended with a speech, toasting to something. Peter wasn't sure. He definitely did not get the reason for this sort of event. Barely anyone spoke of what this was for. It was a bunch of people showboating. That wasn't what he said when Norman asked what he thought of it, but he had said worse lies. It wasn't like he had to attend these for a living. Poor Harry.

It was decided Peter would spend the night at the Oscorp penthouse with the Osborns given the late hour and Harry's insistence to show him a new video game. In the lobby, Norman got a call and stepped off to the side. Harry pulled Peter into the elevator by his wrist, clearly used to Norman's sudden disappearances. Harry was talking eagerly about the trailer for a new horror movie when the elevator doors stuttered, closing before opening again.

Harry's brows furrowed. "Is it not working?" He reached up to press the button to one of the top floors. The doors slid shut, but the button on the panel didn't light up.

"Maybe the light burned out? I mean, there's only so many people that go up there," Peter suggested. He could not explain the elevator doors, but lights burn out all the time. They both stared at the button, awaiting some unrealistic correction of the error. Peter would be more worried, but his spider-sense didn't go off, so the chances of them being in danger were low. His eyes flicked up to the LED display of the floor numbers, noticing they were going down. "Did you hit the wrong button?"

"You watched me hit it, Pete. Why would I–" Harry looked to the LED numbers, then down to the bottom rows of buttons. One was very clearly lit up. "It's the suit! You know, there's a reason that I never dress like this–"

"Aside from the fact that you would look like a dork?" Peter interrupted, earning a snort and an elbow to the ribs. They both waited a moment longer, glancing at the floor number as seconds ticked by. "We were on the ground floor. How many basements does your dad need?" he asked incredulously.

"I don't know! It's a skyscraper, Pete; maybe they need a bunch of basements to keep it from toppling over or whatever! It's probably just filled with pallets." Harry crossed his arms. There wasn't much they could do but wait, and now that the lower floors were in question and they actually took notice of their existence, they were curious.

Finally the elevator door opened. "Or not." Peter's voice echoed in the lab as he poked his head out to look around. Harry walked out of the elevator, looking up at the ceiling of pipes. Definitely not just pallets. It was a whole lab. Now, Peter had bad experiences with underground labs—it wasn't anything that helped Norman's case either—but he wasn't about to let Harry stumble into whatever this was on his own. There was the elevator and likely fire escape stairs at a minimum. There were ways out if this was bad.

The laptop laid on the opposite desk, which had a lovely table cloth of papers, cross referenced with arrows drawn across pages with only scotch tape and sticky notes holding them together, all in a scrawl that defiantly wasn't Norman's refined handwriting. Under this desk, caught up in the wheels of the chair, was Charlie's now long forgotten dress. Her heels in a pile not far from the elevator.

Farther in, past the coalition of desks, lay the lab, The hall opening up into what those in the know considered the beating heart of Oscorp. Charlie considered it more of a giant maze with her as the giant mouse stuck tugging her hair out at little vials and giant holograms, and observing much smaller mice die day after day in a much simpler smaller maze.

//so technically they’d be 13, but they’re very brainwashed and unaware of basic things, so they are more childlike mentally? Sort of? They’re vulnerable to words, but they’re trained against blows. Story of their life.

They’re literally just a feral little creature. A little guy. A rat bastard. Keep your fingers and any other body parts you don’t want getting bitten off away from its mouth, please.//

It didn’t trust the lady that had supposedly taken it out of cryofreeze. But HYDRA had been… compromised since it went into the tank. (Into the cold cold cold, feeling its innards slowly freezing, vision slowly turning black-) so it couldn’t exactly go back there either.

That’s fine. It’s trained to take care of itself, trained to survive until it can be extracted again.

⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰

She glanced at her phone. The pond was a quarter mile south. Almost there. She sighed and trudged on. Her boot caught a tree root and she stumbled forward. "Shit-" Her hand scraped the bark of the nearest tree and she steadied herself. Biologists weren't made for hiking she told herself.

It stalks low in the forest, in a crouch, metal claws ejected from its fingertips. Is someone looking for it? The woman from the cabin, someone from HYDRA, an enemy? It isn’t sure, but it’s ready to strike if need be.

The snapping of a branch was, if it was ever asked, intentional. That doesn’t change the fact it’s hearing old trainers and handlers snapping at it for not being careful, echoes of the past… a past that doesn’t feel nearly as past as it is. Something that feels like weeks was truly years, decades. Lost in the cold.

It blinks at the brush for a moment, then glances back up at her quizzically. It’s not sure why she’s concerned about its hair. It still takes it, brushing gently, slowly through its hair, like it’s trying to figure out how to best brush its hair.

“That must be awfully uncomfortable.” She pulled a bottle of emergency water from the back of her car. “Drink this- dehydration is the killer of all.”

//so technically they’d be 13, but they’re very brainwashed and unaware of basic things, so they are more childlike mentally? Sort of? They’re vulnerable to words, but they’re trained against blows. Story of their life.

They’re literally just a feral little creature. A little guy. A rat bastard. Keep your fingers and any other body parts you don’t want getting bitten off away from its mouth, please.//

It didn’t trust the lady that had supposedly taken it out of cryofreeze. But HYDRA had been… compromised since it went into the tank. (Into the cold cold cold, feeling its innards slowly freezing, vision slowly turning black-) so it couldn’t exactly go back there either.

That’s fine. It’s trained to take care of itself, trained to survive until it can be extracted again.

⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰

She glanced at her phone. The pond was a quarter mile south. Almost there. She sighed and trudged on. Her boot caught a tree root and she stumbled forward. "Shit-" Her hand scraped the bark of the nearest tree and she steadied herself. Biologists weren't made for hiking she told herself.

It stalks low in the forest, in a crouch, metal claws ejected from its fingertips. Is someone looking for it? The woman from the cabin, someone from HYDRA, an enemy? It isn’t sure, but it’s ready to strike if need be.

The snapping of a branch was, if it was ever asked, intentional. That doesn’t change the fact it’s hearing old trainers and handlers snapping at it for not being careful, echoes of the past… a past that doesn’t feel nearly as past as it is. Something that feels like weeks was truly years, decades. Lost in the cold.

It blinks at the brush for a moment, then glances back up at her quizzically. It’s not sure why she’s concerned about its hair. It still takes it, brushing gently, slowly through its hair, like it’s trying to figure out how to best brush its hair.

“That must be awfully uncomfortable.” She pulled a bottle of emergency water from the back of her car. “Drink this- dehydration is the killer of all.”

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

Otto pursed his lips. He much rathered the freedom that plain money funds gave him, especially over being given technology. Norman's donations were always so restrictive, much like his desired outcomes. If an experiment didn't show direct results, he killed it. Otto hated that. It was part of the reason he believed Norman had failed to capture Spider-Man or replicate his powers to sell to the military.

Despite his evident distaste, one of Otto's mechanical arms took the thumb drive in one precise movement and held it in front of his face to inspect with another. "So much for Oscorp being top of the line. Norman only now upgraded his system? Then again, the company has been out of balance for years." He balanced the thumb drive on the edge of one of the claws of his arm. "Investments in anything to do with biology, leaving it's robotics to rot." He should know. A failure in Oscorp machinery did this to him. He looked past the thumb drive at Charlie. "Isn't that right?"

A test of her loyalty to Oscorp and therefore Norman or simply the ramblings of a mentally unstable man? Otto's mind was difficult to follow. One moment he was scientifically driven, rational, and even seeking alliances to get himself out from under Norman's thumb, and the next he was violent, raving about whatever irked him in the moment, and burning bridges. He wasn't nice in either of his moods and would still get violent. It was really a matter of the attacks being calculated or impulsive.

"But... I guess I'm a biologist so uh... I've got a bias. I guess." She glanced back, taking a few tentative steps back, "Guess I should go-" She really didn't like Otto. Norman had always warned her to be careful, or at least to not talk for to long. He couldn't have her running off with other villains.

Bane didn't trust Otto either. Well It didn't really trust anyone except Charlie and that only because it could see every racing thought. And they shared a goal of not getting locked in a glass box for presumably the rest of time. It was symbiotic really. Thats what Charlie told herself as a reassurance. It helped her keep her cancer at bay and in return she protected it fiercely against Normans attempts at experimenting with it. Its hesitancy put Charlie even more on edge than usual.

He passed the thumb drive to his hand, in which he gripped it weakly, not that he could muster enough force behind his fingers to hold it any tighter. His robotic limb waved as if he were shooing a fly. "The ever-present work... Ha, that is something I do not miss." Working his own hours produced much more effective results in his experiments. "I hope your bias does not prevent you from realizing that being Norman's yes man will gain you nothing... besides more work of course."

She didn't get her own autonomy, so sarcasm was really her only viable retort, not unlike a child trying to rebel from its parents. If she had it her own way she wouldn't be working for Oscorp. She'd be somewhere in a lab actually creating medicine instead of just saying it publicly. Once Norman finally cracked spiderman's DNA he promised she could work on whatever she wanted. One foot after another she guessed.

Back at the gala, Norman was talking to some of the guests when he felt a buzz in his pocket. It took a few minutes to excuse himself. They were curious as to where his son was. Befriending the heir to Oscorp was a good investment, especially as rumors of Norman's capability to run the business were at an all time high. Explaining that he did not know the whereabouts of his son was a difficult thing to do without making himself sound bad... or worse. Harry had disappeared into the party and taken Peter with him.

Her finger brushed a hard drive that had been plugged in. That was... weird; this was her laptop. Norman certainly didn't need or want anything off it. Nor did anyone else. She pulled it and set it aside. Probably something she did a bit ago and just forgot. That was how things went. "Weird." She looked at it for a moment before dragging herself up. No time like the present to go check on Norman's pet projects. Well it wasn't exactly a pet project- more a series of tests with the Oz compound against Norman's DNA.

//so technically they’d be 13, but they’re very brainwashed and unaware of basic things, so they are more childlike mentally? Sort of? They’re vulnerable to words, but they’re trained against blows. Story of their life.

They’re literally just a feral little creature. A little guy. A rat bastard. Keep your fingers and any other body parts you don’t want getting bitten off away from its mouth, please.//

It didn’t trust the lady that had supposedly taken it out of cryofreeze. But HYDRA had been… compromised since it went into the tank. (Into the cold cold cold, feeling its innards slowly freezing, vision slowly turning black-) so it couldn’t exactly go back there either.

That’s fine. It’s trained to take care of itself, trained to survive until it can be extracted again.

⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰⋆꙳༄˖•❅‧*₊⋆ ˖𖠰 𖠰

She glanced at her phone. The pond was a quarter mile south. Almost there. She sighed and trudged on. Her boot caught a tree root and she stumbled forward. "Shit-" Her hand scraped the bark of the nearest tree and she steadied herself. Biologists weren't made for hiking she told herself.

It stalks low in the forest, in a crouch, metal claws ejected from its fingertips. Is someone looking for it? The woman from the cabin, someone from HYDRA, an enemy? It isn’t sure, but it’s ready to strike if need be.

The snapping of a branch was, if it was ever asked, intentional. That doesn’t change the fact it’s hearing old trainers and handlers snapping at it for not being careful, echoes of the past… a past that doesn’t feel nearly as past as it is. Something that feels like weeks was truly years, decades. Lost in the cold.

It blinks at the brush for a moment, then glances back up at her quizzically. It’s not sure why she’s concerned about its hair. It still takes it, brushing gently, slowly through its hair, like it’s trying to figure out how to best brush its hair.

“That must be awfully uncomfortable.” She pulled a bottle of emergency water from the back of her car. “Drink this- dehydration is the killer of all.”

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

Otto pursed his lips. He much rathered the freedom that plain money funds gave him, especially over being given technology. Norman's donations were always so restrictive, much like his desired outcomes. If an experiment didn't show direct results, he killed it. Otto hated that. It was part of the reason he believed Norman had failed to capture Spider-Man or replicate his powers to sell to the military.

Despite his evident distaste, one of Otto's mechanical arms took the thumb drive in one precise movement and held it in front of his face to inspect with another. "So much for Oscorp being top of the line. Norman only now upgraded his system? Then again, the company has been out of balance for years." He balanced the thumb drive on the edge of one of the claws of his arm. "Investments in anything to do with biology, leaving it's robotics to rot." He should know. A failure in Oscorp machinery did this to him. He looked past the thumb drive at Charlie. "Isn't that right?"

A test of her loyalty to Oscorp and therefore Norman or simply the ramblings of a mentally unstable man? Otto's mind was difficult to follow. One moment he was scientifically driven, rational, and even seeking alliances to get himself out from under Norman's thumb, and the next he was violent, raving about whatever irked him in the moment, and burning bridges. He wasn't nice in either of his moods and would still get violent. It was really a matter of the attacks being calculated or impulsive.

"But... I guess I'm a biologist so uh... I've got a bias. I guess." She glanced back, taking a few tentative steps back, "Guess I should go-" She really didn't like Otto. Norman had always warned her to be careful, or at least to not talk for to long. He couldn't have her running off with other villains.

Bane didn't trust Otto either. Well It didn't really trust anyone except Charlie and that only because it could see every racing thought. And they shared a goal of not getting locked in a glass box for presumably the rest of time. It was symbiotic really. Thats what Charlie told herself as a reassurance. It helped her keep her cancer at bay and in return she protected it fiercely against Normans attempts at experimenting with it. Its hesitancy put Charlie even more on edge than usual.

He passed the thumb drive to his hand, in which he gripped it weakly, not that he could muster enough force behind his fingers to hold it any tighter. His robotic limb waved as if he were shooing a fly. "The ever-present work... Ha, that is something I do not miss." Working his own hours produced much more effective results in his experiments. "I hope your bias does not prevent you from realizing that being Norman's yes man will gain you nothing... besides more work of course."

She didn't get her own autonomy, so sarcasm was really her only viable retort, not unlike a child trying to rebel from its parents. If she had it her own way she wouldn't be working for Oscorp. She'd be somewhere in a lab actually creating medicine instead of just saying it publicly. Once Norman finally cracked spiderman's DNA he promised she could work on whatever she wanted. One foot after another she guessed.

(deviltown au! morgan leaves her home to go across the country with her brother. morgan is twelve...ish. you mainly interact with her older brother.)

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It was a nice, respectable town. A great school district with a decent football team, lovely streets, lovely neighbors; the perfect place to raise a kid.

A church on every other street, perfectly trimmed lawns, and friendly neighbors made up a majority of the community, some would call it boring. You did not.

Especially not after they moved in. A gaggle of young adults, punks and stoners from out of state, took a singular unoccupied house, and some how, it fell into more disarray with them in it than it did without them.

To make matters worse, there was a child in there. Twelve years old. A middle schooler, living in a house that never slept, with no real adult supervision (their parents were nowhere in sight), full of young adults who were barely old enough to be out on their own.

Young adults who were rumoured to be Satanists.

You weren't the type to clutch your pearls, but maybe you could just go check on her.

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But it got to a point, where she was on the brink of hitting the young man leaning against her car. The nice one her dad had got her for her birthday. The cute mint Nissan that still smelled like the dealership. And she was late. And her alarm hadn’t gone off and the hem of her dress and her socks in her perfectly white mary jane’s were wet from the sprinklers and there was a man on her car.

A man she had been arguing with for almost five minutes. A man nobody was going to deal with because it wasn’t any of their business and it didn’t involve them. A man that was trying to negotiate with her to take this child, who was probably going to get her little shoes on the back of Charlie’s seats, to school. A middle school on the other side of town from her high school.

"First of all, she's not my kid, let's get that out of the way." He didn't look anywhere near old enough to have a twelve year old. Frankly, it was offensive that she would even think that, but that wasn't the matter at hand.

The kid in question was just standing there with a mildly pissed off expression, scraggly bangs hanging half in her face.

"That thing can't go over thirty, I'll get run off the road!" He leaned against the door with his full weight, surprisingly more than expected, pleading with her. It was half of the truth; the other half being that his license was one wrong move away from being suspended. "Come on, man!"

She looked between the kid and the man on the car and then to the car itself. Her new baby. “It’s not my problem! It’s not my business.” Charlie’s arms were crossed, an unpleasant mirror of her mothers own stern expression, although sixteen-year-old Charlotte Schmidt wasn’t very good at pulling it off. “She’ll- she’ll get her dirty little shoes all over the seats!”

She almost regretted it as soon as she said it. The idea she was more concerned about her new car than the child that needed a ride to school that came from a bad house. Key word: almost.

"You're already late, what the Hell does it matter?" Geeve was grasping at straws here. He didn't work, hardly cleaned, and was already under scrutiny by the law more than the others; Nick had given him one job, a stupidly simple job, and he would be dead meat if he failed.

'Yo, Geeve! Get Morgan to school on time, wouldja?'

Morgan had offered twice to just walk, to which Geeve refused. One, because he couldn't guarantee she'd end up at school and two, because all it took was one nosy phone call...

She looked down at the kid. "What if I go back inside and call social services huh?" She held her chin unbefittingly high for a teenager. No one had bothered to call social services in this town. It wasn't their business. But Geeve had made it Charlie's business. She took a step back. "I will call them. Maybe they'll clean you out while they're at it."

She reached down and grabbed her school bag off the ground. Maybe he would give up if she left, get off her car. Maybe he would panic and take him and everyone else in that godforsaken house to go be someone else's business.

Morgan was a scroungy little thing. Obviously not from neglect, she seemed pretty well taken care of, but she had a scroungy demeanor, an little coyote face framed with frayed, ill-maintained waves. And a nasty RBF.

Geve was starting to feel the heat now. He tugged on the neckline of his tank top, face knotted up. It's not like they were doing anything wrong - other than the noise violations and the drugs - but the thought of anyone searching the house scared the daylights out of him. Even if they didn't find anything, he would get kicked out.

"We're not Satanists, you... white-shoed... jerk!" There was really no reason why he couldn't swear in front of Morgan, but his dad always said you shouldn't swear in front of kids. Or girls. "Just take her to school! I'll buy you a tank of gas!"

“Are you okay?” She took on that tone again. Her mother’s condescendingly caring tone. She would have offered to let Morgan in the house but the thought of her on the perfectly fluffed couches made Charlie cringe. What would her mother think? What would her father think? Talking with strange men, offering favors.

What would the neighbors think? Ms. Hampton would be all over in church on sunday, Charlie late for school, talking to those strange delinquent boys. So young to be caught up in something so awful. Thats what she would say and then Charlie would be disgraced forever and her mother would die from shame.

Thats what Charlie’s spiraling thoughts told her. No one would like her, she would never get that scholarship, she could never go to a football game again and she would probably be grounded forever and never be able to driver her pretty new mint car that still smelled like the dealership.

Morgan didn't respond, just deadpanning in Charlie's general direction, like everyone here was pissing her off. Maybe they were. One could wonder how much God-given anger a tweenage girl could hold, and their guess wouldn't even scratch the surface of one Morgan Gonzago.

It's not like she was a dirty kid, not inherently, she just didn't look... clean, all clothes that didn't fit right and frazzled hair from regular bar soap and near constant humidity. Along with a reputation for maladaptive behavior, that made for an unsavoury, 'do-your-homework-or-you'll-end-up-like-her' kid.

She took a step back. The farther she was the less she could be associated with them. But it was honestly completely unnecessary and inconvenient because they had to keep talking louder.

"If she messes up my car?" Charlie asked, assuming he'd offer money again. Dirty money she wanted nothing to do with. She knew what happened to people with dirty money. They ended up rolled over on the side of the road a mile out of town. She couldn't imagine the mess that would leave. And she was her parents only child, to no ones dismay.

It was a battle of determination versus desperation, laid out for the whole street to see. And Geeve was about to lose.

"She won't! Scout's honor!" He pleaded, his voice weak, army boots pressed into the ground to make him look taller. "And if she does, I'll fix it! With my own two hands!"

One of the people in the house had to be good with cars. For fuck's sake, there were eleven of them.

"And it's not her, it's just her jac- here give me your jacket-" Geeve moved off of the car, grabbing Morgan by the back of her jacket. She didn't like that.

"No!" She snapped, pulling away from him.

"Morgan!" He snapped back, mirroring her expression.

This is a child, Geeve. He takes a deep breath, smoothing his hair down under his bandana before turning away from the difficult little shit who was pulling her jacket back over her shoulders.

She gestured to Morgan to get in the back. It was a nice car. Light beige seats that still needed breaking in, nice real wood trim, a ribbon tied around the side of the wheel and a Pointer Sister's CD on the passenger seat. It smelled like roses, or at least, the closest rose-equivalent perfume you could get at the mall. The only thing you could point to as off was an old cinema ticket discarded under the driver's seat.

"Honestly." She rolled her eyes, throwing her backpack into the opposite seat. She couldn't believe she was doing this; she couldn't imagine what her nosey neighbors would say. Not to her of course, but to each other.

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

Otto pursed his lips. He much rathered the freedom that plain money funds gave him, especially over being given technology. Norman's donations were always so restrictive, much like his desired outcomes. If an experiment didn't show direct results, he killed it. Otto hated that. It was part of the reason he believed Norman had failed to capture Spider-Man or replicate his powers to sell to the military.

Despite his evident distaste, one of Otto's mechanical arms took the thumb drive in one precise movement and held it in front of his face to inspect with another. "So much for Oscorp being top of the line. Norman only now upgraded his system? Then again, the company has been out of balance for years." He balanced the thumb drive on the edge of one of the claws of his arm. "Investments in anything to do with biology, leaving it's robotics to rot." He should know. A failure in Oscorp machinery did this to him. He looked past the thumb drive at Charlie. "Isn't that right?"

A test of her loyalty to Oscorp and therefore Norman or simply the ramblings of a mentally unstable man? Otto's mind was difficult to follow. One moment he was scientifically driven, rational, and even seeking alliances to get himself out from under Norman's thumb, and the next he was violent, raving about whatever irked him in the moment, and burning bridges. He wasn't nice in either of his moods and would still get violent. It was really a matter of the attacks being calculated or impulsive.

"But... I guess I'm a biologist so uh... I've got a bias. I guess." She glanced back, taking a few tentative steps back, "Guess I should go-" She really didn't like Otto. Norman had always warned her to be careful, or at least to not talk for to long. He couldn't have her running off with other villains.

Bane didn't trust Otto either. Well It didn't really trust anyone except Charlie and that only because it could see every racing thought. And they shared a goal of not getting locked in a glass box for presumably the rest of time. It was symbiotic really. Thats what Charlie told herself as a reassurance. It helped her keep her cancer at bay and in return she protected it fiercely against Normans attempts at experimenting with it. Its hesitancy put Charlie even more on edge than usual.

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.

"I think I know her, nice older woman? Shorter hair?" She was honestly grasping at straws for a bit of connection that could hold off the Osborn in-fighting.

It was hard enough to deal with one of them on a daily baises, two at a party was almost too much. And she had been dealing with Norman for almost the whole night, a vicious tug of war between glowing compliments and small reminders that she owed him.

"If she mentions she does quad biking, hiking, or roller skating, then yes, you do know her," Harry listed some of May's more adventurous hobbies, curious if Charlie did know her. He also did so because he knew that Peter wouldn't think to further describe his aunt to help Charlie out.

With a sympathetic nod, Peter laughed. Being spread thin was no fun, but he found keeping a light attitude helped somewhat. "When you figure out how to clone yourself, let me know. Having a double would be a big help, so long as they, y'know, don't go all evil twin," he quipped. With his luck, a clone would go evil on him, but he could still chuckle at the fantasy.

She couldn’t imagine cloning yourself would do any good. Her eyes drifted to Norman. Two Normans might be her worst nightmare. Two people looking over her shoulder, two sets fo expectations. The stress would eat her from the inside out if it wasn’t already.

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” She paused, letting the uncomfortable silence settle into her chest. She couldn’t stand it, she usually worked with music blasting to drown out the symbiote in her head. Nothing really worked forever though.

”Harry aren’t you dating that girl?” Charlie hadn’t seen him in a few months and she remembered, against her own will, how flippant Harry had been with his new relationship. But it was probably just high school. That hormonal buzz and then the eventually breakup after the honeymoon phase eventually lapsed. On second thought maybe that hadn’t been the smartest question.

After the silence fell, Peter was blindsided by Charlie's question to Harry. "You're dating someone?" he blurted, head whipping to look at Harry. He had seen Harry flirt a few times and entertain a few flustered confessions of love, but he also remembered the eye rolls and frequent complaints about how little those people had an interest in him beyond his public persona.

To imagine Harry finding someone he was willing to date and not mentioning her was surprising to Peter. Harry had never been one for secrets. This was the same guy who invited the whole school, excluding the new kids, to a house party to prove how great his social life was after those same new kids made quick friends with Peter.

"Uh..." Harry's awkward expression says enough. That relationship didn't last long, but seemingly didn't go down in flames. Harry was the type to hold a grudge and he wasn't glaring, so Peter guessed that it ended somewhat mutually. "I was just trying it out. Don't knock it 'til you try it, y'know?" Definitely over. "But I think I have other things to focus on right now."

Peter nodded. That was a mature answer for Harry. He was full of surprises tonight, apparently.

Opposite to Peter's reaction, Norman still had his composure and looked unperturbed by the information about Harry's dating life. "I agree. School really should be your focus at this age, son." He received a tired sigh in response as Harry looked to the ceiling with a flat expression.

High school had probably been the worst years of her life. She had spent most of her first half rebelling and most of her second half trying desperately to get a scholarship she never got. She had had to go to the state college, not horrible but not supported enough to get her where she was now. Luckily, or unluckily, she had caught Normans' attention.

Norman who was now dictating every move she made. Norman who put out opportunities at her feet and pointed them out when she pushed back. Norman who she still couldn't see as completely evil, despite everything. Norman who called her a bright young mind and gave her responsibilities no twenty-year-old should have. Norman who trusted her over his son with his work.

Charlie looked between the father and son. How would harry feel if he knew? Would he be angry at his father? At her? At himself for not noticing the times Charlie would come to their house late at night and go into his fathers locked room to try and bring him back from the green goblin's form. For not understanding enough to figure out why his father seemed to change on the turn of a dime.

"Assuming your best is good enough," Harry muttered and gave his father a bitter sidelong glance. No matter what Harry did, he would receive the same treatment: apathy and a comment about how there was always more he could do, on a bad day, a comparison to someone Norman deemed superior. Harry could destroy his life completely and he was sure his father would give the same mild disappointment as if he got a C on a test. Harry had come to expect that sort of reaction from any authority figure, so trying hard for college did not seem worth the effort if he could never reach the bar his father claimed to be the standard.

The negative turn in the conversation was not Charlie's fault in the slightest. No matter the topic, the Osborns had recently begun finding ways to make jabs and argue. Peter would not say they ever got along peacefully, but as the years went on and Harry begun to bite back before a comment could be made, he noticed the growing gap between the two. They rarely interacted, and when they had to, it was tense, snide, and constantly on the precipice of an argument.

Unfortunately, the safe topics Peter would run to when the conversations got like this also dwindled with time. Even though he knew that Harry's frustrated sigh was coming, Peter still tried to put a positive spin on it. "At least you learn something, even if other people fail to see that."

It might seem rude or hasty or, god forbid, suspicious. And she didn't know anyone else to peel away with. Maybe she could just leave, although it seemed quite rude it was really her only viable option and Charlie wasn't one to hold herself so high as to not stoop so low at a party.

"I'll be right back." She held her hand up and quietly excused herself. Her steps maybe a bit too hasty to leave. Maybe Norman would disapprove, he probably did, but Charlie needed to catch her breath out of the stuffy room.

So Peter dragged himself through being the mediator between Harry and Norman, counting to five minutes in his head. The aggravated tone of the conversation had mostly died down by now and Norman was asking questions about how they were finding the gala, which was met with Harry's dry responses and Peter playing up his excitement and naivete. There was a million more interesting places he could think of, but lying and acting like this was of any interest to him made the tense line in Norman's shoulders drop and for Harry to grin and call him a dork.

Having finally reached a pause in the conversation, Peter stepped aside, making Harry's arm fall from his shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Charlie, make sure she's alright. It's been a bit." A little too long for comfort, actually; people can move quite the distance in roughly 5 minutes.

"Wha– Pete," Harry began. He didn't want to be left alone with his father.

"Harry, do you think you could get us some water?" Peter asked. If he could find Charlie and she was willing to come back, some water could help with whatever nerves she had, and it was giving Harry an excuse to get away from his dad. "Thank you!" He waved at the two and hoped it was innocuous enough that no one would be getting an earful from Norman later.

"Just get back in!" Charlie was hissing, her back pressed against the wall. She had a bead of sweat forming on her brow, it was taking a lot of her to not let the symbiote fully take over. Her fists clenched against the wallpaper.

"No" It argued, its voice so deep it was barely audible if you weren't listening hard. It wouldn't be very intimidating if Peter hadn't had known what it was. But knowing was worse than not in this situation and looking at the symbiote was like a rock in his chest. It wasn't venom, that was still attached to its last host, at least as far as he knew.

"What do you mean 'No'? We're in public, you can't come out! Norman's going to kill me if you get out-" She grabbed at the symbiote that expertly dodged the onslaught. She stumbled. "I can't let you out until we get back to the lab- there's some stuff there I promise." She whispered. She couldn't let it out here.

Norman would actually kill her, or worse put her in one of the little glass boxes. She could hardly imagine him actually angry at her. Anything past mild disappointment she was deathly afraid of.

"I'm hungry- I'm starving." It droned, wilting pathetically.

Charlie looked up helplessly, "God, I know! I know! B- just give me like an hour, I can excuse myself politely and we can leave and no one will notice and we can avoid any questions. I've already planned the whole thing out-" She was a chronic over-planner and over-thinker and having a symbiote attached to her had done nothing but heighten her tendencies.

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. Did Norman know about this? Charlie certainly seemed anxious about him knowing of this. That was an issue and could mean that Peter would have to confront more than a few things he had heard about Norman over the years. Octavius had hurled accusations of Norman being behind all of the stalking he had done on Spider-Man every single time he was captured, and then promptly disappeared without a trace before reappearing like the world's worst magician. Oscorp's genetic work being similar to Octavius' was another point against Norman's innocence. Vulture, Lizard, Rhino, and himself. The former two, and Venom if one wanted to count that, were caused by Octavius, but he and Rhino were caused by Oscorp messing around with genetics. But all were equally disastrous, with him as the outlier, kind of.

He shook his head. He could be paranoid later. Right now, he needed to worry about the symbiote attached to Charlie that was interested in eating nice people. Could he find something to stop that? What do symbiotes even eat? People, apparently, but that was a no-go. How should he even react? His baseline for experiencing weird, scary things is way off compared to what he was pretty sure was normal. Not that pretending to be normal and going off screaming and running would help either. It would be quite the way to find out if symbiotes had a prey drive or not.

It really hadn’t been a problem tonight and Charlie was getting exasperated by its complaining, even now, from the back of her mind. But she was an expert at this point in covering her tracks. She fingered her phone in one hand, glancing off. Peter wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. I mean she didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone actually. She could barely deal with the awful ordeal of ‘disposing’ of scientists and people that knew too much and Peter was still young.

”Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.” She apologized, expertly covering up her nerves with… well the ones she already had. Maybe that had mellowed the symbiote. Usually its boosted already had negative tendencies, agression, lying. Or nerves apparently. “I just get a bit hot at these type of things, overwhelmed.”

For once, he seemed to be a little lucky and didn't have to directly deal with Charlie's symbiote. Life usually wasn't so kind. He was preparing for the worst, so he wasn't quite sure what he should do now that the outcome he prepared for wasn't happening. He would do his best to help without saying he knew anything.

Tomorrow was also Saturday, a completely strange day to have work on. But working for Norman Osborn was a full time job. Working for the Green Goblin was undisputedly worse. Long hours, longer headaches and way too high risk for anything Charlie would have normally gone through, but it had been a slow and brutal accumulation of tasks that had eventually trapped her under its heavy palm.

She just had to make it out as soon as possible, just had to make it back to the Oscorp lab, change and get down to the shipping dock where supposedly Otto would be waiting. It wasn't her favourite job, she actually much preferred when Norman did it.

But here she was, scrambling out of a party with a symbiote screaming in the back of her head and some kid trailing behind her. Bursting out of the front doors the wind felt like you were being doused in ice water. Clouds gathered in puny whisps across the lonely sky. Far above the familiar red air traffic lights blinked from the top of the towers. Yellow taxi's and ubers of every shape and size wizzed past, each more determined to get to their stop than the next.

When Charlie spoke, he snapped back to where he was, on the ground outside of a very crowded building with what was now one of his biggest problems inside. "Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you, Charlie. I hope you have a good night and that, uh, work goes well for you." He took a step back. Charlie clearly wanted him to leave—fair enough with the whole symbiote thing—which felt a little weird to leave her before he knew she was able to get where she was going safely. However, he couldn't really insist on staying without coming off as weird, and, besides, she had a symbiote that could probably handle trouble if it came her way.

Ding! The elevator jolted to a stop. She left her dress on the back of her chair, pulling on the jeans and hoodie she had left earlier.

"We'll get dinner on the way-" She mumbled, grabbing a thumb drive ladened with data. The symbiote would have jumped for hoy if it had understood anything of the expression.

A text -'ONW'- Flashed across Normans' phone. Then corrected '*OMW'. In her defence Charlie was only typing with one hand, the other pulling on her tennis shoes. She was out in under fifteen minutes. A record by her standards but nothing groundbreaking by anyone else's. Maybe she'd get tomorrow off if this went really well. Maybe she'd get the whole weekend paid off. That had happened before. Once or twice but it had definitely happened. Probably.

Peter took the opportunity to dart through the crowd and find Harry; a much easier task because he was more familiar with his voice than he was Charlie's. Ducking elbows and gesticulating hands was the hard part. Thank goodness for spider-sense, though he did wish it would chill out. No one's elbows were sharp enough to warrant this sort of reaction. But he would ignore it for the time being, like the rest of his problems.

In the privacy of the alley she allowed Bane to seep out and encase her in itself. Then the two were off. It was faster to travel by Symbiote in New York anyway. Spiderman didn't save the city by taking the subway. Rooftops were a common favourite among the uncommon. Open, easy to duck behind and devoid of most life. Charlie had places to be. And dinner to find for Bane. And Otto to meet.

His robotic arms twitched. Perhaps he would kill him when the time finally came. The man deserved it thrice over. Otto sighed and looked out to the water, trying to will away his contempt. It was not a secret that he hated Norman. Far from it. But if he posed a threat... well, he could say goodbye to any relations he had outside of Norman, potentially his own life if the man was sick of him. He had been getting reckless as of late; both an advantage and danger to Otto.

He supposed just about now he would find out Norman's temperament. That was the reason he risked his freedom to come up here after all. He turned and walked away from the water, towards where they agreed to meet, his robotic arms clicking on the ground as they carried him. He didn't fully exit the shadows. He risked his safety being up here enough.

"Yeah- sorry he's busy. Public appearances and all that." Charlie dropped her head on his behalf. Better to be polite. She could probably survive a hit or two from those arms but maybe at the expense of a few bones. And then what? Have Norman pay for her hospital visit?

She rustled around in her pocket, better to just get this over with and get home. "Here." She pulled out the thumb drive and held it out to him. "The system upgrade."

It wasn't just that but he didn't know that and he would never know that hopefully. It did do what it promised, but it also, buried in the code, had a few lines that remotely connected it to a computer back at the Oscorp lab. Just in case. Norman liked kill switches. Especially for others. Especially for Otto who had proven himself time and tome again, a loose cannon who was not the most reliable when it came to what Norman wanted.

//Note: This starter is not compliant to the usual blog timeline. Peter is still 17-19, however, Norman has not revealed himself to be the villain nor has he been redeemed and after years of secretly hunting the wall crawler and hiring whoever is willing, people are talking. I'll probably add more context in the comments since unhealthy mentor-mentee relations has infected my brain.

This evening is out of the norm. Well, for Peter at least. Some of the other attendees likely do this every week. The surrounding faces are mostly unfamiliar and he only vaguely recognizes a few from magazines, the news, and such. The room was pretty much the same with arched ceilings and fancy warm lighting that he would imagine when thinking of a charity gala. The only familiar thing was the skyline. Good ol' New York, albeit the higher end buildings, but still home. How people manage to travel across the world for these sorts of things, Peter can't imagine. Thankfully, that's not his life.

His life was supposed to be keeping Harry company this evening—not many people their age here or something—and said Harry had disappeared to the bathroom 15 minutes ago. The chances that Harry is still in that bathroom is low. He probably got dragged into a conversation he can't get out of. And if he's stuck in a conversation, there's no way Peter with his lack of high brow social skills could help.

He sighs, rolling the bottom of a glass on the table cloth of one of these round tables and worrying that he's in the way of the people meandering around for the hundredth time.

"Peter," greets the voice of Norman Osborn, paired with an irregular tone for the stern businessman. Any gossip magazine would describe Norman as a detail-oriented, near-clinical man who spends more time as a CEO than a father to his son, Harry. More recently, the bolder gossip magazines would dare mention the concerning amount of supposedly stolen Oscorp technology that villains are getting a hold of.

Not that Peter is very good at staying in the know, and the possibility of his best friend's dad, who has been nothing but friendly, being a villain and/or hiring villains is a complex topic he does not have the time to consider. He would need a week off for the mental breakdown alone.

He stands up, straightening his suit, borrowed from Harry, that's a little too small. "Mr. Osborn." He smiles.

"Where is Harry?" Norman scans the surrounding crowd for his son, a slight frown etched into his face.

And this is where Peter decides on telling a little white lie. Harry gets enough flack from his dad about his struggles with science. "He's in the bathroom." It is, technically, the truth, he merely omitted the detail that Harry has been 'in the bathroom' for 15 minutes.

"Hm. Well, I suppose he will have to join us when he's finished." A more pleasant expression is fixed back onto his face and he circles the table and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, leading him back around to the person Norman was with, who Peter didn't notice at first. "Peter, I'd like for you to meet someone." He looks to them, awaiting their introduction.

//Naturally, anyone is more than welcome to interact! And don't worry if your muse has no reason to be at a charity event; make something up like being a part of a networking program, having a friend who is attending, working at the event, being a special guest, or whatever you'd like!

Her eyes flitted up to Norman nervously. She always felt she was on thin ice around him; One misstep away from loosing her internship and finding herself on the wrong side of his containment cells.

"Bioengineering, huh?" Peter echoed. That was a subject he was unfortunately well-versed in due to his own 'situation' and a majority of the animal-themed villains he's faced who were biologically engineered. But those villains were the work of one guy with an obsession with octopods, not Oscorp, thankfully ((as far as he knows)). He smiled. "That's really cool! Always something fun to study there." He shouldn't let past experiences get in the way, particularly because he could not give a reason as to why he was nervous with the subject.

"Do you do like the gene splicing or separate the DNA, RNA, and stuff– or is that automated?" he asked. It was definitely a topic that interested him, so at least it was easy to talk about. He took a step to the side, Norman's hand dropping from his shoulder, to make room for Charlie so they are now standing in a sort of triangle, which Peter hoped was a little less intimidating since Charlie did seem a little nervous.

“You’re going into your senior year soon though? What are you going into? Mr. Osborn’s told me you’re interested in science.” She was talking too much. It was just nerves. It wasn’t often she got invited to these types of events and she wasn’t exactly the target group.

"Of course I do, Peter. You've helped my son time and time again with school. I wouldn't be where I am now if I weren't able to recognize intelligence when I see it," Norman replied, his tone even. "And you never ask for anything in return, so I figured I would do us both a favor and network with other bright minds." He looked to Charlie, not saying a direct compliment to her but placing her under the umbrella term of 'bright minds'.

“I play tennis mostly on the side. A bit of volunteering, I do emergency food programs in the Bronx. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you there before? Maybe?” It was honestly a dizzyingly orchestrated public profile. Not unlike Norman’s schedule there was no possible way she could have anything to do with the disappearances, the rising rates of villain attacks or the excess of Oscorp tech showing up.

How could she had been connected to the latest Doc Oct attack, she had been at a tennis tournament. Where was she during the hours of six pm to eight pm when that couple had gone missing just off of Jefferson blv? Helping Veterans get their papers in order to move into assisted living.

"Uh, maybe? My aunt does a lot of volunteer work, and a lot of hobbies, so you might have seen me when she brought me along to whatever she was doing," he suggested. And Norman's interest had seemingly been sated with that answer.

He nodded as Charlie recommended MD, smiling as she spoke of her positive experience. "I'll have to look into it." A few years ago, when Peter had only been friends with Harry for about a year, he would have been surprised to think of Norman as someone who would hold favors over someone else's head. Nowadays, it was a much more believable thought, one that made him more and more grateful he never accepted those sorts of favors each and every day.

Well, that conversation lasted longer than Peter expected. Usually his social skills fail him much sooner, but he finally felt like he hit a wall, which usually meant a stupid question would be the next thing to leave him.

"Pete!" Oh, thank goodness. Harry's arm looped over Peter's shoulder and he sighed dramatically, looking behind him and offering a tight smile to whoever he just got out of a conversation with. He did a double take upon seeing his father. "Dad." And in a slightly more friendly tone, Charlie gets a "Hey." He then looked between the three. "What's going on?"

"Mr. Osborn was just introducing me to Charlie. She's an intern, bioengineering," Peter explained.

Harry nodded slowly, leaning forward to shake her hand, but not bothering to remove himself from Peter in the slightest. "I'm going to pretend I know what that is," he joked with an easy grin. He very well could have met Charlie before. Remembering people was not his strong suit.

"And where have you been?" Norman questioned, eyeing the group Harry just left, arms crossed.

Harry had probably met tens of people that worked ‘with cancer’ and didn’t have the capacity to remember all of them by name or face. Even if she had graced their dinner table multiple times and wasn’t a stranger to cleaning up after Norman’s messes as Green Goblin, to the oblivion of Harry. He probably brushed her off as a cleaner or female friend of his fathers he had absloutly no interest in.

Charlie opened her mouth to ask where Harry was going to collage, remembered the hassle their last conversation had been. The argument between son and father she had had to mediate and immediately dropped the thought.

With a stern glare, Norman prepared to refute.

Peter laughed awkwardly, "Haha, that's a good way to say– Huh?" However, Charlie spoke up as well and interrupted what was likely a poor attempt to save Harry from a scolding.

Harry stopped his stare down with his father, seemingly more interested in the topic Charlie brought up.

"Uh, I don't think so. I honestly can't keep track. She does so many things in a week. I think her Saturday mornings are yoga... or was it pilates? It could have changed, though," Peter mused, running through the list of activities she does in his head.

"May does so much, I'm surprised you can keep up with her schedule, Pete. Is it like a Parker family thing to be so busy that you're unreachable?" Harry teased. He seemed to notice Charlie's eagerness to avoid conflict and went along with the topic switch, by ignoring his father, but at least it was something he went along with for now.