Peter Parker

//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.

This may be one of the stupidest things he's done… or well, it was. What he's about to do will probably be worse. But that's for later, so *rewind noises* or whatever.

MJ must have some sort of mind control ability because she managed to convince Peter to come along to her interview. Like last time went so well when the Beetle trashed a whole floor of the Daily Bugle building. So, here he is in some greasy diner as J. Jonah Jameson grills MJ in the booth to his left—Peter didn't even get a nice seat, just one of those uncomfortable plastic-laminated wood chairs that are always an awkward height. At least there's fries. Though they'd be much better if he didn't have to hear Jameson ask MJ about all of the qualifications she's already given the last ten times she's been interviewed for a position. It all boils down to how willing she is to diss Spider-Man, which is where her stubbornness wins out every time.

But fries! So hot his tongue is starting to lose a little bit of feeling. Perfection.

About to pop a fry into his mouth, he pauses and his eyes narrow, dropping the fry back onto the plate.

The door to the diner flies open, the little chime of the bell drowned out by the thud of the door whacking into a, thankfully, empty chair. Peter barely got to glance at the person barging in before there's a table skidding across the floor. His fries? Upended. The awful chair? Knocked aside. Himself? At the other end of the room, steadying the now sideways table that was sent his way so it doesn't crush him and whatever patrons unlucky enough to be on this table's warpath. "Sorry, folks. Pancake-dom via table costs extra," he says mindlessly, even though he should definitely watch his quips when Jameson is around. Speaking of, the news reporter himself is shouting something about refusing to be silenced and the usual spew of his bravery and, as revealed as Peter tips the table back onto its four legs, is cowering as far into the corner of his booth as he can.

And that about sums up how he got where he is now, shielding whoever is behind him with a mere table between himself and the threat, and to top it all off, the loudest journalist in New York along with other civilians as an audience that could oust secrets he doesn't want to get out if he gets a little too spidery.

"You!" they gasp, winded, "you are the absolute WORST!" They had no idea who the other was, but they did know they'd been chasing him for at least 5 blocks and then through an interdimensional portal (one THEY made to follow him THEMSELF! Their magic was improving!) all while he wrecked havoc and caused large amounts of damage. That was more than enough to decide that yeah, this guy sucked.

Shade takes a moment to glance around -- civilians everywhere, small area, J. Jonah Jameson -- they do a double take. Okay, cool, cool, whatever they did here was probably going to be reported on. That's fine.

First things first. There's no room for giant swords in here, so they let it disappear into their pocket dimension. Second, they should probably ensure civilian safety. They notice the table about to crush a bunch of people first, and quickly dodge away from an oncoming attack to get closer.

"Hello!" They greet as they come to the side not pressed against the wall. "Sorry I can't chat. I need to take this, hope you dont mine." They pull the table away from the civilians and twist, throwing the thing as hard as they can at their assailant. It's mostly dumb luck no bystanders were in the way-- the table lands and the man falls, only to stumble up a moment later.

Kind of. Peter winces as the table crashes into the man. At least he isn't the one paying for it. Huh, having little to no responsibility in a crisis situation is weird. Well, that was until he was given the task of evacuating the area. "You and me both," he agrees. Preventing people from getting hurt as a shared goal is enough for him to decide that he can trust Shade to handle the bad guy. It takes a load off his shoulders. He doubts the ol' adrenaline excuse will cut it with J.J.J. as a witness if he were to go toe to toe with this guy. But while getting people out of the way it might.

He glances around, watching the man's destructive behaviour that is blocking the main door for a beat longer before moving towards the emergency exit. If he can clear a path to it, getting everyone out will be much easier. Peter has a feeling that the man won't have the kindness to see people out the front door.

There are footsteps that follow after him—likely the group that was behind the table with him—and short shrieks as a chair clatters into the wall above their heads. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Peter grumbles, keeping an eye on the man now that he's decided to start throwing things again. "Turn off the burners, fryers, whatever and get out of here!" he calls towards the workers, most of which have crouched behind the counter, shielding their heads. He doesn't expect them to follow the first part much, if at all, but it would be nice if there wasn't a fire hazard as well as an attack.

He wrenches open the small gate separating the kitchen area behind the counter and the rest of the diner, gesturing for the few people trailing after him to go in. "Follow after the workers there– Lead them out of here," he orders the worker that was slowest to get out of here. Shock, probably, but the job should give them a task to cling to for the time being.

As Peter darts through behind the counter, checking that everything is off and making his way around to more people to help get out—mostly Jameson since berating the guy throwing chairs like dodgeballs is not helping, the assailant's carnage seems to have more of a purpose, unfortunately for Shade, they have become his focus. There's only so many tables and seats not bolted to the ground, but he seems intent on throwing all of it in Shade's direction. A shock, I know. You'd think he'd go for the loudmouth crowing obnoxiously about the disrespect

They flinch as Jameson shouts another line about disrespect-- enough of a break in their focus to cause them to get hit square in the nose with a stool. Shade covers their face and yells out a few obscenities before turning to Jameson.

"Can you PLEASE just SHUT UP!" They face their opponent again, wiping blood from their nose as they continue talking to Jameson. "This would be so much easier if you just left and got to safety, man--" they dodge another chair before they seem to come to a realization. "Wait, I'm so stupid, I could literally just--" A blue glow forms around their hands yet again, and suddenly a portal opens under Jameson; he can be seen falling onto his face through the window.

After shoving MJ to follow the rest of the crowd out—he actually had to close the door between them—because she wanted to stay to get the story on the scene and no way is he letting that happen no matter who is here to keep her safe as she records, he sighs. He thinks that's everyone. Or so he thought until he heard Jameson yell as he is dropped through a portal and made to eat the concrete outside. "I'm getting way too good at tuning him out." Peter doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing, especially with the result he just saw, but maybe he should pay a little more attention next time.

"Yeah, I'm working on it," he says, pushing on the door to the staff. It doesn't budge. "Wait, was it?–" He pulls the handle. Nothing. The door locks as it shuts. Just his luck. Pushing on a pull door would have been less embarrassing than accidentally locking himself inside.

He yelps as the intruder crashes into the shelves in front of him. This is the first actual chance he's gotten to see the man unobstructed, and the pumpkin head is definitely a shock that has his yelp being louder than he'd have liked. The pumpkin head's carved grin seems to grow—how that works he doesn't know—at his shout and he begins to sit up. "Trick or treat!" He crows in a voice Peter would never call sane.

Now, he's seen many horror movies. He's complained about the dumb decisions the characters have made enough that he'd be put to shame if he didn't grab the nearest object and hit that pumpkin square in its face. That object just so happened to be a sheet pan. The pumpkin is still intact, and the twang the metal sheet gives is almost comedic, but it has the man faltering long enough that Peter has the chance to hop over the counter. He knows it's a little too graceful of a move for the whole 'Peter-act', so he tries to mess up his landing, stabilizing himself with some flailing and a hand on the floor.

They nearly laugh at the absurdity of hitting the guy with a sheet pan, but cut themself off; they should probably focus so they don't get hit again. The bruise that was definitely forming on their face was already going to be so annoying to explain away later.

"Come on, man, Halloween is my favorite holiday! You're ruining it!" Shade glances at Peter. "Try to stay out of the line of fire. I got this." They say it with way more confidence than they feel, but whatever. They've been living on fake it 'till you make it rules long enough it's practically second nature.

They leap over the counter, fire already wrapped around their fist. They intend for it to hit the guy in the face, but he catches their punch with ease. They're surprised for a moment, caught off guard by the lack of response to the fire, before realizing that of course the guy who's head is literally a flaming pumpkin wouldn't react to a little heat.

They don't have much more time to reflect on this misjudgement before they're met with a swift punch to the gut. They cringe but stand their ground, offering a quick blast of fire in return. It's enough to get the guy off them, if only for a moment.

Peter has dealt with all sorts of crazy before, but maniacally happy with a Halloween theme is new. Would it be wrong of me to say I miss Goblin's crazy? At least he made sense... in his own twisted way. He nods as he's told to try to stay out of the line of fire. That's the plan.

"You got it!" If it's a treat you want, then a treat you shall get!" It is, unfortunately candy themed weaponry, almost a gun of sorts that he's quick to pull from beneath his cape and fire. Luckily, his aim sucks. On the less lucky side, whatever he's shooting is coming apart as it's shot.

So much for staying out of the line of fire! Peter throws his hands up over his head, shielding his face from the pellets. That's what they must be since they haven't torn through Shade and himself like shrapnel would. The pellets are hard and surprisingly small, bouncing off his arms and falling to the floor with a clatter. They hurt, but not nearly as much as one would think something that came from a gun would. He cracks open an eye. He knows he's not bulletproof, so what is this? He takes a peek at the ground. "Candy corn?" The little orange, yellow, and white triangles litter the ground of the diner now. "Where do you even get this much of it?"

For the briefest moment, they consider trying to catch a piece in their mouth. They decide against it, though. One, it would be so embarrassing to die because they choked on a piece of flying candy corn, especially after everything else they've lived through. Two, they didn't really want to meet their sister again. Hela might not be kind enough to send them back up a second time.

Shade watches Peter slowly back away out of the corner of their eye. They need to keep Jack'O'Lantern occupied so he can escape.

Their sword returns to their hand. Now that the store is mostly empty, they have a little more room to swing the giant blade. "Hey, Jack! Try countering this!" They step forward for a swing, aiming to knock the gun out his hand.

That is not what happens. Their foot lands on a piece of candy corn and they slip. They quickly adjust the grip of the sword as they fall -- it nearly takes Jack's head off, and they have no want to kill the guy -- and it slices through the gun and lodges firmly in the wall. Shade hits the floor.

They blink and quickly stand, avoiding the candy corn this time. They shoot a glance at Peter, then look back to Jack. "That did not happen. You didn't see that." It's clear they speak to both of them.

They're very good at this. They are a well trained and professional superhero, and they are not lying to themself about that.

Jack O'Lantern, the maniac, giggles, "That's witchful thinking." He peers over the sword at Shade on the ground. He then yelps as Shade's fist collides with the pumpkin, stumbling back out of their reach as quick as he can. "No fair," he growls, cradling the spot where he got hit. Whether he's cradling the part of his face that got hurt through the pumpkin or is just really that attached to the gourd on his head, Peter can't tell. "I guess it's time for my own tricks!" Like anything he's given is a treat.

As Jack whips out yet another weapon, some sort of pole that elongates itself with his movement, Peter has to duck to avoid the blade. A scythe. Kind of. He doubts it'd be any good on a farm, what with the way the blade crackles. The blade doesn't even seem to be metal, just energy. It must save space for whatever other goodies Jack has up his sleeve. "You're really out of your gourd," Peter mutters, focusing on righting himself from the near-backbend he just had to do.

Jack O'Lantern, of course delighted to hear any vaguely Halloween related pun, spins around, nearly taking out Peter with the scythe again. This time, Peter grabs it near the blade to stop the whole waving around very sharp things theme that has been going on. It also means that he's putting a lot of his balance into Jack holding the scythe steady, which he regrets immediately as Jack leans closer excitedly. "Aw thank you! It makes me all the more spooktastic, and that's just bootiful, don't you think?"

And Peter could do without his eyebrows getting singed off by the flaming pumpkin, so he wedges his heel into Jack's shoulder and pushes him away, maybe a little too hard as Peter flips himself over while doing so, now firmly on his feet with the scythe in hand, the blade safely on the floor. "Oops..." he hisses under his breath before straightening like it was intentional and totally normal of him to do a backflip in a fight. Just such a normal, innocuous thing for a guy to do. He did gymnastics—for two months when he was six—that's why he can do that. "Isn't that grim? You've lost another toy," he comments, trying to play it off. He really should shut up more. Thank goodness Jameson is outside and probably dealing with being dumped onto the pavement so he can't hear these quips.

There's only a few heros with that amount of flexibility, and only one they know of who can come up with that many terrible puns that fast.

Deciding that's not really important, nor their business, they choose to just be happy he's on their side; with their luck, it was a miracle they didn't run into a building holding the next Hydra convention.

Jack isn't facing them, giving them a good opportunity to sneak up. They're careful to avoid the candy corn, not wanting a repeat of their previous mishap (please please please tell them no one caught that on camera. They might cry.)

Shade leaps when they're close enough, tackling him to the ground. They land awkwardly on their side and cringe as candy corn digs into their skin, but continue with their plan anyways, fighting to keep Jack from reaching for any more of his "tricks."

As Shade tackles Jack to the ground, Peter stumbles back, allowing himself to stumble on the candy corn and barely catch himself on the scythe. Is anyone paying attention? No, definitely not. They're busy fighting on the floor. He totally had that realisation before he did that. It was just practice.

"Wh– hey!" he begins, about to defend his quips. At the very least, they aren't on the same level as Jack's. He can accept that they're cringe-worthy, but to compare them to puns that sound like they're from some website? Simply unacceptable. That is until Shade jams their elbow into Jack's chest. Peter looks away. "Yeah, I'll just shut up now."

Jack makes some sort of wheezy coughing noise, similar to a breathless laugh but that's more so the crazy rather than any sort of joy. He flails wildly in Shade's grip, pushing at just about anything and trying to squirm away.

"Got him!" They mentally add ripping the jacket to their list of reasons this guy is totally definitely a superhero. Unless that jacket was made with really flimsy fabric, they don't think it would've ripped that quickly and easily. Plus, they're pretty sure the average civilian wouldn't think of that unless they, for some reason, had experience tying up random villains on the street with little resources.

Shade grimaces as Jack tries to pull his arms back again. They take a moment to thank the stars they got the superhuman strength and endurace from their Asgardian half; this guy was not giving up.

Jack is shouting rather loudly, half of it threats mixed with puns, and the other half claiming that tickles are a rude trick to pull—his understanding of what is going on seems really limited, and Peter almost feels bad for the guy, in that aspect, less so the terrorizing people part.

"Just need a bow and you'd be set for Christmas," Peter pants, sitting back on his heels as Jack writhes.

"NOOOO!" Jack O'Lantern howls, clearly furious in his binds. He is fuming as his squirming grows less violent frome either exhaustion or the cloth cutting into his limbs.

"Can't tell if he's more mad about losing or about the Christmas pun." Shade watches him struggle for a moment before looking back at Peter. "Thanks. You got a level head on you for a guy who presumably doesn't do this every single day." They're still, like, 99% sure this guy is Spider-Man. No other hero would make puns that bad. No need to ruin the guy's secret, though.

Shade holds out a hand with a grin. "I'm Nightshade. Shade. Whichever. 'Preciate the assist. Sorry about your shirt."

"Torn off sleeves are still in fashion, right? That's a thing?" he jokes, folding his arms together. He can argue that's accentuating his arms and making them look more muscular than his 'nerdy' arms actually are, can't he? I'm overthinking this. No one actually pays that much attention, much less people who barely know you to be a 'nerdy weakling'.

"Yeah, it probably needs one considering... Literally everything about this city." NYC had to deal with gods and men flying around in iron suits and sorcerers and spiders. They'd seen the damage plenty; Shade feels a little bad for the people doing all that clean up.

...Better those guys cleaning it up than them, though.

Shade's gaze follows Peter's. They let out a breath. "Damn, Jameson is gonna make me the second most hated superhero in New York after this. First one being that bug guy." They know good and well that spiders aren't bugs, and also that Spider-Man is more well liked than Jameson makes him out to be. They still think it's a little funny to poke at Peter without being obvious about it, though.

Peter opens his mouth to refute the bug guy comment, but holds back, just barely. "Just be confident. I would not be surprised if they can smell fear," he says instead. The advice is bogus, he has no idea what makes Jameson like people. Both times Spider-Man was impersonated, Jameson was praising 'him' to the high heavens.

Shade's decision to stick around has Peter turning his head to look at them, surprise melting into a small, appreciative smile. "Yeah? You just stole my sleeves to tie this pumpkin head up?" he teases. "Thanks," he adds with a more genuine tone. He doesn't plan to let Shade take the fall for him like that, not with Jameson's sway on the public, but the offer is nice.

"Let's go before they bust the door down." He pushes the door open with his shoulder. The clamor from outside bursts in through the open door, the sound of people fussing as they notice the door cracking open. Peter can pick out a few questions and exclamations from the crowd, just civilians, as far as he can tell, for now, but he only waits long enough for Shade to make it through the door before walking to the corner. He does not expect to lose the crowd, but getting them away from the door so police, professionals, and all that can enter the building whenever they get here. It's also a chance for him to scan the crowd for MJ... and Jameson too, mostly because MJ would stick close to him to observe what a 'true journalist' does in this situation.

"What happened?"

"Who are you?"

Those are the two main questions he can decipher from the hubbub, whether they are sent his way of Shade's, he has no idea. How celebrities can understand anything when thirty questions are being hurled at them at the same time, he has no idea. He comes to a stop at the corner of the building, glancing back to make sure Shade is still there and alright.

"Peter! Where have you been? You can't disappear like that!" A familiar head of red hair parts the crowd, stepping right up to Peter and poking his chest accusingly with a grin. "I had a whole cover ready." She crosses her arms, finally seeming to notice his state. "Whoa, I think this is the first time I've seen your shoulders. You're going to distract someone," she comments.

"That is not true, MJ. We've known each other since we were four; you've seen my shoulders," Peter protests, rolling his eyes.

They hear the questions as soon as they step out. Shade is briefly stunned by the overlapping speech and all the eyes on them, but they quickly pull themself together as they plaster on a confident smile and pose with their arms on their hips.

With a tone that sounds almost rehearsed, Shade responds, "I am Nightshade Odinchild, God of the Wildfire and sorcerer in training. Consider this villain vanquished!" They stand proud for a moment before their face falls as they mumble to themself. "No, that sounds too fantasy-ish. This foe is finished? Enemy annihilated? Eh, we'll workshop it." They clear theur throat and stand tall again. "He's in there, and he alone is responsible for all damages. Please lead the cops to him when they arrive, put the guy behind bars, maybe get him some help?" They glance around and spot Peter out of the corner of their eyes. "Uh, I gotta run. No more questions and bye!!"

MJ tilts her head. "Shade Odinchild? Well, that's a name we certainly didn't cover in our school's mythology studies," she remarks, taking Shade's hand eagerly. "And newest hero on the block, huh? So you're going to be sticking around? What can the public of New York expect from you?"

Peter's eyes widen, basically seeing a flashing neon sign indicating the loaded question. Now, no matter how friendly and people-skilled Shade may be, answering that is a trap. Not one MJ lays intentionally—this time, that is; he won't forget how she bullied her way past Iron Fist and Power Man to get to an interview in a building under attack—but with the public and Jameson around, any answer will not be taken in good faith. "Haha, maybe that's a better question for when you have your camera, right? The digital age, y'know? Everyone likes a video." He puts his hands on her shoulders. He knows it's hopeless to tell MJ straight up that such a question has the very high chance to do more harm than good: she sees the good in everyone and wouldn't believe him if he said otherwise when it comes to the media, at least in his experience.

"Ah, well I could still write it down." She smiles. "Besides, how cool would it be to be a hero's first interview!" It's the same excitement that makes him feel bad to say no or point out a flaw in her plans.

"Haven't you already done that?" MJ was the first one to interview Spider-Man. What? You think I could refuse her back then? She'd have personally hunted down Spider-Man three years ago. "Do you even have a notebook?"

"No..." She crosses her arms, eyes narrowing in thought. "Do you?" she asks hopefully.

"Me? Nope! Didn't even bring my bag," he answers. He did, but he has no idea where it is in the diner, so he might as well not have brought it. He'll have to find it later. MJ's expression is disbelieving at best. He smiles 'innocently'.

"There you are! Watson, if you want to be a top journalist, you need to find the action, not run off," Jameson scolds, lightly holding a handkerchief to his nose. Seems the landing face first into concrete after being teleported wasn't exactly harmless. But he still has his attitude, so it's likely nothing to worry about.

"I think she found the action first, sir," Peter comments, earning a judgy side eye from the man, his mouth twisting into a frown before he turns his gaze onto Shade.

"But I'll be in your textbooks soon, I bet. Up there with Captain America and Black Widow and the rest of 'em." Maybe they sounded a bit too confident. They had been living off the fake it till you make it mindset the past few months, though. If they sounded confident enough, maybe it'd come true.

Shade opens their mouth to respond, but is cut off by Peter. They're a little annoyed. This could be their big break! Their first interview to really thrust them into the public eye, make them a real hero! They could get their name on tee-shirts and have those stupid little knockoff figures of themself and unlicensed merch that looked so bad it was funny and--

Okay, plot lost. Still, it would be really cool to have their first real interview, even if it wasn't exactly the most professionally conducted.

"I mean, I might have a notebook somewhere." They throw so many things into their pocket dimension, they wouldn't doubt they did. "Hold on, I can look real--" they pause as Jameson speaks, quickly straightening their posture in an attempt to look more professional-ish. They quickly forget about the notebook as they swivel to face Jameson.

"Oh! Jame-- I mean, Mr. Jameson, sir." They aren't usually one for authority figures; Shade's always been more of a "do what I want and deal with the consequences later" kind of guy. Jameson kinda has actual influence, though, and they really want a good first impression with the public. It's the first step to their dreams of greatness, after all.

...which is why they're kind of regretting the whole telling him to shut up thing. And the dropping him face first onto concrete thing.

It's fine, if they pull out all their natural charisma and charm, they can still turn this around to be in their favor!

Shade clears their throat. "I, uh-- Sorry about earlier. Heat of the moment thing, I don't usually tell people to shut up, be quiet maybe but I promise I'm not that rude--" Oh god they're rambling-- "Is your- uh, your nose okay? I'm still a little iffy on portal trajectory. Busted my own nose a couple of times."

"Well," Jameson clears his throat, adjusting his suit jacket. "It's something you definitely need to work on. Preferably before hurling innocent civilians through your portals." He looks to the side, lips pursing beneath his mustache. "But I am glad you're taking accountability. It's not something everyone does, especially some so-called heroes."

And there it is. Peter was waiting for the Spider-Man diss, even if it was indirect this time. He waves his hand as MJ looks ready to refute that claim. There's no need to save the dead horse Jameson is insistent on beating. Instead, just let Shade have their moment. Peter can't lie and say he's interested in seeing Jameson actually be kind of nice.

"I... suppose... my commentary was not exactly de escalating the situation." Wow, that almost looked like it hurt for Jameson to say. The man looks less than happy to admit his fault, but at least he apologized... kind of.

Peter has to physically bite his lip to keep from adding a 'ya think?' Now isn't the time and he really shouldn't snark an adult while he's so obviously himself, no matter how much of a pain that adult may be. I am mature. I am so good at shutting up. I will utter no words. Imagine Fury is super mad and ready to end anyone who talks back.

He breaks, because how could he not? There are so many different things he could say. He opts for the most innocuous one. "I'm sure it's alright, sir. Villain attacks are scary for everyone. There's no shame in that." It doesn't quite scratch his itch to be a bother, but there's only so much he can do before he loses plausibility that he isn't being intentional in his antagonism.

Jameson does not seem amused. "Yes, for civilians. I am a journalist, and we do not scare in the face of some loon in a mask, now do we, Miss Watson?"

"Not exactly. We act in spite of our fear to deliver–" she begins to say.

"Exactly," Jameson plows on, not waiting for her to finish her thought. Because it's something she got from Spider-Man in an interview? Maybe.

They nod along as he speaks, trying Very hard to seem engaged. The better the impression they leave, the better the future article about them will be (hopefully.) "I'm... working on the portals. I'm mentoring under someone with way more magical skills than me,so I should figure it out soon." They figure outright saying my older brother Loki is showing me how to do cool magic stuff wouldn't get a good reaction. God of Lies or not, he's still not well liked. "Next time, I'll make sure you land on your feet, probably."

At the claim that Shade will clear out New York of supervillains faster than Spider-Man, Peter's eyebrows furrow, his mouth opening like he's deciding if it's worth responding to and risking identities. He purses his lips. The diss wasn't appreciated, but less work is less work, so he won't say no.

Jameson, however, grins, "Ha! Glad to know not all of the new heroes think Spider-Man is the standard."

"Of course that's the key to your heart; hating Spider-Man. Who would have guessed," Peter grumbles under his breath, unsurprised and keeping his voice down low enough that he's sure Jameson wouldn't hear him over his own beginnings of a rant.

"Well, actually, a lot of the villains on Spider-Man's roster were only in New York because they were hired to fight him. So, it would be O– uh, whoever hired them's fault." It's a valiant attempt on MJ's part to defend Spider-Man, even though Peter nearly had a heart attack when she nearly said the—now reformed—'employer's name.

"Well, I don't think I have anyone who hates me bad enough to give people to kill me quite yet." Maybe a few people who had beef with Odin, or Thor, or Loki, but those people didn't directly hate them. They were just trying to hurt the aforementioned Asgardians without any direct sort of confrontation. Not the same as hiring a guy to kill Spider-Man. (Not like Odin cared about anything happening to them. The couple of guys who came after them with the intention of getting Odin's attention were so misguided it was a little funny.) Back to their original point, they add, "I don't thing I'll be attracting any supervillains here anytime soon."

They can't say they aren't enjoying the praise. Even if Jameson isn't their favorite person ever, they haven't ever been used as a good example. It feels pretty nice; Shade just hopes they can live up to his (and the rest of New York's) expectations.

They handle themselves well enough in front of the media, anyway. Peter's glad to see Jameson likes at least one superhero, excluding the two times that he's taken a liking to people impersonating Spider-Man.

"So long as you keep up your efforts, I look forward to it." Jameson takes Shade's hand, giving it a firm shake while stating his hefty expectations. No pressure or anything. With that, he walks back into the crowd, saying he and MJ will meet another time—which will likely end in disaster such as today; her interviews with the man are always interrupted by villain attacks—with a brief over the shoulder wave.

As the news reporter leaves, Peter squints. "Did you put something in his drink, MJ?" he accuses, mostly in jest. He doesn't think he's seen the man in such a good mood, like ever. "Or did he hit his head so hard it knocked the stick outta–"

"I didn't drug Mr. Jameson, Peter." MJ rolls her eyes. She shifts her attention to Shade. "Don't feel too worried about what Mr. Jameson says. So long as you do your best, that's enough. Don't set unachievable expectations to beat yourself up over: that helps no one," she says, a friendly smile on her face. "Right, Peter?" she adds on pointedly, jabbing his side with her elbow.

They look at MJ as she talks, nodding along. "Of course. I'd never set unachieveable expectations." Because no expectation is unachievable if they just achieve it, so they aren't doing that! They're sure theyre never going to get burnt out with thoughts like that.

They look at Peter. "Yeah. I, uh... I'll do my best! Can't wait to work eith yo-- uh, Spider-Man, on that. And the other heroes in New York." They shift their weight from one foot to the other. They really are excited about their new hero-ing thing; they yearn for the sort of praise people like Captain America, Black Widow, even Thor receives.

At the mention of damages, MJ repositions herself to see into the diner, sucking in a breath through her teeth. With a villain like Jack O'Lantern, damages are hard to avoid, but it's far from a pretty sight.

"Uuummm..." Peter always dipped before he could be spoken to, so he has no idea if heroes actually get in trouble for the damages. S.H.I.E.L.D. kind of shields—heh—him from that stuff so long as it isn't gratuitous. "I don't know..." He checks over his shoulder before continuing in a lower voice. "I can call folks in to get the clean up handled, there's a thing for that. So, you only have to run if they start coming over here." It's a suggestion, not one most would approve of as it is quite literally 'run away from the cops' but who is he to care for what should be done? So, he'll keep an eye out for any police coming towards Shade.

"I, uh... I'd appreciate that. Calling those guys in." They do feel a little better, knowing they're not causing some poor innocent civilian a bunch of money because they slipped on some candy corn (and threw chairs and tables and used fire magic indoors.) They nervously glance back at the crowd, keeping an eye on the cops for a moment. They don't seem to be paying them any mind, but they would still rather not linger.

They turn their attention back to MJ and Peter. "I kinda sorta ruined your lunch, right? Sorry about that. Could I get you guys something else to eat?" They maybe have, like, 15 dollars stashed away in their pocket dimension somewhere, but they'd feel at least a little bad for not offering (that, and they really want to get away from all the cops).

It's good enough. Fury will see the news anyway. He's somehow got his eye on everything. Even with the cameras, watching all of those screens is a feat and a half for anyone.

"Lunch?" Free food is free food, Peter can admit that much, but also free for him is not free for Shade. He can survive without it. "Nah. I feel like I should be buying you lunch after you saved us from Jameson. My ears were ringing from halfway across the room," he jokes instead, rubbing his ear with an exaggerated wince.

MJ rolls her eyes. "But we should get going," she decides, spying a sliver of a blue uniform in the crowd. "They don't like how I get the info to show new sides to a story." She spares a glance over her shoulder to glare in the direction of the police as she turns to lead them out of the crowd.

"What? MJ!" Peter hisses, pulling her leather jacket tighter around himself. Torn between following after her and staying between Shade and the police grouped in the crowd. He doesn't want to leave Shade behind to deal with the police, especially after their somewhat nervous attitude towards them.

"There's a reason they aren't journalists, Peter; the truth isn't as important as the law."

Can i have extra money this week pleasepleaseplease like 30 or maybe more dollars pleaseeee

They really don't intend on letting Peter or MJ pay if they can help it. For one, Peter kinda helped in the fight with Jack (and sacrificed his shirt in the process, which Shade still felt a little bad about.) For two, MJ was helping them avoid the cops, which was much appreciated. (They aren't sure how illegal the vigilante thing is, but they do know that they're probably classified as a missing person a few states away, and the less the cops are on them the better.) The least they could do was offer a meal.

As they walk, the crowd thins. He looks between Shade and MJ as the interview conversation goes on. "Ha, that resume is going to be a book by the time she's 20."

"As if that's a bad thing. You know it doesn't hurt to have varied experiences, Peter." MJ knows he's teasing, her own defense being a jab about how he has been in the same 'field' since he was 14.

"Yeah, yeah, Miss journalist, tutor, play writer, and who knows what else." He rolls his eyes.

MJ raises an eyebrow. "You could probably add something to your resume besides teaching. Like that time you acted for my play... or improvised."

"It was a high school play. And Trapster literally crashed your play and I was, like, understudy number seven for Flash; no way you're still mad that I improvised," he groans, waving his hand that is not holding MJ's jacket.

"Maybe I am." She turns to Shade, grinning. "You know his aunt sent me pictures. She thought it was Flash at first because, well, the play was about Spider-Man so masks, so the 'identity reveal' was a big shock when Petey was under the mask." MJ is clearly very happy to share an embarrassing story about Peter.

"No way she was able to take pictures," Peter protests, already knowing his aunt likely snuck them since Flash has been his neighbor since forever and it's not like his folks were around to be proud of him.

"Maybe a video..." She teases. "I think that's the first time I ever heard him sing in the 13 years I've known him," she adds.

They pause in listening when they get a buzz on their phone, they take it out just long enough to read the notification.

$29.99 added to account number...

They slide their phone away, deciding not to comment on the stupid joke. Calling Loki a jerk for giving them one cent less than they asked for would maybe not get them more money in the future. (Even though the bit was a little funny, they could not let their brother know that Ever. He wasn't getting the satisfaction.)

"Oh no, I wouldn't dare," MJ teases, fully intending to send Shade the images and the video if she has it.

"Like a house on fire," Peter sighs to himself, amused by how well Shade and MJ are getting along. And yes, pun intended. "We should be there soon and you two can exchange your info." At least he thinks.

As soon as the smell of food hits their nose, they realize how hungry they are -- having the powers of the Wildfire also comes with an appetite to match. Still, they're trying to get the money in their account to stretch across three people (there's no way they're letting Peter or MJ pay after they kinda sorta destroyed the diner they were supposed to eat in,) so they decide on a cheap-ish pepperoni sandwich and soda.

Shade gives their order to a waiter. While they wait for Peter and MJ to order, they take a napkin and a pen and scribble their number on it, sliding it to MJ with a grin.

He glances up as his name is mentioned. "Huh? Oh." His eyes flick to the napkin, then MJ's grin, figuring out the context. "How devious of you," he comments, his eyes darting across the menu. Too many options. Is it weird to get fries again? What if they're just cursed today? He only had the one shirt and could not deal with another villain vs. diner situation.

He gets the nachos.

"I mostly came here because it's where the Asgardians are. I knew I was different as a kid-- too strong for anyone my size, never got sick, healed too fast -- but I didn't know about my Asgardian side until I was 10-ish."

They still remember that day-- lights flickering and magic pouring from their hands and broken glass and no understanding of what was happening or why. Even with all the villains they've fought and their various near death (and one actual death) experience, it was still the scariest thing they've been through.

"Eventually I got bored of my small town, wanted to figure out more about my father. I figured someone as charming as me could bother answers out of Thor if I tried hard enough -- not that I had to, because the other Asgardian prince found me first. Apparently I have a very distinct magical aura that Loki clocked as being related to the All-Father's."

"I bet that causes some second-hand arch enemies," he adds. Thor has fought and ticked off many a things in the time Peter has known him, never mind all he did before that too. Odin and Loki probably add to that list as well... He'll be sure to keep an eye and ear out for Shade.

(They have gotten better about that, though. Otherwise the diner probably would have been nothing but ash by the end of that fight.)

"Though, I guess my family having enemies got me some of the power I have now. I wouldn't have the God of the Wildfire thing going if Loki and Odin hadn't pissed off some ancient god enough that he wanted to curse me." They didn't see the fire as a curse. Guess that guy wasted his time and energy with that one.

As Shade considers their access to backup—because that is what it is; support in difficult fights—Peter suppresses a wince, trying to hide it with taking another bite. Refusing hypothetical support in the name of being taken seriously, that is a rather familiar thought process. "Well, you have a bunch of your family's enemies after you, so they must take you seriously. At least that, right?" It's not an argument that will win any debates, but he thinks it's at least positive enough.

"Not that that's necessarily a good thing... or the usual experience from what I've got from my interviews. There's a lot that comes with being targeted all the time, and more often than not, asking for backup is the right move," MJ adds logically.

In Peter's mind, what MJ said is most definitely the right answer and what should be taught, even if he still gets irked by the idea of asking for help after years of working on that. "Yeah, of course. More awesome team ups when folks ask for help." He's still rolling her words around in his head, trying to find an angle that can make asking for help more appealing, not only for Shade, but for himself and the heroes he teaches. "Wait. What do you mean by not the usual?"

MJ sighs, rolling her eyes with a slight smile. She knew the question was coming. "Because most heroes and vigilantes have to build up their villain 'portfolio' for months if not years before they have mortal—or in Shade's case, immortal—enemies. Getting into the gig with multiple big names trying to kill you is not normal. Even Daredevil had to work to get where he is."

"Even Nova?" Peter challenges, already figuring that what she's saying makes sense.

"Yes, even him."

Shade listens to MJ's argument. She's right; most heroes ease into the role. Doom doesn't try to stab any teen who suddenly finds out they can fly or shoot lasers from their eyes or stretch their body to extreme amounts. But most people don't have the All-Father's name stuck on their back like a big target. Most up and coming heroes don't have shoes that big to fill. They chew their lip and avoid eye contact. They don't need help but they don't know how to explain that in a way these two might understand.

"Prove the villains wrong?" MJ questions, not nearly as concerned with broaching the topic and staying on the topic at hand. She can wonder how in the world, or outside of the world, Shade came back to life. Her interview has gone a little off the rails, but she feels it is worth it. After all, there would be no chance for any other interviews or sharing more embarrassing pictures of Peter with Shade because they got killed in their refusal to ask for help.

"The villains, yeah." They reply a little too fast. "I mean, you obviously want to have villains fear you, right? Because then it's easier to keep them from causing harm, intimidation and all." They chew at their lip again. It's not exactly a lie, but it's not exactly the whole truth, either, and aren't you suppose to be truthful during interviews? "Maybe I also want the rest of the family to take me seriously, but it's more the villains." There. Thats more true than before.

Family, they know, is a strong word for the shitshow that is their family tree. Loki and Thor are less strained than they have been, but there's still tension. Hela isolates herself from everyone else and longs for the day they all become a part of her domain. Angela... exists, but Shade hasn't actually met her and they aren't sure she wants to. They shouldn't really care about what those guys think, and especially not that damned All-Father, because theyre all messy and half of them are morally grey at best.

Really, Peter knows quite a few people who thought handling things alone was the best way to build a name for themselves or handle their issues, himself included, but he will stick to what Shade is most familiar with. It was also easier than challenging what was likely Shade's lifelong belief that respect came from power and fear, or something along the lines of that.

"I could try to bring it up to him? He's not the most... available guy. Hard to get a phone signal in Asgard, or Van-e-him, or... any of the other ones." Thor was a prince, technically, and had a lot of prince-y duties to attend to. Or something like that, they never listened when he was explaining the responsibilities that came with being royalty. Outside of the time he would occasionally visit them, he was really hard to get ahold of. "...But I guess I could maybe bring it up next time he's in town."

They take a long sip of their soda while they try to figure out how to best respond to MJ. It's about more than just proving themself to a bunch of villains. It's about sending a message to them, yeah, but Asgard too. To all those smug gods who think that just because they're part human, they're less than, weaker.

MJ hums, considering what Shade said. "I guess... So long as the bad guy is stopped at the end of the day, and everybody stays alive, you can go about it like that," she concedes, not entirely convinced but she's been trying to learn to pick her battles more often.

"I won't mention this when I write about my interview with you," she reassures. Some things are not meant for the tabloids, like how someone is struggling to prove themselves to their family and technically their whole society. "Speaking of, do you want to continue the interview or would you like to turn the tables and ask us some things, especially after Peter just revealed himself." She looks at Peter. "To think I spent six years not knowing just for you to spill this day one with Shade," she teases.

"To be fair to Peter, there's no one else in this city that makes puns as bad as Spidey's. It was only a matter of time." They finish off the rest of their sandwich, thinking about what they would want to ask Peter. Spider-Man is, like, one of the best superheros they know. At least top 20, though they haven't updated their list in a minute.

"How do you balance the hero shtick with your regular civilian persona?" They glance between MJ and Peter. "Obviously I'm not trying to keep a secret identity or anything, but after all the fights with villains and patching up the wounds there's just -- where do you even find the time to do normal stuff?"

MJ laughs at Shade's question. It's a good question to a problem any hero struggles with, but from her experience, Peter is the worst person to ask because he is known to regularly disappear and he devotes his health, sleep, and time to being a hero.

"Well, I keep my identity a secret, and before anyone in my life knew, it was a lot of trying to get through the big problems as fast as possible, especially when I had plans, and then giving some excuse for being late. It was a lot of work towards being efficient in fights." And ignoring injuries he shouldn't have, but he knows that is not a good thing so he won't share it. "I would guess, if you're not hiding your identity, being honest to whoever you're close to, being efficient in fights, and keeping your enemies guessing."

//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.

//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.

//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."

//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.

//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.

//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.

//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.

This may be one of the stupidest things he's done… or well, it was. What he's about to do will probably be worse. But that's for later, so *rewind noises* or whatever.

MJ must have some sort of mind control ability because she managed to convince Peter to come along to her interview. Like last time went so well when the Beetle trashed a whole floor of the Daily Bugle building. So, here he is in some greasy diner as J. Jonah Jameson grills MJ in the booth to his left—Peter didn't even get a nice seat, just one of those uncomfortable plastic-laminated wood chairs that are always an awkward height. At least there's fries. Though they'd be much better if he didn't have to hear Jameson ask MJ about all of the qualifications she's already given the last ten times she's been interviewed for a position. It all boils down to how willing she is to diss Spider-Man, which is where her stubbornness wins out every time.

But fries! So hot his tongue is starting to lose a little bit of feeling. Perfection.

About to pop a fry into his mouth, he pauses and his eyes narrow, dropping the fry back onto the plate.

The door to the diner flies open, the little chime of the bell drowned out by the thud of the door whacking into a, thankfully, empty chair. Peter barely got to glance at the person barging in before there's a table skidding across the floor. His fries? Upended. The awful chair? Knocked aside. Himself? At the other end of the room, steadying the now sideways table that was sent his way so it doesn't crush him and whatever patrons unlucky enough to be on this table's warpath. "Sorry, folks. Pancake-dom via table costs extra," he says mindlessly, even though he should definitely watch his quips when Jameson is around. Speaking of, the news reporter himself is shouting something about refusing to be silenced and the usual spew of his bravery and, as revealed as Peter tips the table back onto its four legs, is cowering as far into the corner of his booth as he can.

And that about sums up how he got where he is now, shielding whoever is behind him with a mere table between himself and the threat, and to top it all off, the loudest journalist in New York along with other civilians as an audience that could oust secrets he doesn't want to get out if he gets a little too spidery.

"You!" they gasp, winded, "you are the absolute WORST!" They had no idea who the other was, but they did know they'd been chasing him for at least 5 blocks and then through an interdimensional portal (one THEY made to follow him THEMSELF! Their magic was improving!) all while he wrecked havoc and caused large amounts of damage. That was more than enough to decide that yeah, this guy sucked.

Shade takes a moment to glance around -- civilians everywhere, small area, J. Jonah Jameson -- they do a double take. Okay, cool, cool, whatever they did here was probably going to be reported on. That's fine.

First things first. There's no room for giant swords in here, so they let it disappear into their pocket dimension. Second, they should probably ensure civilian safety. They notice the table about to crush a bunch of people first, and quickly dodge away from an oncoming attack to get closer.

"Hello!" They greet as they come to the side not pressed against the wall. "Sorry I can't chat. I need to take this, hope you dont mine." They pull the table away from the civilians and twist, throwing the thing as hard as they can at their assailant. It's mostly dumb luck no bystanders were in the way-- the table lands and the man falls, only to stumble up a moment later.

Kind of. Peter winces as the table crashes into the man. At least he isn't the one paying for it. Huh, having little to no responsibility in a crisis situation is weird. Well, that was until he was given the task of evacuating the area. "You and me both," he agrees. Preventing people from getting hurt as a shared goal is enough for him to decide that he can trust Shade to handle the bad guy. It takes a load off his shoulders. He doubts the ol' adrenaline excuse will cut it with J.J.J. as a witness if he were to go toe to toe with this guy. But while getting people out of the way it might.

He glances around, watching the man's destructive behaviour that is blocking the main door for a beat longer before moving towards the emergency exit. If he can clear a path to it, getting everyone out will be much easier. Peter has a feeling that the man won't have the kindness to see people out the front door.

There are footsteps that follow after him—likely the group that was behind the table with him—and short shrieks as a chair clatters into the wall above their heads. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Peter grumbles, keeping an eye on the man now that he's decided to start throwing things again. "Turn off the burners, fryers, whatever and get out of here!" he calls towards the workers, most of which have crouched behind the counter, shielding their heads. He doesn't expect them to follow the first part much, if at all, but it would be nice if there wasn't a fire hazard as well as an attack.

He wrenches open the small gate separating the kitchen area behind the counter and the rest of the diner, gesturing for the few people trailing after him to go in. "Follow after the workers there– Lead them out of here," he orders the worker that was slowest to get out of here. Shock, probably, but the job should give them a task to cling to for the time being.

As Peter darts through behind the counter, checking that everything is off and making his way around to more people to help get out—mostly Jameson since berating the guy throwing chairs like dodgeballs is not helping, the assailant's carnage seems to have more of a purpose, unfortunately for Shade, they have become his focus. There's only so many tables and seats not bolted to the ground, but he seems intent on throwing all of it in Shade's direction. A shock, I know. You'd think he'd go for the loudmouth crowing obnoxiously about the disrespect

They flinch as Jameson shouts another line about disrespect-- enough of a break in their focus to cause them to get hit square in the nose with a stool. Shade covers their face and yells out a few obscenities before turning to Jameson.

"Can you PLEASE just SHUT UP!" They face their opponent again, wiping blood from their nose as they continue talking to Jameson. "This would be so much easier if you just left and got to safety, man--" they dodge another chair before they seem to come to a realization. "Wait, I'm so stupid, I could literally just--" A blue glow forms around their hands yet again, and suddenly a portal opens under Jameson; he can be seen falling onto his face through the window.

After shoving MJ to follow the rest of the crowd out—he actually had to close the door between them—because she wanted to stay to get the story on the scene and no way is he letting that happen no matter who is here to keep her safe as she records, he sighs. He thinks that's everyone. Or so he thought until he heard Jameson yell as he is dropped through a portal and made to eat the concrete outside. "I'm getting way too good at tuning him out." Peter doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing, especially with the result he just saw, but maybe he should pay a little more attention next time.

"Yeah, I'm working on it," he says, pushing on the door to the staff. It doesn't budge. "Wait, was it?–" He pulls the handle. Nothing. The door locks as it shuts. Just his luck. Pushing on a pull door would have been less embarrassing than accidentally locking himself inside.

He yelps as the intruder crashes into the shelves in front of him. This is the first actual chance he's gotten to see the man unobstructed, and the pumpkin head is definitely a shock that has his yelp being louder than he'd have liked. The pumpkin head's carved grin seems to grow—how that works he doesn't know—at his shout and he begins to sit up. "Trick or treat!" He crows in a voice Peter would never call sane.

Now, he's seen many horror movies. He's complained about the dumb decisions the characters have made enough that he'd be put to shame if he didn't grab the nearest object and hit that pumpkin square in its face. That object just so happened to be a sheet pan. The pumpkin is still intact, and the twang the metal sheet gives is almost comedic, but it has the man faltering long enough that Peter has the chance to hop over the counter. He knows it's a little too graceful of a move for the whole 'Peter-act', so he tries to mess up his landing, stabilizing himself with some flailing and a hand on the floor.