-- Saanvi felt someone tugging on her sleeve thirty minutes and turned around to find Bautista staring up at her. She pointed at the lab and announced that Peter had abandoned his sink.

He was nowhere to be found.

This reeked of Spidey business.

Saanvi told Bautista that she’d find him, not to worry. In the meantime, go sort the mail please, and do not look too closely at what Saanvi was about to do next.

Peter was outside in the bushes.

Repeat: in the bushes. Among the shrubbery. Buried in still-living foliage.

“Peter,” she said. “Do you think you’re camouflaged?”

Peter scuffled and hunkered down a little further.

Saanvi no longer had a grip on the situation. It was time for an intervention. --

Peter claimed nothing was happening. He claimed that he was not aware of any slash-marks to his person. He said that he’d never seen an old, weirdly shiny rubber ball before in his life.

He then announced that he was very busy and had to go review the meeting notes over there in that café across the street immediately.

He returned eight minutes later with inexplicably wet hair and denied the existence of any concerning or uncharacteristic behavior.

Leo announced that this intervention had been a failure. They had to take dire action. --

Peter had two partners because he was handsome and charming and full of life and love. His two partners consisted of 1) A gal from the Institute for Biomedical Advancement around the corner who looked like she’d considered brushing her hair once and 2) a mysterious guy who may or may not actually exist but who allegedly did tech work for national security purposes.

Saanvi had met one of them. It was not Mr. Mysterious; it was Ms. Considered a Comb Once. Peter regularly went to have lunch with her and fell over himself trying to make her express an emotion—any emotion whatsoever.

Saanvi didn’t get it, but different strokes for different folks, she guessed. She hoped Peter was happy trying to squeeze an emotional connection out of those two floating brains.

Regardless, dire action meant speaking to Ms. Biomedical Institute.

To do that, however, they’d have to—gag—enter the Institute.

Disgusting. Horrible. The Worst. Someone ready the decontamination shower for their imminent return. --

The Institute was full of labcoats with blue pocket patches who judged their own red patches and stared into Saanvi’s eyes with smoldering rage in their soulless ones.

Saanvi and the others asked one of the receptionists at the front desk if they could speak to the gal who the dude with the yellow sneakers and a coat like theirs came by to harass all the time. They were led straight to her.

Her security card said that her name was ‘Michelle,’ but Saanvi had never heard Peter refer to anyone by that name in her life.

“Are you MJ?” Himani asked for their group.

Michelle stared at them like all her colleagues had before her.

“Where is he?” she asked. --

“Give me the GODDAMN—I don’t care. Give it to me. Now. Give it. I’m not doing this again, Parker. I’m not doing it again,” MJ’s (Michelle) voice threatened from Peter’s office.

It did not sound loving or affectionate. It was much closer to the tone taken by someone trying to wrangle the carcass of a decaying pigeon from their dog’s mouth.

In response, Peter had started doing an alarmingly good impression of a hostile cat. Even the staff passing by his door stopped to lodge a concern with their line of observing managers. Saanvi told them the situation was under control.

MJ (Michelle) set the disgusting, scorched, now concerningly smeared ball on Saanvi’s desk.

“This,” she said, “Is what we in the field call ‘trouble of the first degree.’”

It was a ball.

“It’s not just a ball.”

Could have fooled literally everyone in this building, friend.

“It’s the ball,” MJ (Michelle) said. “And for the sake of you and all your colleagues, I recommend that you take this and you incinerate it.”

O…kay. That was an emotion. Yep. Definitely an emotion on MJ’s face right there.

“Incinerate it?” Leo said. “Are you sure we can’t just, you know, donate it to Goodwill and call it a day?”

MJ’s dark eyes began to bore into his soul. He looked away first and straightened his shirt.

“Right. Burn it. Okay,” he said. “Can’t be too hard, can it?”

MJ picked up the ball and placed it square in his hand.

“If one of them gets ahold of it, there will be nothing but mayhem for the next week,” she said. “Blood and tears will be spilt. One time there was a pipe bomb. For the good of this city, no one can know that Peter has it, has touched it, or has even seen it.”

That sounded a little extreme, no?

“You have no idea what this is,” MJ said. “Destroy it. If you can’t, give it to me and I’ll put it in the acid bath.”

Was Peter dating a secret supervillain? Did he know he was dating a supervillain? Man, talk about cosmic irony. This was like Mr. And Mrs. Smith but with superheroes and evil geniuses.

“Promise me,” MJ said. “Now. Cross your heart.”