#6 - You Owe Me One

By John Stevenson

Spidey spent his hour wisely, using the little webbing he had left to get himself back home. He slipped in quietly to make sure not to wake MJ or the baby.

He opened a drawer that contained some knick-knacks, spare webshooters and webcartridges. He riffled through it for a few moments until he found what he was looking for. Two webshooters which he fit over his costume instead of under.

Looking down at the Scarlet Spider's old webshooters, a wave of sadness hit Peter. Ben Reilly who had been so much like a brother to him, this and the Scarlet Spider costume that Peter kept for no particular reason, were the only things he had left behind. "Thanks Ben. These are going to come in handy."

The Scarlet Spider's webshooters had the added features of sedative stingers and impact webbing which would trap an opponent of any strength for an hour. Spidey figured that if he had to go up against a crowd again, they would come in handy.

Looking at the clock on his workbench, Spidey realized he would soon be late for the meeting.

Spidey had actually gotten to the meeting place first. It was a tall building in downtown Manhattan. He could see the Daily Bugle only a few blocks away from where he stood.

After less than five minutes of waiting, he saw a spot of bright color in the sky grow larger and larger. As Mattie was approaching, Spidey could see she was holding a person in a trenchcoat in her arms. After a moment Spider-Man realized that the person in the trenchcoat had long black hair. After another moment, he realized that the person was a female. After yet another moment, Spidey recognized the person.

"Spider-Woman!" Peter said involuntarily. He was not talking to Mattie, but to her passenger. Mattie was carrying the original Spider-Woman!

"Sorry, we're late," Mattie said, "But it took her forever to get out of bed."

Spider-Woman I scowled at the young heroine.

"Nice to see you again Spider-Man," Spider-Woman greeted him.

"Likewise," Spidey replied still a little surprised. He thought the original Spider-Woman had retired or was permanently removed from the super-hero game.

"You'll have to excuse my rudeness, but I'd like to get back to bed before sunrise, so if we could just get straight to business."

"Certainly," Spidey said finally recovering from his state of mild surprise.

He handed her the list of places he had gotten from Arthur Stacy's old friend.

"That's a list of all the places my friend had thought to be suspicious before he disappeared," Spidey explained. "Mat - errr… Spider-Woman probably already told you that we checked out the old airstrip. It was the only one with any action that I could see."

"Does your friend have a name?" Spider-Woman asked as she inspected the list.

"Arthur Stacy."

The trench-coat clad super-heroine looked up from the list. "Captain Arthur Stacy?"

"Yep. You've heard of him?"

Spider-Woman shrugged. "Not much. Just general things. I've heard he was a good cop," she said thinking back to her career in law enforcement. However, she quickly returned to her list.

"Told you she was good," Mattie said inching her way closer to Spidey and poking him in the ribs.

"Stand up straight," was the only thing Spidey could find to say to the slouching teenager.

The original Spider-Woman broke the awkward silence when she said, "Wait here, I have to make a phone call." With that she walked to the far corner of the building and pulled a cellular phone from one of the pockets of her trench coat.

"Superheroes carrying cell phones?" Spidey said shaking his head.

"Man, how old ARE you?" Mattie said shaking her head in response.

Spidey was going to make a witty remark when he heard the older Spider-Woman cry out, "We need to get to the docks!"

"The docks again?" Spider-Man complained. "I must have said it a million times, but why can't the bad guys hide out in condos or apartment complexes? Why is it always the docks and warehouses?"

He said all this as he jumped from the rooftop and fired a web-line to a nearby building.

"It's not a hide-out," Spider-Woman said.

The trio arrived at the docks minutes later. By now it was already late in the night.

They decided to land a block away from the actual place where Spider-Woman had indicated they should go and went on foot from there.

As they walked along through the shadows, the super-heroine explained herself. "I was going through your list, and it seemed to me that a lot of the spots on it were on the east side of town, near the waterfront. On top of that, your airstrip had lots of abandoned hangars, right? Well, I figured those would be used for storage, otherwise the use of an abadoned air strip doesn't make sense."

Spidey was listening to the words closely, and was following the train of thought as best he could.

"From that, I figured that whoever Stacy was after, was probably in the smuggling business, otherwise, he wouldn't need that much storage space. So, I followed up on my hunch about the waterfront and got in touch with a contact of mine around here. He said there was a boat being loaded at pier 4."

"A boat being loaded at 3 am?" Mattie said, looking quite tired.

"You look terrible, kiddo," Spidey mocked the young girl.

"Ya, well you don't look like no spring chicken either, pal!" she shot back venom in her voice.

"That'll happen when you've been shot," Spidey retorted as he emphasized his limp.

They both hushed when they came to the spot they were looking for. The trio was standing between two buidlings that were close enough together that there wasn't room for more than single-file procession. Mattie who was at the rear couldn't see the loading going on.

There was a large container ship being loaded up. There was a crane and several men running around the grounds. As a matter of fact, too many men. Some were just standing around. Undoubtedly guards.

Mattie from behind hovered into the air, which she noticed took much more effort than she ever remembered it taking. "Well, let's get to it," she said, trying to artificially inject some energy into her voice.

She was just starting to zip off, when Spidey's hand shot out and caught her by the ankle.

"Let's do this my way, this time, okay?" he said, invoking the bullet wound so that the teenager would listen.

Spidey tried counting heads as did Spider-Woman. When they compared, they found that there was somewhere around one hundred men, not one of them looking scrawny. They also took from the bulges in their jackets, that they were most likely well armed.

One man in particular caught Spidey's attention. He was tall and of a decent build. He was set apart by the others by his long trenchcoat with the collar pulled up high, and a hat that was pulled down low over his eyes. The man was barking order. The only one Peter managed to catch was, "Less than an hour!"

"Ward," Spidey muttered under his breath.

"The Senator?" Spider-Woman asked, perplexed.

Peter avoided the question and turned to Mattie. "Mattie, we need you to call the police."

"Me? No way, and miss all the fun! You guys might need me!"

"This is important. If the cops don't show up after we're done here, these guys are eventually gonna wake up and walk away. Please!" Peter pleaded.

Mattie didn't budge and just glared at Spider-Man.

He sighed. "Fine, we'll leave you a few."

As if having come to an agreeable compromise, Mattie turned and ran in the other direction. The two remaining Spiders both took note of the fact that she ran instead of flying.

"Ready?" Spidey asked as he turned to the remaining Spider-Woman.

"Hope so. I'm probably a little rusty," she replied as she shed the trenchcoat revealing the classic yellow and red costume of Spider-Woman.

Peter found himself trying to avert his gaze in order to not admire her near perfect feminine form. He had to wonder if she had begun to exude her pheromones.

"Let's go," he said finally and the two heroes jumped into action.

"Freeze. Everybody hands in the air!" Spidey exclaimed as he jumped into the night sky.

The expected response came next - gunfire.

"No respect," Spidey complained as he avoided a hail of bullets with relative ease and decided to test out the new toys on his webshooters.

He fired off three stingers. His aim was not all that great so although his targets were pretty clear, he only hit two out of three men. A moment later, the two fell to the ground.

Next, he fired two pellets of impact webbing at a group of five firing from the container ship's deck. The two minuscule pellets had grown to a size so large, that by the time they reached their targets, they were able to cover all five men in webbing to the point that they were almost mummified.

Spidey decided he liked the impact webbing best.

Spider-Woman for her part was holding her own. While it was true that she had been without her powers for some time now, she had not stopped her martial arts training. With flips, backflips and sommersaults she confused the shooters to the point that they hardly fired at all. Her motions were fluid with a grace that could not be taught. A well placed kick there, a chop here. Everytime, she used just the right amount of force to take the opponent out of the fight. As she rolled away from a pair of goons who had tried to subdue her without firing, she sprang into the air and fired her trademark venom blast knocking the two out of the fight all together.

Spider-Man for his part, despite his slightly decreased mobility from his wound, was still doing better than he had been in the previous fight. For one, he had had time to take stock of his opponents and had had the element of surprise. Secondly, the Scarlet Spider's webshooters were coming in mighty handy. Although, he had to admit, they clashed with his costume.

As he vaulted over a man's head and pushed him into one of the large metal containers at the same time, he remarked, "You guys are real sissies, y'know that? You're being beaten on by a guy wearing bracelets!"

He took a moment to glance over at Spider-Woman who seemed to be doing quite nicely. He couldn't help but notice that she didn't have as many bullets to dodge. Again, he wondered how much effect those pheromones had.

As the number of enemies was starting to decline quickly, Spidey allowed himself a pause in the jumping, as he ducked behind a container in order to look for Ward. He saw a number of goons laid out or webbed up nicely. He himself had taken out at least thirty, and he guessed that Spider-Woman had probably done about the same. Some had took off on foot the moment they saw they didn't have a chance, many of those who were on the container ship simply jumped overboard and probably tried to swim to safety. That didn't leave many men still standing and fighting.

He scanned the pier for a man wearing a trenchcoat and a hat. He had to scan a little bit further to see someone fitting that description running on foot towards an alley across the street. Spidey jumped onto the container and put as much strength into his good leg as he could muster in order to leap in the mysterious man's direction.

He closed the distance dramatically in this fashion. He came out of the jump in a handspring, landing him in a crouching position. Like a spring, he let the potential energy out of his legs and flew back into the air.

He had no impact webbing or stingers left so he would have to do this the old-fashioned way. He shot one web-line, with incredible accuracy at the man's feet. The line connected, and the man tripped and fell hard to the ground, his hat falling off in the process.

When Spidey arrived at the downed man's side he was groaning in pain. Spidey rolled him over onto his back and saw the face of Senator Ward.

"Where's Stacy!?" Spider-Man yelled to make sure the Senator could hear him over his own moaning.

"Don't know what you're talking about," Ward managed to sputter.

"Talk!" Spidey yelled again.

"Spider-Man!" Spidey turned to see Spider-Woman I holding a goon by his collar. He noticed that all the gunmen had been subdued, although the number that was strewn about the pier was less than a hundred.

"Check the containers. Look for a blue one," Spider-Woman continued.

Spider-Man turned towards Ward and through clenched teeth managed to say, "Your political career is over." He encased Ward in enough webbing that even the Rhino would have took some time to untangle himself.

Spider-Man and Spider-Woman systematically checked the ship for blue containers that sounded hollow. After ten minutes of searching, Spider-Man knocked on a container and heard the unmistakable sound of an echo, followed by that of a whimper. He unlatched the container, and using his superhuman stregth, swung the lid open.

A rush of air filled the container that was empty save for a silver-haired man who was tied and gagged.

Peter rushed to undo the gag, and the man inhaled deeply. "They - were - going - to - dump - me - at - sea," Arthur Stacy managed between gasps.

Spider-Man guided the man back down to the pier where he met the two Spider-Women. Mattie was dragging at least five men behind, albeit with some noticeable difficulty.

"Glad to see you're okay, Captain," the elder Spider-Woman said to the weak Stacy.

"Thank you, dear," he said not even looking the slightest bit surprised that he was surrounded by three costumed Spider-people.

"That's the third batch she's brought back," Spider-Woman I said pointing to Mattie.

"I guess she got the ones we missed."

Mattie joined them. In the distance sirens were beginning to be heard.

"That's our cue to leave," Spider-Woman I declared. "She turned to Mattie. What do you say we take a cab?"

The younger Spider-Woman looked relieved. "I'll run ahead and see if I can find one."

As she ran away there was no smile on her face.

Spider-Man watched her go and turned to the red and yellow Spider-Woman. It was as if words passed between them unsaid.

Spider-Woman spoke first. "Her powers are leaving her, and she knows it. She liked having the powers, they made her special instead of an ordinary, boring kid."

"Do me a favour?"

"I'll keep an eye on her, Spider-Man." With that she started off in the direction Mattie had gone. When she was thirty yards away, she turned around. "By the way, you owe me one now!" And then she took off.

Spider-Man followed her with his eyes until Stacy, who was still holding himself up on Spidey's shoulder, said something.

"Ward?"

"We got him."

"His associate?"

"Who?"

"The Kingpin."

A chill ran up Peter's spine. "Don't worry, I have a friend who will make it his personal duty to see that this associate gets his just desserts."

A police cruiser finally pulled up in front of Spider-Man and Stacy. Not far off, Peter recognized a young reporter from the Bugle. He had the feeling he wouldn't be able to go home right away.

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