AT A DEMONSTRATION OF RADIOLOGY, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT PETER PARKER WAS BITTEN BY AN IRRADIATED SPIDER FROM WHICH HE GAINED THE ARACHNID'S INCREDIBLE AILITIES. WHEN A BURGLAR KILLED HIS BELOVED UNCLE BEN, A GRIEF-STRICKEN PETER VOWED TO USE HIS GREAT POWERS IN THE SERVICE OF FELLOW MAN, BECAUSE HE LEARNED AN INVALUABLE LESSON: WITH GREAT POWER MUST ALSO COME GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.

#9 - Mutualism

By John Stevenson

Peter Parker checked the wall clock as he placed the last test tube into the centrifuge and hit the “on” button.

He should have finished a little less than an hour ago and he was the only person still left in the lab. Worst of all though, was that he hadn’t even realized it. Peter had never really had a job that he enjoyed so much. He found himself getting lost in his work and losing track of time. A few years ago that would not have caused any problems, but Peter was now married with a child, and he had been home late everyday this week. MJ was going to give him an earful again…

The centrifuge stopped spinning. Peter removed the tubes, and placed them in a rack, forcing himself to finish the experiment tomorrow.

He quickly made his way to the roof and changed into the colorful attire of the Amazing Spider-Man. Making sure that his civvies were well attached to his back he set off for home.

Peter’s webswinging was a little more tame in comparison to his usual display of mind-blowing acrobatics. He had Venom to thank for that. The monster had bruised his ribs so well, they had been aching for a week now. Peter was finally beginning to feel normal again, but he didn’t want to risk aggravating the injury with overly-fancy webswinging.

Spidey recalled the night a week ago when Venom had almost done him in for good. It was an incredible stroke of luck that Matt Murdock, the Daredevil, showed up. It was even luckier that Venom had no desire to fight the Man Without Fear, for although Peter knew Daredevil would fight to the end, Venom would have overpowered the red-clad hero too.

When Peter had come to, he was in the office of Matt Murdock, attorney of law. Daredevil had taken the liberty of phoning Peter’s wife and letting her know he was okay. When Peter was coherent again, the two talked briefly.

“Peter, do you want some help tracking that thing down?”

“No, Matt. I’ll handle Venom on my own. I just got taken by surprise today. You have bigger fish to fry anyway.”

“How so?”

“Matt, the Kingpin’s back. I just thought you should…”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I know he’s back.”

“You do?”

“Peter, I’m blind, but I am definitely not deaf. I hear a lot of things.”

“Well then, don’t I feel useless.”

“So, in that case we have an understanding?”

“We do?”

“Yes. I’ll handle the Kingpin, you take care of that monstrosity, and neither one of us gets killed. Do we have a deal?”

“Matt, I’d shake your hand, but I really don’t want to risk moving right now.”

The Amazing Spider-Man let go of his final webline and flew through a window to his penthouse apartment. Looking left and right he saw no sign of his wife or daughter. Removing his mask, he walked across the plush living room toward his bedroom.

He was reaching for the doorknob when he heard the sound of a throat being cleared. Peter turned around and was greeted by the sight of his gorgeous wife standing, hands on her hips, with that look in her eyes that never meant good news.

“You’re late,” Mary Jane said, flatly.

“Well, um, yeah. You see…”

Peter never got the chance to finish his poorly thought out reply because MJ had already wrapped her arms around his neck and had locked him in a pleasant welcome home kiss.

After a few more moments in joyful bliss, the loving couple broke the kiss.

“So… you’re not mad?” Peter asked tentatively.

“Peter Benjamin Parker, you have a number of great qualities, but punctuality has never, and will never, be one of them,” MJ replied with a content smile on her face.

Peter couldn’t help but laugh. It was all too true.

“Where’s the munchkin?”

“I just put her down.”

Peter noted the time. “I’m not THAT late. Isn’t she a little early?”

“She’s like her mother, she needs her beauty sleep.”

Peter laughed again. “I’m just glad she’s got her mother’s looks.”

“Suck up. What do you want?” Mary Jane said, but quickly followed up with, “No, don’t answer that. How about some dinner?”

Before Peter could answer the question he had been dragged to the kitchen and was greeted by the smell that could only have been Mary Jane’s cooking.

“Mmm… marinated chicken,” Peter said, desperately trying to suppress a groan. MJ was the most beautiful, kind-hearted, intelligent woman he had ever met, but she was no Aunt May in the kitchen.

MJ served up a plate of her infamous chicken and sat across the table from her husband.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Peter asked.

“Already ate. Go ahead.”

Peter began to pick at the food doing his best to find topics of conversation to distract him. Lucky for him, MJ had one already planned out.

“Tiger, you know how we were talking about what’s going to happen now that we’ve both taken about all the time off that we could?”

Peter nodded, still barely nibbling on his food.

“I’m realizing now that with you back at work, taking care of May is a full time job. It’s a job that I want to do, I really do.”

Peter could see now that MJ’s smile was gone and she looked anxious, stressed and eager to get this conversation over with.

“I also realized that to keep living like this,” MJ gestured to their penthouse apartment, “I need to go back to work.”

Peter knew for a fact that everything she was saying was 100% true. Yes, his new job at TriCorp paid a lot better than his freelance work for the Bugle, but he was still living far above his means in a Manhattan penthouse.

MJ sighed and let out what was going to be the last part of her opening statement. “I think I should go back to work. I also think we should get a full time nanny to take care of May. Someone we can trust.”

Peter frowned, he knew it had been coming, he just really didn’t want to have to deal with it. “Who are we going to find like that in New York? Both our aunts are in Florida, and at their age I wouldn’t ask them to take on that responsibility anyway. I don’t think I could trust a total stranger.”

MJ smiled again, “I think I may have solved that problem.”

A slight tingle of his Spider-Sense made Peter look towards the door about a full second before someone knocked on it.

“And there she is now,” MJ said getting up from her seat.

Peter looked down and saw that he was still in full costume. A single bound carried him out of the kitchen across the living room and to the bedroom door before MJ had even gotten out of the kitchen. He fired a webline at his mask which lay on the corner of the coffee table and disappeared, mask in hand, into the bedroom just as MJ was three steps away from the front door.

MJ opened the door to the sight of a pretty black-haired woman dressed casually in jeans and a leather jacket.

“Jill!” MJ exclaimed almost as if she was surprised to see her friend, Jill Stacy, at the door.

The two women locked each other in a warm hug and MJ being the gracious hostess ushered her guest out of the hallway.

Peter emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Hi Jill,” he said while waving from a distance and immediately busying himself with the task of finding the remote for the television set.

The two ladies sat on the couch beside the cushion Peter had removed to look for the remote control. The head of the Parker household was scratching his head when MJ tugged on his T-shirt. He turned around to see both women giving him those looks he could never quite figure out.

“Yes?” Peter asked hesitantly.

“Tiger, you remember how I told you I found someone to take care of May?”

“Sure…”

“Well, here she is.”

It took Peter a moment to realize what MJ meant. When it clicked it made perfect sense. Jill needed a job, he knew they could trust her, and she was practically part of the family. “That’s great!”

Jill was wringing her hands. “Well, I guess, I’m sort of here for a kind of interview or something.”

Peter looked towards MJ and they exchanged a look that pretty much said it all. “Jill, we don’t need an interview. You’re definitely hired.”

Jill seemed to relax visibly and was about to reply with her thanks when gurgling sounds came from the baby monitor.

MJ sprang to her feet. “I’ll go check on her.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jill said following her friend into the nursery.

As Peter watched the two women leaving the room. The remote caught his eye under a folded newspaper. He grabbed it and switched on the set. A local news bulletin flashed to life on the screen.

”… this killing is the fourth of its kind in seven days. Police have no doubt that all four murders were committed by the same individual. The primary cause of death in all four victims was internal bleeding caused by severe beating. The coroner believes that the murderer removed the brains of all four of his or her victims post-mortem. Police refuse to say if they have any suspects or if the threat is of a super-human nature.”

Peter switched the TV off as the anchor-woman moved on to a story about the race for a city councilman’s position.

It had been a week, since he’d narrowly avoided death at Venom’s hands and it seemed the monster was calling him out. The murders would continue until Peter faced him once more.

Most normal people spend their Friday nights having fun, going to the movies, partying, going out on a date, or relaxing. Peter Parker was spending his Friday night swinging from rooftop to rooftop looking for a psychopathic monster that ate brains and had enough strength to crush a human skull in one hand. Then again, there was nothing about the Amazing Spider-Man that was really normal.

The city whirled by beneath him, and Peter wondered how he was going to find a single psychopath in Manhattan. Perhaps the more pressing question was what he would do if he did manage to find him. The last two times Spider-Man had gone head to head with the monster he had been squarely defeated and both times had ended the fight in unconsciousness with nothing more than luck saving his life.

Peter hoped his resolution to make Venom pay as well as his resolution to not hold back would be sufficient. That and the opportunity to finally be the one with the surprise factor.

Spidey touched down gently on a rooftop and paused to collect his thoughts. He was beginning to realize that going after Venom with a plan that went something along the lines of, “Take him by surprise and beat him down,” probably was not the most intelligent move of his career. However, it seemed all his other options were exhausted. He had tried contacting the Fantastic Four but as usual they were off somewhere adventuring or saving the world. In some ways, Peter was envious of the FF, they saved the world from megalomaniacs; Spider-Man fought guys whose sole purpose in life was to kill him.

Regardless, had Spidey been able to persuade Reed Richards to lend him a sonic gun it would have been a great help. At the very least he could have borrowed the Human Torch whose fire-wielding powers would have been very effective against the Venom symbiote.

The decision to head home for the night and come up with a better plan was just starting to solidify in Spidey’s head when it was pushed aside by the alarm that was his Spider-Sense.

Spidey jumped straight up into the air a full second before what looked like a glowing net hit the spot where he had been standing. Before he had even landed, Peter had determined that the net was laced with some form of plasma that was sure to not be healthy.

Peter’s Spider-Sense blared again and he twisted and contorted his body in mid-air in positions that looked so awkward they would have made an ordinary person wince. Every jerk, twist and contortion allowed him to avoid energy bolts that seared past him.

A voice yelled out, “Use non-lethal force. We need him alive.”

“Well, that’s comforting. At least for once the nutjobs that are after me aren’t trying to kill me,” Spider-Man retorted loud enough that he hoped his attackers would hear. Spidey landed in a crouching position and took a look at the source of the fire. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

The men firing at Spider-Man were all dressed in black suits with white shirts and black ties. All five of the men were wearing dark mirrored sun glasses, they all wielded various high-tech weaponry, and Peter could have swore that the one who had shouted the orders was Will Smith.

With a contraction of his great muscles, Spider-Man sprang from his crouching position and flew with great speed into the midst of his attackers who were on an adjacent rooftop. The surprised men managed to get off a few shots, but were greatly hindered by the fact that they did not want to shoot each other.

Having no reason to believe the men were anything but normal humans, Spidey forced himself to hold back on his assault. A leg sweep brought a mammoth with blonde hair and a wiry fellow with a shaved cranium to the ground winded. A stocky man with a crew cut brought the barrel of his gun around to face Spidey and he grabbed it in his right hand. Will Smith fired a plasma net which Spidey neatly avoided by flipping over the stocky man’s head, gun still in hand. The man refused to release his hold on his weapon and so he was carried up into the air with Spidey until the hero tossed him in the direction of a sallow-skinned comrade of his. Both men skidded a few feet across the roof and out of the fight.

Spidey turned his attention to Big Willie who was the last remaining foe. The man was smarter than he looked, throwing down his net launcher and putting his hands up in surrender.

“Wow,” Spidey remarked, “They almost never come peacefully. Now continue your good behavior streak and tell me why you clowns look like the Men in Black, and why you declared open-season on friendly neighborhood wall-crawlers.”

“Spider-Man, we need your help.”

“That’s how you go about getting someone’s help?” Spidey had finally convinced himself that the man was not Will Smith… ears were too small.

The man in black ignored the question and went on, “We need help in apprehending one of your arch foes, Venom.”

Spidey came close to splitting his side laughing. “You clowns are going to take down Venom? Man, I thought I had fought some fruit loops in my day, but I think this takes the cake. I just took five of you out in less than half a minute, without breaking a sweat and without using my webs once.”

“Yes, but you were not an intended target. My unit is trained to deal with Venom. We have the weapons necessary to capture him.”

To Spider-Man’s ears that sounded a lot like flamethrowers and sonic guns. If these guys knew that much about Venom then maybe they were for real after all…

“Who did you say you were again?”

“We’re what you’d call a modern version of the Monster Hunters.”

Through his superhero circles, Spidey had heard of the Monster Hunters as being a group of super-heroes who went around hunting trolls, and ogres and other weirdness post-World War II.*

(* You can read the adventures of the old Monster Hunters in Travis Hiltz’s highly entertaining Avengers Spotlight issues -ADS)

“Riiiight… so how much do you know about Venom exactly?”

“We know that Venom is actually Edward Brock fused with an alien symbiote, whose combined hatred and madness drove the being known as Venom to become one of the most dangerous monsters in the world. We also know that the offspring of the Venom symbiote, the Carnage symbiote, was recently removed from its host Cletus Kasady. We have very good reason to believe that the Venom symbiote and the Carnage symbiote have joined together and taken the same host making for one of the most dangerous killing machines on the planet.”

Spider-Man had his jaw set. Monster Hunter Man was confirming his own suspicions and he didn’t like it.

“Why should I help you?” Spider-Man asked to keep the conversation going all the while trying to pump as much information out of this mysterious stranger as he could.

“The answer to that is simple. Although you may have been able to defeat both Venom and Carnage in the past, this new Venom is much more powerful than anything you’ve ever faced before and you will not be able to defeat him alone. The longer the three beings remain merged together, the stronger Venom will become. We need to apprehend Venom and destroy the symbiote once and for all. Then and only then will Earth be safe from the menaces of the psychopathic murderers who will allow themselves to be possessed by alien entities.”

Spidey cocked his head to one side. “You make a convincing argument.”

The Monster Hunter stuck out his right hand, “Can we depend on you?”

Before answering, Spider-Man sucked in a lungful of air. Before he could change his mind he grabbed the black man’s hand and shook it. “I’m doing this against my better judgment, but the way I see it, I don’t have much of a choice.”

“You really don’t.”

Author Notes

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