For the crossover roulette: 42 What does the answer to the universe give us?
Back to Tempo Trio we go!
Lewis was exhausted. They all were, to be honest. Evil Arthur doppleganger had shown up again and while the good news was that his outside was starting to match his insides in terms of sheer ugliness (thus making him unable to pass for Arthur ever again), the bad news was he'd come out of nowhere, killed CEO Norman Osborn, and then vanished in the night.
None of them had been able to find him again, not even Vivi's squirrels. Mystery said he was almost impossible to trace magically due to how quickly he was degrading physically and spiritually. So the past few days had been combing Tempo City trying to find a trace from him.
And he couldn't even explain to his parents why he was so exhausted all the time. Maybe if he'd been like Spiderman he could, but he'd chosen to be defined by his anger. He'd never be able to let Mama and Papa know he was the wrathful Ghost who'd been more than willing to make his solutions to crime permanent ones.
So he was more than a little put out to be waken up early on a Sunday. But any annoyance melted into concern with the look on his mother's face. "Lewis, there's a lawyer here to see you."
A lawyer? A social worker, maybe, they still checked in everyone in a while. A cop if his secret identity had been discovered. But a lawyer? What would a lawyer want with him?
Lewis's trepidation only rose when he saw the lawyer. The was a man who worked for money. He sat down, with his parents flanking him on either side. It took a little of a little of the edge that had his nerves jangling. "Mr. Pepper," The lawyer inclined his head to show he was speaking to Lewis and not his father. "I am here to represent your biological father." The floor fell out from under Lewis. How did he even respond to that His parents stood a little bit closer, showing they were willing to fight for him if need be. "He was not aware of your existence until recently. And as you had already had a good and loving home, one he was not sure he could provide, he opted not to pursue custody. It seemed he was interested in getting to know you, but." The lawyer smiled fondly. "He was the sort of man who never moved forward without a plan. And he hadn't found a plan he was happy with before...he ran out of time." The lawyers smiled turned sad, and Lewis....Lewis didn't know how to feel. He'd known his mother had died shortly after his birth, and had assumed his biological father was dead or didn't care. And now he'd known the man had wanted to get to know him, but it was too late and he hadn't cared about his first father for his whole life and now he was a real person to Lewis just in time for him to be dead and- "Sadly your father had no other family or really any close friends, so everything he had was left you too. Unfortunately that includes some responsibilities...I mean no disrespect to you capabilities but it's a lot for someone who hasn't been trained to handle these things. I know this is a lot to process, but at some point in the near future I'd let to set up meeting to discuss how to handle things till you come of age." "Mr. Monroe," His mother cut in, "just who exactly is Lewis's biological father?" "Norman Osborn." Lewis's blood pounded in his ears. He'd met the man. He'd helped Arthur after the spider bite. He'd called him son. Had he known then? Was he testing the waters? Or was it just the throwaway term for a young man he'd only assumed it had been? Had he found out later? Was his companies negligence almost killing Arthur the reason he'd been hesitant to approach?
"I need air." He muttered as he stood and stumbled from the room.
~
Not for the first time Lewis was grateful for Arthur and Vivi who'd held him as he'd sobbed and screamed his emotions out. Now he felt more hollow than anything but at least he could think. "I don't know what to do." he admitted. "If that lawyer meant what I think he meant, then I'm in charge if a multinational company. There's people who will be depending on me to survive. I don't know how to do any of that!" "it'll be okay," Vivi assured him, wrapping her tail around him snuggly. "We'll figure it out." "More importantly, we need to figure out who else knew you were his son before now." Arthur said with a grim determination. "Is that really important now?" Vivi chided, gesturing to Lewis as if reminding Arthur he had enough on his plate. "It is Vi. It never made sense. I mean, a lot of things at the time didn't make sense, so i put a pin in it, but who would bother making a clone of me to kill Lewis? If I was the target, it was someone trying to get revenge on me for a Spiderman thing, why did they never go after Vivi or Uncle Lance? Uncle Lance is literally helpless. Lewis, random recently adopted orphan made even less sense as a main target. But Lewis, secret son of Norman Osborn? That makes sense." "And cloneface resurfaced exclusively to kill Osborn." Vivi suddenly seeing what Arthur saw. "Norman Osborn was always his target." "Clone his secrets son's best friend to get close enough to kill him. Didn't count on Nemesis intervening. Clone tries to take me out, possibly to take my place, possibly to deny me an alibi, but realizes after fighting three supers he can't get close again. Clone starts to deteriorate because spider mutation probably wasn't a factor taken into account and clone goes on a kamikaze mission to take out the original target." Arthur summarized. "Which means whoever made cloneface knew your relation to Osborn." Flames of anger and vengeance curled around his heart, in a way comfortingly familiar. Lewis didn't know how to run a company or deal with the emotions surrounding Norman Osborn. But catching bad guys. That he was good at. "We're going to be with you every step of the way." Vivi promised. "Together." Together. As long as they were together, he could do this.
