#closed for plot

[doublehelixweb]

Thousands of miles away, the proverbial Sarah Brightman only-an-ocean, Richard Parker, Jr sat up sharp in his bed, clutching his head.

"Ahhh!" he sputtered, bewildered and unamused. His spider-sense had triggered so hard he'd awoken. 

He'd stayed over with Ben tonight, giving Peta and Clay free run of the Stark Tower apartment whilst keeping an eye on Ben while his nurse was away.

But now his skull was ringing and the tingling and twitching ran all the way down his back. And the direction-- was-- east? What?

He lunged for his phone, but it rang before he could dial it.

Peta.

He answered.

She sounded very alert, the kind of very alert you suddenly are when a fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night and you're a self-taught superhero for four years.

She demanded: "Did you feel that, too?"

Rich nodded, then slapped his forehead and remembered to speak. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. Checking on Ben, you-- you secure your perimeter or something. If the Twelve are pulling shit again..."

"Stay frosty, Rich," Peta replied grimly.

"Oh, Petes," Rich replied, already bounding down the hall to Ben's room because fuck gravity he's a spider. "I'm downright chilly."

[doublehelixweb]

"Sinister, Part 6."

Gliding above the rooftops of Little Fuzhou, Norman Osborn flexed his fingers in their purple glove and squeezed Spider-Man's neck just a liiiiiiittle tighter.

"Here we are again, Parrrrrrkerrrrr," he snarled. "It was always going to end this way, with me dropping you from a terrible height. It's become my signature piece now, and one should always sign one's work."

"Bas--" Rich choked, batting uselessly at the reinforced scale of The Goblin's green "skin," "--tard."

"Mouth like a sailor on you," Norman tutted, and unleashed a medium-level sparkbolt from the fingers of his glove, enjoying the smell of the spider's skin sizzling under his touch, enjoying the low muffled throttled crrrrryyyyyyy coming from Parker's masked face. "You'd think with all the words you use, you could make time for a little subtlety in your speech. Or at least censor yourself for all your adoring TV-Y7 public."

Norman shook his head, slowly, and glanced down below them, adjusting his hover so that it brought them a better vertical angle, a better shot straight down. "Presumably Brock will have eaten your odd little female anomaly by now. He always did have trouble curbing his cravings. If, on the off-chance he has failed, well. It's hard to find good help these days, and at least I'll have succeeded in getting rid of one of you. The balance, in any case, will be restored. Too many Parkers."

He giggled softly. "And, well, if she has survived, I'll have to drop her off of something, too! Oh, what fun I'll have picking it out. Perhaps the top of The Chrysler Building, this time? Or the Queensboro Bridge? Have I overdone the bridge thing, d'you think? Maybe I'll just fly over the Central Park Reservoir and drop her in there."

"There's just one problem with that," came a voice from below and beside and behind Norman, a voice that simultaneously filled Norman's blood with rage and filled Richard's with hope and relief.

--Norman spun, disbelieving, incredulous, molten-golden eyes bulging in their masked sockets--

"We don't fall so easy," Spider-Girl drawled, and fired.

Web splattered Norman in his screaming face, and he reached up to claw his eyes clear...

...but with a roar of effort, Rich reached up, tore the razorbat out of his own shoulder...

...and slammed it like a Bowie knife into the side of Norman's neck.

Howling with indignity and fury, Norman flung Rich away hard and clapped that freed hand to his fresh wound...

Peta flashed her hand out, fired another web...

...blinking through bleary eyes, Rich flashed out his own hand, and he, too, fired...

...their webs collided in mid-air, connected, Rich swung down hard and slammed shoulder-first into more brickwork, grunted. 

Spinning on his axis, Norman seethed, one hand putting pressure on the blade at his neck, the other hand tearing web from his face. "Fine. Fine, then. Keep your stupid skin on your stupid bodies, see if I--"

--he choked out a strangled laugh. "Too many Parkers. Too many Parkers."

And the glider's rocket flared, soaring him away.

Rich let go of the web, and dropped to land on his good ankle on the sidewalk below. After a moment, Peta landed in a crouch beside him.

Spider-Man laughed a weak little laugh, holding his side. "God. Fuck. 'Sinister Twelve.' At least it's not goddamned alliterative. Which six did you fight?"

"Six?" Peta frowned. "I fought... five."

They both froze. At the same moment.

"'Too many Parkers,'" Peta breathed. 

"Gimme your phone," Rich snapped. "Gimme your phone, Max fried mine, just--"

Her phone was in his hand in an instant; he dialed furiously.

...his jaw flexed. A vein bulged in his neck, visible even through the fabric of the uniform. 

"...sir," he murmured, hesitantly. "I'm. Richard Parker." ...a long pause, too long, Peta's hand flew to her throat.

"Yessir," Rich mumbled. "Thankysir."

Peta stared at him for a long, long moment as Rich lowered the phone from his ear and handed it back to her.

"NYPD," Rich shuddered, each letter coming out as a separate burst. "I think-- I think-- it was the same guy that-- when May--"

He drew in a breath. The silence was agonized, elongated.

"Ben's been shot."

[helixwebdouble]

"Sinister, Part 5."

Herman's electrosonic blast buzzed through the air next to Peta's head, and it shattered the chips of ice that had formed in her wet hair. 

Spider-Girl skidded sideways, kicking up gravel from the rooftop, and then launched at Herman from a wild angle-- firing a kick at his head that the shockproofing in his ridiculous get-up only barely absorbed. 

"Herman, how do you keep getting work?" she wondered as he staggered back. "I mean, some of these guys are scary powerhouses, but you? Do you have tenure or something? Blackmail material?" 

Making incredulous, infuriated noise, he swung one gauntlet to fire another blast at her, but she came at him straight on, knocked his gauntlet away, and powered a fist into his face. He folded like wet toast.

"That reminds me," she remarked absently, "need to get fresh batteries for my vibrator."

Then a roar exploded the air behind her, and she turned to face it. "Okay. Actual bad guys."

Eddie and Sergei came at her at once-- Sergei, he'd been a complete toolbag before, but had somehow gotten into some illegal genetic grafting, now he had some sort of Vincent Keller werelion thing going on. That plus his seemingly-endless collection of medieval melee weaponry made him a force to be reckoned with.

And Eddie...

Eddie was the stuff of Rich and Peta's nightmares. The source of so much of their heartbreak. So much damage done to their souls.

Claws and teeth and pseudopods raked the cold morning sky and Peta's muscles screamed as she fought to keep ahead of every strike, every scizzoring razorsharp maneuver... she darted left, she darted right, everywhere she darted, she bled...

...but she could have bled worse.

...her spider-sense blared in the back of her skull and she hurled herself into a backflip, cracking Adrian across the face with a powerful boot. 

Adrian reeled back, but The Vulture's internal cybernetic geomagnetic gyroscopes re-established his equilibrium just in time for him to get out of the way of The Beetle's scattering bomblets... 

...the little metal marbles flew everywhere, and all three combatants-- Sergei, Eddie, and Peta, darted apart to escape their fiery crescendo. 

"Jenkins," Venom hisssssssed, landing in a crouch that cracked concrete beneath him. "What the fuck are you doing?" 

"Sorry, sorry," Abner replied, wheeling about, recalibrating his laser-targeting.

"...love the smell of napalm in the morning," Peta muttered to herself.

She'd managed to keep ahead of them so far, to take down their weakest link, but she couldn't keep this up forever, and she was losing fluids to the cold winter air like whoa.

...and to top it off, her ears were ringing.

...no, wait.

She grabbed for her phone on the belt hidden under her uniform. Caller ID was a Stark Industries logo. Thank Christ.

She threw her phone to her ear, firing web at Adrian's face with one hand as Sergei and Eddie bounded through the smoke.

"If you're telemarketing clean power, seriously, I'm down with that, but now is not a good time!" she quipped, hopping onto the edge of the roof, getting ready to swing for it if she had to. (Would hurt like Hell, cut as bad as she was.) As she spoke, another shot of web landed square in Sergei's mane and, irate, the craven hunter took a moment to claw the sticky stuff away.

"Miss Parker," came soothing, Received Pronunciation tones, "I have restored my telepresence in Stark Tower after an appalling data-intrusion, and have detected considerable disruption to Miss Bennet's flat. Is everything all right?"

J.A.R.V.I.S.!

"I'm getting clobbered by five supervillains," she replied, bounding away down the edge of the rooftop as Eddie fired web after web at her. "Well, four, now. Can I get your help with something?"

"Name it," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied, crisply.

"You know how Boss Stark likes to hack P.A. systems to play his entrance music? Well I got two people here trying to wear my kidneys for earrings and--"

"--and Abner 'The Beetle' Jenkins just left his grubby fingerprints all over my favorite drive sectors. Yes. One moment."

It was in that instant that Venom caught up with her, his hand like a vise around her wrist, her bones creaking and shrieking in protest. His long, slithering tongue lashed up and down the side of her masked face.

"Yesssss," he hissssssed, "you've had your fun playing hard-to-get, but playtime is over."

"On most guys, a tongue like that would be a selling point," Peta retorted. "You, I wonder what Rich ever saw in you."

"We made him complete--" Venom started to bray, started to brag--

But then Abner's RCS thrusters flickered, threw him off course, his helmet mic started squawwwwwking... and then the external speakers of his armor's public address system let out this unearthly, ear-splitting sound, more decibels per second than Madison Square Garden-- 

Venom screamed, clutching at his head with both hands, and Sergei, enhanced ears and all, fell to his knees, cursing in Russian.

...her skull ringing, her proverbial fillings rattling, Peta hauled back her free hand. "You were the worst boyfriend ever."

And as The Suit started to peel back from Eddie's flesh in desperation, struggling to get away from That Godawful Noise, it revealed his agonized face...

...and her knuckles made a very satisfying crunch as she broke his nose and sent him sprawling. 

A single bound brought her knee into Sergei's chin, an axe kick then pounded that chin hard into the rooftop. Without even slowing down-- though the baying from Abner's armor threatened to black even her out, she grabbed the spear from Sergei's back, twirled it, threw...

...and clipped one of Adrian's wings as he made one last-ditch attempt to swoop at her. Sparks flew, his wing was clipped, and he barely managed to maintain altitude as he decided, instead, to run away with his tailfeathers between his legs.

The noise suddenly ceased and Abner dropped to the rooftop like a tin can shot off of a fence.

"That was quite cathartic," J.A.R.V.I.S. opined, sounding a little surprised at himself.

"You're telling me, Robo-Pennyworth," Peta nodded, flexing her knuckles. And, hey, now her ears really were ringing. "Glad that's over."

"My apologies, Miss," J.A.R.V.I.S. pointed out, "but I don't believe that it is. I am monitoring civilian emergency radio traffic and-- there is a disturbance in Brooklyn. You may wish to hurry."

  "Oh, shit," Peta's eyes widened in her mask. "...Rich?"

[doublehelixweb]

"Sinister, Part 4."

The razorbat gleamed where it jutted out of Rich's shoulder, a constant cold-hot-pain reminder of itself every time Rich moved. And he moved a lot.

Rhino stampeded through the pile of girders, the gleaming gun-metal pachyderm armor giving him sufficient impetus to scatter those solid steel building blocks like they were bowling pins. 

Max crackled with power, sending out a lightshow like a CD in a microwave, like a Northern Lights, and bolt after bolt cascaded down at Rich like hot death.

At the center of this vortex of chaos, Rich swung useless punches against a man made out of water and a man made out of sand while dodging strikes from a Scorpion tail that could kill him with a hit. 

All the while, Norman orbited above, laughing that piercing, chilling laugh of his and taking potshots at Richard if ever he got too far out of the killbox, herding the young man back into place.

Rich felt naked, felt exposed, felt like the world was weighing down on him... like he was the only one holding up a collapsing tunnel as claustrophobic air-loss sapped his strength.

One of Flint's brick-hard punches caught him square on the jaw and he skidded ten yards on his back. "Hrrrrrahhhh!"

Mac was on him in an eyeblink, a hand around his throat, and hurled him head over feet back towards the crush of sand and water...

...desperately, Rich lashed out with a web, fired it at random, managed to tag the center of Mac's chest, and pulled hard. Mac was strong enough to stay standing, damn him, and Spidey just hurtled in his direction, but at least it kept Spider-Man from getting swallowed up by Morrie and Flint again...

...but then Mac backhanded Rich into the ground and as stars exploded behind his eyes, Rich reflected that this was something of a Pyrrhic victory.

He sprawled on the ground for a moment, that razorbat stabbing him all over again, tried to force himself to stand, tried to get his feet under him...

"Suh-- suh-- seriously," he wheezed, "what's in this for you guys? Obviously, Norman's paying you, right?"

"Obviously," Mac chortled, cracking his knuckles as the four thugs circled him again, Max and Norman remaining overhead.

"But," Rich mumbled, planting a hand, pushing, barely rising, "really, this is personal, right? I punked all you guys separately, so you-- you kinda unionized. (Not that I wanna speak ill of unions.)" 

Flint rumbled: "Always with the talking, this guy."

"Nah, nah," Rich was half-standing, now, hunched with his hands on his knees, and he waved a wavery hand at Flint, "legit question, here. Who gets the killshot? I mean, I damaged all your reps, right? And only the guy who actually snuffs me gets the full bennies from that, right? Is it the dude with the Unseelie Court motif what rolls the bank, or did you guys draw straws?"

High above, Norman narrowed his eyes. "I'm not paying you idiots to stare dumbly at him, what are you doing?"

Max scowled. "No. No, the whining child is right, Osborn. You said we could do this to restore our former glory, but as much as we do this as a team, only one of us can actually say we killed him!"

"I'm signing your paychecks," Norman snarled, pointing at Max, "that should be enough to keep your egos in check!"

"If I might," Rich heaved, holding up an instructive finger, "muh-make a suggestion. There was this bit in Julius Caesar? Bunch of dudes stabbed another dude, all at the same time, so-- so they all got the credit, because no-one knew whose blade actually did the deed."

Morrie scowled. "That's-- that's stupid. I'ma kill a man, folks're gonna know it was me."

Mac snapped his gaze across to Hydro-Man. "What? So you're gonna be the one, then? You're electing yourself?"

"Bullshit," Flint snapped, "I've gotten th' closest ta killin' him, I should be allowed to finish the thing!"

Norman clutched at his skull. "You-- miserable cretins! You're-- you're losing focus! Just-- it's supposed to be glorious!"

But they weren't listening. Not to Norman. Not anymore.

The Rhino let out a rumbling, infrasonic roar as he powered towards Spider-Man, aiming to crush the injured arachnid under massive steel-mesh boots... and as the others saw him going after the finisher, saw their chance slipping through their fingers, they, too, dove in for the kill.

...all at once.

...all at once, Morrie's watery form poured down towards Spider-Man like the proverbial rain in the spout. ...all at once, Flint's silicate mass rushed in on Spider-Man like an avalanche. ...all at once, Rhino thundered forwards like a one man mobile epicenter. ...all at once, Max lashed downwards with a single sizzling surge of power, bordering on Asgardian in its magnitude...

...and Spider-Man leapt, hands over his head, eyes clenched shut, trusting his spider-sense to let him find the one single gap out of all of this onslaught if even one existed... 

...Electro's bolt drilled into the center of the scene like God striking down sinners and the world detonated with thunderous EMF.

...Spider-Man's whole skull rattled, his spider-sense burned in his skin...

...as the bolt coursed through Morrie, he burst like a water balloon, the electricity dividing hydrogen from oxygen and casting him to the four winds...

...and the water's conductive properties boded ill for The Rhino's robotic armor, frying his circuits, at the same time that the bolt's massive heat fused Flint into glass...

...the particle-equilibrium from the misfiring bolt coursed back up into Max, broiling him, knocking him out of the sky like a puppet with his strings cut.

Spider-Man landed badly, crying out, holding his ankle, but he didn't stop, he didn't stop, because Mac--

--Mac was on him again, just as quick as Spider-Man if not quicker, he'd been able to get of the middle of that shitstorm just like Spidey had and now his tail drilled for the symbol on Spidey's haggard, blood-stained back...

Spider-Man twisted, twisted, put so much into his last move, he twisted out of the way of that pounding tail one last time, threw his arms around it and... yanked...

...this time Mac did get hauled off of his feet, much to his howling dismay...

...and with every ounce of strength left in Spider-Man's body, Rich threw that howling Scorpion headlong into the cooling glassy form of Flint Marko.

Some of Flint shattered. Some of him spattered.

Mac screamed as innumerable splinters of glass tore into him, and what didn't pierce him sizzled and burned...

...he was down.

Spider-Man staggered one step on his bad ankle. Two steps. Had to-- had to-- had to get--

And then that shadow whipped down from the sky, bearing him skyward with a purple-gloved fist around his aching throat.

"Parrrrrrkerrrrrrrrrrrrrr," Norman Osborn growled, no longer laughing, no longer amused. "I'm still here."

[helixwebdouble]

"Sinister, Part 3."

Peta's hair reeked of soot.

In fact, her whole body reeked of soot. Stupid industrial fire.

The water from Claire's shower pounded down on her, however, and Lord, did it ever feel nice. She sighed softly, and pressed her forehead to the cool tile. Soon, not so much smelling of soot. Soon, working the kinks out. Soon. Soooooon.

She closed her eyes. Just for a moment. Just for a moment.

********

The Beetle hovered near a cell antenna about a block from Stark Tower. As soon as he'd gotten the signal from Osborn, he'd put his own machinations in motion...

"I've got the A.I. chasing its tail with a logic maze," he reported, "but Stark's no slouch, I can't say for sure how long it is before the thing realizes what's going on and sounds the alarm."

Eddie Brock, however, dangled almost casually from the ledge below the window of Claire's apartment, his shapeshifting symbiotic Suit keeping him from being spotted immediately. "Relax, Jenkins," he purred into the earbud commlink that The Goblin had provided. "She's just one little girl, and she won't see me coming. This won't take long at all."

Pseudopodia rippled up from his shoulders, slithered up the wall, silked between windowpane and window-frame, and eased the window open as though he had done this a thousand thousand times. With grace bordering on the horrifying, the massive-framed creature hauled himself in through that open window, and crawled on all fours across the floor. As he went, his pseudopods wrigglingly wreathed his head like a Gorgon's headdress, and the camouflage drained from The Suit until it regained its classic, leathery wet black finish.

He oozed like an oil slick across the floor, approaching the bathroom and the sound of running water. 

His own grin spread across his face, rows of razor teeth gleaming in the CFL lighting of the apartment... there was a certain poetic irony to this. Parker had always been such a moron for pop-culture. And now he was going to murder Parker's superfluous little x-chromosomal double in the shower... it was all very Alfred Hitchcock, and Eddie couldn't help but approve. 

In fact, Eddie noted, just to put the pop-cultural cherry on top, the fridge in the kitchen looked awfully roomy. Perfect. 

The bathroom door exploded off of its hinges, he bounded over the backpack and the bathmat in the middle of the tiled floor quicker than a rattlesnake striking, and he ripped the curtain down with eight psuedopods as he raised his clawlike hands and--

Found the shower running. But empty. 

He paused.

"Hrrrrnh," he grimaced.

Then, behind him: "Fun fact: my biology is separate and distinct from his."

Eddie whirled, found Spider-Girl on the ceiling of the hall outside the bathroom, dangling upside down, her hair still dripping wet as it hung from her masked head, just in time for her to conclude: "Means my spider-sense still works on you, bitch."

  Venom roared, his toothsome mouth craning open wide, and without even missing a beat Spider-Girl fired--

  --hammering down the trigger of her webshooter like a gamer punching in The Konami Code--

  --bombarding Eddie with a dozen wads of web all at once--

  --hitting him square in his open mouth.

  "WHULP!" Venom twitched, clutched at his face, gagged, "GHK!" staggered... 

  ...and Spider-Girl powered for the open window like she'd been launched from a trebuchet.

  More danger waited out there. She could feel it, she could feel it even as she cleared the windowframe and fired a wild webline to swing away, could feel it even before The Vulture dove at her...

  ...but she would be damned if she was going to let these idiots trash Claire's stuff.

  ...she would be damned if she wasn't going to give them a run for all the money they had.

[doublehelixweb]

"Sinister, Part 2."

Rich was soaked to his spider-skin, even through the body-stocking he wore under the uniform in the winter. And now he was drowning in sand.

...if this was going to be happening, he'd want to at least be at Brighton Beach. ...or roundabout Coney Island.

But no, some dumb construction site in the middle of Brooklyn and-- oh-- right-- oxygen deprivation--

...he flailed like a mad thing, punching and kicking and spraying up silicate dust everywhere he moved... and with a helpless wild surge of effort, he bundled up his legs under him and launched...

...he flew maybe six feet, pathetic by spider-standards. But it got him out of the sand.

It got him out of The Sandman.

He landed in a heap next to a stack of girders, hacking and spitting and rolling up his mask to free his mouth. "Flint. Dudely. Bubely. I thought you were trying out the straight and narrow, now. That seemed nice. Whatever happened with that?"

Flint Marko, for Flint it was, emerged from the sandpile with a lackadaisical smirk on his face. "Priorities, kid. Priorities."

All the while, the water from the tower poured like Niagara down the front of the building across the street, splashing and trickling and piling up into the form of Morrie Bench. 

At one point, Morrie and Flint had been bitter rivals, and Spider-Man had then had to run interference during their combat to try and make sure no innocents got hurt in the resultant barfight. (That had been an interesting day.)

But now it seemed like they were having a team-up? Yeah, something had gotten them prioritizing, but what?

Puddles oozing from his every stride, Morrie strode across the street, cars honking around him as he ignored them. "I hate the winter," he confessed. "Hate the damn cold. Hard work keeping m'self all liquid. But it's worth it to see you beaten and broken down."

Spider-Man snorted, yanked his mask back down over his mouth and chin. "That's a lil' bit premature, there, Mor'. I'm bruised. I ain't beaten. I ain't broken."

"Th' day is young," Flint chimed in, the massive sandpile shifting and sifting around him.

Rich squared his shoulders and beckoned to them with both hands. "Yeah. Let's get this thing done. Y'all've got a Real Housewives marathon to get back to, I'm sure."

And then things got worse.

Again, Rich's spider-sense screamed in his head, and this time he was able to move-- barely-- in time. And again! And again!

...a bolt of lightning speared from the sky, blowing a crater where he'd just been standing.

...one of those girders spun end-over-end at him, and he bounced up to meet it in the air, clinging to it for an instant before diving away and rolling to crouch in the dust.

...and then a massive green metalloid shape the girth of a tree trunk tried to plow into his chest, but he powered straight up over it, landed forty feet away.

...and then the scariest thing of all happened. A shadow the shape of a bat loomed over Rich like the pallor of death.

All the blood went from Rich's face. All the chills ran up Rich's spine. 

"Hello, Spiderrrrrrr," oozed the maniac's voice, the green figure clad in purple perched on the batwinged glider. "Been awhile."

"Norman," Rich breathed. Shit.

Spider-Man glanced desperately around. 

They were in a ring around him, five of them, with Norman hovering gleefully above. And he was already wounded and winded.

Five of them. Flint, Morrie... Max Dillon, called "Electro," Mac Gargan, called "The Scorpion," and the slow-witted armored juggernaut known only as The Rhino.

...and Norman. Fuck. Norman.

He snapped his gaze back up to the hovering Goblin.

"Heya, Normie," he drawled. "You got the old band back together! What's the occasion? Did all these guys finally learn how to count to Six?"

"Six," Norman cackled, kicking his glider into a little spin. "Oh, don't be so obtuse, Spider."

"There's two of you now," he leered, that devil's grin splitting his verdant face. "It's not about counting, but multiplying."

Rich felt his pulse start to pound in his throat.

"Twelve of you," he breathed.

Peta!

His hand shot to his hip to try and grab his phone--

But then a pumpkin bomb hurtled at his face like it had been fired from a cannon.

And the time for talk was over.

[doublehelixweb]

"Sinister."

"So, what?" resounded the nail-chewing, gravel-spitting voice, "it wasn't bad enough that there was a Spider-Man running around? Now we've got a Spider-Girl?"

Rich sprinted across a rooftop, vaulted an alleyway without blinking, hurdled a satellite dish, kept running. He wore a Bluetooth earpiece he'd redesigned and miniaturized to fit in his ear under the mask, and he was listening to J-Cubed's latest rant as he went for his "morning jog." It wasn't pretty.

"Yes, we've had Spider-Women before, I've got my finger on the pulse, here," Jonah dismissed brusquely. "But at least they had the common decency to not be affiliated with The Masked Menace! ...no decency at all, this new one. They've been seen together at numerous criminal escapades, they've finished each others' sentences, done each others' comedy routines. Of course, I use 'comedy' here strictly ironically, there's nothing funny about a new Menace, especially one who incorporates potentially jailbait feminine wiles into her repertoire."

Spider-Man felt his ears burning, and this time it wasn't related to power source beta-testing in the earpiece. This was his twin the guy was badmouthing, here. His sister, for lack of a better term. 

It wasn't the first time he'd wanted to punch JJJ's mustache out through the back of his head, but this was by far one of the most fierce.

Web darted out, snagged a water tower, and he swung in a wide arc, landing in a crouch on a building ledge overlooking a construction site.

He crouched. And he seethed.

"And of course, I can only wonder where she came from," Jonah continued. "Is whatever made Spider-Man Spider-Man contagious, now? Should the government be quarantining him? Or is he some deviant scientific experiment by some genetic mad Frankenstein now given a wife so he can breed?

"We're pouring all this taxpayer money into S.H.I.E.L.D., now," he snarled, "I demand we get some payoff for that. I demand that this supposedly high-minded peace-loving international military force put its power to work for the people that help pay their bills! Let's look into this Spider-Duo mess before it spreads any further!"

  Teeth gritted with fury, Spider-Man poked himself in the ear, angrily silencing Jonah's rant.

"God," he muttered, "I could use something to hit right now."

Perhaps Rich's spider-sense made him more precognitive than he thought. Or perhaps The Universe was bent on reminding Rich, yet again, that he should be careful what he wished for.

Because it was right at that instant that that selfsame spider-sense flared hard.

It was right at that instant that the water-tower behind Rich exploded in a rush of thousands of gallons of clear noncompressible liquid... some of which formed into a massive fist and belted Rich clear off of his perch.

Spider-Man hurtled ass over teakettle and landed in the massive pile of sand that adorned the bottom of that construction site.

...sand which then proceeded to shift... to move... to morph...

...and to strangle Spider-Man's living daylights out of him.