Chapter Text
Thankfully, it’s only a short swing to the Oscorp Tower. The Osborns also have a penthouse apartment in Manhattan -- and probably additional residences elsewhere -- but since Norman Osborn had gotten sick, he’s been in an intensive care until on one of the top floors of the tower, bedridden.
Jameson doesn’t know how Spider-Man knows this, but for some reason he does, because he lands on the top of the tower -- a stomach turning height, almost nosebleed territory.
“You have something against lobbies, kid?” Jameson questions.
“Going in through the lobby? Not part of the plan,” Spider-Man responds.
“Let me guess, the doorman hates you here too?”
“Maybe. But not the point. This is a shortcut.”
He looks around for a moment and then walks toward one of the edges of the building. At first Jameson is afraid he’s going to jump off again, but he doesn’t. Instead he turns around and climbs backwards down the side, hands and feet sticking to the shear surface of the windows. As they climb, Jameson can see into the top floors of the Oscorp Tower. He sees part of an elegant apartment and a high tech engineering lab.
“This is how I find people when they’re sleeping,” Spider-Man says. Then after a beat he adds, “Kidding.”
Jameson’s going to respond how that’s not at all funny, but at that moment he realizes they’re just above the intensive care unit. He can see the white sanitary floor and wall of medical equipment. Spider-Man creeps down the side until Norman Osborn himself is visible inside, obviously asleep in the bed surrounded by blinking machines. Harry Osborn is sitting in an armchair beside him, a shiny black laptop perched on his lap.
Spider-Man knocks on the glass.
Harry warily looks up from his computer screen. Seeing Spider-Man and Jameson hanging outside the window, his eyes widen. He glances from the window to his father, and then back to the window. Spider-Man knocks again.
Harry puts down his laptop and walks a bit closer to the window. He yells at them, and Jameson can just barely make out “The window doesn’t open!”
Spider-Man groans. Jameson wonders briefly if this will make him reconsider the going-through-the-lobby option, but before he realized what’s happening, Spider-Man punches the window, smashing it into pieces. Harry cries out and stumbles away from from the shattered glass.
“I figured you could use some air,” Spider-Man says, climbing into the room through the jagged hole he made. “Fresh air’s good for sick people, right?”
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Harry shouts at him. “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU FREAK!”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t--” Spider-Man tries, but Harry interrupts him.
“Trust you? You’re breaking and entering! What, you kidnapped Mr. Jameson and now you’re after my father?”
“Harry, calm down,” Jameson tells him. “We’re here because--”
“We?” Harry interrupts again. “So now you’re in league with the wallcrawler? That’s the news story of the millenium!”
“Hey!” Jameson shouts, offended. “I’m not in league with this menace!”
“Oh yeah? Then tell me why you’re putting my father--” This time Harry’s interrupted. Norman Osborn coughs.
“Breaking my building again, Spider-Man? This is what? The third time now?”
Everyone in the room shuts up and turns toward the bed. There’s a moment of stunned silence. Finally Spider-Man speaks up.
“To be fair, Mr. Osborn, your building started it.”
Norman coughs again, but differently, like he might be trying to laugh but can’t get enough air for that. “Ah, there’s that sense of humor I’ve heard so much about,” he says, almost fondly. His eyes seem to be appraising Spider-Man. He then turns his gaze to Jameson. “And Jonah,” he says. “How are you?”
“How do you think?” Jameson growls, not in mood for niceties, even for Norman Osborn. “I’m handcuffed to a criminal.” Jameson and Spider-Man raise their handcuffed arms together to show him.
“An interesting situation,” Norman comments, as if Jameson had just shown him his new watch. “How did these circumstances come about?”
“Smythe,” Jameson spits. “Is a goddamn lunatic. Handcuffed me to this menace and a damn bomb for good measure, sent his damn robots after everyone he thinks wronged him, including you--”
“Hold on,” Harry says sharply. “A bomb?”
“Don’t worry, buddy. There’s still six minutes left on the clock,” Spider-Man says casually.
“That’s it; I’m calling security,” Harry decides, whipping out his phone.
“Harry, please,” Norman says frustratedly as his son mashes the buttons.
“Father,” Harry snaps back. Clearly there is unrest in the Osborn household.
“You’re not gonna throw his phone out the window?” Jameson mutters to Spider-Man.
“Are you kidding? That thing probably costs more than my house.” the webslinger murmurs back. “Plus,” he adds. “This is all part of the plan.”
“Security!” Harry yells into his phone. “Spider-Man is in the ICU! He may have explosives! I need help now!”
“Harry, I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Norman says.
“No, it is actually,” Spider-Man tells him. “In fact, you should have called security the moment you saw me outside. I mean, what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You--what?” says Norman, sounding taken aback.
“Jeez Norm, let’s see, you sent a giant robot after me, captured me, and nearly unmasked me on national television. A little thing like that gets a guy a bit pissed off, you know?”
“I...I meant no harm by it,” Norman insists. “I simply wanted to ensure the safety of this fair city of ours.”
“That’s very good of you; very noble,” Spider-Man comments. “But here’s the thing, Osborn, I do what I want.”
“Security!” Harry shouts again, and finally the sound of booted footsteps thunders through the halls as a SWAT team of heavily armored Oscorp security guards rushes to the scene.
“Being arrested by Oscorp security is part of your plan?” Jameson asks.
“Oh, JJ,” Spider-Man replies, sounding amused. “Do you even know me at all?”
“Neutralize him,” Norman instructs. “I want him alive.”
“Hands where we can see them, Spider-Man,” one of the guards barks, as a dozen of them stomp into the room and train their guns on him.
“Okay,” says Spider-Man, raising his arms, and Jameson raises his arms too, partially because one of them’s linked to Spider-Man’s, and partially because that’s just the natural thing to do when you have a dozen guns pointed at you. “Where’s the best place for you to see them from?” Spider-Man jokes. He grabs Jameson and leaps to the ceiling, sticking with his legs and his free arm. Jameson dangles down. “How about up here?” Spider-Man asks. “Can you all get a good view of them from up here?”
The guards angle their guns up at Spider-Man, but they seem hesitant to shoot at him for fear of hitting Jameson instead, which Jameson is grateful for.
“Quick test,” Spider-Man continues. “How many fingers am I holding up?” He hangs upside down from the ceiling by his feet so that the other arm is free to make his signature hand gesture and shoot webs at the security guards. He sprays webs at a few of the guards’ guns and pulls them toward him, gathering them up in his arms. He sticks them to the ceiling in a great glob of webbing. “You know it’s very rude to point guns at people,” he says, doing the same thing to more of the guards’ guns. “They might accidentally go off.”
Once he’s taken all the guards’ guns, he drops back down to the floor and swings Jameson onto his back. They try to grab him, but even with the bulkiness of Jameson hanging onto him, he’s able to slip away from them every time and easily dodge them every time they try to tackle him. He makes his way over to the window without even touching any of them and climbs back out through the hole in the glass, clinging to the outside edge of the window to deliver one last message.
“Attention Oscorp SWAT fuck-ups,” Spider-Man calls disparagingly. “You have failed to capture me. Hopefully you’re not so incompetent that you can’t keep watch on ol’ Norman over there while I take care of something downstairs. Good luck.” He salutes them sarcastically. “Oh, and Norman?” he adds. “Fuck you.”
With that Spider-Man releases his grip on the window and falls one hundred stories.
Jameson screeches like a wild animal until the moment Spider-Man catches himself on a web and land softly on the ground. The publisher’s heart is beating a mile a minute but he doesn’t have time to calm himself down. “That was part of your plan?” Jameson shouts at the wallcrawler. “Get the security guards in there with the guy the robot’s going after, but take all their guns away so they can’t even do their job?”
“Guns wouldn't do them any good anyway,” Spider-Man tells him. “And if we’re lucky, the slayer won’t even make it that far. That was just a precaution. Besides, I hate guns.”
Jameson only has a second to contemplate that before he’s distracted by the powerful clanging sound of a monstrous machine advancing toward them.
“My, my, robo,” Spider-Man calls, looking up at the spider-slayer, which is a great deal larger than even the last one had been. “What big legs you have. Let me guess, the better to dance with, right?” He shoots out a web and swings toward the robot, sticking to the side of it and crawling up to the top. He stands up. “I’m the king of the world!” he shouts, throwing his arms wide. Jameson groans.
Spider-Man then gets down to business, thankfully. He locates three tasers mounted on the top of the robot and rips one off. “Let me just preemptively get rid of this for you so you don’t get into any trouble,” he says, smashing it on the ground.
“That won’t do you any good, wallcrawler,” a voice emanates from the robot. “Spider-slayer 3.0 is equipped with a vast set of weapons to use against you.”
“Smythe?” Spider-Man says, recognizing the voice. “Oh god, you’re not inside of there, are you?”
“You think I would be that stupid?” Alistair laughs. “No, I am a safe distance away, controlling my beautiful machine and watching you battle for your life against it!”
“Oh, so it’s like a video game. Cool,” Spider-Man comments. “Hey, you lose five points for getting hit with webs!” Spider-Man jumps off the robot and sprays webbing at its many legs. However, the spider-slayer is so big and powerful that it barely has any effect. Alistair fires the two remaining tasers at the vigilante. “And you get one extra life if you can hit me,” the wallcrawler taunts, dodging out of the way. “Man, your aim sucks,” he adds, as he easily evades the tasers’ blasts every time.
“This is not a video game, wallcrawler!” Alistair’s voice shakes with anger and frustration. “You are not taking this seriously! I am going to destroy you! Of course,” he pauses. “Why bother? You must not have much time left. Around four minutes, I’m guessing.”
“Three and a half, but thanks for your concern,” Spider-Man replies. “Well, since you don’t need to destroy me, you don’t mind if I stick around, do you?” Spider-Man jokes, jumping onto the robot and clinging to the side. “Sorry about that. I think those tasers are set to pun. Let me fix that.” He climbs up to the top and webs up the tasers. “Alistair?” he says, as the robot pays him no attention and just continues forward. “Jeez, all night I’ve been cracking wise to these things! Finally I get one that talks back and you’re not even listening!”
“I’m finished with you, Spider-Man,” Alistair replies. “I’m moving onto my real target -- Norman Osborn!”
“Sorry, Norm’s sleeping right now,” Spider-Man tells him. “And he’s a very grumpy billionaire when you wake him up from his nap.” Spider-Man leaps off the back of the spider-slayer and lands on the street in front of it. He then begins webbing up the robot’s legs, but Alistair merely laughs madly and then with a hissing sound, gas emits from the front of the spider-slayer.
“Die, pest!” Alistair yells.
Spider-Man coughs. “Hey… I...resent...that…” he says weakly, falling to his hands and knees. Jameson begins to feel a little lightheaded as well, but nowhere near the symptoms Spider-Man is showing.
“What’d you do to him, Smythe?” Jameson asks. The gas smells faintly sweet, but he can’t identify it.
“Just as I thought,” Smythe laughs. “Spider-Man is susceptible to ethyl chloride -- pesticide.” The spider-slayer marches past the wallcrawler’s weak form toward the Oscorp Tower.
“Pesticide?” Jameson repeats. He’d laugh too if this wasn’t such a horrible situation already. “Give me a break! Get up, wallcrawler! It’s just a little bug spray!”
“Smythe,” Spider-Man coughs. “I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” says Jameson.
“You were right, Smythe!” Spider-Man shouts after the spider-slayer. “It’s my fault! I should have--” He coughs. “Should have saved you.”
The spider-slayer stops, turning around so that the camera lens on the front has a good view of the vigilante kneeling on the ground, offering his apology.
“You should have,” Alistair agrees. “But it’s too late. You must pay.”
“I’ll be paying in one minute, Smythe,” Spider-Man tells him. “Don’t bring anyone else into this. Leave Norman Osborn alone.”
“He’s your enemy too!” Alistair shouts. “Why won’t you let me destroy him?”
“Because,” Spider-Man says as he gets to his feet, his voice getting stronger as the gas clears. “I won’t let anyone else get hurt.” With that he snaps Jameson’s handcuff off of him. “Run,” he says.
The timer on the handcuffs still chained around Spider-Man’s arm begins emitting a quiet beeping sound. Jameson backs away from it.
“You fool!” Alistair shouts in delight. “When the handcuffs are broken the timer speeds up to half time!”
“I figured that might happen,” Spider-Man says, sounding like himself again. “Which is why I did it now instead of at the beginning. Only lost thirty seconds instead of thirty minutes. Neato, huh?”
“That won’t save you!” Alistair bellows. “In thirty seconds you will die!”
“Maybe,” Spider-Man agrees. Alistair shoots the tasers at him again, but Spider-Man all too easily manages to avoid being hit. Free of the constraining weight and bulkiness of Jameson, Spider-Man looks way too hyper as he flips around the spider-slayer in a blur. He lands on top of it. “Say, Dr. Smythe, can I ask you a question?” he says, peering into the camera lens. “You’re controlling this robot, right? There’s no like, computer directing it?”
“Yes,” Alistair says gleefully. “While the other spider-slayers were controlled by mere artificial intelligence, allowing you to defeat them, this one has the mind of a genius at its helm, enabling me to outwit you at every turn!”
“Fascinating,” Spider-Man responds, and smashes the lens.
“No!” Alistair shouts. “What have you done?” He fires the taser blindly, but without them really aiming at anything, it’s easy for Spider-Man to simply tear them off.
“Ha! Bet you didn’t see that coming?” Spider-Man quips. He jumps off the spider-slayer and webs up its legs. “This is just too easy,” he comments. “See what I mean?”
Alistair screams, then seems to calm himself and take a deep breath. “Fine, Norman Osborn will pay another day. Goodbye, Spider-Man.” The spider-slayer takes flight, rising up into the sky. Spider-Man glances over his shoulder at Jameson and gives him a thumbs up. Jameson can hear that the beeping on the timer has gotten faster. He has only seconds left.
Spider-Man shoots a web at the ascending spider-slayer and pulls himself on top of it just as it reaches the canopy of the city. As it gets higher and higher Jameson can still see it, but he can’t see what’s happening up there. He suddenly remembers the camera around his neck. If an idiot like Brock can work this thing, he definitely can. He quickly turns it on and finds the correct setting, raising it to his face to look through the lens and zooms in as much as possible.
Boom. The device explodes in a flash of light over the city, the spider-slayer...and Spider-Man going with it. Jameson snaps a picture.
An eerie calm sets over the street. Jameson’s astonished. He can’t move. The wallcrawler...Spider-Man…sacrificed himself to save him. Now he’s gone, and Jameson will never be able to tell him…that maybe...he’d been...wrong about him.
Throughout the whole hole hour they’d been stuck together, Spider-Man had been putting his life in danger chasing after robots, saving people who had hurt him in the past. Brock, Osborn, and yes, even Jameson had all been involved in a plan to expose Spider-Man to the world, yet the wallcrawler had just saved all their lives without hesitation. And in the process he had paid for it with his life.
Maybe Spider-Man wasn’t the villain Jameson made him out to be. Maybe he was trying to be good. The feeling of shock leaving him, and numbness setting in, Jameson walks to the next street over and hails a taxi, tells the driver to take him to the Bugle.
In the cab he looks at the picture he has taken. A perfect shot of the explosion. A perfect shot of Spider-Man’s death. Jameson’s heart starts beating fast. Maybe he can make something good of this. The Daily Bugle will have the exclusive scoop on the death of Spider-Man, finally exposing him for what he is -- a hero.
And just think of all the copies it will sell! He’ll probably have to do three printings!
When the taxi pulls up in front of the Daily Bugle building, Jameson nearly leaps out of the cab, thrusting a fistful of cash at the driver. He walks swiftly into the building, clutching the camera tightly in his hands. Up the elevator he goes, to the top floor.
It’s getting late -- almost 3 a.m, but the newsroom of the Daily Bugle never shuts down entirely. The floor is still half full of his employees hard at work, drowning their drowsiness in coffee . As he crosses the room to his office he says to Betty,
“Cancel everything we had for the front page tomorrow. I got the biggest news of the year right here.” He holds up the camera. “Send Robbie in, we’ll have it ready in half an hour.” He starts to go into his office.
“Mr. Jameson, Mr. Jameson, wait,” Betty says. Jameson pauses.
“What is it?”
“Uh, well,” Betty looks concerned. “You weren’t answering your cell phone, so we couldn’t tell you, but we already put the paper to bed.”
“What?” Jameson shouts. “What’d you do for the front page?”
“Peter was here with his pictures just five minutes ago,” Betty explains. “You just missed him.”
“Dammit!” Jameson yells. “You’re telling me you put the paper to bed not five minutes ago, and you can’t wake it back up?”
“I--I’ll call, see if they’ve started printing yet,” Betty stammers.
“You do that!” Jameson marches into this office and slams the door.
He smells him before he sees him -- cheap deodorant and sewage, now mixed with the smell of burnt metal and fire. Jameson turns around.
“You!” he hisses.
“Hey picklepuss!” Spider-Man says cheerfully. He’s sitting in Jameson’s office chair with his feet up on the desk. His dirty, sticky spider-feet.
“Get off!” Jameson shouts reflexively. “Off of my desk!”
Spider-Man jumps casually onto the ceiling and clings up there. “Sorry about ending our relationship like that,” he says. “I hope we can still be friends.”
“You--you--” Jameson sputters. “Why are you alive?”
“Well, I’m told my mommy and daddy really loved each other, and then--”
“You were dead!” Jameson insists. “I saw the explosion!”
“Really? It must have looked beautiful from down there. Like a firework,” Spider-Man responds. “I was a little too busy falling thousands of feet.”
“That--but--” Jameson doesn’t know what to say. He’s too completely surprised and furious.
“Mr. Jameson,” Betty says, poking her head into his office, but not looking up to see the vigilante crouched on the ceiling. “The press said that--”
“Nevermind!” Jameson bellows, and Betty sighs and closes the door. “What are you doing here?” he barks up at Spider-Man, severely pissed off he won’t be getting that exclusive scoop.
“Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Spider-Man. “It was either that, or your animal magnetism.”
“Of course I’m okay!” Jameson shouts. “Why in blazes would I not be okay?”
“Well, Smythe might still be after you,” Spider-Man explains.
“I don’t need you watching out for me!” Jameson bellows. “I don’t need some webheaded freak hanging around all the time. I’ve seen enough of you to last me a lifetime! I never want to see you again! Get out! Out!”
“Fine,” says Spider-Man moving towards the window and beginning to climb out. Before he goes, he turns and shoots webs at Jameson. Jameson cries out as the force of the webs knock him back into the wall and glob him there. “I still know where you live!” Spider-Man calls tauntingly as he swings out the window and disappears into the night.
Jameson face is beet red as he struggles in the webs, but it’s no good -- he’s stuck. He opens his mouth and roars as loudly as he can, “WALLCRAWLING MENACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”