4 Chapter 4

The world was buzzing about one thing and one only over the past number of days. The mysterious spider themed vigilante, dubbed Spider-Man, by the media turned up and rocked the entire world. The web slinger took down several low level criminals.

There was one man who noticed this. At first, he thought that this was some punk dressing up on a Halloween costume. They would all have a few laughs, but they would be taken for a ride and everything would be good. He would be shaken up and returned to the city, never to interfere with his operations again.

The problem was grabbing onto Spider-Man and he needed a hook, a shock, to get his attention.

"The subject is here," the man said, his large hand clutching onto the phone in the shadows.

"Yes, it is," the contact at the other end of the phone said. There was nervousness by the lead contact. "Are you sure that we should do this?"

The man smiled and decided to give the word. "Yes, I know that we should do this. Get ready for this."

The Kingpin of Crime as he was known prepared to look at the gang member who had been humbled by Spider-Man about a week ago. They picked him up and put him in a limo.

"So, some punk in a Halloween costume gave you trouble?"

"Shit, it isn't any trouble, I'll take him out, just give me another shot at him," the criminal said and the Kingpin leaned on his walking stick, leaning forward.

"So what's your name?"

"Maxwell Dillon, my friends call me Max…"

"Don't worry, your friends and your enemies will call you much more, young man," the Kingpin said and he turned to his lead scientist. Kingpin knew what he was. Dillon was an electrician that fell on hard times. One mistake had lost him his license. When the door shut, the Kingpin was there to get him back his license, for a price. "Make sure he's stabilized, the last thing we need is for the experiment to injure anyone important."

If this worked, then the Kingpin had an enemy to take down Spider-Man or at least figure out what he's all about. And if didn't work, well ambitious young men who wanted a little bit of power were a dime a dozen.

"Are you ready for power?"

"Yeah, what's with the monkey suit though?" Dillon demanded, staring down at him.

"It's to conduct energy and allow you to pack a punch that will take Spider-Man down," the scientist said and the Kingpin placed his hand on the edge of the table. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready."

"Hey, what about me?"

Dillon's question fell on the deafest of deaf ears, and there was a sense that things were about to heat up in the worst way.

"I'd advise not moving all that much if you can help it," the scientist told Dillon and he cranked up the juice. "I do hate to clean up afterwards."

"Doc, doc, what the….."

There was a second where he got silent and then his shrieks of terror could be heard. The doctor looked stoic as he looked at the man. The Kingpin stood at his shoulder and waited. The scientist's lips curled into a sadistic smile for a few seconds.

"It means it's working," the Kingpin suggested and the scientist nodded.

"It's working, perfectly," the scientist said as Dillon dropped down to the ground. There was a second where he remained immobile on the floor, sparks flew from his finger. There was a long second of time with the Kingpin and the scientist turned to each other.

The thug's legs and arms twitched as he screamed out loud. It looked like he had some kind of seizure as he slumped onto the ground.

"Get him out of here, we're going to need another test subject….."

"No, I'm fine," Dillon growled as sparks began to fly from his fingers. His arms and his legs grew rigid, as the lights flickered and he smashed his way through the doors. The man took half a step forward and the television set above him flickered.

"It worked, it worked better than I thought it would," the scientist whispered, but he was terrified, terrified of the monster that he might have created.

"Yes, it worked well, it worked perfectly," the Kingpin said, his mouth curled into a nice twisted grin. He wondered what kind of monster they created. "So….Mr. Dillon….."

"Maxwell Dillon was a loser, he never accomplished anything in life," he said, as the light bulbs flickered and the energy responded to him. It was almost like he could hear it, manipulate it. "You may call me Electro."

"Very well Electro, and what are you going to do now?" The Kingpin asked.

"I'm going to crush Spider-Man!" Electro yelled as he caused static to flow through the electronics.

"So what's this nutjob all about?" Peter asked, after he returned from a long night. Actually it wasn't a long night.

"Well, he's disrupted electronics all over downtown," Gwen said after a few seconds, keeping her ear to the police scanner. "He calls himself Electro."

"Electro?" Peter asked.

"Well, he's already embraced the super villain psychosis with all of the powers, but where he came from, no one really knows," Gwen said, as she could hear Peter arrive outside the door. "We'll track him down, but someone like that, needs a lot of juice. He's addicted to it completely."

"Oh is he?" Peter asked, quickly sneaking up behind Gwen, only not really.

"I'm trying to isolate where the power spikes are coming from, but….he's not your common thug or anything like that," Gwen said, biting down on her lip nervously as she did her magic. "With any luck we'll find him tonight, so…don't take that costume off or anything. Even if you look better without it."

"Is that a compliment towards me or a slight against the costume?"

Gwen said nothing as she continued to work through the grids and found it.

"Either he's trying to get someone's attention or the boy had a midnight craving," Gwen said, even though it was still fairly early in the evening. "So….got to find out what he's all about…."

Peter had a fix on the location and smiled, he was so on this. The web slinger gave his girlfriend a kiss goodbye.

'Not even a month in the webs, and already my first super villain with a stupid name, wow, talk about….' Spider-Man thought as he reached there. He stopped his thought process, his spider sense was going absolutely nuts. The web slinger crashed down onto the ground as something shocked him.

"So I have you now, Spider-Man!"

Typical super villain talk, as Spider-Man was face to face with some man in a tight black body suit with a lightning bolt.

"So, Electro," Spider-Man muttered and he dodged being zapped.

"Yes, that's my name, don't wear it out."

Zap, zap, zap, dodge, dodge, dodge, Spider-Man was pretty quick on his feet but perhaps he was even quicker with his mouth.

"I'll make you pay for humiliating me!" Electro yelled and Spider-Man jumped into the air but a bolt of lightning nearly took him down. The equipment off to the side moved at the pull of Electro.

Dodge the wrecking ball, check. Make a cutting quip towards your enemy, well Spider-Man was working on that one.

"I don't even know you, how is that….."

"You put me in jail, and now I'm going to return the favor by putting you in the morgue!" Electro yelled, electrifying the ground that Spider-Man was on. He doubted that he would get only a bad case of static shock, so he jumped up, and tried to web onto Electro.

He got a shock, bad idea.

"Look, I put a lot of gang bangers in jail every day, that's kind of my thing," Spider-Man panted and Electro sent another bolt of lightning at him. "So, you could really stand to be a bit more specific, just a little bit really. That's all I'm asking, really."

Electro tried to maneuver a crane to attack Spider-Man but he did not have the control over his powers that he wanted to. The web head dodge the attacks of the crane, bounced off of the wall and landed down on the ground.

"Come on, sparky, what's the matter, dead battery?" Spider-Man asked him and Electro shook his head.

"Just for that awful pun, I'll kill you, like that!" Electro yelled, as he maneuvered a wrecking ball at Spider-Man.

The web slinger dodged that one once again.

"Come on, you got to stay current," Spider-Man said and a dump truck wheeled out towards him and flung its debris at Spider-Man.

The web slinger dodged things and Electro rushed forward. He delivered an electrically enhanced punch and knocked Spider-Man back.

The web slinger was at the edge of a trash compactor.

'Yes, this might hurt,' Spider-Man thought as he leaped off before Electro could make him a more compact Spider-Man.

Electro raised his hand but a few sparks flew from his fingers.

"What, what, no not now!" Electro yelled and he saw the generator on the ground. "Just enough, must have….."

"Look if you start growling about your precious, I'm so out of here," Spider-Man said, using his web line to stop Electro.

"NOOOO!" Electro shouted but Spider-Man knocked him down to the ground hard.

'I just sent him towards those downed power lines, didn't I?' Spider-Man thought, wanting to face palm himself for the rookie mistake, the stupid rookie mistake.

Electro grabbed the power line and got a jolt out of things. His eyes glowed.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," Electro growled as suddenly a steam roller was about to run Spider-Man over. The web slinger dodged it, but it rolled into the city.

'Great, people are in the crossfire, and I'll be blamed for this,' Spider-Man thought, as he shook his head. 'He might be controlling it, but it can't run without any fuel, so I got to pop the fuel tanks…..and save the people.'

Spider-Man sent several lines of webbing out, creating a web net to block it. It only slowed it down, but it slowed it down enough for the web slinger to work his magic and take out the fuel tank. Breathing heavily, he popped the gas cap and drained it.

Of course, this was a diversion, as Electro got away.

'Of course,' Spider-Man thought, but he was going to plan to defeat him next time. In his enhanced mind, he was going over the battle. He was a power junkie, that was one weakness.

"Guy like that, he's not going to upgrade those powers on his own," Gwen whispered and Peter nodded, the two of them walked their way up the stairs to Midtown High. There was a lot of buzz around about Electro showing up and what Spider-Man would do to defeat him.

'First Spider-Man has to find him….'

"Um, hi."

Of course, Spider-Man needed to work on his path finding abilities when he was day dreaming, when he nearly ran into someone.

Most interestingly enough, he ran into a fairly attractive redhead female, nearly causing the two of them to run head on. She had red hair that extended down her back, tied in a ponytail. She wore a black tank top and tight jeans. This female had an amazing figure and Peter could see that Gwen took notice of this fact.

"Sorry, I wasn't….."

"No, really, I should be apologizing to you, because I wasn't watching where I was going," the redhead said with a smile. "New school, it's really easy to get lost. And a lot bigger than my old school….."

"It's overwhelming the first couple of days, yes," Peter said and Gwen smiled.

"Yeah, I remember my freshman year," Gwen said, she was a senior right now and about ready to get out of the rat race. "Total nightmare….oh I'm Gwen Stacy, this is Peter Parker by the way."

"Well, pleased to meet….did you say Peter Parker?" the redhead asked and Peter blinked before speaking.

"Is that a….good "did you say Peter Parker" or a bad "did you say Peter Parker."?"

The girl waved that off, with a grin on her face. "Good, my aunt talks to your aunt all of the time…I'm Mary Jane Watson."

"Oh right, Mrs. Watson's niece, Aunt May did mention that you'd be moving in soon…..after what happened."

"Yeah," Mary Jane said, the official story was that her mother was in the hospital and her father skipped town. The whole truth was a bit far more convoluted than that. "So…..this is Midtown High?"

"It isn't as good as it seems at first, but I guess it does have that new school smell for you, so it's amazing," Gwen said with a smile.

"So, I'm looking for….Room 502, that's where my homeroom is," Mary Jane said, checking the note that she received from the main office.

"How about that, that's across from my homeroom," Peter said and Mary Jane smiled.

"Maybe you can walk me there," she suggested in a bright and bubbly voice and she turned to face Gwen. "If that's…."

"Hey, I'm not going to have any complains about it, if Pete doesn't," Gwen said, waving her hand for a second. "I'll catch you later, Peter."

Gwen leaned forward and gave Peter a nice kiss on the lips, which he returned. Mary Jane watched, her mouth hanging open. Was it perverted to think that was a bit hot?

Mary Jane stepped forward but suddenly her book slipped from her arms in a clumsy display. The redhead shook her head, what the hell was with her today?

The redhead bent down and the tight jeans offered a visual treat, as Peter got a nice look at her ass. As a result, he inadvertently released a few pheromones.

Mary Jane blinked, she could feel warmth spreading between her legs. Her heart beat a bit faster but she shook her head. The redhead discounted it as first day titters.

"So, shall we?" Mary Jane asked, wrapping her arm into Peter's. "You better lead me, tiger, I've been a bit…clumsy today."

"Well anything to help a pretty lady," Peter said with a wide grin.

'Telekinesis, who knew?' Gwen thought to herself, shaking her head. It did work out rather well all things considered.

"Hi, Gwen, is Peter here?"

Gwen turned around and saw Liz Allen standing there before her.

"You just missed him about five minutes ago," Gwen said and she smiled. While most people thought that Liz was the Alpha Bitch of Midtown High, she only acted that way around Flash and his cronies.

"Oh….well that's a shame," Liz said, she had no idea why, but she had been having those kind of dreams about Peter Parker. And he wasn't the scrawny nerd anymore. It almost happened over night. She was only slightly intimidated by the older girl, whose father was a cop and likely knew how to use a gun. So Liz treaded very lightly. "So….I was wondering if he was feeling alright because there's something different about him….."

"I hadn't noticed," Gwen said, trying to figure out what Liz knew.

"Well he seems a lot more confident…..a lot more unwilling to….."

"Put up with Flash's shit," Gwen said to Liz and Liz smiled.

"Yes," Liz said and she blinked. "So….if you see him…..tell him that I said hi, and…well give him this please."

Gwen was handed a note and she took it.

"I'll pass the message, thanks," Gwen said, with a smile.

Her and Peter had talked about adding more partners to their relationship, and Gwen was not about to let an opportunity slip through her fingers like that. Sure it might take a bit of persuasion, and a lot of seduction and potentially some breaking, but Gwen was up for it and she was sure that Peter might be as well, if she talked him into it.

Plus Liz deserved better than Flash, much better than Flash.

"So, she was in the drama club when she was at her old school, I say we should consider her for an audition," Gwen said over the radio to Peter, as he was in full Spider-Man mode.

"Did you really do a background check on her?" Peter asked, shaking his head.

"Due diligence, Spider-Man, due diligence," Gwen said with a smile on her face. "I can tell she's had a bad home life. Cases like hers all of the time come in, given who my dad is, you can see it all of the time. She deserves a good ride on the sheets….we did discuss this as well."

"Yes, I know but saying it and doing it is two different things," Peter said and he smiled. "And I'm on board with it by the way, what guy wouldn't be?"

"You're thinking about convincing the girls to share might be a pain because they tend to murder each other about wanting the same pair of shoes," Gwen suggested and she sighed. "Yeah, I thought about that as well but…..we'll work on that. I developed a new power…"

"So, maybe I can play mission control sometimes and you can go out on the field, or maybe we can work together?"

"You do have better control over your powers than I do, I still sometime set the curtains on fire when I have an orgasm," Gwen said and Peter cringed at the thought. "That's why I have a fire extinguisher by the bed at all times."

"Combustion kind of kills…..I think I found Electro."

Sure enough, the lights in the business district flickering on and off indicated that Spider-Man did in fact find Electro. The web slinger swooped down and this time, he had a way to defeat him. He just hoped that it would work out about as well in practice as it did in theory.

"Okay, Electro, come out now, the game is up!"

"In a minute, Spider-Man! Let me finish dessert!"

"Yeah, I think you've indulged yourself so….are you even wearing pants?" Spider-Man asked as he could see the glowing blue form of Electro. Was he bigger than before?

"How do you like the new me, Spider-Man?" Electro crowed as he tried to zap Spider-Man but the web slinger dodged the attacks. "Even the fat man didn't see this coming. Even the Kingpin, he didn't see this one coming. So how do you like me now Spider-Man?"

"I liked you a lot better when you had pants on," Spider-Man replied, dodging his attacks.

'That's it, just a bit closer.'

Spider-Man threw a magnet at Electro and his energy flickered a little bit. Just as he suspected, magnets was a flaw, a weakness, much like a computer.

"Is it working?" Gwen asked as there was static.

"Yeah, but I'm going to need something bigger," Spider-Man said, as Electro took forward.

"I thought it would be water, because you know how well water and electricity mix but your way works too…."

"That was unpleasant!" Electro growled as he shook off the effects of the magnet. His voice echoed with a sinister quality given to it. "But you're going to have to do better than that to stop me, Spider-Man!"

"Oh believe me, I've got a lot more tricks in my bag then that," Spider-Man said, a brief taunt in his voice, as he launched himself up into the air and went down hard onto the back of his head.

'Need a bigger magnet, of course….'

"I really hope Electro doesn't get that new generator at ESU, then he would be unstoppable," Spider-Man said swinging off. "He would have enough power for the rest of his life, well I better go than secure it."

Power or not, Electro looked to be a bit of an idiot and by a bit of an idiot, a complete idiot, for he followed Spider-Man all the way across town.

'That's it, just a bit closer, that's it….that's it,' Spider-Man thought, web slinging across town and then he slid underneath the door.

"Let me at it!"

"How about this, ESU's new super magnet?" Spider-Man asked and he turned the magnet at Electro. He screamed in agony.

"No, no, no one!" Electro said, as he felt his power fading. He could not….he would not…..he had to.

He screamed as Maxwell Dillon dropped to the ground. The lights were off, not that anyone was home. His shallow breathing indicated that he still lived.

"Well, I sort of recognize the face, how could I forget a mug that ugly?" Spider-Man asked, as the police arrived. "Make sure to keep him away from any power, trust me, it won't end well. And keep a magnet on him at all times."

"Should we go after him?" one of the cops asked Captain Stacy.

"Later, we got to get this one secured," he said as he could see the comatose form of Maxwell Dillon on the ground.

X-X-X

"Spider-Man saves the day once again," Gwen said with a smile as she stood with Peter the next day. It was the talk of the entire town.

Sure when Spider-Man was busting normal thugs, he was an occasional topic of interest. Given that there were more than a few witnesses for the Electro fight, and how dangerous he was, they were all buzzing about Spider-Man.

Really bad pun intended of course.

"That does seem to be what everyone was talking about," Mary Jane said, trying to hide her knowing smile from Peter and Gwen. But she did nothing more than that. "All of those people with older siblings at ESU…..you know, they swore that they saw Spider-Man."

"They swore that they saw him, but no one got a picture of him, did they?" Peter asked, proud that he was good.

"Yeah, the only thing they got was this drawing," Mary Jane said, her cellphone blinking as she pushed it underneath their noses. "Look."

'Okay, my head's a little big, but that's scarily accurate,' Peter said, with a smile on his face.

"Well, I'm sure that….."

"J. Jonah Jameson is offering a big reward for pictures, pictures of Spider-Man," Gwen said and Peter smiled.

While he dabbled in photography a little bit, he didn't see it as his calling. That being said, it appeared that now every amateur photographer would be trying to get his face on camera.

"Good luck, he's been out of focus in all of the shots from what I heard," Mary Jane said with a smile.

"Well, he does web sling pretty fast, I've seen him after all," Peter said.

Mary Jane kept her tone even. "I'm sure you have."

Gwen blinked, surely not? Then again, she was not going to say anything, in case she was being paranoid. She looked at Peter and he seemed to be thinking along those same things.

"So…..my aunt and I might be coming over for dinner on Sunday night," Mary Jane warned Peter and Peter smiled. "I think that my aunt and your aunt are bound and determined to set the two of us up on a date, girlfriend be damned, no offense."

"Hey, you're not part of that evil scheme, are you?" Gwen asked, not letting onto the fact of her evil scheme of seducing Mary Jane into a threesome at some point in the future.

"No," Mary Jane said with a shrug. "I had a really bad break up last time and I'm not sure if I'm ready to get back on the horse….."

"Well I'm sure when you get back on the horse, you'll be able to ride them with the best of them," Gwen said and Mary Jane blinked. "That sounded a lot cleaner in my head."

"Right," Mary Jane said, shaking her head.

"Oh, and before I forget, Liz Allen told me to give you this note, she seems interested in you now," Gwen said.

"It almost sounds like you're trying to pimp Peter out to other girls," Mary Jane said jokingly and Gwen smiled.

"Not exactly a bad source of income, but no," Gwen muttered and Peter raised an eyebrow. "To be fair a lot of girls are interested in Peter's recent growth spurt."

'Likely to see if it's transferred to other areas, maybe?' Gwen asked.

"Well, there's Liz right now, maybe I should talk to her in the flesh about this," Peter said, after he read the note.

"Maybe you should," Gwen agreed and Mary Jane wondered what was going on. She could have sworn that there were sometimes where she saw Gwen checking her out and it should have unsettled her more.

Peter paused, for a second, he thought that someone was watching him. He shook his head.

"Hey, Liz!"

To Be Continued In the Next Chapter "Expanding the Circle."