Peter Parker was currently three hundred feet above 5th Avenue, locked in a heated argument with his own clothing.
He fired a thick, black strand of webbing at the corner of a glass high-rise, letting the momentum carry him into a sweeping, stomach-dropping pendulum arc. The autumn wind roared past his ears, biting at the exposed lower half of his face.
[I do not like them.] The deep, bass-heavy voice vibrated directly against the inside of Peter's skull, cold and thoroughly irritated.
"I told you to suppress your auditory receptors," Peter muttered aloud, releasing his web line and launching himself over a passing helicopter. He shot another line, anchoring himself to a gargoyle on a pre-war stone building. "You can't complain about the noise when you're the one who refused to retreat into my bloodstream during the rehearsal."
[I appreciate music. I enjoy John Denver.]
"John Denver is acoustic folk music!" Peter argued, hauling himself up onto the stone ledge and crouching beside the gargoyle. "Gwen and MJ are in a rock band! It's drums and heavy bass! You're an alien symbiote completely vulnerable to high-frequency sonics. It's a miracle the Mary Janes didn't accidentally melt you into a puddle on the studio floor."
[I do not like them. I do not like any of them.] The black biomatter shifted around Peter's shoulders, rippling with visible agitation. [Do not select a mate from that group. I forbid it.]
Peter blinked, his grip slipping slightly on the stone. "Excuse me? Since when are you my dating coach?"
[The dark-haired one. Cindy,] Venom continued, entirely ignoring Peter's protest. [She is acceptable. She is quiet. She trusts you. And she does not play the drums.]
"Okay, first of all, I am not discussing my love life with a puddle of extraterrestrial goo," Peter said, rubbing his temples.
[The silver-haired thief is also acceptable. She is cunning. She appreciates the claws. She likes our aesthetic.]
"She likes stealing things and manipulating me, which is a very different aesthetic," Peter groaned. "And again, this is my life. You're just renting space in my pores. Stop interfering."
[We are partners. Your poor choices affect my blood pressure.]
"You don't even have blood!" Peter threw his hands up in exasperation.
Before Venom could offer a biological counter-argument, a massive LED billboard mounted on the side of a nearby skyscraper flashed bright red. The booming, unmistakable voice of J. Jonah Jameson echoed across the intersection, drowning out the honking taxi cabs below.
"And what are we left with?!" Jameson roared from the towering screen, his face practically pressed against the camera lens. The veins in his forehead looked like they were ready to burst. "Since Wilson Fisk was locked behind bars, New York's crime rate hasn't dropped! It's skyrocketed! What does this prove to the citizens of this great city? It proves that the masked menace, Spider-Man, and his little vigilante fan club had absolutely no contingency plan!"
Peter sighed, pulling his knees to his chest. Same old Jonah.
"They took down a mob boss and created a vacuum for a hundred worse criminals to flood the streets!" Jameson slammed his fist on his desk, sending a coffee mug rattling. "He claims to be your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man! But look around! The only thing he's friendly with is chaos!"
"You know, New York has always had bad neighbors, Jonah," Peter said softly to the giant screen. "But you're just doing your job. I'll let it slide."
Deep inside his right pocket, Peter's heavily encrypted Stark-tech phone vibrated.
He pulled it out, mildly surprised to see Mary Jane Watson's name flashing on the caller ID. He tapped the screen and held it to his ear. "Hey, MJ. Did you guys finally finish blowing out the amp fuses?"
"Peter! Oh my god, you are absolutely not going to believe what just happened!" Her voice was entirely breathless, rushing through the speaker at a mile a minute. In the background, Peter could hear the chaotic, rhythmic clatter of the Daily Bugle bullpen—phones ringing, keyboards clacking, editors shouting across desks.
"Whoa, slow down," Peter chuckled, leaning back against the cold stone of the gargoyle. "You sound like you just won the lottery. What's going on?"
Mary Jane let out a bright, unrestrained laugh. "I might have just changed my entire life. Do you remember when you suggested I ditch the standard interview transcript and write a full investigative piece on the Rhino instead?"
"Yeah. The Alexei Sytsevich background check. Did you give it to Jonah?"
"I put it on his desk twenty minutes ago. Peter... he loved it. You can't even imagine how happy he was!"
Peter's Spider-Sense gave a faint, confused flutter. "Wait. Happy? Are you absolutely sure we're talking about J. Jonah Jameson? The guy who looks like he chews on glass for breakfast?"
"I know! It sounds completely bizarre, but it's true!" MJ's excitement was infectious. "He literally jumped out of his chair. He dragged me out into the bullpen and introduced me to Robbie Robertson and the rest of the senior editors. He actually praised me in front of everyone!"
Peter listened, genuinely stunned.
"He told the staff that in this day and age, it's getting impossible to find a journalist willing to dig into the root causes of crime instead of just writing sensationalist clickbait," MJ continued, her voice thick with pride. "He's revising tonight's entire Bugle broadcast to feature the Rhino piece. And Peter... he told me that if I keep this up, he'll personally sponsor my university tuition. He guaranteed me a full-time investigative desk job the second I graduate."
"MJ, that's incredible," Peter said, a massive smile breaking across his face. "Seriously. Congratulations. You earned that."
The line went quiet for a few seconds. When MJ spoke again, the frantic excitement had mellowed into something deeply sincere.
"Thank you, Peter. But I didn't call to brag. I called to say thank you for giving me the idea. If you hadn't pushed me to look deeper into Alexei's background, I would have just filed a boring transcript. None of this would be happening without you."
"No, no, no. I'm not taking the credit for your writing," Peter insisted gently. "I just pointed at a door. You were the one who kicked it open and put the words on the page. You earned Jonah's respect on your own."
"Well... speaking of things I owe you," MJ said, her tone shifting back to her usual playful cadence. Through the phone, Peter could hear Jonah barking orders at an intern in the distance. "I still owe you a dinner. Are you free tonight?"
Peter raised an eyebrow. "Tonight? Yeah, I can make that work. You pick the restaurant."
"Are you sure you aren't busy? Don't you have that internship at the Baxter Building?"
"I got my hours covered," Peter lied smoothly, watching a police cruiser flash its lights three avenues over. "Just text me the address when you're off the clock."
"It's a date, Tiger. See you later."
Peter pocketed the phone, feeling lighter than he had all day.
[The redhead?] Venom's voice slithered back into his mind, dripping with absolute disdain. [Unacceptable. She plays the guitar. It is very loud. I do not approve.]
"Yeah, well, it's a good thing I don't care who you approve of," Peter shot back, standing up and stretching his arms over his head.
He glanced back up at the massive LED screen. The broadcast had shifted. J. Jonah Jameson was no longer screaming about Spider-Man. His expression had sobered, his posture straightening into that of a seasoned, old-school newsman. A graphic of Alexei Sytsevich—the Rhino—flashed on the screen beside him.
"In this modern era, where vigilantes and supervillains perform like circus clowns above our streets," Jameson spoke to the camera, his voice carrying a heavy, gravelly gravitas, "most citizens only focus on the collateral damage. We ignore the tragic reality of the men inside the monster suits. We ignore why a bad guy becomes a bad guy."
Peter crossed his arms, leaning forward to listen.
"I will not deny that pure evil exists," Jameson continued. "But there are also men whose monstrous existence is entirely a byproduct of our own broken society. Take Alexei Sytsevich. A man who underwent agonizing, horrific body modifications simply to survive in a criminal underworld that preyed on him. He became the Rhino not because he was a born psychopath, but because when he reached out for a lifeline, the only people willing to pull him out of the gutter were the syndicates..."
Peter stood on the gargoyle, the cold wind whipping his flannel shirt around him. He watched the gruff, angry newspaperman aggressively defend a supervillain's humanity on live television, using the exact words Mary Jane had written.
Jonah was a pain in the neck. He was loud, obnoxious, and unfair. But beneath the bluster, he cared about the soul of the city.
Peter pulled his mask over his face, the white lenses snapping into place.
"You see that?" Peter muttered, firing a web-line toward the next skyscraper and diving off the ledge. "Sometimes, a little noise is exactly what this city needs."
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