But Andrew's triumph was short-lived.
From somewhere behind him, commentary began filtering forward.
"Whoa. Look at him. Andrew is absolutely wild," one male classmate said, propping his chin on his fist.
"Right? Andrew's clearly some kind of deviant," Classmate B agreed.
"I never would have guessed," a girl said, shaking her head—while sneaking a quick look downward. "The wholesome boy-next-door act, all that studying and sports—was it all fake? Remember when people said Andrew was into S&M? I didn't believe it then. But looking at him right now? Total deviant."
"And Liz has been out sick ever since that ordeal," another girl added pointedly. "Meanwhile Andrew's parading around school like nothing happened. Says a lot, doesn't it?"
Andrew froze on the spot.
That is NOT what anyone was supposed to focus on, he screamed internally. The whole point was proving I still have everything intact—how did this turn into a referendum on whether I'm a leather-pants-wearing deviant? And Liz is a mutant who accidentally activated her powers! I'm the innocent party here!
He couldn't say any of that, of course. The mutant business was far too volatile—not after watching police storm that hospital room and draw blood with the urgency of a crime scene. And his own recovery wasn't exactly medically explainable either. Medical miracles were fantasy.
For fuck's sake. He'd endured the misery of squeezing into undersized pants, and they were calling him a pervert. What exactly had been the point?
Andrew reversed course immediately and hauled Jamal back into the bathroom with him.
Meanwhile, on the Upper East Side, another recently discharged patient was having an equally rough morning.
"Tony, you have a noon meeting with General Hayden today. Main topic: negotiating the purchase price for the Neural Pulse Gun." Obadiah—VP of Stark Industries—let himself into the room.
The Tony Stark that greeted him looked nothing like a billionaire. His eyes were sunken, hollowed out. His hair had congealed into a single oil-slicked mass. His stubble grew in uneven patches. His custom Armani white shirt was smeared with grease. He looked, altogether, like a dock mechanic who'd slept under a car—not a trace of his usual effortless polish.
"Where is it going wrong? This doesn't make sense—Spider-Man, some loser in a homemade suit, somehow pulled it off. And I can't produce a stable prototype? The math checks out... but the pulse is completely unstable. And it's not just nerve damage—it's severely damaging muscles and bones on top of that. This is a failure, full stop. An unqualified failure."
Obadiah crossed the room, braved the smell, and clapped Tony on the shoulder. "Tony. Stop. You haven't slept in three days. Go shower. You have General Hayden at noon."
Tony surfaced slowly, like a man coming up from underwater. "What's the point? The schematics aren't finished—there's nothing to negotiate."
"That's why we negotiate early." Obadiah's voice took on its particular boardroom precision. "Once we agree on a price, the research funding comes out of Defense. A good arms dealer always works on the government's dime, researches his own weapons, then sells those weapons to the government's enemies. No arms gap, the military takes losses—"
"—takes losses, they come to Stark, the cycle continues until we're kings of the world." Tony cut him off. "I know the speech, Obie. But look at the papers—Spider-Man just signed an endorsement deal with Coca-Cola. You know what that tells me? Our whole play against Oscorp was wasted. Spider-Man isn't some corporate asset. He's a flat broke loser."
Obadiah bristled. That anti-Oscorp strategy had been his play, and from where he stood, it was working—Norman Osborn had been run ragged lately. His plan was sound.
"Tony. Bigger picture. Spider-Man not being Oscorp's asset is good news—it means Oscorp doesn't have a Neural Pulse Weapon either. Even if we wrongly targeted them, they still want a cut of the arms business. That conflict was always going to happen. We just moved first."
"I'm not disputing the Oscorp decision," Tony said, waving that off. "What I'm saying is—Spider-Man is broke. And from scraps and spare parts, this loser built the most advanced ODM gear I've ever seen. He built a weapon I can't replicate in my own lab." He took a few hard breaths. "I've seen the data. Near-perfect accuracy. Every target incapacitated—zero internal or external injury. And even fully paralyzed limbs eventually recovered on their own. According to hospital MRI, those victims simply had their peripheral nerves severed. The incision quality is surgical precision beyond anything I can account for. Beyond anything."
Obadiah's expression turned thoughtful. "So—if you can't build it in the short term, and Spider-Man is broke...why not just buy it from him directly?"
Tony turned it over. "Hold on. I'll go shower. The Hayden lunch—do it right. And quietly let him know we're upping the kickback by thirty percent this time."
Obadiah started to object. Tony raised a hand. "But the advance has to be fifty percent upfront. I'll use that to keep the research going for a while longer. If there's still nothing to show—" he paused, "—I'll use the rest to buy Spider-Man's finished product. Full patent rights included."
Obadiah gave a satisfied nod. "I've said it before, Tony—three days of no sleep hasn't cooked your brain. If Spider-Man's as broke as he looks, this might not even cost much."
A gleam sharpened in Tony's eyes. "And when the actual meeting comes: fifty ex-Navy SEALs in ODM gear, positioned throughout the surrounding area. Plus three of the company's spy satellites repositioned over Manhattan."
Obadiah's approving look grew warmer by the second. He smiled. "Don't worry, Tony. I'll set up a meeting with NYPD Commissioner Albert tomorrow. And once that's arranged—every officer in Manhattan will answer to us."
"Ha ha ha!"
The two of them laughed together.
At that same moment, on the other side of Manhattan, Madam President was deep in her Hansen Immortal-Ninja Art cultivation in the student council office—when she snapped out of her meditation with a sudden string of sneezes.
"Achoo—achoo—" She looked around. No sign of a cold. Her Shadow Clone had been handling the outdoor sessions every night, so windchill was out. "Is that conveniently acquired Shifu of mine out there talking about me?"
The ever-scheming Madam President couldn't have imagined it: the Chakra Scalpel she'd deployed so casually for operational efficiency had attracted the serious attention of the United States Department of Defense. And now Tony Stark—the same Tony Stark she'd been cheerfully farming for Influence Points, the man who'd found himself on the wrong end of her schemes more than once—was sitting across town, quietly drawing up a very large trap for "Spider-Man."