Spider-Man: Legacy

Chapter 1 - The Call

WINTER

The call.

The call finally came. 

Aaron Davis was sat upon a rooftop enjoying a pepperoni pizza from the pizza shop across the street. He had always thought that Papa Georgino had the best pizza...the BEST. It was the type of pizza with crispy crust and cheese that was so soft and stretched when you bit into it. You didn't even care how greasy the dang thing was because your mouth was just full of flavor.

He wiped the grease onto his shirt, well, rather his costume. Aaron had been the Prowler for a couple years now. He hadn't been caught once. It took years to figure out how to out-maneuver Spider-Man, but he managed to make technology that let him do extraordinary stuff: he could cloak himself into invisibility, walk and run on walls, boost himself with rockets, and it also helped that his best weapons were retractable claws on his hands. He had always heard of some obscure superhero in the hidden city of Wakanda called the Black Panther who had retractable claws, and he was just someone that Aaron had always looked up to.

His actions, however, said otherwise. Aaron's reputation proceeded him. He had robbed every bank in NYC twice over, and not once had he been caught. And the name of the Prowler had not even been given to him, it was some crazy thing that Jameson had given him in the paper. He had assaulted cops and hurt a lot of people. His own brother, Jeff, wanted nothing to do with him because he had a sneaking suspicion of who he was. Jeff was a cop, and he was a good one.

Aaron had never taken money as a hitman before, but he thought he might as well try his hand at it. Hurting people was easy, he was sure killing someone was just as easy. All he had to do was not think about it.

The phone buzzed, and he answered it. 

"This the Scarlet guy?" he asked the man over the phone.

"Scarlet 'Killer', Mr. Davis, I would appreciate if you used the name as such," the man responded. The Scarlet Killer had been making headlines in the papers for months now. He slaughtered his enemies like someone would bleed a pig. And on the walls where he killed them, he would paint words in their blood. Some of these words were "innocent" and others were "delicious". Either way, the man was sick. Aaron didn't really care all that much though, all he was focused on was the money. "You, however, are not a killer, Prowler, am I correct?"

Aaron smirked and chuckled. "Hey, man," he responded, "I can be whatever you want for the price you're asking. Speaking of which, where is the money? It was supposed to be wired to me hours ago."

"All in due time. More players are joining the game at this moment."

Aaron looked at his phone and saw that three or four more callers had joined. This meant that there was more than one assassin that had joined this killer. Aaron shook his head and disagreed quickly. "Woah, woah, woah, WOAH, man, this ain't what we agreed to, you told me that you wanted to hire me!"

The killer chuckled. "You weren't the only one I told that to. More heads get stuff done."

"So what about my money?"

"I said...ALL IN DUE TIME!"

His voice sounded different on that last line. It put a fear into Aaron, one he had no idea he had.

"Now is EVERYBODY listening?" The rest of the callers were officially turned off of mute. 

"Here," one said.

"Listening," another responded.

"Yeah," said another.

And the fourth didn't say a word, but just a gruff "hmm". It almost sounded like, to Aaron, that he didn't want to be there.