Black Webs

New York City's Angel

This city is so pretty,
under moonlit skies we'll be hanging like a cigarette,
so stunning, start running,
tonight's like a knife would you cut me with your kiss?

xxxxx

s i x:

S t i l e s

There was smoke in his eyes but he would've known that she was there even with his eyes closed. Stiles joked about having a connection to Lydia, but he felt it. He felt her presence when she walked into a room, like her aura was breathing colors into his soul somehow.

He felt her there. In the midst of the thunderstorm surrounding him.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to drop everything, forty-nine hostages for one girl, and get her out of there before the lightning could strike her. He couldn't. He was Spiderman. He could not mess with priorities. Not even for... Stiles could've sworn he saw Allison amidst the fire.

There was something inside his chest, something extremely sour, and his spidey sense was off the charts, wild like a black hole was going to open a rift and swallow everything whole, in one, swift, mighty gulp. There was no time.

He was running out of time.

"Tell me Spiderman. You're the protector of your people, right? So what is more important to you? The innocent lives of forty-nine people or the life of one useless speck of dust like him," the flaming man had lost the last functioning brain cell that he had and now wanted to trade the life of the hostages for the life of the bank manager (some guy he apparently had a beef with because of a sob story Stiles wasn't really listening to because evil monologues were best kept in the comic books, not in real life).

They stood inside a decrepit bank building. There was smoke and debris everywhere, it was raining embers and it made the air around him stuffy; suffocating. The hostages were lined against a wall with their mouths, wrists and ankles gagged towards his left, the bank manager stood towards his right in pretty much the same tragic position.

Conversing with the flaming man was like talking to a dude on fire. The man must've been wearing an inflammable material of cloth because he was clad in a black t-shirt and pants, but his head, hands and feet were aflame. He had eyes like burning suns and menace on his mind.

Why did Spiderman always get stuck with the most mentally unstable ones?

"I've got a better idea. You let the hostages go, you let the manager go and we can settle this with Froyo and a lengthy discussion about our feelings. What do you say?"

"I'll burn your city to a crisp!"

"Huh. I thought that would work. Everybody loves Froyo,"

The Flaming Man sent a fireball his way, but Spiderman dodged it, leaping into the air and yet landing on his feet gracefully. He put on a burst of speed and landed a few punches across his arms and gut, but it did nothing to injure him, only annoy him.

The Flaming Man attempted to throw some punches of his own, but Spiderman side-stepped, dodged and doused his flames in a mess of webs. Spiderman lost track of time, he wasn't sure for how long they drew their battle. All he could think was that he had to save those people and he had to save Lydia Martin. Nothing else mattered.

He'd beat the darkness, he'd beat the light. He could handle a little heat. All quite literally.

That was when he heard the growls. At first, Stiles felt like his own ears were betraying him, even The Flaming Man fumbled, gawking up and seeming rather floored. The growls sounded out again, louder this time - kind of like King Kong on steroids.