Note: I've been riding high on the last true break I'll ever have (December-encompassing winter break in senior year of college, WHOOO!), so I'm not quite as focused on doing, well, anything as I would be during school periods. But, anyway. Anyone watch Agents of SHIELD? Remember how I said Coulson was a bit of a badass, just because, in that ending author's note last chapter? Well holy hell, has Agents spent the last two episodes affirming that Coulson is a through-and-through badass! Also, Celgress, I honestly didn't write that bit about Coulson's girlfriend to suggest he's going out with She-Hulk, though in retrospect I totally see how it comes across that way. Something I'm going to have to decide on before I reach the end of this story (originally, he was just doing what he was doing pre-Avengers-Death (which he narrowly dodged in this universe), dating a cellist from Portland who'd had a run-in with a very obsessed super-powered individual that Coulson had helped capture, but now…hmmm…).

I do not own Spider-Man. Please review, comment, or criticize constructively. Most of all, enjoy.

The Spectacular Spider-Dad

Chapter 10

The Center Cannot Hold

"Now, before we go any further," The smirking image of Norman Osborn said, "I want to make certain… well, I couldn't call them assurances, but, I want to offer reasonable assumptions to you, Peter. If everything went according to plan, and my men were competent at their jobs, your daughter should still be alive, if not exactly well." He smiled at that, waiting. He'd clearly known what reaction his words would incite; Peter was gripping the table so hard the wood was breaking beneath his fingers. "Though, of course, it'll be out of my hands well before you even see this, so her survival is admittedly up in the air. I do want you to know I honestly hope she's alive. If only because that makes her on more thing I can personally take from you."

In the video, Norman leaned forward, the mirth on his face slowly being replaced with wrath. "I've had some time abroad, so to speak. Kept in SHIELD custody, made to work on special projects, forcibly hopped up on pills that made my mind itch. And degrading as that was, it offered me a certain perspective. Gave me a window back into my old life. The life I lost because of you." Osborn leaned in closer, teeth clenched. "You took everything from me, Peter. My company. My normalcy. My wife. My son. And I never truly appreciated their losses until I caught that glimpse back. And now that I've gotten out from under SHIELD's thumb, I intend to pay you back in kind. I'm going to take everything from you, Peter."

Annie groggily opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, and everything felt… slower than usual. Unfocused. The last thing she remembered was a hand going over her mouth while she tried to make her way through the school, and a prick in her arm. She felt whatever she was laying on jostle beneath her, and groaned at the pain in her head that hit her as she moved.

"Kid's waking up." She heard an unfamiliar voice say.

"Think the stuff is working?" Another voice asked.

"How should I know?" The first one replied.

Annie haphazardly scrambled up, and reached for the metal wall behind her. She tried to climb up as her vision started to clear, but her grip was… strange. She couldn't hold onto the wall like she normally could. And it wasn't because she was still somewhat out of it. It was like her powers weren't-

Her grip failed entirely, and she fell straight off the wall onto the floor. She started to recognize her surroundings. She was in the back of a van, sort of like a SWAT van from the cop shows Mom watched, and occasionally was in. Men with ski masks and helmets and bulletproof vests, with weird-looking shoulder patches, were all around her. Reacting on instinct, she threw a punch at the nearest one. He stumbled back into the bench built into the walls of the van, but she'd hit him hard enough that he should have been lifted off his feet.

"Hey, guess what," One of the men said. "It's working."

"Not as well as the boss said it would." Another said.

"So give her another shot." The voice came from the very front. The van shifted as it took a turn, and one of the men got up, pulling out a syringe filled with some dark red liquid. Pain, a different type of pain, shot through Annie's head. She recognized what this had to be. She reached, leaped, for the wall, grasping desperately with her fingers and feet as the men grabbed for her-

The opposite end of the van bent as something big and fast smashed into it. Annie could hear glass shatter from the front, and screamed as the whole van tipped clean over and crashed on its side. She barely clung to the wall, while the men were thrown against the walls and tumbled around.

Kitridge frowned as a garbage truck barreled out of a side street and plowed into the van. A man in a suit jumped out of the passenger side and started firing into the bottom of the tipped vehicle. From what Kitridge could see, he was firing through the bottom of the van. He lowered the camera slung around his neck and tapped his ear.

"Sir, we've got a little complication. Probably that agent you were worried about. Want me to-"

"If you seriously need to ask me that, Kitridge…" The threat went unspoken.

"Got it, sir." Kitridge reached into the bag at his feet and drew out a folded rifle. He yanked back on the stock, sliding it out of the frame, and screwed the barrel into place. "Proceed as planned once I'm done here?" He asked, lining up the shot.

"Of course." Kitridge winced as he saw another bout of shots, and ran the numbers in his head.

"Sir, Team A might be down, just the same. If you want this to still work, suggest you mobilize Team B."

Annie tried to scramble to her feet, but she wasn't totally sure where the floor was, and her head was still spinning from whatever the men had given her, to say nothing of the relatively high-speed collision.

A series of high-tech-sounding bangs rang out, and bursts of light carved through the opposite end of the van. The men, still stumbling to their feet, all quickly fell back down, shot in their backs or through their legs. Another bang went off by the back doors and the lock was blasted to pieces. The doors were yanked open, and once her vision fully clear, all Annie could do was gape at the person on the other side.

"Uncle Phil?"

So, yeah, a bit of a lighter ending than the last chapter, but the stuff I've got planned as an immediate following is far heavier stuff, and I want to get something up so the story itself doesn't wither and die on the vine, so to speak. Phil also took a page from the book of John Reese, so that was fun to write (that is to say, crashing into cars full of bad guys with much larger trucks. And John Reese is from Person of Interest, an excellent action/sci-fi show I'd recommend to anyone).

It's also worth noting that the history of Spider-Man and the Green Goblin is, like everything else, a bit of a hybrid of multiple histories. In this case, it's a mixture of the Spectacular cartoon (because the Connors connection is just too good, like SO many other great things about that show that died too young) and Ultimate, where the spider that bites Peter is infused with a Oscorp enhancing compound that Osborn later decides to inject himself after seeing what it does to Peter, thus leading to him (and Harry, via lab explosion and chemical exposure) becoming the Green and Hob-Goblins respectively. This also plays into that second death of Harry's that I couldn't talk about in the AN from Chapter 6; another Ultimate Sinister Six reference, wherein Harry tried working with Spider-Man and SHIELD to stop them, and Norman killed Harry in a fit of villainous Goblin-crazy-rage, then seemed to let himself get gunned down by SHIELD attack teams because he couldn't live with himself afterwards. Norman wasn't killed then, either, and was held in custody so SHIELD could try and replicate his way-more-powerful-in-the-Ultimate-universe powers. It went about as well as it goes in this story. Which is to say it went horribly.