"Thank you very much Lance." Said the kind older woman who lived two doors down from him.

"No problem Ma'am. Everyone needs help from time to time." He said, smiling piously at her. Lance had just recently moved in to this apartment building. The lobby doors were poorly put together and old, the lock so shoddily made that most of the residents found tugging on it once was enough to initiate the locks fail safe and click the door open. The carpets in the halls, once a vibrant red fit for the hall of any king, had faded and were covered in years of vomit and blood from the less than savory residents of the neighborhood. And most relevant of all to Lance's present situation - the elevators only worked infrequently.

"Nonsense!" chided the old woman as he hefted the box of her valuables, carefully navigating the stacks of boxes lining the narrow entry way and placing it on the floor next to its brethren.

"With the elevators out of service I don't know how was going to get all my things up here. It's the tenth floor after all." she said warmly, stepping in after him and closing the door now that the last box was finally inside her new apartment. She was a pleasant old woman, if not necessarily pleasant to look at. She had wispy grey hair that was thin to the point of being nearly immaterial, and small beady eyes that reminded Lance of a rats. Even with all that though, she exuded a sort of pleasant motherliness that he sorely missed.

"I'm sure anyone would have stopped to help you ma'am." He said, straightening and swiping a forearm across is forehead. He wasn't sweating - none of this had been heavy to him, but it was important to keep appearances. So he'd strained, and groaned, but made a point of never complaining. As a man, once Lance had decided to do something, he did it. There was no point in making the people around you feel bad because of your own choices. That was just the kind of man Lance Lake was.

"I doubt that." the woman said with a snort. "This isn't small town nowhere you know dear. This is Manhattan. No one here cares about anyone else here."

Lance frowned. He knew intellectually that she was generalizing, and that the people of the city were probably as varied in morality as they were in height, weight, or any other unit of measure. But it certainly felt like she was right. His mind flashed to the first few days he had spent out in the city, trying to get his bearings.

There were so many people. So many things happening. So much noise and moving around. His home, his true home, had once been like this in a way. The peddlers hawking their wares and the people drifting about the roads on their business. But never on such a scale as this. He estimated that there might be more people in this one spot this...

He glanced at a sign hanging overhead from a blinking street light.

This Broadway street, this single road that stretched as far as even his formidable eyes could see, might contain more people than some cities he was accustomed to.

"Oi, you're in the way bud." A bulbous nosed man said, bumping into him and distracting him from his reverie.

"My apologies I -" He said automatically, shifting out of the mans way amidst the sea of people flowing around him. Being bumped into hadn't moved him, or even really hurt - he was too strong for that, but if he was in the way it was only courteous that he moved. But before he could even finish speaking the man had vanished in the crowd.

"Hey ya jerk!" Growled a the woman behind him, who his sudden shifting had pushed him in to.

"I -" he stammered.

"Fuck off!" "Jerk!" "Dick."

Every movement, every step, every action elicited a reaction. Each one moving on without stopping to do anything but hurl insults at him. Eventually, he had just... stopped moving. He was in the way still true, but he did not know where to go, or what he should do, and he had bothered fewer people still than when he tried to move out of the way.

"I'm sure there are still good people out there Miss Abbot." Lance said pleasantly, shaking off the remembrance.

"As you like ." The old woman said, not unkindly. He smiled ruefully at her then perked up.

"There's that Spiderman guy right? He zips around saving people." He mentioned hopefully.

"Bah. A menace I say. Why, my friend knows someone who heard of a fellow that Spiderman beat up once!" She said. Lance... didn't know what to say to that. It seemed like such a long and improbable chain for the information to cross that he wasn't entirely sure it was believable in the first place.

"You're probably right Miss Abbot." he said with a smile, then made slowly for the door. If his smile was slightly more strained, or his voice any more terse, then the old woman certainly didn't notice. She stepped out of his way, then paused mid step.

"Hang on just a minute there. Can't let the man who helped me go home empty handed after all." She said, and scooted off to the kitchen, darting around the boxes laying about her apartment with a spryness that no woman her age had any right to. When she returned she was using both hands to carry a six pack of silver cans to him.

"Here you go my dear. I know it's the middle of the day, but I'm sure a big strong fellow like you can handle his alcohol just fine. Just don't go to work too sloshed." She said, finishing with a conspiratorial whisper and a sly grin. Lance grinned back at her. True he couldn't really get drunk anymore - not without imbibing far more of the drink than his physical body could contain anyway - but he still enjoyed the taste. It was different than his homelands brew, but somehow the simple fact that people still drank was a comfort to him. Many things could change, but at their core, humans it seemed, did not.

"Thanks ma'am. I'm volunteering down at the shelter today, but one for the road should fine." He offered, taking the six pack and pulling one can free to open and sip at. The cold beer sliding down his throat was almost as satisfying as having helped the woman in the first place. Almost.

His task complete, and his presence no longer needed, Lance waved a final goodbye to his new neighbor and stepped out into the hall. It was only a few paces to reach his own door on the same floor, the dingy bronze plate on the front denoting it as 1003 - just two doors down from Miss Abbots 1001. She old woman smiled knowingly at him while he went, all the way up until he opened his door and disappeared inside.

'SHE IS dANgEroUS. selFIsH. DeStROY HEr NoW bEFoRE sHE caN uSe Us!' Screamed the ever present voice in his head. It was cracked and distorted, as though it was coming from a speaker that had been dialed to a volume above what the device could physically sustain.

'Now now. You say that about everyone we meet.' Politely pointed out the... other... voice in his head. Honestly, it was something of a headache to have to deal with. He had long since gotten accustomed to it, but that didn't necessarily make it pleasant - just tolerable.

Lance rolled his eyes, and ignored the ongoing discourse between the two voices. He kicked his shoes off in the entry, and walked forward, turning to the left and into his small kitchen. He placed most of the six pack into the fridge, pausing only to withdraw a second can for consumption as he downed the majority of the first one. Then he padded out into his living room and plopped down on his second - probably third actually - hand couch. It had been a gift from the people at the shelter, when he had managed to go from poor homeless volunteer to just a poor volunteer. Most of his possessions had stories like that. Knickknacks and furniture that were either donated or thrown away. One mans trash and all that.

Lane leaned back on the threadbare couch, glancing at the clock by his old television. It was just a bit past noon - which meant that he had about an hour and a half before his shift at the the shelter started. Content for the moment, he closed his eyes, and let his consciousness fade, trusting in the tiny alarm in his watch to wake him up. That or the voices. The voices were pretty on top of things in that respect.

Men surrounded him. Men in billowing red robes, each one waving and chanting. Each chant was different, each stanza a small part of the whole incantation. He was laying naked in the center of the room, a huge circle writ red with the blood of some bitch the men had pulled off the streets. It sucked, but that was life. Sometimes bad shit happened to people. People like him. He'd had it all. A career, a fiance, a home. Then the fucking spider had taken it all away from him. Ripped it away without even really noticing.

But he got better. He found his savior in the bellfry. He found it, and could use it. Together they were going to get back at the spider. The one who had ruined them. Spoiled them, left them nothing but damaged goods. No one else would take them, so they took each other. And they reveled in it.

Until they hadn't anymore. Because the god damn web head couldn't even let him have that. He drifted for a while after that. Lived from bar to bar on the funds he had saved, just barely making it through any given night. Then the men had approached. They told him they had a way. They could give him the power to take revenge on the menace of New York. Then they'd see. They'd all see. He was the better man. They were going to get his power back.

They were going to get him his other.

'It's time to wake. We have responsibilities.' the pleasant voice whispered in his ear, it's words somehow too dire compared to what they were describing. It was accompanied of course by the soft ringing of his wristwatch, vibrating away on his hand and causing a tinny noise where it touched the empty beer can loosely wedged between himself and the arm of his couch.

"Mmm," he groaned, rising and stretching. It wasn't really necessary - his powers meant that he was almost always in peak physical condition provided he ate and drank enough water not to die of starvation or thirst. But it felt damn good just to stretch while basking in the mid afternoon light of the sun. Warm and welcoming, dozens of meters above the bustle of the city on the tenth floor of his apartment.

He allowed himself a moment to relish the feeling, then rolled his shoulders and walked back to the front door, sliding his feet into his trusty work boots. These too were a gift, though not from the shelter. When he had first arrived in the city, he was a wreck. No money, no clothes, no home. But the shelter had been a shining light to him. Through it he had made acquaintances. Friends even. Not everyone who was homeless was such because they refused to work. Some simply couldn't. And many of them had their own friends, there own connections. A narcoleptic man might not be suited to working on a construction sight, but that didn't mean he wasn't still friends with the foreman after all.

So Lance had found himself in an interesting situation. He was willing to work, he just didn't have a resume, a work history or... well... any I.D at all really. The foreman had been nice, and Lance suspected, was perfectly aware of his somewhat superhuman constitution. But the short gruff man never once brought it up or asked Lance to do more than the other workers did. He just grabbed an old pair of boots, threw them at Lance, and reminded him to follow the safety guidelines.

So naturally Lance had worked twice as hard as anyone else. Not just because he could, but because he felt that it was only right to repay such kindness in any way he could.

The trip to the shelter wasn't long. A natural consequence of living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city was that he wasn't all that far away from the F.E.A.S.T center in the first place. It should - under normal circumstances - take only a short walk of about ten minutes to reach it from his home.

Unfortunately, Lance found himself well outside the bounds of what he would consider 'normal circumstances' within five minutes of leaving the building.

At the time, he was walking jauntily towards the shelter, humming a wordless off key tune that many of his old friends would have harangued him for. They were not around any longer, but just the pleasant memory of their good natured ribbing was enough to buoy his spirits. Being mid afternoon, and fairly close to lunch time, the streets were well full of people traveling to eateries, or simply stepping out for a cigarette. By rights, dozens of people should have noticed it well before he had.

"Hey come on, don't be like that. You need a place to sleep, I need a person to sleep with. I've got money y'know?" slurred a rude voice from an alleyway just ahead of him. He slowed his gait, glancing around. He wasn't accustomed to cities, and had found fairly early on that many of the things he would have sought to step forward and fight were simply common place and normal here. He wasn't sure he liked that - but he also wasn't here to tell anyone else how to live their life.

"Get off." A cold flat voice said from inside the alley. It sounded like it belonged to a young woman, which was completely at odds with the hard edge in its tone. Lance glanced around him once more, looking for a sign that someone else had heard. He noticed quite immediately that pretty much everyone in the vicinity had heard. They had simply chosen to respond by clearing space around the mouth of the alley, and doing anything but look inside of it. There were disapproving looks, and unhappy scowls, but not one of these people wanted to act.

"Hey listen I'm trying to be nice about this." The groggy male voice crooned, before turning suddenly hard. "I don't have to be."

"Neither do -" the womans voice responded, but Lance had stopped listening by that point. He understood on an intellectual level that minding his own business was probably the cultural norm here. But while he was willing to fall into line and blend in normally, there were simply certain ethical standards he had to maintain. Not just as a man, but as a human being. So he jogged forward and into the alley, finding a burly looking man in tattered old coat looming over a young girl with long unkempt black hair, vaguely asian features, and a grim set to her face that told him everything he needed to know about what was going to happen next if he didn't get involved.

Using perhaps just a bit more strength that he had to, he leapt forward stomping on the ground to halt himself behind the man, who's arm he grabbed in one free hand, pull him off the girl.

"Leave the kid alone alright?" He said firmly but politely. If there was any chance he could get through this without any more violence than was necessary, then he would. He was not a naturally violent man after all.

'bLeeD FOR me!' The voice howled in his head.

Well. Most of him preferred non violence anyway.

The girl looked as surprised as the man was by his sudden appearance, but the man recovered and reacted first, pulling a knife from an inner pocket and waving it menacingly in his face.

"Mind your own business cock sucker." the disheveled man growled at him, and as Lance got a closer look at his face, he realized he was either for very high, very drunk, or both. His eyes were so bloodshot they practically didn't have any white left in them, and he shook violently just standing still. As it was, he was pretty sure the girl could have gotten away even if he hadn't stepped in. Not that he would every allow himself to be apathetic in the face of such situations. Not when it counted.

"I really don't think -" Lance said, stepping back and taking a stance. Before he could even finish talking, the man lunged at him, straight past the girl - who promptly stuck a foot out to trip him. It was such a comical blunder that Lance nearly failed to capitalize on the mistake. However, for a number of reasons - not the least of which being his own powers - he did not. With a single fluid motion, he judged the direction of the mans fall and shifted forward, lightly tapping his knee against his foes head. The slight amount of force he'd put behind the strike, combined with the downward pull of gravity was more than enough to knock the inebriated man out cold.

Lance resisted the urge to chuckle. It wouldn't do to gloat. Then he turned towards the girl - she couldn't have been older than 14 - and froze. She hadn't moved from where had been standing against the wall of the alley, but she was looking at him now. Appraising him. Before he could think anything of it his body settled back into a defensive stance, and he pushed off with his foot to create space between himself and her. His confusion must have been writ large on his face, because she smirked at him then and gave him an approving nod. Like he'd made the right choice.

"Um. Are you alright?" He said after a second, slowly loosening his stance when no attack was forthcoming. It was strange. For a moment - just a single moment - he didn't feel like what he was looking at was a young girl. He felt like he was in an alley with an Apex Predator. A monster that could as soon tear his heart out and eat it as deign to notice his presence.

"M'fine." The girl said flatly, her face returning to a flat stare that betrayed no emotion.

"Alright... do you have somewhere to go or...?" Lance asked, taking in the rags the girl was wearing and assuming she was one of the many, many, homeless children that unfortunately frequented the neighborhood. The girls face instantly took on an aggressive cast, and she darted a gaze down to the unconscious man and back up to him as though to highlight the similarities between their offers.

"No." She said, although Lance got the distinct impression that she was refusing something he wasn't actually asking her about.

"What? No! I work at the homeless shelter. I'm just on my way there now. If your hungry you could tag along..." He said, then trailed off when the girl started sniffing the air around them, like she was trying to decide if the stench of the alley agreed with her or not. After a few moments she wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

"Fine." She said, another one word answer.

"Great. I'm Lance by the way." he said, stepping forward and offering her his hand to shake. She merely glanced down at it, then stepped over the unconscious man, ignoring the gesture.

"Laura." was all she said, passing by him with a ghostly swiftness that sent a chill down his spine, and resolved him to make sure she wasn't standing directly behind him at any point during the trip. His hand fell loosely at his side, and he glanced down at his erstwhile aggressor snoring loudly in a puddle of water. He knelt down and turned the man onto his side so he wouldn't suffocate, then rose and walked on after Laura.

"Sooo... do you only speak in one word sentences or what?" He asked jokingly, gesturing for her to follow him out of the alley.

She stared at him for a few seconds before saying; "Not really." and followed him out into the bustling streets.

'Oh good, she has a sense of humour.' Lance thought sarcastically, but said nothing, instead only allowing a rye smile to plaster itself to his face. He had a feeling today was going to be one of those days.

-ooo-

The center was, as always, a busy place. Lance had been told at once point that it used to be a fairly large gym before it had been bought by its current owner and converted for use as a homeless shelter. If so, Lance thought it must have been an extremely successful gym to take up so much space. It was practically a castle unto itself, with several floors and entryways, all built in a halo shape around the gymnasium area, which contained dozens of cheap bunks and folding tables. People milled about, talking to one another, laughing and joking. Several of them sat together playing games of checkers, or simply eating. A number of them waved hello to him, and sent Laura only cursory glances as he passed on his way to the kitchens.

Laura wasn't the first stray kid he had brought here. And she probably wouldn't be the last.

There was a feeling of... not quite family, but warmth to the center. Like the bonds of community were somehow stronger here, among societies refuse, than it was out and about in the city. He supposed that would make sense. It was only in the fires of hardship that great friendships were truly born. It was only when times were toughest that you could look around, and truly know that the people with you were your allies.

Laura seemed more put off by the atmosphere than anything else. Like she wasn't sure how to react to the simple community that had been built up here. Lance had been like her once. Alone and unsure of what to do with himself. Completely without a direction, or guidance. But he had found all that and more here in the F.E.A.S.T center, and that was why - no matter how long he lived, no matter how much he grew, he would always come back here to help others. If there was any one place he considered home in the city, even more so than his own apartment - hard earned as it was - it was here.

"Ah Lance! Brought in another one I see. And a girl at that. tut tut." Came the mocking voice of his immediate superior here at the center. F.E.A.S.T had many, many unpaid volunteers, and a very small number of actually paid positions. Those with paid positions were there mostly to organize everyone else, and keep the books. May Parker was not among those people. She held one of those positions, but never would she accept a dime for her assistance. She merely took pleasure in the simple act of helping others, and Lance loved the little old lady for it.

"Come on , you know me - " He said happily before the woman cut him off, walking ahead of him and pulling the door to the kitchens open for him and Laura. Lance would have found it highly amusing if the less annoying voice in his head didn't balk so suddenly at the idea of a lady holding the door for him.

"Yes yes. It's your duty to help and all that. I swear you and my Peter would get along famously. Pity you always seem to disappear when he shows up." she chirped, glancing at him suspiciously.

"Hah. Well. You know how it is." Lance said, some nervousness creeping into his voice unbidden.

~

The chant grew louder and louder, and slowly he began to feel it, feel something filling the void where his other used to be. It swelled in strength, and he felt himself grinning a feral grin, fully prepared to use this new power to rip Spiderman limb from limb. And when he was done? When he was done he would track Parker's puny aunt back to her little home, and he would tear her apart too.

Then he stopped. Something... something was wrong. The space reserved for his other, the one his new power was filling - it was overflowing now. Being filled with too much. Being torn apart by what they were doing to him. He wanted to scream. To yell. To beg the men to stop. Say he had enough, say he didn't need more than this. But he could not. He was trapped, naked and cold on the floor, quivering violently like he had touched a live wire and was paralyzed by the current.

His mind began to unravel, to fall apart to make room for the new presence, the new thing. But he held on. Desperately he held on. An image of his hated foe manifested in his minds eye, and it was all he could do to hang on to it. It was all he could do to use his hatred to struggle through the pain.

'Peter Parker, I'm coming for you.' He raged internally.

Shaking off the memory, Lance smiled at May, who bustled ahead of him, pulling pre-made packages of food from the fridge and laying them out so he could prepare them to be heated up.

"Go ahead and find a seat Laura, I'll make sure you get the first one." Lance said, gesturing to a pile of chairs in the corner that hadn't been able to fit in the buildings storage. Personally, Lance thought that was just an excuse. The truth was, it was just easier to get them from here than it was to move them too and from storage. The number of people in the center was in constant flux, and so while it was important to keep them seated, it was equally important to remove unused chairs due to space concerns.

"Mm." Laura hummed tonelessly, walking to the corner and pulling up a seat. She sat in it the way a feral cat might find a place to rest. Never permanent, never fully relaxed. Always just enough leverage and room to quickly coil and leap away should something unexpected occur. Lance had seen the behavior before of course. It was pretty common in street kids who were constantly expecting to have to fight for their next meal, or even just for their own safety. But Laura was different. She was less like a stray tabby cat, and more like a wild lion that had inexplicably wandered into the city unbeknownst to anyone else. His instincts practically screamed at him to dodge every time she made a sudden movement. Thankfully, he was not an animal - and therefore not forced to rely purely on instincts to function.

Laura was a lonely kid who needed help. Whatever else she was, that was definitely true.

Several minutes passed as he fell in to his work. Remove the plastic film, place on a tray, put the tray in the oven at six packages, heat for ten minutes, remove, repeat. True to his word, he made sure to hand Laura one of the first meals, which she scarfed down with gusto. By the time had had returned with an empty food cart to grab the next tray of meals she was hungrily eyeing the oven containing the next batch, empty plastic container still in hand.

Technically, the center had limited resources. They really couldn't afford to feed the same person twice in one meal. But in a way Lance felt partially responsible for Laura, at least while she was with him anyway. So when May left the room for a moment, he quickly slid her another container, placing a finger over his lips and whispered "Sssh," at her with a wink and a half smile.

After that she just sort of watched him. She never moved from her seat. Never got up to try and help. Never spoke to him. Just watched him, shiny black pupils following his trip as he moved back and forth from the kitchen to the common area. That lasted for about an hour and half before all hell broke loose.

He was just returning from one of his nigh uncountable monotonous trips through the common room that it occurred. No sooner than a single one of his feet had landed in the kitchen, dinner cart pushed ahead of him, than a nasily voice wrang out in the building.

"Good evening, scum!" The voice crooned in a nasally unattractive tone. He could dimly hear the whirring hum of turbines spinning, and the tang of exhaust fumes filling the air in the suddenly silent common area. Lance halted his movement looking up in surprise at Laura who looked more curious than anything else. Her head was cocked to one side, listening.

"I'm sure you all think I'm about to give some grand villainous speech! Unfortunately for you, I am not here for you." The voice cackled. Then there was a dull thudding noise, followed immediately by the clear sound of an explosion - which was followed immediately by panicked screams.

"I'm here for SPIDERMAN!" The voice howled. Suddenly there was even more yelling, but not from the beleaguered inhabitants of the center - no, Lance, who quickly ducked into the kitchen and was now watching through the tiny windows in the double doors leading there, watched with growing horror as dozens of men in of all things goblin masks swarmed into the shelter. Each of them carried a gun of some kind, and all of them were firing haphazardly into the crowd of fleeing people. In the center of the room was crater the size of a car, with would paneled flooring dangling from its edges and blackened ash ringing its epicenter.

Hovering over it all, was a man almost everyone New Yorker could recognize by sight. The Green Goblin. The heinous criminal who had - over the years - torn more than his fair share of bloody swathes across the city. The criminal who was almost always stopped by Spiderman, even if the papers all refused to acknowledge that little fact. His skin was a sickly snot green, which was contrasted horribly by the royal purple armor and hat he wore. In each of his hands was an orange pumpkin shaped device that glowed ominously as he juggled them back and forth. At his feet was a bizarre hovering contraption, each of it's wings bore a razor sharp edge, and it's underside was practically covered in guns and other esoteric weaponry that Lance couldn't have recognized if he had a textbook on it.

But beyond all that, Lance could only stare forlornly at the bodies. The corpses of what once were people, victim to the first attack launched by the Goblin.

"Laura. You need to run." He said, his voice sounding hollow in his ears. Like he was standing far, far away from his body.

'Stand and fight.' Commanded the voice.

'haIL And KILl!' Cried another.

He couldn't think. Couldn't focus. He barely noticed Laura slip from her seat behind him and pad towards another door. He didn't hear the door close behind him, but he hoped she could get somewhere safe. Hoped the Goblins men had only come in through the front door of the building.

All he could think about, were the bodies. His hand shakily lifted to the door, his fury slowly building with each movement he took. Before he could think to actually push the doors open though, the slammed inward, sending him stumbling back. Two men in Goblin masks began to pepper him with bullets. Bullets that tore through his merely human flesh. He lost a finger. A lung. Two bullets zipped through one of his thighs.

Lance all but crumpled to the ground, staring stupidly up at the two men as they laughed between themselves and hopped forward. One of them put the Barrel of a gun to his head, cackling maniacally the whole time.

He watched the empty blackness inside the barrel moving towards him in slow motion. Sensed the minute the mans finger began to depress the trigger. Knew that that what happened next would be pretty for no one.

And then the man was sent rocketing away, as Laura launched herself at him feet first in a drop kick maneuver she easily turned into a kip up, coming to a crouching halt at the feet of the second Goblin thug.

"D-don't." Lance gurgled, blood spilling from his lips as he struggled to draw breath. Both Laura and the thugs turned to him at that, hostilities pausing as they took in his seemingly dying form.

"Don't do it." He said, somewhat more firmly.

"Or what dead guy?" chuckled the thug Laura had send across the room with her kick.

"I'll get angry." Lance warned them, painfully aware that he was not, in fact, negotiating from a position of power.

"Fuck me, dude thinks he's the Hulk or something. What a riot!" Laughed one of the men. Laura took that opportunity to lung forward, swiping something at his ankles that took both of the mans feet off in a single pass. he slid to to ground with a wet thunk and then immediately began to scream, obviously in terrible pain. But Lance saw something Laura apparently hadn't considered. He saw the other thugs gun rise, almost in slow motion.

He blinked. Once, then twice, then a third time just to be certain of what he was experiencing. He had been summoned. Only... it was an irregular summoning. Something was very, very wrong. He could fill his body - and that was, on it's own quite strange, having a body that is - shifting and popping beneath him. Rearranging itself so that the flesh matched the spirit inside it. His armor took form, summoned unconsciously from the ether in response to the realization that he was naked. He was staring a bright light. It wasn't the sun, but neither was it a torch. Dazed as he was he found it curiously fascinating to look at.

'It's a lightbulb numbnuts.' A gruff voice barked in his head.

'A light - ' 'So bright - ' 'How is it made?' 'Why is it there?' 'GRAAAAAGH!'

His mind was immediately filled with mental static as hundreds of thousands of voices filled the silence, almost drowning out the real, physical sounds he was only just now becoming aware of.

"Is he okay?" A voice in the darkness surrounding him asked hesitantly.

"It's unlikely. We didn't just summon some lesser demon here gentleman. This is the big one. A great evil unlike any the world has ever seen." A stoic sounding man responded.

"He's just... lying there." Another voice pointed out.

"Gentleman, we chose Eddie Brock for this task because we know he has a limited experience with otherworldly entities riding along with him. Give him a moment to adjust." The stoic man once more suggested.

Oh. Oh god. These petty sorcerers had erred greatly. He was accustomed to be summoned from the Throne. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Across a thousand different timelines, in a thousand different scenarios, he had been summoned. He understood the mechanics, he was familiar with the reasons why it happened.

But never had someone done something as completely irredeemable as this to him.

'Be stopped -' 'Such insolence!' 'Where am I!?' 'KILL THEM ALL!"

'SHUTUP!' he half whined, half screamed into the recesses of his own mind. There was another chorus of grumbles, and that peculiar yell, and then most of the voices faded away. Distantly he could sense a conflict there, a battle for supremacy, and then two voices metaphorically stepped forward in his mind.

'It seems we have found ourselves in something of a situation.' The stern voice noted.

'Gruh... gah!' decried the pained voice of the other.

"This is wrong." He said aloud, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

'Truly. It appears as though we have been forcibly torn from the Throne.' agreed the stoic voice, the him that would have been had he been summoned as a Saber.

'UnbEaRABLe iNSoLeNCE!' groaned the him that would have been had he been summoned as a Berserker.

"Are you quite alright ?"

He wasn't. He truly, truly wasn't. He was trapped in a physical body with every possible version of himself from across every possible iteration of his own timeline. He had be ripped from his true resting place upon the Throne, essentially invalidating his entire legend. His entire existence. He had been forcibly ripped from the afterlife, and now he had no knowledge, no idea of if it was possible to ever go back. A black haze began to ripple from his armor, and his helmet formed over his face. He sat up for the first time and really looked at the room he was in. He took in the five men in the room with a single, red tinged glance. He noted the sacrificial dagger laying on a table nearest their leader using only the barest fraction of a second. He felt his rage boil over.

''"NO!"'' Three voices cried as one.

And that, is how five nameless fools died.

It is how Eddie Brock, died.

It is how Lancelot Du Lac, was once more born into the world of men.

Laura noticed it before anyone else did. The sudden pressure that her heightened senses could, if she was dumming it down, be loosely described as 'killing intent'. She had only just oriented on the man with the gun, a plan in mind. His injured companion wouldn't be a problem. She could unsheathe a claw and tear through his spinal column on the way to his companion. She would suffer some gunfire, but not nearly enough to stop her from reaching her target, and certainly not enough to stop her from killing him.

Only she didn't get a chance to do any of that. Because the awkward tall guy who she had bummed a meal from moved. Laura was a mutant. She had enhanced damn well everything, and the training to back it up. She could see and react to people firing bullets at her. There was very little she would reasonably describe as 'too fast to see'.

And yet plain as day right before her, the tall man - Lance he said his name was - had vanished. And so had the heads of both of the men in the room. They hadn't been cut off either. They looked less like they had been decapitated and more like they had been punched so hard that the muscle and bone had more or less disintegrated. The bodies fell to the ground, a motion that was painfully slow to Laura as she watched this new threat turn its head towards her. Intellectually, she realized this was probably Lance. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room for that deduction to be anything but true. One minute Lance was there, the next, this black armored, smokey... thing.

But for the life of her, she couldn't reason out what she was looking at. Her vision, sharpened by her power and years of training, just sort of slid off it. Like she didn't want to look at it. With great effort she managed to look at the things face, and found only a single glowing red slit where the eyes a man should have been. It stared balefully at her for a moment before blurring past her, ripping apart the kitchen doors as it passed. She hurriedly followed after it, curiosity and self preservation warring within her. On the one hand, it hadn't killed her, or well, tried to kill her. On the other, it was clearly dangerous as all hell.

Curiosity however, won out, and she scampered to shattered kitchen doors to look out at what was going on. To call it a bloodbath would be putting it lightly. The thing had acquired a gun from somewhere - probably one of the men it had just killed - and was standing protectively over a dazed May Parker. Where it turned the muzzle of it's gun, huge furrows were torn in its enemies and the surrounding walls. The impacts looked less like bullet holes and more like cannonballs had crashed into them.

"Ah so some other hero - urk!' The Green Goblin laughed down at the thing only to be rudely interrupted when it used that inhuman speed to appear in the air before him, a single fist crashing brutally into the green skinned villains chest. The Goblin flew away so fast someone with poorer kinetic vision might think he had turned invisible. But Laura could see it. Could detect the sound of bones crunching, and tracked the villains flight into an office on an upper floor.

Seemingly no longer interested in the Goblin, the blackened thing blurred again, returning to its position by May. It glanced about the room as though confused by the sudden lack of attackers before it realized that most of the surviving thugs had put down their weapons and removed their masks to cower on the floor with there hands in the air.

Laura was almost disappointed. Did she enjoy killing? Not in the slightest. Did she recognize the need for it? Absolutely. At the end of the day, these were bad men. Being arrested wouldn't fix them, it would just send them to a prison where they could learn how to be better criminals, from worse men. Unfortunately, Laura knew better than most what any standard Hero save maybe the Punisher would do in this moment.

Which was why she was taken aback when the gun wielding mans hands blurred, and all the surrendering Goblin thugs disintegrated into a fine red mist. She stared dumbfounded at the carnage in front of her, but didn't get much more than a few seconds to appreciate the ruthlessness of it all - because the Goblin had returned.

He hobbled out of the broken remains of the office and glared down at the man who's body exuded that mysterious black smoke. Then without further warning, his glider - which had not moved from its original position - rotated, aiming itself, and all it's weapons at the being and May. She thought at first to try and leap forward, to try and at least save the old woman who had helped feed her. But she needn't have bothered.

With a quick leap, the thing was atop the glider, and wherever it touched, the blackness, the corruption that oozed from it suffused the machine. Within mere moments, the entire glider had turned pitch black, with red pulsing veins of light running all across it. Suddenly the vehicle, which had already looked quite menacing, looked positively demonic. The thing resettled itself atop the glider, and then turned it in the air to face a now panicking goblin. Guns whirred to life, missiles slid out of hidden panels, and the Goblin - who Laura wouldn't previously have been able to describe as anything but hideous, look positively perplexed. He hammered away at something on his wrist, his actions growing more and more frantic.

And then all the weapons began to fire at once.

The rear end of the room all but imploded, concrete and and glass vanishing in a continuous burst of detonations that slagged everything of note in the direction the glider was facing. But still the Goblin remained, now hanging from white rope several yards away from the wave of destruction that had rained down from his own vehicle. No, not rope, web.

"Another failed experiment Gobby boy?" came a mischievous laugh from across the room that stopped when the thing ignored it, merely rotating it's vehicle and pointing it at the hanging form of the Goblin, who began to struggle against his restraints with a new fervor.

"Not one of mine Spider!" The Goblin yelled petulantly. The engine on the glider began to whir to life, and for a moment the sheer amount of thrust being generated look strangely at odds with how perfectly still the thing was. Then the black monster hopped away from it's purloined ride, and it shot forward, bladed wingtips leveled squarely at the Goblin. Once more a web shot forth, and Laura was able to follow it to the ceiling where a red and blue clothed man tug hard at the dangerous vehicle, causing it to swerve out of the Goblins path and embed itself solidly in the nearby wall.

"What have we learned?" Called New York's very own Spiderman, kicking off from the ceiling and into a kick reinforced by what had to be super strength and agility. Just like the monster, he blurred for a moment to Laura, and she thought that that was it. The fight was over. But then the thing moved again, whipping around and grasping the Spiderman by his outstretched leg so fast it was more akin to teleportation than physical movement. Just as fast, the thing hurled Spiderman into the ground at it's feet, cracking yet more of the damage floorboards.

"The hell are you?" Whined Spiderman as he flipped up and away from the follow up kick that would have turned him into a screaming invalid.

"We. Are. lanceLoT." Crowed the thing in a deep, almost metallic growl.

"Oh. Well shit. That's new." Quipped the Spider.

Yes, Laura thought in response to the pithey one liner. Yes it was.

-ooo-

Here's one I've been fiddling with the idea behind in my free time. Ironically, I originally was going to use Diarmuid and do a Harem just for funsies because there's really nothing more amusing to me than a character who's power is functionally turning women in to Yandere's. But then I got to thinking about Lancelots ability to basically steal and buff any weapon, and started musing on the sheer number of hilariously dangerous weapons exist in the Marvel universe.

The result is as you can see.

Couple things. No Laura is not a love interest in this story. She's like 14 or 15 at the point when she's living on the streets, and Lancelot is... considerably older. Another point I'm considering is whether or not I still want to do a Harem of Yandere women because well... at the end of the day I find that highly amusing - but don't really have the means to make it make sense at the moment. No love spot and all.

We'll see I suppose.

I like this story but it's kind of just a side project for me. Something I pop over to now and then when I'm having trouble writing for Throne of Heroes or when I'm in a particularly brutal mood. It should come as no surprise that a lot of the fights Lancelot will get into are going to end up being hilariously violent or curbstompy, which is kind of the opposite of what usualy ends up happening in my other fic. Lawful Good Characters and all that stuff. I guess what I'm saying is this will probably update pretty infrequently. I'm not as well read about the Marvel universe as I could be, so I don't really know what characters and stories I want to tell here besides a sort of vague series of moments I want to write about but feel need the appropriate build up to have any impact.

If you like it though, please do let me know, either in a private message or as a review.

And as always

Thanks for reading.