Pound the Table | An X-Men Self-Insert
- Thread starter October Daye
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- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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- She/Her
One — scales, not spiky bone plates. Otherwise that one Xaela tribe couldn't use their "scales" to build rafts from.
And two, she does her makeup the real way. That's a point of pride.
- Location
- Oblivion
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- She/Her
Ah, so you're dealing with the statistically worst players in the game. Alright, that's some fortitude.
Ultima/Ultros here, admitedly just another catgirl player but there's nothing wrong with that.
Lab_Accident
A 2D 1D4
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- Your dreams
I wasn't even aware that Noa was a FF race until just now.
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Chapter is in the betas' hands.
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- Argentina
The Fantastic Four are racing?
- Location
- USA
Sure. Marvel Team Racing is a pretty fun game. It's always Ghost Rider and Silver Surfer battling it out for the top spot, though.
Chapter Seventeen
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Pound the Table
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, May 21, 1990
The limousine service dropped me off in front of 20 Ingram Street, in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, just after three o'clock in the afternoon. The house itself was a striking Victorian brownstone, and I would wager that the interior was substantially larger than my own Manhattan condominium… and probably cost a quarter to a fifth the price. More than that, the home showed signs of actual everyday life — wear and tear on the brick, darkening around the bottoms of the windows from dirt that never got fully washed away, leaves stuck in the gutters… with one exception.
The glass of the front window was clearly different from the others. More shine, less grime accumulated around the window sill. Newer.
That had a story around it, and I didn't want to ask.
I walked up to the double front doors, casting a quick glance at the mezuzah on the door frame. I rang the doorbell, business card ready in one hand and briefcase in the other, then focused and listened in. This was my first chance to learn something about my new client, and I wasn't going to waste it.
How quickly people react to the doorbell can tell you a lot about them, as can where they were prior to getting the door. Feet clambering down stairs implied them coming from the bedroom, and depending on the time, that meant either naps or depression — the latter was more common, sadly. Outside of winter, bare feet said they hadn't been outside, while socks meant they probably had.
What I did hear, the faint scrape of a chair on tile (probably linoleum), told me that my man had been in his kitchen.
A few moments later, I heard the deadbolt unlock, and the door opened. The man who appeared from behind the door was fairly old, a full head of gray hair combed back and out of his face. Deep wrinkles lined his face, laugh lines and signs of a constant smiler, though the bags under his eyes and the deep-set frown on his face told me a different story. He wore a polo shirt over a v-neck sweater (with a pair of reading glasses hanging off of the sweater's neck), paired with khaki slacks; a brief look past him showed a pair of well-loved loafers just up against the wall behind him.
"Yes?" the man asked, looking down at me. "Can I help you?"
"Benjamin Parker?" I asked, to which he nodded.
"Yes, that's me," he said.
"My name is Noa Schaefer," I told him, handing over my business card. "I believe your friend Harry Nolan called to say I would be coming?"
"He did," Ben agreed, taking the card, though he only gave it a quick glance before putting it in a pocket. "I just… he mentioned you'd be coming by sometime this week, but I didn't think it would be so soon, I — oh, where are my manners?" He stood aside from the door, and waved me in. "Please, come in," he said.
"Thank you." On the way inside, I touched the mezuzah before kissing my fingers, which prompted a small, approving smile from Ben. "It won't be a problem if I keep my shoes on, will it?" I asked, seeing the three other pairs of shoes beside the loafers I'd initially noticed along the wall, two of which clearly belonged to someone other than Ben Parker, simply going by size.
"Oh, no, by all means," he said, waving off the concern. "A habit I picked up on a tour of duty." His eyes flicked down to my feet, then he frowned slightly. "Just be careful with the carpet," he added.
"Of course, and thank you," I said with some relief, eyeing the carpet just right of the foyer. Carpet and stockings didn't always mix well, and it was easy enough to just walk 'tip-toe' so long as the heel wasn't too high, three inches at max for me. Well, except for wedges, but those didn't share the issue of possibly poking holes in the carpet.
"We can talk at the dinner table," Ben said, closing the door behind me before he walked past, leading the way. "Oh, um… can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee?"
"Water is fine," I said, following him, eyes scanning the walls as we went. In the front hallway hung pictures of family surrounding a framed ketubah — a marriage contract, typical in Jewish weddings. Beneath it lay a small dresser, with three small bowls on it, two holding sets of keys, one with a wallet, one empty.
Ben rounded a corner at the end of the front hallway, and when I followed him I was met with a dining table. Or, at least, half of it was being used as a dining table, given the placemats facing one another.
The other half was covered with papers, folders, and binders.
"Please, take a seat wherever," Ben said, going over to the various materials on the table and trying to gather them up. "I'm sorry about the mess, my nephew likes to do his homework at the table. A lot like — like his father was, in that way," he said, a slight hitch in his voice as he spoke.
"My father taught me to read Hebrew at the dining table," I said as I pulled out the middle of three chairs on one side of the table (while hiding my relief that there was a space between the seat and the back – thank goodness, my poor tail!), and offered him a soft smile. "And it probably saw as many sermons as the lectern at the synagogue."
"Well, this table has seen a fair bit of griping over Torah portions, so…" Ben's voice trailed off into a little chuckle, and he went into the kitchen, just next to the dining room. I heard a cabinet open and the clink of glass on glass, followed by him working the faucet. "Any ice?" he called from the kitchen.
"Not for me," I said back, only raising my voice enough to be heard. Ben returned to the dining table and placed a coaster first, then the glass. "Thank you," I said.
"Of course," he replied, placing his own glass down on a coaster before taking a seat, his expression turning downward into a concerned frown. "I confess, I've not needed a lawyer before, so I hope you don't mind me asking how this works?"
"Not at all," I said. "There are a few perfunctory things we need to handle first before the attorney-client privilege attaches." I reached into my briefcase for a manila folder, which I flipped open, turned to face Ben, and slid across the table. He pulled the pair of reading glasses off of his sweater and put them on, beginning to read. "What you have before you is a contract of retainer. It spells out what I am and am not allowed to do on your behalf, what you are allowed to ask of me, what protections you have should I act in a manner in which you do not approve, etcetera. Once we have both signed, you are officially my client, with all the rights and expectations involved."
"And how much will this cost?" Ben Parker asked, looking up from the contract.
"It won't," I said, hands clasped on the table in front of me. "You will incur no fees for legal representation or any court filings, or, hopefully, in damages."
Ben looked down at the contract before him with a heavy sigh, one hand pushing his glasses up to massage his closed eyes and the bridge of his nose.
"I don't like the idea of accepting charity," he said after a moment, peering at me from across the table with a heavy frown.
"If I may be frank for a moment, Mr. Parker?" I asked. A couple of fingers came off of the hand currently holding the contract of retainer, which I took as him waving me on. "If you were to try and pay for my services, you wouldn't be able to afford them. And you are currently staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Norman Osborn, who will undoubtedly come into this with at least a dozen lawyers, all of whom bill even more for their services than I do. At the moment, you only have two options: accept a little charity now, or ask for a lot more charity once Osborn has bankrupted you."
Was it harsh? Yes, though not needlessly so. One of the single most difficult parts of being a lawyer was managing client expectations. This meant making sure your client had a good idea of what outcome you expected – including if they decided not to hire you on as their attorney. While I had been at Lewin Lieberman & Loeb, that simply meant that any future firm they went to would be curious as to why they didn't hire us on, as LL&L was a tier one firm, and one of the best you could work with. This time, on the other hand?
It was the difference between throwing a low-experience legal aid attorney to the den of wolves that was Osborn's legal team… or having a fighting chance. Assuming, of course, that this case never saw the inside of a courtroom.
That fight was a slugfest that I wanted no part of.
From the wrinkling of his brow, the frown pulling at the corners of his mouth, and the way his eyes glanced across the page before him, Ben Parker seemed to be mulling over what I'd said. I simply took a sip of the water he'd offered and rested my hands on the glass, waiting for him to come to a decision.
"Do you have a pen I could borrow?" Ben asked after a minute or two, and I knew his decision was made. I produced a black ballpoint from my briefcase and handed it to him.
Moments later, he handed my pen back, along with the signed contract of retainer. I filled in my own signature upon the document, placed it in a manila folder (with a note to photocopy it a few times back at the office – always make a backup), and tucked the folder away in my briefcase.
Then, I pulled out a legal pad in exchange, brought out several more pens (in red, green, and blue, to join the black), and set them beside my legal pad.
"And with that, I am officially your attorney in this matter," I told Ben. "Now, I have already availed myself of publicly available filings on this matter, so I've seen the complaint that Mr. Osborn filed, and learned his take on events." Despite the event happening in February, the strings Judge Nolan pulled dragged out the actual refusal to press charges until very recently, in the hopes that some distance from the actual event would allow cooler heads to prevail. Unfortunately, that was not the case. "Now, I would like to know yours. Could you walk me through the events that took place on the evening of Friday, February 9th?"
"Sure, of course," Ben said, taking a sip of his water and leaning back in his chair before he started talking. "February 9th. Well, that was the debate tournament finals, between Midtown Prep and… what was the other school? I'm so sorry, I can't remember which one it was," he said, frowning.
"It's not a big deal," I said, writing down a note in red, reminding myself to figure out which other school was involved. "Please, continue."
"Right, anyway. So it was the finals of the inter-school debate tournament. My nephew Peter and his best friend Harry – Harry Osborn," Ben paused for a moment to clarify that detail for me. "They're both on the debate team together. I, uh…" Ben sighed, staring into his water glass. "When my wife May passed, Peter took it particularly badly. Distanced himself from his friends, stayed out late, got all moody. Grades slipped a bit. I confronted him about this change after a month or so, and told him he needed to do something to pull out of this new rut. I… we both did, really," he added. "So I started volunteering at the synagogue's food bank, and Peter joined the debate team. Then a week later, Peter told me his friend Harry had joined the team too. It was good for them," Ben said with a smile.
"How long have Peter and Harry been friends?" I asked once I noticed that Ben was starting to lose the thread.
"Since kindergarten, actually," Ben said. "My brother and his wife had Peter staying with May and me while they went overseas on a two week assignment." He shook his head, sorrow etched in the lines of his face. "Their plane never made it, went down in the middle of the Atlantic. So there's Peter at his first day of school, we've just had to tell him his parents aren't coming back a couple of weeks before – and he comes back after that first day telling us about his friend whose mommy is also gone, and whose daddy is never there."
"Harry Osborn," I surmised. Ben nodded, then sipped at his water before continuing.
"Those two have been thick as thieves ever since. It's to the point that while the house has a guest bedroom, it may as well have Harry's name on the door for how often he's in it. Or, at least until May passed," Ben said. "He… told me he felt odd about coming over here after… after what happened."
Given the newer glass on the window… I didn't even have to ask why. Home invasions had a way of making once safe spaces feel utterly inhospitable.
And if even Harry's retreat from his father wasn't safe anymore, then what place was?
"A-anyway, this all means that I've had the displeasure of encountering Norman Osborn more than a few times. He always has this look of wanting to be anywhere else, and constantly in a hurry." Ben grimaced as he said this. "The ninth was no different. For the first time, Norman showed up to one of his son's debate tournaments. And the first thing he does is sit himself down in the front row, cross his arms, and scowl. Every time it was Harry's turn to speak in the debate, Norman would clear his throat, just loud enough to be heard. It unnerved Harry something awful," Ben said, one hand over the other now, the knuckles I could see tightening. "I've known that boy for years. He looked more scared than I've ever seen him, and it only got worse the longer the debate went. By the end of it—"
The sound of the front door unlocking interrupted what Ben was going to say, and I found myself a little surprised by how good his hearing still was. When I heard 'war buddy from Korea', I assumed some measure of hearing damage because of proximity to gunfire. He noticed the sound as quickly as I did, and my hearing was literally superhuman.
"I'm home!" we heard from our place in the dining room.
"We're in the dining room!" Ben yelled back. I nearly raised an eyebrow at the subtlety of his hint. Surely a teen wouldn't catch the difference between – wait, I realized. Peter Parker was no ordinary teen. He was a mild precognitive. Was this Ben's way of testing me? Seeing if Peter's Spider-Sense pegged me as a threat? Did this mean Ben Parker was in the know?
… was I reading too far into this?
"Hey, so uh, before I forget!" The two of us heard Peter's shoes come off and backpack hit the floor, even as he continued to talk. "I'm meeting up with Gwen after school tomorrow to get some studying done for the history final on Friday, and we're gonna get dinner after," Peter continued, his speech punctuated by the sound of him unzipping a backpack and pulling out what sounded to me like binders. That, and some kind of wrapper, though I couldn't be sure what from. "So uh, yeah I've got plans for dinner tomorrow," he said, his voice getting closer as he walked through the hall and to the dining room, "and you can just—"
And that was when Peter Parker saw me in person for the second time. The glasses frames with clear lenses were nowhere to be found this time, and he was dressed for early summer weather instead of winter – a Mets t-shirt (the correct choice, I approved) and tan cargo shorts. And as for the wrapper I'd heard, it was, in fact, candy. A tootsie pop, which Peter plucked from his mouth and used to gesture at me.
"You're that lady who was in Jameson's office," Peter said, his brow furrowing and chin tilting down. "The one who called Spider-Man a criminal on TV last year."
"Uh, Peter," Ben said, standing from the table and gesturing towards me. "This is Noa Schaefer. She's the lawyer helping with this, um… this whole Osborn business," he said, voice falling a little flat at the end.
"A pleasure to properly make your acquaintance," I said, standing from the table. I made my way to Peter and looked up at him, offering a hand to shake. "I look forward to working with you both."
He didn't take it.
A beat passed where I stood there, hand outstretched, looking a petulant young man in the eye with an utterly placid expression on my face. He glanced down at my hand, but beyond that, nothing changed.
Until Ben Parker cleared his throat. Peter's shoulders went tense, and he transferred the tootsie pop to his left, gave a quick (and much too tight, any longer and he'd have broken my glamour; also, ow...) handshake, which left me trying to hide a wince, then let go and dumped his binders on the dining table. Specifically, he dumped them directly on top of my briefcase.
My very nice, seven-hundred dollar, leather briefcase.
God almighty, had I forgotten how much of a shithead a teenage boy could be. Hell, even Pietro had been an absolute angel in comparison.
"Don't let me interrupt," Peter said, putting the tootsie pop back in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the dining room with crossed arms.
"Well, I guess I can continue?" Ben ventured as I walked back around the table to the chair I'd been using, pointedly ignoring the binders on my briefcase — not a big deal, it wasn't like I couldn't afford to fix any damage, he was just a kid — and sat down.
"Unfortunately not," I said. "Mr. Parker, your nephew will need to leave the room."
"What!?" Peter spat, pushing off of the wall. I wasn't sure if he was fully aware of his specific body language, but he was making himself as tall and wide as possible as he took a step towards the table.
"It's okay," Ben said. "I'm okay with Peter hearing whatever I say."
"That is not the problem," I said, forcing my face into a mask of utter calmness as I turned to look at Peter. I did not need 'angry teenage male' to become part of my list of problems. "Mr. Parker," I continued, letting who I was facing indicate which Mr. Parker I was speaking to now. "From what I've already heard of your uncle's account, you were present at the incident. This makes you a material witness, and means that I will also have to interview you. Which means that I need to make sure your uncle's statements have as little influence as possible on yours."
"Look, Peter," Ben raised a hand part way off the table to get his nephew's attention back on himself. "It's okay. Just… go upstairs. I'll be fine."
Peter practically growled at being dismissed like that. But he did, thankfully, accept it. He grabbed his binders from off of my briefcase, stomped his way upstairs in that particular fashion angry teens do, and then slammed the door to his bedroom behind him, the thud clearly audible, with Peter's room apparently being directly above the dining room.
"Should I—"
I held a finger up to my lips with one hand, and with the other, pointed above us. It was very faint, but I could just barely hear Peter's footsteps on the floor, along with the squeak of a door hinge at the early stages of wanting some WD-40. Then, about ten seconds later, I heard the echo from a small zap of static electricity filtering in through the doorway of the dining room, and couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"That means no eavesdropping, Mr. Parker!" I yelled down the hallway. A muffled thud greeted this pronouncement, followed about ten seconds later by the door to Peter's room closing again. Not a slam this time, but just a closing.
"How did you know?" Ben asked, an amused smile on his face.
"Part of my being a mutant," I said with a shrug. It still felt odd to be this casual and almost open about what I was… but it was on national television. Not like I had as much reason to hide it. "I have very good hearing."
"I can see that coming in handy, though I wager sirens are a pain," he said good-naturedly. My pained smile was enough of a response for that. "Anyway… where was I again? Before Peter got home?"
"You had commented on Harry Osborn's look of fear," I said after glancing at my notes.
"Right," he said, shifting in his chair. "Well, that look of fear was certainly justified. Right as the debate ended, even before the judges could give their scores and critiques or award the win, Norman was out of his seat and up the aisle. About twenty minutes later, everything was said and done. Midtown had won the tournament, pictures were taken, and the teams went back out front to mingle. But right as I get out, Peter's grabbing me by the arm. He said Harry had gone to the restroom fifteen minutes ago, but hadn't come back yet, and that he had a bad feeling."
I had a sudden bad feeling of my own when Ben said this. Namely: how much of Peter realizing something was wrong came down to his being a good friend, and how much of it was his Spider-Sense?
I would say, at least, that it was smart of him to get an adult.
"And so what happened next?" I prompted after I'd written down some notes. Namely, that I wanted to know which building this debate tournament was hosted in, and its layout. Was it at one of the schools? Probably, but I wasn't sure. Regardless, that was information I could get later, but it could be useful. Not likely, but still.
"Peter led the way as we checked every men's room we came across. Three restrooms later, we checked the locker room, and that's where we found them," Ben said. Yup, it was at a school. "Norman had Harry backed up against a row of these small lockers with padlocks hanging from the front. He was standing over the kid, and Harry was holding his arms around his midsection, like he was hurt. Norman was yelling something about how Harry was an embarrassment to the Osborn name."
"And is that when you intervened?" I asked, starting to put the pieces together. Judge Nolan had said this was a defense-of-other case – the main issue of law is whether or not there was a compelling justification for Ben Parker to have interposed himself for the purpose of defending Harry Osborn. And unless there was sufficient reason to think Harry was genuinely at risk of harm, and not just a victim of clear verbal and emotional abuse…
"Not until Norman's hand came up," Ben said, giving me exactly what I needed. "I yelled out to Norman to try and get him to stop, but either he didn't hear me, or he just didn't care, and he struck Harry in the gut." The knuckles of Ben's clasped hands paled as his grip grew tighter, and I saw his jaw tense up. "I saw a pair of cleats just laying out on the floor of the locker room. Next moment, I'm picking them up and throwing one at Norman."
"Metal or plastic teeth on the cleats?" I asked, sincerely hoping it was the latter. Metal teeth turned this from something I could argue into me telling the Parkers to prepare their best groveling voices.
"Plastic," he said, and I let out a small sigh of relief. "That finally got Norman's attention, and I had the other cleat in my hand. I'm holding the cleat by the toe, and when Norman tries to yell at me, I hit him across the face with the laces side of the shoe. I see him stagger, so I drop the shoe, grab Harry, and Peter and I leave before Norman can get his wits back about him."
"Did you see what kind of effect your strike had on Osborn?" I asked, frowning. A hit with the spike of the cleat would have explained the medical and dental bills that Judge Nolan told me about, but a hit with the top of the shoe? With the laces, not the sole? That didn't make much sense to me.
Whatever was in those medical records, I really needed to see them.
"I didn't," Ben said. "At that point, I was more concerned with getting the boys out of there. We went right out to the parking lot and left, then I drove straight to the ER to get Harry checked out."
Thank God for people with a lick of common sense. If he went to the ER, then that meant there were medical records, so I could get an idea of… wait.
"Good call on the ER," I told him, trying not to let the worry show on my face. "Remind me, how old are Harry and Peter?"
"They both turned seventeen this year," Ben told me, and I bit back a curse. That meant Harry was still a minor, and his medical records were under the control of… Osborn.
Shit. So much for avoiding a Request for Judicial Intervention, and keeping this all contained to the parties.
… unless…?
Could I frame my not wanting to need an RJI as a threat?
I jotted that down in the margins in green, as a reminder to myself. I had to remember that this was a case where one party was all but anonymous, while the other was the complete opposite. If I needed to use that anonymity as a weapon, then that was what I would do.
"And can I assume that you were not allowed to remain with Harry Osborn at the emergency room?" I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"No," Ben said with a frown. "They told me only a parent or legal guardian would be allowed, and I was neither. Never mind that it was his father who put him in that state to begin with."
I could only agree to that sentiment with a sigh of my own. The system did, indeed, have its pitfalls… and while the police would be the ordinary remedy to this situation, when the person you were trying to call the cops on was a billionaire... that remedy swiftly evaporated into thin air.
"I think that's about it for what I can ask you for the moment," I said, flipping my legal pad back to the front and laying the pen down atop it. "As I mentioned earlier, I do need to talk to your nephew Peter and get his account of events, then compare the two. It's possible that he saw more of what happened than you did. Do I have your permission as his legal guardian to speak with him now, or would you rather I come back another day?"
"I think today would be best," Ben said with a slight frown. "He did mention that test on Friday, and I think we're running low on time here as it is?" I nodded at the implied question. "Then yes, feel free. Let me show you upstairs."
Ben Parker and I both stood up from our chairs. I put my notepad and pens back into my briefcase, then followed him back out to the front hall. From there, we turned right from the front door, went past the living room (where I had to walk on tiptoe to not chance my heels damaging the carpet), and did a u-turn to a stairwell leading up.
"Peter's room is the last one on the right," Ben said, stepping to the side of the stairwell. "Thank you again for this. It means a lot."
"Don't thank me yet," I said honestly. "There's still a lot of work to be done before I can comfortably accept your thanks."
With that, I made my way up the stairs, and tiptoed along the carpeted flooring, not letting my weight rest on my heels as I knocked on the door to Peter's bedroom. The door opened up just a sliver, and Peter glared down at me from the crack in the doorframe.
"It's your turn, Mr. Parker," I said, plastering a genial smile on my face. "Would you like to speak in there, or would you rather use the dining room?"
Peter continued to glare at me for a moment longer before he stood aside, and pulled the door to his bedroom open, letting me inside. He turned and plopped himself down on the bed, crossed his arms, and glared at me as I stepped inside, and took a quick glance around.
The biggest dominating feature was a Lego Death Star, fully opened up and on display, resting on the top of a bookcase along one side of the room. The bookcase itself was filled to the brim with textbooks, several of which probably had no place on a high schooler's reading list – organic chemistry wasn't usually taught until a person's second semester of college at least, and that was only the first one I noticed. The medical textbooks were the particularly interesting ones… and something I was decidedly not going to ask about.
Peter's bed was a full-size mattress pressed against a corner of the room, the duvet messy and unmade, pillows surrounding where it made contact with the wall. His desk looked for all the world like a library study carrel with drawers attached, save for the fact that most of its space was occupied by both a Macintosh II and a Commodore 64. One drawer, so full it wouldn't properly close, had myriad wires of all types sticking out of it… and a pair of wire strippers hanging haphazardly on the lip of the drawer.
The walls themselves were mostly sparse. Peter only had two posters: a periodic table of elements just above and to the right of his desk, and an AC/DC poster next to the window.
"Would you mind if I sat here?" I asked, a hand on Peter's desk chair.
He didn't offer any meaningful response. He just wrinkled his nose, gave a disdainful sniff, and kept sitting there, glaring at me with arms crossed.
I took the silence as acceptance, and spun the chair around… to see all of the binders that he'd previously set on top of my briefcase sitting on the seat. I didn't have to look to catch the barest glimpse of a shit-eating grin pass across his face – the accompanying amused exhalation was all I needed to hear.
Well. That and, again. My hearing was good enough for minor echolocation. When accompanied with a sound that sudden, I didn't need to see somebody to know their facial expression.
I carefully picked up the binders from the chair and placed them atop the Macintosh on Peter's desk. Then I spun the chair around, sat in it, placed my briefcase on the floor, and removed my notepad and pens.
"As I mentioned downstairs, your uncle has availed himself of my services in dealing with this…" I waved my left hand a little, my pen waggling slightly in the air. "Whole messy business. I've already spoken with your uncle, and now, I would like you to tell me your account of what happened on February 9th."
"And you couldn't let us do it at the same time why?" Peter bit out through clenched teeth, now deliberately not looking at me. "Cause you need to see if we're lying," he accused, rather than let time answer.
"Yes." Peter's eyes immediately snapped to me, a slight look of surprise on his face, so I took the opportunity to press on while I had his attention. "Trust me when I say that until people are under oath, and sometimes even then, somebody is always lying. This is just one of many ways I make sure that lying isn't being done to me.
"And on that note," I said, taking the segue as it came up, "feel free to begin wherever you'd like with what happened on Friday, February 9th."
There was no response for a good thirty seconds. The silence lingered heavy, with me tapping out a slow rhythm on my notepad with my pen, waiting for Peter to crack.
"Hmph."
A vocal harrumph and a further emphasis of his crossed arms was all I got.
Well. This was going nowhere fast. Despite being Spider-Man, a beloved (by all but Jameson) superhero… he was still also a teenager. One with a chip on his shoulder where I was concerned.
And given his alter ego, I had a feeling as to why that was.
"Mr. Parker," I started keeping my tone neutral. "If there is some problem you have with this situation or with myself, then I can't begin to do anything about that until you tell me what that problem is."
There continued to be no response.
"Does this have something to do with your status as Spider-Man's photographer?" I asked, deciding that I'd rather try to get to the heart of the issue than sit here in silence until the superhuman lost his patience. Or worse, his temper.
"Spider-Man's not a damn criminal!" Peter bit out, the sheer vitriol in his voice surprising me. "You got up in front of the whole country and called Spider-Man a criminal!"
Was that what this was about? That had been a single line of questioning in a cross examination from most of a year ago. Had Peter been holding onto that niggling doubt for this whole time?
Or had his encountering me, the one who said that, in John Jonah Jameson's office cemented it in his mind?
Regardless, if I wanted to actually get anywhere, I needed to nip this in the bud.
Now.
"While that is not how I phrased it in court, and not how I would phrase it now either, arguing the semantics will get us nowhere," I began. "Mr. Parker. Your anger is due to my statement that Spider-Man, who you are at least acquainted with, is a criminal. Am I correct in that regard?"
"Yeah," he said, his glare not abating one bit.
"Then would it surprise you to learn that, were I to have to defend Spider-Man to a detractor, I could quite successfully argue that he has not, in fact, broken any laws?" I said.
"... what?" Peter's face went almost completely slack out of surprise. I couldn't help but smile, and pressed on.
"Despite all of his acrobatics and theatrics, Spider-Man causes one of, if not the lowest amount of collateral damage and injuries among the heroes that call New York home," I said, and gestured at the medical textbooks on Peter's bookshelf. "Something I would wager you had a hand in. Heck, even the single most biased source of reporting on Spider-Man is shockingly light on accusations of actual damage."
Which was true. I'd taken the weekend to look at several of my back issues of the Bugle, paying special attention to Spider-Man reporting. And despite all of Jameson's fear-mongering?
I couldn't find a single injury or bit of property damage that I could wholly and unequivocally attribute to Spider-Man. The largest complaint was that he left his webbing all over the place, occasionally exacerbating traffic or public transit… but that was temporary at best.
"All of that taken together?" I asked rhetorically. "In the absence of damages or injuries, it wouldn't be all that hard to have each and every one of Spider-Man's arrests and villain takedowns dismissed as valid citizen's arrests."
"What… but that—"
"And as much as I have begun to value my friendship with Mr. Jameson," I said, interrupting Peter, "wherever Spider-Man is concerned? Mr. Jameson is, to be blunt, full of shit," I finished.
Peter's arms fell to the sides, the sudden mental whiplash and cognitive dissonance clearly tossing him for a bit of a loop. Here he had drawn up this mental image of me as yet another Jameson, just younger and prettier. Instead, he was getting an object lesson in what should and, more importantly, shouldn't be considered a first impression.
Hopefully, this was a lesson he took with him when he eventually became more involved with the superhero community.
"But… but you said at that trial that you thought Spider-Man was breaking the law," Peter said after a good twenty seconds or so, grasping at the last straws of his argument, and his anger with it.
"I know what I said then," I replied. "But no. I do not believe Spider-Man is a criminal. He is perhaps a bit rough around the edges, but I don't think he's a criminal. Not even close."
"You… you don't?" Peter asked, jaw slack in confusion. Most likely, he wasn't expecting to have the opposite of what he expected thrown at him. In that case… perhaps some elaboration. Make the lesson explicit.
"Mr. Parker, people have a way of acting differently depending on the situation. When I am in the courtroom, I am doing the hardest part of my job," I told him, tapping my pen against my notepad as I spoke. "And half of that difficulty is framing the story both how I want the jury to see it, and in a way that they will accept. I had a point to make, and given the situation, that was the best way to bring them around to the point I needed. Even though that meant following the Daily Bugle's example, and even though it was, yes, at Spider-Man's expense."
Peter was quiet for a moment, though he gave me a funny look. I had a feeling he was trying to reconcile the 'courtroom Noa' he'd seen on TV and the 'managing John Jonah Jameson' Noa he met this past winter with the 'out-of-court Noa' in front of him.
Which was fair. Entirely so.
"... so, um," Peter said, rubbing his hands together and pursing his lips expectantly. "You don't think he's a criminal. So uh, then. Aside from the, you know… civilian arrest thing?" Peter asked.
"Citizen's arrest," I corrected.
"Yeah, that," he said. "Uh, other than that. What, um. What is your opinion on Spider-Man?"
Oh. Oh my God. This boy was so transparent.
He was so incredibly transparent that his earnestness had already wrapped around to being adorable.
I put my pen and notepad down on my lap, clasped my fingers, and just gave him a look, followed by a long, slow, blink.
"Mr. Parker," I started. "Peter." I looked up and gestured idly to his closet – and more specifically, to his laundry basket. "If I were to get up and look through there, what are the odds I find Spider-Man's costume inside?"
Peter gave me a blank look, before he gave a small chuckle. When my facial expression didn't change a bit, the nervous grin fell off his face, and he started to go a bit pale.
"W-what—" Peter cut himself off as he stood, wetting his lips as he raised his hands out in front, as if to ward me off. "T-that—"
"Mr. Parker," I stopped Peter. "Look at me."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour fell away, showing the young man my true appearance.
"I have horns and a tail," I said, gesturing to them for effect. "And I can only hide them from sight. Even with that limitation, I lasted twenty-one years hiding that I'm a mutant, and my outing was a fluke. Compared to that? You're not very good at this."
"O-oh…" Realization dawned on his face as he clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly. "That's… yeah, right, you're uh… yeah, you're that. Uh…" Peter paced around his room, hands behind his head and running through his hair. "I, you, uh… look, y-you're not gonna… like, tell anyone, right?" he asked, turning back towards me.
"That depends," I said, pointing at his bedroom door. "Does your uncle know?"
"Y-yeah," Peter said, sitting back down on his bed. "Yeah. He does."
"Then no," I told him. "I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially since your little secret is covered by the attorney-client privilege."
"It is?" he asked, somewhat incredulous.
"Mhmm," I nodded. To be fair, it was... with a generous interpretation of the rules of ethics, courtesy of Peter still being a minor, and his legal guardian being my client.
"Oh thank God," Peter said, collapsing down onto his bed with relief. And then mere moments later, he popped back up. "Uh, alright, look, I gotta know. What gave me away?"
"The glasses," I answered immediately. It wasn't exactly true... but it wasn't exactly false, either.
Peter opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, and closed his mouth. His brow furrowed in thought, and then his eyebrows went up in surprise.
"Really?" he asked, incredulous.
"For obvious reasons, I pay attention to the research and discourse on mutants," I said, tapping my horn with my pen. "There's still a bit of peer review to go, but from what I've gathered, the most common mutant power researchers have found is slightly-better-than-perfect vision. It's also the most common secondary power, and the most common beneficial side effect of powers.
"Now, keeping in mind that mutant powers can, and often do, manifest quite literally overnight? Outside of a few situations, clear lenses are a dead giveaway. As are a glasses wearer's tics and quirks when you can't see contacts. Once I caught that first sign that something might have been amiss, it wasn't hard to see how graceful your fake clumsiness was."
"Oh, that's… huh. How hard is it to see if someone has contacts, though?" Peter asked.
"You tell me," I said, leaning in and looking him in the eyes.
"Wait, what? Why are – oh, ooh..." Peter cottoned on quickly and looked me in the eye. I saw the moment he realized what he was seeing. "Okay, I can see it. A bit of blue around the iris from the lens. And it slides down a bit after you blink."
"Indeed," I said. "And now you know how to spot most contact lenses. Anyways. Can we get back to the initial point of our discussion?" I asked. "Your recounting of events?"
"U-um…" Peter flushed a bit, in embarrassment. "S-sorry."
"It's okay," I said, picking up my notepad and pen. "Now, I know from your uncle that this was the first time Norman Osborn had shown up to one of the debate team's events, but I'd like it if you could take it from the top for me…"
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, May 21, 1990
The limousine service dropped me off in front of 20 Ingram Street, in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, just after three o'clock in the afternoon. The house itself was a striking Victorian brownstone, and I would wager that the interior was substantially larger than my own Manhattan condominium… and probably cost a quarter to a fifth the price. More than that, the home showed signs of actual everyday life — wear and tear on the brick, darkening around the bottoms of the windows from dirt that never got fully washed away, leaves stuck in the gutters… with one exception.
The glass of the front window was clearly different from the others. More shine, less grime accumulated around the window sill. Newer.
That had a story around it, and I didn't want to ask.
I walked up to the double front doors, casting a quick glance at the mezuzah on the door frame. I rang the doorbell, business card ready in one hand and briefcase in the other, then focused and listened in. This was my first chance to learn something about my new client, and I wasn't going to waste it.
How quickly people react to the doorbell can tell you a lot about them, as can where they were prior to getting the door. Feet clambering down stairs implied them coming from the bedroom, and depending on the time, that meant either naps or depression — the latter was more common, sadly. Outside of winter, bare feet said they hadn't been outside, while socks meant they probably had.
What I did hear, the faint scrape of a chair on tile (probably linoleum), told me that my man had been in his kitchen.
A few moments later, I heard the deadbolt unlock, and the door opened. The man who appeared from behind the door was fairly old, a full head of gray hair combed back and out of his face. Deep wrinkles lined his face, laugh lines and signs of a constant smiler, though the bags under his eyes and the deep-set frown on his face told me a different story. He wore a polo shirt over a v-neck sweater (with a pair of reading glasses hanging off of the sweater's neck), paired with khaki slacks; a brief look past him showed a pair of well-loved loafers just up against the wall behind him.
"Yes?" the man asked, looking down at me. "Can I help you?"
"Benjamin Parker?" I asked, to which he nodded.
"Yes, that's me," he said.
"My name is Noa Schaefer," I told him, handing over my business card. "I believe your friend Harry Nolan called to say I would be coming?"
"He did," Ben agreed, taking the card, though he only gave it a quick glance before putting it in a pocket. "I just… he mentioned you'd be coming by sometime this week, but I didn't think it would be so soon, I — oh, where are my manners?" He stood aside from the door, and waved me in. "Please, come in," he said.
"Thank you." On the way inside, I touched the mezuzah before kissing my fingers, which prompted a small, approving smile from Ben. "It won't be a problem if I keep my shoes on, will it?" I asked, seeing the three other pairs of shoes beside the loafers I'd initially noticed along the wall, two of which clearly belonged to someone other than Ben Parker, simply going by size.
"Oh, no, by all means," he said, waving off the concern. "A habit I picked up on a tour of duty." His eyes flicked down to my feet, then he frowned slightly. "Just be careful with the carpet," he added.
"Of course, and thank you," I said with some relief, eyeing the carpet just right of the foyer. Carpet and stockings didn't always mix well, and it was easy enough to just walk 'tip-toe' so long as the heel wasn't too high, three inches at max for me. Well, except for wedges, but those didn't share the issue of possibly poking holes in the carpet.
"We can talk at the dinner table," Ben said, closing the door behind me before he walked past, leading the way. "Oh, um… can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee?"
"Water is fine," I said, following him, eyes scanning the walls as we went. In the front hallway hung pictures of family surrounding a framed ketubah — a marriage contract, typical in Jewish weddings. Beneath it lay a small dresser, with three small bowls on it, two holding sets of keys, one with a wallet, one empty.
Ben rounded a corner at the end of the front hallway, and when I followed him I was met with a dining table. Or, at least, half of it was being used as a dining table, given the placemats facing one another.
The other half was covered with papers, folders, and binders.
"Please, take a seat wherever," Ben said, going over to the various materials on the table and trying to gather them up. "I'm sorry about the mess, my nephew likes to do his homework at the table. A lot like — like his father was, in that way," he said, a slight hitch in his voice as he spoke.
"My father taught me to read Hebrew at the dining table," I said as I pulled out the middle of three chairs on one side of the table (while hiding my relief that there was a space between the seat and the back – thank goodness, my poor tail!), and offered him a soft smile. "And it probably saw as many sermons as the lectern at the synagogue."
"Well, this table has seen a fair bit of griping over Torah portions, so…" Ben's voice trailed off into a little chuckle, and he went into the kitchen, just next to the dining room. I heard a cabinet open and the clink of glass on glass, followed by him working the faucet. "Any ice?" he called from the kitchen.
"Not for me," I said back, only raising my voice enough to be heard. Ben returned to the dining table and placed a coaster first, then the glass. "Thank you," I said.
"Of course," he replied, placing his own glass down on a coaster before taking a seat, his expression turning downward into a concerned frown. "I confess, I've not needed a lawyer before, so I hope you don't mind me asking how this works?"
"Not at all," I said. "There are a few perfunctory things we need to handle first before the attorney-client privilege attaches." I reached into my briefcase for a manila folder, which I flipped open, turned to face Ben, and slid across the table. He pulled the pair of reading glasses off of his sweater and put them on, beginning to read. "What you have before you is a contract of retainer. It spells out what I am and am not allowed to do on your behalf, what you are allowed to ask of me, what protections you have should I act in a manner in which you do not approve, etcetera. Once we have both signed, you are officially my client, with all the rights and expectations involved."
"And how much will this cost?" Ben Parker asked, looking up from the contract.
"It won't," I said, hands clasped on the table in front of me. "You will incur no fees for legal representation or any court filings, or, hopefully, in damages."
Ben looked down at the contract before him with a heavy sigh, one hand pushing his glasses up to massage his closed eyes and the bridge of his nose.
"I don't like the idea of accepting charity," he said after a moment, peering at me from across the table with a heavy frown.
"If I may be frank for a moment, Mr. Parker?" I asked. A couple of fingers came off of the hand currently holding the contract of retainer, which I took as him waving me on. "If you were to try and pay for my services, you wouldn't be able to afford them. And you are currently staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Norman Osborn, who will undoubtedly come into this with at least a dozen lawyers, all of whom bill even more for their services than I do. At the moment, you only have two options: accept a little charity now, or ask for a lot more charity once Osborn has bankrupted you."
Was it harsh? Yes, though not needlessly so. One of the single most difficult parts of being a lawyer was managing client expectations. This meant making sure your client had a good idea of what outcome you expected – including if they decided not to hire you on as their attorney. While I had been at Lewin Lieberman & Loeb, that simply meant that any future firm they went to would be curious as to why they didn't hire us on, as LL&L was a tier one firm, and one of the best you could work with. This time, on the other hand?
It was the difference between throwing a low-experience legal aid attorney to the den of wolves that was Osborn's legal team… or having a fighting chance. Assuming, of course, that this case never saw the inside of a courtroom.
That fight was a slugfest that I wanted no part of.
From the wrinkling of his brow, the frown pulling at the corners of his mouth, and the way his eyes glanced across the page before him, Ben Parker seemed to be mulling over what I'd said. I simply took a sip of the water he'd offered and rested my hands on the glass, waiting for him to come to a decision.
"Do you have a pen I could borrow?" Ben asked after a minute or two, and I knew his decision was made. I produced a black ballpoint from my briefcase and handed it to him.
Moments later, he handed my pen back, along with the signed contract of retainer. I filled in my own signature upon the document, placed it in a manila folder (with a note to photocopy it a few times back at the office – always make a backup), and tucked the folder away in my briefcase.
Then, I pulled out a legal pad in exchange, brought out several more pens (in red, green, and blue, to join the black), and set them beside my legal pad.
"And with that, I am officially your attorney in this matter," I told Ben. "Now, I have already availed myself of publicly available filings on this matter, so I've seen the complaint that Mr. Osborn filed, and learned his take on events." Despite the event happening in February, the strings Judge Nolan pulled dragged out the actual refusal to press charges until very recently, in the hopes that some distance from the actual event would allow cooler heads to prevail. Unfortunately, that was not the case. "Now, I would like to know yours. Could you walk me through the events that took place on the evening of Friday, February 9th?"
"Sure, of course," Ben said, taking a sip of his water and leaning back in his chair before he started talking. "February 9th. Well, that was the debate tournament finals, between Midtown Prep and… what was the other school? I'm so sorry, I can't remember which one it was," he said, frowning.
"It's not a big deal," I said, writing down a note in red, reminding myself to figure out which other school was involved. "Please, continue."
"Right, anyway. So it was the finals of the inter-school debate tournament. My nephew Peter and his best friend Harry – Harry Osborn," Ben paused for a moment to clarify that detail for me. "They're both on the debate team together. I, uh…" Ben sighed, staring into his water glass. "When my wife May passed, Peter took it particularly badly. Distanced himself from his friends, stayed out late, got all moody. Grades slipped a bit. I confronted him about this change after a month or so, and told him he needed to do something to pull out of this new rut. I… we both did, really," he added. "So I started volunteering at the synagogue's food bank, and Peter joined the debate team. Then a week later, Peter told me his friend Harry had joined the team too. It was good for them," Ben said with a smile.
"How long have Peter and Harry been friends?" I asked once I noticed that Ben was starting to lose the thread.
"Since kindergarten, actually," Ben said. "My brother and his wife had Peter staying with May and me while they went overseas on a two week assignment." He shook his head, sorrow etched in the lines of his face. "Their plane never made it, went down in the middle of the Atlantic. So there's Peter at his first day of school, we've just had to tell him his parents aren't coming back a couple of weeks before – and he comes back after that first day telling us about his friend whose mommy is also gone, and whose daddy is never there."
"Harry Osborn," I surmised. Ben nodded, then sipped at his water before continuing.
"Those two have been thick as thieves ever since. It's to the point that while the house has a guest bedroom, it may as well have Harry's name on the door for how often he's in it. Or, at least until May passed," Ben said. "He… told me he felt odd about coming over here after… after what happened."
Given the newer glass on the window… I didn't even have to ask why. Home invasions had a way of making once safe spaces feel utterly inhospitable.
And if even Harry's retreat from his father wasn't safe anymore, then what place was?
"A-anyway, this all means that I've had the displeasure of encountering Norman Osborn more than a few times. He always has this look of wanting to be anywhere else, and constantly in a hurry." Ben grimaced as he said this. "The ninth was no different. For the first time, Norman showed up to one of his son's debate tournaments. And the first thing he does is sit himself down in the front row, cross his arms, and scowl. Every time it was Harry's turn to speak in the debate, Norman would clear his throat, just loud enough to be heard. It unnerved Harry something awful," Ben said, one hand over the other now, the knuckles I could see tightening. "I've known that boy for years. He looked more scared than I've ever seen him, and it only got worse the longer the debate went. By the end of it—"
The sound of the front door unlocking interrupted what Ben was going to say, and I found myself a little surprised by how good his hearing still was. When I heard 'war buddy from Korea', I assumed some measure of hearing damage because of proximity to gunfire. He noticed the sound as quickly as I did, and my hearing was literally superhuman.
"I'm home!" we heard from our place in the dining room.
"We're in the dining room!" Ben yelled back. I nearly raised an eyebrow at the subtlety of his hint. Surely a teen wouldn't catch the difference between – wait, I realized. Peter Parker was no ordinary teen. He was a mild precognitive. Was this Ben's way of testing me? Seeing if Peter's Spider-Sense pegged me as a threat? Did this mean Ben Parker was in the know?
… was I reading too far into this?
"Hey, so uh, before I forget!" The two of us heard Peter's shoes come off and backpack hit the floor, even as he continued to talk. "I'm meeting up with Gwen after school tomorrow to get some studying done for the history final on Friday, and we're gonna get dinner after," Peter continued, his speech punctuated by the sound of him unzipping a backpack and pulling out what sounded to me like binders. That, and some kind of wrapper, though I couldn't be sure what from. "So uh, yeah I've got plans for dinner tomorrow," he said, his voice getting closer as he walked through the hall and to the dining room, "and you can just—"
And that was when Peter Parker saw me in person for the second time. The glasses frames with clear lenses were nowhere to be found this time, and he was dressed for early summer weather instead of winter – a Mets t-shirt (the correct choice, I approved) and tan cargo shorts. And as for the wrapper I'd heard, it was, in fact, candy. A tootsie pop, which Peter plucked from his mouth and used to gesture at me.
"You're that lady who was in Jameson's office," Peter said, his brow furrowing and chin tilting down. "The one who called Spider-Man a criminal on TV last year."
"Uh, Peter," Ben said, standing from the table and gesturing towards me. "This is Noa Schaefer. She's the lawyer helping with this, um… this whole Osborn business," he said, voice falling a little flat at the end.
"A pleasure to properly make your acquaintance," I said, standing from the table. I made my way to Peter and looked up at him, offering a hand to shake. "I look forward to working with you both."
He didn't take it.
A beat passed where I stood there, hand outstretched, looking a petulant young man in the eye with an utterly placid expression on my face. He glanced down at my hand, but beyond that, nothing changed.
Until Ben Parker cleared his throat. Peter's shoulders went tense, and he transferred the tootsie pop to his left, gave a quick (and much too tight, any longer and he'd have broken my glamour; also, ow...) handshake, which left me trying to hide a wince, then let go and dumped his binders on the dining table. Specifically, he dumped them directly on top of my briefcase.
My very nice, seven-hundred dollar, leather briefcase.
God almighty, had I forgotten how much of a shithead a teenage boy could be. Hell, even Pietro had been an absolute angel in comparison.
"Don't let me interrupt," Peter said, putting the tootsie pop back in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the dining room with crossed arms.
"Well, I guess I can continue?" Ben ventured as I walked back around the table to the chair I'd been using, pointedly ignoring the binders on my briefcase — not a big deal, it wasn't like I couldn't afford to fix any damage, he was just a kid — and sat down.
"Unfortunately not," I said. "Mr. Parker, your nephew will need to leave the room."
"What!?" Peter spat, pushing off of the wall. I wasn't sure if he was fully aware of his specific body language, but he was making himself as tall and wide as possible as he took a step towards the table.
"It's okay," Ben said. "I'm okay with Peter hearing whatever I say."
"That is not the problem," I said, forcing my face into a mask of utter calmness as I turned to look at Peter. I did not need 'angry teenage male' to become part of my list of problems. "Mr. Parker," I continued, letting who I was facing indicate which Mr. Parker I was speaking to now. "From what I've already heard of your uncle's account, you were present at the incident. This makes you a material witness, and means that I will also have to interview you. Which means that I need to make sure your uncle's statements have as little influence as possible on yours."
"Look, Peter," Ben raised a hand part way off the table to get his nephew's attention back on himself. "It's okay. Just… go upstairs. I'll be fine."
Peter practically growled at being dismissed like that. But he did, thankfully, accept it. He grabbed his binders from off of my briefcase, stomped his way upstairs in that particular fashion angry teens do, and then slammed the door to his bedroom behind him, the thud clearly audible, with Peter's room apparently being directly above the dining room.
"Should I—"
I held a finger up to my lips with one hand, and with the other, pointed above us. It was very faint, but I could just barely hear Peter's footsteps on the floor, along with the squeak of a door hinge at the early stages of wanting some WD-40. Then, about ten seconds later, I heard the echo from a small zap of static electricity filtering in through the doorway of the dining room, and couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"That means no eavesdropping, Mr. Parker!" I yelled down the hallway. A muffled thud greeted this pronouncement, followed about ten seconds later by the door to Peter's room closing again. Not a slam this time, but just a closing.
"How did you know?" Ben asked, an amused smile on his face.
"Part of my being a mutant," I said with a shrug. It still felt odd to be this casual and almost open about what I was… but it was on national television. Not like I had as much reason to hide it. "I have very good hearing."
"I can see that coming in handy, though I wager sirens are a pain," he said good-naturedly. My pained smile was enough of a response for that. "Anyway… where was I again? Before Peter got home?"
"You had commented on Harry Osborn's look of fear," I said after glancing at my notes.
"Right," he said, shifting in his chair. "Well, that look of fear was certainly justified. Right as the debate ended, even before the judges could give their scores and critiques or award the win, Norman was out of his seat and up the aisle. About twenty minutes later, everything was said and done. Midtown had won the tournament, pictures were taken, and the teams went back out front to mingle. But right as I get out, Peter's grabbing me by the arm. He said Harry had gone to the restroom fifteen minutes ago, but hadn't come back yet, and that he had a bad feeling."
I had a sudden bad feeling of my own when Ben said this. Namely: how much of Peter realizing something was wrong came down to his being a good friend, and how much of it was his Spider-Sense?
I would say, at least, that it was smart of him to get an adult.
"And so what happened next?" I prompted after I'd written down some notes. Namely, that I wanted to know which building this debate tournament was hosted in, and its layout. Was it at one of the schools? Probably, but I wasn't sure. Regardless, that was information I could get later, but it could be useful. Not likely, but still.
"Peter led the way as we checked every men's room we came across. Three restrooms later, we checked the locker room, and that's where we found them," Ben said. Yup, it was at a school. "Norman had Harry backed up against a row of these small lockers with padlocks hanging from the front. He was standing over the kid, and Harry was holding his arms around his midsection, like he was hurt. Norman was yelling something about how Harry was an embarrassment to the Osborn name."
"And is that when you intervened?" I asked, starting to put the pieces together. Judge Nolan had said this was a defense-of-other case – the main issue of law is whether or not there was a compelling justification for Ben Parker to have interposed himself for the purpose of defending Harry Osborn. And unless there was sufficient reason to think Harry was genuinely at risk of harm, and not just a victim of clear verbal and emotional abuse…
"Not until Norman's hand came up," Ben said, giving me exactly what I needed. "I yelled out to Norman to try and get him to stop, but either he didn't hear me, or he just didn't care, and he struck Harry in the gut." The knuckles of Ben's clasped hands paled as his grip grew tighter, and I saw his jaw tense up. "I saw a pair of cleats just laying out on the floor of the locker room. Next moment, I'm picking them up and throwing one at Norman."
"Metal or plastic teeth on the cleats?" I asked, sincerely hoping it was the latter. Metal teeth turned this from something I could argue into me telling the Parkers to prepare their best groveling voices.
"Plastic," he said, and I let out a small sigh of relief. "That finally got Norman's attention, and I had the other cleat in my hand. I'm holding the cleat by the toe, and when Norman tries to yell at me, I hit him across the face with the laces side of the shoe. I see him stagger, so I drop the shoe, grab Harry, and Peter and I leave before Norman can get his wits back about him."
"Did you see what kind of effect your strike had on Osborn?" I asked, frowning. A hit with the spike of the cleat would have explained the medical and dental bills that Judge Nolan told me about, but a hit with the top of the shoe? With the laces, not the sole? That didn't make much sense to me.
Whatever was in those medical records, I really needed to see them.
"I didn't," Ben said. "At that point, I was more concerned with getting the boys out of there. We went right out to the parking lot and left, then I drove straight to the ER to get Harry checked out."
Thank God for people with a lick of common sense. If he went to the ER, then that meant there were medical records, so I could get an idea of… wait.
"Good call on the ER," I told him, trying not to let the worry show on my face. "Remind me, how old are Harry and Peter?"
"They both turned seventeen this year," Ben told me, and I bit back a curse. That meant Harry was still a minor, and his medical records were under the control of… Osborn.
Shit. So much for avoiding a Request for Judicial Intervention, and keeping this all contained to the parties.
… unless…?
Could I frame my not wanting to need an RJI as a threat?
I jotted that down in the margins in green, as a reminder to myself. I had to remember that this was a case where one party was all but anonymous, while the other was the complete opposite. If I needed to use that anonymity as a weapon, then that was what I would do.
"And can I assume that you were not allowed to remain with Harry Osborn at the emergency room?" I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"No," Ben said with a frown. "They told me only a parent or legal guardian would be allowed, and I was neither. Never mind that it was his father who put him in that state to begin with."
I could only agree to that sentiment with a sigh of my own. The system did, indeed, have its pitfalls… and while the police would be the ordinary remedy to this situation, when the person you were trying to call the cops on was a billionaire... that remedy swiftly evaporated into thin air.
"I think that's about it for what I can ask you for the moment," I said, flipping my legal pad back to the front and laying the pen down atop it. "As I mentioned earlier, I do need to talk to your nephew Peter and get his account of events, then compare the two. It's possible that he saw more of what happened than you did. Do I have your permission as his legal guardian to speak with him now, or would you rather I come back another day?"
"I think today would be best," Ben said with a slight frown. "He did mention that test on Friday, and I think we're running low on time here as it is?" I nodded at the implied question. "Then yes, feel free. Let me show you upstairs."
Ben Parker and I both stood up from our chairs. I put my notepad and pens back into my briefcase, then followed him back out to the front hall. From there, we turned right from the front door, went past the living room (where I had to walk on tiptoe to not chance my heels damaging the carpet), and did a u-turn to a stairwell leading up.
"Peter's room is the last one on the right," Ben said, stepping to the side of the stairwell. "Thank you again for this. It means a lot."
"Don't thank me yet," I said honestly. "There's still a lot of work to be done before I can comfortably accept your thanks."
With that, I made my way up the stairs, and tiptoed along the carpeted flooring, not letting my weight rest on my heels as I knocked on the door to Peter's bedroom. The door opened up just a sliver, and Peter glared down at me from the crack in the doorframe.
"It's your turn, Mr. Parker," I said, plastering a genial smile on my face. "Would you like to speak in there, or would you rather use the dining room?"
Peter continued to glare at me for a moment longer before he stood aside, and pulled the door to his bedroom open, letting me inside. He turned and plopped himself down on the bed, crossed his arms, and glared at me as I stepped inside, and took a quick glance around.
The biggest dominating feature was a Lego Death Star, fully opened up and on display, resting on the top of a bookcase along one side of the room. The bookcase itself was filled to the brim with textbooks, several of which probably had no place on a high schooler's reading list – organic chemistry wasn't usually taught until a person's second semester of college at least, and that was only the first one I noticed. The medical textbooks were the particularly interesting ones… and something I was decidedly not going to ask about.
Peter's bed was a full-size mattress pressed against a corner of the room, the duvet messy and unmade, pillows surrounding where it made contact with the wall. His desk looked for all the world like a library study carrel with drawers attached, save for the fact that most of its space was occupied by both a Macintosh II and a Commodore 64. One drawer, so full it wouldn't properly close, had myriad wires of all types sticking out of it… and a pair of wire strippers hanging haphazardly on the lip of the drawer.
The walls themselves were mostly sparse. Peter only had two posters: a periodic table of elements just above and to the right of his desk, and an AC/DC poster next to the window.
"Would you mind if I sat here?" I asked, a hand on Peter's desk chair.
He didn't offer any meaningful response. He just wrinkled his nose, gave a disdainful sniff, and kept sitting there, glaring at me with arms crossed.
I took the silence as acceptance, and spun the chair around… to see all of the binders that he'd previously set on top of my briefcase sitting on the seat. I didn't have to look to catch the barest glimpse of a shit-eating grin pass across his face – the accompanying amused exhalation was all I needed to hear.
Well. That and, again. My hearing was good enough for minor echolocation. When accompanied with a sound that sudden, I didn't need to see somebody to know their facial expression.
I carefully picked up the binders from the chair and placed them atop the Macintosh on Peter's desk. Then I spun the chair around, sat in it, placed my briefcase on the floor, and removed my notepad and pens.
"As I mentioned downstairs, your uncle has availed himself of my services in dealing with this…" I waved my left hand a little, my pen waggling slightly in the air. "Whole messy business. I've already spoken with your uncle, and now, I would like you to tell me your account of what happened on February 9th."
"And you couldn't let us do it at the same time why?" Peter bit out through clenched teeth, now deliberately not looking at me. "Cause you need to see if we're lying," he accused, rather than let time answer.
"Yes." Peter's eyes immediately snapped to me, a slight look of surprise on his face, so I took the opportunity to press on while I had his attention. "Trust me when I say that until people are under oath, and sometimes even then, somebody is always lying. This is just one of many ways I make sure that lying isn't being done to me.
"And on that note," I said, taking the segue as it came up, "feel free to begin wherever you'd like with what happened on Friday, February 9th."
There was no response for a good thirty seconds. The silence lingered heavy, with me tapping out a slow rhythm on my notepad with my pen, waiting for Peter to crack.
"Hmph."
A vocal harrumph and a further emphasis of his crossed arms was all I got.
Well. This was going nowhere fast. Despite being Spider-Man, a beloved (by all but Jameson) superhero… he was still also a teenager. One with a chip on his shoulder where I was concerned.
And given his alter ego, I had a feeling as to why that was.
"Mr. Parker," I started keeping my tone neutral. "If there is some problem you have with this situation or with myself, then I can't begin to do anything about that until you tell me what that problem is."
There continued to be no response.
"Does this have something to do with your status as Spider-Man's photographer?" I asked, deciding that I'd rather try to get to the heart of the issue than sit here in silence until the superhuman lost his patience. Or worse, his temper.
"Spider-Man's not a damn criminal!" Peter bit out, the sheer vitriol in his voice surprising me. "You got up in front of the whole country and called Spider-Man a criminal!"
Was that what this was about? That had been a single line of questioning in a cross examination from most of a year ago. Had Peter been holding onto that niggling doubt for this whole time?
Or had his encountering me, the one who said that, in John Jonah Jameson's office cemented it in his mind?
Regardless, if I wanted to actually get anywhere, I needed to nip this in the bud.
Now.
"While that is not how I phrased it in court, and not how I would phrase it now either, arguing the semantics will get us nowhere," I began. "Mr. Parker. Your anger is due to my statement that Spider-Man, who you are at least acquainted with, is a criminal. Am I correct in that regard?"
"Yeah," he said, his glare not abating one bit.
"Then would it surprise you to learn that, were I to have to defend Spider-Man to a detractor, I could quite successfully argue that he has not, in fact, broken any laws?" I said.
"... what?" Peter's face went almost completely slack out of surprise. I couldn't help but smile, and pressed on.
"Despite all of his acrobatics and theatrics, Spider-Man causes one of, if not the lowest amount of collateral damage and injuries among the heroes that call New York home," I said, and gestured at the medical textbooks on Peter's bookshelf. "Something I would wager you had a hand in. Heck, even the single most biased source of reporting on Spider-Man is shockingly light on accusations of actual damage."
Which was true. I'd taken the weekend to look at several of my back issues of the Bugle, paying special attention to Spider-Man reporting. And despite all of Jameson's fear-mongering?
I couldn't find a single injury or bit of property damage that I could wholly and unequivocally attribute to Spider-Man. The largest complaint was that he left his webbing all over the place, occasionally exacerbating traffic or public transit… but that was temporary at best.
"All of that taken together?" I asked rhetorically. "In the absence of damages or injuries, it wouldn't be all that hard to have each and every one of Spider-Man's arrests and villain takedowns dismissed as valid citizen's arrests."
"What… but that—"
"And as much as I have begun to value my friendship with Mr. Jameson," I said, interrupting Peter, "wherever Spider-Man is concerned? Mr. Jameson is, to be blunt, full of shit," I finished.
Peter's arms fell to the sides, the sudden mental whiplash and cognitive dissonance clearly tossing him for a bit of a loop. Here he had drawn up this mental image of me as yet another Jameson, just younger and prettier. Instead, he was getting an object lesson in what should and, more importantly, shouldn't be considered a first impression.
Hopefully, this was a lesson he took with him when he eventually became more involved with the superhero community.
"But… but you said at that trial that you thought Spider-Man was breaking the law," Peter said after a good twenty seconds or so, grasping at the last straws of his argument, and his anger with it.
"I know what I said then," I replied. "But no. I do not believe Spider-Man is a criminal. He is perhaps a bit rough around the edges, but I don't think he's a criminal. Not even close."
"You… you don't?" Peter asked, jaw slack in confusion. Most likely, he wasn't expecting to have the opposite of what he expected thrown at him. In that case… perhaps some elaboration. Make the lesson explicit.
"Mr. Parker, people have a way of acting differently depending on the situation. When I am in the courtroom, I am doing the hardest part of my job," I told him, tapping my pen against my notepad as I spoke. "And half of that difficulty is framing the story both how I want the jury to see it, and in a way that they will accept. I had a point to make, and given the situation, that was the best way to bring them around to the point I needed. Even though that meant following the Daily Bugle's example, and even though it was, yes, at Spider-Man's expense."
Peter was quiet for a moment, though he gave me a funny look. I had a feeling he was trying to reconcile the 'courtroom Noa' he'd seen on TV and the 'managing John Jonah Jameson' Noa he met this past winter with the 'out-of-court Noa' in front of him.
Which was fair. Entirely so.
"... so, um," Peter said, rubbing his hands together and pursing his lips expectantly. "You don't think he's a criminal. So uh, then. Aside from the, you know… civilian arrest thing?" Peter asked.
"Citizen's arrest," I corrected.
"Yeah, that," he said. "Uh, other than that. What, um. What is your opinion on Spider-Man?"
Oh. Oh my God. This boy was so transparent.
He was so incredibly transparent that his earnestness had already wrapped around to being adorable.
I put my pen and notepad down on my lap, clasped my fingers, and just gave him a look, followed by a long, slow, blink.
"Mr. Parker," I started. "Peter." I looked up and gestured idly to his closet – and more specifically, to his laundry basket. "If I were to get up and look through there, what are the odds I find Spider-Man's costume inside?"
Peter gave me a blank look, before he gave a small chuckle. When my facial expression didn't change a bit, the nervous grin fell off his face, and he started to go a bit pale.
"W-what—" Peter cut himself off as he stood, wetting his lips as he raised his hands out in front, as if to ward me off. "T-that—"
"Mr. Parker," I stopped Peter. "Look at me."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour fell away, showing the young man my true appearance.
"I have horns and a tail," I said, gesturing to them for effect. "And I can only hide them from sight. Even with that limitation, I lasted twenty-one years hiding that I'm a mutant, and my outing was a fluke. Compared to that? You're not very good at this."
"O-oh…" Realization dawned on his face as he clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly. "That's… yeah, right, you're uh… yeah, you're that. Uh…" Peter paced around his room, hands behind his head and running through his hair. "I, you, uh… look, y-you're not gonna… like, tell anyone, right?" he asked, turning back towards me.
"That depends," I said, pointing at his bedroom door. "Does your uncle know?"
"Y-yeah," Peter said, sitting back down on his bed. "Yeah. He does."
"Then no," I told him. "I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially since your little secret is covered by the attorney-client privilege."
"It is?" he asked, somewhat incredulous.
"Mhmm," I nodded. To be fair, it was... with a generous interpretation of the rules of ethics, courtesy of Peter still being a minor, and his legal guardian being my client.
"Oh thank God," Peter said, collapsing down onto his bed with relief. And then mere moments later, he popped back up. "Uh, alright, look, I gotta know. What gave me away?"
"The glasses," I answered immediately. It wasn't exactly true... but it wasn't exactly false, either.
Peter opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, and closed his mouth. His brow furrowed in thought, and then his eyebrows went up in surprise.
"Really?" he asked, incredulous.
"For obvious reasons, I pay attention to the research and discourse on mutants," I said, tapping my horn with my pen. "There's still a bit of peer review to go, but from what I've gathered, the most common mutant power researchers have found is slightly-better-than-perfect vision. It's also the most common secondary power, and the most common beneficial side effect of powers.
"Now, keeping in mind that mutant powers can, and often do, manifest quite literally overnight? Outside of a few situations, clear lenses are a dead giveaway. As are a glasses wearer's tics and quirks when you can't see contacts. Once I caught that first sign that something might have been amiss, it wasn't hard to see how graceful your fake clumsiness was."
"Oh, that's… huh. How hard is it to see if someone has contacts, though?" Peter asked.
"You tell me," I said, leaning in and looking him in the eyes.
"Wait, what? Why are – oh, ooh..." Peter cottoned on quickly and looked me in the eye. I saw the moment he realized what he was seeing. "Okay, I can see it. A bit of blue around the iris from the lens. And it slides down a bit after you blink."
"Indeed," I said. "And now you know how to spot most contact lenses. Anyways. Can we get back to the initial point of our discussion?" I asked. "Your recounting of events?"
"U-um…" Peter flushed a bit, in embarrassment. "S-sorry."
"It's okay," I said, picking up my notepad and pen. "Now, I know from your uncle that this was the first time Norman Osborn had shown up to one of the debate team's events, but I'd like it if you could take it from the top for me…"
So, this chapter was supposed to have three full scenes.
That was until I realized that this first scene was more like three scenes condensed into one, since there's no page break, and it just has segments that serve as diegetic transitions, almost.
… well, that and the thing breaking the 7000 word mark.
So, the next scenes… one of them has been cut and is going to be relegated to a canon sidestory most likely, since it was only there as a breather between the subject matter of this scene and the other. So the initially planned scene three will now be the first scene of next chapter.
And the five planned scenes from next chapter are now scenes two and three, and then the three scenes of the chapter after that.
Fingers crossed that other scenes don't balloon the way this one has. Otherwise, this arc isn't going to wrap up around chaptertwenty-two twenty-three like I wanted it to.
Anyways. Hope y'all enjoyed. If you're feeling generous, my Ko-fi is still going for now (hopefully not for too much longer… I'm getting tired of sending resumes and cover letters into the void, please networking work…).
And the chapter after this one is currently scheduled for release on July 16.
For the one year anniversary of this fic's posting.
… oh shit it's about to have been a full year—
That was until I realized that this first scene was more like three scenes condensed into one, since there's no page break, and it just has segments that serve as diegetic transitions, almost.
… well, that and the thing breaking the 7000 word mark.
So, the next scenes… one of them has been cut and is going to be relegated to a canon sidestory most likely, since it was only there as a breather between the subject matter of this scene and the other. So the initially planned scene three will now be the first scene of next chapter.
And the five planned scenes from next chapter are now scenes two and three, and then the three scenes of the chapter after that.
Fingers crossed that other scenes don't balloon the way this one has. Otherwise, this arc isn't going to wrap up around chapter
Anyways. Hope y'all enjoyed. If you're feeling generous, my Ko-fi is still going for now (hopefully not for too much longer… I'm getting tired of sending resumes and cover letters into the void, please networking work…).
And the chapter after this one is currently scheduled for release on July 16.
For the one year anniversary of this fic's posting.
… oh shit it's about to have been a full year—
- Pronouns
- Masculine
And now our favorite Lawyer just got Spider-Man on her side.
That... is fucking amazing.
And will be so fucking helpful in the future if you look at it from a mercenary perspective.
And fuck... Norman deserved that. And fuuuck... it had to have been Norman who did it, wasn't it? He came in as Green Goblin and killed May. That'd be exactly his angle.
I wonder if Noa can get him to admit he is Green Goblin... because yesssssss.
That... is fucking amazing.
And will be so fucking helpful in the future if you look at it from a mercenary perspective.
And fuck... Norman deserved that. And fuuuck... it had to have been Norman who did it, wasn't it? He came in as Green Goblin and killed May. That'd be exactly his angle.
I wonder if Noa can get him to admit he is Green Goblin... because yesssssss.
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GG was big on colateral damage, most home invasions are purpose fueled crimes.
Thanks for the chapter!
You know, after reading much of this story again recently, something hit me about what stood out about it. The conversations are so well done - it stands out a lot. It's rare for me to read conversations and feel each different character's voice so separately.
Characterization is so difficult for me. It really blows me away to see it done like this. Makes me grumpy to compare it to my own attempts at writing.
I really loved the conversation with Peter here. Noa was very smooth in addressing and moving over his small grudge. Looking forward to more!
You know, after reading much of this story again recently, something hit me about what stood out about it. The conversations are so well done - it stands out a lot. It's rare for me to read conversations and feel each different character's voice so separately.
Characterization is so difficult for me. It really blows me away to see it done like this. Makes me grumpy to compare it to my own attempts at writing.
I really loved the conversation with Peter here. Noa was very smooth in addressing and moving over his small grudge. Looking forward to more!
Blinktwice13
Underpaid Struggle Bus Attendant
- Location
- Eastern US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Excellent chapter. Can't say how accurate to Spider-Man the characterization is, but you nailed the 'bitchy teenage boy' aspect. (Again, Marvel novice who's only seen movies and the odd animated series.)
Uncle Ben is a cool dude. I haven't even met Norman and I want his head on a pike (metaphorically). Save Harry!
Uncle Ben is a cool dude. I haven't even met Norman and I want his head on a pike (metaphorically). Save Harry!
- Location
- Argentina
Staff Notice: Rule 2 "Don't Be Hateful" - Insistently repeating that Peter Parker shouldn't have Jewish heritage, combined with aspersions regarding Stan Lee and 'the current political climate', verge on anti-Semitism.
I had never heard about his parents being Jewish. How that even works with them being accused of having worked for Hydra?
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- Location
- Miami
Our favorite lawyer returns! And now with friendly Spider-Man too!
We're in a better timeline.
- Pronouns
- Masculine
Considering how many people took the lego space sets and made them into original Star Wars ships and fighters?(Me included)
...yeah, screw a pre-designed model. Peter is brilliant enough that he probably got all the grey bricks and everything else for it over months or years and built it himself of his own design.
The joy of Lego has always been you can make anything from them. Especially without the need to follow directions.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You think this is the first time Spidey's been explicitly Jewish?
Cause hmm... Yup. Yup. Uh-huh.
Looks like a Jewish wedding to me.
- Location
- Detroit, Michigan
Wait, are there three bowls or four?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Three bowls.
Two of the bowls have keys in them.
One of the bowls also has a wallet in it.
One of the bowls is empty.
Therefore, one bowl has keys, one has keys + wallet, the last one is empty.
- Location
- The deathworld-in-miniature that is Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
And, like, he was made by a couple of Jewish comic creators (EDIT: I have since found out that Steve Ditko was not Jewish, though he was an outsider to mainstream US society (and like 90% of the comics industry was Jewish at that point, including both Lee and Kirby (who when some Nazis rolled up to the Marvel offices and demanded that 'that [slur] Kirby' to come out and take his beating like a man (presumably for something in a Captain America comic), famously promptly stood up, got his hat, told the person who had brought the message to tell them he'd be down in a minute, and rushed down to beat the hell out of some Nazis, who had already fled before he got there - by far not the only time Kirby vigorously exercised his opinion as to the limits of Nazis' right to free speech in his life)) to be as relateable as possible, and lives in a traditionally Jewish area of NY (somewhere the MCU notably moved him out of for I-wonder-what-reason), and a hundred other reasons across the entire existence of Spider-man that he's Jewish, which I have seen any number of wonderful fan breakdowns of.
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