41The cool midnight breeze washed over our favorite web-swinging superhero as he patrolled the city he loved. The city was bustling to life with lights and noises surrounding him, the place that he called home feeling even more like a living breathing animal as he took in the sights around him. Landing gracefully on the edge of a rooftop that was abandoned barring the exception of the few birds that were present, Spider-Man overlooked Times Square from above with the megacorporation Oscorps in the distance. It was a slow night for crime, which at the moment Peter appreciated as he took a quick breather while he relaxed ever so slightly.
His life recently was hectic, having to deal with a team up of an escaped Rhino rampaging in Chinatown and Martin Li...Mister Negative taking advantage of the surrounding chaos to escape by corrupting multiple civilians and holding them hostage. It was a nightmare to deal with, and while he didn't come out unscathed he still saved the day in the end, contrary to what J. Jonah Jameson said about Spider-Man in the aftermath. Peter still had "mixed" feelings about Mr. Li ever since he found out the truth at FEAST, but that's the story of his entire life.
So the young protector relished the peace and quiet as he perched, but never quite completely relaxing. The people below on the streets were up and about much like himself at this ungodly hour as they went along their day (or night, in this instance). The noises of the city had a sort of "controlled chaos," as Peter called it. The cars honked at each other incessantly, but not unpredictably (for when one honks at another it is their fate to be honked back in earnest); the trains in the distance rumbled as they raced their way to their location with the sounds of construction never far behind.
All of it reminded Peter why he loved his city. To be honest he didn't know what exactly he was getting into when he first "swung" into crime-fighting, but it was the little things that made it all worth it. Sure, sometimes it smelled and not all the people there appreciated him, but knowing that he (as Spider-Man) can and has made the city safer brought a smile to his face every time.
And then the hairs underneath his suit stood up like a bat out of hell.
His Spider-Sense was tingling, but Peter could count on one hand the times it was ever this bad, this hair-raising. Whatever the danger to him and the civilians below was he didn't see it, everything he looked at was nothing overtly dangerous, nothing to set him on edge like this.
Spider-Man stood up quickly, unnerved by the serene calm that the world appeared to be. It worried him enough that he started pacing around the rooftop, trying his damndest to roughly pinpoint the danger, to stop it before it exploded in his face. As he walked further west along the shabby rooftop his Spider-Sense got marginally more blaring. Thinking he was on the cusp of discovering the problem that's when he heard it:
A sniffle, a quiet innocuous sniffle that soon turned into ugly crying.
His superior hearing aided him, and even though it sounded quite faint Peter could tell the person (female?) wasn't trying to muffle their noise at all. Their sobs and hiccups sounded as if they were five blocks away to his front, roughly ten stories downwards. His heart rate increased in rhythm as he jumped off the building into a swan dive, quickly gaining GPE as he fell before he swiftly changed course, nearly slamming into a building as the familiar whiplash of the wind and his equilibrium was ignored as he swung his way to find her; the pit in his stomach growing in tandem with his Spider-Sense telling him to run away from the danger he was going to.
She was free...finally free. She should be experiencing the emotion of happiness, overjoyed that she finally got to see the outside world of the new planet she was now on. It's been at least 143,501 cycles since she'd last seen the stars in the sky (they were in different positions but at least they were still stars). Time was iffy at the moment but she frankly didn't care what time it was when there were bigger problems afoot, such as the native species on this planetoid who may or may not be hunting her down.
Her captors (bipeds, she now recalled) wore white cloth to hide their skin from each other, with each and every one of them asking her to do various things at various times, such as moving, consuming, and the like. They always used a loud humming monstrosity that sat in the corner of her chambers to "speak" to her, to cross the language barrier that surely existed. Whatever they said the monstrosity (somehow) converted it into their wants, their feelings, their intentions to her. The bipeds spoke to each other a lot with their lips pointed downwards, and sometimes if she was lucky the "machine" (as they called it) would pick up their voices, giving her the rough idea that the "experiments" they were doing on her would only last "several years" at most (she still didn't know how long a "several years" lasted). The "experiments" didn't hurt as much at first, mild pricking and numbness in some of her newly formed limbs; the "needles", as they called it, were gentler and fewer.
They didn't like it at all when she disobeyed. When she didn't immediately stand/slithered to attention, when she didn't immediately do the things that were asked of her. They thought she could take everything they could throw at her, but in truth she was so tired of the constant never-ending tests. So she lashed out at them when her energy was more sapped than usual, thought they would understand. She just wanted a break after the endless litany of tests that happened every 100 cycles.
Fifty cycles after she did that they said to each other that they were testing her resistance to something called "electricity" with a feral upturn of their lips. When she was connected by the strings that disappeared into a wall energy coursed through her, making her body ripple in agony and pain! Her new skin(?) bubbled and bled its black blood and it hurt so bad!
It hurt so much, and it hurt, and it hurt and hurt and hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt HURT!
She was aware through it all, through every micro-cycle of the torturous pain that made her confused on what was real and what was just a dream. But it was all real, and it was a long time before she realized it had stopped long ago, with her being an unmoving puddle of smoking black goop on the floor. And right before she reformed some strange man in a weird sort of foreign armor came in and used a tool on his back to suck her in some sort of iron-made container.
She was given to someone, someone who had dark semi-circles under their optic orbs. Brought into a weird box that moves by itself, being moved to probably be tortured somewhere else. But the biped looked to be similarly energy-sapped much like herself, and grumbled to himself as he tossed her somewhere outside haphazardly into another container (but it was open?) with a loud thunk. Filled with debris that was made of strange materials, the ground inside felt distinctly wrong as it was also made of iron (or what she assumed it to be).
She didn't like that it wasn't organic, like everything else in her recent life.
The container she was personally in was of poor design, as the opening was left ajar after impact. She slivered out agonizingly slowly and went up the weird tiled wall, until she was on a floor of sorts. There she morphed back into a look-alike of one of the natives of the species that examined her, the one with the pretty black hair and nice face. She decided to slump her back against an alien rectangular iron prism that made noises on the regular, bringing her walking extremities closer to her main body. It was then that she realized that she was finally alone; away from the bipeds atop of a tall unknown alien structure.
She knew it was only a matter of time before they found her again. When were the sentient life forms coming back for her, to capture and test and feed her?! Her breathing became ragged as her vision tunneled. She was dying, couldn't and unable to do anything with her energy sapped. The planet's sentient life forms were too far away for her weak body to crawl to, and even then they'd resist her cries for help, not to mention her "unique" needs. The numerous tiny creatures capable of aviation cooed all around her, practically taunting her but were too quick to catch in the state she was in and definitely too small to regain enough strength from. She was going to die and not she, nor anyone else, would save her. And so her sniffles turned to hiccups, to which they became full on sobs as they wailed into the night.
"⋔⟟⌇⌇, ⏃⍀⟒ ⊬⍜⎍ ⍜ ⏃⊬?" asked a worried voice from above her.
Her cerulean colored pupils in her ocular organs dilatated in fear like that of an animal as she saw the biped approaching in front of her. Standing tall it was wearing clothing all over itself in a red and blue fashion, from head to toe she couldn't tell its intentions with her, not with the mask. She scurried backwards into the metal prism to no avail, trying to get away from the unknown threat, trying to keep herself alive. No matter how much she pushed the metal wouldn't give, causing new tears to form as she knew she was going to get hurt again.
The biped slowed until it stopped, putting its hands in the air for whatever reason. "⟟⏁'⌇ ⍜ ⏃⊬, ⟟⏁'⌇ ⍜ ⏃⊬...⟟'⋔ ⋏⍜⏁ ⍜⋏⋏⏃ ⊑⎍⍀⏁ ⊬⍜⎍," the biped gently whispered its incomprehensible language again as it assumed a crouching position several steps away from her. "⋔⊬ ⋏⏃⋔⟒ ⟟⌇ ⌇⌿⟟⎅⟒⍀-⋔⏃⋏," it told her as the biped touched the black spot that was stitched into the center of its clothing, "⍙⊑⏃⏁'⌇ ⊬⍜⎍⍀ ⋏⏃⋔⟒?"
Her eyebrow rose subconsciously at the thing's nonsensical language and continued to say nothing, unsure of what to do.
The biped tilted its head very slightly as it also paused, looking like it was trying to think. Before long the creature once again tapped its main body twice inanely before repeating, "⋔⊬ ⋏⏃⋔⟒ ⟟⌇ ⌇⌿⟟⎅⟒⍀-⋔⏃⋏...⌇⌿⟟⎅⟒⍀-⋔⏃⋏," as if saying the same thing over and over and over again would make her understand.
Enough.
She had enough of...of whatever the biped was doing. She turned away from the creature, unable to care whether it would attack her or not. She lowered herself onto the cold floor beneath her, facing the metal prism as she did so. She let out a needless exhale, closing her optical orbs to let fate run its course.
Never before had Peter Parker encountered a situation quite like this, be it in his public life or in his seven years as Spider-Man. He's saved countless civilians nearly every day (barring certain sick days), he's fought several foes of all shapes and sizes and materials, and to top it all off he works at a volunteer homeless shelter just because he wants to.
For whatever reason his Spider-Sense had finally lessened to a moderate hum after she went prone, as if the defenseless naked woman who he thinks doesn't understand him or any of the pantomimes wasn't as big of a problem anymore.
Peter pushed that thought away from his mind, knowing he could think about it later as he was wasting time. Slowly approaching her he noticed (among other aspects that made his face bright red) her breathing, which was both shallow but thankfully also steady. "Miss, I'm going to take you to a hospital." He waited several seconds and after still no response gently picked her up bridal style. She was cold all over, shivering slightly before trying to nudge closer to his torso for extra warmth. His heart clenched at the small movement, and so he ran through just about several hundred ways to not make this awkward, eventually settling on giving her a piggyback ride. After carefully webbing each arm and leg to his torso, and as an afterthought securing her neck, Spider-Man did a running leap off the side of the building towards the nearest hospital in Hell's Kitchen.
He made a web line to the nearest building with his left web-shooter after gaining enough momentum, the wind nipping at him as he swung to his destination in a hurry.