24Christmas Eve was busy at the best of times, but this was clearly not the best of times. The food had already been distributed to the needy, and what had been left had already been scrounged through days before for Christmas dinners across the city. The small warehouse that was serving as one of many food banks and aid outposts was running out of everything. And when they opened their doors to the public once more early on the morning of December 24, this pickings were indeed slim.
Peter Parker understood this. Living on the sporadic wages of a photojournalist, he was used to taking the less glamorous route when it came to culinary options. So if there was even the possibility of bringing home something for his humble Christmas dinner with MJ and Aunt May that evening he would seize it.
He reached the aisle where meats were stored in row upon row of grocery store refrigeration units. There were a few awkward looking chickens scattered here and there among the empty shelves. And then he saw it.
There was a large ham sitting in the back corner of the unit. It had obviously been passed over due to its inconvenient location. And now that most of the meats had gone to other families, the ham was revealed. Peter Parker made a bee-line for the ham, opened the glass door on the refrigerator and brought then ham out. He smiled to himself; his luck seemed to be turning around.
And then his spider-sense went haywire.
If Alex Mercer had been anyone else, he might have even smiled. He looked down at his list and smirked maliciously in a slightly smug, self-satisfied manner.
The dinner rolls had been tough to find, but a quick hunt through the baked goods section had turned up a bag of fluffy calabrese buns that were only a shade on the stale side. Broil then up with some garlic butter and that wouldn't be noticed. Of course, all the butter was gone, but a bulb of garlic and some margarine spread made for a good substitute.
At least it did to the late Matilda Klein, an elderly lady who continued to nag from beyond the grave in his own head!
He shook his head and blinked slowly. Inhale. Exhale. Carry on.
A bag of frozen Green Giant vegetables covered that side of it. And he had managed to snag an only slightly sprouted bag of white potatoes. The pudding was a bust, but a smushed Yule Log cake worked for his purposes.
All he needed now was a ham. He swung the cart towards the section of the warehouse that sported the meat refrigeration units. A quick glance showed him that, apart from a couple of chickens that looked like they had been passed over for a reason, there was one last ham.
And it looked like some nerdy looking guy had gotten there first.
Alex Mercer glowered. It was decision time.
Option one: sneak up behind the other man, remove him from the equation, and take the ham.
Option two: ask for the ham. Maybe in disguise as Matilda?
Option three: ...
He really liked option one. Dana wouldn't approve, but it was Christmas, and maybe she would forgive him if he only knocked the guy out. But then again, it would make her angry with him. Or scared. That was a possibility he didn't like at all.
Mercer's scowl deepened. It was settled, then. Ask, and if the answer was no, then plan B. He would control himself for Dana. This was all for her sake, after all. He tried to make his expression a little more amiable, but could feel his failure etched into the contours of his own face.
Here goes nothing.
Turn around, his spider-sense screamed. There's something behind you!
He whirled around, dropping into a crouched, defensive, stance, placing the wrapped ham on the floor to his left as he span to face whatever danger had crept up behind him. He almost stumbled back in surprise. It was just some guy.
A very scary looking guy, but as far as he could tell, just a man.
Danger! Run away! His senses disagreed loudly with this thought, and he tensed.
Then man before him was tall and solidly built, filling out a hooded sweater and leather jacket in a way that made him seem heavily muscled, but not bulky. The hood of the sweater was drawn up, shading the top half of the man's face from view. The man's mouth was drawn into a deep scowl, but the edges seemed to be twitching as if he were trying and failing to smile.
While the man would have seemed highly intimidating in appearance to a normal person, after everything he had seen in his time as the "Amazing Spider-Man" the presence of the man before him was limited to the warnings that his spider sense continued to blare.
Swallowing, he asked, "is there something I can help you with?" Idly, he noted that this guy looked familiar.
The man's head tilted to the side as if he was sizing him up. "Christmas dinner," the stranger growled in a gravelly voice, "for my sister. She is coming home from the hospital tonight. The ham, please," he gritted out in a voice like coarse gravel.
The 'please' tacked onto the end almost sounded like it was painful to articulate. Peter Parker tried not to smile. And then the rest of the little speech became registered. The ham. He did not want to give the creepy guy his prize grocery item.
"Ah, I see. I'm sorry, but I need this myself for dinner with my fiancée and my elderly aunt. I'm sure there is another ham somewhere around for you?"
The man's already predatory countenance darkened, his shoulders hunching forward and his scowl deepening into a slow bearing of teeth. As if rumbling from the gullet of some kind of large and horrific beast the hooded stranger growled.
"Please. I don't want her to be unhappy. But I'll chance it for the one time I do Christmas. The ham." And he held out his hand expectantly as if expecting that to be that.
Peter Parker frowned. How rude. Slowly, he picked up the ham and backed up a step, shaking his head. "Sorry, man." He opened his mouth to continue with a suggestion for what else he could do, and almost missed the warning of his spider-sense suddenly screeching across his nerves.
"Aw, screw this." The stranger muttered, and suddenly the man's outstretched arm rippled with red and black tendrils, shape shifting from a leather jacket clad human arm into a blackened and spiky looking whip-like appendage tipped with glinting claw.
Peter ducked low as the clawed fist extended over his head, crashing through the glass door behind him with crushing force. The whip-like arm retracted back into place for a moment before swinging forward once more at high speed.
"What the crap! You're gonna turn into some kind of maniacal hobo shoggoth over a freaking ham?"
The horror in question paused, the razor edges of the claws having extended swiftly past Parker's guard to brush the side of said ham, as if considering the question.
"Yes," he growled. More black and red ropes of material seemed to ripple up and down the man's body in agitation. The claws closed around the ham, morphing with a squelch into black strap-like appendages that wrapped around the wood-smoked, honey-sweetened, plastic-encased morsel of Christmas goodness, before withdrawing and cradling the ham protectively against the stranger's chest.
Peter Parker's eyes went wide. Now he knew where he had seen this guy before.
"Holy...you're Alex Mercer."
Alex Mercer swore violently, causing Peter's eyebrows to jump up comically.
"I need to think. Stay put for a second," he ground out. Before Peter Parker could react a heavily placed foot knocked the breath out of him and pinned him to the side of the fridge. Alex Mercer was muttering to himself, a few words here and there were audible, and of these words, their content was enough to have the man who was secretly a spandex clad web slinging hero pale in dread.
Oh, man. I'm gonna die. Over a ham! On Christmas Eve! That doesn't even make any sense!
But Peter Parker was intelligent. And desperation is an excellent source of motivation. And while the idea in question was not the best, it might be able to buy him enough time to notify SHIELD or the Avengers that Mercer was still at large.
"Can we cut it in half? It is a pretty big ham." And it's Christmas, he added to himself.
Mercer paused, considering.
He glanced towards his shopping cart piled with his Christmas shopping and the ham, then back to the prone form pinned beneath his heel, debating internally.
A whole ham with left overs that Dana wouldn't be able to possibly eat all herself...or...
Mercer narrowed his eyes at the young man before him. Peter Parker gulped, expecting the worst.
And then the man who for almost three weeks in the summer of 2009 had been regarded as the greatest internal threat to the nation surprised him.
Alex Mercer's right arm rippled and warped, shifting into a large, wicked looking sword blade almost as long as he was tall. He picked up the ham and held it in front of himself almost grudgingly before bringing the the blade arm swooshing down, bisecting the ham into two.
He dropped half of the ham onto Peter Parker's stunned chest before backing off and leaving the aisle with an oddly threatening, "Merry Christmas."
Peter Parker sat there for a moment just catching his breath. He needed to call someone. Reaching into his coat pocket he brought out his cell.
His mangled cell, which had apparently been crushed during the short skirmish.
"Aw, crap. Not another one!"