Intricate Entanglements

All right, I had to go to school with Gwen tomorrow. If nothing happened on the way, fine. But if something did happen and I had to leave midway, there'd be no way to keep my identity hidden from Gwen.

It was after ten at night when Peter finally slipped out of the house. His webbing traced silvery arcs through the night over Queens as he swung toward Manhattan like a shadow. Avengers Tower stood in the darkness, with only a few scattered windows glowing faintly. J.A.R.V.I.S. had opened the door for him in advance. Peter landed lightly and habitually brushed at nonexistent dust on his suit.

"Good evening, J.A.R.V.I.S. How was the Avengers' mission going?"

After the Quinjet entered Wakandan airspace, all external communications were cut off. The only data transmission record originated from within the Wakandan royal palace.

That probably meant there was nothing wrong. The Avengers had entered the Wakandan royal palace, but communications had been severed because of Wakanda's unique circumstances. After getting a rough grasp of the intelligence, Peter stopped worrying about the Avengers and turned his attention to two other matters: first, whether this new imitator was the escaped Chameleon or merely Mysterio; second, why Carl had been following him and whether he had discovered something.

"Let's start with the easy one. J.A.R.V.I.S., compare Midtown High School freshman Carl King's face against every known camera feed in New York. I want to see exactly what he knows."

J.A.R.V.I.S. quickly found the first piece of information Peter needed from the cameras of various media outlets. On the night Spider-Man fought Scarecrow, Carl had appeared at the scene and even looked around the battlefield for a while after the fight ended.

There seemed to be nothing else. Peter then had J.A.R.V.I.S. compare the footage in which he himself had been caught on camera, using ten-minute intervals from the same cameras. Unsurprisingly, every clip had taken place at Midtown High School.

It looked like there was no problem...

Peter's eyes sharpened as he caught the footage he needed. It was from the night he had gone to the school lab to make new Web Fluid. Carl had entered afterward too. He might have found webbing that had not yet degraded, and since Carl had been the one to put that spider on Peter's neck, he had begun to suspect him.

But that still didn't explain why he was being so paranoid.

"Could he be worried about me taking revenge? All right, Carl. You'll just have to figure out that I won't do anything to you. Until then, I'm afraid you'll have to keep worrying."

Peter, who knew absolutely nothing about the villain known as "the thousands," skipped over Carl and had J.A.R.V.I.S. pull up information on Chameleon instead. Neither J.A.R.V.I.S. nor the NYPD disappointed him—Chameleon had indeed escaped again.

Some dirty cop working for someone had let Chameleon out, and Chameleon had fled. Something unusual had also happened along the way: Frank Castle, the Punisher, had tried to kill Chameleon, but he had targeted the wrong person again. Chameleon had already slipped away, and his whereabouts were currently unknown.

"The Punisher? Has he been hunting Chameleon for a long time?"

According to existing records, Frank Castle had carried out more than five operations against Dimitri Sneshkov, all of which had ended in failure.

"Can you find out why? No? All right."

After sorting through the clues, Peter roughly pieced together the situation. First, Chameleon had been working with Mysterio, while Mysterio's equipment had been stolen by Scarecrow. To cover for Scarecrow's thefts, someone had organized a large-scale string of bank robberies as a diversion.

And now Mysterio and Chameleon were working together, initially trying to smear him. That meant there had to be someone behind them, someone intending to get rid of Spider-Man. Whether by killing him directly or ruining his reputation did not matter. As for the reason, after carefully considering everything Spider-Man had done so far, Peter could only reach one conclusion: it was the person who had bought up all those Chitauri parts in New York, modified them into weapons, and sold them. After all, for quite some time now, Spider-Man had mostly been dealing with smugglers running around with high-tech weapons.

Who could it be? Kingpin? Hammerhead? Tombstone? There were plenty of gang bosses in New York, so it was hard to say who exactly it was.

But regardless, Chameleon's objective was clear: get rid of Spider-Man.

"But Chameleon has the Punisher on his tail. If he keeps smearing Spider-Man, the Punisher will recognize that he's a fake. That's why he has to imitate me and do what a superhero is supposed to do. That's really ironic."

The Chameleon who had appeared now was definitely a trap. Peter still could not determine what kind of trap it was—perhaps a large group of thugs, perhaps a bomb trap, or perhaps the mastermind had hired a supervillain skilled in combat. But as long as Peter showed up, he would definitely step into the trap. It might not work on him, but...

Why did he have to walk into that trap in the first place?

Wasn't there the Punisher?

"I need to talk to the Punisher. He'll definitely be closely watching any Spider-Men who show up. I should be able to find him easily... as long as he doesn't shoot at me. He couldn't be that violent, right?"

Peter was certain that the Punisher, having hunted Chameleon for so long, knew a great deal about him. He only needed to confirm whether Chameleon was truly beyond redemption or whether, like Herman, he was not fundamentally beyond saving.

"All right, let me state my conclusion first. Spider-Man was probably a student. A high school student or college student, but high school was more likely."

MacDonald Gargan might have been a rather questionable person as a detective, but his professional competence was unquestionable. After compiling his findings, he looked at his two temporary teammates and Kingpin. Kingpin had brought in an Eastern-style armchair and sat on only half of it. He smiled pleasantly and gestured for MacDonald to continue.

"Right. This is my summary of his appearance times. It's very obvious that Spider-Man's activity patterns differ between weekdays and holidays, and there are distinct patterns on weekdays as well. He rarely appears between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon. That definitely isn't work hours—it can only be school. I compared the class schedules of schools across Manhattan, and seven schools match the criteria."

"Very good, Mr. Gargan."

Kingpin took the A4 sheet printed with the names of seven schools from MacDonald, glanced over it, then passed it to Prowler standing beside him with satisfaction. "If we fail to deal with Spider-Man for too long, this list may prove useful. But for now, let us consider how to eliminate Spider-Man directly. I have already arranged it: an entire building under construction, not under Fisk Industries' name. There are enough explosives inside to kill any living creature. Even if the blast fails to kill him, the collapsing ruins will be enough to bury Spider-Man."

"Now all we need is the right moment. When Spider-Man is in action, we let him discover us, and we can lure him into our trap."

Kingpin extended his palm, as if an invisible spider stood upon it, then viciously clenched his fist.

"And then, once and for all, eliminate Spider-Man."