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When Spidey Met Oracle	By : littleblackduck Category: zMisplaced Stories [ADMIN use only] > Spiderman Views: 37996 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: The Spider-Man universe and characters are owned by Marvel. The Oracle universe and characters are owned by DC. I make no profit from this work. This is a sequel to "When Spidey Met Batgirl." I think you should read that first, but that might just be

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
CHAPTER TWO: Brightest Brand New Day
Spider-Man wasn't sure if coming to the Black Cat's apartment was a mistake or not, but when she didn't show up for their meet, he didn't see what choice he had. He'd wasted an entire night on a rooftop in Chelsea waiting for her and he'd just spent the whole morning swinging around town to all her familiar haunts. No sign of her anywhere. And she wasn't answering at the number she'd texted from, either.
Technically, he wasn't supposed to know where she lived. Since the two of them started things up again, they'd been meeting in hotel rooms or the odd penthouse she'd break into while the super-rich tenants vacationed somewhere exotic. And while Spider-Man knew she was Felicia Hardy, she didn't know he knew that she moon-- er, daylighted as a special investigator for the Mayor's office under the alias Ashley Moon. Peter had run into her at City Hall back when he worked for Jonah. She could stuff all that platinum blonde hair under a brown wig if she wanted, but there was no disguising that seductive purr in her voice or that mischievous twinkle in her eyes. There was certainly no hiding that fantastic body. It was only slightly nicer than her apartment.
Felicia -- or rather Ashley -- had a Central Park view in a doorman building with antique fixtures, a working fireplace and private deck garden. If she blew out the kitchen wall, she could make a very nice breakfast nook.
Whatever she was making working for Jameson, it was easily three-times what Peter Parker'd been paid. Actually, the more he looked around, the more he was pretty sure this was that lavish luxury apartment they "borrowed" after that flameout with Firefly at the Museum of Natural History. When Spider-Man got to the bedroom, he knew he was right. The Black Cat had pretended to break in, the sexy little liar! Just because she knew how uncomfortable that kind of thing made him! Then she'd pushed him onto that bed…
"You know me, Spider," he remembered her saying as she slowly unzipped that crazy catsuit down to her navel. "A little B and E always gets me in the mood for a little suck and fuck." Then she wriggled her shoulders and those creamy white tits popped right out at him. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen her wear a bra in all the years he'd known her, yet those frisky kittens of hers never seemed to suffer from this habitual lack of support…
He barely had the chance to yank his mask up over his mouth before she pounced on him. His face buried in a buoyant abundance of spongy tit-flesh, he drew the fur-lined leather off her shoulders and pulled her suit down to her waist as she freed herself from its sleeves.
"Oh, Spiiiideeerr," Felicia had moaned, her naked hand rubbing the top of his masked head while he licked and sucked at her nipples. They were salty with the taste of her sweat and grew stiffer with every flick of his tongue. "You're quickly becoming my favorite fucktoy," she purred, lifting her tight, leather-clad ass so he could tug her costume down her thighs. She wasn't wearing any panties. Of course she wasn't. When he couldn't work the suit down any further, he let it drop and the heavy material settled over the tent he was pitching in his tights. She shifted her knees so that the tangle of her costume rubbed back and forth on his raging erection, sending a thrill up his spine that made him groan into a mouthful of tit. He caressed the back of her legs with his gloved hands, working his way up to the well-rounded cheeks of her ass which he squeezed before smacking her once.
"Ho!" she yipped when he slapped her. She seized the headboard so she could raise herself up, denying him that playful faceful of soft skin. "Am I being baaaaad, or are you just telling me where you want to ffffuuuuck me?" she teased, settling her bare ass onto his stomach as her breasts dangled over his face, swaying to and fro. He tried to lean up to kiss them, but she shifted down, intercepting his lips with her own. Her tongue slipped into his mouth. Felicia Hardy was a fantastic kisser. Always had been. Peter was so content to let her devour him that he almost missed her thrashing above him, her legs working frantically as his spandex-bound cock rubbed between her trembling thighs. It took him a moment to realize she was kicking off the rest of her costume. His hands had been kneading her ass throughout this mini-makeout session, but now he was trying to pull her back toward his dick so he could finally fuck her. He wanted that pussy so much. So, of course, she fought him. "Nuh-no," she whined, pulling back when his cock nestled into her ass-crack. "I-if you want a prize, kitty needs her cream…"
"Ooookay…" he sighed shakily. Peter wasn't some rake. He wanted her to enjoy this just as much as he knew he would. He slid his hands from her butt to caress the length of her long, supple legs, then started to massage her inner thighs.
"I… I just need to cum," she begged as his gloved fingers traced the thick lips of her slit. "Juh-just make me cum and we can have so much fun…" He pushed two digits into her then. "Haw!" she moaned, shuddering, as her eyes screwed themselves shut. "Oooooh! Hah! Uhn!" she whimpered as he started to finger-fuck her in earnest. He took the opportunity of her momentary distraction to bend up and lightly bite one of her plump nipples. "Nuh-nooo," she weakly asserted, pushing him down as she sat upright. "Baaaad itsy-bitsy spider," she admonished, reaching behind her to tug his spider-pants down and free his oozing prick. "Mmm-maybe nuh-not so itsy-bitsy," she corrected, stroking his manhood in time to the rhythm of his fingers thrusting into her cunt, driving him wild. His fingers blurred into her now. Her hips rolled forward, thrusting into the hand so desperate to pleasure her pussy. "Ah! Ah! I'm… close…" she moaned in broken gasps. His other hand had alternated between squeezing her ass and stroking her thigh, but now drifted upward to fondle her breast. He tweaked her hard nipple before pulling it hard. "Fah-ffffuuuuuck," Felicia groaned at the naughty sensation. "Oooohh, I love when you play with my titties, buh-but you know where I like it..." And he did. His hand trailed from her breast to her back, sliding down each bump of her spine until it returned to her ass. He pushed his thumb into her rosebud.
"Guh-gaaaawwd!" she cried, her sphincter closing on the bulb of one digit while she squirted cum on the other. Her whole body shook in her ecstasy, including those lovely, luscious titties of hers. Spider-Man wanted a mouthful of those puffy pink nipples, but she pinned him down to deny him again.
"Soooo good," she whined as he continued to rub circles into her anus through the last of her climax. She fell forward to kiss him again, the hand that had been stroking his cock now tapping it on her taint. He felt the warmth of her flesh, but something was off. Spidey looked down between them to see he was now wearing a condom.
"Huh-how the h-hell?" he wondered as she lightly squeezed his dick with her thighs. "Wh-when did you….?"
"I'm just full of surprises," she smiled, scooting back so that his rubber-hooded cock settled between her butt cheeks once again, "but right now, I want to be full of something else..."
"Shiiiiit," he groaned as she ground herself against him.
"Where do you want to take me?" she whispered into his ear. "You want kitty's pussy or asshole?"
"Whuh-whatever you want..." he said, his hand now clutching her tits as he gave himself over to her. "Juh-just let me fuck you, Felicia..."
"Soooo indecisive," she teased, leaning back so his hard cock found her cunt. "Uhn eh-eeeeeeney," she sighed, sinking onto his dick then. "Mmmmmeeeeeeney…" she moaned, slicking his length with her wet cunt as she rose up and down. He slipped out of her then, and he thought she just pulled up too far for a moment until she inched forward and perched her anus onto his dickhead. "Muh muh miiiiiiiney!" she huffed feeding his cock into her tight asshole.
"Mo!" Spider-Man grunted, grabbing her waist as he started to gently bugger the Black Cat.
"Bah! Huhn! Hah!" she shuddered. Her eyes lit up as he pulled her down on his manmeat, then screwed themselves shut as he pulled his dick back. "Awhn," she groaned before breaking off into tiny squeaks and whimpers as she slowly bounced up and down his erection. Her hands had been clapped on his chest, clutching fistfuls of red and blue spandex while he throttled her rectum, but she shifted her slight weight to move one to her pussy. "Fffffuck my ass, Spideeerrrr," she purred while she diddled her clit. He slipped a hand from her hip to close over the fingers she was using to pleasure herself. "Ooohhh -- mmm -- Do it!" she begged. He drove a finger into her cunt and she screamed, her pussy rippling around his pointer while the muscles deep in her ass pinched down on his dick. "Ah! Ahhhn… Arrr-aren't you do yet?" she whined when her orgasm faded.
"Oh! Oh! Almost!" he panted, still drilling her sphincter.
"I -- uhn! ah! -- nuh-know what you waaaant." She pulled his shirt up to his neck, exposing his torso. "Spider loooooves kitty's titties." Felicia fell forward, smashing her breasts into his chest. "Cum for kitty's sweet titties," she whispered into his ear, rubbing his nipples with hers.
Who was he to refuse? His dick pulsed as his boiling load spewed out.
"Good little fucktoy," she murmured when he was done, patting his head as she tenderly squirmed off of his cock. Now that she'd had her way with him, she cuddled up against his chest and dozed off. Content to feel her soft skin pressed onto his and exhausted, Spider-Man let himself fall into slumber. At that point, the two of them had been hooking up fairly regularly for a couple of months, but this was one of those rare times that they actually slept together…
Steady on, Spidey, he told himself in the present. Felicia's not here, which means she's probably in trouble.
Spider-Man checked the bathroom, and sure enough, there was that marble-tiled shower enclosure. He'd woken up alone that next day, which was typical for a morning after with Felicia, but this time, he heard the shower running. Neither his spider-sense nor the apartment's actual tenants were screaming, so he figured it was her, which he thought was weird at the time. He carefully crept out of bed to investigate and found her lathering her long legs with soap. "Good morning, sweetness," she practically sang when she saw him.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"If you really don't know, we might need to have a serious discussion about personal hygiene, man-friend," she teased, foaming up her flat, sexy tummy.
"Shouldn't we hightail it out of here?" he asked, only slightly distracted as she started running the bar soap over her chest.
"Trust me, nobody's coming to interrupt us," she assured him. "It's Sunday morning, Spider. What's the rush?"
He really didn't have anywhere to be. He'd just gotten fired. But he couldn't really just hang out here with her in someone else's place, could he?
She seemed to sense his indecision and turned toward him then, leaning against the transparent shower pane. "Help me shampoo my hair?" she asked, her soapy tits pressed against the steamy glass. "If you're good, I might even make you breakfast."
"You know how to make wheatcakes?" he asked stripping out of his costume. The mask had to stay on, which would eventually mean a lot of damp breathing, but she liked it that way.
"I'm an eggs and sausage kind of girl," she informed him. "Now let's clean that dick. Kitty's got needs…"
They got around to washing those long blonde tresses of hers eventually, and afterward, true to her word, she started making breakfast, going so far as to brew them some coffee. Peter's guilt about eating out of another person's refrigerator was tempered by the all too distracting sight of Felicia padding around the kitchen in only an apron.
"I'll tidy up," she told him after he finished eating. "Don't worry, Spider. When I'm done, no one will ever know we were here."
"Do you need any help?" he asked as she took his plate to the sink.
"Nope," she smiled. "Feel free to swing off at your leisure."
It was one of his favorite memories of their recent time together. A titillating mix of their emotionally-detached screwing and her mocking sexpot rendition of the kind of domesticity Peter Parker had grown up with and yearned for. At the time, he'd thought it was the Black Cat trying to meet him halfway. Now he realized that it was probably just Felicia maintaining her usual morning routine of coffee and breakfast while keeping him in the dark. He could hardly blame her. It's not like he'd ever taken her back to his place, after all.
Honestly, that's what kept things between them so charged in his mind. That constant tug and pull between complete transparency and unspoken expectation. It went both ways between them, each of them both fulfilled and denied in a dozen different ways at the same time from the same exchanges. If Ms. Marvel had invited Peter Parker to spend the night at her apartment, it would have meant one thing and one thing only. But for the Black Cat to bring Spider-Man back to her place after a scorching hot team-up -- all the while faking that it belonged to someone else -- made it something else entirely…
But he was getting distracted. He needed to find her, and clearly he was wasting his time here. He was all set to take off when he heard the beeping. A high-pitched tone coming from one of her dresser drawers. He yanked it open to find it bristling with a throng of panties. "Yikes!" Spider-Man said, slamming it closed. For all his worldly experience, at his heart he was still May Parker's prim and proper young gentleman. But there was still that infernal bleeping. He gently reopened the drawer and rooted through its frilly, satiny contents until he found something akin to a sci-fi Bluetooth headset. "The hell is this?" he wondered aloud.
"Spider-Man, this is Oracle," bellowed a slow, deep voice that sent chills down his spine. "If you want to see your girlfriend again, I'm afraid we're going to have to work together."
"There goes the friendly neighborhood," he groaned. "What do you know about Black Cat? Did you hurt her?"
"Hurt her? No!"
"Then why are you talking in kidnapper code?"
The voice from the machine sighed. A low, ominous sound. "I guess I can see how what I said before might lead you to that conclusion," it replied. "Felicia Hardy, aka 'Ashley Moon', aka 'The Black Cat' was working with me."
"Working with you?" he said. "Working with whom?"
"I told you," said the voice. "I'm Oracle."
"Never heard of you," Spider-Man replied.
"I'm a very private person," Oracle said. "In fact, would you please place the communicator in your ear so we can have this conversation a little more quietly?"
He took a long hard look at the device in his hand. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said. "I'm not even sure what this thing does."
"It's a communicator," Oracle told him. "I'm pretty sure I already mentioned that, Spider-Man."
"That's another thing," he said. "How do you know who I am? It doesn't feel like I'm being watched... My spider-sense would warn me if I was being watched..."
"I recognized your voice," Oracle told him. "Just put in the comm!"
"How do I know it's not rigged to explode or something?"
"Is it setting off your spider-sense?" Oracle asked, and Spider-Man slapped himself in the forehead. Why was he always so quick to gloat about how great it was to have an innate sense of impending danger? You've really gotta learn to keep that one under your hat, Pete, he admonished himself. It's been TEN YEARS.
The current calm of his spider-sense wasn't the most compelling argument -- it was notoriously spotty about just what constituted "impending danger," after all -- but he was running out of options. He slipped the communicator up under his mask.
"Okay," Spider-Man sighed once it was in place. "What'd you pay Black Cat to steal?"
"I didn't pay her to steal anything!" Oracle protested. "I just sent her on a mission that might have gotten her into some trouble."
"Right," Spider-Man replied. "What'd you pay her to steal?"
"She didn't steal anything," Oracle insisted. "She may, however, have appropriated some sensitive information belonging to a very dangerous man."
"That's just a fancy way of saying you paid her to steal something!"
"Do you want to talk semantics, or do you want to help me find her?"
"I can do both," Spider-Man said. "I'm an overachiever."
*
You're a smug jerk, Barbara thought. She couldn't believe she was having this conversation. She'd spent years trying to avoid this. And apparently, if she'd just asked Catwoman to make a Manhattan daytrip, she could have succeeded…
Spider-Man had never even heard of her?
Obviously, that was a good thing. There were too many people aware of Oracle's existence as it was. It had become a security risk over the years, so the fewer superheroes zipping around blathering about an information specialist on their side, the better. But Spider-Man tended to get around. She figured he would have heard at least a rumor by now…
"Just tell me what you see," she said, pulling herself together. "In the apartment."
"Uh, no signs of forced entry at the door or windows," he told her after what she assumed was a deep, cleansing breath. "No signs of a struggle…"
"Someone's been watching CSI," Barbara mused.
"I have a friend in the business," Spider-Man explained. "I've never been much of a detective, but I'm trying to get better."
Typical metahuman meathead, she thought to herself. Years of working under Bruce had tainted her against all these super-powered jocks who just punched their way through life. But as she brought the extensive dossier she'd compiled on Spider-Man up on one of her heads-up displays, she was reminded that he brought more than enhanced strength and speed to the table. There was a two-point difference in their respective IQs.
"Okay," she said, tying her hair up in a sloppy bun while she worked through the scenario. "So she probably wasn't taken from the apartment. But I'm guessing the communicator was stashed with her supplies. Any clues there?"
"Not really any clues there, nope," he explained. "No, bras either," he said a little bit softer.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"It was, um, in her underwear drawer," he admitted.
Of course it was, Barbara thought, rolling her eyes. She really might as well have gone with Selina. These cat burglar sex kittens were all exactly the same.
"And her Black Cat costume and gear's in a heap at the bottom of her coat closet," Spider-Man said. "Felicia's never been too traditional about the secret identity thing."
Great, Barbara thought. She'd clearly picked a real professional for this job. "Any other leads you can think of?" she asked.
"She works with a team," Spider-Man said. "Sometimes with Misty Knight and her Heroes for Hire crew, but she has her own personal support, too. There's a computer whiz guy and a gadget girl. Maybe one of them knows something."
"I've already spoken with them all," Barbara informed him. None of them had been too pleased that Oracle knew who they were and what they did, but when she told them Felicia might be in trouble, they wanted to help. "None of them have heard from her in days, but they're asking around."
"Damn," he said. "I might be the last one she's been in contact with."
"She called you?"
"Text message," Spider-Man corrected. "She said she needed help with something. I was supposed to meet her but she never showed. That's why I came here."
Damn it, Cat, Barbara fumed. She'd specifically asked Felicia not to do that! "I'd prefer if you didn't involve anyone else in this," Oracle had instructed the Black Cat when she recruited her. What was unclear about that? But this might just be the break Barbara needed.
"What's the number for that phone?" she asked.
"I don't know what good that's going to do," Spider-Man said after he rattled off the ten-digit sequence. "She hasn't been answering."
"I'm not going to call her," she sighed. "I'm going to dump her phone log. Maybe even run a trace if we're lucky and the cell's still intact."
"You can do that?" he asked.
"That's the least of what I'm capable of," she answered, working the computer interface. "Got a trace!" she announced. "She's headed east on 23rd Street. I'll try to cross-reference the phone GPS with satellite imaging and footage from any available security cam with eyes on the street. See if I can see her."
"Satellite imaging?" he repeated. "What are you? S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"I'm part of an organization that's about to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. in the dust," she replied with a sense of pride she hadn't expected since Bruce had announced this "Batman Incorporated" insanity. "Get a move on."
*
Spider-Man was out the window and web-swinging his way downtown in a flash. He was a good forty or fifty blocks away from 23rd Street, but the way he moved, that shouldn't take him too long. Everything was happening so fast. And he still didn't really know who or what he was dealing with.
"So, who are you, Oracle?" he asked, swing down Fifth Avenue.
"You want to trade secret identities?" Oracle responded. "Fine. You first."
"I don't mean what's your real name or anything," he said. "I just want to know what your deal is."
"My deal?"
"You said you're not S.H.I.E.L.D., but are you with another organization? Is Oracle a new agency or something?"
"I guess you can say I'm an independent resource to the superhero community who can provide information and data retrieval with my specialized computer skills."
"So you're kind of a worldwide web-head…"
"Sure," Oracle responded. Spidey could hear her eyes rolling over the line.
"How'd the Black Cat get into all of this anyway?"
"I trust you're familiar with Norman Osborn," Oracle said.
"Duh," Spider-Man replied. "I was punching that jerk in the face before it was cool."
"Then I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of things he got up to with unlimited resources and an unchecked global mandate," Oracle continued. "He kept the truly awful stuff off of the H.A.M.M.E.R. mainframe, but I knew he had to have files stashed somewhere. Turns out it was all on a flash drive he secured in his private vault at Osborn Industries' corporate headquarters right before he attacked Asgard."
"It's always flash drives these days," Spider-Man murmured. "Whatever happened to microfilm? There was a certain touch of class to microfilm…"
"Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Sorry," he said. "Continue."
"I hired the Black Cat to recover--"
"I believe you mean 'steal'…"
"Fine," Oracle conceded. "I hired Black Cat to steal the drive."
"And now she's missing."
"No, the recovery -- er, theft went off without a hitch," Oracle explained. "She completed delivery last week."
"So how do you know her disappearance has anything to do with you?"
"I screwed up," Oracle admitted. "Osborn had locked up the drive... He'd encrypted the data... I didn't expect there to be any other countermeasures..."
"But there were," he guessed.
"A self-destruct worm," Oracle said. "As soon as I opened the files they started erasing themselves. I managed to stop it in time -- it wasn't that sophisticated, really -- but one of the files was corrupted. I recovered what I could, but all I really know is that it involves a facility in the New York City area. I contacted Felicia to see if she'd heard anything about it, and she volunteered to look into it. Free of charge. She was supposed to check in last night, but she didn't. Maybe she's working another job right now or lost interest, but I doubt it. She really seemed like she wanted to handle this one. She said it might make her look good for the Avengers."
"Of course she did," Spider-Man sighed. Ever since Osborn had fallen and the web-head was now back on an officially sanctioned Avengers team instead of Luke Cage's motley underground crew, Felicia had been subtly hinting that she'd like to join up, too. He was actually glad because if she was doing legitimate superheroics it probably wouldn't leave her much time for burglary, but at the same time, he felt insecure enough on the team without his semi-crazy ex-girlfriend-with-benefits hanging around to break his spider-themed booties.
"Got a visual fix," Oracle told him. "The phone's in a cab."
"Which one?" Spider-Man asked, swooping down over 23rd Street around the Flatiron Building.
"First one stopped at the light on Madison Avenue," Oracle sighed, "but don't bother…"
He wasn't listening. He was already on the street, tearing the passenger side door off its hinges. "Cat?" he called out. But there was only the middle-aged cabbie and two frightened French tourists in the back.
*
Thanks to a feed from an ATM security camera positioned at the corner of 23rd and Madison, Barbara had watched the whole thing play out onscreen. "Gee, Spider-Man," she said. "I wonder how you get all that bad press in the papers…"
"Yeah, this was kind of stupid of me," Spider-Man admitted, still holding the car-door.
Barbara took off her glasses to rub the bridge of her nose for a moment before settling back into the work. "Okay," she said. "Tell Mr. Dickles that you're sorry and that money's currently being wired into his checking account for the damages."
"Who's Mr. Dickles?" Spider-Man asked.
"The cab driver," she answered. Barbara had pulled up his data as soon as she got a clear view of the taxi's license plate: Charles Dickles, Jr. No criminal record. Facial recognition software hadn't matched his DMV photo to any known felons. He was clean. "Now, apologize," she told Spider-Man. "Preferably while searching the back of the cab for Black Cat's cell phone. As I tried to tell you before you attacked that poor defenseless door, she's not there. Whoever took her ditched her phone in the cab to throw anybody trying to track her off the trail. Probably did so as a passenger. Find it."
While he was doing that, Barbara was funneling the appropriate amount of cash into Dickle's checking account from one of her discretionary funds -- including a hefty bonus for what she could only imagine was the absolute horror of dealing with the amazingly neurotic Spider-Man.
"Found it!" the web-head chimed just as she finished.
"Good," she said. "Now just web the door back into the frame so everyone can go on their merry little way. I'll stop holding the red light."
"Anyone ever point out that you can be a bit bossy?" Spider-Man asked, doing as ordered.
"Anyone ever point out that you can be a bit of an impulsive idiot?" she countered, watching him leap out of range of the ATM camera to web-swing away.
"My bad," he admitted. "I tend to panic when my friends go missing. Especially if Norman Osborn's involved."
"Osborn's in jail," she said. "We can't assume he's involved."
"We can't assume that he's not," Spider-Man insisted. "Where the hell is she?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," she sighed. "The whole point of dumping the Cat's phone was so that now, even if I backtrack through the GPS record since she disappeared, it's going to be a wild goose chase."
"Where was she when she texted me?" Spider-Man asked. "That's got to be better than nothing, right?"
"It might be worth a shot," Barbara figured, though she had her doubts. But like he said, it was better than nothing. It took her a moment to cross-reference the GPS history with the call log. "City Hall," she told him.
"Probably from her office," he replied. "Might find something there. I'll check it out."
Barbara sat back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. It wasn't the worst lead, really. If Felicia had found something, she'd probably used her access to city records as Ashley Moon to get it. But Barbara wasn't sure whether she actually wanted the Black Cat not to be smart enough to know how to cover her tracks. Chances were this was just another dead end, and then what? There was just too little to go on. She needed more information…
And there was only one way she might get it.
*
J. Jonah Jameson wasn't anybody's damn fool. A bad ticker and a treacherous board of directors had ripped the Daily Bugle from him, but now he was the goddamn mayor of the greatest fucking city on God's green earth. It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't an accident. He was the right goddamn man for the job. Because he knew what New York really needed.
He was J. Jonah Jameson… and he knew everything.
He knew what people whispered behind his back… That he was a cantankerous crumb-bum… That he was a cheap skinflint… That he had an unhealthy bias against that dog-fucking wall-crawler… Well fuck 'em. He was a "cantankerous crumb-bum" because somebody had to ask the hard questions about this flawed, woe-begotten world. He was a "cheap skinflint" because he grew up before the goddamn internet bubble boom after which yuppie scum thought it was completely acceptable to leave their half-drunk five dollar froufrou coffee drinks behind while they ran off to spend twenty bucks on a movie. And he was against the web-head because Spider-Man was a goddamn menace, dammit!
And J. Jonah Jameson knew who worked for him. He'd sussed out that crooked Parker kid had doctored that photo of Jonah fighting the Vulture to clear those ridiculous TMZ reports that he was in league with that weird winged freak. Parker thought he was so smart, but J. Jonah Jameson could see into that little punk's goddamn soul. Peter fucking Parker had no secrets from J. Jonah Jameson. Neither did Ashley Moon. He knew the shameful truth about her from the beginning. There was no way some damned masked crusader was going to work right under his nose and he wasn't going to know who she was.
When he saw Moon's resume in his search for a lead investigator for the Mayor's office, he'd been impressed, and that alone had been enough to get him suspicious. Joe Robertson had been the best hire Jonah ever made, and Robbie's resume had been a goddamn mess. Good workers had this stupid assumption that the god's honest truth would get them that job. Ambitious social climbers and sociopaths knew they needed to play their potential employer. Jameson had learned over the years that a good manager hired a balance of saints and sinners to ensure the workplace hummed with just the right amount of controlled chaos.
So he decided to meet with this Ashley Moon, and the second she marched into his office, wiggling those tits under her smart little business suit, he knew exactly who he was dealing with… the goddamn Black Cat. She could cover all that crazy white hair with a ratty brown wig, but J. Jonah Jameson was a newspaperman, and a newspaperman never forgot a face. And he certainly never forgot a pair of tits.
He decided to interview her for a bit -- just to break up his day at first, but the longer the interview went, the more qualified he realized she was. And then it occurred to him that if he had her on the payroll, he might just manage to get some crucial information on that blasted Spider-Man. He knew the two of them had been involved at some point…
"You're hired!" he found himself announcing. "Welcome to City Hall!"
She smiled then, positively beaming, and when his heart skipped a beat it briefly occurred to Jameson that someone might need to warn her about flashing that sexy little grin in the presence of someone who'd recently survived a severe cardiac event. "I should tell you, Your Honor, I'm not exactly who you think I am," she said. "My name's really Felicia Hardy. I'm also the Black Cat."
And that's when J. Jonah Jameson realized he wasn't talking to just another mask trying to pull a fast one. Because, again, Jameson wasn't anybody's fool. He knew that Spider-Man's actions tended to do more good than harm. But if it was as simple as that, then why did the wall-crawler hide behind that ridiculous mask? If he was really as good and as true as his actions seemed to indicate, then why not tell the world who he was? Spider-Man had to be hiding something… and it had to be something so terrible and evil that it'd obliterate all the good he'd supposedly done. It was the only explanation…
Despite Jonah's earlier suspicions, the Black Cat was a different case entirely. She worked around going through the proper channels, assuming she didn't have a shot otherwise, and when her subterfuge seemed to work, she'd come clean. That was exactly the type of devious morality he wanted in his investigative department… but he needed to know the truth.
"Who is he?" he asked her flatly. "Who is Spider-Man?" She had to know who he really was. And if she was looking for a job with him, he had to assume she was willing to give the web-head up.
"I don't know his real name," Hardy told him. "He was always just The Spider to me."
J. Jonah Jameson knew a falsehood when he saw one. He was a goddamn human lie detector. She wasn't lying. Which meant Spider-Man was just as depraved as he always suspected. He'd heard the stories. He'd seen the pictures. What kind of man carried on a sexual liaison with a woman without telling her who he was? A predatory deviant like that web-slinging fraud, that's who!
So Mayor J. Jonah Jameson hired the Black Cat. And she did good work. When Jonah asked her to look into Dexter Bennett, that smarmy smug bastard that managed to snake the Bugle out from under him, the Cat managed to save hundreds of lives when she uncovered one of Bennett's shady construction deals mere hours before a building collapsed. And while Spider-Man had clearly been involved in her investigation, he let it slide. It was better if he got that wall-crawling whack job comfortable with her. Maybe one day he'd slip up enough for them to finally nail him!
So no, Jameson wasn't the monster everybody assumed he was. Jonah was willing to dole out a second chance to someone who deserved one. But he couldn't excuse laziness, and he wouldn't put up with a no-call/no-show.
He knew Felicia Hardy, or "Ashley Moon", or whatever the hell she wanted to call herself hadn't produced anything worthwhile for days. And that wasn't acceptable. At all. He stormed his way into her office to tell her just that, but when he pushed open the door, he found the room empty.
It was very possible that she was off working a lead or following a hunch -- one of the things he loved most about Felicia working for him was that it was the closest his duties as mayor came to feeling like working back at the Bugle -- but the old newsman in Jameson's heart told him she hadn't been here all day…
And it told him something else: Spider-Man was hiding in the room.
J. Jonah Jameson had spent the last ten years of his life dealing with that web-slinging menace… both by revealing his high-flying scandals to the world at large, as well as suffering Spider-Man's childish attempts at retribution afterwards. Jameson had developed an ability to tell when that wall-crawling weasel was around that bordered on extra-sensory perception… and his menace-sense was jangling.
"I know you're in here, you dog-humping piece of shit!" he announced to the room. "And I know exactly where you're hiding! I'm not like the punks and thugs you pull your little flimflams with! J. Jonah Jameson's got the good sense to look up!"
At that, Jameson reached for the light switch and scanned the ceiling frantically…
Nothing.
"Damn," he muttered quietly.
He shrugged as he stormed out of the office. Jonah was only human. He made mistakes just like anyone else. Maybe one of those mistakes had been hiring Spider-Man's slacker ex-girlfriend in the first place. It was clearly making him edgy.
Okay, he told himself, command decision time. If Hardy wasn't in tomorrow, he'd call out the National Guard. And if she showed up without a good excuse, he'd just dock her pay. Spare the good people of New York City her exorbitant hourly rate for a few days. Seemed fair.
Goddamn, it was good to be king.
*
"Jeez Louise," Spider-Man grumbled, crawling out from under Felicia's desk once the old bastard was safely down the hall. He'd actually had to tuck himself up into the corners and cling there just to be sure Jameson couldn't see his feet through the gap.
"Find anything useful?" Oracle chirped.
"Not sure," he said, stretching his cramped back for a moment. "She had a pile of files on her desk. City records of all of OsCorp's New York real estate holdings… If you want I can grab them and take them to you…"
"Don't bother," Oracle said. "I've just downloaded everything in the City Hall records regarding Osborn's holdings."
"Of course you have," he sighed, climbing out of Felicia's office window. "Anything promising?"
"Hard to tell," Oracle admitted. "Osborn has a lot of property in the area."
"Start with the most obscure buildings in the seediest neighborhoods," he suggested. "Norman's always buried the worst of his crap as deeply as possible."
"Great," Oracle said. "Did you find anything useful that was offline in Hardy's office?"
"The last date in her appointment book before she texted me said she ordered car service to Grand Central Station," he explained, swinging away from City Hall.
"So she could have gone anywhere after that," Oracle concluded.
"Osborn's still our best lead," he said.
"I guess you're right," Oracle sighed.
"But he's in jail," Spider-Man said. "Right?"
"I'm looking at surveillance footage of him right now," Barbara assured him a hundred miles away up in her tower, where in the upper right hand corner of her holographic heads-up display, she was watching Norman Osborn read a book in his cell at the Raft. This wasn't any techno-trickery on her part. GBS had been running a live-feed of Osborn ever since he'd been incarcerated. "The little dictator's right where he's supposed to be."
"I didn't know you had eyes on hell," Spider-Man muttered. "So what's with this grudge against Osborn, anyway? I mean, the more people keeping tabs on him the better, obviously, but everyone else stopped worrying once he got locked up…"
Barbara sighed. This was essentially the same question Batman had asked her yesterday, and if she hadn't wanted to talk about it with Bruce, she definitely didn't want to talk about it with Spider-Man…
Because her passion for all of this was driven by one simple fact: Barbara was pretty sure that Norman Osborn had killed Gwen Stacy.
There was a lot of confusion surrounding the Green Goblin. There were at least four different people who'd reportedly assumed the identity, to say nothing of the Hobgoblins, Demogoblins and other related menaces that had appropriated the same M.O. through the years. Norman Osborn had certainly done everything within his considerable power to plant an astonishing amount of misinformation to confuse the matter even further. So much so that even Oracle couldn't sort everything out. She was 80% certain that Norman had been wearing the costume when the Green Goblin had thrown that beautiful blonde girl she used to babysit off the George Washington Bridge.
Barbara's only lingering doubt about this was Norman's son, Harry. While all evidence seemed to indicate that the younger Osborn hadn't taken the Goblin mantle until well after Gwen died, it seemed to her that Harry, Gwen's classmate in both high school and college, was far more likely to have some motive to murder her than Norman ever would. But there was no accounting for the intentions of madmen.
If there was one lesson Barbara had learned in her life, it was that.
This all might have been easier to figure out if she had known about Gwen's death when it happened, but it'd been almost an entire year before Barbara's father finally told her. If she hadn't asked if he'd heard from her lately, she doubted Dad ever would have. She could tell from the way he looked at her when she asked after Gwen that something terrible had happened.
"Gwen died, Barbara," he said finally. He went on to explain the few circumstances he knew of her death. How he'd taken the trip to New York on his own for the funeral. He'd paid his respects to Gwen's Uncle Arthur and her cousins. "I even had a brief word with Gwen's boyfriend," Jim said. "Pat Palmer or some such. Poor kid looked like his whole world had imploded. Wish I could say I'd never seen anything like it before, but I've been a cop for the last thirty years."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Barbara asked. "I would have gone with you…"
"It was a while ago," Jim said. "Right after your accident."
It used to infuriate her when he called the Joker's assault her "accident". There hadn't been anything accidental about it. But eventually she realized that he had to call it that. Otherwise, he had to face his own guilt about what happened to her. The Joker hadn't been gunning for Barbara because she'd been Batgirl. He'd been after her dad and she just happened to be there. She'd just been another one of his casual casualties. An after thought.
Eventually, she even understood why her father probably thought it was best not to tell her about Gwen's death when it happened. Barbara was still in the hospital, recovering, after all. And the two girls only knew each other because their dads had been partners years before either of them had been born. It wasn't as if Gwen had ever been Babs' best friend. The five year age difference between them was part of it. They'd practically lost touch well before Barbara went to college. In fact, the last time she'd spoken with Gwen was when little Miss Stacy come to Gotham University for a campus visit several years back. Gwen had called to ask if Barbara wanted to catch up over coffee, but it had been in Barbara's early years as Batgirl, and she was busy with that and her job at the library. And Barbara had figured there would always be time later. Because she was young and so was Gwen and they had their whole lives ahead of them…
Looking back on it now, Barbara realized that the night Gwen Stacy died had been a big moment for her. Learning that someone she'd known had been killed so soon after she'd been paralyzed put some things into perspective. She remembered that Gwen's father, George, had passed away a few months before Gwen -- another funeral she missed because she'd been busy. It was then that Barbara realized she didn't have a monopoly on personal tragedy. A lesson she probably should have remembered considering she'd once stood shoulder to shoulder with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, but she had been so mad at them both at the time.
Loss does funny things to people…
"Oracle?" Spider-Man said.
"What?" she snapped, ripped from her reverie. Would he ever shut up?
"I, um, I asked about Osborn," he replied. She could hear the surprise and hurt in his voice. "I just, uh… never mind."
"Sorry," Barbara said. She was so tired. "I'm just… frustrated with this."
She knew that thinking about Gwen Stacy would only complicate working with Spider-Man further. Gwen, a cop's daughter through and through, had been very careful to keep her personal information off of the internet, so Barbara had never really been able to get much sense of her social life. But it was common knowledge that Spider-Man had been involved somehow. It wasn't just the fact that he'd been there fighting the Goblin when it happened -- just like he'd been there when George Stacy died -- or the coroner's report which implied that it'd been Spider-Man's attempt to save Gwen that had been the cause of her death. Barbara didn't blame him. She knew enough about him to know he wasn't a killer. No matter what she'd read in the Daily Bugle. But she also knew he could probably answer some of the questions she had... if she could only ask them, but she couldn't. Not to him…
"I guess Norman Osborn's a bit of a sore subject," she told Spider-Man finally.
"Trust me," he said. "I understand the feeling".
"I bet you do," she murmured bitterly.
"Are you… mad at me?" he asked.
"Perhaps we should maintain radio-silence until I figure out our next move," Barbara suggested.
"So you are mad at me," he insisted.
"I'm not mad at you, Spider-Man," she sighed.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Because I can't shake this feeling that you don't like me for some reason, Oracle…"
"I like you fine, Spider-Man," she said through gritted teeth.
"Wouldn't blame you if you didn't," he mused. "I know I've got a certain reputation -- completely undeserved, mind you."
"You just menaced a cab driver!"
"Accidentally!" he said. "Totally not my fault!"
"Jesus," said Barbara. "Are you always this whiny, Peter?!"
The second she'd said it, she realized her mistake.
"You know who I am?!" Spider-Man cried. "You can't know who I am! Who are you, Oracle?!"
Well this certainly wasn't going to make working with him any easier…
NEXT: The Secret Life of the Amazing Web-Slinger
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When Spidey Met Oracle