"Harry!" Twilight snapped, tackling her boyfriend to the couch and attempting to grab the controller from him "It's my turn now!"

"No it isn't Twi" Harry smirked "I haven't died yet" He managed to keep Twilight at bay with his leg while also keeping hold of the controller and not die.

"You're never going to" Twilight grunted, trying to escape the leg hold Harry had her in "You're too good at the game"

"I am aware of this Twilight, that's why I made the deal that we trade when one of us dies" Harry chuckled "That's one thing I learned from my father, why bother learning the deck and it's tricks when you can just pay off the dealer?" There came a brief knock at the door before it creaked open, Cadance sticking her head in.

"What are you two yelling about?" she asked with a small smile on her face.

"Harry's cheating!" Twilight exclaimed, pointing at her boyfriend as she leaned over the couch. Harry scoffed loudly, slamming his thumb down onto the reload button as he ducked behind cover.

"I'm not cheating" Harry smirked "And what are you, five?" Cadance rolled her eyes, shutting the door and walking over to the wall, leaning against it with her arms folded.

"So, what are we doing now?" Cadance asked.

"I'm waiting for Harry to die so I can have my turn" Twilight glowered.

"You're going to be waiting for a while Twilight, I'm way too good at this game to-" Harry began only to have another player gun him down within seconds, followed by Harry releasing a loud and shrill scream. The two girls looked at the young man in his moment of terror before he quickly regained himself, cleared his throat and growled at the TV.

"I swear to God if I see someone else running around this map with those damn dual-wield Kap 40s I am going to sell my Xbox" he hissed.

"Hey-" Twilight said, taking the controller from him with a smug grin "At least we're not playing Hijacked where everyone just turns the boat into a sniping range" Twilight quickly switched her class to her custom built one which contained an RPG as a primary weapon and a riot shield as her secondary. Harry looked at her with an extremely bemused expression, the look being noticed and briefly questioned.

"What?" Twilight asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"An RPG?" Harry questioned "That is the cheapest thing ever"

"Oh shut up" Twilight said, slapping him on the arm.

"Ewww!" Harry jokingly exclaimed "The touch of a casual!" Twilight rolled her eyes while Cadance chuckled, enjoying the banter between the two teens thoroughly. Twilight rounded a corner in the game and executed her strategy which included throwing a C4 with fast hands equipped only to drop shot with the RPG. Twilight's cocky smile was wiped off her face immediately as the C4 was thrown back and the other player survived the RPG explosion, proceeding to kill her and collect her tags.

"Flak jacket!" the two teens yelled angrily, causing Cadance to jump in surprise.

"That is so cheap!" Twilight glared.

"How do you even dare?" Harry asked before his phone began to ring, the ringtone being the Japanese opening theme for Fairy Tale. Twilight looked at him for a brief second before chuckling.

"Dork" she commented. Harry sneered jokingly at her before checking the caller ID.

"Huh, it's Aunt May" he noted "I wonder what she needs?" Harry walked over to the window and answered the call placing the phone to his ear and speaking.

"Hello?" he asked. He was silent for a few seconds and Twilight turned her attention back to the game, switching her class to something close-range. Out of the corner of her eye however she noticed Harry's face drop a mile.

"What!?" he exclaimed, getting the attention of the two girls.

"I... fuck, where are you now?" Harry asked, his eyes widened in horror "I'll be there as soon as possible" Harry hung up the phone with a quick goodbye and grabbed his jacket off the coat rack by the window.

"Hey, what's happening?" Twilight asked as Harry rushed around the room.

"Peter's Uncle Ben-" Harry muttered "He's been... he's been murdered"

"What?!" Twilight demanded "Where, how!?"

"I don't know, Aunt May is at the police station while they're looking for Peter" Harry explained.

"He's not with her?" Twilight asked.

"No, I'm going to the station to try and talk to her" Harry continued.

"I'm coming too" Twilight announced.

"I'll drive there, Shining took the squad car and left the Beamer here tonight" Cadance added.

"Thanks Cadance" Harry nodded "Shit, I hope Peter's OK"

"Me too" Twilight nodded "Where the hell could he be?"

Peter gripped the edge of the railings as he threw up into the Hudson River, creating a guttural and disgusting sound. After a few seconds the vomit stream ended and he fell back onto the ground, wiping his mouth with his sleeve but feeling no better. The gun he had used to kill, no, murder that man with was now at the bottom of the Hudson River. Peter's hands were freezing cold and he felt sick to his stomach, his conscience dirtied by the death on his hands. The riverside was nearly abandoned that time at night, without even joggers or late night dog walkers. He had removed the hat and mask from his head and stuffed them into the inside pocket of his jacket and had decided that he was going to destroy them when he got home.

"Fuck..." Peter muttered to himself, his mind flashing back to the look he had been given by the man before he murdered him and then to the look Uncle Ben had given before dying. The looks of disappointment and fear had been haunting him for several hours now, replaying in his mind over and over to make sure he never forgot what he had done. As he sat there on the cold ground he replayed the whole scene in his mind, from finding the girl, to attacking the man with the pipe-.

"Oh fuck!" Peter exclaimed, leaping to his feet as he remembered that he had left the pipe behind. It had the blood of the man and his fingerprints on it still.

"I-I need to go back" Peter mumbled, turning around and setting off at a sprint "If I can steal the pipe away from the police then they'll have no way to prove I was there-" Doing as he knew he had to he leaped through the dark city, rooftop to rooftop until he reached the scene of the crime where a forensics crew had been dispatched and were surveying the crime scene.

"No..." Peter hissed under his breath. There was no way now that he would be able to get the pipe back without being spotted. Either they'd found it and it was in the back of their forensics van or even worse, on the way to a forensics lab, or they hadn't found it just yet but were soon going to. Knowing that getting the pipe back was his only way to stay out of jail he had to get it back, by any means necessary. He reached into his jacket pocket, ready to get his disguise back on only to have his eye catch a glimmer of movement across the rooftops. Moving quickly he ducked behind a set of air vents, poking his head out to see the shadowy figure drop down to street level with feline gracefulness.

"The hell?" Peter asked himself. The figure moved quickly into the light for only a second, illuminating a slender feminine figure dressed in a black outfit with flowing, white hair. She pressed herself up against the forensics van, looking inside it for something to steal presumably. Peter slowly lowered himself into a prone position and crawled to the edge of the rooftop to get a better view of what was happening. The woman reached inside the van and pulled out a grey pipe with a large blood splotch on it. Peter's eyes widened in shock as she removed a small piece of equipment from her belt and clicked a button.

A beam of light began to shine from the bar, somehow wiping the blood away from the weapon without ever touching it.

"What is she doing?" Peter muttered. The woman then took two more small, round objects from her belt and held each one in either hand.

"Hey!" an angry voice yelled from inside the alley. Both Peter and the strange woman turned to look at the voice, realizing that it was one of the forensics team who had now alerted the others in the alley.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"Sorry boys, nothing personal" she chuckled in a very playful tone "Just business" With that she thumbed down two buttons on either ball, throwing one down the alley and another into the back of the forensics van before leaping away. Peter's eyes leaped onto the forensics van and then back to the forensics officer before his sixth sense flared up wildly.

"Shit!" Peter roared, throwing himself backwards off the roof as the two spheres detonated into equally massive explosions. Peter slapped his hand to the wall as he tumbled off the back of it, hearing the sounds of glass shattering and rubble flying everywhere as the explosions destroyed the alleyway and the several buildings surrounding it. Peter jumped back into the street and barely managed to dodge the falling rubble as it slammed into the ground where he had been seconds earlier. As the explosions died down the silence became very strong once more, giving Peter time to think.

"The officers..." he panted "They're all dead..." Another wave of guilt washed over Peter as he realized that while he had been standing around gawking he could've done something to intervene, he could've stopped the woman or he could've saved their lives. Now there were over five people dead because of him, through action or inaction, families had been ruined and lives had been destroyed because he had failed. As the sound of sirens entered his hearing range he once again fled the scene of the crime, his crime hidden but the guilt still with him.

Harry rushed through the precinct, Twilight close behind him, before seeing May sat in a chair sobbing her eyes out, a box of tissues on a table next to her and a female officer sat across from her with a sympathetic look on her face. The officer noticed Harry first and she stood up with her hand extended.

"Sir I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to leave" she said calmly.

"My name's Harry Osborne" Harry said quickly "I'm a friend of Mrs Parker's family" May seemed to notice Harry and she looked up at him with bloodshot eyes.

"Harry, have you seen Peter yet?" she asked in a heartbroken tone.

"No Aunt May, I haven't" Harry sighed "The last time I saw him was at school today"

"Oh, where he could be?" May asked, placing her face back into her hands and sobbing. Harry placed a hand to his head and screwed his eyes shut, thinking of everywhere and anywhere Peter could be at that point. All the places they used to hang out at as kids, places Peter mentioned he'd liked, anywhere that he might think to go. Harry's phone went off in his pocket and on a glimmer of hope he grabbed it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID.

"Peter?" Harry asked as he answered the phone "Where the hell are you man?" Everyone in the room looked at Harry at this point and he quickly turned his phone onto loudspeaker.

"I-I'm around" Peter muttered from the other end of the phone.

"Peter, we're all worried sick about you" Harry said shakily "We're at the police station with your Aunt May, your Uncle Ben's been-"

"Murdered... yeah I know" Peter said, cutting him off in a tone that made him sound as if he were on the edge of tears.

"You know?" Harry asked in a shocked tone "How do you know?"

"I was... I was there" Peter answered "It's my fault"

"Peter!" May shouted from her seat "It's not your fault, just tell us where you are and-"

"Aunt May it is my fault!" Peter yelled, his voice breaking on the last word "I was there when he got shot, I could've stopped the guy and I didn't!"

"Hey, slow down Peter, just tell us what happened" Harry said slowly, trying to comfort his friend.

"When I ran out of school today, Uncle Ben came looking for me. I went into a store to get a drink and got into an argument with the cashier-" Peter explained, trying to keep his voice steady enough to talk "When I left some guy robbed the money out of the register and threw me the drink I couldn't afford. I wanted to get back at the cashier for acting the way he did so I held the door open for the guy and didn't try to stop him" Harry grimaced painfully while Twilight put a hand to her mouth in shock as Peter explained what had happened. They could hear Peter weeping softly on the other end of the phone for several seconds before Harry spoke up.

"What happened then?" Harry asked.

"The cashier noticed what happened and ran out after the guy, screaming for someone to help-" Peter continued "And when I turned around I heard Uncle Ben shout... and I heard a gunshot...-" Peter's voice trailed off as he began to sob again. Harry looked over to May who had now stood up and was walking towards the phone.

"Listen to me young man, I know you may feel like this is your fault but listen to me when I say this, there's nothing you could have done" May said, tears streaming down her face "You did the right thing by not getting involved"

"How can you say that?!" Peter roared "Uncle Ben is dead because of me, I let that guy go and he shot Uncle Ben... I could've stopped it from happening"

"No you couldn't Peter, if you had tried to do anything he would've shot you too" May snapped "Is that what you wanted to happen?"

"No!" Peter sobbed "I... I just-"

"Peter, listen to me. I know you feel like this is all your fault but blaming yourself isn't going to fix this, it's only going to make it worse" May said in a softer tone "You're angry right now, and you're lashing out at whatever you can. What you need to do is come down to the police station and give a witness statement about what you saw and then we can let the police deal with this, I know it's hard but it's the right thing to do" Peter sobbed for several long seconds before taking a deep breath and clearing his throat.

"OK" he muttered "I'm on my way now"

May threw her arms around her nephew as the two of them began to sob together. Harry clapped his friend on the back while Twilight and Cadance merely stood back, both of them mist-eyed as they looked at the family.

"I'm sorry Aunt May" Peter murmured.

"Don't be-" May sighed "You couldn't have done anything" Peter stepped back from his Aunt and looked at her in the eyes, wishing that he could tell her about what had happened but he knew that the last thing she needed was for her only remaining family member to go to jail on murder charges. At this moment a police officer walked over to Peter and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Son-" he asked in a deep voice "Do you think you're ready to give a statement now?"

"Yeah, I think so" Peter nodded. There was a moment of silence before the door swung open and Shining stormed into the room with a phone in his left hand and a case file in his right.

"I am aware of that Mack" Shining growled "The attacked, whoever it was, took down a whole forensics team and two of our own" Shining slammed the case file onto the table, waving at his wife before furrowing his brow in confusion as to why his sister was there. A photo slid out from the case file, a photo of the man that had shot Peter's Uncle hours earlier. Peter picked up the photo with shaky hands as a tear slid down his cheek.

"Son?" the police officer asked, Shining hanging up the phone and looking at Peter "You alright?"

"That's him" Peter announced "That's the guy that shot Uncle Ben" Shining gently took the photo from Peter and handed it to his co-worker.

"Then you'll be happy to hear that he's dead" Shining sighed "We found what was left of him and one of our teams in an alley earlier tonight after someone had blown the place to pieces"

"What are you talking about?" Peter asked, faking to not know what was going on.

"Well, our theory is that this guy had connections to this city's invisible crime lord, and once he got picked off by someone tonight, that same crime lord sent in a clean-up crew to destroy the evidence and anyone else who was near it at the time" Shining said.

"Why would they do that?" Cadance asked, speaking after having been quiet for so long.

"A cover up" Shining answered "Whoever this guy was the crime lord wanted his trail to go dead"

"He didn't do a very good job of it" Peter said, wiping his eyes "He's now got a lot more heat on him than if he'd just let this run it's course"

"Exactly" Shining nodded, snapping his fingers loudly "It doesn't fit what he usually does, why d'you think he did that?"

"Bait?" Peter asked, glad his mind was being taken off the current situation with a little bit of critical thinking.

"Exactly" Shining nodded "I think our crime lord expected someone to be there and he then sent in his clean-up crew in to execute with extreme prejudice"

"Who's he going after though?" Twilight asked.

"I think he's gunning for someone he wants out of the picture" Shining explained "I think he expected me to be there"

"So what are we gonna do Boss?" a thick Manhattan accent asked.

"What we're going to do is we're going to get that little thief off this job and instead bring in someone else we can trust to perform the job... efficiently" a deep, powerful voice stated calmly.

"And who's that gonna be?" the other man asked.

"Do we still know the whereabouts of that Mr Marco?" the deep-voiced man asked.

"Flint?" the accent asked "Yeah, lives in Soho last time I checked, he gonna do the cop in?"

"No, no, I don't want Armour dead, I just want him to stay out of the picture, the thief was supposed to send a warning, not attempt to kill the fair Captain" the man continued "We're going to be more subtle with our friend Marco here"

"Ahhh, we gonna send him after Armour?"

"No, we're going to deal a more crushing blow to Mr Armour" the boss said "We're going to send him after his wife" Next Chapter: The Road to Redemption Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 46 Minutes