Author's Note:
I have made an interesting discovery over the last few days.
Disney has a very rich catalog of young adult books that reinterpret its classic stories in darker, more mature, or more complex ways.
The most famous series by far in this field is the "A Twisted Tale" line. The premise of these novels is always a question: "What if...?"
The books change a fundamental detail of the original plot, completely disrupting the evolution of the story.
Here is an example: "What if Rapunzel's mother had drunk the potion from the wrong flower?"
The plot: To save the sick queen, the soldiers do not find the magical Sundrop Flower, but by mistake, they gather the Moondrop Flower instead. Rapunzel is thus born with grey, silver hair and a power opposite to her classic one: the power of the Moon, which can hurt and kill instead of healing.
Anyway, I wish you a wonderful read.
XXX
Story Arc: Out-of-Town Visitors
Episode 3: A day full of dates and surprises (IV)
Chapter 12: Trouble Ahead
Plot: Welt Blight and Peter Parker each manage to slip away on their own and change clothes to become Black Warlock and Spider-Man. The two heroes meet where they had agreed; at the same time, Detective Rodrigo reaches the captain.
XXX
POV Narrator
A luxurious convertible car of a deep midnight blue color was smoothly eating up the burning asphalt of the streets in the Midtown district, cutting through the warm suburban air.
In the driver's seat, her gloved hands firmly anchored to the leather steering wheel, sat Belfast, the Maid of the Robinson family. Her posture was impeccably straight and rigorous, almost marble-like. Sitting in the back seat, however, was Welt Blight, completely absorbed in the backlit screen of his Stark smartphone as he browsed the internet. Belfast maintained a dead silence; she had no intention whatsoever of speaking to Miss Lola's eccentric new suitor, even though reality's irony leaned completely in the opposite direction: it was Lola who was courting Welt with a eagerness that was nothing short of overwhelming.
The bookseller decided to do a quick cleanup of his emails and backlog of notifications. Among the various alerts, a recent upload stood out: the famous YouTube channel NerdHistory/NerdScience had just published a video titled Could Iron-Man Save WW2 Pearl Harbor?.
Welt found the narrative premise intriguing and recognized some clever historical points within the editing. However, the final analysis left him rather unsatisfied: the creators of the video had completely underestimated Tony Stark's extraordinary tactical and strategic abilities, crudely downplaying the actual ballistic and defensive capabilities of the Iron-Man Armor—even if it was just the Mark III, the first true official and heavy armor conceived in the Stark laboratories.
'I wonder if one day I could build a Power Armor all for myself?', Welt thought, his gaze lost as he stared at the digital illustration of Iron-Man intent on facing a squadron of World War II fighter planes.
In the boy's geometric mind, a first, rough structural draft immediately took shape. The design vaguely recalled the mighty armor of a Space Marine from the Warhammer 40k universe, but entirely reworked through complex and fascinating Arcane-style steampunk technology.
'Warlock's true long-term project remains the construction of a majestic Airship. Of course, it doesn't pose an immediate necessity—after all, Black Warlock can fly freely using his magic staff and possesses a nascent teleportation network protected by glyphs. But no one can predict the future: one day there might be a desperate need for massive firepower, to manage a large evacuation of civilians, or simply to reach a point too distant and isolated for a standard flight on a staff,' Welt reflected, bringing up the three logical and rational reasons to justify the slow, methodical, but steady work he dedicated to the airship.
Yet deep down, beyond any military or engineering logic, in the depths of his soul lay the simplest, purest, and most childish desire: the dream of becoming the captain of a majestic flying ship and setting sail toward adventure.
'But, all things considered, what reason would Warlock have to build a titanic Power Armor? It would be a huge, complicated, and time-consuming project. Not as much as an Airship, granted, but we are still talking about months and months of forging and welding. And, fortunately, giant Kaiju-style monsters haven't appeared in Nightfall City yet,' Welt thought, temporarily shelving the idea of the Iron Warlock in a drawer of his mind.
With a soft hiss of the brakes, the sports car slowed down and came to a smooth stop by the curb... right in front of the facade of the Owl House.
"This doesn't look like a house to me," declared Belfast, breaking the silence and speaking for the first time since she had turned on the engine at the Manor's stables. Her voice was flat, clinical, and tinged with a subtle note of disapproval.
"It's the Owl House, my home away from home. On Sundays, this place is all mine and officially becomes my playground," Welt replied, stepping out of the car and not joking at all about the potential of that place.
His shop was a true armored temple that guarded everything he loved. Without the presence of customers to serve or employees to supervise, Welt could indulge in the most diverse pastimes without worrying in the least about operating costs.
Taking advantage of the Sunday solitude, he could grab a massive hardcover volume from a shelf, consume and read it entirely in a single day, and then use a small touch of magic to eliminate the signs of wear from the pages, making it brand new before placing it back in the display window for sale. He could put the most elaborate cosplay costumes on mannequins and combine illusion magic and Territory Creation to recreate entire iconic scenes from his favorite franchises or make structural changes to the fabrics. Or, he could fill an immense gaming table with Necrons and Drukhari miniatures, temporarily bring them back to "life" thanks to magic, and watch from above who would win the pitched battle on the wood.
One of Warlock's minor and purely recreational projects consisted of modeling and creating Frame Arms Girls to serve as his very own magical familiars or little laboratory assistants.
For those unfamiliar with certain hobby niches, Frame Arms Girls are a famous and highly regarded line of plastic model kits produced by the giant Kotobukiya. Born as a "moe" spin-off of the Frame Arms robotic mecha series, the line reinterprets the original armored robots, transforming them into heavily armed, armored mecha-girls (mecha musume) endowed with highly customizable modularity. There are even some rather cute anime series dedicated to their universe.
Returning to the important things of the day.
"I have brought you to your destination, please step out, Mr. Bear," said Belfast. She accompanied the sentence with a small, detached nod of her head, displaying a rigorous courtesy, forced solely by her professional role and not by any real sincerity of heart.
"Thanks for the ride, say hi to Lola for me," Welt replied, placing his shoes on the pavement and closing the blue door of the convertible.
Belfast locked her gaze into the bookseller's eyes for a long moment, as if she were weighing whether or not to utter one last formal warning to protect her Mistress. Then she changed her mind: she pressed the accelerator pedal firmly, and the car shot forward with a roar of the engine, vanishing into the street traffic.
'Lola, her parents, and even her Maid are definitely out-of-the-ordinary people. I wonder if their personal chef is a bizarre and eccentric fellow like them, or if he is the only normal human being inside the estate,' Welt thought, a hint of genuine curiosity moving his lips.
He took a quick glance at his smartphone's digital clock, verifying that there was barely half an hour left before his rooftop meeting with Spider-Man. Suddenly, the screen vibrated, lighting up with the arrival of a pop-up notification from one of the superhero news channels he subscribed to. Welt read the preview title of the video: The Heroes of San Fransokyo: The White Knight and the Red Queen Save a Ship from a Sea Monster Attack.
'I'll watch it in full later, I have to hurry now,' Welt thought, slipping his fingers into the pocket of his grey trousers to pull out the brass key to the Owl House.
However, the idea of speeding up the completion of his Airship or putting a real engineering draft for the Power Armor down on paper kept pressing forcefully against his mental walls. After all, Nightfall City was still a port and customs city, and local legends regarding mysterious sea monster attacks—like those spoken of by the old motel founder—had existed since the district's founding. One could never know what might emerge from the waters.
Welt inserted the key into the keyhole, made the lock click with a sharp metallic sound, and entered. Once safely inside his "nerd palace," the quiet bookseller would vanish into the shadows of the basement, and in the city skies, cloak blowing in the wind, Black Warlock would rise again.
XXX
In the historic heart of the Blackwood district, Peter Parker and Laura Lane were sitting on a time-worn wooden bench. Both were hungrily devouring steaming kebabs, just purchased from a small and quaint little shop located a few meters away, the surrounding air saturated with the spicy scent of meat cooking on the rotisserie.
Until that moment, the two Daily Bugle envoys had explored the geometric and picturesque streets of Nightfall City moving mostly on foot, wearing out the soles of their shoes on the asphalt. To cover the larger distances between the various industrial and residential districts, they had to rely on the urban bus network; a fleet of public transport that was certainly not as omnipresent or hectic as the New York City subway, but with a shred of patience, it would get you to your destination along the city lanes.
"We got some good photographs at the harbor," Laura commented, a small and radiant smile lighting up her face as she tried to isolate the positive side of their complex morning experience.
"And we almost got arrested," Peter replied, his voice veiled in a slightly cynical and disillusioned tone.
"I just wanted to slip past a reception desk and see up close what the police are doing," Laura justified herself, shrugging her shoulders and implicitly admitting to having exaggerated a little with her spirit of initiative and journalistic audacity.
"Lieutenant Wu clearly said that the harbor is closed to the public because the forensics team is gathering microscopic evidence on the dock, there wasn't much to photograph," Peter reminded her, striving to act as a solid voice of reason to curb his colleague's recklessness.
"We still managed to take pictures of those colossal trees that grew all of a sudden and literally pierced the vehicles through and through. I wonder what exactly happened on that pier," said Laura, her brown eyes full of a vivid and burning curiosity regarding that botanical anomaly.
"There was a heavy weapons trafficking operation underway. The vehicles immobilized and gutted by the tree roots should be the logistical transport vehicles used by the smugglers. Black Warlock probably used his magical powers to freeze them in place," Peter explained. He moved his free hand through the air, pretending to rely on pure, shrewd photographer's deductive logic rather than revealing the fact that he had witnessed and participated in the entire night event in his Spider-Man suit.
"But aren't Druids the ones who do stuff with plant manipulation, while Warlocks do dark stuff related to demons or fairies?" Laura asked. She arched an eyebrow conspicuously, not knowing much about fantasy classifications or applied occultism, but still possessing a few scattered details on the subject.
"I don't think Dungeons & Dragons manuals are valid to use as an accurate guideline to decipher Black Warlock," Peter cut her short, certain that the Fifth Edition of the famous role-playing game was not the correct answer to crack their investigative work.
"Do you know about this stuff?" Laura asked, resting her elbows on her knees to make conversation.
"No, in high school I was strictly a chemistry lab nerd, not a board game or miniatures guy. What about you?" Peter asked in turn, whose mind had always been oriented toward pure sciences and physics.
"The younger brother of a very dear friend of mine was a die-hard fan of that kind of fantasy and, through pure osmosis, I ended up learning a few things," Laura replied. She made a vague gesture with her hand, recalling the years of her adolescence when she had been, more or less, one of the popular girls at school, far removed from those nerdy pastimes.
"Going to the harbor turned out to be a big wild goose chase after all," Peter admitted, shaking his head slightly. They had only gotten vague statements from the patrol officers and some suggestive photographs of twisted metal and branches, but nothing Jameson would ever consider worthy of the newspaper's front page.
"We had some luck at the local university, though," Laura countered, displaying a sly and amused little smile.
"The kind of luck I would gladly do without," Peter muttered, gritting his teeth.
"You got the phone number of a rather cute, muscular guy," Laura teased, landing a friendly and energetic elbow directly against Peter's ribs.
"I like women, only and exclusively women," Peter specified quickly, his cheeks turning a slight shade of red from the embarrassment of having attracted the romantic interest of a campus bodybuilder.
"If we didn't have this important job to finish, I would try my luck with the local wildlife. A bit of wholesome fun never hurts," Laura declared. With a fluid flick of her fingers, she pulled five strips of paper out of her jacket pocket with phone numbers written on them in pen, waving them in front of her colleague's face like a fan. For anyone wondering, three of those contacts belonged to men and the other two to women.
"I think our lunch break is officially over. I'm going toward the museum now to take some photographs. You go ahead to the central precinct, but please: don't overdo it with your investigative blitzes, I don't have enough money in my wallet to pay your bail if they lock you up," Peter said, getting up from the wooden bench and throwing the paper packaging of the kebab into a metal trash can located on the corner.
"Have fun at the museum, Peter! I'm going to get an exclusive interview, and I guarantee you that this time I won't be handcuffed!" Laura exclaimed. She sprang to her feet with an elastic leap, overflowing with a vibrant youthful energy, before turning on the heels of her sneakers and marching off at a fast pace toward the NCPD central precinct.
'She is a nice and energetic girl,' Peter thought, finding Laura's presence and temperament genuinely pleasant and refreshing compared to the cynicism he was used to in New York City.
The Bugle photographer did not immediately run toward the nearest dead-end alley to strip off his civilian clothes and put on Spider-Man's mask. On the contrary, he remained motionless on the sidewalk of the historic district, watching Laura's silhouette as she walked briskly away, moving down the street until she became a smaller and smaller shape against the horizon of the buildings.
For a very brief fraction of a second, Peter's gaze lingered on the curves of Laura's bottom, tightly wrapped in her form-fitting pants, but he immediately averted his eyes with a textbook cough.
'Don't go having those kinds of thoughts about the new girl at the office!', Peter severely reprimanded himself mentally, chastising his own male biological impulses—impulses that in the past had gotten him into a monumental string of troubles, many of which involved a certain and dangerous cat-themed female thief.
When the photographer's gaze focused back on the street to look for Laura, the girl had already vanished into thin air, having moved too far away to be spotted by the naked eye among the passersby.
'Let's take these blessed exterior photographs of the museum, and then we'll see if Black Warlock decides to show up for the appointment,' Peter Parker thought, adjusting the strap of his SLR camera around his neck and starting to walk at a fast pace toward the facade of the historic building.
XXX
A little later.
Peter found himself outside the monumental building of the civic museum. Moving with studied nonchalance, he kept snapping a flurry of photographs of the stone facade and the surrounding intersections, blending perfectly into the crowd and acting in every way like an ordinary tourist hunting for historical views.
The main entrance was barred, and the entire area was still closed to the public. Beyond the security cordons, the local police patrols had not yet finished their technical surveys and ballistic analyses inside the halls.
'The police in this city have had a weekend definitely full of surprises. On Saturday at the museum, there were Captain Cold and Heat Wave with their load of ice and flames; on Sunday, in the dead of night, Spider-Man appeared at the harbor to help Black Warlock dismantle an entire heavy weapons trafficking operation,' Peter thought to himself, absolutely certain that local law enforcement was not at all used to sustaining such a rhythm.
Shifting his gaze sideways toward the sharp silhouette of the old clock tower, Peter checked the hands and noticed it was already 11:50.
'There are barely ten minutes left until our unofficial meeting on the rooftop, and there's still no Dungeons & Dragons-themed costumed hero to be seen around,' Peter thought, uncertain how to feel about that wait.
Technically, Spider-Man was a lone hero who preferred to work alone. Yet, swinging for years among the skyscrapers of New York City, he had inevitably ended up meeting, knowing, and collaborating with almost every single known vigilante or superhuman in the city. Some of these collaborations had remained on a strictly professional and detached track, as in the case of Daredevil; others had turned out to be extremely complicated and tense, like the violent clashes of opinions he had with the Punisher; still others had transformed into beautiful and solid friendships, first and foremost those with the members of the Fantastic Four. Honestly, Peter Parker was very curious to find out which track his relationship with Black Warlock would channel into.
Suddenly, Peter's Spider-Sense triggered with an electric thrill at the base of his skull. Finding himself in public at that moment under the civilian guise of Parker, the boy could not produce his usual superhuman acrobatic reactions. Fortunately, the biological warning did not tighten with the alarm of an imminent deadly danger, but manifested instead as a light vibration, similar to a perimeter signal that warns you if someone is getting too close to your car door.
For this reason, Peter moved while remaining strictly within the limits of human possibilities. He casually raised his camera toward the celestial vault, focused the lens, and snapped a series of sharp photographs of Black Warlock, intent on flying at medium speed straight toward the museum rooftop.
'I think I just got a front-page shot for the Bugle,' Peter thought, a small spontaneous smile bending his lips as he enjoyed the certainty of being one step closer to the double salary promised by Jameson.
The photographer walked with studied discretion toward a nearby dead-end alley, slipping into the dim light between the brick walls. After looking around to verify that there were no prying eyes and noting that his Spider-Sense was quiet, he sprang into action. With fluid and time-tested movements, he slipped off his shirt, baggy pants, and sneakers, revealing the red and blue bodysuit underneath. He quickly stowed his civilian clothes inside his canvas backpack, pulled on his reinforced gloves, tightened the metallic bracelets of his web-shooters around his wrists, and, to complete the transition, pulled the fabric mask down over his face.
Spider-Man was finally ready to step onto the scene.
With a swift movement of his hand, he tossed his backpack upward, sending it onto the wall of the building at a height entirely out of reach and sight of ordinary people.
THWIP!
A taut stream of arachnid fluid shot from his wrist, firmly gluing the backpack to the masonry to keep it safe during his patrol. In the early days of his hero career, this practice regularly ended very badly: before he could return from patrol, the standard chemical compound of the webbing would completely dissolve on its own, sending the luggage crashing onto the sidewalk where it was promptly stolen by some passerby or removed by street sweepers along with the alley's garbage.
To prevent a recurrence of such financial incidents, Peter had modified the fluid's laboratory formula, synthesizing a special, extra-long-lasting web variant, specifically conceived to anchor his personal belongings or to immobilize opponents endowed with extraordinary physical strength. It had turned out to be a great victory for Peter's finances, even if the innovation brought with it a new and inconvenient logistical problem: having to move at breakneck speed to face supervillains and sudden emergencies, sometimes the boy ended up forgetting the exact spot where he had stuck his backpacks on the city walls.
THWIP!
Spider-Man fired a second web-line and soared into the air, swinging with style out of the dead-end alley. However, he did not swing straight toward the top of the museum. He still had five minutes ahead of schedule, a stretch of time more than sufficient to glue a secondary camera near a ledge to ensure a good panoramic shot.
It was a simple matter of commercial logic: more differentiated photographs meant more chances of receiving a mountain of cash from the newspaper.
XXX
On the museum rooftop, bathed in the warm midday light, Black Warlock was waiting patiently for Spider-Man to arrive.
The hero of Nightfall City was suspended in mid-air in a peculiar position: he was sitting cross-legged, holding a volume by H. P. Lovecraft, but he did not occupy an actual chair; rather, he sat on his own magic staff. The weapon was positioned on a perfect horizontal axis, kept floating by pure arcane force at the exact height of a common office seat. If someone had possessed an eye particularly attentive to details, combined with a solid knowledge of magic and the science related to the art of Artificers, he would have noticed that Black Warlock was sporting a rather special earring in his left lobe today.
It was a small, shiny metallic object, resembling a miniature mirror, which by its nature could be worn interchangeably as a necklace pendant or as an earring; Warlock had opted for the latter arrangement. This bizarre trinket was a magical artifact with a dual function: the first was the mystical equivalent of a latest-generation miniaturized camera, but connected directly to its user's visual channels and will. In short, it snapped flawless photographs without the slightest need to use one's hands; it was enough to keep one's eyes fixed on the desired target and formulate the thought in one's mind. In the worst cases of distraction, a sharp blink of the eyelids was enough to activate the mechanism. This was a function that would prove incredibly useful to the local hero's third alias, Himeko, who was in charge of selling exclusive shots and confidential information to Charlotte Gagnepetit. The device's second function, however, remained a secret guarded for the future.
'Spider-Man is late,' Warlock thought to himself, raising his eyes from the dark pages of the book in front of him to scan the perimeter of the roof.
THWIP!
The sharp, unmistakable hiss of a web-shooter tore through the still air, followed a tenth of a second later by Spider-Man's feline, cushioned landing on the museum roof.
"Am I late to the party?" the wall-crawling hero asked, straightening his supple back into a relaxed pose and seasoning the sentence with his usual light humor.
"Only by a few minutes," Warlock replied without getting flustered. With a fluid movement, he slid the Lovecraft volume inside his spacious Bag of Holding, which swallowed the tome, vanishing into the folds of his belt.
"That purse is pretty roomy," Spider-Man observed, narrowing the white lenses of his mask onto the cloth pouch, absolutely sure that some engineering trick was hidden behind that unnatural capacity.
"I'm worse than an old lady, I carry everything and then some with me," Warlock replied with total composure. He shoved his entire arm into the opening of the bag and pulled out a fragrant croissant entirely covered in glossy chocolate.
"I like to have my tank full when I start a neighborhood patrol," the wizard added, bringing the pastry to his mouth to take a hearty bite, while with his remaining free hand he rummaged again into the infinite bottom of the artifact to extract a second croissant, this time filled with apricot.
"If you don't like the apricot flavor, I also have several other flavors and other fresh baked goods. If, on the other hand, you are one of those heroes who never accept free food from colleagues, I can simply give you a detailed map with the best places in the area to go eat," Warlock offered, holding out the second steaming croissant directly toward the hero in red and blue.
This time, Spider-Man decided to put his wariness aside and gladly accepted the offer. With quick fingers, he lifted the lower edge of his fabric mask just enough to leave his mouth exposed and consume the meal, grabbing the pastry.
"Thanks for the snack, I didn't have a proper lunch today," the wall-crawler admitted. Unlike his colleague Laura, who could easily stay full for hours with a single kebab in her stomach, his organism—enhanced by the spider bite—demanded a much more massive caloric intake due to an off-the-charts accelerated metabolism.
"Did you play the tourist around here, did you rest inside the Spider-Cave, or did you prefer to conduct investigations on your smuggler enemies?" Black Warlock asked between greedy bites, cleaning his lips with the tip of his fingers.
"I don't have a Spider-Cave, I'm not Batman," Spider-Man commented, rolling his eyes and genuinely curious to find out what kind of high-tech secret bases people out in the provinces believed he possessed back in New York.
"You didn't answer my question," Black Warlock pointed out with a sly smile from behind his mask.
"I took a thorough look around the area and searched for some useful clues along the streets; I didn't find much at the moment. But your city is really nice, there's definitely less madness compared to New York City," Spider-Man replied, swallowing the last bite of the pastry and readjusting the fabric of his mask over his face with a sharp tuck.
"Nightfall City can certainly seem like a small town and less crowded compared to yours, but in terms of pure madness, it has absolutely nothing to envy New York for. You just have to know how to wait, and you will inevitably end up meeting some unique character on your path—take my word for it, I speak from personal experience," the local hero sentenced, being able to draw upon those facts both in his guise as Black Warlock and in his ordinary days as Welt Blight.
"So, do we want to talk about what happened last night, or what exactly did we come to do up here?" Spider-Man asked, swaying slightly on his legs and still a bit uncertain about what the wizard's real intentions were.
"I'm starting my standard patrol now. If you feel like it, you can come with me; I'll show you the most interesting places in the district, and maybe we can chat about this and that regarding what it means to be an idiot in a costume with an oversized civic sense," Black Warlock proposed. He agilely shifted his body weight onto the floating staff, returning to sit firmly astride the weapon just like a Quidditch player ready for takeoff.
"Just to be one hundred percent sure... is this a purely platonic request from the bizarre Black Warlock to the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man? Because today I've already had to turn down a romantic date proposal made by a man," Spider-Man made sure to clarify, eager not to misunderstand those gastronomic attentions and hoping he wasn't over-analyzing the details of the conversation.
"Let's make three distinct things clear right now, so we avoid any misunderstanding right from the start," Black Warlock replied, tilting his staff to fly just a few inches away from Spider-Man's mask.
"Number one: I spiritually and mentally identify as a man, I am biologically a man, and despite occasionally reading some Yaoi manga in my free time, I am solely attracted to women," Warlock clarified with absolute seriousness, making it clear that he had no intention of seducing the wall-crawler.
"The same goes for me, except for the Yaoi reading; I vastly prefer more academic and scientific books," Peter Parker replied. He hadn't touched a comic book or a work of leisure in years, too absorbed and crushed by daily deadlines to continue certain adolescent pastimes that were definitely too expensive for his finances.
"Number two: I don't have any convoluted plan in mind, nor do I suffer from some crazy paranoia toward other costumed heroes. You save New York, I protect Nightfall. If one day we both find ourselves in the exact same place, we will save the city together or, at the very least, we will each work on our own without stepping on each other's toes to reach a common goal," Warlock recounted, showing not the slightest logistical issue with collaborating with Spider-Man or letting him act in complete solitude.
"That last word describes exactly how things work back at my place. Every hero moves with their own specific mission of the day; everyone wants to save a little piece of New York, even though some out there aim directly at saving the entire planet," Spider-Man admitted, nodding his head solemnly.
"Number three: you are absolutely the first real superhero I have ever met in the flesh out in the field. Do you really find it so strange that I have a great desire to chat with you?" Black Warlock confessed, exposing the final, clear matter of fact.
"You look a lot like Nightcrawler from the X-Men: you have a definitely unique appearance, but you sport excellent manners and an incredibly friendly personality. I know plenty of people in New York who could easily learn a thing or two from you in terms of hospitality," Spider-Man admitted. Under the fabric, he was certain that his complex life as a vigilante would be infinitely simpler if all his metropolitan allies possessed Nightcrawler's or Black Warlock's temperament.
"Thanks for the compliment. So, are you coming with me on patrol, or do you prefer to swing alone through the streets?" Warlock finally asked, rising vertically a few meters above the roof and stabilizing his magic staff, completely ready to fly away into the sky.
"I'm coming with you, but along the way, you'll have to explain to me in microscopic detail why I never received my personal acceptance letter to Hogwarts," Spider-Man joked, finding in that wizard aesthetic the perfect inspiration to spark a dozen new quips.
"The real-life Hogwarts doesn't take the trouble at all to send invitations or letters to Muggle-borns. You must have at least three whole generations of Wizards behind you to even be considered by the council. And if you truly wish to enter the elite halls of the occult, you must do something extraordinarily impressive or know the right person who can write you a formal letter of recommendation," Warlock recounted with total composure, blending the classic Harry Potter lore with the rigid mechanics of the Clock Tower.
"Hogwarts doesn't seem so magical or fun anymore now that I know these bureaucratic things," Spider-Man replied, convinced that the wizard was simply joking to play along with his jabs.
"Then I suggest you try your luck with the exam for Hexside School of Magic and Demonics; the admission test isn't too hard to pass, even though the vast majority of the students are fourteen- or fifteen-year-old adolescents," Warlock suggested to him, while tilting his staff and definitively leaving the museum roof, speeding into the sky.
THWIP!
Spider-Man flexed his wrist and shot a web-line against the ledge behind him, launching himself in pursuit of Warlock. He moved forward with a slight amount of mechanical difficulty: Nightfall City was a provincial town and didn't offer the colossal buildings or endless skyscrapers he was used to in New York at all, forcing him into much lower and closer-to-the-ground swinging trajectories.
"Too bad, but I won't cry over it; after all, I've always preferred the logic of science over magic. But where are we going that's nice?" Spider-Man asked, executing a spectacular swing above the asphalt of the deserted street, confident that his camera positioned on the ledge was capturing every single movement.
"To the top of the old clock tower; from up there, you can see the entire layout of the whole Blackwood district," Black Warlock declared out loud, pointing his hand toward the imposing stone structure towering against the summer sky.
While the two heroes were carrying out their joint patrol, cutting through the air, beneath them, stuck on the concrete sidewalk, a determined Charlotte Gagnepetit had launched herself in pursuit of them.
Only a moment before, the girl was standing still, reading with curiosity a promotional flyer that grandly announced the grand opening of a super coffee shop with a brand-new formula that promised to drive all customers crazy. It was at that precise instant that she raised her eyes, catching the unmistakable silhouette of Black Warlock in full flight, immediately followed by Spider-Man agilely swinging between the buildings clinging to his webs.
Without a second thought, Charlotte dropped the paper flyer, which floated away in the wind, and began to run at breakneck speed down the street so as not to lose sight of the two vigilantes' trajectory.
The young woman with candy-pink hair was not wearing her usual investigative journalist uniform today; she had instead opted for a definitely different and original civilian outfit. Her look consisted of shiny black shoes, laced tight with bright shocking-pink strings, a black pencil skirt that fell softly down to her knees, and an oversized pink t-shirt covering her hips, embellished on the chest with the stylized drawing of a classic detective's magnifying glass. On her hands, she wore a pair of fingerless black leather gloves; on her nose, she wore glasses with a matching pink frame; on her head, a stylish standard black beret; and slung cross-body over her hip, a pink handbag with a perfectly rectangular geometry.
After the grueling and dangerous night odyssey experienced just a few hours earlier among the containers at the harbor, Charlotte had solemnly decided to take a well-deserved day of total rest to recharge her energies. But faced with such a colossal journalistic opportunity—seeing the local protector team up with the New York City legend in broad daylight—the girl immediately changed her plans: she would enjoy her day off the next day, postponing all laziness until Monday morning.
To her immense good fortune, her professional instinct was stronger than any vacation: Charlotte never left her house without carrying her trusty SLR camera hung around her neck.
XXX
Motoko Kusanagi stood motionless in front of the sink, inside the women's restroom of the central precinct.
The woman at the head of the detective squad had just repeatedly splashed her face with running water, trying to fight the oppressive summer heatwave and refresh her thoughts. At the moment, she was not wearing her usual civilian clothes as a plainclothes officer, but rather her official uniform as a high-ranking police official, ironed to perfection. In fact, in a few hours, she would have to attend a formal press conference. Captain Itami had determined that openly telling the public the details of what had happened over the last few days was a good strategic move, useful for demonstrating to the citizens that law enforcement maintained absolute control over the situation.
Finding herself completely alone in the restroom, Motoko slipped her hand inside the inner pocket of her shirt and pulled out the W-Powder, the eccentric gadget resembling a lavender compact powder that Warlock had given her just yesterday morning in his kitchen.
The sexiest policewoman in the city observed the shiny device between her fingers, torn about what to do.
'What am I, a high school girl? Do I really have to waste time and energy deciding whether or not to call a kind idiot who goes around playing a costumed hero? If I need his support, I will call him if and only if the situation becomes absolutely necessary,' Motoko thought. Letting out a soft sigh of resignation, she put the small pocket mirror back inside the pocket of her uniform jacket.
Suddenly, the quiet of the room was abruptly interrupted. The women's restroom door was flung wide open, and Laura Lane rushed in in a hurry, then threw her weight against the wood of the closed frame, pressing her back and hands against the surface as if she had to keep an imminent horde of zombies out of the room.
"Are you alright?" Motoko asked. She turned slowly toward her, maintaining a studied caution; the girl's body language clearly screamed agitation, stress, and an evident hint of fear.
"Are you Detective Kusanagi?" Laura asked breathlessly, widening her brown eyes as if she had just found a precious diamond in the middle of a sack full of coal.
"Yes, I am," Motoko replied with total stoicism, her muscles ready to extend a helping hand or deliver a precise, millimeter-accurate strike directly into the intruder's solar plexus in case of a threat.
"You are much more attractive than what people say on the internet! Never mind the title of the sexiest policewoman in the city, you might just be the most beautiful policewoman in all of Massachusetts," Laura exclaimed, her cheeks turning abruptly red, having been rather struck by Motoko's magnetic appearance and by how good women looked when they wore an official uniform.
'This is definitely Warlock's fault,' Motoko thought to herself right after, absolutely sure that the Dungeons & Dragons-themed hero's flirting temperament was directly responsible for her burdensome media fame.
"Thank you for the compliments, but who are you, and what exactly do you want from me?" Motoko said, taking a step back to re-establish safety distances. If Laura had not already been stuck with her shoulders pressed against the wood of the door, she would have unconsciously taken a step back in turn faced with that icy tone.
"I am Laura Lane, a journalist for the Daily Bugle. I want to ask you some specific questions about Black Warlock; I heard that you are the one who interacts and collaborates with him the most in the field," Laura explained, drawing on the information she had learned browsing the internet and consulting the reports published on Charlotte Gagnepetit's blog.
Motoko Kusanagi's name popped up many times in the news articles dedicated to Black Warlock's appearances; on social media, some of The Steambird's most die-hard fans openly claimed that Motoko was a sort of Lois Lane, but in a policewoman variant.
"There will be an official press conference in a few hours; keep your questions for that moment," Motoko replied curtly, firmly refusing to grant private statements to a journalist.
"Not even a simple background statement?" Laura asked, her voice taking on a demoralized tone at the thought of seeing her exclusive interview slip away.
"I am not a fan of J. Jonah Jameson's editorial lines and the Daily Bugle at all," Motoko cut her short, making it perfectly clear that she didn't like the ruthless way the New York newsroom continuously tried to crucify and burn Spider-Man.
'The Daily Bugle can tear Spider-Man apart as much as they want, but there's no way I'll let them play the same game with Warlock. I don't want to see at all how that boy would react to bad press,' Motoko thought. For an instant, her mind produced an absurd mental image: a Warlock much younger than normal, curled up with big, defenseless puppy eyes tearing up from sadness.
'What on earth just crossed my mind?' Motoko thought right after, bringing a hand to her forehead, visibly taken aback by having formulated one of the strangest and most alien thoughts of her entire life.
Faced with that peremptory refusal, Laura made a hurt expression, just as if Motoko had shot a bullet right into her chest.
"Please, can you change your mind? We could do an interview entirely centered on your glorious career, without mentioning Black Warlock in any way! I am willing to buy you dinner and... do other things," Laura offered, only to freeze with her face burning red from embarrassment, realizing she had come across as terribly ambiguous and allusive with that last sentence.
"Are you by any chance attempting to bribe a public official on duty?" Motoko asked, her voice becoming serious and inquisitorial.
"No, no, no, no, no! I am just a desperate girl on her very first official assignment as a correspondent, with a very authoritarian boss who demands decent work! My partner made a risky bet and risks seeing his salary cut in half if we don't bring home a good report!" Laura exclaimed, abandoning all tactics and banking on total sincerity mixed with a hint of professional desperation.
Motoko let out a detached huff from her nose.
"Perhaps tomorrow I could clear an hour of my time to grant you a brief interview. But the session will be held inside an armored room at the precinct, I will speak exclusively about the hard work of the police force, and there will be no mention of Black Warlock. Furthermore, I will have the luxury of not answering an uncomfortable question if I deem it appropriate, and I demand to record the entire conversation," the detective arranged, finally deciding to do a good deed to help the girl and keeping all the cards of the deal firmly in her hand. Captain Itami wanted the public to feel safe in Nightfall City, so an interview that highlighted the efficiency of the police was exactly what the department needed at that moment.
"Thank you so much!" Laura exclaimed, making an instinctive movement in an attempt to hug the sexy policewoman.
But without any warning, someone began to knock with unprecedented violence against the wooden panels of the women's restroom door, making the structure shudder.
"Come out right now, young lady! I broke down the entrance door, and I will put handcuffs on your wrists immediately!" a deep male voice thundered from the outside corridor.
"Could you do me one last favor?" Laura asked in a thin voice, realizing she had stepped on someone's toes to manage to reach the restrooms and speak with Motoko.
"I'll see what I can do about it," Motoko replied, clenching her fists along her sides. She gave Laura a sharp nod to step aside and clear the door frame.
The sexiest policewoman in the city had to admit to herself that, living in Nightfall City, it had become simply impossible not to run into bizarre people at any hour of the day.
XXX
Meanwhile, inside the women's restroom, Motoko saved Laura from receiving a forced twenty-four-hour stay in a prison cell, swapping the arrest for a severe and peremptory formal warning.
At the same time, Origami was leaving the forensics lab premises, clutching the paper files with the official results of her latest forensic analyses in her hands.
As soon as it was discovered that the massive weapons trafficking operation thwarted during the night was closely linked to the murder case they were investigating, Captain Itami had signed the necessary authorizations to allow the biological samples gathered by Origami to receive top bureaucratic priority and be immediately analyzed by the laboratory machinery.
'The victim was heavily drugged shortly before being killed; his brain tissue shows clear signs of having been attacked by an extremely complex chemical substance, artificially synthesized in a laboratory. To fully understand what happened inside that cerebral cortex, we would need to proceed with dissecting the victim's brain entirely, but by analyzing the old clinical studies conducted on subjects exposed to Poison Ivy's toxic pheromones in Gotham City, I have already formulated my usual precise hypothesis about what happened in this room,' Origami thought, tightening her grip on the medical file.
The victim had technically committed suicide, but not because he was moved by a real and conscious desire to die; he had taken his own life by executing a biological and peremptory order imposed directly by the mind of the man or woman who had previously drugged him.
'I am absolutely sure that Welt will be very pleased to hear how this specific investigative case is progressing,' Origami thought right after, interrupting her march along the corridor for a brief moment and leaning her back against the cold surface of the concrete wall.
The white-haired doctor pulled her personal smartphone out of her lab coat pocket. The background image of the backlit screen portrayed a smiling Welt, captured during a medieval exhibition set up at the civic museum several months ago. This specific photograph represented the hundredth shot Origami had taken of Welt, either secretly or openly, but it was absolutely the very first one of which the boy had been fully aware, having posed of his own free will and smiled straight toward the lens.
Origami's facial features remained rigid, fixed in her usual expression of a totally expressionless porcelain doll, but for an instant, her large blue eyes seemed to soften visibly.
'I wonder what Welt actually knows about complex subjects like neuroscience and advanced biochemistry. Despite possessing the academic qualifications of a simple engineer, he has demonstrated a decent and flexible knowledge in many different scientific fields. He doesn't shape up to be an absolute universal genius; rather, he resembles a perfect Jack of All Trades of science,' Origami thought. She found it incredibly pleasant and refreshing to be able to speak with a peer who was truly capable of understanding the theoretical discourse of her complex forensic theses, without limiting himself to a single and boring office topic.
Of course, Origami had understood from their very first meeting that Welt's true specialty lay in the functioning of heavy machinery and computers, but she liked testing the limits of his mind to see how much he could come to understand a new scientific topic from scratch. Every time the white-haired woman scouted out an interesting essay belonging to a branch of science about which Welt knew little or nothing, their private conversations would drag on for hours, continuing until the boy internalized the basic ideas of the text or began to suffer from severe headaches due to intellectual overload.
'Tomorrow I will take him to have lunch in a small place not too far from my private apartment; we will continue our scientific discussion on the properties of metal alloys and the behavior of hyper-conductors. After that, I will formally ask him to watch a movie together at my place. Is it better to propose Star Trek or Star Wars?' Origami thought, uncertain which of the two sci-fi franchises held the top spot in Welt's ranking of favorites.
The forensic scientist opened a encrypted notes application on the phone, inside of which many rigorous notes and schematic annotations centered on Welt's personal preferences were cataloged. Origami indeed had the rigid habit, right after the end of every official or casual meeting with Welt, of meticulously transcribing her every new and microscopic discovery about the boy's character and habits.
On the multimedia page dedicated to sci-fi movie sagas, it was written word for word that for Welt, Star Trek and Star Wars were exactly like cake and pizza: both excellent productions, characterized only by a different texture and flavor, but which nevertheless remained excellent products to set up a nice party in company.
'I will choose Star Trek, I personally like it better; Welt is a fan of both series anyway and will enjoy watching the movie in all tranquility. If he accepts the invitation and everything goes according to my calculations, this movie night could turn into a pleasant, regular habit, prompting him to come to my place to watch and discuss a film, and maybe next time I will be the one to go to his house,' Origami thought, having meticulously devised a long-term strategy to gain exclusivity over Welt's heart and life.
And if by chance, in a hypothetical future scenario, during the viewing of a romantic scene on the couch, Welt were to have a sudden "enlightenment" about who the right woman for him truly was, or simply experienced a moment of strong physical attraction toward her... well, Origami would not refuse under any circumstances in the world to go along with the event.
'Formal marriage and the birth of children will not shape up as possible options until I have carried out my personal mission, but a single night of mutual pleasure will certainly not harm my stability, as long as he takes the right and necessary biological precautions,' Origami thought, feeling a series of sudden and intense physical impulses rush up her body.
The white-haired woman closed her eyes for an instant and took a deep, liberating pulmonary breath. When she reopened her eyelids, her gaze had returned to being cold, lucid, and sharp as ice, and every single muscle of her body was once again under the complete and total control of her rational mind.
Origami put her smartphone back in her pocket and grabbed the folder with the forensics results, clutching it with both hands; she could not afford the luxury of distracting herself like that during work hours at all.
'Since I chose to stop finding casual partners with whom to vent physical tensions, my level of self-control has undergone a progressive deterioration, especially in the moments when I feel I have made a real step forward in my relationship with Welt,' Origami thought, aware of having given up old and deeply-rooted personal habits solely out of pure love for the bookseller.
Before moving permanently to Nightfall City, the white-haired woman had maintained only three sole objectives in her entire existence: academic study, physical training, and the fulfillment of her secret mission. Eleven years ago, a traumatic event had occurred that changed her forever; from that day onward, Origami had begun to commit herself to the utmost of her human capabilities to excel in every single school subject, completely tossing aside her personal tastes or her aversions regarding food and consuming meals only to intake the precise amount of nutrients and calories necessary to keep her body perfectly healthy and efficient.
This dedication of hers, taken to a crazy and all-consuming level, allowed her to graduate with honors from the prestigious MIT at just 17 years old. Subsequently, she pursued advanced specializations in Forensic Sciences and Criminology, simultaneously carrying out a rigorous, extremely high-level athletic practice in Karate and Kendo rings. In short, in many aspects, Origami could easily be compared to the figure of Bruce Wayne during the period when he was taking his very last formative steps before definitively transforming into Batman.
However, such a constant physical and mental performance had caused a huge level of stress and pent-up fatigue to accumulate inside Origami's nervous system. With the arrival of development and puberty, the girl had found a rather simple, direct, and efficient escape valve to loosen the pressure on her muscles. The white-haired woman had kept this private habit intact until the exact moment Welt appeared for the first time in her life; not wanting in any way to betray the pure feeling of love she felt for him with another person, she had categorically stopped seeking temporary partners for her physical release.
Unfortunately, the accumulated stress and repressed biological desires were slowly increasing in intensity as time went on. If the situation were to continue on this track, Origami would progressively become more direct, assertive, and potentially perverse in her romantic moves. In plain words, if Origami and Welt were to end up alone inside a bedroom, the girl would prove herself more than ready to literally "eat" the poor, unsuspecting bookseller.
XXX
In the heart of the NCPD central precinct—an immense open space saturated with orderly rows of office desks, small meeting rooms bordered by glass windows, and a break area used as a kitchen—the officers were going about their respective daily duties in a dense background buzz.
Origami had just deposited the paper folder with the official clinical test results on Captain Itami's desk, also reminding him with her usual precision to stop by the forensic lab premises later if he wished to pick up the package with his goods, collected directly from the Owl House. To all the police officers present in the precinct, Dr. Origami Tobiichi was a true ice queen: an asocial, millimeter-accurate, cold, and terribly skillful and methodical figure in the execution of her work. In the corridors, some colleagues openly pointed to her as one of the three secret weapons at the city police's disposal, placing her on the same strategic pedestal as Captain Ch'en and Chief of Detectives Motoko Kusanagi.
Keeping her imperturbable porcelain-doll facade intact—a perfect mask conceived to flawlessly conceal her rather wild and overwhelming intimate thoughts when it came to love—Origami walked with measured steps to make her way back to her laboratory, having more than one urgent case on her agenda that required her immediate scientific attention.
Her straight trajectory ended up intercepting abruptly with that of Detective Rodrigo, who had just returned to the precinct corridors. The man showed a definitely strange and vacant look; his movements appeared rigid, tense, and his skin was visibly beaded with sweat, though this last detail could easily be mistaken by the rest of the staff for a normal side effect linked to the suffocating summer heatwave. With the impressive amount of extra work poured onto the district over the last few days, none of the colleagues seemed to pay due attention to Rodrigo's altered state; Origami, however, possessed an unbeatable clinical eye for the smallest details.
Walking just a few inches away from Rodrigo along the corridor, Origami could not help but size him up from head to toe, observing and analyzing him mentally with the exact same detachment she would use to study a bacterium under the lens of a laboratory microscope.
The scientist's very first thought lingered on the hypothesis of a sudden opioid addiction crisis. However, at the exact moment Detective Rodrigo partially turned his back to her to continue his march, Origami spotted a tiny entry point at the base of the skull: the tip of a microscopic lesion that only a formidable eyesight like hers could have isolated in the dim light.
'He has been drugged, but clearly not of his own free will,' Origami thought. For a very brief fraction of a second, the idea of intervening on the spot herself, immobilizing him with a martial grip, flashed through her mind.
But making the first move and sparking a physical brawl in a room overflowing with armed police officers, each with a service pistol close at hand and nerves frayed from fatigue, shaped up to be a terrible tactical idea. Therefore, Origami turned on her heels 180 degrees with a geometric movement and marched back toward Captain Itami's office to slap him in the face with a bad and immediate piece of news: "Detective Rodrigo has been compromised."
XXX
Meanwhile, in the cellars of the precinct.
Scar-eye, the fearsome leader of the failed night weapons trafficking operation, was sitting on the concrete floor of his holding cell. He shared the cramped space with a few of his subordinates and a certain Garrett Bobby Ferguson, who was currently curled up in a corner of the latrine, reduced to a purple sack of meat and beaten bloody over the last few hours. After the terrible night experienced at the harbor due to the webs, the criminals had a desperate need to vent their frustrated rage against something or someone, and Ferguson had turned out to be the ideal victim for that venting massacre, already being partially worse for wear due to Friday's brawl.
Unlike his men, the smugglers' leader maintained absolute calm. Before being locked up, he had managed to make an emergency phone call and had explicitly asked his superior to be pulled out from behind bars as soon as possible, receiving a cold and efficient directive in response:
"Lady V will personally handle your case. Wait in silence; you will understand the signal on your own."
Scar-eye had waited motionless, but inside his head, the images of the only two individuals responsible for his failure kept running like a nightmare: Black Warlock and Spider-Man.
'I abandoned Gotham City and Bane's ranks for a specific reason: I wanted to grow, expand, and make a name entirely my own, not rot in a cell like just another nonentity defeated by a pair of pathetic costumed boy scouts,' Scar-eye thought, his military criminal pride wounded to the core.
All of a sudden, the still silence of the cell block was swept away. The smugglers' chief began to distinctly perceive from the outside corridor a crescendo of chaotic shouting, violent curses, sounds of bodies impacting against the walls and...
BANG!
BANG!
Two sharp gunshots tore through the air.
A massive, distorted, and evil smile stamped itself onto Scar-eye's face the exact moment the security door was flung open. Detective Rodrigo arrived at a run in the dim light of the cellars, his left shoulder visibly bloody from a bullet and a crazy, animalistic expression—resembling that of a rabid dog—painted on his glassy face. In his left hand, he was still clutching his smoking service pistol; in his right, raised above his chest, he held a stylized glass pen that housed a dense, yellowish, fluorescent chemical substance in its reservoir.
"I bring a gift from the Mistress and a message. She says: one hour of time to show up at the appointment set at the Red House," Detective Rodrigo declared in a flat, monotone voice, thrusting his right hand through the cell bars to proffer the artifact.
Scar-eye grabbed the cylinder and firmly pressed the pen cap, revealing that a thin needle was housed beneath the metallic base.
"It's nice to have friends in the right places," the smugglers' chief declared, flashing a wild grin as he plunged the needle into his neck, injecting the dense yellow substance directly inside his own body.
In a split second, biological hell came alive, opening the doors to his frightening transformation into an authentic, monstrous supervillain of pure destruction.
To be continued...
XXX
Author's Note:
This Sunday I was supposed to go to the movies with my brother, but I changed plans and we went on Monday; surprisingly, my father came along too.
We watched Runner (2026 American film). I can say it is a good action movie, with a simple and easy-to-follow plot, good protagonists, and great action scenes.