Chapter Text
Jon’s day is relatively normal before he almost dies. Of course, ‘normal’ is completely different in Scion City as compared to anywhere else, but it's not every day you get attacked by a superhuman, even for Jon. It's especially not every day you get attacked by the Boneturner. In retrospect, Jon should have anticipated that the Boneturner might actually be in the abandoned butcher shop that's been one of his bases over the past few years, but he'd been so focused on research for the newest profile article that he'd completely ignored the possibility. He's regretting that now as he sprints through streets and back alleys in the middle of the night to try and shake the Boneturner off. Based on the too-heavy footsteps behind him, it's not working.
He runs down another alleyway, nearly tripping over several trash bags on the ground next to a dumpster. The Boneturner does trip, surprisingly enough, giving Jon enough time to get a lead. A lead that doesn't help, because the alley is cut off by a tall chainlink fence. One that Jon won't be able to get over before the Boneturner reaches him. He's trapped.
“Shit,” he mutters, turning to face the Boneturner, who’s walking toward him with a huge grin on his… well, it is a face, even if it doesn't look like one.
“You work for the paper?” the Boneturner says, voice a deep rasp that sounds like it's coming from something other than vocal chords.
Jon tries to move away and feels his back hit the fence. “I- yes, I work for the paper.” Maybe if he can keep him talking…
He tries not to think about the corpses the Boneturner tends to leave behind, organs crushed by the weight of their own skin when he pulls their bones out to add them to himself.
The Boneturner lets out a throaty laugh, a sound like two bones grinding together. He's close enough now that if he wanted to, he could reach out with one of his several elongated arms and touch Jon. That's all it would take, just a touch. Jon feels his breath stop short of his lungs as he tries to sink further into the fence. There's no way he can get around the Boneturner; the misshapen arms can stretch to both sides of the alley. Jon tries to say something, to stall for time until he can think, but the words don’t make it out of his mouth. He's going to die.
The Boneturner reaches toward him with three of his arms. Jon tries to shrink away, but there's nowhere he can go. There has to be something, anything he can do, but there's nothing. You can't fight the Boneturner, you can't run from the Boneturner. The only thing Jon can recall at the moment is that he must be weak to fire, since it was Blaze that beat him last time, but Jon doesn't have fire and the Boneturner’s clearly toying with him now because he has his hands on the fence on either side of Jon and is laughing all the while, and Jon is going to die.
“I’ve always wanted to find one of you,” the Boneturner says, and Jon cringes away at the feel of his hot breath. “Can you see into my head? Hm? There anything in there?”
Jon continues struggling to breathe, barely managing to choke out a reply. “I- I don't- I don't know what you're talking about.”
The Boneturner’s head cocks to the side, some of the extra bones in his neck cracking and snapping. “No? Ah.” He appears to think for a moment, though Jon’s not sure how much of that he can do. “Shame.”
The fence rattles as the Boneturner releases it and moves to touch Jon, but before he can, there's the sound of an impact and something bursting. The Boneturner stumbles forward and Jon catches a glimpse of a trash bag split open on the ground just behind the Boneturner. He thinks he sees someone standing at the other end of the alley, but it's too dark to tell and they disappear before he can even be sure if they're there at all. The Boneturner turns his head to look, rotating it all the way around like an owl.
“Who’s there?” he calls, the rest of his body rotating to face the same direction.
One of the trash bags slides a few feet across the ground. The Boneturner bellows and runs at the movement, apparently not even bothering to notice the fact that there's clearly no one moving it. Jon freezes for a second, trying to process what's going on. He starts to turn and try to climb the fence, but he feels something touch his shoulder and shouts in surprise, frantically diving to the side to try and get away. But it's not the Boneturner. It's a long strand of some nearly transparent material, extending down from somewhere above him.
“Grab on,” says a voice from somewhere above him.
The Boneturner’s head snaps back around. Jon doesn't really know what's going on, but whoever this new person is must be better than the Boneturner. He takes hold of the strand of… whatever it is, and nearly gets his arms torn out of their sockets as he's sharply pulled upward. His legs hit the fence and he nearly collides with the brick wall, but someone catches him before he does and pulls him up into an open window. He tumbles down to the floor, the air knocked out of him as he lands on his back.
“Sorry! Sorry, I didn't think- um,” the person who pulled him up says, helping him get to his feet, “I guess I- I just don't know my own strength.”
Jon gets his first good look at the person, and it just serves to make him more confused. In Jon’s line of work, it's vital to have at least passing knowledge of every superhuman in Scion City, but Jon doesn't know who this is. It's a man, based on both the build and the voice, though he's much softer around the edges than many of the superhumans, and his demeanor seems… small, comparatively. He has a dark gray suit and mask. Over the suit is a circular cloak colored black on the outside and gold on the inside, fastened around his neck and draped over his shoulders, stopping at his waist. The mask is covered in golden yellow lines in the pattern of spiderweb. These, along with the gold spider insignia on his chest, give Jon a moment of panic. Jon's encountered one of the Web’s ilk in the past and barely escaped with his life. But those thoughts evaporate after a second as the man continues apologizing profusely and asking if Jon is okay.
“It’s alright, I’m fine,” Jon says, reaching up to adjust his glasses from where they were knocked off center.
“Oh, good.” The man looks over Jon’s shoulder, his oval shaped optic units widening. “That's… less good.”
Jon turns to look. There's a hand on the windowsill, fingers pointed with shards of bone almost bursting through the skin. A second hand just like it appears, then a third. As the fourth hand grasps for the windowsill and the Boneturner begins to pull himself up, the man shoulders his way past Jon and slams the window down on the Boneturner’s fingers. The Boneturner howls and drops three stories back to the ground when the man pulls the window back up again. Several of his leg bones break with a sickening crack.
Jon wishes he hadn't dropped his camera after the Boneturner started chasing him, because if there was anything of this encounter to get on tape, this would be it. The superhuman in the spider suit jumps out the window. He doesn't fall and break his legs on the ground as one might expect, but just… stops falling. He stands in the air, balancing on nothing. Jon leans out the window a bit, and the light of a car passing by the alley’s entrance reveals the thin strand of webbing suspended between the two buildings.
The Boneturner gets back to his feet, using one of his pairs of arms to adjust his legs, bones visibly shifting underneath the skin. Once he's finished that, he starts to make his arms longer, adding bones and stretching the skin in ways skin shouldn't be stretched. The unknown superhuman dodges away from the Boneturner’s grasping hands, appearing to simply step through the air, dancing gracefully (well, almost gracefully, he's stumbling a bit) on nothing. As he moves, he's doing something with hands, tracing lines and circles and making jagged connections between. Jon doesn't recognize it as anything specific, but the patterns are close enough to general materialization powers: mapping something to be pulled through to the real world.
“Ugh, stop moving!” the man says in frustration, though at himself or the Boneturner Jon’s not sure.
The Boneturner takes the opportunity to snag one of the lines of webbing. Jon doesn't think it snaps, but it bends down enough that the man loses his balance and nearly falls. He grabs hold of another line a few feet down, well within the Boneturner’s reach. Instead of staying on the webs, the man drops down to the ground in a tuck and roll, then takes off for the entrance of the alley. The Boneturner has to take a moment to shrink his limbs back down to a manageable size, then snaps his body around. The man stops and turns back toward the Boneturner, and the two of them stare each other down, waiting for the other to blink first, whatever blinking means in this situation.
The man raises his hands again, and the Boneturner charges him, two pairs of hands extended. Then he stops. At first Jon can't completely tell what happened, but as he leans farther out the window, he can just make out the huge spiderweb stretching across the entire alleyway. The Boneturner twists and writhes, trying to use his sharp edges to cut himself free, but all it does is entangle him further. It doesn't seem like he's strong enough to break through it. He howls in anger, using his one free arm to swipe at the man on the other side of the web. The man just ducks under a corner of the web, carefully avoiding the thrashing Boneturner, and walks back to under Jon’s window.
“I assume you’re not planning on leaving me up here?” Jon says.
“No, just- just let me think for a second.” The man pauses, then continues. “I’ll just make a line for you to slide down on, if you’re- if you’re okay with that.”
“I’d just like to get down.” While this will make for an interesting piece sometime tomorrow, Jon doesn't particularly care for being stuck here, especially with the Boneturner nearby.
The man makes a downward gesture with one hand, and a new line of web materializes in front of the window. Tentatively, Jon takes hold of it and climbs out the window. The web is a bit sticky, but smooth and easy enough to slide down. He hits the ground a bit harder than anticipated and staggers, then rights himself and wipes his hands off on his jeans. The web vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
After a moment of awkward silence, Jon says, “Well, um, thank you.”
“Oh! You’re welcome.” The man extends a hand for a handshake, which Jon takes. “I’m-” He cuts himself off. “Er, I guess I'm not really sure.”
So he isn't just a superhuman Jon didn't know, he's one that hasn't even established himself yet. “Jonathan Sims,” Jon says. “Scion City Times.”
The man lets go, stepping back just a bit. “Oh, yes, I knew that. Um, I mean, I read your articles. I guess it's kind of difficult not to. You can't really not read the paper if you're going to… fight crime.” He laughs, though it sounds mostly forced.
“Right,” Jon says, the slight pride of being recognized overshadowed by his trepidation at being the least knowledgeable party here.
“Oh, that reminds me, do you have your phone on you? I think the police would like to know about him.” The man gestures over his shoulder at the Boneturner.
“No. I dropped it somewhere.” Otherwise, Jon would have recorded something, or at least taken pictures.
The man hesitates, then starts walking down the alley toward the Boneturner. “I can call the police. You just- you just need to get somewhere safer than here.”
Jon follows behind him, warily eying the Boneturner has they approach. “Yes, I… would rather like to get away from him.”
As they reach the Boneturner, the man lifts up the web for Jon to duck underneath it. Jon manages to stay away from the Boneturner as he steps out onto the sidewalk, though it's still much closer than he'd like to be. The Boneturner looks at him, and his face turns up in a grin once again.
“You don't know nothing, paper boy,” the Boneturner says, trying and failing to rip one of his arms free. “I think I might know more than you, and I've never been the sharpest.”
“And what is that?” Jon asks.
The Boneturner just smiles and stubbornly, infuriatingly, refuses to talk. The man is talking on the other side of the web, probably making the call to the police.
“What do I not know?” Jon demands.
Nothing but a grin filled with too many teeth that don't belong.
The man steps out from under the web, preventing any more questioning. “Will you be okay from here? The police will probably want you to answer questions anyway.”
“Yes, I’m- I’ll be fine. I'll wait here.” Jon would really rather not be around the Boneturner any more than necessary, but it would be better than relying on a cab being in a less populated part of town this late at night.
“Alright. Dispatcher said that they should be here in maybe five minutes, so…” The man shuffles awkwardly. “I guess I’ll get going.”
As he turns to leave, Jon calls after him. “Wait.” The man looks back. “Who are you?”
“I’m- um- well, I don't really have a name or anything yet, and I can't really tell you my real name. I’m not- I’m not with the Web, if that's what you’re asking, much too much murder and destruction on the Web’s side. I’m just- just trying to stop people like him, I guess. I’m just trying to help.”
“‘Just trying to help,’” Jon echoes.
The man nods, pauses a moment, then takes off. He springs up to the rooftops, with extra leverage provided by web lines he creates on the way up, and disappears, leaving Jon alone. Except for the Boneturner, who’s still grinning sinisterly. Jon considers trying to follow the new superhuman, proving his journalistic integrity, uncovering more answers, but that idea is shot down as soon as he has it. How tired he really is hasn’t hit him until now, when the adrenaline’s begun to wear off, and his legs are sorer than he realized. He’ll go home tonight, get what sleep he can manage. After he gives his statement to the police, anyhow.
As flashing red and blue appear at the end of the street, accompanied by the howl of sirens, Jon looks to the Boneturner.
“I don't suppose you have a camera?”