I Am Karen - Spider-Man / Peter Parker [1]

Chapter Fourteen - The Glowy Thing Explodes!

Maria's neck had a serious crick in it and her eyes were fighting to stay open – Maria wasn't exactly used to doing all-nighters that involved mainly just waiting for something to happen. Maria was surviving off of coffee, her new cup was steaming beside her whilst she was stood up out of her chair trying to wake her arse up that had gone to sleep.

"Initiating trial 247" Maria tiredly said into her earpiece as she hit the right keys on her keyboard. It took mere seconds before she could hear the sound of a mechanism working and her screen flashing up with the words, 'Trial Successful'. Both Peter and Maria shifted and watched in shock as the door to the vault began to open.

"It worked" Peter mumbled in shock, "It worked!" Quickly, the boy swung his way out of the building and was clambering his way around before a large truck suddenly was driving underneath him and he was jumping on top of it – might as well get a lift. With Peter moving faster, Maria knew she had to get ready to form a path to wherever he wanted to go. Looking at the time, Maria realised that the Decathlon team would be getting ready right about now. Knowing Liz, they would be practicing on the way to the competition which meant that people weren't going to be on their phones – Liz was ridiculously strict about phones during practice.

"Karen, you have to get me to the Decathlon as fast as possible it's right across the street from the Washington Monument" Peter ordered as the truck he had jumped upon rolled out of the DODC facility. Maria quickly typed away on her keyboards, setting a route as swiftly as she could.

"Route created" Maria said as she sent the route to Peter's suit. As Peter began to follow the route, he grabbed his phone to ring his best friend since he was out of the vault he was finally able to receive some signal. Maria however already knew what the outcome of this was going to be ... Ned didn't pick up. Whilst Peter left a panicked voicemail, Maria's phone buzzed on her desk. Grabbing the item, Maria opened up the text messages she had received.

"Shit" Maria mumbled as she realised that Ned had messaged her back and she had missed it but the alert was from Michelle. Quickly, Maria opened Michelle's text only to discover more bad news.

Sorry, just got your messages, reception at the hotel is awful. We are heading into the Decathlon so can't talk right now. Will call you after.

"You have another problem Peter" Maria started, "the decathlon team is about to enter the competition and you're not there. The school isn't going to be happy."

"Can this day get any worse?" Peter sighed heavily as he jumped between more vehicles trying to get to the Decathlon as fast as he could. The journey was taking forever but Maria couldn't speed anything up. Maria anxiously sat waiting for anything to happen - the very obvious downside to be the 'guy in the chair'. She couldn't even contact Ned back; it was most likely that Michelle and Ned had given in their phones to the organisers outside the Decathlon to ensure no cheating was happening. The Decathlon was going to take over an hour and Peter was just as far away from the Decathlon.

Eventually, Peter was nearing the Washington Monument and Maria was receiving a phone call off of Michelle. Immediately, Maria silenced her earpiece that connected her to Peter before she answered the call.

"MJ?"

"Hey, guess what? We won" Michelle announced demurely; it was clear she was not showing lots of emotion to everyone else but Maria had been friends with Michelle long enough to be able to hear the difference in her voice. She was clearly very happy with the results as she should be. However, Maria felt awful as she knew she had to disregard her friends obvious want to celebrate her success all because Ned was carrying around a potential bomb.