***PETER***

"I feel like we just stepped onto the set of a Pretty Reckless video," Gwen mutters as, together with Aquaman, we peer down a long, dimly lit corridor.

Humming "Heaven Knows," I nod along with her.

Aquaman shushes us, then crooks his finger at us and points his trident down the hall. As we follow him, I ask in a whisper, "Anything in particular we should be looking for?"

"Any place where there's an outlet to the bay," he says. "That'll be where Penguin's offloading the Venom, for sure."

"There must be a bunch of outlets like that in this building." I wrinkle my nose as it finally registers just how much this place stinks of raw, bloody fish. If I were a fish vampire, or maybe a snakehead, it would probably smell like heaven to me, but as it is...I wonder what Aquaman thinks of it, but I'm not about to ask him.

"Like this?" Gwen taps my shoulder, then beckons me over to a nearby doorway. She crouches next to it, poking her head around the side. I lean down over her so I can look through as well, and Aquaman does the same above me. It's really hard not to burst out laughing when I realize we're doing a Scooby Stack.

Then I look into the room to see the outlet Gwen's talking about. There's no fish in here, but there's still a serious, serious stink of some kind, and I think it's coming from an overturned vat that's spilling green liquid into a half-pipe.

"Did he forget absinthe's legal in New Jersey now?" I ask nobody in particular.

"I only wish it was absinthe," Aquaman says. "That's not good for the wildlife either, but it's not as bad as Venom. Not even close."

"Have you ever had absinthe?" Gwen asks. "Just, uh, out of curiosity."

"The only alcohol I drink is Atlantean mead." The way Aquaman says it, he makes it sound so...epic. Especially when he goes on to say, "That's made with a potent blend of salt, yeast, imported Greek honey, and seaweed."

"Sounds like the next big health-drink craze," I say.

"You laugh now," Aquaman says, "but wait till you see how good it is at dissolving minerals with a low Mohs hardness level."

"Then why do you drink it?" I ask.

"To get drunk. Why else?" Aquaman walks around me and Gwen and steps into the room, his trident held up and pointed right at the vat.

I twitch, then turn around just in time to see the big fat security guard from earlier coming at us. And he's not alone. Out of the corner of my mouth, I inform the others that we've got company. Aquaman stiffens, then raises his trident above his head, one-handed.

"Freeze!" the guard barks at us. "Put your hands over...oh. Oh, you've already done it. Wait, what about you, missy?"

I eyeball Gwen, who's leaning casually against the nearest pillar, whistling that Pretty Reckless tune to herself. Sure, it's a favorite of both of ours, but I'm finding myself disconcerted by the driving melody - especially because I'm sorely tempted to whistle in unison with her. "Oh Lord, Heaven knows, we belong way down below..." Gwen being a husky-voiced girl just like Taylor Momsen, it's hard to tell who's singing the song in my head.

Gwen stops whistling, then laughs out loud. "Oh, you have no idea how much I'm not a 'missy.'"

Now she's channeling Mikaela from Transformers. Gwen, I love you, but you're legitimately scaring me today. And you're the least armed out of the three of us. Unless...no, no way. She wouldn't have been able to sneak something through security at the airport, or on the ferry, even if she did hide it in her bra or something.

The guard draws his gun, but doesn't point it at her. Maybe he's conditioned to not attack kids. Or women. However he sees Gwen, it's a good thing, because it only means he'll underestimate her. Or she could distract him while I subdue him.

She must be thinking along similar lines, because she approaches the guard, and despite his protests, he does nothing to repel her. "Why don't you just put the gun down?" she asks. "Please? We're not doing anything wrong. Nobody has to get hurt."

I totally did not see this coming - Gwen trying to sweet-talk her way out of trouble. It's not really her style. She's a different kind of assertive, normally.

The guard looks like he's about to obey, but at the last second, he finally raises his gun. That's when Gwen strikes, too fast for his fat body to respond in kind. She gets up in his face and twists his wrist until he drops the gun.

"I asked nicely," she says.

Fearing the gun might go off upon hitting the floor, I snag it with my webs and sling it away. It falls into the half-pipe, where the current of Venom carries it away towards the bay.

Aquaman glares at me, but then holds me back when I try to retrieve the gun. "Leave it," he says. "Any skin contact is almost as bad as drinking it."

Panting with fear, the guard reaches into his leather jacket (isn't that a little warm for this environment?) and tries to pull out a backup piece with his free hand. Gwen again disarms him, this time without dropping the gun. She examines it closely and says, "You've got your safety on. You probably wouldn't have been able to shoot us quickly enough. My boy Petey here would've webbed your shit up faster than you could cry out for your mom." Then she ejects the clip and hands back the rest of the gun, now unable to shoot, to its owner. As I expect, he refuses to take it.

Chills race down my spine. Where is this side of Gwen coming from?

I exchange glances with Aquaman, who simply shrugs and says, "Gotham air, I guess. I've long wondered what's the source of Batman's sheer daredevil...ness." He shakes his head. "Wish I could come up with a better way to describe it."

As for the guard, he tries to radio for help on his walkie-talkie, but I get rid of that with my webs as well. Then, just because I'm feeling a bit extra-boyish, I use double crossed weblines, connected to him at the waist, to tug down his pants, exposing his Family Guy boxers.

"I should do that more often," I say, snickering as the guy struggles to cover himself up. "That's actually pretty fun!"

"Don't do it to any Russian mobsters," Aquaman says, stone-faced. "They'll take that as a challenge."

I walk around Aquaman, patting his shoulder along the way. "Duly noted."

The vat finally empties itself out - it took this long not only because of its size, but also because of how viscous the Venom is. It could probably support my weight if I were to walk on it, that's how thick it is.

As soon as this vat's done, a claw-like machine reaches down from the ceiling and picks it up. Then it attaches the vat to a huge chain which carries it away. Out of a hole in the wall, the chain brings in another identical vat (and this time, I see a prominent biohazard symbol stickered on its side), which the claw gently lowers to the floor and tips over. Before it can start draining, however, I web it up and block the green stuff in, even though I'm sure it'll only last so long before failing.

"Lovely, isn't it?" I turn around to see a besuited, heavyset, squat man enter the room with an odd, limping gait. He makes me think of what Malcolm Merlyn might grow up to be in about twenty years if he doesn't watch his diet, but also has a few additional features that detract from his appearance. Chief among them - a long, pointed, beaky nose.

"Penguin, I presume," I say, crossing my arms.

"That's right," he says. He stops to check a pocket watch - on a chain and everything. It's all I can do not to burst out laughing at the sight. "But you may call me Mr. Cobblepot."

Okay, that's an even sillier name than "Penguin," but I'm not about to tell him that. Unless he decides to fight me, in which case, bring it on. I'd have no problem using my agility to my advantage against him.

"Okay, Mr. Cobblepot," Gwen says. "Riddle me this - what's with this toxic sludge you're dumping in the water?"

"Yeah," I chime in. "What, you thought you'd build a better Mountain Dew and it backfired? And you're just trying to cover up your mistake, huh?"

Penguin folds his arms over his prominent gut. "You're right about one thing," he says. "I made a mistake. Which is rare for me to admit - not that you'd know that, because we've never met." He crosses over to the vat, which is still blocked by my webbing - except the webs are turning green, no doubt absorbing the Venom. "I shouldn't have entered into that deal with Bane, and now it's gonna bite me in the backside...I'm sorry, but I'm curious. What...what is this?" he asks, feeling the web. "It looks like spider silk, but this must've been some enormous spider to have covered all this."

Well, if that wasn't an abrupt change of subject... "A little webbing I designed myself," I say. I hold out my wrist and gently tap the webshooter, resisting the temptation to fire it at Penguin and pants him like I did to his guard. Or, even better, web up his mouth, because his flutey, Wonka-like voice is getting on my nerves.

"I know who you are," Penguin says. "And now I can finally put a face to Spider-Man's name. Hmm...I knew you were young and fit, everything I never was. But..." He pauses to chuckle lightly to himself. "What I never knew was that you were still a kid!"

"Barely," I counter. "I'm eighteen in four months."

"And besides," Gwen says, "every time he kisses me, he scratches my cheek."

Aquaman leans down to me and asks in an undertone, "Your girlfriend complains about that too?"

"I thought you liked it," I say to Gwen. "I thought you liked my perma-stubble."

"Only when we're not kissing," she says.

I'm about to respond when I get that familiar tingle in the back of my neck. Swiveling, I see a number of guards trying to sneak into this room through a more unobtrusive entrance. I say "trying" because the second I see them, I start layering webs all across the doorway, trapping several of them and distracting those who are already in.

Aquaman then yells, "Sorry to wreck your handiwork, Spidey!" I turn to see him puncturing the web barrier on the vat's opening with the tips of his trident. The blades come out covered in disgusting green gunge, and he throws the trident at the guards, who duck aside as quickly as possible. One of those still trapped in my web gets raked by the blades, and given the mingling of red and green liquids on his uniform, it's safe to say the Venom got into his bloodstream.

"Out of the frying pan..." I groan.

Gwen completes my sentence. "Into the fire." She puts the clip back into the first guard's second gun, then fires it roughly in the direction of our new assailants. She doesn't hit any of them, but she comes very close, firing at their feet and such.

"Now you've triggered the ShotSpotters, my friend," Penguin says. "Unlike in your hometown, though, the cops are a little more corrupt in the real Gotham."

"And that's our cue to do as the kids on the internet might say and GTFO. Come on, guys!" I fire a webline at the ceiling, then run forward and grab Gwen, pulling her up into the air and landing us both on a catwalk.

Seriously? Another catwalk? This one better not get blown out from underneath my feet like the last one.

"Wait!" Gwen cries, pointing down at Aquaman.

Shit, almost forgot about him. I call his name, then send him a second webline, but he shakes his head. "I'll get up to you myself! Just hang on - I need my trident back!" He pounds his way through the guards with his shoulder first, like he's a football MVP about to make the game-winning touchdown. Flash Thompson, if you could see this, you'd cream your pants.

When Aquaman gets his trident back, he runs back into the room, jumps on top of the vat, and leaps up to the catwalk. He grabs it very narrowly, with white knuckles, but then pulls himself up after Gwen takes his trident and holds it for him.

"God, this is heavy," she says.

"I could've told you that," he laughs.

"What's it made of?" I ask, tapping the handle with my knuckles. "I wanna say silver, but..."

"It's an Atlantean alloy," says Aquaman. "A proprietary blend of metals, some of which aren't featured in the periodic table."

"Any vibranium?" I ask as we set off, all our feet clanking away on the catwalk.

"No, it's too rare. But I think there's one other superhero who uses it a lot...if only I could remember which one."

The catwalk takes us into another room, where we see the chain of Venom vats that's being brought in. There are at least ten of them in sight.

"Peter, look!" Gwen points at an engine on the floor below. "I wanna shoot that, but..."

"No, do it," I say. "It couldn't hurt." I cover my ears when she fires several shots into the engine. Before long, she manages to disable it, somehow. Like a girl from Star Wars, she's a deadly skilled shot.

As for us boys... "How far can you throw that trident?" I ask Aquaman.

He shrugs, then raises his trident. "As far as you'd like."

"Then throw it at those vats in the distance," I say. "Cut the chains. You get those, and I'll use my webs to drop the rest."

Together, we get the remaining vats down to the ground, where they stay stuck. Some of them have turned over and are spilling their contents all over the floor. It's even spreading into the next room, judging from the sounds of the guards running and screaming in fear. I guess Penguin paid them enough to know exactly what chemicals he's processing around here. Either that, or they're just instinctively afraid of the stuff.

Aquaman looks at me and Gwen and raises his eyebrow - which, I now notice, has a scar cutting through it. "Now I have a really important question," he says. "How do we get down from here? We've made the floor impassable, and there's no more catwalk."

I did not think this through, did I? "Uh..." I scratch my head until an idea finally comes to mind. "Tightropes?"

"Again?" Gwen asks.

"I know," I say. "If we fall, it's really, really gonna suck. But there's our way out." I point to a door on the other end of the room, an area mercifully free of Venom. Then I fire my web to the top of that door, tie it to the catwalk, and stand aside while Gwen goes first.

"Petey, you really need to come up with better ideas," I mutter as I follow her, with Aquaman slinging his trident behind his back as he prepares to take his turn. "What happened to that big brain of yours? Someone's hijacked it, dude. Next mission - get it the hell back."