ACT 1: Back at Peter's apartment building, Mary Jane helps Peter put his dislocated shoulder back into place, while their neighbors wonder exactly what is happening inside their apartment. Peter tells her that Doctor Octopus has improved his tentacles and that he was fortunate to have been able to get away with just a dislocated shoulder. Meanwhile in Queens, it is close to midnight when Doctor Octopus arrives at the house where he was raised, which is now owned by someone else. The man who answers the door is furious at Doc Ock for showing up so late at his house; not realizing who he is talking to of course. One of Ock's tentacles grabs the man and throws him across the room into a wall. As he looks around the house, Doc Ock reminisces about his troubled past as a young boy whose mother sheltered him from his abusive father. The man, who has slowly started to regain consciousness begs Doctor Octopus not to kill him. Doc Ock replies that no one wants to die. Whether or not Doc Ock kills the man remains a mystery.

ACT 2: In the meantime at Peter's apartment building, Peter, Mary Jane, Flash, Big John Anderson and a couple other guys are hanging out on the rooftops enjoying the evening. MJ asks Big John what brought him from New Zealand to the United States. Big John replies that he came to New York with the hopes of getting himself a job as a superhero apprentice sidekick; Big John even picked a name for himself: the Kiwi Kid. MJ almost bursts into laughter when she hears the name but holds her composure. Peter approaches and tells her that he is going to bed, although she knows that he actually is going out on patrol as Spider-Man.

ACT 3: The next morning, Spider-Man is out patrolling while Doctor Octopus makes his first move since their latest encounter. Doc Ock calls a radio talk show and tells them that he is currently at the Central Museum of Antiquities about to commit a crime. He tells them that he has taken hostage eleven people and that they will be released only if his demands are met. The radio hosts, believing it is a hoax, ask him to be more convincing than that. Doc Ock tells them to turn on their television and watch the news in approximately 30 seconds. He presses down on the button of a remote control he is holding in his hands and a massive explosion destroys part of the museum. Spider-Man, who happens to be nearby, web-slings to the scene to investigate. When he reaches the museum, he finds civilians and cops running all over the place, dodging bullets being shot at them from the museum. His trusty spider-sense at his disposal, our hero dodges the bullets and makes his way into the building, only to find out that motion sensitive weapons are actually firing at the crowd below. He deactivates the weapons and notices Doc Ock's silhouette at the other end of the floor, looking out the window, speaking on his cell phone. Spidey climbs on the roof of the building, goes to the other side, and throws himself off – a web-line in hand, with the other end webbed up to the rooftop ledge. Our hero comes crashing through the window in front of which Doc Ock was standing; knocking the latter in the process. Spider-Man, expecting to see Doctor Octopus rise to his feet is stunned when he sees that it was actually a dummy made up to look like his arch-nemesis.

ACT 4: As a confused Spider-Man frees the hostages, one of them reveals that Doctor Octopus just came in and tied them up, and did not even try to steal anything of value; he was there for less than three minutes. Spider-Man finds a gaping hole in the floor. As he looks down the hole, he realizes that it keeps going down through every floor, all the way into the sewers. He drops down and heads into the sewers. Soon he reaches a hole in the ceiling of the sewer. As he peeks out of the hole, he finds himself in the Palestinian Embassy. He immediately realizes that, all this time, Doctor Octopus had been aiming at the embassy and that the museum bombing was only a decoy. To make matters worse, Doc Ock has kidnapped the Palestinian Foreign Minister visiting New York City (mentioned last issue by Robbie Robertson). As the police arrive on the scene, Spider-Man realizes that once again he will be blamed for something he didn't do.