Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter Parker is one of Midtown’s highest achieving students; it’s no secret, the school posts public rankings each semester. And every time Peter’s been in the top ten. Sure, he could easily get higher, possibly into the top three, or even number one– if it weren’t for the whole Spiderman thing. He never has enough time to study, too busy swinging across highrises and protecting the streets from petty crime. Heck, he barely has enough time to sleep!

That’s why when he sees the winter semester’s ranking, he's shocked: tenth place. Out of over a thousand students.

He was easily expecting to get something much lower, maybe around the hundreds; he hadn’t properly studied in months. Somehow he still managed to ace all of his classes: straight A*s.

“Ha, I beat you. Take that!” Mj exclaims. This isn’t her first time in the top ten, but it’s the first time she beat him. So, obviously, she’s ecstatic. Ninth place: only beating Peter by an inch, boasting one more point than him.

“It’s only luck.” Peter scoffs, knowing full well she deserved it. Maybe if he had gone to more of her study sessions (ie: more than zero) he would have gained a higher score. Anyway, he couldn't say that he even cared about the rankings, even if they gave him an ego boost.

“Aww, guys.” Ned sounds disappointed in himself. “I only got 96th place.” He says, punctuating the sentence with a frown.

“Only 96th?” Mj asks, smirking at him. “That’s still great– think about it, you beat over 90% of the other students. Don’t be disappointed in yourself.” She tells him, giving him a playful slap on the back.

“Yeah!” Peter agrees. It’s a massive achievement, one Ned worked extremely hard for.

Their walk to their next class– fourth period chemistry with Dr. Wilson– is quickly interrupted by an announcement overhead, congratulating them for their placements. “Well done everyone!” The voice of their student president booms over the loudspeakers. “I hope you’re all happy with your places, and if you aren’t, remember that there’s always room to improve next ranking!” She giggles with an overwhelming sense of joyfulness. “Oh! And before I forget, we’re hosting a very special trip this year– free of charge. The top one hundred students will be invited to the New York Junior Tech Fair, and the top ten will have the opportunity to show their creations off! Please come to the main office for more information or to get your permission slips.” And with that, the speakers cut off with a resounding electrical buzz.

Instantly, Ned turns to face them, unfiltered excitement on his face. “Did you hear that? I’ve always wanted to go, and you guys get to show your stuff off!”

“Well I haven’t.” MJ’s deadpan quickly turns to a look of consideration. “Although… It does sound pretty cool. Hey Peter, you heard her, which one of your wack creations will you show off– better make sure it’s a good one.”

Peter hums, the gears in his brain turning. He has many abandoned projects, all at differing stages of completion, that he could easily fix up in time for the fair. “Did I tell you about the mini jet boosters I made? They’re kinda like the ones Iron Man has on his suit, except I don’t think they’ll be as good.” He frowns, knowing he doesn’t have the same type of tech Tony Stark has in his lab. If he did, he could probably make them much better– possibly even better than the ones on the Iron Man suit. “I scraped them a while back, but they’re still hanging about somewhere in my room, so I could probably bring them back”.

He knows it’s a pretty basic idea, everyone and their mother wants to recreate Iron Man, and the jet boosters are an integral part of that. In theory it’s pretty easy to do: just weld a bunch of components together and connect them to a giant battery. But, it’s significantly more difficult in practice: there’s so many factors to consider, especially if he wanted to make them approximately the same size as Iron Man’s. He can’t really go around lugging a car battery behind him to power them.

Cutting his mind off from going on a long winded tangent, he turns his attention back to Mj. “You can’t call my stuff wacky, when you make all sorts of even wackier things.” He jokes, laughing when he sees her small smile. “Enough about me, what will you make?”

“A spider” she replies simply.

“A spider?” Ned questions.

“Yes, a giant, robotic spider.” She confirms. “Or a fly– I could make it fly around and attack people.” Peter can’t tell if she’s joking, it does seem like the type of thing she would do, and the sly smile does nothing to ease his suspicions.

The final bell rings overhead, cutting their conversation about robot bugs short– they’re late. Running to class as fast as their collective legs will carry them, they manage not to get eviscerated by Dr Wilson, who just looks at them, sighs and points them towards their seats.

He’s used to their shenanigans by now.

…

For once, May’s there waiting for him when he gets home. Her appearances have become rarer and rarer since Ben died; she was forced to take on extra shifts at the hospital to keep their apartment. Peter couldn't ever imagine losing the place, all his memories of uncle ben kept within those marigold walls. Losing the apartment would be like losing Ben all over again.

“Hello Peter.” She greets, exhaustion clear in her voice. He feels so bad that he can’t help her pay the bills. It's not like he doesn't try, either, whenever he has a spare twenty bucks (usually won in a bet against Ned) he always offers it to her, but May has always been stubborn and she refuses it each time. He’s just gotten into the habit of sliding them into her purse, hoping she doesn’t notice the extra money and bust him for it.

That’s all he can do for her, he can’t ever get a job, part time or not– not with his vigilante work on the side. It’s either getting a job to support May and himself, or continuing to stop crimes and make the city safer. He knows which one he has to do. After all, it was his ignorance that got them into this mess. That got Ben killed.

Pushing all the self deprecating thoughts from his brain, he shakes his head. He can’t let himself spiral, not infront of May. Alas, he desperately wants to tell her about the trip.

“Hey, May.” He rhymes, doing his best to hide his own tiredness; he doesn't want May thinking it's her fault and blaming herself. That was something she did a lot after the accident.

“So, how was school today?” She asks, like she does everyday. Peter thinks they’ve become a bit alienated from each other, with all of the new responsibilities they both had to pick up, getting closer to strangers as the days pass. He supposes he can’t blame her, because it's half his fault, if not more.

“It was good.” He hums, already rummaging through the fridge. “The rankings came out today– I got tenth.” He hopes to butter her up a bit, impress her with his amazing grades, before he mentions the trip; he knows how much she values his education, and how she would hate for him to miss a single day. It's a good thing she doesn’t know about him being spiderman, she would quickly connect the dots between spiderman dealing with a group of thugs at 9:00 am and Peter Parker skipping second period. Her hope that he will turn out great is one of the only things truly keeping her going. Without that hope, she would have broken down years ago, back when uncle ben first died. Peter vows to never tell her about his extracurricular activities.

“That’s my Peter, scoring high as always!” She winks at him, a happy, youthful glow on her face. Secretly, he knows she’s faking it– doing her best to put on a mask that hides her true emotions, but he keeps his mouth shut. “I’ll have to get you a gift, anything in mind?” His powers allow him to easily hear the strain in her voice, she really doesn’t want to spend any of the meagre money they have on a toy or game when it could be going to food.

“Well…” He bats his eyelashes at her in an over exaggerated display of begging. “There is something you could do.” She laughs at his act, her eyelids wrinkling around the edges like they used to. Hastily, in case she changes her mind, Peter pulls out the permission slip, flattening the crumpled paper down onto the table so the dotted line faces up. He hands her a pen, it has almost run out, but it’ll work for now. “Sign this for me.” He begs, looking up at his aunt in the best approximation of puppy dog eyes.

“What is it?” She questions, raising her left eyebrow.

Peter knows that he’s got her wrapped around his little finger, and that she’ll sign it no matter what he says (Seriously, he could tell her it was a permission slip to go to Siberia to freeze to death for a week and she’d still sign it to make him happy.) “It’s a permission slip to go to the New York Junior Tech Fair.” She’s about to start talking, but he interrupts her, desperate to tell her about it. “And, because I was one of the top ten, I get to show off one of my inventions to hundreds of potential investors. The best thing is– it’s being fully covered by school, you don’t even need to pay for it!” He exclaims, excitement worming its way into his voice. “It will be a great opportunity. Pleasepleaseplease let me go!”

She laughs, a melodic sound escaping from her throat. “I was gonna sign it anyway, Kiddo. But, if you insist.” Smiling, she scrawls her signature on the off white paper.

It’s confirmed: he can go.

“Thank you so much May, I promise I’ll repay you.” He says, holding out his little finger.

She interlocks her own with his, giving their hands a weak shake before letting go. “Don’t worry about it– now get out, you need to make sure your project’s finished if you want to go.”

“I will!” He promises, having to raise his voice as he runs to his room.

“You better!” She shouts back, her voice carrying clearly across the apartment.

After slamming his door shut behind him (oops, he might be a slight bit too excited for this), he starts to rummage through his closet. Eventually, he finds exactly what he was looking for– a large cardboard box filled with projects and parts galore. In the last few months, he's had no time to work on his beloved projects– Queens has been needing Spiderman more and more recently, leaving him with not a moment of spare time. A thick layer of dust has congregated on the cardboard, showing how long it truly has been. Blowing it off, he opens up the flaps, revealing the treasure trove within.

Circuits, motherboards, and pieces of scrap metal sit haphazardly in the box, piled on top of each other with very little care. Whatever, Peter knows they’ll survive being disorganised. In the centre of it all sits his most prized possession: an old blow torch and welding mask. A layer of rust engulfs the aged metal, making the mask look almost scary. Try as he might, the rust just won’t come off– no matter what products he applies or how much he scrubs at it. He’s had to learn how to live with it; the rust doesn’t actually affect the way it functions, and he definitely can’t afford to buy a new one. (And he will never stoop as low as stealing, not for something he can live without.)

Gently, he picks it up and slips it onto his face, some of the rust pulling at his hair. He doesn’t notice it, completely relishing in the feeling of the metal on his face. This is his escape: retracting into his room and fiddling with his trinkets until he makes something great. It’s the one time when he doesn't have any deadlines or expectations: Peter Parker has the deadlines of copious amounts of homework and the expectations to keep his grades up or risk May’s wrath; Spiderman has the expectation to always be there, protecting the community and saving people. It can get exhausting, but he doesn't mind, these little retreats are enough.

The jet boosters aren’t in the box like he expected them to be, which makes his heart rate raise slightly in worry. But he finds them quickly enough, hiding in the dark depths under his bed. Dragging them out, he inspects them, looking for any new damages or faults. There's no cracks in the plastic outer shell. What? He would have preferred metal, but that unfortunately wasn’t in his budget, and there was no way he could possibly ask aunt May to buy it for him. Luckily, the paint isn’t even slightly chipped.

It’s the inner workings he has to worry about. He knows there’s nothing wrong with them, per say, but they’re bulky and unfinished, and he wants them to be comfortable. That means they have to be light– any regular person can’t go around lugging forty pounds on each arm without quickly getting exhausted, even if he can– meaning that he’ll have to find some way to remove the extra weight. He knows that it’s from the batteries, which are bulky and heavy and only hold an hour of charge, making them little more than useless. Sure, Spiderman can do a lot in an hour, from saving people from burning buildings to rescuing cats that climbed too high up a tree, but it’s not enough time to do everything.

Then again, it won’t be him who’s wearing them– will it? Originally, he wanted them for himself, but they don’t fit that well with the suit, and they would get in the way of his web swingers. He’s Spiderman, not Iron Man, and he doesn’t need any flashy jets to do that. He’ll simply sell them to some eccentric millionaire for the sole purpose of jetting around their mcmansion for a few minutes at a time. Boom. Done. Easy. Practically all he needs to do now is refresh the paint and they’ll be good to go.

Except… That’s not good enough for him. He wants them to be perfect– even better than Tony Stark’s creations. It’s a longshot, especially with his resources, but he may as well try. If it all goes wrong he can quite easily go back to the basics and show off some mediocre tech. He better get brainstorming.

The ideas run through his mind at a million miles per hour, some quickly getting discarded and others getting shoved into a neat little folder in the back of his mind. He wonders how to change the batteries, and if he should alter anything else while he’s at it. He’s not picked it up in months: there’s bound to be a few more things to work on. Focusing on the dilemma of the batteries, he lets the other ideas slip his mind; it doesn’t matter how fancy the wiring is, or how expensive the components he uses are, the way he powers the contraption will make him really stand out.

He decides to power it in the most difficult way of all: by recreating the arc reactor and using that as a base. Obviously, it doesn't need to be an exact one-on-one copy (he feels like that would get him into trouble with Tony Stark himself, and as much as Peter would like to meet the man, he won’t be doing it in a courtroom). He’s only planning on getting enough energy for the blasters, not a supersuit.

Pulling out a large piece of grafting paper from his desk, Peter begins to draw. First, its theories on how he will actually make a mini arc reactor. He uses his laptop– an old, falling apart thing– to cross reference videos of Iron Man in action, analysing the way the suit whirs to life before shooting in the air to deal with the villain of the week. Whatever the process is, there seems to be a sort of divide between the glowing superpowered battery at Tony’s heart and the metallic super suit he wears.

Interesting, it seems that even the biggest, richest heroes are unable to perfect their tech. It comforts Peter, knowing that he’s not the only one who doesn't always get everything right. Spiderman had always been seen as perfect, bending the world to save people, even when it meant shattering his own bones. And, as much as it pained Peter to admit it, there had been numerous times where he failed to save someone, or stop illegal weapons sales, or even got a civilian hurt because he underestimated the enemy. Those were the worst times: knowing he could have easily done something– should have done something, but didn’t because he neglected to pay attention, even when lives were on the line. Like what happened to Ben.

Eventually, he finds an old interview with Stark that took place mere days after his rescue. It detailed how he made the giant super suit with nothing more than some scraps, what “epic” moves he pulled on his would-be kidnappers, and most importantly: how he made the arc reactor.

The process was dumbed down to a level most kids would understand, meaning it wasn’t entirely helpful for Peter’s advanced mind. Most of the stuff said Peter had already theorised about, with a surprising degree of accuracy, but there were some strings of words that stuck out to him, things about the arc reactor he had never once considered.

“It’s about electromagnets, all about electromagnets.” Peter hears Tony’s voice drawl over the crackling speakers. Peter scribbles the word down in bold, chunky letters in the middle of the page– he was finally getting somewhere. “The electricity sends a pulse around a circuit– err, around a body, attracting any magnetic metal in a certain range around it.” On the pixelated screen he shifts into a more comfortable position. “Surprisingly, when you reverse engineer it, the magnet does this weird thing. You’d think it’d repel the metal, right? And it does, but it also works as a power source through this weird process called–” The interview ends, cutting Tony off. Ugh.

Peter got the jist of it, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out the missing parts. He spends all night there, at his desk, pondering on how the arc reactor works. The process is slow, but at least he’s making steady progress (even if it is taking much longer than he would have liked). When he next glances at his alarm clock, it’s two am. He had been scrawling and writing and doodling for over eight hours, making barely a sliver of progress. And, he missed dinner– something his crazy quick metabolism is going to make him regret tomorrow.

Resting his head on his desk, he ponders on if he should get something to eat, but he’d hate to disturb May. She has a twelve hour shift tomorrow, and he can’t afford to wake her up for the life of him. Oh well, he’ll have to eat a big breakfast tomorrow. Sliding his tired eyes shut, he dreams about the mystery of how the arc reactor works.

–

His alarm blares at him: it's six am, and time to get up. Rolling out of bed, he pulls on his spider suit, pulling it out from under a pile of clothes at the bottom of his closet. He has just enough time to do a quick patrol of Queens before he heads to school. Quietly sliding his window open, he crawls out of it, heading to the roof.

Mornings are his favourite time to patrol, when the city is just waking up and an air of tiredness hangs over everyone’s heads. It makes them more docile, less irritable, and therefore less work for Spiderman. He can spend his time being what he truly wanted to be– The Friendly Neighbourhood Spiderman. The crime is at its lowest, most criminals working late into the night usually going to sleep at this hour, meaning its the best possible time to help old ladies cross the road and rescue cats from high up places. In fact, he sees Mrs Martinez right there!

Stretching his arms high above his head, he prepares his web shooters. The handy little LED interface on the sides telling him he has 80% capacity. Perfect, he won’t need to refill for a couple more weeks, if everything goes to plan. Which is to say, it will go to plan, because he’s Spiderman, and his spidey-senses would never allow him to mess up.

He swings down from the roof, his trusty web shooters holding his weight as he hollers and laughs through the air, landing next to Mrs Martinez. She doesn’t jump or shout; instead gracing him with a slight half smile as she continues to look forward, ignoring his presence. Almost every morning, he helps her cross the road, and almost every morning, she plays the game of ignorance, pretending not to see him. It’s fun– having someone who doesn’t constantly idolise him, boosting him up to a pedestal he can never climb.

“Hello Mrs Martinez!” He exclaims. “How are your petunias?”

“They are doing well, although I need some more fertiliser.” She replies, her words short and clipped. She doesn't like talking much, but Peter knows she cares about their interactions.

Taking her arm in his, he helps her cross the road to the gardening store. He swears that she goes there almost every day to buy more plants for her ever increasing collection. “Here we are, have a nice day!” He says, about to swing off when his stomach starts rumbling. The noise was quiet enough that he hopes she didn’t hear it; she fusses over him way too much when it comes to the matter of if he’s eating enough. His enhanced metabolism and vigilantism means he requires well over double the calories of an adult man– and that's on a good day.

However, it seems like she did pick up on the barely there rumble of his stomach, her wrinkled hand dipping into her massive purse and pulling out a sandwich. “It’s ham and cheese.” She says, shoving it into his hand before turning away towards the gardening store.

“Bye Mrs M!” He waves, grabbing the attention of more than a few passerbyers.

“Hey, isn’t that Spiderman?” He hears a few people whisper around him, only now picking up on the brightly coloured red and blue spandex suit he’s wearing. Cosplayers of him are exceedingly common in the city– something that shocked him when he first saw one– so that's most likely why the civilians didn’t immediately clock onto him.

As he swings away, heading to his favourite spot to scope out the city, he hears a few people shout “Spiderman, I love you!” It never gets old.

The people below him point towards him as he swings by, attracting the attention of hundreds. These are some of his favourite times: when he can soar through the air like a bird of flight, ignoring the ant like people milling around on the ground. Gracefully, he swings from building to building, shooting out and retracting his webs dozens of times until he finally reaches his spot: a small footbridge in the centre of Queens.

It allows him to look at the entire street below, as well as scope out the connecting side streets and back alleys for any muggings or drug deals. It is situated on one of Queens main avenues, thousands of people pass through each day, all of which are ample targets for pickpockets and the like. He is the not so metaphorical eye in the sky, watching over his city to keep him safe. It kinda unnerves him, that he’s becoming this big brother-esque figure who doesn’t let anything be unknown to him. At least he's only doing it to keep people safe, and not for any nefarious purposes.

Currently, the street is pretty sparsely populated in comparison to what it becomes at midday. There's about a hundred or so people in suits and ties commuting to their office jobs, probably as a middle manager who stares out of the window all day, as well as some loiterers. He doesn’t bother them: they’re mainly teens hanging around before school, and he doesn't think any of them would particularly want to be told off by Spiderman, who has been proclaimed as “the people’s hero”. As much as he dislikes that title, Spiderman isn’t the type of arachnid to disturb people who are doing nothing wrong, even if their presence may be mildly unsettling for the businessmen who frequent this area.

Behind his mask, his eyes scan over the crowd for any suspicious activities. He’s only half paying attention, the rest of his mind focused on the delicious looking sandwich in his hands: ham and cheese, with a generous layer of ketchup. Just how he likes it. After skipping dinner last night and breakfast this morning, he hadn’t realised how hungry he’d been until Mrs Martinez had given him the sandwich. Making a mental note to thank her the next time he sees her, he bites into the sandwich. The bread is soft and fluffy like a cloud in his mouth, and the ketchup immediately makes his tongue tingle. Savouring every bite, he finishes the sandwich, immediately starting to miss it. Yum.

It’s getting later in the morning and he should probably get going if he wants to make it to school on time. He can’t afford to be late– not unless he wants to lose his scholarship and get kicked out (much to flash’s delight). But first, he decides to do one more quick check over the especially shady back alleys. Even his enhanced vision can’t always see into them, making them a prime location for all sorts of illegal happenings.

The first alley he strolls down is empty. It’s the closest to him, so he can’t lie and say it wasn’t expected. It’s the exact same situation with the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth: all empty, except for a few trash bags.

The sixth alley is different, the moment he gets close to it he can hear voices. There’s multiple of them, maybe two, maybe three? It’s hard to tell, the voices overlap in hushed whispers, hiding their words from any prying ears. If it weren’t for his super hearing, he would have never been able to tell what they were saying. Listening in, a handful of snippets of conversation make themself apparent to his straining ears. “It’s new… somethin the boss made himself.” Even as he tries to listen in more, he can’t make out a single word. He almost thinks that they’ve noticed him hanging around, and lowered their voices to become more inconspicuous. Of course, that’s not possible– he’s practically a master of sneaking. There’s no way in hell some (hopefully) low level thugs could have clocked him.

Still, their words make his spider-sense fire up, the back of his neck tingling in a way that’s all too familiar. And all too unwelcome. What could they even mean by “it’s new”? Whatever they have, he hopes it’s not some super overpowered weapon of destruction. He’s wrestled a fair few of those out of the hands of criminals who were planning on robbing a bank or infiltrating a government agency and not leaving hostages.

Careful, he climbs along the walls above their heads, his hands sticking to the worn brick through his suit. Now, he’s not a religious person– losing your uncle and becoming a superpowered mutant in the same week does that to you– but he prays to the gods above that the men below don’t look up. Pretty quickly, he makes it to the wall above their heads. He planned on listening in to their conversation for a while longer before dropping down, but they quickly went silent. They’re no help, are they?.

“What-cha doin?” He asks playfully, earning shocked gasps from the three men. Those gasps quickly become shouts as they argue about what to do now he’s moments away from busting them. “Now now, guys, don't argue. I can deal with you all equally.” He grins under his mask, none of them seeing it. It can be strangely fun to taunt criminals.

One of the men, the burliest and strongest looking of the three, immediately makes a run for it. He doesn’t get more than a few steps away before Peter is shooting his webs at the man, the material wrapping around his ankles, tripping him. Now that the biggest threat is immobilised and writhing on the dirty concrete floor, Peter turns his attention to the other men.

Purposely, he positions himself in front for the entrance to the alley, blocking their exit. The only way out is to try and run past him, something his web shooters could easily stop, or climb. And they all know who’s the better climber; not either of the criminals. Still, they refuse to give up, one of them pulling out a small handgun and pointing it at Peter. “Hey, why don’t we talk it out? Put the gun down.” He commands, purposely lacing fear into his voice. He’s not scared, not at all– there’s not much a gun the size could do to him any worse than a papercut.

Thug 1 has no hesitance, aiming the gun at Peter’s head and pulling the trigger. That would probably be a very big problem for Peter, if it weren’t for the fact that the shot went wide, his webs bending the man’s wrist at a weird angle. Whoops, he hadn’t actually meant to hurt the man, even if it was just a broken wrist. “Sorry!” He shouts earnestly, honestly feeling the slightest amazon of pity for the man who just tried to shoot him. Quickly, he webs the gun to the wall, so the man can’t get the bright idea of using his other hand to shoot.

While Peter dealt with Thug 1, Thug 2 had the brilliant idea to make his great escape. Peter was very good at multitasking, whether that was doing his homework in class, or dealing with two criminals at once. Shooting out his other arm, he used multiple of his webs to stick Thug 2 to the wall. He was kinda bummed out that he had to use so much web fluid, especially when he could have easily been much more efficient, but hey, he looked cool while doing it.

With Thug 1 scared out of his mind, Thug 2 stuck to the wall, and the other one– he’ll call him Thug 3– squirming like a worm (hah) on the floor, Peter was ready to interrogate the men.

He was careful and precise with his questions, making sure not to ramble, something he had a massive habit of doing, or give the criminals long enough to figure out how to escape. His webs were almost indestructible, and he was extremely proud of that. But, like any rope, his webs had a weakness: time. The webs would usually dissolve in about a week, possibly only a few days if the conditions were right. Sure, there was no way the Thugs would get out of the webs in any less time than that, but it soothed his pounding heart to get things wrapped up quickly. There was no point drawing it out anyway, he wasn’t the type of guy to torture his enemies. (Or their goons.)

“Like I said earlier: what-cha doing?” He asks, standing over Thug 3, his hands on his hips and his head tilted to the side slightly. He gets no reply, nothing but a look of pure horror from the guy’s steely grey eyes. The man looks like he’s going to poop his pants, and when he desperately tries to talk the only thing that comes out is a hoarse groan. He wouldn’t be any help, and Peter didn’t really want to scare the man that badly, so he moves onto the next thug.

Peter hadn't meant to, but it turns out he had accidentally webbed over Thug 2’s mouth. After a quick check that yes, the man could still breathe, he turned to face the final Thug. Spider-man had a strong moral code, with one rule that stood above all others: don’t kill anyone– EVER. It was Peter’s job to capture criminals, and maybe interrogate them a bit: it was never (and will never) be his job to be the judge, jury and executioner. There’s a fine line between being a hero who kills when absolutely necessary, and a monster. A very fine line. A line that he never wants to tread.

The Thug immediately starts stuttering, wanting to explain himself. Peter wonders if he looks scary, like a monster that’s coming to rain down hell on the man’s soul– he’d never thought about things from the criminal’s perspective before, not in his years of being Spiderman. Peter is a patient man, and he waits for the thug to stop stuttering and start speaking, as he doesn’t see the point in beating his words out. “I-I… it’s just somethin I made. I was showin it off to the guys, that’s all. That’s right, guys?” He says directing his attention to his friends. When they don’t reply, fear overtaking their bodies, he shouts it at them again. “That’s right. GUYS?” Hastily, they both nod.

“Mmm-hmm.” Peter hums, staring down at the criminal who is making no move to show him whatever it is he “made.” “That's funny.” He continues, his voice going cold. “I heard you say that the boss made it. Your words, not mine.” He shrugs.

Somehow, the criminal’s already pale face turns paler, the colour draining until his skin is paper-white. Peter’s caught him in the lie, and the man looks absolutely terrified. “Uhhh…” He stalls, trying to think up an excuse. It’s unlikely that Peter will get much information out of him– the man looks clueless. A low level weapons pusher, then.

Carefully, he picks up the weapon that has somehow made its way onto the floor: it must have been kicked into a corner when he was catching the Thugs. It looks like a gun of some sorts. Or, to be more specific: it looks like a water gun. Except, it’s made of a sturdy grey metal that barely reflects the light, making the machine blend into its equally grey and brown surroundings. Wires run along the length of the barrel in waves of red, blue, and green, looking eerily like muscle fibres and mostly covering the cold metal underneath. Despite all the strange additives to the weapon, it still holds the general shape of a water gun, which only makes him laugh. Internally, of course— he doesn’t want to accidentally offend the criminals and have them send a hitman after him. That’s happened before.

“What is this?” He asks, holding the gun up to his face to get a closer look.

The thug blinks, and then he blinks again. “I don’t know, the boss told me to bring it here… but he didn’t say why.” His words are careful, each one being considered and thought over before being said. He knows more than he’s letting on.

“Let’s say I believe you– which I definitely do not– so don't be getting any ideas.” Peter says, his mask’s eyes squinting to become a sharp glare when the man starts to perk up. “You don’t know what this is, or why you were told to bring it here?” He holds up the gun as if the thug suddenly forgot about it and the man nods, his head bobbing up and down like one of those bobble-head figurines. Peter has a large collection of Spiderman ones.

Getting back on track, he makes one final deduction. “But! You do know who your boss is.” This time it’s not a question.

“No, no! I don’t! I don’t!” The man repeats as Peter steps forward. Each step he takes, the man moves back, and it’s getting pretty annoying. He had allowed the man to stay free, as long as he talked– gave Peter all of the necessary information. But, the man had decided to go back on their deal. In one swift move, he used his webs to pin the man’s hands to the wall, like he did to the others. Trying to keep Peter as far away from him as possible, his legs kicked out, colliding with Peter’s knee.

Peter didn’t bother reacting, he had worse, and this was barely a scratch to him. He did his best to grill the man for some more information, telling him that “just one name” would set him free. In the end, the thug didn’t budge, alternating between screams and shouts and pure silence. He sighed: this was getting nowhere.

Giving the criminals a little wave, he leaves the scene, intent on getting to school on time. A shit eating grin plastering itself to his face, seeing the Thug’s faces as he left. They really thought he was gonna leave them there! He makes sure to call the police and alert them of what happened– he’s not cruel.

–

He arrived at first period a minute late, earning a glare and a mouthing of “Where were you?” from MJ.

Sitting down in his seat, he shrugged, as if to say: “I don’t know, what was I doing?” Truly, he did feel bad about leaving his friends in the dark, disappearing without warning them and coming back hours later with no explanation. But, he feels like even if he did tell them, they simply wouldn’t believe him. MJ would definitely laugh in his face: Peter Parker is a nerdy highschooler who spends all his free time on science projects (or, that’s what she thinks he does); Spiderman is a super-cool, crime-fighting vigilante. And Ned would be even worse. He’d probably immediately blab to Flash, trying to defend Peter as being “cool”. Oh boy, he’d get eviscerated.

And Harry… Well, Peter doesn’t know what to think about Harry anymore. They were the bestest of friends, an inseparable duo. If you could find one, the other wouldn’t be that far behind. Everything had changed since they finished middle school: Peter was given a scholarship to midtown; and, at his father’s insistence, Harry had gone to some sort of Prep school upstate.
Peter obviously knew that Harry’s father– a vile man called Norman Oswald– was trying to separate them, but he couldn’t think of a single reason why.

Peter hummed to himself, he still had Harry’s number (assuming that his father didn’t force him to get a new one). Maybe he should call him.

Or, maybe not. “What is the Fibonacci Sequence?” His math teacher asked the class scouring the room for an unlucky victim to occur her torture onto. Not so luckily, he was that victim. “Peter Parker, because you are so intent on daydreaming in my class, why don’t you tell us the answer?”

Immediately, the entire class’s eyes were on him as he stuttered, his voice escaping him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Flash laughing at him, his entire gaggle of friends joining in.

“Um… Each number is the sum of the two numbers before it?” He says, his voice sounding unsure.

“Very good– Flash, stop laughing.” She smiles at Peter. “Now…” He blocks her words out, his mind fully focused on that strange looking gun he found earlier in the morning. What is it? What does it do? How dangerous is it? The questions run around the mixing pot of his mind, taking first priority.

Eventually, the day is over, all his classes spent pondering about the unusual mixture of wires and metal. He spends the entire walk back talking to Ned and MJ about his jet boosters, and MJ talks about the giant crane fly she’s decided to make. He truly fears her. Once he’s dropped both of them off at their respective houses, he rushes home, eager to look at the contraption he picked up.

May’s not home again, like usual. He guesses that he prefers it that way, he wouldn’t be able to talk to her anyway. He wants to rush to his room and take a closer look at his findings, but first, he has to eat dinner. His metabolism makes him pay when he skips out on a meal. After scoffing it down– he might regret that later– he then rushes to his room, locking the door shut behind him. He barely ever locks the door, not wanting to make even more reasons for May to not trust him– he already has more than enough with all the weak excuses he gives her when he gets back late, or leaves at the crack of dawn.

Peter had given the gun a look over in the alley, but unfortunately wasn’t able to tell much about it. Hopefully he would get a more conclusive look now and find out what it was for— or why the criminals were so avoidant to tell him anything about it. Seriously, he’s in the dark here

Snapping a mask over his mouth and putting on some latex gloves, he inspected the weapon– he was unable to afford any proper safety equipment, so this would have to do if it exploded in his face. Some protection would be better than none, although not by much. His heightened immune system would help to protect him as well, so he didn’t think he really had too much to worry about. It wasn’t like handling the gun would turn him into a mutant human spider hybrid– oh wait, that had already happened.

Yeah, he’d probably be fine.

Using his superhuman eyesight didn’t help him with finding anything else about the gun, it was still an intangible mess of wires that he couldn’t make heads or tails of. The only thing to do now was to cut it open. Deep down, he knew it was one of the dumbest ideas he had had to date. Ah, yes, cutting the wires on a weapon that could easily be a gun in disguise, what could possibly go wrong with that? But, he had a deep, instinctual need to figure out what was going on, even if it meant potentially shooting himself.

Peter wasn’t dumb, he would be as careful as he could and listen to his spidey sense, and that had never failed him before. He knew how to disassemble and reassemble a speaker without damaging even the most useless of components, this couldn’t be too different. Except, well, this wasn’t a speaker, or anything remotely close.

Placing the contraption— because that’s exactly what it was– onto his cluttered desk, he grabbed an exacto knife and a pair of May’s rusty old tweezers. She would never notice they were gone; Peter really didn’t want to get caught over a pair of tweezers.

Cracking his knuckles, he prepared himself for what he was going to do. It could all go wrong and lead to a flurry of questions from aunt May, something that he really needed to avoid. Carefully, he cut a small slit between the joints in the metal, holding still in case it exploded. Luckily for him, it didn’t explode, or do anything really, so he continued cutting into the casing. Grabbing the two separate sides, he split the weapon down the middle into two different parts, a left side and a right side. It was held together with a mixture of welding and superglue, making it difficult to separate– for someone who didn’t have super strength.

The inside looked strangely normal: a battery, a motherboard, some wiring, and a handful of other specific components. He was expecting to open it up to flesh and guts, but this was definitely better. And less gross. Looking closer, he could see more and more components he didn’t recognise, he thought he had a pretty good knowledge of different mechanical parts. Maybe he didn’t.

He began to pull the parts out, each movement overly careful to avoid disconnecting or breaking everything, the gun would be little more than a pile of scrap if he did that. After a handful of painstaking minutes he finally managed to remove the circuit from the shell, leaving only a singular wire connecting them. There was now a jumble of wires and parts on his desk; it kinda reminded him of spaghetti but less edible. Sighing, he realises he’s already hungry again, and he hasn’t even been out as Spider-man since the morning. His metabolism was strange like that, but there was not much he could do other than ignore it or indulge it. He chose to ignore it, wanting the focus and the project in front of him.

It turns out that his knowledge of mechanics wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he thought: the weapon was made from an unusual mix of human and alien parts. He had only found that out after he had further deconstructed the circuitry, some of the parts becoming less familiar as time went by. It was also entirely possible that the parts had come from somewhere not alien– like a scientist’s lab or a military base– but the alien theory was much more fun, so he’d stick with that.

Ned would go absolutely crazy if Peter showed him an alien weapon. Peter smirked to himself, imagining the other boy’s reaction: he’d no doubt say something along the lines of “Wow, that’s so cool!” and “Can I try it out?”. Like a responsible friend (Peter was the furthest thing from responsible), he’d refuse to let his friend use it, and then they’d spend the rest of the day staring at it.

But… Peter couldn’t get his friends involved in this, they’d question how he got it in the first place, and he’s a terrible liar, so he’d end up blurting out the entire truth to them. It was too dangerous to risk them knowing. And, as much as he trusted the both of them, they could easily spread his secret. He knows they would never, but something deep within his mind tells him to keep his secrets guarded with his life or risk losing it.

Yeah, he doesn’t want to do that, especially because of a blip in judgement Peter Parker made, rather than a mess up with a thug. Plus him dying would devastate aunt May, and out of all the things he doesn't want to do, that is up at the top of the list “Stuff Peter Parker never ever wants to do in his life”.

Shaking his head, he focused back on the project in front of him; it was getting late and May would soon wonder why he’s not left his room all day. And he’d rather not get caught with a bona fide weapon on his desk, even a deconstructed weapon, no siree.

After a little more messing around, he concluded that there wasn’t much he could do with it, not until he had some more information on how these things worked. It was a mix of regular technology and some unknown tech (he’s still riding on it being alien) but that is all he can tell. It’s too risky to continue poking and prodding it, he could risk bringing the entire apartment building down if he hovered over the wrong wire for too long.

That would just be another problem for Spider-Man, and he really didn’t want to deal with one of those. Not if he could avoid it. Which he could by putting the thing away nice and safe.

He worked quickly at reconstructing it back to its original state, being possibly too wary at putting each component back into its place. By the time he was done with it there wouldn’t be a single wire out of place; nothing to indicate that the weapon was anything more than a strangely designed water gun.

If May found it he could always make up the excuse that it was for a LARP campaign, and she had always been the type of person to encourage his hobbies– no matter how strange they were– so it was unlikely that she would ever spare the contraption more than a passing glance.

It reminded him of a villain encounter he had had when he first started being Spider-Man a few weeks after Ben’s death. This was a real villain, not the type of low level drug pushers he had been dealing with for the first week of being a vigilante, someone who had a growing criminal empire under his feet– an empire that was quickly becoming dangerous.

The man had called himself The Vulture: a name, for all intents and purposes, was pretty damn accurate. He wore a pair of homemade metallic wings crafted from an amalgamation of metal, wires, and soldering. Oh, and with some alien tech thrown in, for good measure. With that monstrosity of a super suit he would circle the skies, looking for any abandoned alien tech that he could swoop down and grab before anyone else did.

Peter had quickly connected The Vulture with the new, highly unstable weapons that were popping up around the city. Almost every criminal Peter had encountered was carrying one of the things around with them, waving it around blindly as an unnecessary accessory for petty crimes. He had wanted to wait a little longer before pursuing any of the weapons dealers, build up a case that he could hand to the police once he had caught the big guy.

Until… he saw someone get cut in half by a giant gun that shot out strong, overwhelmingly powerful laser beams. The victim wasn’t completely innocent, one of the weapons dealers that was selling the guns, but it didn’t make Peter any less guilty about saving him.

After that, he had gone directly at the leader of the entire operation, taking him down swiftly when his back was turned and leaving him out for the police to find like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

Although, it did suck that his crush (Who he had successfully invited to sophomore homecoming!) was The Vulture’s daughter. Yeah, he wasn’t expecting it either. But, he heard that Liz was having fun in her new life in Colorado– claiming that she liked being away from her dad’s high expectations, even if she did miss him.

That had to be the biggest thing Peter had dealt with in his entire time being Spider-Man, nothing had lived up to it, not even mildly close. He should be glad– and he was! Some government agency had confiscated all of the weapons, and the hoards of alien tech The Vulture kept in a warehouse just outside of the city, leaving the city clean of those horrible blasters and cannons and blades.

The weapons were back now, which sends shudders down his back when he thinks of all the people who were hurt by them. But, they were different somehow: a few parts he recognised as Chitauri tech, and some others were like nothing he had ever seen before. It sends a bad feeling through his body, something’s wrong.

He spends that evening’s patrol distracted from his duties, thinking of the poor man that was split in half so easily by an overpowered laser.

…

Thankfully, the patrol was mostly uneventful: he helped a man break a broken lock– only after the car was confirmed with his; he pulled a fluffy white cat from a tree– they sure do like getting stuck; and he picked up some litter.

He was glad that so little happened, the weapons and the amount of pain they inflicted was on his mind all night, he kept getting sights of innocent people being attacked by said weapons, torturing his mind all night. He thinks he almost threw up once, too. He’s thankful for the slow days where he can be the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, and nothing else. Although, he thinks he’ll be seeing less and less of those in the future.

Silently, he slid his window open, the movement taking a good few minutes; the entire building was sleeping, and he couldn’t risk waking anyone. Not unless he wanted them to spot Spider-Man crawling through Peter Parker’s window. That would cause a lot of questions, some more absurd than others.

Thankfully, for the last year and a half nobody had spotted him coming or going, and if they had they kept their mouths shut. Sometimes he had to be thankful for New York’s “ignore anything that’s not my problem” attitude, even if it had caused him to lose out on important information many times. You win some and you lose some.

In case May were to walk past his bedroom door, he would always enter by crawling along the ceiling, and today this was no exception. It was a pretty useful tactic that had saved his spidery ass more than once in his time of being Spiderman, but it also required a lot of attention. If he wasn’t careful, he could risk one of his limbs to unstick from the ceiling, making him crash land onto the floor in an unceremonious heap. It would be loud– duh, he just fell ten feet from the ceiling onto a not very padded floor– which was another thing that could draw May’s attention.

Admittedly, once he was inside his room and the window was closed, he started to let his guard down, no longer having to concentrate on listening to the sounds of the city for anyone who needed help. That’s why he didn’t notice his best friend– Ned Leeds– sitting on his bunk beds when he came in.

He had just dropped down from the ceiling in front of his closet, swapping the tight spandex of the spider suit for a pair of loose fitting pyjamas, only to be greeted by the clattering of a dropped lego set behind him.

Oh, shit.

Peter couldn’t help but feel disappointed looking at the lego death star that was now in pieces on the floor– 4016, to be exact– they had spent days building that together, and now it was just abandoned on the floor. Ugh, priorities, Peter. The lego covering the floor should not be his number one priority right now (even if he wanted to cry internally seeing the state it was in).

Ned looked like he was about to scream: in fear, joy, or excitement, Peter didn’t know. But he had to stop him before aunt May caught on that maybe more had happened than just dropping a lego set. Practically leaping forwards, standing on a few lego pieces on the way (ouch), Peter quickly covered his friend’s mouth.

“Are you boys alright in there? I thought I heard something break.” May called out from the kitchen. Things were not alright: the lego star destroyer was destroyed, Ned was squirming like crazy under his grip, and his secret identity had just been revealed.

May’s footsteps were on their way to his bedroom door, quickly getting closer as she crossed the small apartment. “Uhh, yeah– yeah, everythings fine.” He shouted back at her, hearing her stop outside the door. “We dropped the death star, we're just cleaning it up now!” He clarified urgently, hiding the nervousness in his voice.

“Okay then.” She sounded doubtful, but she didn’t pry or make any move to open the door. Phew.

“Dude.” He whispers to Ned who’s still struggling and squirming around. “Dude, don’t scream.” He orders, taking his hand away and trusting his friend to be quiet. Peter waits there with baited breath to see his friend’s reaction, he almost expects Ned to be horrified, that he will go running for the hills and never return. Surprisingly, it isn’t fear or terror on Ned’s face, it’s glee– pure, childish glee.

He looks like he just met his hero for the first time– no. Is Spider-Man Ned’s hero? Sure he's always talking about him, but he’s also always talking about Star Wars and coding, Spider-Man couldn’t possibly be Ned’s hero. He’s just a small-time vigilante who helps the little guy, someone barely worth noticing, not when heroes like Iron-Man or The Hulk exist. Spider-Man is lame in comparison, not the type of hero worth being so starstruck over, but here Ned is, looking like a kid who’s just been given his first gifts from Santa.

“Dude? Dude!” Peter waves his hand in front of Ned’s face, but the other boy doesn’t respond, seemingly stuck in some sort of trance. If anything, this will definitely be eventful.

“You’re Spider-Man?” Ned squeaks, stars twinkling in his eyes. Yep, definitely starstruck. This is not how Peter expected his friend to react, but he guesses it’s better than screaming and shouting. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Can I get your autograph?” Ned shouts, not even bothering to contain his excitement.

Peter winces, praying that May didn’t hear that through the apartment’s thin walls. Obviously she did, because nothing gets past her except being Spider-Man. “Boys?” She shouts, clearly uninterested in what they are doing.

“It’s nothing!” He calls back immediately, maybe too quickly to not be suspicious. “Yes, ok, you can get my autograph.” He sighs. “But! Only if you shut up– May’s getting suspicious.” It’s not a bad trade off: an autograph for quietness, and Spider-Man has given out autographs to potential victims hundreds of times, just never to a friend.

“Oh, sorry!” Ned cringes at himself, his voice still slightly too loud for Peter’s likes. “Is this better?” He asks, dropping his voice into an all out whisper. Peter can still hear it, but he knows May won't be able to no matter how hard she listens in; thanks, enhanced hearing, you can be handy sometimes.

“Yes.” He whispers back, grinning at his best friend. He doesn’t know why he was so worried that Ned would leave him, his friend is too loyal for that– and, as he recently learnt, a giant Spider-Man fanboy.

They quickly fall into the familiar lull of their friendship, joking and laughing at each other’s expense until Ned has to go home less than half an hour later. He had spent longer than he meant to as Spider-Man that evening, helping as many people with their mundane problems as possible, meaning that he had little time to spend with Ned before it got too late.

“Bye Ned.” He waves to him as he leaves. “Oh, and here’s your autograph.” Hastily, he scrawls his name on a discarded piece of paper before handing it to Ned.

“Bye Peter– Hey! This has your name on it!” Ned laughs, waving the aforementioned paper in the air like it had personally insulted his bloodline.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He asks, feigning innocence. He knew Ned had meant Spider-Man’s autograph and not Peter Parker’s, but he had failed to clarify which one so Peter had taken the prime opportunity to prank him and ran with it.

Suddenly, a paper aeroplane hits Peter in the face with surprisingly good precision. Unfolding it, he quickly realises it’s made from his autograph. “That’s payback!” Ned exclaims, shutting the door behind him.

Peter giggles; he had nothing to worry about. Ned is still his best friend, and being Spider-Man will never change that.

Chapter Text

He’s immediately greeted with a knowing look from Ned the moment sits down in homeroom. “So, Peter, did you do anything fun this morning?” He asks, tucking his hands under his chin.

Admittedly, Peter had woken up late that morning, giving him no time to be Spider-Man. Sure, it would be too easy to skip homeroom; their teacher couldn’t care less about skipping. But Peter’s record was already bad enough with how much school he had been missing recently. There was no way he would be able to skip another class without the superintendent phoning May up– again.

The last time it had happened, only a couple months back, May was forced to leave work and drive across the city to attend a drawn out meeting. All of the stuff they discussed could have easily been said over the phone, but the superintendent wanted to “stress the importance school attendance has on a young person’s life”. Peter guessed that bringing aunt May all the way to the school made it seem much more serious.

He didn’t want to disturb her just because of his poor time management. Anyway, the city would be fine without him for a few hours, it wouldn’t be possible for everything to go to shit in only a day. Unless an unexpected alien invasion happened, but even then the city was well prepared against that since the last time it happened.

“Uh, no, sorry.” He replies to Ned, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His friend looked strangely disappointed, like he had expected Peter to always be doing something as Spider-Man. “I woke up late.” He winks, as to convey: “I totally would have been saving people with my sick moves but I couldn’t today”.

“Uh huh, are you sure you weren’t just feeling lazyyyy?” Ned grins, dragging out the word. Peter simply rolls his eyes; sometimes he does feel too lazy, but then he remembers that there could be someone out there who needs his help, and suddenly all the laziness is gone.

Plus, he wasn’t lying: he really did wake up late.

“Nah”. He refuses to elaborate, instead sliding into the chair next to Ned.

MJ sneaks up behind him, tapping him on his shoulder before whispering into his ear. “Boo.” Somehow her voice always manages to sound deadpan, he doesn’t know how she does it.

Peter yelps out in surprise, not expecting her to appear behind him moments after he arrived. Usually his spidey sense alerts him if anyone’s trying to sneak up on him, but it didn’t this time. He would usually think the total absence of this sixth sense as being weird, but he knows he can trust MJ and she means no harm.

She slides into the small boot with them, cramming Peter between herself and Ned; the booths are made to comfortably fit two people at a time, so adding a third to the mix can make this claustrophobic quickly.

“Guys?” He asks, feeling squished.

“You’ll be fine, Parker.” MJ smirks, laughing at his absolute anguish.

“Sorry dude.” Ned whispers in his ear, leaning down to say it and squeezing Peter even more.

In defeat he rests his head on the desk, hoping to get a few winks of sleep before he eventually gets interrupted by MJ’s rustling or the bell. He knows that MJ would more if he asked her too, but he’s honestly too tired to spare even a second thought.

“Listen up everyone!” His homeroom teacher shouts, ringing a triangle– where did he even get that from? It disturbs Peter from his not so restful sleep, making him finally raise his head off the desk. And just as he was getting comfy, too.

He looks over at their group, a suspicious look on his face. Peter can’t tell if it's because of his sleeping, Ned’s refusal to stop talking into his ear, MJ being blatantly obvious that she’s on her phone, or a combination of all three.

“... You’re squishing the poor boy! MJ, move.” He commands, pointing to an empty seat next to Betty Brant.

Rolling her eyes, MJ slides out of the booth “Bye losers.” She punctuates it with a little half wave before turning away to high five Betty. Hm, he didn’t know those two were friends.

“Aw, man! I would have totally moved if I could sit next to her.” Ned complains, looking longingly at Betty. He’s had a crush on her since the start of freshman year– almost three years ago now. A crush that’s persisted for all those years. Peter can understand why: she's pretty, with long blonde hair, and extremely sweet, but not his type.

“You’ll get your chance one day.” Peter mutters back. It’s true, Ned would have a chance, if he wasn’t so shy whenever he was around her.

The teacher looks around the room a few more times– presumably looking for “delinquents” as he calls them, so he can humiliate them– before continuing on with what he was saying. “What was I saying? Oh, yes… There is a meeting in room B2 for anyone who is going to the tech fair thing, I repeat, there is a meeting in room B2 for anyone who is going to that tech fair.” Peter can imagine him holding a plastic red and white megaphone and shouting the words loud enough for the entire school to hear.

“That means you!” He says, looking straight at Peter. The man had one of those crazy stares that really unsettled people, and Peter was no exception. “Peter! Ned! Michelle! Betty! Flash! I can see a few more people in here that are going, but I forgot your names, sorry!”

Peter huffed out a lungful of air, resting his head back on the desk. That man was eccentric, and there is no way of denying it.

“Parker, up! Up! Up! You don’t wanna be late for your big meeting, do ya?” He shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his already ear-ache-causing loud voice.

Lifting his head slowly off the table, he had been disturbed twice already and he was getting bored of it, he replied. “Yes, sir.” His voice was groggy, his tiredness plainly clear, and when he lifted his head it immediately fell back down onto the cool wood veneer, making the entire class giggle with hysterics.

Yep, eccentric, for sure.

The bell went off, saving him from Ned’s Spider-Man related ramblings. Peter doesn’t think that his friend will ever shut up about the hero, he was a big enough fanboy before yesterday, but since then its been amped up by ten. Working as an auto pilot, Peter’s feet immediately started to take him to his usual first period class, the past week’s lack of sleep really catching up to him. Ned had to grab him and turn him around with a reminder of the meeting to get Peter out of his tired haze and back on track.

He is so glad that it is Friday today; he’s already dreaming of his bedsheets and the amazing sleep he’s gonna get tonight. It is such a relief when he can wake up at any time past six am and go to sleep at any time before two am. A full night's sleep: here he comes. It’s been a good two weeks since he got the recommended eight hours, and damn is he missing it, but the weekend should give him the chance to fix his sleep schedule at least a little.

They fall into an easy chatter as they walk to the other side of the school, where B2 is. Peter’s legs are protesting angrily at the prolonged use after all the kicks and jumps he did yesterday, but he does his best to ignore them. After all, he does no sports and has no reason for his legs to hurt, and it’s not like anyone other than Ned knows what he spends his time doing after school is out.

And they won’t ever know, not if he can help it, so he sucks up the pain and carries on walking.

“Hey Ned, you should go and talk to Betty. Look: she’s all alone.” He points behind him, his arm waving in her general direction. In reality, she wasn’t alone, happily talking with MJ. But Ned hadn’t noticed that, and Peter really wanted an excuse to get rid of his friend before he noticed how hurt he actually was. For some reason, the pain hadn’t appeared until later in the morning, once Peter was already on his way to school.

Logically, he was aware that any injuries he had would heal by the end of the day, but until then he would rather not have anyone notice them.

“Hey Pete.” Mj falls in line with his steps, abandoning her conversation with Betty. Shit– if anyone was to notice what was up with him– it would be her.

“I thought you were talking with Betty?” He asks, doing what he can to deflect her attention from him.

“Yeah, but, look at them.” She turns around to look behind her. Sure enough, Betty and Ned are engaged in an animated conversation, he could effortlessly use his heightened hearing to find out what they were talking about, but out of respect for his friends he doesn’t. Anyway, he tries not to use his powers when he’s in public; using them quickly becomes suspicious when a scrawny teenager suddenly gains the ability to lift a hundred pounds effortlessly.

“Aww.” He hums, making a swooning motion, and quickly earning a glare from Ned for it. “I think he’s mad because we’re disturbing his charisma.” Peter leans over to whisper in MJ’s ear.

She nods in agreement. “Yeah.” She smirks, an evil glint in her eye. Oh god, what’s she planning now? “Hey Ned, how’s your conversation going?” She asks, a false pureness in her voice.

He sends them a thumbs up, still fully focused on Betty as she talks.

“Aww” Peter repeats, elbowing MJ in the stomach. “I guess your prank didn’t work, after all.” He calls out in a sing-song voice. She blows a raspberry at him, and they both smirk at each other.

He can feel the tiredness slowly ebbing away as he spends more time joking around with MJ, waves of relief rush through his body. He hated when his friends worried about him and he couldn’t tell them why he was hurt, it made them feel like he couldn’t trust them, which only made him feel worse.

Technically, it was true– he couldn’t trust his friends, or aunt May, or anyone at all. But he had a good reason not to, if any of them slipped up even once it could mean the end for him. The harsh truth didn’t help to sooth him, though.

Pushing open the door to room 2BB– he must have zoned out at some point– the five of them shuffled onto a nearby bench at the front of the room.

The room was set out like a lecture hall, one of the three in their school, with rows of benches with attached desks facing a projector and podium at the front.

Peter couldn’t help but feeling mildly embarrassed; his group was the last to arrive, their entrance stopping the meeting midway through. He was gonna chalk it up to the fact that their home room was so far away from the block of lecture halls.

“Ah, how nice of you to finally join us.” The principle, a fat balding man with grey hair, directed his steely gaze at the five of them. “You’ll have to catch up with the bits you missed from other students.”

“Now everyone, I’m sure most of you were here and listening to what I just said, but for those who weren't I’ll repeat myself: the fair is one week away now. Next Friday everyone will meet by the buses at the start of first period. If you’re late we won't be waiting for you, got it?” He asks, glancing over towards Peter and his friends. “Got it?” He repeats, clearly expecting a response.

“Yes, sir.” The students drone, some scoffing or rolling their eyes while they do so.

Mr Hinchcliffe frowns at their responses, expecting much more respect from them. “Okay then… You’re all excused.” Everyone quickly files out the room, eager to get away from the boring meeting, except for some stragglers who lag behind.

“Uh, sir?” Flash asks sheepishly; the principal's strict attitude quickly makes even the most confident of people nervous.

MJ peeks around the door, waiting to see what Mr Hinchcliffe will say. Peter and Ned hang around her, itching to get to their first period lab class, but not wanting to leave MJ on her own to deal with Flash’s antics– Peter’s pretty sure Flash has a crush on her, the tryhard.

Flash goes to speak again, thinking that he wasn’t heard, only to be brutally cut off by Hinchcliffe. “No– nope. I’ve answered enough questions today, I can’t take another. Get out of here, Thompson.” He waves his hand around flippantly, dismissing the boy before he can say a word. Flash runs out of the room with his metaphorical tail between his legs, grinning sheepishly at MJ as he passes.

Betty appears behind them, scaring the hell out of Peter for a second time today. “He totally has a crush on you. Hey, at least he’s not ugly– on the outside.” She tells MJ, giggling as they both watch him walk down the hall, a displaced swagger in his step.

“Blegh.” MJ blows a raspberry, uninterested in anything to do with Flash. “Don’t say that.”

Peter’s secretly glad– he hasn’t told a single soul yet, but he might have a teeny tiny crush on her. It’s nothing, but he loves the way she smiles, and the way she laughs, and how she is always bothered no matter what happens. It’s more admiration than anything, yeah, and no way a crush. He hasn’t even told Ned, and he always tells Ned everything, that's how much his feelings for MJ are not a crush.

“Anyway, I’ve got yearbook club next, and we’re developing this month’s school newsletter, so there’s no way I’m gonna miss that.” Betty says, waving goodbye as she walks in the opposite direction of where the three of them have to go.

They always have their first and second period in the school’s tech lab on a Friday, the class that they all agree is their favourite. The teacher couldn’t care less what they do, as long as they get their projects done by the end of the semester, giving them a prime opportunity to gossip for a few hours. It’s Peter’s highlight of the week, and the best possible thing about school. Which says a lot, because he is one of those weirdos who actually likes school and listens to all of his classes.

Once they get to the lab, the three of them sit down at their usual workbench: a small table in the back corner of the room that is virtually impossible to see from where the teacher’s desk is. On the first day or the year Peter had scoped out all of the tables in the room, and that one had clearly won, being isolated unlike all the other tables.

Helpfully, the lab also shares a store room with the chemistry lab next door, and the door to said store room is hidden away behind a curtain next to their table. Whenever their teacher leaves the room– something he does multiple times each period– Peter will sneak in there to grab the chemicals he needs to make his webs, giving him a near constant supply.

Admittedly, he does feel bad stealing from the school like this, but it’s for a good reason, and he never uses the webs for any destructive purposes (unless it’s necessary to save someone’s life). Plus, what the school doesn’t know can’t hurt them; there's no security cameras in that particular storeroom, except for one in the corner that’s long broken and hasn’t been fixed in well over a decade.

He hums, considering if he should quickly sneak into the storeroom before class starts to get some more web fluid. He does have enough to last him a handful of weeks, assuming that a million criminals don’t appear from nowhere to fight him, but he will be at the tech fair next week, and therefore not in the lab. If he doesn’t restock now he’ll be forced to wait another two weeks for a chance to refill his web fluid, or have to sneak into the room under much more suspicious circumstances.

If he ever got caught it would be easy enough to say that he needed something for one of his robotics projects, and that he accidentally went into the wrong room to find the part he needed. But, if he got caught while he wasn’t in robotics class, his ass would be toast. He’d have to deal with aunt May’s disappointment, and endure a lengthy meeting with the superintendent.

Hmm, decisions, decisions. What will it be? Just as he’s about to slip out of his seat and past the heavy dark curtain that obscures the store room, the teacher finally walks in, punctuating his entrance with an apology for being late before sitting down onto his swivel chair.

There goes his chance to get any web fluid. “Aww, man.” He whispers under his breath, dissatisfied.

Now that she’s been given the go ahead to work on her project, MJ pulls it out of her backpack. She always bends the rules as much as the school allows before giving her attention, but their teacher has a strict “no soldering and/or using power tools unsupervised” rule that never gets past him. Peter swears that he has a second sense to tell when someone is even thinking of touching the tools when he’s not there, the man has come running into the room to tell someone off more times than Peter can count. Of course, it could be due to the cameras that litter the room, giving him eyes in every nook and cranny– cameras he barely ever uses.

Mr Robinson counts his presence as suitable “supervision”, even when he spends the entire class tapping on his phone and drinking his back coffee, ignoring the students waving soldering irons at each other.

“Woahhh.” He hears Ned exclaim from next to him, his view trained on the thing MJ just pulled out of her bag. It looks like some strange eldritch abomination, with black wires creating a thorny halo around the creation, and too many legs to be any animal Peter can think of.

“What is that?” He asks subconsciously, taken aback by the weird creation.

“It’s a spider, I was gonna do a crane fly but that didn’t work out.” MJ explains, a sligh embarrassed blush on her cheeks.

There’s a silent question in the air, and Peter quickly grins before voicing it. “What do you mean, it didn’t work out.” He asks, directly quoting her.

“Ugh, don’t get me started…” She trails off, glancing around the classroom to check if anyone was looking before leaning forward. “It went haywire– it was flying all over my house, knocking over anything it came into contact with. My mom was so sad when one of our family photos fell off the shelf it was on and shattered. She did manage to save it, so she wasn’t too mad.” Sighing sadly, she looks at the spider robot (spider-bot?) in front of her. “I had to put it down with my baseball bat. Rest in pieces, little guy.” She says, mimicking a praying motion and looking up to the ceiling.

Peter chuckles, that sounded very… eventful. “My condolences.” He huffs, holding her hands in his own. “He sounded like an amazing pet, and I’m sorry that you couldn’t spend more time with him.”

She grins back at him, happy that he’s picked up on her joke. “Don’t be.” She smiles.

“Wait, did your dog die?” Ned asks naively. “Oh, noooo, fluffy!” He cries out, legitimately believing that her dog died.

Peter and MJ lock eyes for a moment, delighting in their friend’s distress, deciding how to break the news. “Yes, we’ll miss him. He’d always eat my socks, what a good boy.” Peter starts dramatically, false tears in his brown eyes.

“We all loved him so dearly.” MJ wails, continuing his sentence. Suddenly, they are both unable to keep their composure, both breaking out into fits of hysterical laughter. “Oh Ned, you should have seen your face! Fluffy’s not dead, we were talking about one of my old projects.” She giggles, seeing how Ned’s anguish quickly turns into an unsettled frown.

“Anyway, because that is long gone, I’m going to take this with me instead.” She says pointing down at the robotic “spider”. Peter doesn’t even think it can be called a spider: it is more reminiscent of a ball of yarn with knitting needles poking out. Carefully, he counts the legs, something doesn’t seem right about them. There’s ten legs.

“Um MJ?” He asks. She looks up at him, no indication that she’s aware of what he’s about to ask. But, before he can say the words, Ned says them for him.

“There’s ten legs!” Ned calls out, his epic skills of deduction allowing him to find that out.

MJ frowns, looks down at the spider, up to them, and back down at the spider. “So there is.” She is completely unbothered by the revelation, just like how she is unbothered at everything. Swiftly, she takes a hold of the two back legs, her smooth hands gripping onto the pointed metal bars, and yanks them out. She deposits them on the table like offending evidence. “There, all better– what? Why are you looking at me like that? Those ones weren’t even wired in.”

The shock melts off from Peter’s face as she explains that she added the extra set of legs in a fit of sleep-deprived productivity, but she fell asleep before she had the chance to properly wire them in. “Were you worried about my little spider friend then, Parker?” She mocks, patting him on the head.

“No!” He denies “It’s just that it would be painful to see all the wires get ripped out, you’d have to rewire the entire thing!” He explains. Sure, he might have been mildly sentimental about the idea of tearing the spider up, but the majority of his care came from him not wanting her to have to spend hours fixing it.

She simply smirks at him, the doubt evident on her face. “Sure, sure.” She sarcastically agrees, turning her attention to the robot in front of her.

Peter focuses on it too, wanting to know how it works and what it does. Gently, MJ places it on the floor, messing with what looks to be the remote control for an RC car. The spider’s eight legs work in tandem to propel it forwards, the robot taking slow, wobbly steps as it walks along the floor, before turning around in a series of complicated movements to return to them.

Grabbing it off the floor, MJ dumps it back onto the table and turns it off from a little switch on its underside. “That’s all I’ve got to do, but it is pretty creepy, right?” Her mouth trunks downward for a split second, only to immediately perk up.

She is right: it is creepy. It moves almost silently, the only sounds an almost silent mechanical whirr and an equally quiet tip-tapping on the hard linoleum floor. But, that doesn’t help it be stealthy; the thing is massive, a good foot wide and half a foot tall. Small for such an intricate piece of tech, but horrifyingly large for a spider. “Yeah, it’s huge, and the way it walks is so… unsettling.” He agrees.

An idea pings into his mind: what if he made one for when he was patrolling as Spider-Man? It could gather intel for him, be his eyes and scope out potential problems that he would have to interfere with. It was certainly better than fully relying on his enhanced hearing and eyesight– if something was happening more than a few blocks away he usually wouldn’t be able to hear it over the sounds of the city, leaving whatever civilians that needed help to fend for themselves. This would allow him to be in two places at once, and help more people in a shorter space of time.

There was the problem of size: a foot wide spider is not at all realistic, so it would have to hide in the shadows to not be caught. But, if he made it to be the same size and look like a regular spider, it would be able to get up close and personal and capture all the details. And the more detailed the better, especially since Peter would occasionally hand over the information he found to the NYPD in hopes that it could possibly help in some of their cases.

He put the idea in the back of his mind, wanting to help MJ improve the robot spider she had in front of her before he got too carried away on his own. It’s not like he would have any time to make one in the next week, all his free time devoted to the Iron-Man style repulsors.

They spend the rest of the class period together like that, pondering on how to improve MJ’s creation in time for the fair. The inner workings and wirings of it are completely fine, amazing, even. The outside, however… There is no way to describe it but as “butt-fuck ugly”. Even if Peter discounts all the wires sticking out, the legs are mismatched and range from shades of boring brown to plain grey, and the core is a black blob that frankly looks nothing like a spider.

When he points out his thoughts, he almost expects at least a little backlash– MJ isn’t the type of person to back down, or to care about appearances– but she quickly agrees. “My dad says that a bad, but good looking product will always goin more interest than a good, but bad looking product.” She agrees.

Peter knows that’s undoubtedly true, all the days spent with Harry hanging around his dad’s office had told Peter that. The man had invested in some diabolically stupid ideas and skipped over some surprisingly good ones, sticking his nose up at anything that wasn’t the epitome of “perfect” on the outside.

“You could make it look like Spider-Man?” Ned suggests, already beginning to sketch out the body of a spider. “I mean, everyone loves him, and I’m sure that some companies would be willing to do anything to capitalise off him.” He justifies it in a way that’s impossible to refuse, even making Peter want to agree with him.

But as much as Peter wants to endorse MJ’s robot as Spider-Man, he doesn’t know if doing so would somehow tie his two identities together. He knows he’s probably being too cautious, to the point of being slightly paranoid, but it’s not something he wants to risk. “What if Spider-Man– I don’t know– came at us with a copyright claim? Individually, we’re broke as fuck, collectively we’re somehow even more broke.” He rebuffs, trying to convince Ned to abort mission.

“Nah. He’s not copyrighted or anything, I checked a while back.” Ned rebuffs, shutting down any chances for Peter to protest more. “Don’t tell anyone, but I hacked into some Oscorp servers the other day–”

Peter quickly interrupts him with a shocked gasp “You what?” Oscorp are known for their impeccable security, and their habit of going after anyone who gets caught with even a toe out of line near them. Peter can’t even fathom how much troubleNed could be in if he got caught, his entire life would be over. Especially if he hacked into their clarified servers that contain information about projects not released to the public.

“Their security was so weak, almost like they wanted me to hack in.” Ned defends, laughing as he explains how a highschooler managed to hack into one of the most secure companies in the world. “I didn’t find that much anyway, but I saw they had plans to capitalise off Spider-Man, so I thought: “Why don’t we beat them to it?””

“Ugh, that’s so fucked up.” MJ groans, her hatred for capitalism shining through.

Peter sees the opportunity and grabs it, filing away the new information about Oscorp into the back of his mind. “Exactly! Imagine how Spider-Man would feel if we copied him. Which is exactly why we shouldn’t.” He exclaims, trying to play at their heartstrings; he knows both of them admire the vigilante for what he does. He purposely places extra emphasis on the last word, pointing his words at Ned like daggers, wanting him to get the hint.

Ned looks up at him, mischief flashing across his face. “But… we’re not Oscorp, are we? I think he’ll be ok with us borrowing his vibe for this one project.” He winks, not backing down. “And! I’ve already finished the sketch.” He slams the paper down between the three of them, his drawing looking up at them in all its red and blue glory.

The spider has a completely black body, accented by a thick band of red that covers its head and runs along its back, with pops of blue accenting its mechanical joints. It unsettles him slightly, the drawing reminding him of the spider that bit him all those years ago. Peter won’t lie to himself, the drawing does look really cool, and would definitely draw a lot of attention. It’s not like anyone would ever think to connect him and Spider-Man because of it. And he wants the best for MJ, it wouldn’t be fair for him to stop her from getting the recognition she deserves because of his irrational fears.

“Damn, that looks great.” MJ comments, sounding assured that she wants to use the idea.

“Let’s do it, my place on sunday?” He confirms, earning a surprised, but elated smile from Ned.

…

“Ughh.” MJ groans in frustration, trying to jam some parts together in a fruitless attempt to get everything working.

As it turns out, designing the spider was the easy part, making it was difficult. They were still able to use most of MJ’s original design, only changing a few of the components slightly to become more efficient, saving them a lot of unnecessary time and effort. Now, they were trying to solder together covering for the machine from scrap metal Peter had found while dumpster diving, but it wasn’t going very well.

He had spent hours digging through dumpsters to collect a suitable amount of metal, evading angered residents that didn’t like the idea of him digging through their trash and running from the occasional cop. As he found out pretty quickly, most of what he picked up wouldn’t work for the project.

On his first attempt, the metal had been too thin to solder, melting away whenever he tried to connect the pieces. On the second attempt, he had much more success, being able to create a sleek looking cover for MJ’s spiderbot. Ned had painstakingly painted it, working slowly to keep the lines as straight as possible. And MJ had lowered it onto the bot, a caring expression on her face like a proud parent. But the robot had immediately slumped down under the weight, the metal simply too heavy.

After that, the three of them had quickly reworked the design, removing some of the decorated parts. He was sad to see them go, some of the extra flair the robot had going with them. But, they needed the creation to work, even if they very sadly had to scrap part of the design.

Feeling burnt out after hours of trying, trying again, and failing, the three of them made the collective vote to take a break from the tedious intricacies of the spider before they could get frustrated enough to throw it out the window.

Currently, it was stood on his desk, walking around in circles, still looking ugly as fuck. MJ sighs, playing with the controller “This seems hopeless, who knew that prettying it up would be so difficult.” She exclaims, almost shouting out the last word in anger.

Peter thinks they can all relate to the frustration, but he still tries to keep the mood light. “I’m sure we’ll get it next time.” He says, trying to put some cheer in his voice, but it falls flat.

“Yeah, yeah–” MJ replies, but he’s not listening.

A faint, girlish scream echoes from somewhere outside of his window, someone begging for help. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he listens in, the screams getting louder and more frequent. “Want any snacks? I’m gonna go to Delmar’s.” He asks, propping himself up on his elbows casually.

“Popcorn.”

“Fritos.”

“Orange pop.”

He’s hit with a small wave of requests from his friends, noting them all down for later. Grabbing his backpack and shooting them a small wave, he quickly jogs out of the door, wanting to get to the victim in need as soon as possible.

Running down the stairs of his apartment building, he almost runs into multiple people, but makes it out the door unscathed. He slams the door behind him, heading to the nearest alleyway to get changed into his suit. Kicking his shoes and pants off, he yanks the spandex fabric out from the bottom of his tattered backpack, pulling it on in record time. He doesn’t bother with taking his shirt off, not wanting to waste any valuable seconds as he pulls the mask over his head, his hair poking him in the eyes. In one swift movement, he webs all of his stuff to the walls, not bothering to shove it back inside of the backpack.

With the elegance of an acrobat, he shoots up into the air, aiming a web at a nearby building. He flies in a smooth ark, waiting for the web to go taught as he swings around a few metres before the hustle and bustle below.

Normally he enjoys swinging through the sky above the oblivious city, the wind rushing past his ears and nipping at them with its cold bite. Today, he has no time to relax, or take in the reactions of the people below him, fully concentrated on reaching the source of the scream.

It takes him a mere twenty seconds to get there, suddenly thankful that the scene was so close to his apartment. Worry hits him, what if he’s too late; the screams have died down into nothing in the past twenty seconds. What if the victim has already been injured– or worse, all because he was too slow. The situation brings up uncomfortable memories of his uncle Ben, memories which he shoos out of his head to focus on the current situation. He can't spend time reminiscing on the past when there’s someone who needs his help in the current moment.

He lands on the roof of the building next to them and peeks down, assessing the situation: there’s a woman clutching her purse to her chest like a shield, and another person cornering her, a gun pointed in her direction. The situation is so similar to what happened to Ben, only confirming his thoughts that he needs to act now and think later. Before he can even blink, he drops down between the woman and the attacker, covering her with his body.

The attacker starts to pull down on the trigger, not hesitating to shoot him. Peter’s reflexes are too fast, due to a combination of his enhanced senses and his experience in fighting criminals, and he webs the attacker’s gloved hand to the brick wall before they have a chance to shoot.

They jerk back, hissing in pain as their arm is violently pulled behind them at an awkward, presumably painful angle. Peter has no time to feel sorry for causing the criminal some light pain, especially when they were going to shoot him. Instead, he turns to address the victim.

She looks exactly like most of the people he saves: shaken, but not physically hurt. He breathes out a sigh of relief, in the time it took for him to get there things could have easily gone south, with the criminal waving that loaded gun around like it was a child’s toy. “Hey, hey, You’re not hurt are you?” He holds his hands out in front of her, mainly trying to get her attention, but also wanting to prove he’s not a threat. Many people can be disoriented after getting attacked, making them think that anyone who approaches them after is going to hurt them– something he learnt the hard way.

“N-no.” She mumbles, a wild look in her eyes. Shakily, she reaches into her bag, pulling out a phone with fumbling hands before dialling a number. It’s not the police, the number is too many digits long. He doesn’t leave.

“I can wait with you here ma'am, if you’d like?” He asks, letting some vulnerability seep into his voice as a form or reassurance.

“Okay.” She confirms, looking mildly surprised. She expects him to swing away into the horizon, he realises. “H-he took my wedding ring.” She says into the air, her voice still tripping over itself but sounding slightly more calmed down.

Peter turns his attention to the attacker, who’s hand– which is still holding the pistol, by the way– is webbed to the wall. Just to be careful, Peter continues to shoot webs at the attacker's hand, just in case the attacker somehow breaks free and starts pointing the gun at him again. The webs are unnaturally strong and take a handful of hours to decompose, the only ways of breaking them off early are by using a knife to cut them or fire to melt them, and neither option is available currently. It would be almost impossible for the attacker to break out, but Peter had always been the type of guy to take precautions. Speaking of precautions, he webs the attacker’s other hand to the wall too, just in case.

Trying to intimidate the attacker, he gets up close to their face before interrogating them. “So, I heard that you–” He says, his voice low to disguise his age. He points at them, watching as they try to shuffle back into the brick wall. Nice try, buddy, but there wouldn’t be any escaping on his watch. “–took her ring.” He finishes his sentence, pointing at the women even though he knows full well the attacker knows who he is talking about.

He’s found out that relaying even the most obvious facts can intimidate a criminal effectively, maybe because he’s the one saying them. The attacker doesn’t speak, instead simply nodding as they crane their head away, trying to put as much distance between himself and Spider-Man.

They nod down to their hoodie pocket, asking permission for Peter to unweb their hand so they can reach down to get it. Peter isn’t stupid, he can’t trust this guy, not when they were literally pointing a gun at thim mere minutes ago. He shakes his head, refusing to allow the person that freedom. Reaching into the pocket, Peter feels two objects in there. He doesn’t have to ponder, it's clear what they are: the ring, like he had expected, and another, smaller gun.

Webbing the weapon to the wall, he asks the woman for a pen and paper to write a note. Dear NYPD, this is this guy’s gun. He webs the note to the wall next to the gun, drawing one arrow pointing at the weapon and another pointing at the criminal.

“You sure are prepared, ain't ya?” He mumbles, partially directed to the webbed up criminal and partially into the air. Like he expected, he receives no response other than some fearful trembling. The attacker was so high and mighty when he had the gun pointed at that woman, but now they’re crying for their mommy when they see spiderman? This city really is full of hypocrites.

He turns his attention back to the woman, who is leaning on the opposite wall while talking to someone on the phone, exhaustion clear on the face. “I believe…” Peter says with a smirk, pulling the ring out from behind his back. “This is yours.”

Hesitantly, she takes it from his palm. Slipping it onto her left ring finger. “Thank you, you don’t know how much this means to me.” She smiles sadly, reminiscing.

He smiles back at the woman, knowing she won’t be able to see the expression under his mask. “Stay safe.” He says softly, swinging away moments later.

The webs will have jammed both of the attacker’s guns, making sure that they can’t hurt anyone else with them again. All he has to do now is to get back in time before his friends get suspicious as to why he’s taken so long to get some snacks.

Quickly, he swings back to his backpack, laughing as he does. He feels good, knowing that he managed to help someone without anything going wrong (for once), a fuzzy feeling taking place in his heart. Luckily all his stuff is still where he left it, not a single sock missing. It’s increasingly common for him to come back to whatever alley he’s left his bag in and for all his stuff to be missing. He always feels bad when that happens, knowing that he has to ask May to replace everything with money she doesn’t have.

Putting his clothes back on and shoving his suit deep into the bottom of his bag, he runs to Delmars. Technically, he could run much faster, but the speeds he can reach (and hold for a long time) would be suspicious for anyone who’s not an Olympic level sprinter. Aka, him. He jumps through the door, almost crashing into a stand of newspapers, the bell screaming overhead.

“Woah, Pete, going a bit fast there!” Mr Delmar exclaims a wide grin on his face.

Peter grins back, feeling slightly bad for his lack of appearances there lately. “Sorry Mr Delmar, I’m in a rush!” He shouts, already at the back of the store where all the drinks are kept. Grabbing three bottles of orange pop, juggling them in his arms to not drop them, he recalls the small shopping list.

He picks up the fritos that Ned wanted, and a bag of gummy worms for himself, sliding to a stop in front of the bags of popcorn. Which flavour: sweet or salty? Sweet or salty? He likes sweet, but MJ likes salted. He ponders for a few more seconds, picking up a bag of sweet n’ salty popcorn when he remembers he needs to hurry up.

They’ll have to compromise. Placing the snacks on the counter, he winks at Mr Delmar “Hey Mr Delmar, how's your daughter?” He asks cheekily

“That’ll be $20.” He scowls, but Peter can tell he secretly finds it funny anyway.

“Hey– what– you’ve not even scanned them yet!” Peter exclaims. “Ya know, I’ve got some very hungry friends to get back to. Ravenous, you could say. If I don’t appease them with some snacks they might eat me” He nods, his veneer of seriousness broken by a wide smile. “So what do ya say, a discount for your very favourite customer?”

Mr Delmar rolls his eyes, smiling down at Peter. “Sure a discount.” He says, scanning the snacks “$14.47”. When Peter makes a begging motion with his hands, he changes his answer. “Fine then, $15”.

“That’s an increase, not a discount! I’m starting to think you don’t know the definition of discount sir.” Peter replies, placing his hands on his hips. “But since you drive a hard bargain, here.” He takes a $10 and $5 bill out of his pocket and hands it to Delmar, cramming the snacks into his backpack and running out of the bodega before Mr Delmar can even offer his change back.

The ten minute walk gets cut down to a five minute run as he hurries home, not wanting to be too late with the snacks. He fiddles with his keys as he locks the door behind him, strolling into the bedroom to greet his friends “Hi guys, miss me much?”

MJ looks up from his desk, where she’s currently soldering together two pieces of metal like he was less than half an hour ago. “No, not really.” She says sarcastically, lifting the soldering mask and tucking a stray strand of curly brown hair behind her ear. “Also you should really get a new one of these, it’s so rusty.” She hands him the soldering mask, standing up with her robot in hand.

“We figured it out while you were gone.” Ned says, dropping his phone onto Peter’s bed, forgotten. “It just needed to be more lightweight, somehow none of us managed to figure that out before.”

“Yeah, that was basically it. MJ confirms. “It was so blindingly obvious.” She facepalms, smacking the palm of her hand onto her forehead.

“Really?” He asks, looking down at the robot on the floor. “Woah, that’s so cool!” The spider looked exactly like Ned’s design, but now that it was real and 3D it managed to look much cooler. The red and blue accents shone under his bedroom light, painted on with luminescent paint. They contrasted well against the matte black body that easily blended into the dark spots against Peter’s room.

“Heh, I know.” MJ confirmed, smugness in her voice. Peter would be smug too if he made something so cool. He was starting to feel mildly insecure about the Iron Man style repulsors he made, they were a basic idea that everyone had thought of at least once. The only way he would be able to save them would be by fixing the power source, something he was struggling immensely with.

Her gloating was quickly cut short by Ned, who was staring out the window at the quickly darkening sky. “Awh man, I’ve got to go.” He complained, disappointed.

MJ glanced out the window, surprised by how quickly the sun had gone down. “Me too.” She sighed, picking up her robot and walking to the door. “Bye guys.” She said, shooting them a two fingered salute.

Ned followed out after her, him and Peter waving at each other goodbye.

Peter slumped down on his bed, wondering why May wasn’t back yet; she had promised to watch a movie with him that night, because her schedule was going to get pretty busy for the next few weeks. On Sundays, she usually volunteers at F.E.A.S.T, a local charity that helps homeless people get up onto their feet again. She usually gets off work at eight, it only takes her fifteen minutes to get home, and she never stays more than thirty minutes late. Peter does the math, looking at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It’s half past nine, she should definitely be back by now.

Worried, Peter checks his phone, but finds nothing. No texts, no calls, no carrier pigeon with a letter strapped to its back: nothing at all. His worry for her cranks up a notch, she always texts him if she’s going to be home late. And she’s over an hour late, so really Peter expects a whole bombardment of apology texts. As a last resort, he googles the name of the place May volunteers at.

Gang attacks local charity, casualties unknown.