"Swinging through New York's skyline, is there anything better?"
Spider-Man swung through the air as he spun another web toward a nearby high-rise. He crouched down on the rooftop, watchful as he observed the ongoing traffic below. "Alright, give me somethin'," he said as he listened to the ear-piece inside his mask. It had a wireless connection to the police scanner he had at home. The radio towers in the city carried the frequency.
{"Attention all units nearby Madison Square, robbery and shootout in progress."}
"That's my cue!" said Spider-Man with two fingers pressed against the ear-piece. He jumped off the roof and dove straight down, like an olympic diver.
A couple of thugs had robbed a clothing store and shot one of the employees in the shoulder. They made their escape through Madison Square Park with the police on their way. "It ain't enough, c'mon this was a bust!" said one of the thugs as he ran.
"A bust is better than nothin'!" said another one as he held a paper bag that contained the cash they stole.
"A bust ain't gonna please Tombstone, remember what he did the last time?" said the third one while he held onto his handgun.
"Nope, tell me what did he do last time?" said a muffled voice from a wall above their heads.
"What's that? Who said that?" said one of them as all three of them looked around spooked.
"Up here, smart guys," said the voice and it drew their attention.
"That's the guy! That Spider-Guy," said one of the three while he reached for a concealed knife.
"Okay. Not a 'Spider-Guy', it's Spider-Man. At least get the name right when I beat you up," said Spidey as he shook his head.
They stepped back from the wall to their left as the gun-wielding thug aimed it at the masked crawler on the wall. He wore a red mask with round white-fiberglass lenses, the frames black. A dark-red jacket with a black spider on the center of the chest, an entirely black bodysuit underneath. Brown knee pads and half-finger gloves similar colored to his knee caps.
His trigger finger teased the trigger as he aimed it a tad higher, head shot was what he aimed for. Under lightning speed the gun was snatched from his hand as Spider-Man shot a web and stuck it to a street light. "Now you've got no gun. If you're gonna throw cans at me, I'll be really upset," he mocked.
"You creep! C'mon down here and I'll beat the taste out of your mouth," the now weaponless thug yelled, the other two each held a knife.
Spidey flipped over their hands and stood behind them before the thug even finished. "I ate a cookie not too long ago, it was chocolate. I like that taste," he said and spun two strands of webbing with which he snatched the knives away from the other two. "Thank you!"
"Get 'im!" said one and all three ran toward him.
They moved like statues, so slow, punches they threw he could dodge by just stepping aside. Time slowed whenever his spider-sense buzzed in the back of his brain. He had them webbed together around a nearby tree before they knew what hit them and stood before it with his arms crossed. "Now you just sit tight, the police will be here shortly. They'll put one of you in the cell with Big Raymond, he's very touchy," Spidey said and jumped with a web spun at a building's rooftop.
The cops arrived with sirens screeching and just in time to see a scrawny masked figure disappear between two buildings. Another week of summer vacation left before another year at Midtown High started and he wasn't too thrilled by it either. He'd have to face the wrath of Flash Thompson again and the general ignoring by every girl he liked. Spider-Man was a different world, he was different with that mask. Confidence reigned whenever he slid that mask over his face, not like school when he had to pretend he's still as feeble as he was before that fateful spider bite.
"Tombstone. That name keeps coming back, gotta find out more about this guy."
Spider-Man swung fast as he hovered above speeding cars. Aunt May counted on him to pick up her prescription at the drug store before 17:00, she'd been having blood sugar problems lately. He had a backpack with clothing stashed in an alley two blocks from his house, there were several places around town he used as hiding spots.
Having changed into his usual attire with his mask, jacket, gloves and knee pads stuck inside the backpack, the bodysuit he still wore underneath his clothes. He made his way toward the drug store. A pair of glasses on his nose and a zipped-up green hoodie, strands of unruly brown hair hung over his ears and down the sides of his forehead. As he walked he pulled the smart phone from his pocket, a gift from Aunt May even though Peter knew she couldn't afford it but she wouldn't take no for an answer. Her contribution to his cool image she said when she gave it. Pictures saved from Tony Stark's Iron Man armor and other various tech that he could find online, amongst his idiols Tony Stark was surely in the top three if not number one. The Avengers battled gods, aliens and rogue robots, he just catches robbers and car thieves. Spider-Man was no hero not like them, not like Iron Man. It was heroes like them that inspired him to put on the mask, but it was Uncle Ben that drove him to an understanding of what it meant to have extraordinary powers. "With great power comes great responsibility." Ben used to say to him, and those words created Spider-Man.
After a thirty minute walk he arrived at the drug store and walked up to the counter with a perscription note in hand and handed it to the clerk. "Here to pick up a perscription for May Parker," Peter said.
"Sure, kid," the clerk said as he read the note and went to a row of metal drawers and pulled one open. Peter waited with his hands inside the pockets of his hoodie. A television set that hung to the left of the counter showed muted footage of the Daily Bugle. Some celebrity they caught sunbathing nude but an ad for different news ran across the lower half of the screen was what caught Peter's eye. "New sightings of the Devil From Hell's Kitchen" was what it read. He had heard rumors about this so called 'Daredevil' but never met him, certainly they'd never post about Spider-Man. Who knew about him except some street thugs? He wasn't news like the Devil from Hell's Kitchen, the man who brought down Wilson Fisk.
"Hey, kid? Wake up, here's your perscription," the clerk said as he waved a small-white paper bag at Peter.
"Oh, uhm, right. Thanks," Peter said as he took the bag and safely put it inside his backpack while he exited the store.
"Daredevil, what a cool name."
He began his walk back toward home and checked the time on his phone as it read: 16:00. He got the perscription on time and he'd be home in time for dinner, Aunt May never liked it when he got home late. On summer vacation he'd do stuff like visit the science lab at the Empire State University where Doctor Curtis Connors, lead expert on biology often gave lectures. It was during one of Doctor Connors' exposition lectures that Peter got bit by a radioactive spider from one of Connors' experiments at the time.
Lost in his own thoughts he slowly walked onwards with his hands tucked away inside his pockets like he usually had them. Suddenly that familiar buzzing in the back of his skull snapped him out of his thoughts as he turned around and saw black smoke oozing behind a high rise in the distance. Like a soldier that knew when to fire, he sought the nearest alley and quickly changed into his costume but kept his backpack on this time as he shot out of the alley and upwards into the air. His spider-sense guided him like a navigation system, the ear-piece hadn't even been switched on when he put on the mask. Wind blew in his face as he spun web after web, closing the distance to whatever alerted him. Sirens from ambulances and cops alike echoed on the streets beneath him as he dropped on a rooftop across from the smoke-filled area.
Fire and smoke surrounded a building but he saw perfectly, he knew where to go.
"Gotta act quick!"
It was an apartment building that seemed to have caught on fire, if it was an explosion he would've heard it. But he was deep in thought when it happened, could've missed the bang. He leapt down from the rooftop and launched himself to the apartment building, launching through a window. The fire came from a floor beneath the one where he was now but it was an easy drop as he crawled down from the broken window and crawled to the one below. The window had already been broken by the explosion as fire reigned throughout the floor.
"Any— anyone here!?" Spider-Man yelled under his breath as he kept his arm before his mouth while he walked through someone's living room. Whoever lived here had already left or worse yet, died by result of the explosion. The explosion would've come from inside the apartment itself because massive damage showed on the walls and furniture. Suddenly a huge vibration shook the floor he stood on and an energy blast launched him out of the building as he flew through a wall. The shock made his muscles cramp-up and ache like they've been hit by 10 tons of raw power. He shot a web at the wall before he even got close to the pavement and pulled himself up. He crawled up the wall of the apartment building while cops and ambulance personal stood below and watched.
His spider-sense continued to buzz and tingle in the back of his head, someone attacked him with an impressive amount of power. As he came close to the floor he was shot out of another blast of vibrating energy blew-out another wall but now he managed to dodge it. He immediately jumped inside the hole that blast had created in the wall. Crouched to the floor on his hands and feet he looked up and saw another masked individual who had a strange pair of gauntlets aimed at him.
There was little smoke there, just some from the floor above and from the blown-out hole in the wall. A man in a dark-yellow hoodie with a black paintball mask to hide his face stood and stared Spider-Man down.
"Hi there, you new in town? Guess you've not gotten the memo on updated costumes, yellow's out of style," Spider-Man said as he studied his opponent.
"You like to talk, bug. I'll blow you to pieces and we'll see if you're chatty after," said the man in the ski mask. Those gauntlets of his were a different tech, something Peter hadn't seen before.
They made a faint zoom as if they recharged for another round of blasts. He wore black-rubber gloves underneath those gauntlets.
"You're on Pikachu!" Spider-Man said as he shot a ball of webbing at the paintball mask and white sticky fluid covered most of the black mask. His opponent replied in kind as he fired another blast of vibrating energy which Spidey dodged and he dealt a roundhouse kick which sent the hooded stranger flying into a television set. "Score!"
The gauntlets made another charging sound and the hooded figure slammed his fist onto the floor which launched a shock across the floor that caught Spider-Man off guard as he dodged it too late and got knocked against another wall but this time stayed inside the building.
"That one I felt," he mumbled as he shook his head
"I gotta stop this guy and fast. He'll tear the building down with those shocks."
"Yeah you keep spinning your webs, boy," said the hooded figure as he walked toward Spider-Man.
"So if I throw you a pokeball will you get absorbed inside it?" Spidey asked as he stood up again and stood face to face with his opponent.
"You talk too much," said the paintball mask-wearing thug as he aimed his gauntlets again but this time Spider-Man spun his webs around them and dove down as he crawled around the hooded figure and soon had him completely wrapped in webbing. "Get this off me!"
"Let's go for a swing!" Spider-Man said as he shot another web at the torso of the hooded figure and jumped out through the hole with the web in hand. Seconds later the yellow-hooded thug flew out of the hole while he screamed just as Spider-Man released the web. "Give my regards to the people down below!"
The thug screamed as he fell down toward the pavement while the cops hid behind their vehicles with guns at the ready. Spider-Man dove down after him and shot another web that captured the thug again, with the momentum from the fall he swung the thug against the side of the building and knocked him unconscious.
"That was one weird lookin' dude. Awesome tech though."
Spider-Man spun a web toward a nearby building and swung away whilst officers and ambulance personal rushed inside the building. The thug was cut down from the webbing and taken into police custody. He was already late for dinner and rushed home. He quickly changed behind a nearby alley and ran to the front door as he knocked, he forgot his keys like usual. Aunt May opened the door with a caring smile on her elderly face, glad to see him home. "Finally, there you are. Come wash up, dinner's getting cold," she warmly said.
As he removed his backpack he searched for Aunt May's perscription medication but felt a tattered hole at the side of his backpack, it must've been caused by one of those vibration blasts. The medicine had fallen during his fight.
"Great, just my luck. Ol' Parker luck."