Spider-Man meets Storm Hawks

By: Dagmar Noble

Spider-Man crawls in through his window and flops into bed, not even bothering to take off his tattered costume. "I hate Venom," he groans "Why can't he use someone else as a punching bag?"

It had been a rough night, all he had wanted was to do some web-slinging and maybe kick a few bad guys' buts. And then Venom showed up, why did it have to be Venom, the one super-freak his spidey sense didn't warn him about? It could have been some one normal, like Doctor Octopus, or Sandman, even Fing Fang Foom, the ancient alien dragon would have been preferable. But no, it had to be Venom; the annoying part was that he thought he was the good guy. Protector of the Innocent, eh? Ha!

****

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

Peter reached for his alarm clock, but fell out of bed instead. "Huh?" He said as he landed on the metal floor with a clang, Shouldn't there be carpet? "Where am I?!?" Peter yelled. He stood up and looked around him, noticing absentmindedly that his Spiderman costume was no longer ripped and torn. Everything in the room was made of metal except the mattress on the cot in the corner of the room. On one of the walls was a blue hawk like emblem. "Never seen that one before, I wonder what they want with me." But before he could even start to come up with possible reasons to why he had been brought here the door burst open.

Three teenagers around his age, two boys one girl, some poor dude who looked somewhat like a rhinoceros, and a fuzzy blue,…..thing, jumped in and pointed there creepy (most likely radio active) weapons at him, or just plain snarled at him in blue fuzzy's case. "Whoa" Spidey said, backing up. They advanced on him, when his hands met the wall he climbed up it. The teen's looks of confused angry looks changed into ones of open awe.

The red head was the first to recover from the shock of seeing him sitting on the wall. "Who are you; why are you here, and do you work for Master Cyclonis?" he demanded.

"Umm, I'm Spider-Man," he said, not wanting to give these people his secret identity until he was sure they could be trusted, "I'm not really sure why I'm here, or how I got here for that matter, ummm, and I have no idea who Master Cyclonis is." At this they all burst out laughing.

"You hear that Aerrow?" The blond haired youth said, wiping tears from his eyes, "He's never heard of Cyclonis!"

"Finn, shut up, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable reason as to why he hasn't heard of the person we fight almost every day to make sure she doesn't take over the Atmose." The dark skinned girl shot at him.

"Umm, Piper, that's pretty impossible, considering she is the biggest threat in all the Atmose." Replied rhino boy.

"Well," said the red head, who he had learned was Aerrow, "if he has never heard of Master Cyclonis, he obviously can't be working for her."

"Yes." Said Spider-Man who was still sticking to the wall hoping they wouldn't decide to shoot at him with there pointy glowing weapons.

****

"You were bit by a radio active spider." Aerrow repeated in disbelief.

"Yes that I was." They had been over it a billion times now; Peter was getting just a little annoyed.

"I don't trust him," said the green skinned man with an emo bang, who's name is Stork. Well at least that made sense, he was fairly stork like, being all skin and bones.

"What was that?" He had missed the question.

"Why do you wear a mask?" the big rhino man, Junko, repeated.

"Because, if nobody knows what my face looks like, they don't know it's me, that way I can live a relatively normal life as well as fight crime." Peter pulled the mask off, he figured he could trust these people, especially because they were flying in a giant ship, he was in an alternate dimension, (as best he could figure) and would most likely never see them again. "My real name is Peter Parker."

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

The alarm went off again.

"Cyclonians!" shouted Stork, who was at the steering wheel. "We're all doomed!" He yelled.

At Pete's look of terror Aerrow reassured him, "Don't worry, he always says that about the tiniest thing."

"This isn't tiny, Aerrow! The Dark Ace is here too!" Stork called back.

"Ummm, who's the Dark Ace?" Peter asked.

Aerrow stared him in the eye and said "He's the one who betrayed the original Storm Hawks."

"Hey Peter, you can ride with me!" Piper called as he stood wondering what to do while every one else ran about.

"I'd rather you called me Spider-Man while we fight bad guys" he replied as he pulled his mask back on.

"Whatever you say Petey."

****

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" Spidey screamed as he fell through the air. Why couldn't he have been bitten by a radio active bird?!? Piper swooped down on her heli-scooter and caught him. "Why don't you have any sky scrapers?" He asked her.

"Uh, what's a sky scraper?" Piper asked.

"Never mind." How he would love to be back in New York and it's jungle of buildings.

"Okay, well, here take this," she said handing him a blue crystal attached to a chain. "It's a floater crystal, that way if you fall again and don't have anything to stick to, you won't die. Sorry I couldn't find you a parachute."

"That's fine, thank you for the crystal." Almost as good as being bitten by a radio active bird. He shot some webbing at another Cyclonian while Piper released energy blasts from her staff, both of their targets went down screaming, only to have their parachutes pop out and send them on a leisurely descent. "Your bad guys are pretty wimpy, you know, it's like they know their going to lose and so are not even bothering to try."

"I never thought about it before but, your right, they are pretty wimpy." Piper replied.

There was a blast of blue to Spider-Man's right as he saw Aerrow fight the Dark Ace. "Whoa, what was that?" He said with an awed expression on his face, which would have made Piper smile if he hadn't been wearing a mask.

"That was Aerrow's signature move, the Lightning Claw." Piper told him, she seemed to be very proud of her Sky Knight.

They shot down the next few Talons with the help of Junko and Finn, only the Dark Ace was left. They had him surrounded when……Peter fell.

"Dagnabit! Not again!" He cried. The Dark Ace chuckled maniacally and used the distraction to get away. "How do you work this thing?" Spidey said smacking the blue crystal against his hand. He was starting to float back upwards when every thing went black.

****

Peter woke with a start. "What just happened?" He wondered out loud.

"Peter, honey, is that you?" Aunt May said as she pushed open his door with a tray that had a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup on it. "You've been asleep all day, dear. I was starting to think you would never wake up. You had such a high fever this morning, you were talking gibberish. Strange comments about Venom and Spider-Man. Well I don't want to talk your ear off." She finished.

Was it just a dream then? Had he imagined it all? But it seemed so real! "What was that Aunt May?"

"I said, where did you get that interesting necklace?"

Peter reached for his neck and found hanging there a chain with a blue crystal on it. "From a friend." He replied with a grin on his face.