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Response to reviews:

Abyss Dragon Slayer:

Glad to hear it's better than you expected… ;) I love Peter/Michelle so much, I can't wait for the next Spiderman to come out! (My coping methods for the long wait obviously include writing bad fan fiction...boy, do I need a life.)

ImagiTheNation:

(I hope I wrote your name right) Thank you for your excitement! ;)

Guest:

Many thanks for your kind words. Enjoy the chapter!

MyNightmaresAreMyDaydreams:

Oh my god that was the best compliment ever! Thank you so much!

He was able to slip out just before midnight.

May was finally asleep, curled up on the couch with her knees drawn to her chest, her mouth half open as she snored. Large piles of paperwork were scattered haphazardly on the coffee table in front of her. Her red glasses were still perched on her nose.

Peter carefully slid the glasses off her face and set them on the table. He took the large gray blanket— her favorite—off her bed and carefully spread it over her, bending over to kiss her forehead before crossing the room, opening a window, and hopping onto the sill. "Bye, May," he whispered quietly. And then he jumped.

The cool autumn air rushed past his body for three exhilarating seconds before he twisted, grabbing hold of the fire escape railing and flipping to slow his descent. He broke his fall with a roll and came up in the deserted alley behind his apartment. He didn't have his suit on, but this was one of the few nights he wasn't on patrol. Instead, he was going to buy a sketchbook.

"Please work," he muttered under his breath as he began jogging toward a small store a few blocks away. Maybe if he bought her a new book, combined with him mostly fixing her old one, he would be able to appease her enough to buy her silence. Then again, Michelle was never as predictable as others were. She could already be revealing his identity on one of her online forums. Or she could simply be throwing darts at his picture. With Michelle, it was anything in between.

The door to the store—open until midnight—made a tinkling sound as he pushed it open. The cashier, a middle aged, balding man reading a newspaper, didn't even bother to glance up. "You've got five minutes before closing," he said, flipping the newspaper over.

"A friend told me you sell sketchbooks. Where are they?"

The man jutted a thumb at the far wall. "Back of the store. Make it quick."

The sketchbooks were on the far right of the wall, ten in all, each with a different design on the cover: flowers, skulls, politicians with their heads on fire, etc. He chose one with all three.

He was just turning to go to the counter when the door's bell rang and a woman entered. The balding man, with his nose still buried in his newspaper, didn't see what Peter clearly could.

The woman was blonde, with blue highlights, a prominent nose, and large eyes. Eyes that were stark red. For the moment, though, Peter wasn't concerned about the eyes. It was the gun held in her shaking hand that was worrying him. The fact that she had a gun was bad enough, but add to it that her hands were shaking...scared people were dangerous. They could act impulsively, with no thought to the consequences. And this woman was clearly terrified.

"Give me your money!" she half shrieked, half yelled at the balding man behind the counter, who looked up to see the gun pointed straight at his forehead. "Give it to me now!"

Peter carefully set the sketchbook down and began to move toward the woman. He was light on his feet, perfectly balanced, and so she didn't hear a thing. The man, whose hands were also shaking, was now pulling twenties out of the register and putting them into a bag the woman had tossed onto the counter.

"I'm sorry," the woman said, her voice choked. "I'm so sorry, but I have to do this. I have to."

The balding man saw him first. His eyes widened as Peter approached and the blood drained from his face. The woman noticed this and spun around. Whether accidental or not, her finger squeezed the trigger.

Peter was prepared. He dove to the side and came up on the woman's left, just as the bullet smashed into the rack of sketchbooks. He sent a punch at the woman's wrist. She gave a shriek of pain as his fist connected with a sharp crack! and dropped the gun.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, swiping the bag off the counter and kicking the gun away. "But that doesn't belong to you." It was one of his cheesiest lines, but he loved using it. It was from Uncle Ben's favorite movie.

The woman had tears running down her face as she held her wrist to her chest. "I have to do this," she half choked, half sobbed. Her completely red irises shone through the dim lighting of the store. She made a grab for the bag, but Peter twisted out of the way.

"Leave," he said, "and I won't call the police. Just this once."

The woman let out a scream of frustration, then rushed at Peter and attacked him. Her punch caught him on the shoulder he had already injured several nights ago. He grunted, shoving her away from him. She stumbled backward and fell hard.

"Don't move!" the balding man ordered. He had picked up the gun and was pointing it at the woman.

"Wait!" Peter shouted, leaping forward and smacking the gun from his hands. The woman took her chance and scrambled backwards, up onto her feet and out the door just as the clock above struck midnight.

"What did you do that for?" the balding man shouted. "We had her!"

Peter didn't answer. "Here," he said gruffly, and shoved the bag of money into the man's arms. "That's what's important to you, right?"

"I—"

"It's closing time, remember?" he interrupted. "Get on it." And then he left.

He didn't know why he was so angry. The stress of Michelle and his secret, of school, of patrolling almost every night and getting less than four hours of sleep, and now stopping a sobbing woman from taking cash...he kicked at a trash can peeking out of an alley. It flew ten feet and smashed into the back wall, the metal dented and half caved in.

The anger drained out of him as he stared at the trash can. It was his fault anyway. He just had to make it through tomorrow, to find Michelle and make things right, and then everything would go back to normal. At least, as normal as life could get for a teenage vigilante.

It was morning before he realized he had forgotten the sketchbook.

The school day was over. He had suffered through two assemblies, gym class, Flash and his asinine comments, and Mr. Davis' stern lecture that they should all remember to get their flu shots as soon as possible. Peter still didn't have his. May was too busy at the moment to remember, and he had yet to remind her.

He caught up with Michelle on the same sidewalk as the day before. The sketchbook was under his arm, slightly crumpled from water damage. The one with the picture of him as Spiderman.

"Can we talk?" Peter asked.

"Didn't I tell you to stay away from me?"

"Please," he said. "It's important.

Michelle snorted. "Yeah, well so was meeting up and doing the project together. And the time before that. And the time before that. You know, you've done such a great job of avoiding me the past few months, so why stop now? You're on a roll."

He caught her arm as she turned away. "Please, Michelle—"

Her punch landed on his shoulder, the one already sore from last night. He inhaled sharply and dropped the sketchbook as she yelled, "Don't touch me!" The sketchbook fell open, landing with the last page face up. The perfect rendering of Spiderman. Michelle's eyes dropped to it. She didn't move for several seconds. Then, she looked up at him.

"Now can we talk?" he asked, wincing as he rubbed his shoulder.

She swallowed. Swung her fisted hands back and forth. Placed them on her hips and then dropped them. Picked up the sketchbook and slid it into her backpack. "You've got five minutes," she said finally. "Come on."

Michelle led him to an alley several minutes away from the school. She crossed her arms and glared at him. "Five minutes," she repeated.

"You know," Peter said frankly.

Her head dipped down and then up.

"How long?"

"Does it really matter?" she asked, and then sighed. "Since before the Washington Monument."

"Since before—oh god," he muttered, running a hand through his hand. "How many others know?"

A ghost of a smile appeared on Michelle's face. "Don't worry. Not everybody is as observant as I am. Even if you are a horrible liar." The smile vanished from her face and she shook her head. "Look, I won't tell anyone about your little secret, okay? Does that make everything better?"

Did that make everything better? In simple terms, yes. His identity was safe. But…

"You're still mad at me, aren't you?"

"And your five minutes are up," Michelle said, pointing to an invisible watch. "Have a nice life, Peter." She turned and walked out of the alley.

"Wait!" He ran after her and skidded to a stop in front of her, forcing her to stop. He opened his mouth to say something—apologize, plead, ask what he could do to make things go back to the way they were before—but the words died in his throat as he looked behind her.

It was the window of a store, advertising their large television screens by broadcasting the news on five screens displayed in the window.

"—found dead in the street in the early hours of today," the news anchor was saying. A picture of a body was shown lying on the street, limbs splayed awkwardly. Her eyes were closed, but there was no mistaking the prominent nose or the blue highlights in her hair.

It was the woman from the store last night. The one he had stopped. The one who had ran out, crying, with nothing.

And now she was dead.

"—autopsy has been recently performed," the news anchor was saying, "but the results are most perplexing. It seems that she was in perfect condition. No diseases, no disturbing medical records, no evidence of anything that could have killed her. She was completely healthy, except for the fact that she was...well, dead."

An picture of the woman popped up, dated several weeks before her death. She was grinning at the camera, her dark brown eyes sparkling in the light coming from the rising sun. Judging by her expensive looking gear and the view behind her, she was a hiker.

Peter wasn't even aware he was moving until he pressed his hand against the glass. There was something off about it. The quality of her hiking gear. Why would she try to rob a store when she could afford gear like that? And the way she had acted, like she had no other choice but to take the money, no matter what the consequence might be...The way her red eyes had been filled with fear and determination and…

The eyes.

Brown in the picture. Pure red last night.

"Peter?"

He jumped at the hand on his shoulder. Michelle quickly retracted it. The anger was gone from her voice, replaced with concern.

"Y...yeah?" he stammered.

"Did you know her?" Michelle asked carefully.

"I...I…"

The Avenger's compound. That was where he would find answers, where he could use the technology to run a search and figure this out.

"...I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry."

He turned and ran.

Usually, he would have gone to Karen for this sort of thing. Had her run a search and come up with all the information he needed in less than five minutes. Unfortunately, his A.I was in another country with Mr. Stark, who had taken her with him on a business trip to upgrade. Peter tried not to resent the billionaire for it, especially because he was improving the A.I., but he still couldn't stop feeling annoyed. Once again, his tech had been taken away from him just when he needed it.

His only other option was FRIDAY. Along with being implanted in Iron Man's suit, she was also wired in the Avengers Compound. It was two and a half hours away, but it was his best option for finding some answers.

"May!" he shouted into the apartment. "Where are the keys?"

"By the sink!" she called back from her room. "Where are you going?"

"Stark Internship stuff!" he called back.

"Don't forget, we're having dinner with Tai at seven! Be here, all right?"

Tai was the short, balding vietnamese man who owned their apartment building. He insisted on having dinner with each family who rented every six months, dinners that Peter had come to loathe with a passion. But he also knew May would slaughter him if made her go alone. So he shouted, "Got it!" and ran out the door.

His car—a sixteenth birthday present from May and Uncle Ben's old co-workers—was parked at the curb. Unlocking it, he slid into the driver's seat and started up the old engine, which spluttered but eventually settled to a normal hum.

"Nice car," said a voice to his right.

Peter jumped, nearly hitting his head on the roof of the car when he saw that the passenger seat was occupied. "How did you get in here?" he demanded.

Michelle held up a twisted piece of wire. "Picked the lock. So where are we headed?"

"Where are we—Why are you here? I thought you hated me."

She blew a stray curl off her face and crossed her arms. "I don't hate you. I have a deep disliking of you that, for the moment, has been paused because of your concerning behavior.

"Concern? For me?"

"Don't push it, Parker," she snapped, then sighed. "Look, you don't have to tell me who that woman was, or how you knew her, but I'm not going to let you wander around by yourself after seeing that. So where are we going?"

If there was one thing Peter knew, it was that Michelle was stubborn. Short of knocking her unconscious—he had doubts that even that would work—there was no way she was budging from her seat. Which left him with only one other option. "Alright," he said, putting the car into gear. "Avenger's Compound, here we come."

And the plot thickens….

Please review! I love constructive criticism!