So, continuing this, I'm not entirely sure how long this will run for, and I can't promise truly regular updates as my schedule could change drastically any day (such is the life of the job-seeking college student). I can say we'll be seeing a good deal of action, super-powered and otherwise, as time goes on. This particular chapter is still a bit more super-powered domesticity and world building, but family Spider-powered action is coming, I assure you.

I do not own Spider-Man. Please review, comment, or criticize constructively. Most of all, enjoy.

The Spectacular Spider-Dad

Chapter 2

Tribulations of Morning

Peter jerked the pan upwards with his wrist, tossing the still-warming batter into the air. It was only thanks to the pain tolerance that came with years of super-heroics that he didn't drop the pan immediately as some of the batter splashed out of the pan on re-entry and landed on his forearm. Setting the pan down, he quickly reached for the wet hand towel he kept hanging over the sink, specifically set for whenever he got anywhere near the stove or oven.

"I think you're supposed to wait before you do that, Daddy." Annie called, hanging off the ceiling by her hands.

"And I seem to recall you aren't supposed to be on the ceiling in the kitchen." He replied, wrapping the towel around his arm.

"But it's not from a nightmare. I'm practicing." Annie argued. She twisted up, setting her feet against the ceiling and letting her hands drop, standing completely upside-down.

"Are there windows?" Peter asked, turning around to give his daughter a stern look. Annie looked past the edge of the counter, the only separation between the kitchen and the living room.

"Yes." She admitted, reaching back for the ceiling with her hands.

"Then get down from there. You know the rules-"

"No powers where people might see." Annie finished for him dejectedly, relaxing her grip and dropping deftly to the floor. Peter reached down out with his free hand and gave her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. As much as he didn't want her abilities exposed, he understood how hard it was to have to hide them.

A few slightly more successful flips and the release of one thankfully whole and unburnt banana pancake later, Peter's phone, set on the counter, beeped. A message, from Robbie at the Bugle: 'Punisher shot up bar in Bronx. Jonah wants photos ASAP.' with an address following. Peter sighed, and started running the numbers in his head.

"You all packed up, sweetie?" He asked Annie. Her face scrunched up in thought and she shrugged her shoulders in response. "Well, go double-check. I might have to leave a little early this morning." Annie took off for her room, and Mary Jane looked up from her laptop, browsing through her latest script.

"What's going on?" She asked. Peter tossed his phone to her and flicked his wrist again, tossing a slightly over-done pancake into the air. "You need to head out before us?" Mary Jane called as she threw his phone back. Peter swapped hands with inhuman speed, reaching behind his head to grab the phone while lifting the pan with his other hand to catch breakfast on the right side.

"I can make the time for breakfast, but I think I'll need to forgo the walk to school. If I remember Frank at all, the most interesting photos I'll be able to get out of this won't be someplace he's already cleared out, and if he's hitting the gangs in the Bronx…" Peter trailed off, sparing her the details. MJ nodded and returned to her script. Peter set his phone down and flipped open a news app, hoping to quick check what was being said of Frank Castle's latest one-man warzone. He didn't think it would be worth the time to stop, but just in case- A small editorial from the New York Bulletin caught his eye as he scrolled through the listings.

Spider-Gone: The History and Mystery of New York's Metahuman Underdog.

Curiosity won out. Peter tapped on the link.

It's been six years, and New Yorkers are still wondering what exactly happened to one of the city's most controversial metahuman figures. Spider-Man, real name unknown, was a major presence in the city, and at times the world, for over a decade. Despite contentions from several local news sources and some city officials, the Daily Bugle most prevalent among them, that Spider-Man was little more than an unrestrained vigilante at best, an outright menace at worst, investigation into the man in the years following his disappearance paints a different picture. Sources within the NYPD who asked that their identities be withheld claim that the costumed wall-crawler maintained a highly favorable working relationship with police, and was instrumental in helping the late George Stacy bring down the super-powered crime lord Lonnie Lincoln, aka Tombstone, among other joint efforts for which New York's finest hold Spider-Man in high regard.

Evidence also exists tying Spider-Man to several operations conducted by the Avengers, both within the boundaries of the United States and far abroad. Footage and statements from reliable sources place him on the frontline of a fair share of the group's more dangerous outings, including a cosmic menace that threated to erase reality, the capture of a rampaging Hulk, and an attempt by the supervillain team known as the Sinister Six to hold the United Nations General Assembly hostage during a session in London.

The last known sighting of Spider-Man was nearly six years ago, during a mass break-out from Riker's Island. Spider-Man's apparently final days on the streets are surprisingly well-documented. After saving local television star Mary Jane Parker and her year-old daughter from the alien organism known as Venom, Spider-Man assisted all parties from the NYPD to SHIELD in the recapture of the super-powered escapees, after which he vanished without a trace.

Six years later, and we're all still wondering: what happened to Spider-Man, where did he go, and if he's still alive, what is he doing now?

"DADDY!" Annie's cry shocked Peter out his absorption in the article, and he quickly saw the reason; the pancake had caught fire. Peter slid the towel off his arm and batted at the flames. He flipped the pan over, dumping the still-burning flapjack onto one of many small plates he'd set aside, then filled a glass with water and dumped it over the plate. The smoke detector started blaring, tripped by the smoke still rising from the pan, and as Peter leapt up to the ceiling to pull it out of place and remove the batteries, he pointed down at the severely-blackened pancake, intent on making a great sacrifice for the sake of his family.

"Dibs." He called down firmly.

Fun fact: those team-ups with the Avengers are all taken from actual Spider-Man/Avengers comic crossovers. Him having to capture the Hulk was his first shot at getting on the team way back when; the reality-erasing event involved Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy (though I suppose Thanos getting the Infinity Gauntlet loaded with the Infinity Gems could also count in that regard, and Spidey did help out then, too), and the Sinister Six bit is slightly altered from it's original telling in the Ultimate Marvel series, where they tried to take over the White House (I changed it to the UN General Assembly to add to the international-adventures-with-the-Avengers angle).

As far as that Punisher bit, it's what I assumed the natural progression of Peter's civilian job would be (sans Horizon Labs, of course) if he gave up being Spider-Man. He's lost his major 'in' because he can't take pictures of his own super-heroics, but he's spent enough time with other super-heroes and the local criminals/crime bosses that he can make good guesses as to where they're going to be based on what they've been up to, and he can still get photos of superheroes that no other photographer can manage because of that inside knowledge and his own super-powers.

I actually didn't fully mean for this particular chapter to happen quite as it did but like I said above, world building is an important part of telling any story, and I also feel like super-powered domesticity is something fiction in general could stand to see more of. Any of you out there who've seen Ant Man, think of that last scene at the dinner table in the Lang house, where it's a fairly well-adjusted family just living with super-powered weirdness as a matter of course in their daily routine. Stuff like that is great, and we should see far more of it in my opinion.

This whole bit with Peter making breakfast, with varying degrees of success, is itself somewhat pulled from another in-comic line; a great little exchange between him and Annie, where she asserts that banana pancakes make everything better.