(Midtown Quad)

Johnny whistled to himself while fiddling with his cell phone in the abandoned quad. The hush silence save for the rustling of leaves in the breeze and chirping of birds were his only company. He flipped through the numbers of various girls he met and examined their pictures, contemplating on which one he'd try to hit on next. He started hearing distant footsteps across the grass, and looked over to find his comrade, Peter.

"Ah, hey - you decide to do it yet?"

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"Woo!" Johnny rooted briefly as he watched Peter trail to the gate.

"Make sure Aunt May or no one else knows," he warned.

"Don't worry - I have so many credits I could graduate right now," Peter replied as he acrobatically hopped the fence. Before continuing to walk off, Peter looked back to his friend. "You coming?"

"Nah, not this time - Susie's gonna be pissed if she catches me ditching to save the world again…"

"How contradictory," Peter retorted jokingly. "You'd figure Reed's speeches should make her encourage you to put the city ahead of school…"

"Ah, you know Susie," Johnny added blankly with a tone of annoyance. "Always beating on how I'd do this or that to screw everything up…"

Peter shrugged, and continued to walk off. "See you later…"

Johnny nodded proudly that Peter had finally decided to ditch so he could protect the city, as Johnny had done many times before.

As soon as Peter was out of sight, one of Flash's cronies, John Allerdyce, walked into view from under a tree. "So the geek's finally decided to do it," he called sarcastically.

Johnny looked over to him and said "You know damn well you've done it more than twice as much as I have…"

"That's not the point," John A. replied aggressively as he approached the table. "You've got guts trying to stick it to Flash…"

"What? That overgrown Neanderthal that still pisses himself?"

"You think that's real funny, think twice when Flash turns your ass inside out…"

Johnny put away the cell phone and stared his nemesis in the eyes. "Listen, Flash has got nothing on any of us. I would know," he said before getting up and walking away.

(Middle of Queens, NY)

Peter slipped on the webbed mask and raised his hand to the nearest building. A huge clump of thick, rich organic webbing shot from his wrist and stuck itself to the window. Peter instinctively jumped off of the roof and began to soar through the air, swinging around the corner along his line of webbing. He shot another towards a hotel and let go the previous webline. Clad in his one and only Spider-Man costume, pedestrians stopped and stared into the sky to watch him swing across the city. Peter leaped gracefully from web to web like Tarzan to vines, pulling off twists and flips in the air.

Spider-Man shot another webline straight in front of him near the top of Fisk Industries. He let himself fall for about two seconds before yanking with all his might on the web, pulling it straight down before gravity forced itself to haul Spidey over the roof and beyond. He swung through the cities of Manhattan for about fifteen minutes until he reached his workplace - the Daily Bugle. He crawled through a vent on the roof all the way to the men's bathroom before changing back into Peter Parker and walking to the office.

There, Rob was waiting for him. "Ah, hi Pete… You're here pretty early," he noted with mild concern.

Peter shrugged and said "Uh… It was a minimum day," coming up with the best excuse he could.

"How's life treating ya?"

"Well, before I… Was going to go anywhere, I wanted to check and see if Mr. Jameson had any work for me…" A fax came out of Rob's printer, and when it finished he snatched it and held it to his eyes, adjusting his glasses. "You came right on time - J.J. has a big assignment that just came up. He said it's really important," Rob added. "Go ahead and drop by his office," and at that Peter walked to the door of J.J's dwelling.

He knocked abruptly, with no reply. After hesitating for a moment Peter opened the door and found J.J. at his desk, smoking a cigar as usual and laying his feet on the table lazily while staring at something in his hands.

"Parker! You took a day off of school for me? I'm flattered…"

Peter shrugged nervously. "Business is important, Mr. Jameson…"

"Ah, yes it is - anyways, we've just received word that Wilson Fisk is proposing a deal with Stark Industries. He's making announcement at Times Square, and employees from both companies are gonna be there - now get to it!"

(Outside, again)

Returning to the city skies, Spider-Man swung and continuously let himself fall to lower elevation. "Times Square is never to hard to find," he said to himself quietly, scanning the streets. Suddenly a familiar prick in the back of his neck spawned the instant that he grabbed hold of a window to Quest Aerospace. "That's never good…" he murmured before leaping six feet above the window. A helicopter burst into the spot Spider-Man once was, the propeller sticking and engine flaming. Screams emanated from the wall's opening and people in suits fled from their cubicles in horror. Spider-Man quickly scurried down to the spot and grunted as he strained to lift the helicopter from the place it was lodged in.

In six tense, pressure-filled seconds the chopper finally budged. Spider-Man tried to lift it out of the crevice through the wall, wedging at it's sides and when he felt his spider sense curl around his neck again, the chopper slipped from his hands. Spidey quickly shot two weblines onto the back of the chopper, straining to pull it back up, the lines retracting back into his arms as it lifted the chopper up. The tingle invaded his spine again when he looked out in front of him to see a pole flying straight for his face. Spidey leapt off the wall and it struck the glass, missing it's intended target.

Spider-Man quickly reeled the chopper back into his hands and, as gently as he could, placed it on the roof he found his feet on. Right as he set it down and was trying to remove his hands from it, his spider sense tingled once again and the pole struck him square on the back from it's side. Spider-Man reeled back and cried out in agony, holding his back and slowly turning around to find the perpetrator, a girl dressed in a black jumpsuit with grayish skin, pink hair and a wicked smile towards him - Jinx.