New Marvel: The Amazing Spider-Man

Direction—Part One

"Grieving"

"As we commit Benjamin Parker... a loving husband and uncle... to the earth, we must remember that, though his life may have seemed humble, he lived every moment to his fullest."

Peter wasn't listening. He was looking at the photograph on top of the coffin in front of him, showing his uncle's grinning face less than a month before a single bullet had ended him.

"I'd like to recite, now, words from one of Ben's favorite poems... Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry that I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth..."

Aunt May's gloved hand was clasped around Peter's as they stood, side by side, in the front of the funeral gathering. Both were almost afraid to let go of the other, worried that they wouldn't be able to stand without the other's support. For May, the funeral seemed to go by in a blur, but to Peter it felt like an eternity, even taking hypercognition into account. He cast his attention around for something to focus on, anything but the death that he hadn't stopped, and found himself focusing on his own heartbeat. And his aunt's.

Eventually, the funeral dispersed around them, with the occasional person offering a few empty words of comfort. Peter finally turned, still holding Aunt May's hand, and started walking to the car.

The Parker Residence

"I'll go about making some lunch," Aunt May said quietly, starting shakily towards the kitchen.

"I'm not hungry," Peter softly replied, his stomach growling loudly. He started up the stairs, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top of his dress shirt with some difficulty. Making his way to his room, he closed his door and removed his tie fully, walking over to the closet and opening it.

A red and black pile of spandex sat on the closet floor.

Peter stared at the costume for a moment, feeling even worse than he had, before roughly grabbing the hanger for his suit and closing his closet door. Ten feet beneath him, Aunt May was sitting at the kitchen table, head in hands, trembling and crying. He could feel it through the air and floor.

His fault. All his fault.

Peter unbuttoned his dress shirt and pulled it and his suit jacket off, putting them on the hanger. Outside, he felt a car coming to a stop and parking, doors opening, two people stepping out.

Peter listened to each footstep of their progress as it became obvious that whoever they were, they were headed for his house. He let them come, didn't bother interrupting. He could not possibly care less.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Asked the larger of the two, and Peter immediately recognized the voice of Lieutenant George Stacy from two nights ago.

"Yeah, of course," said the smaller, and it was Gwen.

Peter lifted his head, standing and straightening the white T-shirt that he had on under his dress shirt. As Gwen knocked on the door, Peter left his bedroom and slowly walked down the stairs. He grabbed the doorknob, his fingers deforming the metal slightly, and opened.

They looked at each other for a few seconds, Peter leaning in the doorframe and Gwen trying to find a comfortable place to put her hands, before Peter gave her a small smile. Gwen returned it immediately.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," Peter replied.

Gwen brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "I..." She indicated her head to her father behind her. "I heard about what happened and came as soon as I could. I would have gone to the funeral, but I didn't know how everyone would react to some girl crashing a funeral."

"That's alright," Peter said softly, not really looking at her. "Thanks for caring."

Gwen rocked onto her toes for a second as both tried to find something to say.

"My aunt's inside," Peter said. "She's not doing so good. This really hit her hard."

"You don't look like you're doing great either," Gwen commented. "...Do you...do you need a hug?"

Peter nodded. "Really badly," he said, his voice cracking.

She stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and embraced him. He returned the hug after a second, lowering his face into her shoulder, taking a deep breath, and squeezing as tight as he dared. Tears found their way out of his closed eyes, soaking into the fabric of Gwen's shirt. She, for her part, patted him on the back softly, her chin on his shoulder. "It'll be okay," she whispered into his ear. "It's going to be alright."

a little later

"You would've liked him," Peter said, sitting down on his bed with his legs crossed. "I'm sorry you never really got to meet him."

"Did he always try to set you up on dates?" Gwen asked, sitting next to him and grinning at the memory.

"Only with girls I liked," Peter said, a second before he realized the connotations of what he had just said. He squeezed his eyes closed for a second, mentally punching himself through a brick wall. If there was a better way to creep someone out than to invite her into your bedroom and more or less tell her you liked her, he had no idea what it was.

If Gwen caught the implications of what he had said, though, she gave no indication. "Well, he seemed nice when I met him. A pretty fun guy."

"Yeah. Yeah, he was. He always was like, 'Come on, Pete! Let's go blow something up!'"

Gwen looked at him incredulously.

"Okay, no he wasn't. Uncle Ben was more the responsible type. But he did love to go do something interesting. He wasn't the kind to sit around and watch TV all day, I think he'd get bored to death before noon. " Peter stopped talking, looking down at the floor. Tears were running down his face silently, as they had been doing off and on all of that and the previous day. "...Why him?"

"Because the only gods are a race of Viking warriors from space," Gwen replied bitterly, "and aside from Thor they don't care about squishy Midgardians."

"Heh," Peter said softly. "You should have seen Aunt May when she saw Thor on the news for the first time. She freaked out for like ten minutes, while all the while Uncle Ben was like, 'take it easy, he's probably just a mutant or something.' So you think he's the real deal?"

Gwen shrugged, looking at all the stuff on Peter's desk on the other side of the room. "I think that if a sufficiently advanced alien race came to Earth back in the Dark Ages, of course they'd be deified. A genuine god? No. The Thor? Sure, why not. What's all that?"

Peter, who had been paying attention to the conversation in the room below, looked up, then followed her gaze, glad of an opportunity to distract himself. "Oh, that?" he said, standing up and walking over to the arrangement of sealed test tubes, beakers, and homemade machines. "This is a thing I've been working on. A liquid polymer that turns into a super strong cable on contact with air. I figure that chemistry research has come far enough recently that it's possible, easy even." He turned to look at Gwen, who had joined him by the desk and was now looking through the pages of equations that had been held down by the corner of his laptop. "I mean, it's all there, someone just needs to put it all together right. I've already found something that turns into little strands when it hits air. What do you think MIT or ESU would give me for a finished product?"

"A horse's head in your bed," Gwen replied without looking up from the notes. "I mean, holy crap. This is miraculous stuff, especially coming from...you." She looked at the fifteen-year-old boy next to her. "You know, even if you succeed, no one's going to really believe that a teenager did this." A pause, as she read the little note on the bottom of the last page. "'Synthetic spider silk?' Hah, good luck. I hear there's a team in OsCorp that's pretty close, but 'pretty close' is about the closest we've gotten."

"Thank you for your support," Peter said, snatching the notes back. "For your information, it was just a thought. And besides, if a super genius is going to make the stuff, why not this one?"

"Ah, okay," Gwen said. "Sure. Hey, do you want to—"

"What?!"

Peter stared right through the floor, at Lieutenant Stacy's heartbeat, where he had just heard the unfortunate news that the man who murdered Ben was to be released. A drop of rain hit the window. Without really thinking, Peter charged out the bedroom door, jumped the entire flight of stairs, and broke two floorboards upon landing. He hit the front door as momentum carried him forward, then stopped, turned, and ran into the kitchen. All this took less than a second.

"What?!" He repeated.

"Wha–how did you—" George looked from the bottom of the stairs, at Peter, back to the bottom of the stairs, then straight up. "...Never mind. As I've just informed your aunt, Mr. Parker, Dennis Carradine, the man who murdered your uncle, has had his bail paid. He's getting released tomorrow."

"..." Peter's mouth moved silently for a second, and in that time Gwen appeared in the kitchen door. "...What? Why?!"

"You must have really good hearing," Gwen commented, looking up at the ceiling.

George lifted his hands. "I don't know. I just heard he's being let out, and that's all I know. I'm sorry, I really am." He stood quietly, looking from Peter to Aunt May. "...I had to take time off of work to tell you. I have to get back. Gwen, come on."

"But—" Gwen looked from her father to Peter, who now looked utterly crushed. "...Dad, can't I stay here?"

George shook his head. "Sorry, Gwen, but no. Let's go."

There were a few words of apology and thanks, but Peter wasn't paying enough attention to know exactly what was said. He just knew when their car started and drove away.

He was glad he had been told. In Peter's mind, it was always better to know the truth than to be uninformed, no matter how unsettling or infuriating. But this was plenty of both, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do to make the situation better. Uncle Ben's murderer was casually and legally walking out of prison tomorrow, and although he might need crutches, there was no reason he couldn't.

What do I do? Peter thought. How am I supposed to make this alright? There's nothing I can do, is there? His brow furrowed as he closed his bedroom door, leaning against the back. Why is all this happening to us? Is it my fault? Is all this because I let it happen?

Who the hell paid his bail, anyway?

the next day

"...Also today, a new development in the Parker murder, admitted murderer Dennis Carradine is being released today. His bail was paid anonymously in cash yesterday, and he has announced gratitude to the person responsible."

Peter glared daggers at the TV screen over his cereal, irritably shoving another spoonful into his mouth. Carradine was talking on screen, and Peter was glad to see a nasal splint and two black eyes on his face. A small consolation. Peter picked up his cereal bowl and drank some of the milk out of it, determinedly ignoring what Carradine was saying. Something about never wanting to kill anyone. Peter didn't want to hear it.

"What happened to his face?" Aunt May wondered aloud.

"No clue," Peter lied. "But I hope it happens again."

May looked at him crossly. "Peter. I know you're grieving, but that's no excuse to say things like that. He's a person, and you shouldn't wish harm on him, no matter what he's done."

Peter didn't say anything, instead choosing to stand up and put his empty bowl in the sink. "I'm going to school," he said. "Do you think you can pick me up at OsCorp at five?"

"Are you going to be there?" May asked.

"Yes," Peter said, rolling his eyes. "Aunt May, I'm sorry I freaked you out about that. I've learned from that mistake. So, can you come pick me up?"

"Yes. I'll see you at five."

"See you then," Peter said. He grabbed his backpack and started for the door.

And stopped.

"Peter?"

Peter turned around, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging. "I'm sorry," he said again, but this time it sounded less like a bother and more like something that he needed to get out. "I shouldn't have run off. I should've been here when it happened. I could—" His voice cracked. "...I could've done something..."

May stood up, walking over and embracing him. "Peter," she said sadly. "I forgive you. There was nothing you could've done."

Peter almost burst into tears then and there. Moving out of an embrace he didn't feel like he deserved, he turned on his heel and walked out of the house. The door slammed.

Peter walked down the sidewalk, eyes on the ground in front of him. He had done so enough times to know exactly what the sidewalk looked like at the bus stop: two cracks intersected, the concrete changed color, and part of the curb was chipped off. A pair of Converse already stood there. Peter looked up, having felt their owner's heartbeat from twenty feet away, and gave Mary-Jane Watson a small half-smile. She smiled back, just as halfheartedly, as Peter stood next to her, heels on the curb. Neither said anything for a while.

"Hi, Pete," MJ said finally.

"Hi," Peter replied flatly. He had absolutely no reason to be in a good mood.

A long pause.

"I heard about what happened."

"I would hope so. You live well within earshot."

"I'm sorry. I liked Ben."

"How profound." Peter glanced at her. "How's Flash?"

"He's alright. Mostly he's just rattled." MJ tugged on the hem of her graphic T-shirt. "Where the hell did that come from, anyway?"

Peter knew what she was talking about. Typically the wallflower didn't kick the linebacker's ass out of nowhere. "What do you care?"

"What?"

"Nothing." Peter scowled, staring straight ahead, then abruptly turned back to her. "Actually, not nothing. Where was your little 'knock it off' routine all the times he beat me up? Or made me do his homework? Or the middle school wedgies, or the elementary school lockers? You kept your mouth shut for eight years, and then the second I decide enough is enough, you're all like, 'Hey, that's wrong!'" He folded his arms. "Real nice, MJ. What's the difference, huh?"

MJ clearly had no good answer. "...Well...I didn't want to get targeted myself—"

"No." Peter frowned. "You didn't want to fall out of favor, out of your little social circle. Puny Parker's not worth it. Am I right?" He stared at her as her body language confirmed what he had said. "I am. I know I am." And then he stopped, more than a little ashamed of himself. Another lashing out at one of the very, very few he considered close to him. When he had done the same to Uncle Ben three days ago, it had been the last thing he had ever said to him. He didn't want the same to be true here. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment.

"No," MJ said, "you're right. I haven't helped you because I need friends. But at least I have a few, however bad they are. But you know what? Flash has never left you with bruised ribs. He's at least better than you in that way."

"And only that way," Peter retorted, knowing full well the remark meant basically nothing. He turned his head to look at the bus as it came around the corner. It pulled up to where Peter and MJ were standing, and opened the door. Peter took a step back, letting MJ board first as he always did, before getting on himself.

Midtown High School, later

Peter sat in the fourth seat to the left in the second row of his math class, trying to pay attention to what the teacher had to say on trigonometry. Heard it, yes. Had it theoretically down pat, yes. But needed something, anything, to keep his mind off of everything that had happened. Trying to keep his aunt's story out of his ears, the killer's face out of his mind's eye.

It was not working.

Peter buried his head in his hands, eyes closed tightly. A piece of paper, crumpled into a ball, went flying at his head the second the teacher turned around, and Peter caught it without so much as looking up. Casting his mind around for something to distract him from his own guilt, he found it in the form of a command two hundred feet away.

"Gimme your wallet."

Without even thinking about it, Peter raised his hand, asked to go to the bathroom, and left the classroom extremely quickly. There was a window at the end of the hall, and he ran towards it, skidding to a stop with difficulty just before crashing through the glass. he put his hand on the window lock and hesitated.

What am I doing?

Peter turned his head towards the mugging, as though staring right through two walls and a floor at it. His hand left the window.

I can't just run off like this. I don't skip classes.

The man who was being mugged had just been hit by the much, much larger man. He collapsed to the ground and was kicked.

I can't. I won't.

Peter turned back to the window, staring at the lock.

It's not...my...

"Not my problem." His own words, unaware of the fate they had sealed, echoed in his mind. "I'm really more of a look-out-for-number-one type guy, you know? Nothing personal, just... I don't care."

Peter unlocked the window, opened it, and vaulted out.

thirty seconds ago

"Gimme your wallet."

Held by the shirt collar some two feet off the ground, the man nodded feebly and reached behind him. Digging his wallet out of his back pocket, he handed it to his assailant, who was roughly eight feet tall and half as wide. "Here you go. Put me down, please."

"Well, that was easy," the large man commented, taking the wallet. "Damn. Well, no reason I can't." With that, he set the smaller man down, punched him in the jaw, and kicked him while he was down.

"AH! Hey, what the hell?!" He said, winded. "I gave you my wallet!"

"Yeah," the mugger said, "but this is fun."

"Well, then, I wanna try!" Out of nowhere, a young man flew into the alley from above and kicked the mugger in the head. "BOOT TO THE HEAD!"

The mugger yelled, falling backwards but managing to catch himself. The young man landed in a crouch between him and his victim, the hood of his jacket pulled up and the drawstrings tightened far enough to almost completely obscure his face.

"Hey, you're right," he commented. "That is fun. For me, I mean, probably not so much for you. Whatevs."

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" The mugger took a step forward."No one hurts the Ox!"

The young man shrugged. "Well, Ox, I think I'm Spider-Man. Nice to meet you, he said sarcastically. So why don't you give the guy's wallet back and just—"

"Why don't you go back where you came from!" Ox yelled, taking another step forward.

"Because you've still got his wallet. So why don't you—"

As fast as he could lift his foot, Ox moved to stomp on Spider-Man.

Immediately, Spider-Man rolled, sprung up on one hand, and stuck upside down to the alley's wall, completely avoiding Ox's foot. Springing off the wall, he kicked Ox in the side, easily sending him staggering.

"Alright, maybe not," he said, landing and bouncing on the tips of his toes. "Whatever, pal. That's your call, just remember. I wanted no part in–whoa." He ducked under one of Ox's fists, springing up and punching Ox in the stomach, just hard enough to send him doubling over.

Ox tried to kick Spider-Man in the kneecap, but Spider-Man hopped back a little, then jumped onto Ox's back, crouched and throwing a punch at the space between his shoulder blades. Ox attempted to slam him into the wall while he was there, and Spider-Man moved onto his chest the second he started twisting to sandwich Spider-Man between him and the wall. When Ox's back hit the wall, Spider-Man held onto his shoulder, planted his feet on each side of Ox's navel, and punched him in the jaw hard enough to knock teeth out. Ox went down hard.

Spider-Man picked up the man's wallet off the ground, closing it as it had fallen open. "And here we are," he said, turning and walking towards the victim, who took a few steps back. "Well, here you are. Point is, here's your wallet back, and if I were you I would call—"

"Get away from me!"

Spider-Man took a step back, surprised. "Ah, what?"

The man scrambled to his feet, not taking his eyes off of Spider-Man. "Stay away! Stay away from me, you—you mutant freak!"

"I'm not a mutant," Spider-Man said immediately. "Also, who cares?" He held up the wallet. "I got this back for you, thank you very much."

"Throw it over and then get!" the man snarled. His wallet hit him in the chest, and he managed to catch it. "Now get out of here, mutant! Go! Get out of here, freak!"

"Mutants have been around since before you were born!"

"You're a disgrace to humankind! All of you freaks! Get out of here!"

Spider-Man glared back at the man for a few seconds. "...You're welcome!" he snarled finally, then turned and scaled the wall quickly. Leaping from that building's parapet to the side of the school building once the man ran off in the opposite direction. Crawling back into the open window, he fully opened his hood, took it off, and unzipped his hoodie. Irritably he wiped the dirt off his hands before stalking back into his classroom.

OsCorp, later

Peter opened the car door, climbing in without looking at Aunt May. "Hi."

"How was your day?" May asked, giving him a quick look.

"Not great," Peter replied. "It kinda hurts to do anything. I'm putting all my concentration into distracting myself, but half the time I just want to go home and cry."

"I know," May said. "I feel that way too. But I'm glad you wanted to go to school today. This is something to overcome, and you're doing it. It's going to be all right, Peter."

Peter nodded slightly, focusing on his aunt's heartbeat. "Can we not talk right now, please? I just... don't feel like it."

"Alright."

The car stopped at a red light, and May took the opportunity to reach over and squeeze Peter's hand.

"We have to be here for each other, Peter."

Peter nodded. "I know."

The Parker Residence

Peter sat on the edge of his bed with his legs crossed, unzipped his backpack and pulled out his binder. Extracting his math homework, he took a look through the problems the teacher had given them, then scribbled his name in the top right corner. The homework wasn't that easy, but that was because he had barely been paying attention in class. A quick look through a couple pages of his textbook and he had solved the first two problems already in his head.

As he wrote the answers down without showing any work at all, his grip accidentally broke his pencil in half. The normal sense of ecstatic satisfaction that came whenever he solved a problem was there as he figured out the problems rapid-fire, but it didn't help his mood much. His mind kept drifting away from the work, to the street where he had let the thief go, or to the spot downstairs where his uncle's corpse had been traced in chalk, or the condemned apartment building where he had found that one had directly led to the other.

His fault. All his fault. Could've stopped him. Could've saved him.

Peter gritted his teeth. The guilt was irrational, he told himself. He had had no way of knowing that it would come back to haunt him. His emotions didn't care. It was his fault that Ben Parker was dead, he could not get that out of his mind. He grabbed another pencil out of his backpack, resuming his homework the best he could. His fault. All his fault. Could've stopped him. Could've saved him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and felt another pencil snap.

I can't do this, he thought, throwing his homework aside. I can't. I have to get out.

The costume was exactly as he had left it. He bent down, gathered it up, started pulling it on. The mask was the last part to come. He stared into it for a moment, just pondering. Then he pulled it on, smoothing it down to his neck and lining it up with the collar of the suit. He opened his window, crawled out a little above it, and closed it all but a crack. Then Spider-Man leapt to the nearest streetlight.

I should hate this costume, he thought as he darted from one point to the next. It was being Spider-Man that had killed Uncle Ben. If he had done anything at all differently, he would probably still be alive. But as he moved, muscles pulling against each other and air flying past him, he had to admit it was freeing. Fun, even. For a few minutes, at least, he could forget that it was his fault Ben was dead, and for those few minutes he was at peace.

He was brought down to earth, hard, by the sound of a few voices. This wasn't anything strange; he could feel a scream from a mile and a half away. What he found odd was that he recognized two of the voices, and not from school.

"Seriously, Big Man, thanks. I can't pay you back enough for bailing me out of jail."

"Just keep up the good work, Dennis. Make sure you give us our cut and try not to get caught again. Ox, what the hell happened to your face?"

"I don't wanna talk about it."

Spider-Man's head slowly turned towards the voices of, among others, his uncle's murderer and the mugger from earlier that day. They were keeping their voices down, but still discernible. Spider-Man hopped two streets an looked down.

"Come on. You gotta tell us. You look like you were punched by the Hulk." The man who spoke was short and wore a ghastly purple suit.

"No."

The group of six continued with their conversation, walking in the general direction of a nearby bar, and Spider-Man quietly followed them from above. He had some questions he wanted answered.

later

A roar of laughter rang from the table.

"A kid?!" Carlton Strand said between laughs. "You got beaten up by a kid?!"

"Shut up," Ox said, the holes where his teeth had been clearly visible. "He was a mutant or something."

Carradine finished off his second bottle of beer, wiping his mouth with the cast on his right hand. "Well, that explains everything," he said. "A mutant kid. Right."

"I said shut up!"

"So," said the Big Man, leaning forward. "Out of curiosity, did you manage to talk to Flint while you were there? I asked him to try and recruit some people in there if he could."

"Uh, yeah," Carradine said. "He said that he got a few guys convinced, but not that many. He also said that he thinks Kingpin suspects something."

Fancy Dan sat back down from the table, bringing with him another bottle. "Sorry," he interrupted, "but can we go back to the part where Ox gets his ass handed to him by a kid? Cuz I don't think that's gonna get old."

"I don't see why not."

The entire group looked at the figure in red and black tights that had sat down at their table like he was the oddest thing they had ever seen, except Carradine. His eyes widened, recognizing the man that had brutally beaten him into unconsciousness, and he leaned away from the young man. That young man, though, did nothing more threatening than put his elbows on the table and clasp his hands in front of him.

"Howdy," said Spider-Man. He turned his head to look at fist Carradine, then Ox. "I see you've examined my work."

"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" the other masked man at the table asked.

Spider-Man fixed him with a stare, and the Big Man was slightly creeped out by the black, almost bug-like eyes of the mask, showing no emotions, nothing but a warped reflection of himself. "I AM THE TERROR THAT FLAPS IN THE NIGHT," he said. "But seriously, I'm Spider-Man. And I'm sure you'll find that answer very helpful."

"What do you want?" Carradine asked, obviously terrified.

Spider-Man turned back to him. "Ah, it's Dennis, isn't it? Hi. I was just passing by and wanted to chat."

"You broke my fucking hand!" Dennis said loudly, holding up the cast.

Spider-Man glanced at it. "Oopsie daisies." He leveled his gaze back on Dennis' face. "So these general guys paid your bail, I hear?"

"Yeah," Big Man interrupted. "What's it to you?"

"It's various stuff to me. Mostly it's annoying, because I went to aaallll the trouble to hunt him down, render his gun hand pretty much unusable, give him a few purplish souvenirs, and have him sent to jail, and then he's out again three days later. Liiiittle irritating, you understand."

Strand, who had gone to take a drink while distracted, suddenly had electricity arc from his lip through the liquid on it, and he yelled and grabbed his mouth. "AGH! Son of a—"

"Actually," Spider-Man interrupted, still talking to Dennis although now he was looking at Strand oddly, "Now that I think about it, why'd you rob that house?"

"...Why not?" Carradine said, confused.

"Oh, there's a list of reasons. But why that house in particular?" Peter was suddenly a little paranoid that out of a city of eight million, the one house that Carradine had chosen to rob happened to belong to the random teenager he had run by a week ago.

Carradine was clearly baffled by the question. "...I don't know, I just picked a house!"

"Really?" Really?! It was seriously just an ironic coincidence? Spider-Man leaned back in his chair, one arm on the backrest. "Huh," was all he could say on the subject.

"Why are you so nosy about it?" Big Man interjected, a gun pointed at Spider-Man under the table. Spider-Man turned to stare at him again, then leaned forward, grabbed the gun's barrel under the table with one hand, and crushed it with a little difficulty.

"No reason," he said lightly, suddenly worried that he had given away his identity. "Actually, I was more interested in..." Unnoticed beneath the blank eyepieces, Peter's eyes were wandering around looking for a diverting topic. "What were you guys talking about when I walked in?"

If he was looking for a way to put their minds at ease, he had failed miserably. Each and every one of the people at the table tensed, suddenly glaring at him. "Who wants to know?" Fancy Dan said menacingly.

"I do," Spider-Man said. "Obviously. I heard something about an unfortunately named guy who was recruiting people in jail. What was that?"

"Are you one of Kingpin's?" Big Man said suspiciously.

"Ah, what?" Spider-Man said, confused—and not sounding particularly innocent.

"He is," Strand concluded as the lights went dim. Spider-Man looked around at them, baffled, while Strand set his hands on the tabletop. "I'll take care of him."

"Carl—"

Spider-Man saw Strand raise his hands an point towards him, and out of simple common sense dove to one side. A bolt of lightning arced from Strand to the backrest of Spider-Man's chair.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" screamed Spider-Man, coming out of a roll into a crouch on top of a neighboring table. The people that sat there leaned back, surprised beyond words for a moment. "Electrokinesis?! That's not—even—" And here he jumped straight up, avoiding another lightning bolt and sticking to the ceiling.

Electro paused for a moment. "What the—" He shrugged it off, then continued firing.

"You're that Electro guy, aren't you?!" Spider-Man darted to the side, remaining on the ceiling. "I saw you rob a truck once! Jeez, we have just got to stop meeting up, guys." He dove off the ceiling, starting to weave between panicking people towards the door. "And now, I'll take my leave. It was nice (is what I would say if it weren't an utter lie), but—"

"AAGH!" yelled someone as lightning almost hit them.

His fault. Again. Spider-Man made an immediate u-turn as though swung around by an invisible cable, feeling rather than consciously deciding that he couldn't just leave Electro there if he was endangering people. "Never mind," he said. "My song just came on the radio."

Electro tried to hit him, and Spider-Man dodged, landing on another table. He jumped forward, intending to nail Electro with a punch, only to be shocked when electricity arced between Electro, his fist, and the ground the second he got close. Yelling in pain and surprise, Spider-Man landed, clutching his fist, then looked up as Electro brought his hands up again, and jumped straight backwards.

A lightning bolt hit him square in the chest, another jetting out of his heel and connecting to the ground. Spider-Man crashed behind the bar, falling out of sight.

"Ow," could be weakly heard. "Buddy, this costume cost $265. If you burned it, I swear to God I'm taking it out of your pocket."

"The itsy bitsy spider," Electro said, starting towards where Spider-Man had disappeared, "climbed up the water spout—"

Spider-Man appeared back in view five feet to the left of where he had fallen, grabbing a pint of beer from off the bar and throwing it in Electro's face. "Down came the rain," he finished as he did this, "and washed Electro out!"

The second the liquid touched his skin, all the power Electro had absorbed from his surroundings shot through the liquid and to all available positively charged points—an explosion of power that was obviously quite painful for him. As he wrapped his arms around his chest and shrieked in pain, doubling over, Spider-Man grabbed a nearby beer bottle by the neck and hurled it at his head. It shattered against Strand's cranium, and he dropped to the ground like a stone.

Meanwhile, all the other criminals, with the exception of Carradine and the Big Man, were pointing all available weaponry at Spider-Man. A few seconds later, that club was joined by the bartender, who had retreated to a back room and now was back with a shotgun.

"I called the police," he announced, pointing the shotgun at Spider-Man. "They'll be here any second."

"That's them now," Spider-Man agreed, turning his head towards the sound of sirens. He twisted a little to look outside, and the bartender lifted his shotgun a little more, aiming it at Spider-Man's head.

"DON'T you move," he ordered. "Don't move a muscle, you—you mutant freak. What the hell were you doing here?"

"Talking to them," Spider-Man answered honestly, indicating with his head to the other men with guns.

"Well, this place has a 'no mutants' policy. There's a sign on the door, under the 'no minors' sign."

"Yeah, I saw that," Spider-Man said. "And I was like, 'Your policies can go fuck themselves with a cactus.' Dude, there's nothing wrong with mutants. Besides, I'm not one, but that's another point entirely."

At this point, the police ran in, guns already drawn. One pointed his at Spider-Man, while the other two pointed theirs at the criminals and bartender, both of whom lowered their respective weapons immediately.

"You there," one officer said. "You—what the hell— you in the tights on the bar. Get down and keep your hands where I can see them."

Spider-Man complied nervously.

"Who is that?" The officer who spoke indicated to the unconscious Electro. "What happened to him?"

"Oh, him," Spider-Man said, looking behind him at Electro. "Heh heh, funny story, that—"

"He hit him in the head with a beer bottle," interrupted the fourth member of the criminals with guns, the one who Spider-Man didn't know by name.

Spider-Man shot a glare his direction. "Tattletale."

"Hands in the air," an officer ordered, gun pointed right at the spider on his chest.

"In fairness," Spider-Man said instead of complying, "he tried to kill me before I hit him. Fair's fair."

"Hands in the air," the cop repeated angrily, her trigger finger tightening. "I mean it!"

Spider-Man put his hands up.

"Take off the mask."

"That's funny," Spider-Man said after a fake chuckle. "Not happening."

"I said," the officer repeated, moving her aim up to his head, "take off the mask."

"And I heard you. And I refused." Spider-Man shrugged, putting his hands back down.

"Hands in the air!"

"Where am I gonna hold a weapon?!" Spider-Man snapped, gesturing to his tights.

"HANDS IN THE AIR!"

"You are bad at this, aren't you?"

Throughout all this, Spider-Man had been extremely nervous to have a gun pointed at him, but hadn't actually expected it to go off. So he was taken completely by surprise when he felt the trigger finger tighten a little more and something in the handgun's body suddenly start moving. He started to twist to the side at the exact same instant that the powder in the bullet shell exploded and the bullet broke the sound barrier in the chamber.

The bullet visibly whizzed past his shoulder, missing him by a good six inches. Spider-Man made a mental note to be impressed later that he could dodge bullets, and even more so that he could see them moving (albeit moving too fast to see anything more than a blur). The bullet's sound hit him an instant later, a whip-crack of a sonic boom buried underneath an earsplitting BANG of an explosion that completely overpowered any other vibration in the area and almost physically hurt, but he momentarily ignored it, starting to leap forward.

"Ohlookatthetime!" he said, leaping over the police. "I'mgonnamissmytrain!"

Hitting the ground running, Spider-Man sprinted out of the bar, leaping to the top of a building on the other side of the street and vaulting over the parapet before most of the officers had even turned around. The one that had seen the jump looked up at where he had vanished, completely blown away.

"Should we call backup?" asked one officer.

"Maybe," another replied. He turned back to the people still inside the bar. "Alright, tell up what happened."

meanwhile

Oh my god! I suck! Spider-Man came to an abrupt stop, taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves. The tingly shock of the gunshot had completely faded in the past five seconds, leaving him with nothing but aching eardrums. He licked his dry lips, then pulled on the shirt of his costume, looking for a burn.

Okay. Cool. Nothing. He smoothed his shirt back down, taking another deep breath. His heart rate should have settled a while ago; clearly he was still on edge. Spider-Man pulled his mask halfway up, spat, and pulled it back down.

I could've died, he realized suddenly as he started jogging east. They could've fired me, or shot me, or fired me and then shot me. And I knew that! Why didn't I get out of there?!

He was still pondering that question as he reached home. Well, not that question exactly. He knew why he had stayed; Electro could've killed someone and he couldn't just let that happen. But literally a centisecond before he made that decision he had already been sprinting for the door. But the instant Electro had threatened someone, he had been willing to risk his life to stop him. The question was...

Where did that come from?! he asked himself as he pulled off his mask, closing his bedroom window as he did. He stretched as he turned away from the window. His entire body was sore from being shocked. He sat on his bed, glanced at the time, and got back up, headed for the bathroom.

One shower later, Peter sat down on his bed, now clad in shorts and an old T-shirt. He lay down, hands on his stomach, staring at the ceiling. The fight was still bothering him more than a little, but he pushed it aside in favor of something he considered more interesting.

"Just keep up the good work, Dennis. Make sure you give us our cut and try not to get caught again." "I asked him to try and recruit some people in there if he could." " He thinks Kingpin suspects something."

Kingpin. The name rang a bell, but for the life of him Peter couldn't place it. He got up off his bed and grabbed his laptop. Pulling on his glasses, as he had removed his contacts before his shower, Peter called up Google and looked up the name.

Results were as varied as they were interesting. According to Wikipedia, Kingpin, real name Wilson Fisk, was New York's biggest crime lord. He had established himself in the Genovese crime family sometime in the late 1990's, quickly rising in rank through a combination of brilliant tactics and sheer brute force. He had quickly become the head of the Genovese family following the disappearance of Vincent Gigante in 2004 and, over a series of two years, took over the remaining four families. He had been arrested twice, each for a different crime, and been cleared of all charges both times.

So?

Next on Peter's agenda was the Big Man. Googleing the name brought rather unsatisfactory results, so he instead searched for big man ox fancy dan electro. This time Google could give him something: apparently the Big Man and his hired guns, the Enforcers, had been operating for the last few months, approaching each of New York's independent gangs in turn and attempting to recruit them to a cause. What that cause was remained to be seen, but based on what had been said, he could presume there was some conflict brewing between Fisk and the Big Man. He could see why the Big Man was carefully concealing his identity: whatever this was, it had the potential to get very bloody.

There was that feeling again. Peter lifted his hands off the keyboard slowly and curled them into loose fists. He tried to tell himself not to get involved, that he would only get himself hurt, that it wasn't his problem.

Those words left a horrible taste in his mouth now. Peter narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at the grainy, zoomed on photograph of the Big Man. He didn't want to do what he was thinking about doing. He really, really didn't. But every time he tried to throw out the idea, he found himself on some Queens street, letting a thief run past. Couldn't do it. Not anymore.

If there was a gang war brewing, and if people were going to get caught in the crossfire, he had to help them at least, didn't he?

No, he didn't. Spider-Man did. If nothing else, then for Ben.

Don't get involved, he told himself. Don't stick your neck out. Just save innocents where you can. Do what Uncle Ben would do.

Peter nodded to himself and cracked his knuckles.

A/N: You know, I wanted to make Peter more reluctant than he comes off here to be a superhero in any way. I figured that going through what he did—failing to stop a petty thief leads to his uncle dying—would give him a guilt-driven, nigh irresistible compulsion to go help people who he knows need help, but I also wanted to give him a looooonng way to go before he's "really" Spider-Man. I understand that ordinarily the classic origin is considered plenty to turn Peter Parker into a full-out superhero, but reading through the Lee-Ditko comics makes it obvious that there was actually a lot of character development that happened after the well-known stuff. So I wanted to reflect that. He's not going around actively looking for people to help like in most adaptations, but when he senses someone who needs him, he can't look the other way. He's still pretty reluctant, seeing as he could die, so he's less "superhero" and more "heroic bystander" right now. Over time I plan to develop Spider-Man into a much more active hero.

Also, the first Electro in this adaptation is Carlton Strand. Anyone who's read James Cameron's Spider-Man screenplay should recognize that name. He'll probably die and be replaced by Max Dillon sometime in the future. So there's that.

Please leave a review. Excelsior!