Eugene 'Flash' Thompson was anything but happy at the moment; about 2 weeks ago he was happy: he was an untouchable football hero and he and his friends made sure that the nerds and losers knew their place. He was from a wealthy family and his dad was a known businessman with political aspirations and support from his friends.

Then it all went wrong.

His dad had been arrested and unmasked as the Crime Master at Alchemax. His perfect life had come crashing down; there were people making fun of him behind his back and now there were police and FBI officials regularly check out their expensive house for more evidence against him.

Not only that but the story had hit the news at the worst possible time for business: Union Allied had made a promo talking about their CEO's intention to run for senate and they were giving him their full support. It was talking about the policies and issues he would be fighting for and it ended with:

"Harrison Thompson; a man you can trust!"

It was a great promo but the problem was it debuted during the commercial break of the biggest news program in New York; the last one before the breaking news of what happened in Alchemax. The Union Allied board of directors and other high ranking officials were watching on a big screen TV and were popping out the champagne.

They were about to pour when the live news coverage showed the police officers unmasking the Crime Master as Harrison Thompson. The bottle was pretty much dropped and broken on the floor.

The company's stock had gone down and they had lost possible deals that were a sure fire and only waited to be officially signed. They had to do damage control by breaking all ties with Harrison. This also affected the other businesses that he had a hand in: due to the incident, that Harrison was pretty much the majority owner of Alchemax and the pending story of Treece's assault plus the investigation into their illegal experiments it was safe to assume Alchemax was dead.

Flash didn't blame his dad at all; all he was doing was keeping crime in the city under control. No he only blamed those who were foolish enough to have him arrested; he especially blamed the stupid masked menace Spider-Man.

He never liked Superheroes; thought they were childish and stupid. He would make fun of his ex Mary Jane Watson for her role in that stupid Masked Marvels TV show. He would make fun of anyone who liked the stupid show plus the Avengers. Just a bunch of grown up show ups that were too old for Halloween with their freaky powers. They stole the spotlight and fame that belonged to real heroes like him and his dad.

Late one Friday afternoon he was at small private gym where he was doing his best work up with barbells and punching a bag with a picture of that stupid Spider-Man. It was so unfair; his father he was told would likely spend the rest of his life in prison while the masked menace was being hailed as a hero!

He had such hated for the Spider, such venomous hatred...

He didn't notice a dark purple ooze come out from a door slithering away looking for someone with enough negative emotions to be a suitable vessel. It had finally found it...


At that same time Liz had finally got her parents to allow her to go out for a while but she was to be back by a certain time. She had found a place to hide in a seldom used park. She had a yellow fireproof jumpsuit that she got as a souvenir form when Mary Jane took her to the stunt department of her TV show.

She had hid it with a long coat she had from her closet; after making sure no one was around she then took the coat off and put on a pair of orange goggles she had found lying around.

She then clicked her fingers and the flames appeared, concentrating she found she could have fire appear in her hands before switching it off. She however found herself accidentally managing to make herself float in the air so she could practice on controlling it.

If she did have powers now she thought she might as well learn how to control them. At the moment she was not sure if she even wanted to be a Superhero at all. Still she had played with names and the best one she could think of was Firestar.


Early that night Peter was out as Spider-Man looking for thugs to beat out; with the Crime Master being ousted the gangs were spreading around trying to divide the territories of the city. He was sure it would die down.

Still he was happy that Harrison Thompson was behind bars and Macendale was actually heading to the supermax prison made for superpowered criminals called the Raft. It was built and maintained by SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division) which was a UN sponsored counter terrorist force that also created the Avengers. Peter heard rumours online about how scary and shadowy the organisation was as it dealt with the unusual around the world.

He was hoping he wouldn't be a target for them but then against they created the Avengers so they must be pro Hero at least. Plus he was sure they would have already come after him if they wanted to since their base was the Triskellion. It was an island tower just on the water of Upper Bay, Manhattan.

He interrupted a meeting between two gangs and made short work of them. He then got the attention of the police and joked as he then web slinged off "this ends this scene of this low rent remake of Warriors."

He got to his apartment and climbed through the window to his bedroom and quickly went to bed after changing out of and hiding his suit. Aunt May went in and noticed Peter who had just his eyes.

She then went and kissed his cheek before going out. Peter was feeling guilty about keeping this a secret from Aunt May but knew she would have a hectic reaction knowing what he was doing as Spider-Man. She already had been through so much as of late especially with the headache problems she had been dealing with.