Entanglement:

New York, Queens, June 17th, 2015:

Expletives flew out of Peter's mouth as he struggled to find his phone with his stained goggles. He lifted his bed over his head with one hand and found it lying in a pool of grey liquid. Peter gently placed his bed back down and picked up his phone and was surprised by how difficult it was to wash away the residue from his screen.

Peter had spent the last few days turning his room into a makeshift chemistry lab using his father's old equipment. He installed liebig tubes, magnetic stirrers, enough glass beakers and flasks to make Walter White envious, plus an entire shelfs worth of chemical compounds, safely contained in plastic bottles.

Normal parents and guardians would be concerned when their teenage ward was turning their room into what looked like a meth lab. But Aunt May was ecstatic when Peter started his experiments. This was the first time he was doing something he enjoyed since Uncle Ben had died. As long as he did not set the house on fire, she was fine with him tinkering around.

'Note to self, don't increase the pressure of the canisters unless I want to make a goop bomb,' Peter said as he used nail polish remover to clean his phone. After a few minutes of vigorous scrubbing his screen looked like a black mirror - if you ignored the cracks.

Peter filled another canister - which were just empty plastic film canisters that his uncle used for an old fashioned camera - with a modified polymer solution his father developed and placed it within an oversized, home made, electrical pump. He pressed a button that was connected to the pump with a long, thin wire to test whether the trigger mechanism worked and was satisfied when he saw a small needle nearly pierce the tip of the canister the moment he placed the slightest bit of pressure on the button.

After cleaning his goggles he put on his lab coat and gloves and placed his phone on his table, making sure that the camera was facing his little set up.

'Alright,' Peter said as he recorded his primitive "web-shooters" with his phone. 'Test number 1 of webbing solution number 8, wait I meant 9. At uh… whatever the pressure that canister's at. Or is it a cartridge? It's way too small to be a canister. Whatever. 3, 2, 1 go!'

An all too familiar buzzing entered Peter's head and the cartridge exploded the moment Peter pressed the button. Peter felt his heart skip a beat as his training kicked in and he backflipped onto the ceiling to avoid the silky-white strands of polymer that spread across his room. Peter took off his goggles and let out a cackling laugh.

'It worked! I can't believe it actually worked,' he said ecstatically.

Peter let go of the ceiling and landed on and grabbed onto a few of the strands to break his fall. The webs sunk slightly to accommodate Peter's weight but they did not weaken or snap. Instead, Peter could feel that they got more tense the more pressure he put on them.

'I really hope I didn't screw up my notes for that sample cus this stuff is perfect. I need to make more of it. Test it's tensile strength somehow and figure out how to downscale the release mechanism. Oh and try not to make it blow up,' Peter said to his phone while he jumped up and down on his webs like he was a kid on a bouncy castle.

Peter almost fell off when he heard a loud knock on his door.

'Peter? What's going on?' Aunt May asked as she twisted the door knob.

'Wait. There's a… radiation leak. Don't open the door,' Peter mumbled out as he leapt towards the door and slammed it back shut before Aunt May could get in.

'Unless you're building a nuke in there I doubt that. Come out of your room right now,' Aunt May demanded.

Peter winced and he partially opened his door to make sure Aunt May couldn't see the webs and slid out of the small gap.

Aunt May blushed when she saw strands of white liquid on Peter's hands and face, which confused Peter.

When Peter figured out what she thought he was doing, he gave her an awkward smile. 'I know this looks kind of bad. Or wrong. Or another synonym for those words but you really don't want to go in there. Trust me.'

'Ok,' Aunt May said sceptically. 'Just be quieter next time you do, whatever it is you just did.'

She hurried away and Peter got back into his room and slammed the door behind him.

'That could have been way worse,' he said, unable to believe what had just happened. He looked at the webs that covered his room and rubbed his forehead. 'How do I clean this up?'

New York, Hell's Kitchen, June 17th, 2015:

'You're unusually quiet,' Matt said taking a sip of coffee while Foggy was reading through a mound of paperwork.

'And you're uncharacteristically casual about this,' Foggy said crumpling up a piece of paper and throwing it into a pile of crumpled up paper balls in the corner of their small office. 'This Wilson Fisk guy tells a former employee of his to consult us on a liability case against Oscorp freaking Industries and you're drinking coffee!'

Matt stretched his arm out to offer Foggy his cup, who slowly pushed it back towards Matt.

'We'll need to make sure this never goes to trial. Assuming Miss Clayton still has the information she "acquired" from Oscorp about those illegal experiments,' Matt said almost robotically.

'We haven't even decided if we'll take the case yet,' Foggy said. 'Besides, wouldn't she have mentioned that she still had the files she stole - '

'Acquired,' Matt interrupted.

'Fine, acquired. If we can't prove she wasn't lying about Oscorp experimenting on those kids then the best we can hope for is a really expensive settlement. And why is this Fisk guy making a couple of newbie attorneys take this case? Something feels fishy,' Foggy said.

Matt tilted his head in the direction of the door. He could hear someone gently place something in front of their office. He said that he needed some air and tapped his cane around the floor as he walked towards the office door and opened it. He concentrated on the heartbeat of the man who placed the item down and Matt could not recognise it.

After determining that the object was a harmless cardboard box with his radar sense, Matt "accidently" stepped on it before picking it up and could hear something small rattle inside it.

'Hey Fog, was this here when we came in?' Matt asked innocently.

Foggy shook his head and took the box from Matt. He used a pair of scissors to cut off the tape that held the box together and revealed that it was sheltering a USB stick. Foggy plugged it into his laptop that was so old that it sounded like it was from the stone age and waited five agonising minutes before he could finally access the files that were saved on it.

Matt could hear Foggy's heart rate rise and his stomach churn the moment he clicked on one of the files.

'Matt,' he said as if he could not believe what he was seeing. 'I think we've won the case.'

New York, Queens, June 18th, 2015:

Daredevil stood stoically with his arms crossed as Peter kept practicing a basic gymnastics drill. It consisted of him somersaulting off of a small ledge and rolling on the ground to cushion his landing. It was pretty basic and anyone with a moderate level of fitness could do it but as Daredevil's sensei said plenty of times.

'Never forget your fundamentals. Fighting without knowing the basics is like shoving a gourmet dinner up your rectum, you'll be left with a bloody mess.'

Daredevil shuddered thinking about what that would smell like. He wasn't exactly sure how his mentor made up those metaphors but needless to say they had the intended effect whenever he complained about how boring or hard training was.

That and he beat me up with a stick if I slacked off, Daredevil thought laconically.

He heard Peter repeat the exercise a few more times and threw an egg at him at a breakneck speed. Peter saw it in the corner of his eye and stood on one hand after landing and used his foot to catch the egg, using his adhesive toe to grab a hold of it.

'Situational awareness, good reaction time, nice improvisation with the hand stand and you didn't break the egg. Not bad,' Daredevil said. 'Now stay like that for an hour.'

Peter almost dropped the egg when he heard that. 'An hour? I can barely hold this for a few minutes.'

Daredevil felt the vibrations from Peter's trembling arm through the ground.

'My mentor used to make me do the same thing while balancing a bowl of hot water on my head and feet for three hours when I was eight. You've got powers, this'll be a piece of cake,' Daredevil said casually as he plucked the egg from Peter's toe.

'What the hell? Pretty sure that's child endangerment,' Peter said.

'More like child abuse. He was a… complicated man. Trust me Peter. I'm going easy on you,' Daredevil said.

Daredevil heard his communicator beeping and he put his finger to his ear. 'Lux. You look at those files I sent you?'

'Yeah. You were right. They were all copied directly off of one of Oscorps internal servers. So everything on here is legit. But that doesn't matter. Apparently a giant monkey is fighting a fire breathing dragon in Hong Kong. The League's calling in all active members,' Lux said.

Daredevil sighed, 'I'll have to be on civilian duty. Right, let's hope the local law enforcement actually listen to what I tell them to do. Daredevil out.' He turned to face Peter, 'I'm needed in Hong Kong. Keep up the handstand for an hour. Use both hands if you find the one handed one tough. If I'm not back by then go home and don't lie to me. I'll know.'

'How're you gonna go to Hong Kong? Do you have like a private plane?' Peter asked.

'Not exactly. That info is a bit above your pay grade,' Daredevil said. 'Remember. Handstand, one hour.'

Peter watched Daredevil perform a quadruple somersault off of the roof and immediately used his other hand to stabilize him.

He did this when he was eight? Jesus, that explains a lot, Peter thought. What kind of a monster makes a kid do this?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone shouting in the distance. Peter stood back on his feet and saw that someone dressed in black was dangling someone off of another building.

'I'm sorry,' the man said, feeling the rush of blood through his head. 'I'll pay up. I swear.'

'Hey. I really don't want to do it but you know the rules,' Black Spider said before letting go of the man.

The man screamed for about two seconds before a skinny teenager dressed in a cheap luchador mask and red and blue hoodie caught him while standing on the side of the building.

'Pretty sure base-jumping's illegal in New York,' Peter said to the man who was cradled in Peter's arms. Peter kicked down a window and placed the man inside before cautiously crawling towards the man dressed in the skintight, purple spandex suit with a spider emblem on his black, yellow lensed mask.

'Of all the villains to rip off you chose me?' Black Spider asked rhetorically as he stood on the side of the building using his vacuum powered boots. 'You really need a better look.'

Peter paused and squinted at the man through his goggles. 'Who are you again? Spider-Guy? Tarantula? Spider-Man? Hmm, catchy.'

'Listen kid. I'd love to help give you a makeover but I have to kill that guy so go make a web or something,' Black Spider said. Gesturing at the teenager to move away.

'The whole web thing is a work in progress right now. So rain check on the makeover. But I'll settle for a little fisticuffs,' Peter said, raising his fists.

Black Spider aimed his palm at Peter and shot a strand of orange goop out of it. He walked down the building almost casually as Peter scratched away at the substance that was stuck to his face. Peter pulled enough off him to see Black Spider had just walked past him and he grabbed the assassin by the shoulder.

'Really?' Black Spider asked. He tried to brush Peter's hand aside but couldn't. Peter kept a firm grip on Black Spider as the assassin used both his arms to try and push Peter away from him. 'Seriously? You actually have powers?'

'And you don't? Wait. So you're using some sort of tech to stick to walls right?' Peter asked.

Black Spider nodded. 'Yeah, so?'

'In that case.' Peter lifted the assassin up and tore away his gloves and boots. Black Spider screamed and Peter pulled him in close. 'Could you stop moving around so much. I'm really bad at this climbing thing and if I dropped you I would get into so much trouble.'

Black Spider responded by pulling out a knife. Peter yelped and threw him aside like old laundry. The assassin flew through the air and he stretched his arm out and grabbed a hold of a drainage pipe and climbed his way up to the top of a neighbouring building.

Peter crawled along the side of his building and jumped and rolled to reach where Black Spider was who was surprised by how fast the teenager was.

'Yes! Did you see that? I rolled and everything. Daredevil should have seen that.'

'You're Daredevil's sidekick?' Black Spider asked incredulously. 'Should have taken you seriously from the start then,' he said, twirling his knife around.

Peter stepped back and raised his hands, 'We haven't really done any combat training yet so could you not do the whole knife thing?'

Black Spider threw a handful of shurikens at Peter who felt the buzzing sensation in his head go into overdrive. He leaned back as if he were doing the conga to dodge the projectiles and he jumped over Black Spider's head.

'I'm really not his sidekick. I'm more like a stray cat you find on the street and feed once a week. You don't have to kill me,' Peter said as he cartwheeled to the side to avoid Black Spider lunging at him with a knife.

'Shut. Up,' Black Spider said between deep breaths.

'Sorry. I talk a lot when knife wielding maniacs try and stab me,' Peter blurted out.

The fight went on for several minutes, with Peter jumping around and Black Spider chasing him in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Neither combatant could relax for even a second. Peter didn't let up since he knew a single mistake would result in him getting stabbed but he didn't fight back since he had no idea how hard he could hit Black Spider without killing him.

Black Spider kept the pressure on Peter because he knew without his climbing gear and orange webbing he couldn't escape Peter who was much faster than he was. Whenever he got close to cutting Peter, he would simply push Black Spider backwards with enough force to knock the wind out of him. The assassin approached cautiously when he was in range so that he wouldn't be victim to Peter's super-strength.

'Look,' Peter said through a dry mouth that was gasping for air. 'Let's be real here. Daredevil's gonna show up soon and this isn't working out for either of us. Drop the knife and take a breather before he breaks your legs or something.'

Black Spider's arms were dangling at his sides and felt like lead weights. He tried to raise his knife hand but he was so tired. And his grip was so weak he could barely hold onto the handle.

'You should listen to him,' a deep voice said behind him. Black Spider spun around and swiped his knife in an arc towards the direction of the voice.

Daredevil effortlessly grabbed his wrist and squeezed to make him drop the knife. He grabbed Black Spider by the neck and slammed his forehead into his chin, knocking the assassin out cold.

'I thought… I thought you were in Hong… Kong,' Peter said with ragged breath.

'That was two hours ago. Superman flew the dragon over the ocean and Aquaman summoned a giant kraken that took care of it and Green Lantern got rid of the monkey by forming a bubble around it's head, cutting off its oxygen supply. Can't believe I didn't tell him to do that earlier. Were you fighting for that long?' Daredevil asked while tying up Black Spider.

Peter could only respond with incoherent wheezing.

Daredevil pat Peter on the back. 'Breath slowly. You did a good job. Just take it easy,' he said.

Peter pointed to the building where Black Spider was dangling his victim. Daredevil didn't even look in that direction and said. 'Oh, he's fine. A little shook up but he'll live.'

'That's good. By… the way, I think… I figured out my… Superhero name,' Peter said after taking some time to let his breath settle down.

Daredevil smirked. This kid loves his tangents.

'Alright then. Let's hear it.'

And that's that. It'll be a few more chapters before Peter becomes a hero in his own right but we need him to learn his "fundamentals first." I'll try and make the next few chapters a bit longer.

Thanks for reading and take care. And get vaccinated.