A/N - I've written a couple of stories of how Peter Parker turned to crime rather than become a superhero. Here is the start of a collection of short stories. Please, let me know what you think.
Spider-Man: Criminal.
With Great Power...
Peter was sitting numbly on the small chair next to his desk, just staring idly at the costume he'd made for his showbiz career - when he had first started, he had just gone with a simple red jumper, jeans and he'd worn a bandana, but he was just thankful his first paycheque had allowed him to not only see more money than he normally saw in a year be given to him on a plate; some of the money had been transferred from his own bank account into that belonging to his aunt and uncle.
Some of the money he had kept and he had used it to make a new costume for himself which was more stylish than the costume he had earlier gone with since he had needed to look the part. One of his favourite details of the mask was the one-way lenses which allowed Peter to look out but nobody could look in, similar to how the eyes of a spider in nature looked. He had thought the costume would open doors for him, and it had. He had gone into wrestling, and thanks to his spider powers it had been child's play to beat 5 wrestlers and he had won a lot of money.
No, he would not think about that night.
Peter tried his best to push the horrible and recent memories out of his mind, but it was virtually impossible. He wished he could look away from the Spider-Man costume and focus on other things. But right now, all he could see in the white lenses of his mask was the memory of how he had found Uncle Ben surrounded by members of the public, and the police after he had been shot by some mugger who'd stolen his car.
Peter felt sick knowing it was due to his own inaction that had led to his uncle being shot in the first place. He'd had the means, the strength and reflexes to deal with the crook who'd run out of the manager's office at the wrestling arena, and yet he hadn't done anything since he'd believed it wasn't his responsibility.
And Uncle Ben had paid the price; Peter did not think that he could live with that kind of guilt again. The guilt he was feeling right now felt like a case of gangrene festering inside of him.
But truthfully what could he do about it?
When he had gotten the spider powers he had been faced with this particular issue anyway? Okay, at the time Peter had been trying to get his powers under control; he had been sticking to dinner trays, walls, and he'd been shooting webbing out of his wrists before he had made wrist bracelets which aimed the strands in a more controllable manner. Other things like his spider-sense and his strength were easy enough to control, really, but he had needed a bit of time to explore his powers. As he had gone along, Peter had gained the experience he had needed in controlling his powers until he had learnt the tiny globs of webbing which allowed him to adhere to the walls in the first place seeped through his skin and then retracted when he pulled his hands and feet away from a wall, was actually happening because he knew he was pressing himself against a surface like a wall.
Once Peter had realised that and what he was doing, he started learning not to force the web globules to the surfaces he was touching so they wouldn't stick to him like glue. It was a long process, but once he had begun practicing he had gotten better at subconsciously telling his body what he wanted to stick to.
The good thing about the self-imposed training was it distracted him; while he was exploring what the spider bite had done to his DNA - he still didn't understand why the spider bite had spliced a large chunk of its genome into his system, or even what Oscorp was doing at the time, but he guessed the spider was a part in some genetic mutagen experiments aimed at splicing animal DNA into human DNA. That would explain a lot, but what the long term goal was for, Peter honestly didn't know. The only people who would know were at Oscorp, and Peter had no desire to ask them for anything.
But the distraction had worn off, and suddenly Peter was left with a clear dilemma.
What was he going to do with his powers?
He hadn't even considered going into the hero business; he had grown up reading comics of Batman, Captain America's adventures against the Red Skull and the Nazis and the Japanese in the Second World War, but this was different, this was real life, and Peter wanted to live in real life, not as some 3D comic book in the real world.
It had seriously never occurred to him because Peter had found an ad in the paper for a new act. The ad had promised the most successful act would garner a whopping prize in cash, and it also promised to create a potential series where the act could go through. The moment he had seen it he had snapped it up because he had been aware the bills had been mounting up and up, and the possibilities of a prize in cash for showcasing his spider-powers would likely see the end of his family's money problems.
As his uncle had always liked to say, with great power, comes great responsibility.
Wasn't his family who had raised him a great responsibility?
Didn't that mean he shouldn't take the responsibility for his family's financial future into his hands?
At the time Peter had thought so, and as he looked at the matter now, he knew he still felt that way. Uncle Ben had been an optimist by nature, but he was a practical man, and he had been trying to make ends meet for some time. It was not easy, and Peter had learnt a long time ago to see the signs of his concerns as the money troubles had mounted up and up.
Peter had seen the ad looking for a new act.
He had his spider powers.
How could it not be an act? All he had needed to do was enter, making sure not to reveal his face since he knew while the public might be amazed and fascinated by his powers and what he could do, there was the chance he and his family would find themselves lynched. Peter had lost count of the number of times a newly discovered mutant was either attacked and killed by people who were afraid of them and sometimes their own family would betray them and join in; while he knew Aunt May and Uncle Ben wouldn't do that, Peter didn't want to take such a stupid risk; after how he had suddenly managed to beat Flash in the middle of school, the last thing he wanted was for his classmates to suddenly turn on him due to their stupid fears.
But his mind went back to Uncle Ben's favourite expression and he wondered what his uncle would have said if he knew of his newfound powers. It didn't take long for Peter to make a detailed guess. Uncle Ben had been an avid superhero lover; he had been following the exploits of heroes like the Fantastic Four from the moment Reed Richards and his crew first fought Doctor Doom, so it didn't take much for him to imagine Ben would have wanted him to join that pantheon.
There was another possibility; Peter knew with his powers, he could become some kind of spider-powered burglar; with his ability to cling to walls, he would have an easy way of getting in and out of a place without trouble, and he guessed his strength was more than enough to open up safes or creep into houses. Peter tried to dismiss the thought quickly; his aunt had suffered more than enough, and so if she discovered he was a burglar out of the blue, then it would break her heart.
She doesn't need to know if you become a thief, any more than she would know if you become a hero, now would she? A traitorous part of his mind thought to himself, and he knew there was a good point there. But he couldn't think of it right now; there were bills that needed to be paid, and he needed to get it down quickly.
In the end, he made his decision.
He decided to drop his showbiz career when the temptation to see if he could be a hero or a thief sprang into his mind. The problem was, from where he was standing, the different alternatives were both appealing to him.
He didn't know why, but he decided to experiment and see it and see how it went.
Peter slipped on his costume, double-checking his wrist bands to make sure the pathways to his spinnerets were clear before he slipped on his gloves. Switching off his lamp, Peter finally put on his mask and quietly slipped outside, pressing his hands and feet out on the walls of his house before he leapt across to the wall of the opposite house before he used his leaping ability to get around the streets. Peter quickly discovered he had a strong dislike for leaping around compared to web-slinging; he might have gotten a thrill for leaping over the wide gaps between the buildings and houses in Queens on the day after he discovered his powers, but after slinging through New York, well leaping was for wimps.
Suddenly he heard the sound of screaming. Alerted to the sounds, Peter leapt from one rooftop to the next before he was right on top of the scene. Looking down at it from his vantage spot, he saw a group of 3 guys surrounding a couple, prowling around them like wolves stalking a deer. The man was trying valiantly to defend himself and his girlfriend/wife, but Peter knew it was hopeless just by looking down at it from the rooftop he was on. The muggers were laughing and jeering at his efforts. One of the muggers got lucky and managed to rip away the purse from the screaming woman, who tried to pull it back while her husband/boyfriend was too busy fighting off the others in the gang.
One of them became tired of the fight and slashed him across the face with his knife, the glint of metal was reflected off of the knife blade. Peter barely stopped to think about what he did - he had learnt that his spider-sense was linked to his reflexes and agility, so he decided to just let it do the fighting for him.
Spider-Man hadn't even landed on the ground before he exploded into action, firing twin web lines at the backs of the muggers closest to him and he yanked them off of their feet, making them cry out in surprise before he landed. The muggers barely had time to react when Spider-Man leapt at them, and he punched one of them in the face - he wondered if he had fractured the mugger's skull, but the thought was so fleeting it barely registered.
The other muggers, recovered from his earlier attack took out their knives, but to Spider-Man they could've been torches or a flower. Peter grinned under his mask as he leapt at them, and he kicked the two men in the faces, sending them both flying backwards. Spider-Man didn't expect either of them to recover from their blows; he had put a lot of force into the kicks, so they should be down until the cops came by.
Landing on the ground, Spider-Man found the purse of the woman after a few minutes. The muggers had dropped it as he'd attacked them, and he picked it up and took it over to the couple. The woman had used the time to get to the man and was hugging him to his chest, and as he walked closer Peter could see the nasty slash across his face, but the lighting and the amount of blood coming from the injury made it hard for him to see if it was serious or not; the guy seemed dazed, but it was hard to be sure if it was blood loss or just shock.
Spider-Man held out the purse. "Your purse," he said.
The woman looked at the purse and up at Spider-Man with glazed eyes. Suddenly she yelled out as she snatched the purse right out of Peter's hands, "Stay away from us!"
"Now, hold on-!" Spider-Man protested weakly.
"No, you're that Spider-Man guy they've been writing about in the newspapers!" The woman screamed.
"What newspapers?" Spider-Man whispered. He had been dealing with the death of Uncle Ben he hadn't paid any attention to the newspapers; had someone been writing about him?
"The Daily Bugle. They've said you're nothing more than a criminal ripping off the public."
Spider-Man said nothing else, he lifted up his hand and he shot into the sky after he'd fired off a web line. He needed to get back to the house or find an old newspaper somewhere. The house was likely the better choice.
When he got back to his bedroom Spider-Man quickly ripped off his mask and immediately checked his computer. Once it had been booted up, he checked the Daily Bugle website. To his surprise, there was a large photograph of himself in his costume on the stage. The headline read: "SPIDER-MAN MASKED CON-ARTIST!"
Peter skimmed through the article. He didn't find anything he wasn't expecting - with the headline like that, the article was fairly predictable. It just basically said he was a con artist playing with magnets and suction cups to cling to walls while he was an acrobat, which was how he had proven so agile in the first place, and he had put on a costume to dress it up.
What surprised Peter the most was how Jameson had actually been in the audience himself, and he had to make notes the whole time of the Spider-Man act. One paragraph drew Peter's attention the most, by the end of it he could well see for himself why the woman had panicked when he'd appeared.
"I am in the business of digging up the truth and exposing it in black and white, and one of the things that draw my attention the most are those who wear masks. People like that are generally criminals who want to steal from others. What have they got to hide? Are they professional criminals who think a piece of cloth or spandex covering their faces will protect them for long? Or are they freaky mutations trying to pose as normal ordinary human beings? Spider-Man is a criminal, make no mistake. He is there, dressing up as a masked performer who has put on a smoke and mirror's trick, but his tricks are easy enough to pull off, but he is stealing money from the audience. I call for his arrest…."
Peter closed the tab, unwilling to read anything else. He stood up and he began pacing up and down thoughtfully rubbing his chin. There was no way he could return to the stage, not after this. The article was 3 days old, it had been read by millions of people throughout the city. Nobody in the show business was going to touch him now. If he showed up he'd be lucky to get out.
The superhero possibility had also died a swift death for him thanks to the way that woman had reacted, although Peter would later realise when he looked back on this there were still possibilities he could use his powers to help people.
There was only one option for him now, and Peter closed his eyes in dread at the thought of going that far. He would have to become a criminal, but as he looked at the blank screen Peter realised to his upset it looked like Spider-Man would have to change completely.