The sun of May shone brightly in the sky. A spring wind blew over the city, and the previously gray and dreary nature glowed with a jade color as bright as a gemstone.
Peter looked down on New York from the top of a building in his neighborhood, wearing his Spider-Man costume, sitting on the edge of the roof and letting his feet dangle in the air. It was an ordinary, mundane Saturday, one of those days that made you want to lie down on the grass in Central Park and fall asleep in the breeze, purging yourself of all thoughts. This month was the quietest for the young man: in addition to the arrival of the good weather, which gave him more and more free time to devote to his role as a superhero, no danger on the level of the Vulture or the Avengers' enemies threatened the peace of the megalopolis. Only a few low-level criminals were causing a disturbance, but nothing the spider-boy couldn't handle. Whether they were alone or in groups, Peter always managed to stop them with his smarts and cunning.
That being said, although he had become a much stronger and more experienced hero through the time loop, the teenager remained extremely cautious... His patrols may have been similar, with mostly the same motives and with weapons whose attack patterns he now knew, but he was never completely safe from a stray bullet in the heart or a stab in the stomach at the slightest error of inattention. All it took was for one enemy to be a little smarter than the others for a seemingly normal and controlled intervention to turn into chaos in a matter of seconds. The first sign of slackening on his part could mean his death at any moment. Thus, Peter was constantly on guard, whether under the mask of his superheroic alter-ego or in his daily life; no matter how intense his spider-sense, the young man took the warning systematically seriously, and made sure that neither his bodily gestures nor his words - virtually absent when he was Spider-Man - betrayed his two identities. He would rather be overly suspicious than suffer a low blow with catastrophic consequences because of misplaced trust.
After several minutes of silent reflection, the guardian of New York pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket to check the time: 10 AM. He still had the whole day ahead of him to help and protect the population. His only restriction was to get home before nightfall so as not to worry his aunt. The spider-boy then stood up, drew his web-shooter forward, shot a web to the top of a nearby building, and then let gravity carry him through the air with speed and agility.
The morning was without much artifice for Peter. Apart from street fights created by some delinquents he had already come across from time to time during his loops and a few shoplifting incidents, no major crimes occurred in Queens. The young man stayed more often motionless on high ground watching what was going on below than actually intervening. Given his reputation as a masked ghost and powerful vigilante among the citizens, the bad guys now thought twice about committing crimes. No one was able to hurt him or even slow him down, as he always managed to foil the most elaborate plans or the most unlikely traps... So it was no surprise that evil individuals now laid low at the mention of Spider-Man's name. Spider-Man didn't mind; the drop in crime meant that the number of tragedies fell with him, offering proof that his actions, however small at first glance, were not entirely in vain.
Since there was no suspicious moves in his neighborhood, Peter decided to explore the other boroughs of the megalopolis to expand his patrol. The Bronx remained just as peaceful as Queens, and even the crowded streets of Manhattan showed no signs of trouble, except for the endless traffic jams on the roads. However, as he hovered around Brooklyn, the teenager suddenly felt his spider-sense activate near a remote housing area. He immediately landed on the roof of a building to observe the surroundings. Several meters below, the superhero noticed three men dressed in dark clothing, heading into a disused building slated for demolition. One of them stopped and then looked back, as if to ensure the full discretion of his squad, before joining his peers in the darkness of the dilapidated foundations. From their gestures and his heightened sixth sense, it was obvious to Peter that these individuals were up to no good.
The young man swung himself up to the abandoned building and clung to the wall in front of him with his sticky hands. He then climbed up the brick wall before stopping at a gaping opening, allowing him to discreetly enter the rubble without going through the entrance. He was careful to avoid all the debris and plaster residue on the ground, then used his webs again to reach the highest point he could find. The teenager saw the three men he'd flushed out of his location, as well as the presence of a fourth person: this one appeared older than them, as evidenced by the white hair on the back of his head and the dark circles on his face, bearing the stature of the group's leader. Spider-Man moved as close as possible to the edge of the railing to hear what the stranger was saying.
"So? Did you find the explosive materials?" The chief asked.
"Yes." One of the bandits replied. "We had to loot some laboratories to get them, but we have what we need to improve our bombs."
"Good." The older man smiled with satisfaction. "With this, we can finally get rid of that troublemaker Spider-Man. That punk keeps thwarting every criminal he comes across, some of whom are our black market partners... We need to cut him off as soon as possible."
Ornament mobsters who want to take my life? What originality. The young man sarcastically thought.
"However, even with sophisticated bombs, it will be difficult to take him by surprise." One of the criminals continued.
"It's true. It's infuriating to admit, but this guy in spandex is smart. That's why we have to make sure we lure him into one of these dilapidated buildings that we've filled with mines beforehand. He'll arrive with a bang to stop us, but the moment we escape through the openings, the bombs will take care of destroying the building and taking it with him in his fall. He may appear invincible, but he's still human... Just like the Avengers. All it takes is one unfortunate accident for their greatness to crumble and for blood to run down their faces."
I won't let you carry out your plan. The spider-boy clenched his fists at these words.
Peter unhooked one of the smoke bombs from his belt, activated the mechanism and let the bomb drop to the level of the group of smugglers. After falling several feet, the weapon exploded in mid-air and released a phenomenal amount of red smoke, which instantly blinded the four men. The spider-boy then jumped over the railing, drawing his battle staff in mid-air, then took advantage of the invisibility provided by the smoke to knock out his opponents one after the other with his weapon.
Just as he had incapacitated the third minion, his spider sense suddenly warned him of impending danger. Peter quickly turned his head in the direction of the source of the threat... And that's when he saw the shadow of a grenade looming through the crimson curtain, aimed straight at him. The criminal leader came to his senses faster than expected and kept an explosive on him in case of an unexpected attack. The lack of a pin told him that it was about to explode... The teenager's body froze from the shock, feeling his heart skip a beat and his irises heat up. However, despite the sight of the weapon just inches away from him, clearly visible at eye level, the spider superhero noticed something... Strange. The bomb seemed to have been thrown at full force, yet it showed no sign of accelerating. It even seemed to move extremely slowly, as if the laws of physics had no hold on it... The surrounding smoke experienced the same phenomenon, dissolving and disappearing almost imperceptibly.
These small details brought him out of his frozen state. The grenade would go off at any moment. He had only a few seconds to react. Peter aimed his web-shooter at the bomb, then pulled one of his special webs that allowed him to trap this type of weapon inside a cocoon to reduce the firepower of the blast as much as possible. The moment the weapon was surrounded by a thick layer of wire, the flow of time shifted and a detonation sound echoed through the walls; the explosion lost its intensity, but the energy it released evaporated the colored clouds with a gust of wind and blew the superhero and the criminal leader backwards two meters, leaving behind nothing but pieces of charred cloth. The spider boy took the chance created by the confusion to run up to the villain and deliver a powerful blow with his stick that knocked him unconscious after he fell to the ground.
When silence returned to the abandoned building, Peter gradually caught his breath... A few milliseconds had passed between the beginning and the end of his intervention, yet the young man had the impression that they lasted for whole minutes. This group of criminals had proven to be tougher than expected... Fortunately for the guardian of New York, none of the adults seemed to be cut out for close combat, making their arrest quicker. It was probably a simple strategic information meeting between brigands, only known by those involved, and the use of pistols didn't appear to be a high probability.
As soon as Peter regained a regular breath, distant noises suddenly attracted his attention... They sounded like footsteps, the sound of which on the asphalt was getting closer and closer to his location.
People are coming... I have to get out of here!
The superhero then immediately climbed up to the top floor of the dilapidated building with his webs, climbed out through a gaping hole to reach the roof and finally flew back to Queens. He saw the bus graveyard on his way, and decided to stop there for a while to rest. Peter landed right next to his landmark with a confident gesture, making a few specks of dust fly away at his landing. Once invisible to the eyes of the world inside the grey bus, the young man lay down of all his length on the row of seats, his right arm covering his eyes...
This was to be the first time Peter had found himself in a complicated situation as Spider-Man since he started the loop again. If he had stayed still for too long, the grenade explosion would have caused him significant burns in addition to potentially revealing his identity through the fire blast that would have destroyed his mask. Of course, the young man had memories of the future and he knew where, when and how such great events as the signing of the Sokovia Accords, the Avengers' Civil War or the Infinity War would occur, but his superhero patrols remained changeable from one iteration to another: the criminals and the places where crimes were committed didn't always remain the same. Peter had never crossed paths with this group of men before in all the time that had passed since he was trapped in the time loop... This kind of matter was beyond the little control the spider boy had over his destiny.
However, beyond this surprise attack, it was what happened before the bomb exploded that occupied the teenager's mind... As if by a simple snap of the fingers, the world began to turn in slow motion, absolved of any notion of relativity, with the sole exception of his body which continued to move normally. At first, Peter thought that his senses were altered by the adrenaline and the intense shock he felt at the vision of the weapon so close to him, simply giving him the impression that his environment was moving at a different pace than his own... However, this sensation of being immersed in a dimension outside of reality was not foreign to him. It reminded him of the ocean of emptiness where his soul had drifted after Thanos had reduced him to dust, as well as the state of general anesthesia that invaded him just before he woke up in a new timeline. Everything seemed too frozen to appear as anything more than a suspension of his instincts.
The superhero replayed the scene several times in his mind to try to find an explanation for this phenomenon, but no concrete answer emerged. After a quarter of an hour walking blindly in a thick fog, Peter finally sighed with weariness... He had so many unanswered questions related to the time loop that he now found no interest in giving it any thought. In any case, even if he managed to dispel his doubts about them, he knew that it wouldn't change the most important events in the timeline. He'd already tried so many times to change their course in one way or another, repeating a considerable number of months that seemed to have lasted more than a decade... All he got at the end of the war was blood and the death of those he loved, again and again and again.
Why should this loop be any different from the others?