The cool night breeze swept by with every web he shot
out. Connor was trailing Spiderman, as
the pair swung through the tops of Manhattan, the city streets sliding away
beneath them. The only difference
between the two was that, Connor was significantly younger, and that all of the
boy's powers rested in his suit, unlike Spiderman. Crouched upon the side of the Chrysler Tower, Spiderman lifted up
one finger to his lips to gesture silence from his apprentice, beckoning him
close to tell him something...
"CONNOR! It's
already 8:30 and you're not even awake yet?! /WAKE UP!/"
A rude awakening from such a quite scenario, Connor blinked
his way back into reality. Just a
dream. It's /always/ just a dream. And here comes his mother once more to take
him out of his fantasy and into uber boring real life. While his mom made her way downstairs to
make him his lunch, muttering all the way, Connor sat up in his bed to think
about his dream. It's always like
that. Always about to get into some
adventure when I get woken up and have to go to school. Guiding his hate from his mother to school,
he curses under his breath as he changes and packs his books before heading
downstairs.
Connor's 13 years old, and ripe to turn 14 in a couple of
months. He's always busy reading the
newspaper headlines, and reading the whole articles when they happen to be
about Spiderman. How /does/ that Peter
Parker fellow always get such nice shots of the villains? But that question's always in the back of
his mind. When Connor isn't busy having
fantasies about being Spiderman's sidekick, or reading stuff about Spiderman,
he wonders, who's the man behind that mask?
The wispy remnants of his dream follow him as he makes his
way downstairs. "Toast or waffles,
Con?" Con's his mother's
'nickname' for him. Snapping out of his
trance, Connor mumbles, "Toast." Wolfing down his breakfast, he dashes upstairs, brushes his teeth and
sits outside on the front step, daydreaming while he waits for his bus to
arrive.
His ride to school was horribly uneventful, the typical
jostling as he made his way to the middle, the loud shouts from the back of the
bus, and the occasional crying kid having hurt himself in some crazy way. He managed to snag a seat next to his
neighbour and friend, another superhero freak, only he always seemed to be
supportive of the villain. Many hours
of Connor's life were spent discussing superheroes with Jacob.
"Did you read this Wednesday's newspaper Jake? The one 'bout how Spiderman mannaged to peg
that Hobgoblin guy again? New
Hobgoblins keep popping up all over the place. Crazy people, wanting to be some kind of villain. They must be crazy, right?" A questioning look crosses Connor's face as he turns to face his friend.
"No /way/ Con!" His mother's nickname seemed to have gotten out somehow, but at
the age of 13, Connor had learned to ignore small nuisances such as these. "Hobgoblin is /so/ cool. Imagine being able to make those pumpkin
balls and stuff like that. Wouldn't
that be wicked?"
And so forth and so forth. The talk rallied for about 10 more minutes, until they reached the
school. "Anyways Jake, I'll see
you 'round. I got History
first." To show his love of the
subject, Jacob performed a dramatic 'thumbs down' upon exiting the bus onto the
front lawn. "I mean, if Mr. Rogers
could get /any/ more boring, he'd be arrested or something. Geez."
Connor, on the other hand, had Gym first. "If I don't see you during recess or
something, I'll probably see you on the bus." With that final word, the two entered the front doors of the
school and parted, one heading left down the main hall, the other heading
right.
So Connor managed to survive school, despite getting yelled
at a few times for drifting off during class. I mean, who could blame him? Who
wants to learn about some people who died a long time ago, or how to solve this
and this for X. That stuff was boring
compared to the thoughts drifting around in his mind. Maybe, he thought more than once during the day, /maybe/
Spiderman might decide to recruit some kind of sidekick to help him out. /Maybe/ that sidekick could be me, and I
could be like Spiderman II. It was
always obvious when he was daydreaming. Even a blind man on a winter's night could tell. If the foolish grin on his face didn't give
it away, his general attitude towards everything else did. He was always /so/ spaced out.
At around lunch time that day, his friends had decided to
watch the Spiderman movie. It was the
first time for them, but maybe the tenth or eleventh time for Connor and
Jake. They just /couldn't/ get enough
of it. If Spiderman didn't attract
Jake, the new villain, Hydra, did. According to the villain lover, the fight scene in the middle of the
movie was "way too fake". Hydra could've
"pegged that Spiderman", as his friend had so aptly put more than once, at
least "5" times. Hydra was /too/ cool,
with his bio-tentacles. He was sort of
like Doctor Octopus, only more – formidable. Shame he didn't exist in real life, Connor remembered his friend mention
many times.
So the group trekked off to the movie theatre after school,
and saw the movie again. The two
neighbours promised not to say a word before they entered, but a little trickle
of noise escaped their lips as the climax of the movie approached. "Better every time you see it, right?" the
two asked each other, as they exited the theatre. "I gotta jet," Connor said upon a glance at his watch. "My mom's probably wondering where I am and
all, so I guess I'll see you guys on Monday, a'right?" With that, Connor began to walk, then jog,
then sprint to the subway station.
As he approached the station, Connor panicked as he began
to realize exactly how late it was. He
didn't notice how deserted the place was, nor did he look up. Had he done so, he would've noticed the
trails of webbing hanging from the tops of the roofs.
"You're name Connor?" a voice asked from behind him. Spinning on a heel, Connor turned around to
spot the infamous hooded red mask with the white, flame-shaped eyes. Spiderman.
