As the sun rose and the birds started chirping, it was a time where one could truly be at peace. So it was a peaceful morning in Manhattan, well, it was as peaceful as Manhattan could get. With the norm being never ending traffic and the sound of multiple car horns coming from every other angry taxi driver inside of said traffic, but for the past year, that norm has been changed ever since the impossible showed up.
" YEEEEEEE HAW!" As a man was yelling at the top of his lungs like a madman, laughing as if he was the only man left in the world as he swung high above the skyline. He was wearing a blue onesie nearly covering his body from neck down, stopping at his red boots while his sleeves did so at his black fingerless gloves, with a sleeveless red hoodie with a spider logo embedded in it covering the torso of the onesie. Although he was also wearing a red goggle-embedded mask, you could still see his smile as clear as day while he closed his eyes as he felt the cool breeze brushing against his face as he began descenting head first right back down to the Earth.
His name was Peter Parker aka Spider-Man, and he felt AMAZING, SPECTACULAR even, why? Because today was his orientation day at his dream school, Empire State University or ESU for short. In either case, he was ecstatic as he rounded the Chrysler building.
When his feet finally touched the ground of a nearby building, he sat there on the edge, taking in the nice view of the city and its early birds, well, the earliest they were going to get anyway. As he lifted up his mask to expose his mouth and nose to take in a deep breath of beautiful polluted air, his phone began to ring with a familiar name showing itself in the caller ID, he smiled as he answered the phone. "This is one and only Peter Parker speaking."
" PETER!" A feminine voice on the other end yelled, causing Pete to pull his phone away from his ear a bit. '''Uh oh, she sounds mad''', He thought as he began swinging once more while still listening. " Peter, where are you! I thought you said that we were both going to move into the dorm today?" The girl said, reminding Peter of the other reason he came out this morning, this "girl" being Gwen Stacy, the Scientist Supreme herself and one of Peter's best friends for the past seven years.
"Right! We did agree to do that today, didn't we? Look, I'm about 10 minutes out from the dorm, is Harry there yet?" he asked, the Harry he was referring to being Harry Osborn, the notorious prodigal son of Norman and Emily Osborn, heir to Oscorp and all Osborn family owned estates and assets, or at least that's what it said on his Wikipedia page. In reality, he has been Peter's best friend (and by extension Gwen's) since the two were in elementary school, and not only was he going to be Peter's roommate in the dorm and he had also agreed to moving in all at the same time, albeit he had his own moving truck. '''God I hope he's not bringing too much stuff, especially since I sure didn't.''' he thought.
" Yeah, his U-Haul is pulling up now. Hurry up Peter, orientation starts in an hour and we haven't even gotten started yet, you know today is our deadline." Gwen spoke with anxiety, he could hear it even through the phone and he couldn't blame him either, she's very much sticking her neck out for him as she could have very easily moved her stuff in already and left him to his recklessness. So letting her down was not an option.
"Don't worry, I won't let you down just give me a sec, I'm just around the corner." Peter spoke with sincerity as he turned a corner that put him on a straight shot towards ESU until… BOOOOM! An explosion went off on a rooftop above the Pursue Bank, causing Parker to sigh tiredly as he did a quick loop-de-loop on a nearby lamp post to turn around so that he could check out the situation, although his on phone companion didn't seem to share his… exhausted sentiment, but rather she was far more concerned. " What the heck? Peter, was that an explo–"
"Sorrygottagobye!" He interrupted her as he hung up, swinging off to trouble yet again, not even acknowledging the mumbled mess of a sentence he just verbalized.
The blaring of the alarm was loud enough to be annoying, especially to the three men that were robbing it. Though they were all covering their faces, they had all chosen different attire, the first had a very Southern look to him as he wore a cowboy hat and a red bandana covering his mouth and nose and only exposing his eyes. "Hurry up, and please remember, I'm only here because you damn fools can't seem to get the job done. Consider me reinforcements." Said one of the men in a thick Texan accent. "Now let's get ah move on, I don't think you boys want to disappoint the Big Man again."
"You got it, Montana." The other two said in unison as they both climbed out of the blown up roof with bags of cash in tow. The one in the cowboy hat and bandana that was in charge was Montana, the top enforcer in the criminal underworld. Meanwhile the other two were common schmucks known as Flint Marko and Alex O'Hirn, bottom of the barrel thugs, but to their credit, they were good fall guys. The trio began hopping from rooftop to rooftop, making their way to the getaway point, but before they could complete their getaway plan Spider-Man thwipped on the scene.
"Y'know if you guys are trying to return that cash to the bank, you're going the wrong way. Your destination is about ten rooftops that way." He quipped as he slingshotted himself into Marko, covering the green striped shirt man webbing to cushion the blow. Before immediately making a move on O'Hirn, shooting a web ball at his face to blind him to then shoot two web lines at his feet to pull them from under him. "You're next, new guy!"
"Well I'll be damned, you are real." Montana said in shock and excitement. "Yippee kai fuckin' yay! We get to crush us a bug!" As he quickly aimed his revolver at the vigilante, "The name's Montana, and I must say, I've never seen someone like you before. It truly is a shame that I have to kill someone like you while you're in your pajamas."
"Well firstly California, I'm an arachnid. Secondly, can we please just make this quick? I've got things to do." Spidey said, feigning boredom as he pounced on Montana until a realization came to him. "And thirdly… wait, we?"
Right at that moment a helicopter came up from behind Montana, flying overhead as the mounted machine gun began firing at Spidey, causing Pete to dodge around quickly as he thanked his lucky stars for spidey senses. Speaking of which, it began blaring in his head again as he narrowly dodged more gunfire as it was coming from the revolver wielding Montana now.
Seeing that his enemy was comfortably preoccupied, "Hey idiots! Now would be your cue to leave with the money!" Montana yelled, barking orders to Marko and O'Hirn. Unfortunately, only O'Hirn heard him as his partner in crime was still indisposed, noticing their inability to escape, Spidey decided it was time to retaliate. " Shit! OX! STOP SHOOTIN' AT THE BUG AND GET YER HEAVY ASS DOWN HERE AND HELP THESE DAMN FOOLS!"
Peter watched as the machine gun fire stopped as a 6 foot 7 inch tall big burly man hopped out of the helicopter and fell onto the roof with a loud SLAM! '''Holy sugar honey iced tea! that guy's huge!''' he thought to himself and right as he was about to make a move Pete felt his phone start ringing, '''Crap!''', seeing that it was Gwen calling him back he knew that he was really in a pickle now because now he had a huge problem, orientation started in in 30 minutes and there was no way he was going to be able to wrap this up, get to the dorms, move the stuff in while in his civvies, AND attend orientation with Harry and Gwen like he had planned.
So with that in mind, he decided that he had to make a tough call as he pressed the answer button, "Hey Gwen, don't worry about all the stuff, you and Harry go to orientation without me, I'll take care of the rest, okay? Please don't let my very insistent tardiness ruin your day." He said, start peeking around the corner of the part of cover he found, his spider sense ringing just as quickly as pulled his head back narrowly dodging a bullet that would have taken his head off. Luckily, Gwen didn't hear it on the other end.
" You know you don't have to do that, you were looking forward to this just as much as Harry and I, so to go without you just seems kinda... wrong ." She said over the phone as made his move on the currently escaping thieves. " There will always be other dorms."
"Yeah, but not many of them are as go OD! " Pete grunted the last part out as he kicked the oblivious O'Hirn in the back while he was trying to get on the helicopter and pulled him off, his spider sense blaring once again as he found himself on the business end of Montana's revolver. With his enhanced reflexes kicking in, Spidey swiftly moved his head to the side as the gun fired and missed while Pete backflipped off the helicopter and back onto the building, taking O'Hirn with him via webline as the helicopter flew off.
He pulled his mask up exposing his nose and mouth to fresh air after knocking O'Hirn unconscious and webbing him to the rooftop, '''Good lord, I'm surprised my head is still attached to my body after all that''', he thought to himself as he remembered that he had taken a phone call mid-fight, panicking, Peter quickly put his phone to his ear in a poor attempt to explain what the just happened. "Gwen?" He asked, but was left with silence as he pulled his phone away from his ear and noticed the bullet lodged in it, "I guess that explains why I didn't hear it whizzing by my head."
Peter sighed, not only because he knew that a new phone alone was going to devour his next paycheck from the Bugle, but also because now he possibly had to explain to Gwen(who was possibly too smart for her own good) why she heard a gunshot coming from his end. Knowing her, Peter figured that she probably had 60,000 theories formulating in her head as to what was going on by now and on top of all that he remembered that he still had a helicopter to catch, swinging off while praying that she didn't hear anything.
_
Fortunately, thanks to the helicopter not getting far and Peter being a "Web-Swinging Enthusiast" as he would say, catching up to it was a breeze. Unfortunately though, the problem came when they immediately noticed that he was giving chase. '''This isn't a problem, more like a mild inconvenience''' he thought, and he was right until he wasn't. As he had conveniently forgotten about the minigun on the helicopter as Montana started firing at him.
'''Okay, maaaybe I underestimated them a little bit'' he thought, "Okay Pete, time to use that brain of yours for more than just quips, but first." He whispered to himself as he began examining the helicopter still dodging the active gunfire while repositioning himself in the air so that no stray bullets would hit any innocent bystanders below.
Speaking of which, so far Spidey was absolutely dumbfounded as to how he was going to down this bird without making a mess that he would prefer not to be blamed for (even though he would be partly responsible). His head continued to try and pound out ideas as the one word mantra of '''Where?''' repeated in his mind while his eyes were still surveying his surroundings.
As he was about to be stumped, inspiration struck when Spider-Man finally realized where he was, continuing to dodge gunfire as he turned his focus to the nearby Hudson. Once again exhaling exhaustedly, Spidey once again re-angled his body, yelling out a catch phrase he heard in a movie once.
"All right! MAXIMUM EFFORT!" He yelled excitedly while he shot out two weblines, attaching both to the helicopter as he slingshots himself into it, not only disrupting the copter's flight path but also accidentally hunting off the aerial vehicle's tail, causing immediate loss of altitude. Peter's expression was unchanging not only because of his mask but also because he was slowly processing the spectacle of the mess he was about to make. '''Well… shit.''' he thought.
Seeing the people down below and just how fast everything was falling, he calmly inhaled and leaped off the helicopter and begin gliding through the air letting his instincts do his thinking for him as he did an air backflip and placed a web-net between the buildings to catch the falling tail rotor, placing multiple web lines onto the tail that were attached to nearby buildings to shave off the object's climbing momentum so that it didn't slice right through the web-net.
Now that it was taken care of, it was time to focus on the now tailless helicopter that was falling through the air in constant rotation. Crashing and breaking into the nearby buildings as it fell. ''I really hope someone doesn't decide they want to play a game of pin a lawsuit on the Spider-Man.'' he said impulsively.
Once again slingshotting on himself towards the helicopter, this time not aiming for it, but rather to get in front of it and in achieving his goal and landing on the front of the helicopter, his spider senses rang as the co-pilot began firing at him from behind the glass, he dodged as many bullets as he could as he turned his attention back to the main focus at hand and braced himself on the copter as he began shooting web lines at the building walls on both sides of him and putting the helicopter at a slightly higher angle to reduce the vehicle's momentum.
It all seem to be going well until the all but unexpected wrench was thrown in, taking the form of a little girl walking dead into the middle of the falling vehicle's path, Spidey saw as the kid's mother notice the helicopter coming at her daughter and sprint as fast as she could to grab her kid in time, Pete jumped into action, not even trying to do the math.
Peter knew that she was going to be too late .
After launching off the helicopter, Pete crushed one of his web shooters and threw it in the middle of the road, the remaining web fluid exploding from inside forming a cushion of webbing, stopping incoming traffic from becoming a problem.
"Now that's what I call a Web-Grenade! Patent pending, If any of you try to trademark that before I can, I'll sue! if I don't get sued first." Spidey quipped saying the last part under his breath, using his good/ only web shooter to fire webs at the feet of the girl's mom before shooting a web line at a nearby light pole and flinging himself towards the kid, grabbing her whilst flying by, narrowly moving her out of the way as the helicopter crashed, sliding as it made an imprint in the concrete.
"Well that's one way to make a landing." he said, still tense after that entire spectacle, all while the little girl looked at him in amazement. Quickly after returning the kid to her now barefooted mother, he leaped to the partly destroyed vehicle's final stop.
He slowly approached the vehicle in case of trouble, only to find it empty with only an unconscious Flint Marko and a few bags of cash still left inside, a clear sign that the rest escaped, and definitely weren't empty-handed. His face turned stern as he read the note left behind.
' We'll be seeing you, bug. - The Enforcers' Hanging his head in defeat, Spidey swung away disappointed as the sirens of the approaching police grew louder.
As he set down the last box of Gwen's stuff inside her room, Pete let out a huff of exhaustion out of habit as he wasn't actually tired, but he still had a reputation as "Puny Parker" to keep up, the less people question whether or not he could lift a car (which he most definitely could) the better.
Taking the time to better survey the room, Pete noticed that there really wasn't much to it. It was your average apartment made for three people with a set of bunk beds on one side and a twin size bed on the other, one bathroom, and a corner kitchen. It was just like the one he and Harry had on the next floor down.
Sitting down on one of the beds, Pete pulled out his broken phone, which could maybe be fixed if he actually had the time, but that idea warranted an eye roll as he already knew how that would pan out, '''It's probably best that I just get a new phone.'''
"Though, the reproduction cost of even one of my web shooters is going to take up at least half my next paycheck and that's not even factoring in the modifications I'm going to have to make from my original design." He said, talking to himself. "Great! Now I'm taking myself again, I need to get back to my dorm before I actually start looking like a crazy person."
After closing and locking up the dorm room of his female companion he turned to make his way back to his, only to catch a face full of boxes with a loud crash as everything came tumbling down. "Ow!"
'''Ok, where the hell were my spider senses on that?!''' he thought as he felt a sharp pain in his back, using his hand to find the source. He was surprised to feel something wet as he will quickly pulled back his hand to find his fingers with blood on them, moving with haste, he wiped the blood off on his pants before the other person could notice, '''So glad I went with the red pants.'''
Speaking of the other person, Pete was quick to notice that they were in fact a she and she was smokin, even from his position on the floor, Peter could see that she wore a top that showed off her midriff and a pair of skinny jeans that perfectly complemented the top and her waist, he was completely mesmerized as the two locked eyes and although he wasn't paying attention, there was something awfully familiar about the beautiful light brown face and hazel eyes he was staring into.
" Petey?" The one worded nickname had suddenly snapped Peter out of his trance as he had finally recognized the voice and the woman who owned it.
"Liz? Liz Allan?!" Peter said her name in shock as he sprung to his feet looking around out of habit.
"If you're looking for Flash, he isn't here." She said, accepting the hand Peter offered to help her up. "Now if you don't mind me asking, why were you coming out of my dorm? I know the building's co-ed but I don't think that's what they meant."
"Oh? OH! No you misunderstand, I was just moving in the last of my friend's stuff, y'know, Gwen?" he explained quickly, his hands were up defensively with a mix of gesturing back and forth between himself and the door.
"Your friend huh?" She said accusingly while looking him up and down. "You aren't one of those perverts are ya, Petey?"
Peter flustered. "I-I can assure you that I am n-"
"Oh hush, I'm just kidding, I knew who my roommates were when I signed the lease." Liz explained giggling, easing the boy's nerves as she picked up the dropped boxes. "I had a feeling I'd run into you eventually, you and Geekette were practically inseparable in High School, along with Osborn of course."
"You know she has a name Liz, I'd suggest you learn it, especially if you're going to be roommates." Pete reminded her.
"Sorry, Gwen. I guess that's what happens when you spend far too much time with Sally Avril and Flash Thompson, not to sound like I'm making an excuse or something."
"Speaking of which, where is your Prince Blonding?" He questioned, it felt unnatural to not receive a wedgie or some other childish prank he would receive from flash by simply being near Liz, though he definitely doesn't miss it.
" Ex-Prince," Liz corrected, fumbling the door key. "And I have no idea, nor care, we broke up just before graduation."
However this was definitely news to Peter, whether you choose to believe it or not, he was actually in attendance for graduation, yet this is the first that he's heard of this. Though he supposed it made sense, it wouldn't have done the students of Midtown High any good to know that their power couple had broken up, right before graduation no less, nor was it any of their business really.
"The last I heard Flash accepted a full ride athletic scholarship to play football here and hopefully that's all I'll ever have to hear." She said, visibly annoyed as she finally made her way inside. "Now if you don't mind, I need to get this stuff in here. But… it was nice seeing you again, Petey."
"And vice versa!" He said gleefully, ignoring the haughty nickname she had for him. "Although I hope we see each other a lot more."
"Oh really?" She responded, a flirtatious nature starting to show as a small smirk appeared on her face, looking Peter up and down as she turned around to face him in the doorway after setting the boxes down. " Well let's hope together then, Parker."
"Yeah, le-" He didn't even get to finish before Liz closed the door in his face, leaving him in the hallway by himself, though, despite what had just transpired, Peter still found himself grinning as he walked back to his dorm. "Hey, it's progress at least."
A mere Bartender stood alone in the middle of his bar, as carefree as he possibly could be while whistling a tune and drying out his last few before he closed up shop for the night, but given the circumstances and the hurried footsteps he heard coming from outside that were growing ever closer, he knew that a simple night to himself was out of the question.
Like a whirling hurricane, there came three men bursting through the doors of his bar right as he finished his thoughts, it was as if the Fates themselves had willed it to be.
"Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!" Montana shouted as he punched a nearby brick wall, putting the slightest crack in it. "I knew the bastard was crazy, hell, he's practically swinging around in his underwear for God's sake, but to knock an entire helicopter out of the sky? WITH HIS BARE HANDS?!"
"I'd say there were more feet involved in hands." The third Enforcer said, a tall and lean African-American man named Dan, otherwise known as Fancy Dan.
"It doesn't MATTER, point is he tore that thing apart on the slightest whim and knocked out those two idiots with ease, we barely got away with the money that we did." He let out, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No matter how you look at it, the scales are uneven and it's tipped in his favor."
"Tipped in his favor, eh?" They all turned around to see a familiar man in a blue linen suit with a particularly large frontal lobe. "The Big Man figured as much. That's why, unlike you idiots, he planned ahead."
The Enforcers gathered around as Hammerhead sat a suitcase on a nearby table and opened it. "Now hows 'bout we level the playing field..."