Chapter 1: One Sick Superhero

"Ah-ah . . . ah-TCHOO!"

MJ blinked and smiled. "That was quite a sneeze, Tiger. Have a Kleenex." She handed Peter a small box of tissues from her purse.

Peter grinned at Mary Jane through watery eyes, took a tissue, and blew his nose gratefully. "Thag oo," he said stuffily before sniffling loudly. "This is a miserable cold."

"Sure thing, Peter," MJ said conversationally as she put the tissue box away again. "It's been a while since you've been sick at all, hasn't it? Looks like you've finally decided to catch up on the seasonal bugs."

"Yeah . . ." Peter shrugged as he said it, waving goodbye to MJ as she headed off to Chemistry, but his eyes unfocused as he thought about it. It had been a while since he'd been sick. While Peter had never been sickly, he'd always had allergies and, like most people, he caught a number of seasonal bugs each year. But since he'd been bitten by that spider, his allergies had disappeared (rather like his need for glasses; Aunt May was still trying to figure that miracle out) and he'd been perfectly healthy. Was that healthy streak just a fluke? Was he losing his powers or something?

As Peter walked into Physics, he touched the tips of his fingers to a wall tile and pulled; sure enough, the tile stuck securely to his fingers. He pulled it out of the wall with ease, even. Frowning slightly, he let the tile fall off his fingers into a wastebasket and sat down. Well, it doesn't seem to have affected my powers at all. He even smiled a little. Honestly, why would getting spider-powers have anything to do with getting sick? It's not like a spider has any special power to repel viruses, or anything. I'm being stupid.

In fact, being sick probably followed logic. The night before Peter had saved about fifteen people from the burning building where he'd nearly been fried alive. The rain, refusing to be nice and let up, had kept coming down in torrents throughout the rescue but failed miserably to put out the flames. The only thing Peter could conclude was that the fire had been started by a gas line. The numerous trips inside the burning building dried Peter off a little, but the effect was canceled out by only a few seconds in the open.

After Peter had saved everyone who needed saving, he'd fashioned a makeshift tent out of the last of his webbing, warned the survivors that the tent would only last about an hour, and then returned to his backpack to find the contents just as sopping wet as his costume. Silently thankful that there was nothing of more value than his clothes in his bag, he'd roof-hopped most of the way back home in the pouring rain to the accompaniment of faraway thunder. Only when the rain began to let up a bit did Peter strip off his costume and change into his street clothes (his logic in taking off the costume being that wet T-shirts are more see-through than dry ones, and he didn't want to risk it once he was home), and then he continued leaping roofs (he figured no one could see him in the weather anyway). Once home he'd been appropriately admonished by his aunt May for being outside in such a thunderstorm before being lovingly bundled into a hot shower and given hot tea to drink.

The shivers hadn't really started until halfway through the night, and by morning Peter was sneezing for all he was worth. Aunt May 'tsk, tsk'ed, informed him he was lucky he only had a cold, and made him promise to drink his entire thermos of hot tea at lunch that day.

You know, it's probably a pretty lame hero who gets sick from being out in the rain. Peter barely kept his chuckle to himself. Oh, well. Things could be a lot worse.

He sneezed.

Peter winced as he looked at the mangled remains of the combination lock on his locker. "Yikes . . ."

"What is it?" MJ looked over Peter's shoulder, smiling a little.

"Just a sneeze," Peter answered, holding up the lock for inspection and sniffling.

MJ thrust her Kleenex package at Peter. "Take it and keep it, for heaven's sake. 'Just' a sneeze?" She took the lock from Peter and whistled. "What did you do to it?"

"Well, you know how you kinda automatically lock up right before a sneeze?" Peter asked, grimacing and blowing his nose.

"Yeah . . . ?"

"I was holding the lock when I sneezed."

MJ gaped. "You freaking crushed it! You never told me that super-strength was—"

"Sshhh! Geez, MJ, don't – you know – what if Kong hears—"

"It's okay, Tiger," MJ interrupted, putting a finger to Peter's lips, smiling. Peter's heart did that little skip-skip thing it did sometimes when Mary Jane smiled like that. She leaned in conspiratorially. "But really – I didn't know you could do that!"

"I – well, I don't really think about it, I guess," Peter admitted. "I mean, I know I have strength proportional to a spider's, and I did the math, and I guess I should be able to lift about eight tons if I'm really trying. But it's so easy to control it just feels implicit. But then, when I don't quite have control over it, I do things like this," he pointed to the lock.

MJ rolled her eyes and rapped Peter on the forehead. "Dork. Only you'd do the math to calculate your own strength." Then she got serious. "Well, I dunno what to do about this. I mean, I don't think you can go to the office and tell them you crushed your combination lock, can you?"

"I could try telling them Kong did it," Peter suggested hopefully before sniffling.

"Nice try, Peter. Not even Kong's strong enough to do that." She studied the lock. "It looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it."

Peter groaned and blew his nose. "Don't remind me! I didn't ask for this!"

Mary Jane put a finger to her lips and seemed to pause to think. "Well, maybe you could just tell them you crushed the lock . . . you've broken desks in half, after all . . ."

Again Peter groaned. "Please . . . I'm just lucky the school doesn't charge me for damaging school property." He sneezed violently again. "I'm willing to try anything, though. Uh, guess I'll see you next period?" he asked, glancing up at the clock.

"Sure, Tiger, see you there." MJ breezed by, blew Peter a kiss, and disappeared into the crowds.

Peter blushed and wandered off in the direction of the office, rehearsing his explanation absentmindedly. You see, I came up to my locker and found the lock like this . . . I dunno how it happened . . .

Luckily the administration wasn't too picky about the lock ("Good grief, kids these days . . . gotta cut down on the horsing around in the halls"), although they did take note of the amount of destruction that seemed to happen around Peter these days ("First desks, now locks . . . you're a walking disaster area"), prompting Peter to vow to himself that he would be extra careful about how he handled himself lest somebody put two and two together only moments before he nearly tore out a chunk of wall trying to cover his mouth for a sneeze.

The rest of the day followed much of the same pattern, although Peter successfully kept from causing further damage to school property, and by the end of the day he dreaded work at the Daily Bugle until he found himself mulling over Doctor Octopus' apparent escape from the Vault—

"Hey! Didja hear? SHEILD got on the news today and said that Doc Ock escaped from the Vault!"

Peter's head snapped around to stare at Flash and Kong before he caught himself and listened more discreetly.

"How'd you find that out?" Kong's voice was jovial.

"Current Events – the teacher turned on the TV and there was some agent girl talking about how we should all be on the lookout for him."

Peter could almost hear the grin Kong wore as he exclaimed, "Did you see that time on TV a couple months ago when Spider-Man—"

"Dude, that's all you ever talk about! Spider-Man this, Spider-Man that—"

"Well, can I help it if he's cool?"

From there the conversation dissolved into an argument about the coolness level of Spider-Man, at which Peter grinned and shook his head and sneezed again.

However, the grin faded when Peter considered the implications of recent developments. So, the doc got out. I heard some government agency took him into custody, but – hmph. I wonder if the woman Flash saw on TV was that agent girl that tried to arrest me on the dock . . .

"Hey, Pete, what're you thinking about so hard?"

Peter looked up at Mary Jane, and it wasn't hard to force a smile for her. "Nothing, really."

"Uh-huh." MJ gave him a disbelieving look, one eyebrow raised. "That's about as likely as you getting second place in the science fair."

Peter snorted, then sniffled. "Just some weird stuff going on – I'll tell you later, okay?" he added pointedly. Mary Jane caught on, nodding, and he stretched with a groan. "I'm achy . . ."

"Of course you are, you dork, you sounded like you were going to cough up a lung in class," Mary Jane remarked, rolling her eyes. "Hey, did you want me to just come home with you from school? I could use your help in chem, anyway."

It was tempting, Peter had to admit – time spent with MJ was priceless, and he didn't like to pass it up. But—"Actually, I was thinking I was gonna go out for a while, swing around town," he answered, jamming his hands in his pockets. "Check some stuff out. Has to do with the stuff I was, you know, thinking about."

The look Mary Jane gave him was a dubious one. "You think it's a good idea to 'swing around town' when you're sneezing like that?" she asked.

"Aw, come on, don't you start in too," Peter groaned. "Aunt May's bad enough! I just – it's important, okay? I promise I'll be careful. I'll call you as soon as I'm home and you can come over then, okay?" He offered MJ a placating look, one calculated to calm the nerves of any woman.

Unfortunately, he wasn't very good at placating nerves, evidently. "You make sure you call!" she said sharply. "Do you know how scared I was when I saw you on TV fighting Doctor Octopus?"

Peter started to interject – he'd only heard about it fifty bajillion times by then. Note to self: Never fight on TV again. "I know, I—"

But MJ cut him off. "You owe me big-time for that, Tiger, don't forget!"

Peter couldn't help the tiny grin from the nickname – he could really get used to that – before his breath caught, and suddenly, he was having a coughing fit. Catching his breath, he managed, "Okay, okay, you win – I mean, not that we were arguing or anything," he added, trying to work out how MJ had 'won' the conversation. "Just – I'm gonna tell Aunt May I'm at the Bugle, okay? Cover for me?"

MJ sighed and nodded. "You're crazy. If you're splatted on the sidewalk somewhere because you started coughing while you were jumping from a building, I'll kill you."

"If the sidewalk doesn't kill me first, you mean?" Peter offered weakly, then dodged MJ's incoming hand. "All right, all right, I'm going—see you later, okay—?" He jogged back up the school stairs, starting for the roof, and waved goodbye.

It was starting to turn into some sort of full-fledged head cold – Peter felt stuffed up and his nose was starting to run in earnest, and he was achy – achy enough that he half-dreaded web-swinging his way over to OsCorp labs to do some snooping. But if Doc Ock was up and about, he had to be on his toes – especially because he didn't know if Octavius knew who he was. He obviously didn't have it figured out last time we fought, or – oh, man, I'm so lucky. If he'd gone and blurted my name or something that night – man, everyone in the Tri-State area would've known who Spider-Man was! And then Aunt May would've been toast, and heck, probably MJ, too – the Kingpin probably still wanted his head on a platter, and the guy had just fled to the Bahamas while the heat was high. Peter couldn't help the shiver he had at the thought. I've got to be more careful.

Which was why he was taking off his pants and t-shirt and struggling into his Spider-Man costume on the roof of the school right then – for once, he was going to pre-empt the bad guys and stop Doc Ock before he caused some real trouble.

Sliding his mask over his face, Peter sighed as he realized the material made breathing through his already stuffed-up nose impossible – he'd have to breathe through his mouth. He was going to be drinking a gallon of water by the time he got home, he'd be so dried out. But –"That'd be my luck," he snorted, slinging his backpack over his shoulders and shooting off a webline to a nearby building.

It was time to get to work.