Mayday's Hero

Part V of V

Disclaimer: As I explain below, the situations, characters and setting of this story are not my own – they belong to Marvel, and the various writers and artists who work for the company. I'm only borrowing them, and trying to give credit where credit's due. It's fanfiction after all; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The epigraph to pt. 2 is from Thom Stark.

A/N: The villain in this chapter and Spider-Man's clever strategy for defeating him, are both filched from a comic that I haven't even read, ASM #501. (I did read a bunch of reviews and summaries of it, though). His stupid name was sort of my idea, but not really. And yes, he's supposed to be idiotic. I wanted a time-consuming villain, dangerous and horribly destructive, but one who was, to Spider-Man, more annoying than threatening; this guy fit the bill perfectly. The nameless hotel manager is my own invention. Oh, and the idea of a potential lawsuit against Spidey derives from that brilliant superhero movie, the créme de la créme of all superhero movies, The Incredibles. Now, onto the last part ...

Spider-Man was exhausted. He'd been at it for over an hour, since the bank, and he still hadn't figured out how to stop this idiot. He was some lamebrain who'd stolen a prototype mining suit from GlobalCore Technologies, a resonating suit that allowed a single person to tunnel deep underground and literally core out the earth as he or she went. It worked, he remembered reading in a scientific journal, by using a rotating combination of high and low frequency pulse vibrations that could pulverize rock like powder.

When he'd originally read about the prototype, Peter had thought hopefully about the potentially positive applications of a series of mining suits like it for impoverished countries lacking the equipment to find and use their own natural resources. It was supposed to be environmentally-friendly too. But no, instead of allowing the suit to be a potentially liberating force, something good and useful, this blockhead had stolen it, and then tried to use it to rob a bank only a few blocks from Mayday's school.

First, he'd bored up through the bank's foundation, causing a wall to collapse almost on the heads of a crowd of bank customers and tellers. Arriving nearly a moment too late, Spider-Man had managed to hold it up long enough for everyone to get out from underneath, but he thought that the building itself was probably a write off, given how much the foundation had been destabilized.

To add insult to injury, a few exchanged barbs revealed that this dope was going around calling himself by a ridiculous, unimaginative name: "The Pulverizer." He supposed he should thank his lucky stars the guy hadn't decided to call himself "The Vibrater" since that appeared to about the level of intelligence the moron possessed. Boy, that'd be just what he needed, for word to get around that Spider-Man had come out of hiding to fight some guy called "The Vibrater." People would never stop laughing.

Chased from the bank, the jerk had next smashed straight through the steel, glass and concrete of a skyscraper in the last stages of construction. After receiving a few useless punches from Spider-Man, which failed to do anything more than knock him on his backside, the idiot then vibrated his way up onto the roof of a fancy hotel next door. As he went over the top, he caused parts of the ornamental facade to fall in huge chunks toward the busy street below. Racing after him up the side of the building, Spider-Man had just managed to catch the substantial mass of broken stone and brickwork in a webnet as it plunged past him, but its weight had stretched his muscles painfully, strained his joints and then yanked him right off the side of the building to plummet towards the street many stories below.

Fortunately as he fell he had the presence of mind, or the good luck, to anchor himself to an overhang of the adjacent building, the one that was still under construction, with another one of his webs. Then he was able to swing himself to and fro, using the excruciating weight of a half a ton of masonry to give force to his arcs, until he managed, just barely, to bring the contents of his net back up and around, burying his opponent in a crushing heap of rubble. Luckily the roof of the hotel appeared to sustain the impact of all that limestone, but unfortunately it only took about twenty seconds for his adversary to vibrate his way out from under the immense pile of stone that Spider-Man had dropped on him.

Too bad you didn't have to be smart in order to hurt people, Spider-Man thought sardonically. If it were a law of the universe that a minimum level of intelligence was required before you could start doing any serious damage, criminals and bullies would be much rarer than they were.

The Pulverizer swiftly bored his way back down the front of the historic hotel, making it virtually certain that the old, decorative building would shortly be slated for demolition too, and Spider-Man lost his temper. He realized that unconsciously he'd been herding the wacko in the opposite direction from Mayday's school, and that if he'd just stood by and let him rob the bank, the idiot would have destroyed only one building, instead of two, or possibly three. He was almost certainly making the situation worse by prolonging this dumbass's activity. It had to stop now, before somebody, or quite possibly, many people, really got hurt.

He launched himself off the side of the building and landed a few feet in front of the guy in the bulky suit.

"Care to dance?" he inquired, before picking his oscillating opponent up around the waist. Sweet mother in heaven, he'd never experienced such throbbing pain. He could actually feel his bones beginning to fracture, his muscles starting to unweave and his teeth grinding at the terrific pressure caused by the suit's ceaseless vibrations. Unable to hold his adversary any longer, Spider-Man hurled him back toward the base of the construction site. At least that building was more or less unoccupied, except for the construction crew, who had, please God, stopped work when they'd heard the destruction going on next door.

The mechanical mining outfit hit the bottom of the skyscraper with a crack like thunder, and the man inside the suit lay there stunned for an instant, while the suit mindlessly vibrated a huge hole in the concrete beneath and beside him. Gritting his teeth against the pain of multiple pulled muscles, Spider-Man gingerly approached to look for the suit's off-switch. Unfortunately, the moment that he spotted it, on the guy's shoulder, beside the seam connecting metallic helmet with the neck of the suit, the guy opened his eyes and bounded back onto his feet as though he had springs in his boots.

"Thanks for getting that kink out of my back," Spider-Man managed to wheeze out through the agonizing pain in his ribs as they squared off once more. "You're like a lethal new kind of chiropractor."

"You can't stop me!" the guy calling himself The Pulverizer snarled back, his voice weirdly distorted and amplified through the suit's electronics. "These vibrations won't quit until the suit is turned off!" With that, he turned his back on Spider-Man, jumped like a hideous, giant metallic grasshopper in the opposite direction, and began to bore back through a load-bearing wall of the busy hotel.

Naturally, thought Spider-Man in frustration. Yep, let's duke this out in a densely populated area, why don't we? He wracked his brains as he leaped through the hole in the wall, and then through another large hole, which the Pulverizer had just created in the floor of the hotel's posh lobby. Time was passing, little Mayday was waiting for him, and, most important of all, people were sure to get hurt any minute now. It was only a matter of time before this mini-megalomaniac brought a building down on the heads of a crowd of people. That cretin inside the suit had no plan; he was letting it do all the work. There had to be a way to use that suit against him somehow.

He landed on his feet, and found himself in the hotel's pool and spa area. Several scantily-clad screaming patrons fled past him as an idea emerged.

"That's right!" the Pulverizer shouted after some more fleeing bathing beauties. He was standing on the edge of an enormous swimming pool. "Run! Run and tell everyone that The Pulverizer's here, and he's going to pulverize your buildings, your houses, your city ... pulverize them into dust!"

"What makes you so hostile?" snapped Spider-Man. "You had an unhappy childhood or something?" Inwardly, he could scarcely believe the opportunity that he'd just been handed on a silver platter. He approached quickly.

"You quit following me," the guy in the suit said menacingly, "Or I'll pulverize you!"

"Oh, that's original," said Spider-Man with mild sarcasm as he unleashed a well-aimed punch right at the loser's reinforced helmet. It contained just enough force to knock him backwards into the pool.

"What're you doing?" cried the guy incredulously, surfacing and standing up in the pool's shallow end. "This suit is waterproof! That move's going to get you nothing, buddy!" The water around him began to swish and froth ominously.

"Oh, I'm so glad you asked," Spider-Man said cheerfully. "What I'm doing is giving you a lecture on geology. Now pay attention. You know what causes tsunamis? Seismic activity on the ocean floor creates vibrations of high enough amplitude and frequency to set the water in motion. So ... guess what will happen when such vibrations occur in a closed environment?"

As he spoke, a succession of waves began to rise up from either end of the pool, hammering into its only occupant from opposite ends at the same moment. "Ow!" he exclaimed as they started to pummel him from all sides. "Hey, stop it, that hurts!"

Spider-Man smiled grimly beneath his mask. "Yes, you get the gold star!" he crowed. "A series of massive waves will keep clobbering you over and over until someone helps you turn off your equipment. It'll feel like a ton of bricks being dropped on your head every second."

"Oww!" wailed the hapless swimmer. "Stop it, please stop it! I surrender!"

Spider-Man simply folded his arms. Let him see what it felt like to have the teeth practically rattled out of your head and your bones shaken apart at the joints. That suit would protect its inhabitant from any truly serious damage, and he would turn it off ... in a minute. Sheesh, his whole body ached from his own experience of holding onto that damn vibrating suit for just a few seconds. What he wouldn't give for another hot bath and one of MJ's massages right about now.

"You know, he just surrendered," said a cultured voice from somewhere in the back of him. Spider-Man turned to see the hotel manager striding up rapidly from behind. He was a lean middle-aged man in a crisply tailored, well-cut navy suit, with a gleaming gold nameplate pinned on his smart lapel.

"I heard him," Spider-Man responded calmly, raising his voice a bit so that he could be heard over the increasing din of the smacking waves of water. The hotel manager came and stood next to him, surveying the severe damage that had been done to the ceiling and the side wall.

"You should have stayed in retirement," the manager commented as he looked around at the broken tiles, fragments of plaster and exposed wiring decorating the room. "My company is going to sue the pants off of you."

He would hardly have believed it could be possible, but Spider-Man became even more annoyed than he was already. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered. Not that he was worried about a lawsuit – people threatened them regularly, but no one had as yet launched any against him personally. There were so many other convenient targets, like the criminals themselves, or the city. Heck, the hotel would be sued before he was. No, he was irked that he'd strained all his muscles, wasted precious time he could have spent with his cute daughter, and, as usual, received nothing, not even a thank you, in return.

"Listen, I'm not the one who put on a destructive mining suit in the middle of New York," Spider-Man retorted. "Tell your proprietors to sue the homicidal creep who started this whole mess."

The hotel manager raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, I know what you did here! I'm just saying."

Spider-Man decided it was time to put an end to this pointless conversation. "You got the time?" he asked impatiently.

"The time?" said the hotel manager, looking a bit bemused. He pulled back a neatly tailored sleeve. "Uh, it's 5:45. Why, you got a date?"

Yikes! thought Spider-Man, grimacing beneath his mask at the thought of his scared, abandoned daughter sitting all by herself at the playground in the company of a couple of irate caregivers. The afterschool program ran until six, but they usually managed to pick Mayday up around 5 pm. The poor kid had to be wondering where her family was by now.

"As a matter of fact I do," Spider-Man replied shortly over his shoulder as he headed quickly toward the pool.


He was an ordinary hero. Just the regular kind.

An ordinary hero, when heroes were hard to find.

Mayday was perched on the top of the monkey bars again. It was fast becoming her favorite place to sit. The top of the slide was higher, but anyone could climb the spiraling metallic stairs leading up to it.

In contrast to her lonesome mood the day before, this afternoon Mayday was content to be by herself. Janeen and Travis had both been collected by their moms already, but for some unknown reason no one had come to get her yet. She wasn't too worried about it, though. Someone always came eventually, usually too soon for her liking. In the meantime, she was getting to have the monkey bars all to herself ... along with Spider-Man's amazing web ladder, which, although it was looking more and more fragile every minute, was still gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Just after he'd swung off, Lydie had stubbornly taken a giant pair of garden shears and tried to cut it down, only to wind up breaking the clippers themselves in two. Then she'd told all the children that they daren't go on the web ladder, on the grounds it was unsafe, and that the monkey bars were off limits for the rest of the afternoon too. Mayday was glad that Lydie had to leave early today, because the other grownups didn't bother enforcing her ban on the monkey bars after she'd gone.

Earlier, Mayday and the other kids had wrapped up the Princess Power game from the day before. Then, once Angela, her brother and Kendall had left for the day, Mayday, Janeen and Travis spent practically the rest of the time running after each other. To an outsider, it might have looked like a game of tag, but, in fact, they had been playing a rousing game of Spider-Man whaling on bad guys. The game mainly involved Travis chasing Janeen and Mayday alternately, with one or two surprise ambushes when the two girls had joined forces to gang up on him. Mayday had found it a little maddening that there had been a perfectly good web ladder over by the monkey bars, totally unused, which they hadn't been allowed to go near – but they'd had fun anyway.

Now that same extraordinary web was dwindling into slender little wisps and the school yard was nearly deserted. There were only about a half a dozen unclaimed kids left, playing on the swings and the slide. Two caregivers were still hanging out under the tree, waiting impatiently for any remaining parents to pick up the kids so that they could go home.

Mayday was also glad to be sitting alone on the monkey bars because she was feeling a little overwhelmed as she mulled over the stunning events of the afternoon – namely, Spider-Man and Janeen's cousin. Thanks to Janeen, she had begun to wonder why Spider-Man had been there to save Mayday and her mom that one day, but hadn't been there to save Chantal another day. Up until today she'd thought that Spider-Man would inevitably appear at just the right moment whenever anyone needed him. After all, he had yanked her and Mommy practically right out of the Lizard's clutching claws. Wasn't it the hero's job to show up in the nick of time? Mayday furrowed her brow and looked down at her aimlessly swinging feet in their clean white sneakers and brightly colored laces. Could it really be true that the good guys, the heroes, didn't always manage to save the day? Despite the fact that only this afternoon she'd seen with her own eyes that Spider-Man was everything she remembered – friendly, larger than life, colorful and incredibly fast – she was feeling forlorn at the moment, as though her hero had lost a little of his luster.

Then something tightened in her chest as part of her rebelled at the idea of giving up on Spider-Man. Surely it was a good thing that heroes still saved the day some of the time? Surely that must count for something? Maybe even a hero like Spider-Man couldn't save everybody all the time, so maybe, sorta like Mayday herself, he just did the best he could, in between eating chili dogs and yucky green vegetables, and giving out typically grown up advice to kids in school yards before rushing off to save the day for somebody else.

Anyway, he was real and she had really seen him. A bubble of happiness welled up inside at the thought.

Mayday closed her eyes and tried to call up a mental picture of him standing tall on the top of the courtyard wall. Suddenly, though, she was distracted by the sound of quick footsteps crunching across the gravel toward her. She opened her eyes.

"You again!" said Mayday delightedly when she saw who was approaching. She got to her feet on top of the monkey bars, held out her arms, wiggling her fingers, and, after a second, jumped. Her dad caught her easily and set her on her feet, ruffling her bangs. "Hey, kiddo," he said by way of a greeting. "I'm sorry I'm so late."

"What happened to you?" Mayday asked, scrutinizing her father. He was looking even more rumpled and disheveled than usual, and his normally thick brown hair appeared to be damp.

Her father made a face. "I got a bit messed up at a construction site I happened to be passing through. It was near a pool, and ... well, it's a long story." With a cheerful smile, he offered his hand and Mayday slipped hers confidingly into it. The two of them began to walk back to the big shade tree at the other end of the school yard to check in with a daycare worker and to sign Mayday out in the big book.

"It's okay that you were late," said Mayday, giving him a sunny smile in return. "I was having so much fun I didn't want to go home before now anyway." Then she grew worried. "How come you're here again? Is Aunt May still sick?"

Dad shook his head. "No, she was actually feeling much more like her normal self when I talked to her at lunchtime," he replied. "But I told her that I wanted to pick you up myself again today." As he spoke, he kept looking at Mayday sideways, as though he were waiting for something.

Mayday gave her father a sly look. "Does that mean more ice cream?" she asked hopefully.

Dad just looked back at her. "Did you have another bad day today?" he challenged.

Mayday dimpled. "No, I had an amazing day. Dad, you'll never guess who I met."

Her father cast his eyes down at his shoes and smiled a small, secretive smile. "Oh, you never know." Then he looked back into her face, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he grinned at her. "If it's so impossible for me to guess, why don't you save us both time and tell me about it?" His eyes were warmer and bluer than the sky.

Mayday took a deep breath, hardly able to contain her giddiness. "Spider-Man!" she whispered excitedly.

"You're kidding!" said Dad, widening his eyes almost comically in surprise. "Now, how did you happen to meet him – was he doing something heroic?"

"Nah," Mayday said. "He stopped to say hello, and spun us a web to play on." At that instant, they reached the big oak tree. A bored counsellor handed Dad the daybook and he wrote in it for a minute before handing it back to her with a polite smile. While her dad was busy with the book, Mayday went over to the wall and picked up her backpack, sliding her arms through it to put it on. Not too far away, a tower clock struck six o'clock. As Dad took her hand again to lead her out of the school yard, Mayday mentally counted off the gongs.

"So," said Dad, giving her yet another quick sidelong look, "What did you think of him?" He seemed like he was keen to hear her answer.

"Oh, he's awesome, even more cool up close than ever, Dad," Mayday confided. "Not 'cause of anything he said – he talks pretty much like any old grown-up, y'know – but just 'cause of who he is."

As they were walking, Dad began absently running his thumb back and forth over the line of tiny calluses, the result of all her climbing, on the center of Mayday's palm. He looked thoughtful for a minute before glancing down at her with another warm smile. "And who is that?" he inquired. She liked that about Dad. Unlike her busy teacher and some other grownups she'd encountered, he always looked like he was really interested in what you were saying. And he cared about things like heroes, monsters and cartoons.

"Well, he's nice," said Mayday candidly. "And he's neat. At the end he just zoomed away, like – Whoosh!" She used her free hand to demonstrate the whooshing motion. "He's kinda ordinary too," she added, remembering the irritating comment about healthy food. "But he's still a hero anyway."

Dad gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Yes, I guess so," he agreed quietly as they walked through the open gates of the school courtyard.

The End

A/N: Thanks for reading!

A/N (6/23/05): Not that I'm complaining or anything, but I do find it funny that this story has received 300 hits since it went up (yay!) and 15 reviews (thanks again to all of you who reviewed); I'm glad people are reading it, but I'd also love to know what you think of the story. If you have a moment, please consider reviewing.