Chapter Forty-Two: The Big Bucks

"This is about that e-mail you sent, Peter," Robbie said as he lowered himself into the chair behind the desk in his office. Peter was grateful that he was sitting, because Robbie was intimidatingly tall and he always felt like an ant next to him. If it wasn't for his kind eyes and easy smile, Peter would have avoided this meeting altogether.

Peter sighed. "About a full-time position? No more freelance?"

Shrugging, Robbie answered, "Well..."

Of course not. Peter was about to drop onto his knees and burst into a soliloquy about how his old boss turned into a giant, ravenous lizard that ate his own family and now, unemployed, he was eternally poor and destined to never pay his college fees. However, Robbie kept talking.

"It hit me when I read that e-mail. It made me remember all your other ones. Your prose has this...dry, sarcastic wit to it. Have you ever thought about journalism, Peter?"

Peter blinked rapidly. "Uh, what?"

"As a career."

"Well. To be honest...no. Never."

Robbie started fiddling with a pen sitting on his desk. "The Bugle has room for journalists, or photojournalists, who have a deep understanding and passion for certain fields. Jonah's trying to expand the readership by..."

"Toning down the sensationalism?" Peter chimed in, hoping desperately that this meant no more hit pieces on Spider-Man.

Robbie nodded with a smile. "Yeah. Exactly. I hired a pop culture writer the other day. A handful of new sports ones last week." He then reached for a sheet of paper on the table and handed it to Peter. "Know anything about this?"

Peter hesitantly accepted it and had a gander. It was a crew photo of NASA's Hermes mission, a state-of-the-art sample expedition that was decades in the making. Landing on an asteroid from another solar system as it passed by Earth to study it...sounded like something the Fantastic Four should be doing.

Peter suddenly snapped back to reality. "The Hermes mission, right? I've been watching the livestreams...man, it's insane."

Robbie smiled. "I want you at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport when the craft touches down on Saturday. Write me a story, work in some interviews, get some pictures."

"W-What?"

"Peter, I'm giving you a shot. I don't really have a science guy on staff. If you pull this off...well, this could be about a permanent position."

Peter almost pushed up out of his seat and stood there with some kind of burning passion in his eyes. Well...he did. He did that. He was going to watch NASA's Hermes mission come back from doing cool science stuff on an interstellar asteroid? With Peter's recent sting of bad luck (recent being the last 20 years of his life) this sounded too good to be true. This was a real chance to make a stable living...to provide for Aunt May...to take Annabelle to a fancy restaurant that neither of them would like...that is, if she'll take him back after being a complete tool.

Peter contained the urge to leap across the desk and give Robbie a big, sloppy smooch on the forehead, 'cause that would be weird and he'd probably get fired before even getting the job. "Robbie...thank you so much. I won't let you down!"

"I know you won't," Robbie added with a smile.

Peter's attention went back to the Hermes Mission. "Okay I get that Jonah wants to find new angles on things...but why cover this? He seems like the kind of guy who'd want me to write about how robots are gonna steal people's jobs and take over the world."

Robbie sighed. "Look at the photo again, Peter."

He snatched the sheet up from the desk and looked at the crew members standing in front of the Hermes spacecraft. There, a handsome, brown-haired guy who looked just as American as Steve Rogers. The annotation had his full-name in there; John Jameson. "Of course. Jonah's son is an astronaut?"

"I'm surprised you haven't already heard about it. Jonah won't shut up about him. You're gonna have to be a little more observant if you want to be a journalist."

Peter shrunk in his seat. He was desperate for a job. And no, Avenging wouldn't cut it. If he decided to stop focusing on the small problems and only worried about the giant intergalactic threats, who was gonna stop a little corner store from being mugged in the outskirts of New York? Who was going to talk a kid off the top of a building or save a dog from traffic? Peter respected the Avengers for focusing on the bigger picture, but if everyone was doing that, there would be no world worth saving. The little things mattered too. Helping an old lady find her way without being assaulted was just as important as fighting an angsty god with a weird helmet.

He knew that in the grand scheme of things, he didn't have anything to offer the Avengers. People just as smart, strong, and fast as him were already there. The people on the street here didn't have anyone like that.

The only person who would benefit from Peter working as an Avenger would be himself, and that meant it wasn't the right thing to do.

No, New York needed Spider-Man.

But this job...was it Peter Parker's big break? A chance for him to make money doing what he liked and continue to be the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man? It was the perfect opportunity...but somehow, Peter knew that it wasn't going to be that simple at all. It never was in his life.