Chapter Forty-Five: Spider's Shadow

Ever found yourself just spacing out and losing track of time? Peter certainly wasn't a stranger to that. However...slipping out of a trance and suddenly realising he had no idea where he was or what day it was? That was new.

The New York skyline extended across the horizon, washed in the deep black of the midnight sky. Speckled lights of cars, street lights, and buildings twinkled like tiny stars. The beauty of it all almost distracted Peter from the fact that he was hanging on the side of a skyscraper...and had no clue as to how he got there.

"O-Okay..." Peter muttered. He sent his eyes down. He had to be, like, eighty floors up. Yeah...crawling down from up here was gonna take like half an hour. Before he went and dived off the giant building, for some reason, Peter brought his right hand up in front of him and glanced at his wrist.

Suddenly, his stomach twisted. His web shooters weren't on. What the hell happened? He never put on the costume without the web-shooters. Hold on...the costume?

His focus drifted onto his actual arm. To be more specific, what was on it. "What the hell...?" He didn't remember ever having black gloves.

Peter flexed his fingers. He then turned around, seeing that the windows of the building he was attached to were incredibly reflective... He saw that there was not a single speck of red or blue on him. His entire body was covered by a suit as dark as midnight. Whatever it was, it didn't crease or bunch up at all. Like it was...a second skin.

Gone were the webbing patterns that he spent so much time designing and stitching. The only other colour on this suit was white; two teardrop-shaped eyes, and a massive spider emblem plastered over his chest and upper abdomen. The legs of this spider wrapped around his ribs, linking up with an identical symbol on his back.

Peter had to admit, he did have fleeting thoughts about redesigning the suit with this kind of minimalist flavour...but that's all they were. Thoughts.

Then the physical sensations started trailing into his mind. Sure, Spider-Man could stick to walls. But you try holding yourself up on the side of a rock-climbing wall; your muscles needed to support all of your weight whilst gravity was fighting to pull you down.

Right now? Peter felt nothing. No ache, no cramp, nothing.

"I guess I should...go home," Peter mumbled to himself.

Before he turned himself upside down to start the painstaking crawl back to ground level, Spidey dropped a hand from the surface of the skyscraper to peer over his shoulder once again at the streets below. As he hung there, one hand and both feet fixed to wall, his free hand twitched.

He thought about how much time it would've saved if he had his goddamn web shooters on him.

Thwip!

That was it. Peter knew this day would come. He had completely and utterly lost his marbles. It was inevitable, he thought. Eventually, one day, shit would get so crazy that his tiny brain couldn't handle it anymore. This was that day.

A densely-woven web line had been spun directly from the top-side of his hand, right below the knuckles. In disbelief, Peter slowly brought up his other hand and ran it along this strange new webbing.

"Okay..."

Peter was usually a very reasonable guy. He had no idea what this webbing was made of, its tensile strength, or if it was anything more than silly string. He knew that he should just ditch it and climb down the building.

But...there was this urge. An urge to say 'screw it'.

Spidey leapt off the skyscraper. He hurtled toward the street like a human rocket. When the webline was no longer slack, Peter instantly felt its increased elasticity. With his own homemade web fluid, there was always a slightly violent 'snap' when it became taut. Here, there was none.

In a split second, Spidey arced through the air like a pendulum much faster than he was anticipating. He released the webbing.

Peter couldn't help but cry out in shock. He went soaring over one city block, two, three, four, five. Then...the ground came up at him a faster than expected as well.

Skipping across harsh pavement like a rock across water was not fun. Especially when you went barrelling down a damp alleyway and slammed into a dumpster at the end of it. Peter was upside down, his backside imprinted into the metal dumpster, staring outward and rethinking his life.

The wall-crawler slowly rolled over and sprung to his feet. That should've hurt. But it kinda did...but at the same time, it didn't really. Not as much as it should've. Peter looked at the sizeable dent that his butt made in the dumpster and rubbed the side of his head in confusion.

However, a quiet rustling and hushed whispers promptly garnered his attention.

Spidey turned down the length of the alley and saw about six guys staring at him. They were wearing ski masks and some of them were brandishing hammers and crow bars.

Peter started, "You guys didn't...see that, did you?"

The goons, probably planning to jimmy their way into the back of one of the stores, hefted their tools aggressively.

One of them called, "Who the hell are you supposed to be?"

"Uh...Spider-Man?"

"Bro, Spider-Man's not black," came another voice.

Peter was paralysed by confusion for a moment. "Okay there are a few things wrong with what you just said so let's...move on. Put the hardware down and go home," he demanded.

Another one started whispering to his friends. "Hey, if this ain't Spidey, we can probably take him. We just saw him fall on his ass, fer cryin' out loud."

Slowly, the small gang of looters started to encircle the webhead. Peter kept steady and waited for them to make the first move. A sharp chill rumbled through the base of his skull, warning him of incoming danger.

Peter crouched as a crowbar was swung at his head, leapt as a tire iron made a lunge for his knee, and flipped as a set of fists tried to find his side.

The first attack he made was a front kick to a rushing thug. His foot pressed firmly against the man's sternum, and Peter pushed with a reserved amount of strength.

Mirroring how Peter had entered the alleyway, the looter soared ten feet backwards, then skidded across the pavement another ten feet.

Everyone, Peter included, was a little shocked. That kind of a hit was supposed to send him off his feet and onto the ground maybe three feet away...something wasn't right.

Some of the smarter thugs decided to back off after this display, still hesitantly holding their makeshift weapons at the ready.

One decided it was a good idea to give it another go, coming back around with his crow bar. Spidey, as if by instinct, fired a webline at the weapon and pulled it back sharply. Maybe a bit too sharply.

A 'pop' filled the air as the man's wrist was dislocated. Like a group of frightened rats, they all kind of decided to scurry away all at once. It was impressive, really.

Peter glanced down at his hands. Something had happened to him. His powers were...amplified somehow. He was hitting harder and it scared him. Not hurting people all depended on his ability to control his physical exertion. Right now, he could be a danger to everyone close to him. What the hell was going on, and what did this weird suit have to do with it?

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Peter crossed his arms as he leant on the table, eyes fixed on the man seated at it. "So? Any ideas?"

Hank Pym was peering down the lens of a microscope zeroed in on the strange black costume Peter had somehow come into possession of. Peter had chosen to slip into his civilian getup for the time being...until he figured out what the heck this new suit was.

"To be honest with you, I have no idea what I'm looking at," Hank declared in defeat.

"What do you mean?"

"You should've brought this to Reed. He's the one that understands out-there fringe science," Hank added as he pulled his glasses off and rubbed his brow.

Peter shrugged. "Yeah well...he's kind of off-planet...you know, doing out-there fringe science."

Hank grabbed the black costume and ran his fingers along it. "Where did you get this from again?"

Reluctantly, Peter sighed, "That's the thing. I don't know."

"You don't know?" repeated Hank in disbelief.

"Yeah. I just woke up wearing it."

Hank was lost for words. He handed the suit back over to Peter. "Wait for an opinion from Reed, alright? I don't do this weird stuff anymore. These days, I do more nanomaterial synthesis than gallivanting around discovering shiny black suits."

Peter lifted the suit up in front of him and stared into its stark white spider icon. "This might be a bit of a stretch...but what about Bruce?"

"Bruce? Bruce Banner? I live under a rock and even I know he's at the top of America's Most Wanted right now. Fell right off the face of the Earth," answered Hank. "Only Reed will be able to make sense of that mess of molecular architecture."

Peter rolled the black costume up and stuffed it into his backpack.

Hank pushed to his feet. "Peter, do me a favour. Don't put it back on until you know what it is. Got it?"

"Y-Yeah, of course." Peter said distantly, without ever looking up from the suit. There was a hunger in his eyes that Hank didn't like, and he wondered if he should have burnt the damn thing instead of handing it back over...