A/N - I don't own Spider-Man; I do like alternate timelines where something different occurs. My favourite so far is where Peter becomes a spider-powered version of the Punisher.

Anyway, enjoy this little early Christmas Present.

With Great Power….What a Joke!

Spider-Man looked down from his lonely vantage point in the shadows above the city streets. Like all spiders, he had a craving for dark corners and great heights, and New York was perfect if you wanted to go high and just stay in the shadows if you had spider powers. Tonight he just wanted to be left alone, tonight, he just wanted to think.

Sitting on the ledge, Spider-Man could see the headlights of the cars below, signifying the people inside them as they went about their lives. He had often thought they were so small, really. They went about their lives without a care or a thought in the world.

As Spider-Man, he was able to be the man he'd wanted to express his entire life but hadn't been in a position to. When he had gotten his spider powers through the bite, Peter had made dozens of mistakes which cost his Uncle Ben his life. But Uncle Ben had wisely instilled into Peter, With Great Power, comes great responsibility.

With Great Power comes great responsibility. For a long time Peter had done his level best to live up to the mantra, deciding to do some good whereas whenever somebody came up with a drug or a new form of technology, like a suit which would make someone invisible or give somebody incredible strength, they would design some stupid costume and use it to become either a superhero or a supervillain.

Peter leaned back thoughtfully, believing the whole thing was childish not to mention embarrassing. In any case, he could hardly say he was different himself since he had a costume himself, and people mocked him for it.

How many times had Jameson wrecked him or claimed everything he had done was down to him in the first place, so every time a fire happened and he rescued people from it, Jameson would claim he had started the fire in the first place?

But…the mantra of With Great Power comes great responsibility repeated itself over and over again inside his mind.

But he was tired of it. He was sick and tired of risking his life to help people nowadays and getting attacked for it. He was tired of how his double life as Spider-Man caused pain and grief with every single person he loved.

Betty Brant.

Gwen Stacy.

Felicia Hardy.

Mary Jane Watson.

Uncle Ben.

Aunt May.

How many times was he going to forge a relationship with a person, only to let them down? There were times where Peter so despised his life as Spider-Man he wanted to throw the costume away although he would not destroy the web-shooters since they were so versatile, but he didn't; there would always be some super menace raising its head.

But how many times had his uncle's advice caused him nothing but pain and grief?

How many times had he tried to foil a bank heist, only for the cops themselves to point their weapons at him and telling him to stand down so they could arrest him?

Uncle Ben had been a great man, Peter knew that….but the advice had never really helped him.

So he had decided to stop being a hero. When he had been younger, and when he had first started out as Spider-Man, he had considered turning to cat burglary. It would have been so easy, but he hadn't because he had not wanted to hurt his aunt. But with his never-ending problems with finance, Peter was becoming desperate. He had no intention of going for a secondary job, he'd done that so many times in the past but they always ended badly because, once more, Spider-Man duties got in the way.

But now he wished he had chosen cat burglary. His last encounter with Black Cat had impressed him, especially since Felicia had asked why he was a hero when they gave him nothing in turn; in the past, he would have naively said it was right, but now he wouldn't have been so sure. He'd had enough of being the good guy. And he realised it had been on the back of his mind since he had deliberately let Felicia go. He was just so tired of fighting the same battles over and over again and getting nothing out of it in return.

Peter knew he had always wanted some form of recognition; it was one of the reasons he had gone into show biz in the first place, even if the results were not what he'd wanted, but he was just not caring about the mantra anymore. Peter looked down on the streets, wondering how he was going to spin this.

He knew just where to start a burglary career.

He didn't know, didn't care, what Jameson did or said, he just did not care anymore. In any case, it wasn't as if he wouldn't still help people - okay, he'd likely have to adapt some of the Punisher's extreme methods to ensure his enemies stayed down although he wouldn't kill them, just maim them until they were no longer a threat, even though many in the superhero community would turn their backs on him, some of them weren't even friends with him anyway, so what could he lose?