Spider-Man: Close To Home

Chapter 11: First Patrol

One Month Later…

It was finally time to reveal Spider-Man to New York. After testing his limits the best he could in secret, he finally felt confident enough to go out there and start doing what a friendly neighborhood superhero should do…

"Hello, New York!" Peter shouted out as he jumped off of the building, shooting out a web and diving into a swing. He whooped as he jumped up into a slow backflip, making his way down the road and keeping on a lookout for crime…

"Hey, that guy stole my sandwich!" A hefty gentleman shouted as he rushed out of a sandwich after a trashy looking guy in raggedy clothes.

"Oh boy." Peter muttered to himself, turning himself around in the air and swinging the other way. He grunted a bit as he made his way ahead of the chase, landing in a slide in front of the perpetrator.

"What in the God's name?!" The guy exclaimed, stopping in his tracks.

Peter quickly turned and shot a web at the sandwich, flinging it towards him. The sandwich rolled out of its wrapper, and it went into the air. Peter yelped as he jumped out to catch it. At the same time, the guy turned around to run.

"Oh no you don't!" Peter shouted, turning and shooting another web to yank him from the back. The guy was thrown back and skidded backwards on his back.

"Aw god!" The guy groaned, turning awkwardly onto his side.

"Here you go, man!" Peter tossed the sandwich back to its rightful owner. He reached out to catch it. It suddenly bobbed out of his hands and fell to the floor. There was silence between them for a moment…

"Hey, man! Come on!" The hefty man groaned. Peter flinched and quickly jumped into a swing.

"Have a good day, man! Sorry 'bout that!" He shouted back before quickly swinging over a building and to another street.

"Woah… That doesn't look good." Peter commented, looking down from his perch atop a building. From there, he could see police sirens chasing after a speeding car that was trying to escape the pursuit.

Peter took a breath and jumped outwards, shooting out a web and swinging after the pursuit in progress. He shot webs from both hands and turned a hard corner, flipping his feet forward and speeding up, allowing him to near the criminals' car.

"What the hell is that?! Do we shoot it?!" One of the cops exclaimed, looking up out of his window. They weren't sure how to react.

Peter swung towards the middle of the road, landing atop a streetlight. He shot off several webs towards the car, holding onto them tightly. The car slowed some, and Peter's light perch began to lurch forward as Peter tried to play tug-of-war with the speeding car.

The police cars suddenly hit their brakes in order to not slam into the car. One of them skirted past the car, breaking Peter's webs. This threw Peter off balance, but at the same time, the car, whose tires had been spinning the entire time, shot forward again without control.

After swinging side to side a bit, the car sped onto the wrong side of the road and crashed into several other cars, creating a chaotic pile-up. Peter's eyes widened, as he realized he was going to have to act quickly in order for as few people as possible to get seriously hurt.

"Oh god!" Peter explained as he jumped forward, swinging to the pile-up. Immediately he saw 4 different cars that had been affected by the hit, and there were numerous people that needed help getting out.

Peter started with the criminals, using his webs to pull their car off of the other cars. He pulled the doors open and started pulling the perpetrators out. In their daze, they didn't really fight back. Peter was quick to web them all together, leaving them for the cops to collect.

Peter then turned his attention to the other cars. One by one he jumped from car to car, helping people to open their car doors and get out. The victims all thanked him quietly as they got out while pedestrians recorded the event on their phones and the police officers watched with confused expressions.

"Um… Stop where you are, you in the red mask…?" One of the officers said, stepping forward. Peter turned towards the officers, stepping forward casually with his hands up to show that he wasn't threatening them.

"It's alright, officers, sirs. I got 'em." Peter said, holding two thumbs up. The officers paused for a bit, looking at one another.

"Who are you?" One of them asked.

"Oh, you know, I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is all! Here to lend a hand," Peter said with a nod, shooting a web out and pulling himself into a swing. "Catch you on the flip side!" Peter called back as he swung away.

"What's with the weird outfit?" The guy standing next to Peter on the subway asked him as he texted Ned on his phone. He looked up from his phone and turned his head towards the gentleman, still wearing the mask to hide his face.

"Oh, uh… I'm a superhero. It's kind of a new development right now, you know?" Peter replied simply. The guy nodded slowly.

"Oh… Alright. What's your superhero name?"

"Spider-Man. I'm Spider-Man," Peter said, shaking hands with the guy, who hesitantly shook his hand in return. "See? I even printed a spider on my vest." Peter pointed out the faded spider that was printed on the chest area of his vest.

"Yeah, I do see that. So what're your 'powers', Mr. Man?" The guy asked with a bit of a mocking chuckle. The man couldn't see, but Peter was rolling his eyes under his goggles.

"Um, super strength, super agility, sticky hands and feet, and that's kind of what I'm working with right now. The rest is kind of revealing itself so far. I also made these web shooters so I can shoot webs, but they kinda ran out… That's not really a superpower, just figured I'd throw that in there."

"Ah… Cool. That's…unique, I guess." The man commented, speaking with Peter as though he were talking about a character in a game.

"You want to see my powers? It's pretty cool." Peter offered, taking a step back to clear some room for himself. Quickly, the man shook his head and held a hand out for him to stop.

"No no no!" He quickly protested.

However, Peter went ahead and jumped upwards, slapping his hands against the roof of the subway car. As he stuck to it, this quickly caught the attention of everyone inside, and they all immediately began to take steps away from him. Peter placed his feet on the roof too.

"See? Spider-Man!" Peter laughed, pointing at himself with his thumb as he turned to face the man he had been speaking with, "Get a picture now before I blow up and become, like, an Avenger," Peter laughed again before striking a pose for the people pulling out their phones.

"Oh yeah, I'm on my way up." Peter said to himself…