(The Loud House and all other Nicktoons related brands/titles are legally owned by Nickelodeon)
(Spider-Man and all other Marvel related brands/titles are legally owned by Marvel and Disney)
(The following is a work of fanfiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information, and material of any kind contained herein are for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.)
This fanfiction is dedicated to the memory of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
Without them, there would be no Spider-Man. Excelsior!
- Issue #01 -
All in a Day's Work
The City of Royal Woods, Michigan. 6:30 P.M.
Early September.
MacDonald Gargan, or just simply "Mac" for short, leaned against the side wall at the mouth of an alleyway, the brown glass bottle that he held in his right hand was nearly half empty. He looked down and examined it. He grinned. Best not let it go to waste. Bringing the edge of the bottle to his lips, he guzzled down the liquid contents through his gullet until it was all empty. After he was finished, a loud belch erupted from his throat, and he made a satisfied groan. Suddenly, a small but audible meow had caught his attention, noticing that it had come from the opposite side of the alley entranceway.
A small black cat rested on top of a dirty garbage can. The man frowned and he growled angerly under his breath.
"Shut up, you mangy hairball!" Gargan snarled, throwing the empty glass bottle towards the cat's direction. Luckily, the bottle had missed and it smashed into multiple shattered pieces against a brick wall instead. The black cat shrieked in fright, hissing at the nasty crook and then it scurried away into the darkness.
"I hate cats," he groaned rather annoyedly, rubbing the back of his brown-haired head. Mac Gargan wrinkled his nose and he made a hard sniff.
Looking up into the night sky above, he noticed that the twilight clouds immediately began to clear up, allowing him and the rest of the city the full tranquil view of what was left of the depleting light that came from the setting sun in the distance. His crusted lips formed into a smile, revealing his yellowish, un-brushed teeth. At least it ain't raining tonight. So that's a plus. Mac Gargan peeked his brown-haired head around the corner and examined the inner city.
Though this part of the neighborhood was mostly re-built, there were a couple derelict buildings that remained. Next to the near-gentrified architecture of the new, the old places now almost looked like they came from an old-fashioned horror movie. Hard to believe that Royal Woods use to be your typical small town many decades ago, he thought to himself. Nowadays, it don't look that much different from back home in Great Lakes City. At least the residential areas were left untouched.
After about five minutes of standing there, leaning against the wall, he noticed from the corner of his eye, a lone figure, one that was interestingly not like the others, was heading up towards his direction. To his amazement, it was a young adult woman, a very beautiful one at that, so modest and clean. This woman happened to be fair-skinned and seemed like she was at least almost thirty years old, with short curly brown hair, and a pair of rounded white glasses were adorned on her head.
Hanging from her right shoulder was a black purse with a single laced strap. The clothes she wore consisted of a blackish gray jacket, a V-necked yellow shirt and a pair of tight-fitting, gray-blue jeans and black stiletto boots. A predatory smile beamed across his face as he stared at her hourglass figure that seem to hypnotically sway back and forth at each step she took.
Why was a sweet-looking cutie like her strutting her stuff around in this part of town? You would have to be totally insane to do something like walking around here at this part of town when it was close to nightfall. It was almost like she was begging to be robbed. Pushing himself off from the side wall of the alley, he had begun to follow after her, determined to get a hold of her before anyone else could spot them. Luckily for him, there was hardly anybody around within the vicinity.
He never counted on being caught in the act by any upstanding civilian who would dare tread in the middle of a neighborhood as this one. And that was all good enough for him. Once after Gargan had reached her until he was now directly behind her, he quickly and roughly caught the young woman by her left arm and threw her up against the back of the right-side wall of the alley, one that was perfectly away from being close to the sidewalk and out in the open. His hand wriggled with anticipation. Before the woman could comprehend what in the world was happening, he placed his other hand over her mouth, silencing her quite firmly.
"If you so much as even try to scream," he snarled threateningly at her.
The young woman stared at the crook, her stomach turning into liquid, her knees into rubber, and her heart now pounding hard against her heaving chest. She watched helplessly as he pulled out a long cylindrical object from his back pocket. The woman saw the object and she realized much to her horror very quickly that it was the handle of a switchblade. He pushed the button and the blade shot out from inside. He pointed the tip of the blade close at her delicate throat.
Beads of sweat began to form around her smooth brow.
"W-What do you want from me?" she whimpered frightfully. "Y-You want money? I swear, I d-don't have a lot!" A low guttural chuckle escaped from his throat.
"Oh, I ain't here for your chump change, sweetness!" he chortled, his raspy voice laced with a dangerous sense of lust. She looked at him in confusion, that is until she saw the way he was licking his crusted lips. And that was when she realized that he had something far more sinister in his twistedly perverted mind. She felt like wanting to cry. A tiny sob escaped from her quivering lips. But then, her attention had been taken away. The goon looked at her confusingly.
From there, he finally realized that her eyes were no longer focused on him, but rather, she was gazing up behind him, and saw something peculiar emerging from the hovering shadows. The crook turned around and did the same, and what he saw was something that which he didn't think he would ever see. From within the darkness above them, a large human-sized figure was seen nimbly crawling down the brick wall, as if it were a giant spider.
"Now this is just sad," the figure said, before leaping down from the wall and on the ground to his feet. The figure stood to be approximately more than five feet in height and appeared to be male, judging from the physique, for his body was quite lean, but some muscles could be seen beneath the spandex-made suit he wore.
The mask, gloves, and boots were colored red, as was the design that spread upwards across his midsection and down his outer arms, while the legs and outer torso were a shade of blue. The angulated eyes of the mask were large and white, and a thin black web pattern covered up all the red portions of the suit. And finally, a stylized yet simple black spider emblem the size of a large fist was centered just above his chest.
"Didn't your parents teach you to know better than to harass a lady?" the figure stated, folding his arms across his chest, and then tapping his foot. "They must be soooo proud of you."
Gargan's eyes, as well as the woman's, bulged in understanding of who the two of them were now staring at. Sweat the size of bullets began to pour from Gargan's face, as the emotions that he was feeling were beginning to be replaced with a new-found emotion that he had not felt in an exceedingly long time. The growing sense of fear and dread. The young woman, on the other hand, looked at the colorfully costumed individual with a growing sense of hope and relief within her heart.
"No way...!" Gargan cried out fearfully. "Y-Your real...! You're... You're..."
"Spider-Man..." the woman whispered, holding her hands to her own chest.
"Yep, that's me," the aforementioned hero proclaimed proudly, striking a dramatic pose. "The Amazing Spider-Man, saving damsels in distress and looking good while doing it."
"K-Keep away from me, you f-freak!" Mac Gargan exclaimed, holding his switchblade out at the costumed web-head. Spider-Man's demeanor suddenly changed in a matter of seconds.
"Oh my gosh, is that a knife?!" Spider-Man cried out fearfully, cowering down on his knees to the floor, his hands held up defensively. "You found my weakness! It's small knives! Please, mister! Anything but knives!" Gargan had become a bit confused by this sudden display.
Seriously? All it took was one simple look at his knife to make this wall-crawling freak lose himself? Wow, this was surprisingly easier than Gargan had realized. Or so he had thought. Now with confidence, the goon suddenly let out a poor excuse of a battle cry and swung the blade out at him. But the masked vigilante was fast, moving with such lithe, skittering grace that appeared barely human, jumping high up into the air, landing straight over where Gargan had just been.
Gargan turned around to face the web-slinger and before he could even have the chance to react, Spider-Man suddenly drew his left hand out in front of him, pressing both his middle and ring finger against his palm, and then a large gray-white ball of silk webbing shot out from his wrist in an instant. The web-ball connected to Gargan's blade-wielding hand and pinned it up against the brick wall. The web was surprisingly strong, and also quite sticky to match.
The criminal's heartrate started to beat very fast in his heaving chest now.
"So simple," Spider-Man declared. "Hard to believe you actually fell for that."
"What the heck is this stuff, man?!" Gargan exclaimed. Spider-Man raised an eyebrow underneath his mask. His shoulders slumped.
"Seriously, dude?" he chided almost annoyedly. "I think you should easily know what a spiderweb looks like when you see it." Desperate, Gargan went for Plan B. He quickly tried to reach into his other pocket, and he pulled out a large object that glistened from the light of a nearby streetlamp, which was revealed to be silver-steeled, snub-nosed revolver.
"Oh no you don't!" In another fast motion, Spider-Man shot out a single, thick strand of web at the little but deadly firearm, and he yanked it hard out of Gargan's hand, the pistol vanished into the growing darkness of the alley. And then, the red and blue costumed web-slinger unleashed two more web-balls directly at Gargan's feet, sticking them to the wall as well. Gargan struggled to break free, but the webs were a lot stronger than they appeared to be, almost as strong as steel cables.
"Someone get me out of here!" the goon called out. "Get this stuff off me!"
"And now for the finishing touch," the web-slinger had said.
Using both of his hands, Spider-Man had let out a huge spray of thick web strands that interlinked with each other to create a giant net shaped just like a spider's web within a matter of seconds, covering up the entirety of Gargan's body, leaving only his head completely untouched. The two-bit hoodlum growled in frustration as he continued to try and struggle against the web but had found next-to-no success. This stuff truly was strong as steel cables.
"And that, my friends, is how you put the word zing in amazing," Spider-Man stated. "Now until mommy gets home from work, you are gonna stay on that wall and think about what you've done, young man." Upon hearing that little taunt, the young woman could not help but make a humorous giggle a little bit. Spider-Man turned around to face her.
"You okay, ma'am?" he asked concernedly. Without even thinking, the woman rushed forward at him, and she embraced the wall-crawler into a grateful hug, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"Thank you so much, Spider-Man!" she expressed gratefully to him. "You're the best!"
"Eh, it was nothing," Spidey answered in a flattered tone. "It was just all in a day's work for your friendly neighborhood-" And before he could even get the chance to finish the rest of his sentence, the woman released her embrace, but then she started to get closer to his face. Unexpectedly, she planted a soft yet firm kiss right on his left cheek. This sudden action had taken the web-slinger completely off guard. His eyes widened underneath his mask.
"W-W-What was that for?" he stammered a little bit. The woman smiled adorably.
"Oh, just a little token of appreciation for my Good Samaritan," she stated, flashing him with a flirty wink. Even though she could not see it, but his face was actually blushing almost the same shade of red like his mask.
"Dah, ha, ha, aw shucks," Spider-Man muttered bashfully, impersonating Beaky Buzzard, the funny vulture character from Looney Tunes. This got another cute giggle out of the woman. But then, a voice suddenly spoke out, interrupting the moment.
Gargan...
"Let me out of here, you wall-crawling freak!" the goon grunted irritably. "I swear, when I get out of this thing, I'm gonna make you wish that you were never-" Spider-Man swiftly turned around, now a little bit annoyed from such a rude interruption.
With his back now turned, the woman got a clear view of what appeared to be another spider emblem, located between her hero's shoulder blades. She noticed that it was red like the rest of his suit and also a lot bigger than the small black spider on his chest. Spider-Man lifted his hand up and shot out another web-ball from his wrist, covering Gargan's entire mouth as a means to make him shut up for good. The web-slinger turned back around to the woman.
"You shouldn't have to worry about him now," Spider-Man assured her. "He should stay up there at least until the police arrive. Try to be more careful when you're walking around sketchy places like this one, alright? You never know if I might not be around next time." The woman inclined her head into several nods.
"I will, Spidey," she gladly said to him. As he was about to turn and leave, he stopped himself for a moment and faced the woman once again.
"Hold on a moment, I don't believe I caught your name yet."
"It's Belle," the woman introduced almost shyly. "My name is Belle." Spider-Man smiled underneath his mask.
"Belle, huh? Like as in Beauty and the Beast?" he asked her. She smiled delightfully at the assumption.
"Eh, you could say that." she said with another flirty wink. Spider-Man chuckled good-naturedly.
"Well then, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Belle," he said before giving her a saluting gesture. "I'll be seeing you around." And with that, Spider-Man turned back out to the opened street. With an audible THWIP!, he shot out two long silky strands of web from both his wrists, catapulting himself high up into the air like a slingshot.
An awestricken Belle watched on with admiration in her lovely eyes until the costumed hero finally disappeared from her sight and into the darkened city skyline.
Almost half an hour later...
The cool night air filled his lungs as he took in a long deep breath through his mask and into his nose.
What a peaceful dull evening. he thought to himself. Okay, sure a quiet night may have its moment of dullness at times, but one cannot deny that they were still always a given. And tonight was no different at all, even with the addition of having super spider powers that enabled one to swing around or crawl their way up a wall to the tallest building there was possible to get a far better experience. He stood high up at the very top of the aforementioned tallest building within the city, gazing down at the light-covered streets far below.
Oh, Royal Woods. Just where in the world would you be now without me?
He then took in another deep breath of air until his lungs were completely full as he slowly rose both his hands up above himself. And in that instantaneous moment, he leapt off from the edge of the building, swan-diving straight down to the teeming streets below. As he reached to be about several meters close, and with impeccable timing, he shot forth another line of web. The other end of the web-line stuck itself to a nearby building, pulling him up and allowing him to swing at a very great distance.
"YAW-HOO!" he cried out excitedly at the top of his lungs. "I'M KING OF THE WORLD!" Oh, how he loved web-swinging across the city. The absolute rush, the feeling of the wind blowing against his face, the heart-pumping adrenaline that flowed through his body. It was like he was riding on a roller-coaster, but without the tracks. After shooting out another web-line, he held onto the end as he started to run across the side of one building that was almost nothing but clear glass.
Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
With the strength of his legs, he propelled himself towards another direction, covering a lot of ground before web-zipping towards a nearby crane that stood closely within the confines of a construction site. The many people walking down the streets watched him with awe, filming him with their cellphones as he swung by with such acrobatic grace and fashion.
"Hey, look! It's the Spider-Man!" one civilian shouted, pointing up at him. The aforementioned web-slinger smirked underneath his red, web-patterned mask as he shook his head. It's just Spider-Man, dude. There's no 'the'.
"Looking good, Spidey! You da man!" another citizen shouted towards him. Spider-Man showed his gratitude with a simple wave of his free hand and then a tip-of-the-hat gesture at the person. Back at ya! It was always so awesome to hear people cheer his name with such love and admiration. It almost made him feel like a celebrity. Well, if superheroes could even be counted as such.
But of course, just like every other celebrity, be it from Hollywood or on the internet, Spider-Man was not without his own fair share of haters and critics as well. As he started to swing pass Giovanni Changs Italian Chinese Bistro, a very familiar elderly woman with large black sunglasses and riding on a mobility scooter noticed him up above and then sneered her lips at him.
"Get a real job, you menace!" she shouted at him with clear disdain in her old voice, all the while shaking her fist. Nobody could see it, but when he heard that, he simply rolled his eyes underneath his mask. Nice to see that you're in a cheery mood like always, Scoots. For a little while now, he continued to sustain his smooth momentum; swinging, running, jumping, zipping, and doing acrobatic spins across the skyline from one part of the city to the next until he now found himself in another very familiar place in town.
After effortlessly dropping down, his feet landing soundlessly on the gray concrete sidewalk, he glanced over at one side and noticed a large property of land with a tall iron fence surrounding it. He tilted his head up to look at what appeared to be a large sign just above him and his gaze slightly shifted uneasily when he realized that he was now standing at the front entrance of the Royal Woods Cemetery.
He exhaled with a whelming feeling of hesitance, not because of knowing just how ominous a graveyard can always be at around nighttime. In truth, it was something a little more for very personal reasons. Well, since I'm here anyway. He noticed that a single padlock, greatly aged with time, hanging on a heavy chain link, was keeping the wrought iron gates nice and closed. With great reflexes, he jumped up over the locked gate of the entranceway and landed perfectly on the other side.
Slowly, he eased his way down the stone pathway that led deeper and deeper into the graveyard, eyeballing many of the surrounding tombstones that varied in both shape and size. This place was always so still at around this hour. Coming to this place many times over the last year, he knew exactly which path led to what, knew very well where he was going. It was then that he now found himself in a more familiar part of the cemetery in the northeast side.
Thanks to his enhanced perception, which allowed him to almost perfectly see through the surrounding darkness, he was able to finally reach his destination, locating the one specific tombstone that he was looking for. One that he had recognized instantly, hiding underneath the looming branches of a large oak tree. His heart pounded heavily against his chest.
Making sure that nobody else was around to see him, and also thanks to the surrounding darkness that concealed his presence, he pulled off his mask, revealing to be none other than a young boy in his mid-teens with snow-white hair and blue eyes, along with a chipped tooth. He made a solemn expression as he bent down to one knee to get a better look at the gravestone. He gingerly ran his gloved fingers against the marble surface and over the letters.
"Hey there," he muttered aloud at the headstone, a small but loving smile forming on his youthful face. "It's kind of been a short while since my last visit hasn't it? Sorry about that. It's just that life's been a little bit complicated as of late. But despite that, I'm still trying to do better though." With that, he carefully sat down next to the gravestone onto the cool dry grass.
He looked down at his gloved right hand and the costumed web-slinger carefully analyzed his fingertips, just barely making out the small claw-like spider hairs that easily stuck out through the red spandex of his glove. The next thing he did was slightly pull up the glove to reveal only the lower end of his forearm, noticing the very small web-shaped gland on his bare wrist.
His smile had begun to grow bigger, and he deeply exhaled through his nose, a growing sense of nostalgia starting to ferment every corner of his teenage brain.
"I still can't believe that it's only been that long since I had gotten my powers," he said with a small snort, half to himself and half to the gravestone. "Feels like only yesterday when it all happened. It's crazy how time flies by you really fast, eh?" A small chuckle escaped his throat and he let out a nostalgic sigh. He gazed his blue eyes up at the clear night sky, the stars above twinkling brightly and beautifully.
"I sure came a long way since then, haven't I? Though probably not in the way you thought I would turn out to be, huh?" he said with a small chuckle. He turned his head over to face the headstone once again. His smile switched into a frown. "But then again, the both of us didn't turn out the way we thought we would, right?"
In that moment, a terribly heavy feeling of emotional pain and heartache was staring to grow within his mortal being, almost like a festering disease. He softly draped his arm around the smooth marble structure as if he were putting it across someone's shoulder, and he rested his white-haired head gently against the side of the stone slab. His bottom lip started to quiver.
"I really wish you could be here right now to enjoy nights like this one," he murmured sorrowfully, a terrible lump getting stuck in his throat. "I miss you so much... So, so much..." A small tear escaped from his left eye and trickled down his near reddened face. As he remained where he was, sitting on the cut grass next to the headstone, he gazed back up at the stars above one more time, perfectly in time to notice a shooting star fly across the night sky. Seeing such a beauty had prompted a returning smile onto his face.
He took in another deep breath and leaned back a little bit, but still keeping himself up with his arms.
Who am I? he thought, mentally addressing to the stars as if they were a large audience watching him on a stage play. Are you sure you wanna know? I must warn you; the story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody had told you that this was a happy little tale, if somebody said that I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world, Mr. Somebody lied. But let me assure you, my story is something unlike any other that you may have heard before.
Mine is a tale of discovery, excitement... as well as pain and loss. This is the story of how it all began, of how fate had intervened and changed the course of my life forever. Of how one little bite from one little spider had completely transformed a fifteen-year-old teenage boy into something far greater than he ever was before. Something no human being has ever seen before in the past until now. Something spectacular. Sensational... AMAZING.
My name is Lincoln Albert Loud, and this is my story...
Well, here it is folks. The first chapter of my Spider-Man/Loud House crossover. I sure hope that you guys will like it. I cannot tell you all how excited I am in writing and posting this story for you all to see.
And as you can tell, this is a retelling of Spider-Man's classic origin story, but with the cast of the Loud House. The story will be about 80 to 85 percent like the story, with some notable differences such as the characters, settings, and how it's being written.
And also, I plan on including a lot of different references of Spider-Man media throughout this story, or at least as many as I am able to throw in. Heck, even Lincoln's ending dialogue in this chapter was from the opening of the 2002 Spider-Man movie starring Tobey Maguire. And also, the title of the fic itself is a reference to Amazing Fantasy #15, the one comic where Spidey made his very first appearance on back in 1962.
With that being said, don't forget to send me your reviews and tell me what you guys think if there might be some things that need to be improved or if you like them the way they are.
Until then, have an awesome day. ;)