(Disclaimer- I own nothing in the Spider-Man franchise. Enjoy!)

Something didn't feel right.

Peter didn't notice it at first. His usual routine of school, tending to Aunt May, and fighting crime wasn't disturbed for a good while. But one morning, as he swooped past the towers of Manhattan to get to his morning class in time, he had a strange feeling in his hands.

His webs felt slippery.

Peter's thoughts froze, and he leaped onto a rooftop to assess the texture. As he crouched on the edge, he ran his fingers through fibers of one of his most prized creations, analyzing this particular batch of spider goo. It was dangerous to lose grip on the one thing holding him from a fatal three hundred foot drop, and therefore a lethal mistake to ruin the formula at any time. But after a few minutes, he was unable to find what caused the web strings to feel as slick as oil.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered to himself, standing up and crawling down the wall into an alley. But as he made his way down, he noticed that the building felt mildly slippery as well.

"What the- what?" he exclaimed as his feet finally hit the solid floor. He went out onto the sidewalk and walked final block before reaching his school, adjusting his backpack strap as he entered the building. But even then, the texture returned, causing him to stop in the middle of the hallway.

Finally, it dawned upon him.

He took a good look at his hands, noticing that they were shiny with sweat. He raised a brow and rubbed them onto his jeans. And just like that, the problem was solved.

"At least I know it's not the webs," he sighed before arriving at his first class. "I guess I'm stressed about the test and don't even know it."

He completed his school day as usual, which included being shoved into a locker, acing a science exam, and itching to leave just like all the other kids. As soon as he finally escaped after the final bell, however, he heard new ones wailing, signaling alarm from a nearby bank. He groaned, wishing he could catch just one break to be able to visit the new bookstore that had opened a few blocks from his house. But with a sense of duty, he removed his suit from his backpack and began slinging away, maneuvering his way between buildings to get to the source of the noise.

To his horror, his palms were once again covered in sweat, causing his grip on his webs to become loose.

Peter leaped onto the wall of the bank and rubbed his hands on his suit as fast as he could before launching himself onto the back of one of the robbers that had just escaped with sacks of stolen money.

"Going somewhere?" he quipped, knocking the man over before launching his webs into another robber still inside the doorway. "That's not how you take out a loan."

A third man sitting in the getaway car a few meters away rolled down his window to point his gun at Spider-Man, soon rendered paralyzed inside a sticky white cocoon. Peter then knocked the other two men out cold before plastering them to the walls of the bank. He picked up the sacks of money and noticed that his grip had now returned to normal, placing them next to the criminals before he made his escape.

Before the cops could come, he let out a whoop and returned to the skies, which he instantly regretted. The further he rose into the skyline, the less he was able to keep a stable hold on his webbing. Soon, he was struggling to swing normally- his arms slightly wobbled when he shot his next round of fibers, he nearly landed face first into a few apartment windows, had to practically use super strength just to keep himself holding onto the webs, and on top of it all, he couldn't look down.

Something about looking down made it worse.

Huffing and puffing from one of his worst swinging sessions he'd had since he first learned the skill, he landed in someone's garden, unable to keep it up until he reached home. He pulled off his suit after crouching in the bushes and stuffed it into his bag before hopping over the fence to avoid a trespassing charge. Judging from his location, he guessed that he had at least made it three fourths of the way to his house, and only had to walk for twenty more minutes to his destination. But for the life of him, he couldn't wrap his mind around how much he now struggled at something so simple. He hoped it was just a fluke.

There wasn't anything stressful on his mind at the moment, after all.

The Green Goblin, despite his intelligence, realized his impulsivity was the cause of his failures. One particular failure he lamented was his inability to catch New York City's famous webslinger, time and time again. At first, it frustrated him that the wall-crawler so easily slipped through his sharp fingers, but he then realized that the definition of insanity was trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. And as insane as he was, he preferred to be the kind of madman who was functional. Switching tactics would mean that he would no longer speed through the skies, hoping to catch the superhero with a weapon from his hoverboard. No, it was time to pick a more discrete approach.

And on a Friday evening, he was doing just that, crouching quietly atop a hospital tower near the bank.

Normally he didn't bother interacting with boring civilians- what use could they have for him?- but he realized that it didn't take big mafia guns and corrupt underground kingpins to lure out the desired spider. All it took was an easily accessible crime, and paying those two homeless men on the street loads of cash to rob a bank hardly took any effort. All he had to do was wait for Spider-Man to arrive on the scene.

Not to fight, but rather, to study. Know thy enemy, and all. He had a solid appreciation for the classics.

And what he found, he considered very unusual.

Spider-Man wasn't on his A-game today. Oh sure, he knocked out the bad guys as quickly as he came, but that wasn't the point of interest anymore. As Goblin watched the webslinger make his way in and out the scene, he noticed that his enemy visibly appeared to be struggling. His form was poor, he had to grip his webs multiple times, and nearly smacked himself into a billboard on occasion. Was he in a rush? Did something startle him? Whatever it was, it didn't affect the fluidity of his motion when he took care of the actual crime. So far, none of this was making sense.

The Goblin watched as the hero disappeared into the distance, unwilling to pursue him just yet. Whether it was temporary or something more long term, something was wrong with Spider-Man, and a new window of opportunity had opened.

All it would take was a watchful eye.