Peter waved his hand in front of Mina's face a couple times, but she was out cold while the cheap action movie blasted out another explosion sequence on screen. Something about car chases and robbing a bank in Brazil; the plot didn't interest Peter so much as the physics of two cars dragging an entire bank safe around. But this was no time to get distracted. Satisfied that Mina wasn't about to wake up, Peter crept around the couch towards the chair where Mina's helmet sat.
Tonight was going to be the trial run, and he needed whatever he could get to hide his identity. He gently picked up the helmet, then froze when he heard Mina snort and shuffle behind him. Heart pounding in his chest, he looked over his shoulder to see Mina hadn't woken up, but rolled over in her sleep. Peter quietly let out the breath he held and crept back up the stairs to his room.
From there it was a simple matter of putting on his suit, opening the window, and sneaking out the backyard. Peter checked his web launchers one last time, the culmination of two weeks of work and more than a few all-nighters ensuring their success. Making sure the web fluid didn't clog up the device was probably the hardest part. Luckily, he could brush it all off as extra school projects whenever his two roommates asked about his sleep habits.
"Alright, Peter," he said to himself, "Mina's fast asleep, Gina's out for the night, and there's no school tomorrow. Best chance you'll get. Yeah, let's do this." Peter grabbed his backpack and then slid the biker helmet on as he opened his window. He stepped outside, using his hands to attach himself to the wall. Once outside, he took a deep breath and jumped.
Peter winced as he mis-calculated the jump off the balance beam and found himself once again on the mat in a pile of limbs. If it wasn't for his new durability, Peter was sure he would have broken more than a few bones just now. Groaning, he stood back up and looked down at himself.
"Guess Uncle Ben was right. Eating green veggies does build strength," he joked. He then stared back at the beam across the room. "Jumping at full power got me a bit further than I thought, but better a mat than a brick wall." Peter's eyes flicked upwards to the ceiling where the steel beams crossed over it. With only a brief thought, Peter crouched and then leapt upwards like a rocket.
The ceiling was a little over two stories tall, but Peter managed to catch the ceiling with his palms at the peak of his jump. Had anyone walked in at the moment and looked up, they would have thought he was glued to the ceiling by his hands. Peter gasped at how easy it was, and then laughed at how much the support beams looked like monkey bars.
Super-hero sized monkey bars.
It didn't take a genius to figure out the theme of Peter's powers, but it did take Peter a few days of research and long nights of work to figure out how he was going to make the tools he needed. For all the proportional strength and agility of a spider, there was one crucial thing his spider bite neglected to add: web-making. But after a few hours of research and some deep thinking, Peter accepted that it was probably a good thing that he couldn't shoot webs out of his butt.
Puberty was already bad enough.
Peter worked on a webbing formula at school, using whatever research he could get on adhesives, spider silk, and the chemistry involved. It took a few long after-class sessions in the school labs and a lot of ruined glassware, but he eventually created a working formula of "web fluid."
Meanwhile his nights were taken up by designing the wrist launchers and then performing extensive testing to ensure they wouldn't fail when he would need them most. It took quite a few misfires until he had it dialed in perfectly. Good thing the webbing could be dissolved. Peter didn't want to explain any sticky white substances on his clothes to his caretakers.
Peter struggled to stifle a yell as he swung over the streets. He recalled a time when he would get sick on the roller coasters at Coney Island from all the dips and swings (granted he had stuffed his face with hot dogs before riding), but there was no sense of that nausea now. There was only the heightened awareness of himself and his surroundings. Web a billboard, swing. Web a corner, slingshot around it. Web that window, pull, and fly clear over the building!
Was this how Tony Stark felt flying in his suits? No wonder he used them a lot to get around.
It took almost 5 minutes to make a complete, quick circuit around Manhattan. By that time, he had really gotten into the swing of it, pun intended. Now it was time for the real test.
"Now if I was a criminal, where would I go?"
A tingle went through his head (look to your left) and he received his answer: a little alley just off of Chinatown.
It wasn't just his muscles and reflexes that got a boost when he could see the mugging about to happen from over a block away. Peter webbed a water tower and swung himself around towards the alley, catching himself on the wall high above their heads. From there, he could just barely hear their catcalls towards the girl they were following.
"What's this? A defenseless young woman surrounded by five ugly dudes in tracksuits? Well, don't mind if I save the day."
Peter jumped around until he was squatting on a fire escape almost over their heads.
"Get away from me!"
"Come on, baby, we can show you a good time."
"Yeah. You look like you could use a night of fun."
"Don't touch me! I'll… I'll call the cops on you!"
"Hear that? She'll call the cops on us. Us! What are we doing wrong here?"
Peter took that as his moment to chime in. "Probably for spreading that toxic gas you guys call cologne. What is that? Fart de Garbage Dump? I could smell that from Central Park!"
Six pairs of eyes snapped up to look at him.
The leader scowled at Peter. "Beat it, kid. You got no idea who you're messing with."
"Five guys who look and smell like they took a jog through the sewers? I'm shaking in my boots," Peter quipped. "What are you gonna do? Make me need a shower?"
"Bro, don't make me come up there," the man said as he pulled out a gun. "Last chance to run or this is gonna get ugly."
Peter grinned under the helmet. "Oh we're way past ugly. Five times past. But hey, if you want to come up here," Peter fired a thread of web at the man's chest, surprising him, "Then let me give you a lift!" Peter jumped over a nearby sign pole and fell to the ground while the man was launched into the air like a counterweight, yelling as he went. "Oh man, the smell is even worse down here!" Peter said, landing in the midst of the remaining thugs.
"You little shit!" One of the nearest thugs yelled as he tried to throw a punch at the back of Peter's head.
Without even looking, Peter tilted his head to the side, letting the fist fly over his shoulder. He then grabbed the arm by the elbow and tossed the man like a sack of potatoes into one of his buddies. While those two became a pile of limbs, the remaining two had each pulled out a knife.
"You're gonna regret messing with us, bro," one said.
"No one messes with the Tracksuit gang!" the other said.
'Tracksuit Gang? That's what they call themselves?' Peter had to resist the urge to facepalm. Instead, he held his hands up in mock surrender. "Oh no! You found my one weakness: tiny knives!" A twitch of each wrist fired a blob of webbing onto their knife-wielding hands. While they were distracted by trying to free themselves, Peter grabbed one by the collar and threw him into the air. Then in a split second, he spun and swept the legs out from under the other one. While both were in mid-air for that instant, Peter struck both of them with a wide spray of webbing, gluing one to the street and the other onto the wall about a dozen feet up.
Duck, then jump! Peter followed the tingle, ducking first under a wide hook, and then leaping upwards into a backflip to avoid the kick. Landing on the wall as if it were the ground, Peter looked down to see that the last two thugs had gotten back up and thought they could surprise him with a sneak attack.
"Bro, did you put your hand in a subway toilet? I could smell that from a mile away!" Peter mocked.
"Bro, what the fuck?!" one of them said, now shaking in fear. The other picked up some trash and tried to throw it at Peter but missed wildly.
Peter rolled his eyes. "Okay, playtime is over." He shot threads at each of their heads and pulled them into each other, knocking them out with their own thick skulls. Satisfied with his work, Peter dropped to the ground next to the woman who stood in stunned silence and awe. "Hey, can you call the cops? I kinda left my phone on the charger."
The woman nodded and fumbled in her purse for her phone. She must've looked back up at him as he heard her cry out thanks before Peter swung around the building corner and out of sight.
"Not bad for a test run," Peter said to himself. "Definitely need to wear something more flexible next time, or keep it short. Jeans are starting to chafe a bit." Peter made more notes to himself as he swung the rest of the way home.
It was far later into the night when Peter returned home, but the lights were still off and he could faintly see the TV playing through one of the windows. Relieved, Peter shimmied back through his window and started to peel off his suit and gear. Once they were hidden away, Peter crept once more back down the stairs to the living room.
Sure enough, Mina was still dead asleep despite the noise on TV, which now featured a movie about alien robots and lots of explosions. Peter still took care to keep his steps light as he tread across the wooden floor, staying far from the squeaking parts. He reached the side table and set the helmet back where it belonged. Before Peter returned to his room, he grabbed the remote and shut off the TV, and then threw a blanket over Mina.
"Thanks," he whispered, and then left the room, eager to get some sleep.
The TV played movie after movie, dulling the eyes to sleep, but keeping the ears awake.
Movement. Someone sneaking around like a thief.
It was a natural thing to play dead to 'Mina'.
The TV shut off. A blanket was offered. A whisper of thanks given.
When the sounds had faded, an eye cracked open in the darkness to see a motorcycle helmet not quite exactly where she left it.
'What are you up to, Peter?'
A/N: This chapter would have been out sooner but I had my cousin's funeral the weekend before and then ended up working myself down to the point I got physically ill. It was rough to say the least. It's still hard to accept that he's gone and it honestly feels like the world got a little dimmer without his bright, cheery attitude. Still, I'm glad that the last thing we were able to do together was watch No Way Home.
As for the chapter, yes it's a bit short, but there wasn't much more to add to Peter's little training montage when we have some more important developments to get to. I just wanted to throw this out here to start setting up for the next chapter. That may be a while as I want to try to knock out another chapter for my other two stories first. I've been letting them gather dust for too long.
