Procrastinating on Lightning-Struck, as per usual. Shorter chapter. I just realised that I'd reached a natural stopping point earlier in the chapter and that's why I was having so much trouble writing past it without the chapter feeling bloated.

#704A3D

Something whistled inches from Miles' ear.

His attacker jumped back, his head on a frantic swivel. "The shit!?"

Miles choked on his tongue, collapsing on top of Bailey's shuddering torso.

He was alive.

Stay still, Jackass!

His heart did back-flips in his chest—doing its absolute best to break through his ribcage as he gasped for breath—but he froze, staring at the man.

"I ain't playin' around, kid!" he growled, shaking his gun for emphasis. The charging sound started again.

As he spun it around the alley, Miles got a proper look at it. It had the general profile of a typical rifle, but overall, it was much bulkier.

It looks like a bad kit-bash.

Right above the trigger was a line of blue LEDs, slowly growing brighter alongside the ramping whine.

Hailee Moore had a NERF gun just like it. In seventh grade.

"Alright," the man finally said, chuckling cruelly. He wasn't in any sort of uniform, just a hoodie and jeans. But it was his walk that truly gave him away. He didn't hold himself like a cop, like his father. Nor a soldier, like Uncle Aaron.

He has the exaggerated swagger of a TikTok 'artist'. Definitely compensating for something.

He pointed the gun at what he thought was Bailey's prone body, right through Miles' neck. "Bad luck, Briggs." He tilted his head towards his shoulder. "Got him. North-west corner, six-side. Just off campus, right-hand alley by the barber's."

The man clearly couldn't see him. Why wasn't he moving out of the way?

Don't. You. Dare.

"Sorry about your friend. But don't worry about it. We'll get him eventually, and you'll have plenty of time to tell him exactly what you think about being abandoned."

JUMP!

Straight from his half-lain position, Miles jumped.

The man yelped, discharging his weapon between Miles' legs as he exploded upwards. Five feet. Ten feet. Twelve.

"Enhanced!" the man shouted, slapping a button besides the trigger-guard. "Multiple possible assailants! I need backup!" He started waving the gun around like a maniac, holding down the trigger.

LEFT!

Miles kicked off a storm drain and sprung to the left. He raised his hands to protect his face… and they were flashing different colours.

Before he could even begin to react, he landed, and his hands all but disappeared. The lines were warped and the texture was blurred slightly, but his skin had been replaced with a perfect replica of the brickwork below.

Upholstered hands with blue lightning palms.

UP!

Miles scrambled forward, shards of mortar pattering off the soles of his shoes. He wasn't just sticking to the wall. It was as if the alley had fallen onto its side—becoming an overhang—and Miles was running straight towards the edge of the world.

A real M.C. Escher staged by Scarface. RIGHT!

Miles dove to the right, fully losing contact with the bricks. The world swung to catch him.

He was back on the ground, less than a foot from Bailey. His bruises were getting worse, steadily growing larger and darker. The one on his neck had spread down to his collar, and was more purple than blue.

The man wasn't even aiming at this point. The recoil from each shot was doing the lion's share of the work moving the barrel. It only made him more dangerous, but at least he was still shooting up.

"Bailey, you've got to get up, man," Miles urged, barely mouthing the words as he cupped Bailey's chin.

BEHIND YOU!

Miles stilled, not even daring to breathe.

Three more people entered the alley.

No, moron, LEAVE!

Two of them raised identical guns. "Christ! Look down!"

They were talking to the shooter. Miles listened anyway. There were splotches of colour and flares, but he wasn't blending in with anything. It was like he'd been rendered on a waterlogged PS2, all blurry and glitched out. If anything, he was more visible than normal.

GET OUT OF THERE!

The man stopped firing. "Oh shit!"

DIVE!

Miles dove straight between his legs. They weren't quite far enough apart to let him through cleanly, and Miles buckled slightly as the man toppled over his back. Miles felt a dull impact—like he'd been hit with a sack of flour—before the man stopped fighting.

"Where'd he go?"

Miles glanced down. The camouflage was working again. It was like he was made of glass. Striations of metal and concrete that were refracted to hell and back for him, but clearly working from the others' perspectives.

RUN! Straight line, Miles. Any lateral movement will give it away.

God, Bailey.

YOU CAN GET HIM BACK LATER!

Angry tears burned in Miles' eyes.

GO!

He turned and ran, scrambling up the enclosing wall.

Slam!

Miles pressed his back against the door and wheezed. Somewhere on the way, he'd lost the camouflage. Where, he wasn't sure; he never stopped to check. For all he knew, he'd see it on TV that night.

Breaking News! Mysterious plastic boy terrorises pedestrians in Brooklyn.

He slid down the door, before pressing his head into his knees.

What was happening to him? What was going to happen to Bailey?

Miles reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It took his trembling fingers ages to type out "the last stand sokovia accords", but, soon enough, the page loaded. He hit the top result.

"Humanity's Last Stand, commonly shortened to the Last Stand or HLS, is a controversial and influential political activism organisation that advocates for stricter enforcement of the United Nations' Sokovia Accords, citing a list of what it calls a "toothless response" to several incidents following the Accords' ratification in 2016.

Their leader, Peter Krane, was a United States Senator before the Decimation, after which he resigned to spend time with his family.[1] His son Arthur was among the billions lost to Thanos' purge."

"Miles? Is that you?"

Miles sniffed, wiping his eyes. "Yeah, Uncle Aaron. It's me."

Aaron came out of the hall, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Where you been, man? I brought you some soup." He pointed his thumb at a stack of styrofoam on the table. "You didn't answer my text, so I grabbed a few. Ran out of battery?" he asked, nodded towards the phone still in Miles' hand.

"Ah, no. I…" Miles looked down. Sure enough, there were two texts asking the kind of soup he wanted, and from where. A drop of water splashed off his phone screen. His shoulders began to shiver. "There was…"

"Hey, hey." Aaron grasped Miles' upper arms, leaning down so they were face-to-face. "What's wrong, man? Sit down."

Miles sat. Aaron walked into the kitchen and came back with a stack of napkins.

"What's going on?"

Miles blew his nose. "I went to the Keep."

Aaron smiled, proudly. "How's Gloria?"

"Good." Miles tried to smile back, but he couldn't quite manage it. "There's this guy, there. Bailey Briggs."

"We've met," Aaron nodded.

Miles swallowed. "He's been kidnapped."

Aaron recoiled, as if slapped. "What?"

"There were these guys. With guns."

"They had what!?" Aaron scooted back and started searching his clothes. "Are you okay?"

Miles slapped his hands away. "I'm fine. I wasn't hit."

Aaron leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Alright. Start at the beginning. Tell me everything."

Miles paused. His tongue refused to form the words.

"Miles?" Aaron prompted. "I promise you aren't in any trouble. I need to know. Whatever you think you've done, I promise I was doing worse when I was your age. I mean, your dad and I would—"

"I have superpowers." All in, Miles.

…

Aaron blinked first. "You…"

"… Have superpowers. Yeah."

"Like the Avengers?"

"Some of them."

An uneasy silence settled on their shoulders. Aaron kept opening his mouth to speak, but seemingly thinking better of it and stopping himself.

Finally, he asked, "You're sure?"

"I could be hallucinating."

Aaron glanced at the couch. "Your controller broke. I stepped on some shrapnel."

Miles nodded, wincing. "Sorry."

Aaron walked to the fridge and shuffled around for a minute. He came back with a beer. "Take me through it," he said, cracking the cap.

So Miles did. He started when he first woke up, and how the sky was screaming at him. He mentioned feeling better suspiciously fast, and dying to Kraven's Crypt for the hundredth time. He explained how the controller exploded. How he turned red and blue and purple. How he went to the Keep, hoping to unwind. How he ran into Bailey. The guns and bruises. The world on a gyroscope. All of it.

When he was done, Aaron was on his second drink and Miles was clutching a bottle of root beer. Unopened, though his mouth was extraordinarily dry. He just liked the condensation on his fingers.

"Okay," Aaron said, hoarsely. "Can you show me?"

Miles shook his head. "I can't do it on command."

Aaron studied his face for a bit. "Okay."

Miles' hands fell into his lap. "You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Aaron rested his elbows on the table. "I believe you believe it. But you were really sick this morning, Miles. And you took cold medicine."

Miles kept his eyes turned down. "Like I said, I could be hallucinating. I wouldn't know if I was."

There was another stretch of silence, which Aaron used to polish off his drink.

"We need to call the police," Miles mumbled.

Aaron gave him a flat look. "No."

"Uncle Aaron—" Aaron stood up. Miles sighed and followed him into the kitchen. "One of Dad's friends."

"I said no."

Miles threw his hands to the side. "What about Bailey?"

"I'll make some calls," Aaron said simply, tossing his can in the bin.

"Do you really think your 'street smarts' will do jack shit right now?" Miles shouted.

"Goddammit, Miles!"

Miles shut up. Aaron never shouted. Never.

"We tell the cops; they take you away. Don't you remember how hard it was?" Aaron got a faraway look in his eyes. "Half of all children left orphans. Half of all parents left childless. And they had a problem with me taking care of my nephew."

A lump formed in Miles' throat. "Yeah, I remember."

"If I lose you, I'm done," Aaron spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing facts as basic as the weather. "That's it, for me. You understand?"

"They could kill him, Uncle Aaron," he croaked. "If they haven't already. And I left him there! I just…" his voice started to shake.

"Woah, woah!" Aaron pulled Miles into his chest. "This wasn't your fault, Miles. There's nothing you could have done, I don't care if you're Captain friggin' America."

Miles wrapped his arms tightly around Aaron's torso, clinging to him like a lifeline. "I ran, Uncle Aaron."

"You did what you were supposed to."

They stayed like that for a while, just holding each other as Miles steadied his breathing.

Soon, there was a buzz from Aaron's pocket.

Miles pulled his head away. "You have to get back to work."

Aaron clicked his tongue. "This is more important."

"I'll be fine."

Aaron pulled out his phone and glared at it.

"Go."

Aaron took a slow, shallow breath. "Alright. But I need you to promise me something."

"Yeah?" Miles whispered.

"You can't go back to the Keep. Not for a while, at least."

Miles exhaled sharply through his nose. "Yeah, I know."

"Promise me," Aaron said severely, staring straight into Miles' eyes.

"I promise." Miles tried not to flinch.

From the look on Aaron's face, he was unsuccessful.

Despite his blithe comments, Miles knew he hadn't imagined the whole thing. Just as he knew that it wasn't something Aaron could just take his word for. He needed proof.

Which meant he first needed more information.

The library receptionist barely glanced up from her book as he walked by, waving. His first few weeks at Visions, Miles used to come up with increasingly funny possibilities for what she might be reading. It always eventually ended with him being kicked out for excessive laughter.

He sat at the closest computer and cracked his knuckles. The internet was a well of information deeper than the Mariana Trench. If there were answers to be found, he'd find them. That morning, he wrote a list. Just to avoid Google paralysis, if anything.

"what to do if you get superpowers"

Predictably, the top answer was not from an Avenger moonlighting as a blog writer. Unfortunately, it was Buzzfeed.

"10 Things You Could Do with the Super Soldier Serum!"

There were twelve entries in the list, two of which were about getting laid. Miles clicked off after number seven: "Become the Spokesperson for a Fast Food Restaurant!"

"where do superpowers come from"

This attempt at least led to some actual scientific research.

"Anomalous Biochemical Augmentation: Distinguishing the Erskine Serum from Conventional Augmentation Technologies."

Biochem had never been Miles' strong suit, but, from what he could understand, the Serum was an extraordinarily complex steroid, folded into a gene-altering matrix. Not that it could be classified as such, but the core function was the same. It hooked onto the DNA to force protein production. Boost muscle repair, basic cell function, oxygenation. The main difference—the insane, godless, holy-shit-what-was-Erskine-smoking difference—was that this steroid seemed to be intelligent.

That was the actual term the paper used. "Apparent intellect." The problem with most performance-enhancing procedures is that they were all bullish processes. No subtly whatsoever, just overwhelming activity in the general vicinity of aesthetically pleasant muscle groups. That's what caused the side effects, more often than not.

The rest of the paper wasn't working with anything new. It was clearly some broke grad student's final or something, and there wasn't an active population of post-Erskine patients for anyone to do tests on. The actual science part was just reusing data from other studies featuring performance-enhancing drugs.

There was some mention of the drastic physical changes both known super soldiers went through. Before the serum, Captain America was five-four and ninety-five pounds. And Red Skull's cheeks were a much healthier Aryan pink.

Miles may have grown a half-inch. But he'd also not checked his height since his last doctor's appointment. Considering he took any excuse to avoid going back to the hospital…

"active camouflage superpower"

"how high can captain america jump"

The latter search turned up a Reddit thread comparing the relative "power levels" of the Avengers. It was one of the nerdiest things Miles had ever seen, and he immediately became invested.

ditkodisko: cap can run around the lincoln reflecting pool in less than two minutes without breaking a sweat. I don't think he can get tired.

==== | vinnycoals [OP]: ofc he can get tired. Just not doing human things.

======== | ditkodisko: he once stopped a helicopter from taking off with his bare hands.

============ | vinnycoals [OP]: bullshit

============ | dropdamicbenny: this was never confirmed

==== | jackysdreamland: i timed him once. fastest lap was 109.12s

======== | ditkodisko: dm pls. Id love to see the rest of hte data

==== | dropdamicbenny: he can catchup to cars easily. 40+ mph, at least

==== | josimisoj: anyone know his vertical?

======== | jackysdreamland: 6ft ez

==== | xlc-oar22: spider-man bodies cap everyday of the wk

======== | vinnycoals [OP]: ight buddy

======== | dropdamicbenny: ok m8, sure

======== | jackysdreamland: is spidey even an avenger?

============ | ditkodisko: nah he's smalltime. Neighbourhood, right?

Miles smiled. And proud. Spidey was a hero of the people. The Avengers saved the world, but Spider-Man kept the streets safe. His dad was never a fan, though.

Speaking of Spider-Man…

He clicked off the thread and scrolled a little further.

xlc-oar22: Spidey's known powers + speculation.

Superstrength—strong enough to catch cars. My roommate did the math on that one video with the minivan and bus. ~25000N to stop that car on the lower end of his estimates. And he was fine after, so i think its safe to assume thats not even half of what he can do.

Enhanced reflexes—it doesn't seem to be the most consistent thing, but spidey has been known to dodge bullets. my friends and i went back and forth on whether or not he had some sort of precognitive abilities. Our findings were inconclusive with available footage. If anybody has proof one way or another, dm plz.

Accelerated healing—nobody could get hurt as much as he does as often as he does without some sort of accelerated healing. Unknown if he has a baseline increased damage resistance on top of this.

Webs—if iron man's abilities can be counted as powers, then so can spidey's webshooters. There's not much we can find about how they work, but we have been able to collect samples which seemed to vary wildly in terms of strength, stickiness and time to dissolve.

Miles' easy grin fell away as he came to the final two entries.

Wallcrawling—crawling is kind of a misnomer, tho it seems to be the msot common way spidey likes to climb. Perhaps its for stability, but we have photo-vid proof that he can stand and walk on walls just as easily. He does not seem to experience any discomfort from being in any orientation.

Stickiness—i consider this a separate power from his wallcrawling. He uses it in different ways, strategically, and it can only be measured if we separate them out.

It was a coincidence. It had to be. Superpowers overlapped. Correlation is not a cause. Plus, it wasn't like Spider-Man could change colours. And it wasn't like they shared any of his other powers…

Miles stared at the back of his hand. The cut was gone. Not scabbed over. Not faded or shallow or scarred. Gone. Like it had never happened.

"… some sort of accelerated healing."

A burning realisation seeped into Miles' chest. He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. He had good and bad days. And he was very good at ignoring it. That was all.

Hesitantly—half-convinced he'd break whether fragile balance his body had achieved—he reached back and poked the base of his spine.

Nothing. No army of ants. No tingling. No pain.

The absence was so quiet, so complete, that he may not have noticed on his own.

His breath caught, and his stomach felt very tight. He refused to cry in the middle of the school library. He swallowed—pointedly clearing his throat—before he rose from his seat and marched stiffly to the exit. He could at least wait until he reached his dorm!

"Mr Morales?" the librarian asked, beady eyes peering over the horned rims of her reading glasses. "You look pale. Do you need the nurse?"

Yeah, who was he kidding?

Miles collapsed and wept with relief.