You haven't lived until you've experienced the thrill of hurtling through the New York City skyline at over eighty miles per hour. Adrenaline junkies get off on skydiving or bungee jumping, meanwhile, I'm swan diving off the Empire State Building on the daily. The Big Apple was my playground.
I let out a whoop as I sailed over Times Square, my web-line carrying me in an arc that brought me just a few dozen feet over the countless heads below. I could tell who the tourists were from the ones that looked up, with fingers in the air, and jaws on the ground. By this point just about every New Yorker was used to the familiar sight of their friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man.
"Burn in hell, mutie scum!" A voice shouted from below.
Okay, so I wasn't friendly in the eyes of
everyone. What's that saying about winning the hearts and minds of the people? Pretty sure the original context was about converting your enemies in war into allies but let me say whoever came up with the phrase wasn't in a media war against J. Jonah Jameson. Though, it was less a war and more of a massacre.
That man was singlehandedly responsible for convincing the city I was a
literal mutant spider. As in a six-foot-tall arachnid with human proportions. Nightmare fuel, honestly. Jonah had even put up a billboard with "MENACE" plastered over my photo - photos that
I took! Winning the hearts and minds of the people was a little trickier when you had to constantly reassure them you weren't there to steal their babies and infest their homes with hybrid man-spider eggs.
The man was also my boss's boss which made the annual Secret Santa gift swaps just a tad awkward.
It wasn't as bad as it used to be, at least. When I first started wearing the tights it seemed like the whole city despised me. Now, it was just the vocal minority. A very loud, very
annoying vocal minority. I swear, every time I save someone from a mugging and they start reciting Trask's anti-mutant rhetoric toward me I want to barf. And I
really don't want to think about how much a dry cleaner would charge me to get vomit out of my mask.
In the last couple of years, though, things had gotten a lot better. I even had allies in the NYPD who looked out for me. But I'll always cherish those fond memories of when the boys in blue liked to use me as target practice.
Speaking of, the radio in my earpiece chirped to life, and the NYPD's Major Crime Unit emergency bandwidth it connected to alerted me to a crime in progress. Without looking, I stretched out my left arm and fired off a web-line that snagged a nearby building and altered my course. According to the dispatcher, there was an incident going down in Waterside. Reports of heavy gunfire and an explosion. Just another day in the Five Boroughs.
To think, I used to just swing around the city aimlessly in hopes of stumbling across crime. Admittedly, not the hardest thing to find in New York. You could spit in any direction and it'll splash on the boots of some mugger or another. The radio was a more recent addition in the last couple of years, along with a handful of other technological improvements I had managed to stuff inside this little old suit of mine.
I was closing in on Waterside when something caught my eye. Below me, two figures were shoving their way through bystanders as they booked it down the street. Their matching black and white outfits gave them away as scandals of the costumed variety. Actually, it was the large duffle bags slung over their shoulders that seemed to be overflowing with jewelry as they fled from a severely out-of-shape security guard shouting at them in between wheezes, but I'm still chalking that one up as a win for my excellent deductive powers.
Waterside could wait a minute, I wanted to make sure everything was okay here. The last thing I'd want was to hear on the news later that someone got hurt chasing after those two.
I swung into action, literally, angling my path to cut off the runners. I flipped off my web-line, snagging both duffle bags from their carriers, and landed on a storefront wall about five feet ahead of the thieves.
"Where are we headed in such a hurry, boys? Is there a buy one get one discount I don't know about at Costumes-R-Us?"
I took a closer look at the two. Both were clad from head to toe in black with white design elements covering their torsos. One had what looked like triangles or crescents trailing down his shoulders and arms. A utility belt hung on his hips strapped with various thin, long pouches. The other had large, concentric circles plastered directly on his chest. Along his forearms, I spotted a series of silver bands that reached up to the elbows. Both wore helmets marked with their respective designs.
"Fuck me dead, it's the webhead," Triangle-dude groaned as he and his cohort skidded to a stop.
The other echoed that sentiment, "shit, let's get outta here!"
"C'mon, guys, there are kids around here. Let's keep the language PG. We wouldn't want to disappoint my sponsors." I gestured toward the quickly emptying sidewalk around us as the bystanders tried to put distance between them and us. By now, New Yorkers knew how to react to a confrontation amongst costumed folk.
"Nah, mate. We ain't gonna bail," The Terrible Triangle told his partner, a smile twisting on his exposed lower face. "I reckon we can take him this time."
I cocked my head. This time? I had
definitely never seen these dorks before, and... wait...
"I know that voice," I said, looking closer at that smile. "Freddy, is that you?"
I pointed at Circles-Man. "And that must mean you're that other guy, uh," I snapped my fingers as if I was trying to recall a distant memory. "Alice. No, Andrea. April?"
"It's Anthony, you little shit!"
"Calm down, mate. Don't get your knickers in a twist, he's riling you up on purpose. Besides," he added. "We don't go by those names anymore."
I tossed the duffel bags over my head and webbed both to the wall high out of reach. Dropping down next to the pair, I walked around them in circles. At this distance, I could tell the fabric of their suits was lightly armored. In the handful of times that I had run across these buffoons, they had never been geared up like this. Frederick Myers and Anthony Davis were just your average would-be-heisters who liked to hit up pawn shops and jewelry stores every time they got out of prison. I had barely ever had to lift a finger to stop them, they usually did a pretty good job of getting caught on their own.
"Okay, Freddy, the outfit's super cute and all, but I'm running late for another date, so if we can just hurry this up I'd appreciate it," I tapped my wrist to indicate the time. "Tell you what, I'll close my eyes and count to ten, and you can try to get away. Ready? One... two..."
I closed my eyes while counting, my fingers gently resting on the triggers for my web-shooters ready to bind them both before they could get too far. I'm not sure where they got their new outfits but these two were still the same clowns I had dealt with before. The only danger they posed was accidentally tripping on their shoelaces and losing a tooth.
"Five... six..."
My body was already moving as that familiar tingling sensation tickled my brain. If my spider sense could speak, it'd be saying 'danger, danger, Peter Parker!' My eyes fluttered open just in time to catch the streak of angled metal flashing past my face. Serrated edges narrowly missed my cheek as my torso twisted out of the way.
Alright, so,
maybe I spoke too soon.
The base of my skull felt alive with lightning as my senses alerted me again. I leaped into the air, flipping over that same bladed object as it went whizzing back down the path it had come from. Had I not moved in time, it would have embedded itself square between my shoulder blades. I landed on a lamp post and watched as the man caught the strange weapon with ease.
Okay. So Myers had come a little better prepared this time. I guess the outfits weren't just for show after all. As confused as I was at this turn of events, I didn't want to show it. I just had to keep running my mouth until I could piece things together.
"Now, I know math might be a little hard for you, Freddy, but I didn't get to ten yet." I scanned my eyes across them both, re-evaluating what might be threatening about them.
"Nice one, Boomerang," Davis encouraged his partner.
"On my mark, you hit him with the big one, Ringer."
Myers seemed to be ignoring my jabs now. Something about him had changed in the year since I'd last seen him. He seemed much more confident and assured. If there was one way to fix that, though, it was my big mouth.
"Wait, wait, wait. Pause. Timeout." I pointed a finger directly at Myers. "You named yourself
Boomerang? Did you throw a
boomerang at me? Doesn't that seem like a stereotype for an Australian? What, was Kangaroo taken?"
That seemed to get his attention. I could see the muscles around his mouth twitch and contort as he struggled to maintain his composure.
I kept going. "I mean, really, how unoriginal could you be? Let me guess, your catchphrase is a quote from Crocodile Dundee. And don't even get me
started on how lame of a name Ringer is," I added gesturing my thumb towards Davis.
I could see Myers inching his fingers into one of the belt pouches on his lift hip. I assumed to grab another of those razor-sharp boomerangs like the one he still gripped in his right hand. I didn't want to let him get another chance, so before he could react I fired off a blast of webbing that stuck his hand to his hip.
"Now!" Freddy-Boomerang shouted as he simultaneously flicked his right wrist and released the boomerang he had still held.
It came rocketing toward me much faster than it should have been able to given how poorly leveraged that throw had seemed. I pushed off of the lamp post and easily dodged it on the first passing. Rebounding off of the wall of a nearby building, I twisted around in midair preparing to catch the boomerang with a web-line as it looped back. Instead, my spider sense went off again, but I was in too awkward of a position to avoid whatever new threat was coming my way.
I barely had enough time to register the danger before I felt something hard impact my back. The hit knocked my aim off center, and my web-line went wide. The boomerang continued its narrow arc and sliced through my right shoulder, cutting through the nonreinforced section of my suit.
I tumbled to the ground just in time for my spider sense to warn me again. Time seemed to slow down as my heightened senses kicked into overdrive. As I pushed myself off the concrete sidewalk, I caught sight of Myers cutting his left hand free with the boomerang that had just left a considerable gash across my shoulder. Next to him, Davis had taken an aggressive stance with his arms outstretched, closed fists pointing at me. Those silver bands that had wrapped around his forearms looked to have expanded in size and were circling his limbs, freely hovering in the air through some unknown method.
One of those silver rings was rapidly approaching me. I tucked and rolled, dipping underneath the hoop, and launching myself toward the two of them. I heard the explosion behind me and felt a light shower of concrete strike my back as the ring detonated on impact, shattering the sidewalk. I closed in on them quickly, too quick for either to react, and I reached out my hand to snag the belt away from Myers.
Instead, my face crunched against a solid surface as I halted abruptly in mid-air just inches from them. I groaned as I dropped hard to the ground, nursing my injured shoulder. I looked closer and saw the air around me shimmering. That's when I noticed the massive, silver circle that had been set up on the sidewalk under me.
A trap. These two chuckleheads had
trapped me.
I spun around and pressed my hands against the air, finding solid contact. I could feel a slight heat and tingle against my palms. Some kind of energy field. How the
hell had these two bozos gotten their hands on this kind of technology?
"Not so talkative now, are ya," Boomerang stepped up to the forcefield, laughing, and rapped his knuckles against the cage I found myself in.
"Try laughing at us now, asshole!" Ringer chimed in from behind his partner, his middle finger waving in the air.
I slammed my fist against the shield and watched the energy dissipate across the enclosed field but hold firm. I had to find a way out fast. If brute force wouldn't do it, there had to be some trick to how the ring was able to form a self-sufficient energy field. I just had to find it.
"Let's go. Coppers will be here soon."
The two of them approached the webbed-up duffle bags and used a bladed boomerang to cut their stolen goods free. With their loot secured, they took off down a side alley.
I watched, in utter disbelief, as Frederick Myers and Anthony Davis ran off victorious while I remained trapped like a spider in a jar.
I finally found my voice again as I managed to utter three words:
"What. The. Fu—"
mickilennial
Master Bruce
Supermaxx
AndyC
Lord Wraith
Festive
Simple Unicycle
Half Pint
Izurich
Rockette