Chapter 15
[29]
Ren Amamiya sat atop the edge of a building hundreds of feet off the ground playing a game on his phone. He was in his homemade Spider-Man suit with the mask pulled up and the red gloves in his pocket.
A few days ago, Naoto had contacted him about a new case she was working on. Apparently some guy in a bird costume was breaking into rich peoples’ houses over the past few weeks but the cases were being dismissed by the police due to nothing being stolen and no one going missing or reporting the attacks. The detective had studied the various break-ins and established a pattern and that’s where Ren came in.
For the past 3 days, Ren had spent each night up on this rooftop overlooking the home of a rich art mogul named Ichirysu Madarame. He had a walkie-talkie with him so that Naoto could check in with him regularly. He was doing this because according to Naoto, Madarame was a highly likely target of this bird guy who she called the Vulture.
So here he sat on his first ever stakeout, just like the movies! Unfortunately, movies were incredibly misleading about how exciting stakeouts were. The first night, he’d been really excited and stood watch vigilantly for several hours. However after a while he got bored and just started goofing around until the sun rose, school was hell that day. The second night went about the same with absolutely nothing happening, this time, Ren had the sense to bring some homework to do while he was up there. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize how strong the winds would be that night and his papers got blown away. Now on his third night, he just decided to kill time on his phone and luckily, he got amazing reception up this high.
Naoto Shirogane sat in her car doing work on her laptop, she was watching the same building as Ren but from ground level. As a seasoned detective, she had plenty of experience with long stakeouts and was fully capable of monitoring the situation while completing other tasks. She checked the time, then grabbed her radio and contacted her unofficial partner.
“Hourly check-in, how do things look up there?”
“Still the same as the last 30 check-ins. Hey did you know that the Shido Sciences building has 6,200 windows? Over.”
“We’ve been over this already, you don’t need to end every sentence with over.”
“Copy that. Over.”
She rolled her eyes at his attempts at humor, this boy was too much like his predecessor. As she went back to work on her laptop, an alert popped up on both it and her phone. At Naoto’s behest, Rise and Yu installed an advanced security system in their apartment. This system would send alerts directly to all of theirs and Naoto’s devices whenever a large object got within a specific range. The alert she got on her phone was from said system which pulled up a live video feed from the apartment, showing that it had just had its glass ceiling smashed in by a shadowy figure with wings.
“Shit!” She picked up her radio. “Ren! We’ve got a problem! Get to Shibuya ASAP! Rise Narukami’s apartment!”
“Got it!” Came the voice on the other end. Ren made no attempts at humor when he heard Naoto’s tone.
Unbeknownst to the Detective Queen, a skinny young man with long blue hair on his way home overheard what Naoto had said before she started her car and drove off.
“What was that about? I wonder.” The young man asked himself.
Ren swung through the city as fast as he could, trying desperately to get to Shibuya. He still wasn’t great at web swinging and had to look where he was aiming each time, this was nowhere near as easy as the last Spider-Man made it look.
As the building he was heading towards slowly came into view, Ren didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Naoto hadn’t specified what was happening, but it sounded important so he left as soon as she said it.
Over the sounds of the howling winds as he swung, his enhanced ears barely picked up the sound of the walkie-talkie clipped to his pants. “I’ve alerted the police, they’re sending a chopper over immediately.”
Ren was too preoccupied with swinging to give a response, but he was sure Naoto knew that. He was only a few blocks from Rise Narukami’s apartment now and as he landed on top of a nearby building, he saw the silhouette of a large pair of wings carrying a large rectangular object.
He didn’t need to be a detective to figure out what was going on. The Vulture had broken into Rise’s apartment and stolen something important, it was up to Spider-Man to stop him. Ren chased after the figure as he flew off into the city.
Suddenly a spotlight illuminated the figure and Ren could make out their details. The flying figure was definitely human, its wings and the legs carrying what was clearly a safe were mechanical. The pilot of this suit was wearing a pilot’s helmet and a large aviator jacket and pants.
The spotlight was accompanied by the sound of whirring propellers as a police helicopter entered the chase and loudly announced their presence.
“This is the Tokyo Police. Land your uhh vehicle now or we will use lethal force.” A booming voice sounded over a loud megaphone.
The Vulture, seeing that he’d been spotted, shot out a large metal ‘feather’ from its wings, which collided with the helicopter’s blades and sent it spinning out of control. Ren looked over to the Vulture, who proceeded to fly off with his cargo. He looked back to the helicopter which would soon come crashing down to the streets below.
Ren made his decision without hesitation and dove after the helicopter. Landing on a slightly lower rooftop, he shot out two web lines to the building across from him, directly in the helicopter’s path. The falling vehicle was caught between the web lines and slowly brought to a halt, its propeller slowing to a stop as well, Ren began to slide across the rooftop as he desperately held on to his end of the line. With a great amount of effort, he grabbed the two lines in his fist and used his other hand to stick them down to the ground beneath him. The helicopter now sat with its cockpit resting on one line and its tail on the other.
The new Spider-Man lifted his mask and wiped the sweat from his brow, letting out a relieved breath in the process. By now, a crowd had gathered on the streets below in awe of the events transpiring. He placed the mask back over his face and began making his way over to save the officers in the hanging helicopter. However, before he could do anything else, the middle of its tail began to cave in under the weight until it snapped and both ends were sent falling
Ren jumped and desperately shot out a web onto the cockpit and grabbed onto the edge of the roof with his hand. The tail end of the helicopter fell into the streets below and loudly crashed.
“Ohmygodthisissoheavy!” He said to no one in particular.
The bricks Ren held onto were starting to collapse under the strain. As they broke apart, he tried using his wall clinging ability to grasp onto the wall, however this only succeeded in tearing the skin off of his palm and fingertips. In one last act of desperation, he slammed the button on his webshooter as many times as possible. Over a dozen webs shot from his wrist and attached themselves to the side of the building. Ren felt his right arm, holding the helicopter, dislocate from his shoulder as the line was pulled taut.
“AGH!!” He cried out in pain, but didn’t let go. Looking down, he saw that the helicopter was only 3 stories from the ground, not quite low enough to safely release it yet. If he could just lower himself a little more, he could get the officers out safely. Realizing what he had to do, Ren braced himself for the incoming pain.
He separated the dozen lines holding him to the building and just as he began to fall again, he repeated his rapid firing, lower this time and he and the helicopter came to a stop once again. Ren’s already dislocated arm flared in pain as it was yanked even further, tears of pain were beginning to cloud Ren’s eyesight. This time the helicopter stopped mere feet from the ground and the injured officers began to slide out of the vehicle into the crowds’ waiting arms one at a time.
When everyone was out and the crowd backed away from the cockpit, Ren was finally able to release it to the ground, much to his relief. He released himself from the wall and used his one good arm to get himself down. The crowd from before, surrounded him and the flashes of hundreds of phones blinded Ren.
“Yeah! Way to go new Spider-Man!”
“Is that seriously his costume?”
“The old Spider-Man would’ve saved the whole helicopter easily and caught the bad guy.”
That last comment in particular stung hard. He was already being compared to his predecessor? Ren didn’t know what to say, so without a word, he shot out a web and swung off into the night.