visions
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This universe derived it's pleasure from ducking you up it seemed. That was the only explanation as to how your mother decided to toss your dumb ass to some boarding school called Visions Academy under the guise of 'God tier education' and 'spending time with people your age' and 'having the opportunity to live a normal life.'
What a load of bullshit, you thought. She was either sending you there after years of homeschooling all of a sudden either to fuck around with her new boyfriend who was years younger than her without worrying about you walking in on their intense, yet gross make out sessions anymore. Or sending you there because she believed being under the school's radar would discourage you from being Midnight.
Maybe it was both, killing two birds with one stone.
Whatever the reason, your cold stare didn't falter even when she assured you that being thrust into an environment completely alien to you all of a sudden was good for you. "You'll be safer there." She said, "I hear the security is top notch, I won't have to worry about anything dangerous happening to you."
Again, silence was your response.
After getting rescued by the late spiderman who, by the way was replaced really quickly, you were kept in a secret government containment facility for about seven months. During that time, you were watched and monitored for any instability in your powers or body in general, mostly because they wanted to know for sure if you were ready to be let into society. You learned that Dr Last Name, the man who made you wonder why you looked so much like him was your father. Imagine being the man's test subject since you were a baby and yet you had no idea you were his own flesh and blood.
You were glad he and the rest of his crew were behind bars.
You had a mother of course, you were told by one of the kind guards who took pity on you that she knew you were locked up in that facility as a guinea pig for her husband's deranged project and yet never even tried to get you out.
"Why?" You whispered in confusion, Heather said mothers are supposed to be protective and caring towards their kids. "Why did she leave me there?"
The guard took a drag from his cigarette, "she said she was scared, kid. Your father had been beating her for years. She was scared that if she told the authorities what happened, about what they were doing to you, he'd kill her."
You tried to feel sympathy for your mother, you really did. But you had never met the woman.
"Know what I think, super kid?" He said, heaving a sigh. "I think that's a load of bullshit."
But somehow you later did, she wasn't...what you expected. You thought she'd be this sad, timid woman. Constantly mistreated to submission to the point that she'd forgotten what it felt like to have a free will.
But she wasn't like that, she was worse, exaggerated. She was putting up an act for the police, so she wouldn't end up in jail like her husband for withholding information such as that. You hadn't met a lot of people in your life and yet you already knew it when a person lied.
In those seven months, your powers were suddenly dormant. As if it had completed vanished from your body, no traces of the serum was found in your system. It was strange, but everyone thought that the effects of the serum only lasted for a few weeks in your body and left completely because you were no long constantly pumped full with the liquid anymore.
You were okay now, a normal person. And your mother came to pick you up and take you home.
Unlike most kids your age, you were homeschooled, and a therapist came to see you from time to time. You rarely ever left your bedroom, funny how this was freedom itself. Your mother tried to be nice to you, she really did. But she felt more like a stepmother you didn't care about than a biological mother to you. So she gave up and ignored you just as you ignored her and focused on her own love life with younger men instead. And you focused on reawakening your abilities.
You deliberately suppressed it for months so you'd be free, you had a feeling the government wouldn't let you go that easily when you were a walking weapon. So to be on the safe side, you suppressed your strength. Altering your body adrenaline levels and removing traces of the serum through intense concentration.
You weren't successful in your attempts until after your twelveth birthday.
But when spiderman died, when your hero died at the hands of kingpin. You felt you had to make it up to him, to help look after the city he dedicated himself to protecting before he died. To use the powers you were forcibly given for good.
Heather loved superheroes, if she was alive she would have encouraged you to be one.
The new spiderman appeared, and when he swung passed you on the streets when you snuck out out of your house. He seemed like a kid, a teenager...just like you. If he could do it, why couldn't you? What was stopping you from being a hero others could look up to like you looked up to Peter Parker?
So, you became Midnight.
Your mother found out barely a day after that underground drug dealing disaster. And she was not happy about it.
But you never really cared about what she thought.
That's why you suspected sending you to a boarding school was a way of stopping you from continuing to be Midnight. You felt like giggling, did she really think a school security was enough to stop you? Even if you had to disable all the security cameras one by one or set off a fire alarm to slip out unnoticed you'd do it.
You merely adjusted your glasses, whilst keeping eye contact with your mother. "Whatever your true intentions are, it won't work."
Your mother frowned, "I'm doing this for your own good, (Name). You're incredibly smart, you're wasting your potential–"
"Everything you've ever done, you did them all for your own gain." You glanced at the building before you. "The more you deny it, the more I hate having you around."
You stepped out of the sleek, expensive car grabbing your luggage. "Tell Mark I said hi, I'm sure he'd be happy to hear I'm no longer around to cockblock you two love birds." You were careful not to slam the car door, last time you did that the car door came clean off.
You hated the stares everyone gave you as you walked down halls, must be a rare occurrence for a student to suddenly appear halfway through the semester. You also hated how much the school reminded you of the lab, you adjusted your glasses nervously and avoided eye contact with any of the students.You really hoped school was just like in the movies you've watched, at least you were familiar with those cliches and what not.
You gripped the handle to your luggage, you'd do anything to be back home forcing yourself to pay attention to your home tutors. God, you hated this so much.
It had been almost two weeks since you offered to be his partner and in those two weeks you'd gone MIA. Not even the civilians had caught sight of you, he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Okay, really disappointed. He thought you'd both make a great team, just imagine. Spiderman and Midnight– World's Best Crime Fighting Duo, maybe he'd gotten a bit ahead of himself. But the fact that there was someone else, who had super powers and was determined to protect people made him feel less alone.
He already knew he wasn't, after all he had met other spider people from other dimensions. But he felt beyond glad there was someone else, even if you weren't a spider. Sure you weren't the best superhero, but he knew your heart was in the right place based on the video he'd seen online of Midnight fighting small criminals.
And when you officially met him and asked for his partnership, he was too happy to even play it cool. But you disappeared with no warning, didn't you need his help anymore? Did you maybe think to yourself that you didn't need spiderman to be a good superhero? Midnight was known for working alone, refusing help from the police. So he could be right. But the sadness in your golden eyes that night, though.
He even found himself bearing his heart to you a little without even noticing.
He heard a scream and a thud all of a sudden, quickly putting on his mask and swinging a couple buildings over to investigate. And there you were, your back facing him, cradling your left arm and cursing underneath your breath. He guessed you tried to do that high jump thing and it didn't end well.
"When am I ever gonna get it right?" You ranted, still unaware of his presence. "Crap! My writing hand..."
"Uhh...you okay, there?" He asked, watching as you whipped around with wide golden eyes.
"Spiderman!" You squeaked, awkwardly placing both hands on your hips ignoring the pain that shot up your left arm. "Of course I'm okay...heh heh, why wouldn't I be?"
"I don't know, but I'm guessing because you just fell on your shoulder."
You cursed under your breath again then looked away. "I just...I couldn't stick the landing, okay?"
Spiderman walked closer to you, "I had trouble with my powers as well."
"Really?" You turned back to him, your eyebrow raised. "Which one?"
"All of them." He replied and you snorted in response then burst into laughter.
"Hey." He pointed at you, although he didn't sound too offended. "don't laugh at me."
You giggled, "I'm not...laughing at you. It's just, you're just so good at using them that I never even considered the fact that you didn't have it all easy."
"Well..." He puffed out his chest slightly, "I did figure it out after two days or so after getting them."
"Only two days? Wow!" You were genuinely impressed. "I've had my powers for years and I can't even punch some one without almost killing them."
"Seriously?" You didn't even need to look at him to know how surprised he was. "Just how strong are you?"
You smiled boastfully, flexing your non existent bicep. "Let's just say I'm strong enough to stand a chance arm wrestling Superman."
Once again, you wondered how it was possible for his mask to copy his facial expressions perfectly, maybe you could ask him to borrow it in the near future so you'd take it apart to see how it worked and put it back together.
"Okay, maybe not superman. I can't carry a building, but I go against Hulk."
With that you raced off the edge of the building at full speed and jumped, spiderman raced after you but stopped when you had landed on another building close by a lot better than you had earlier, and you jumped again and again landing on buildings like they were just stepping stones across a shallow river until you were almost out of sight. He tapped his web shooter and was after you before you he was even aware of his intentions.
"So..." He trailed off, watching as you glanced at your hologram tracker for any possible threat around the area as you jumped, getting faster and faster as you went. "Where you been for the past few weeks– oh shit!"
He shoot out a web that attached yourself to your back, stopping you from pummeling when you missed a building to land on.
Somehow you weren't too concerned about the fact that you were dangling off a building, the web being the only thing stopping you from being a splat on the pavement below. "What? Did you miss me?"
He grabbed you and swung until you both landed on a fire escape, "miss you? I was just curious, you did say you wanted to be my side kick."
"Not your sidekick." You flicked his forehead lightly, but he recoiled with a yell as if you punched him. God, you had to be the clumsiest hero there was. "Sorry! I don't know my own strength sometimes...anyways thanks for saving me." That's what happens when you suppress your abilities for years instead of training it then reawakening it all of a sudden.
He clutched his forehead with and groan, and God he probably thought you were pretty dumb, which you were at times but.
"It's okay." He placed his hands on his hips, already recovered. "I can handle a lot more than that."
"Uh uh."
He seemed a bit offended at your response, "what? I can!"
Clearly he hadn't been punched square in the face by you at full power before, but you didn't need to point that out yet. So you laughed, "I didn't say you couldn't."
You leaned against the railing, "to answer your question, I... uh, started a... new school."
Did you trust him enough to tell him what school you now went to? Not really, no. Being Midnight was a big risk, as far as any secret government agent knew, (Name) (Last name) was a human experiment who lost her powers months after she was rescued from the lab. Midnight having similar powers to (Name) was enough to raise a few eyebrows. You didn't need anyone else being able to put two and two together and realize you and your alter ego had way too much in common.
"I had to figure out ways to sneak out without security and my roommate." You sighed. "School's hard."
"I hear ya." Spiderman said, "when I first started Visions Academy, I just couldn't keep up."
You tried your best to keep your expression neutral. "You go to Visions?"
"Yeah." Then he jumped off the railing and swung away. You had to jump and follow him. Why did he tell you that?! Even if it would be nearly impossible to find out who he really was in Visions, why did he feel like he trusted you enough to tell you he went to a particular school when you didn't even trust him that much.
Shit, now you felt bad.
As you tried your best to keep up with him, you felt the need to tell him you went there too, but stopped when you remembered this spiderman worked a little too close to the police on the occasions you followed him a few times.
Yes, you followed him around. Not in a creepy way. You just wanted to see how he handled his battles and hope they could maybe help you out in yours. You also wanted to see the kind of person he was in general for yourself.
Funny how spiderman told you something like that after only meeting you once. And you've seen him multiple times in the shadows and yet you still couldn't trust him enough.