Web of Insanity

Hero looks down at the cardboard sign. It wasn't anything special, if anything it made him look like a budgeted street performer. 

…to be fair, he was one, but not the point. 

“Well, now for the next step: set out something for folks to put money in.”

He turns to his empty coffee mug, still stained from his morning brew. 

"...maybe I'll clean that first." 

In about a minute, the mug was stainless, and good enough to be used as a collection bowl. 

"And now…to find a place to actually perform in." 

Hero picks up his sign and mug, mask tucked in his shirt pocket, and walks away, making sure no one saw him in the hallway as he was leaving. 

Alley after alley, square after square, he searched for the right place to perform. Finally, he saw it. A relatively popular area with a few restaurants, some shops, and plenty of people to watch him present the powers he’d gotten.

Hero looks at the ideal spot. Right in front of an alley, so people could see him wall-climb. Besides the smell, it wasn't too bad. 

He turned to his left. The only nearby shop that might be affected would be the flower shop. 

"Hey, uh, do you mind if I set up my, uh, performance here?" Hero asked the lady out front watering the plants. 

She shrugged. 

“I don’t mind! Business has been good recently, so I’m well off for now.”

"Thank you!" Hero replies, placing down his sign and mug, and then putting on his blue and white mask. 

The florist looked down at the sign. "Spider-Man: The Spectacular Performance…huh. What is that supposed to mean?" 

“You’ll see in just a little bit!”

"If you say so." The florist goes back to watering her plants.

With that, Hero decided to start the show. He starts with something that will most definitely get at least one person's attention. 

Sticking his feet to the wall, he lets himself stand on the surface of the wall, just above the ground. 

Unsurprisingly, that caught the eye of the many passersby.

“How the hell’re you even doing that?!” One pedestrian asked, clearly amazed.

“That’s a secret, but I’ve got more to show!”

"Hell yeah, I'll stick around." A bearded man throws two dollars into the mug. "Don't disappoint me." 

"Oh, me too!" A teenager with his scooter puts in a dollar of his own. 

“Well, it’s as they say: the show must go on!” Hero shouts, and with that, he proceeds to do a backflip, landing on his feet back on the ground. 

Which would've probably been a bad move under any other circumstances. 

Because Hero didn't actually know how to do a backflip. But, somehow, he managed it. 

"Alright then, let's see…" Hero turns around and sees a massive green dumpster. 

“Fun fact!” He says, lifting the dumpster above his head with both arms. “Spiders can lift up to eight times their own weight!”

"I'll give you ten dollars if you can lift another one!" A girl in the crowd shouts. 

“Challenge accepted!” He said, stacking a similarly sized dumpster onto the first one and lifting them both. "Well?" 

"Yeah, yeah." The girl says with a grin, and throws ten dollars into the mug. "I ain't going back on what I said."

It’d barely been ten minutes, and yet he’d already made a tidy profit. In an hour or so, if he kept this up…well, say goodbye to his student debt!

"Any other requests?" Hero shouts to the audience, putting down the dumpsters. 

"Can ya lift this car someone parked in the middle of the damn road?” One person said, pointing to the aforementioned car.

"You got it!" Hero walks over to the car and lifts it up. He struggles a little but he eventually gets used to it. "Where do you want me to put it?" 

“The side of the road. It’s my friend’s car, I don't want him to get a ticket.”

Hero gently puts the car down in an empty slot. "Tell your friend his car was repositioned by Spider-man." 

"Yeah, will do." The man says, placing a ten of his own into the mug. 

"Alright, let's keep it coming folks! Any other stunts you think I can't do?" 

“What about...uhh…top of that building, jump off and land it! I got fifty dollars to blow from my business!” Another guy says, pointing to the right building of the alley.

"Say no more!" Hero replies in complete confidence. 

I hope this works, cause I really need that fifty. 

Sticking his hands to the wall, Hero climbs up to the top of the building. As he looks down, he does a risky backflip as he jumps off, and sticks the landing on two feet. 

The crowd claps and cheers in amazement. 

As the hour passed by, Hero kept up with the requests. Building jumps, feats of strength, wall crawling, the like. By the time he had to end the show, he’d made more than enough to clear out the debt from his student loans. Walking back to the university with the mask in his pocket again, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Guess that’s one less thing to worry about.” He looks down at his watch. 

Crap. It was late. 

Bolting back to the university, he prayed that Prof. Houtaling wouldn’t drop his grades.

…Were those police cars?

Hero squinted. Police cars.Police officers. A few of them were around the university, talking, writing. 

“What happened?”

“You go here? You’re pretty lucky. Someone broke into the university’s computer lab. Lots of stolen tech, plus someone dead at the scene. According to the security records, some kid named Mari Suzuki was studying there when the robber burst in, started grabbing everything he could find, then shot the girl presumably to avoid witnesses.”

"...who?"

"The victim? Did you know them by any chance? Mari Suzuki. She's not 'dead', but the wound’s fatal, and she's in critical condition, not much hope." The officer says. "Stay safe, kiddo." 

No. No no no no.

“You alright, kid? You’re shaking like there's no tomorrow.”

"Uh, Mari…which hospital…did you send her to?"

"Oh, you did know her then? Don't know if they'll even let you in, but it's the closest one a few blocks down that way." The officer points down the path. "You'll see the sign."

Without a second thought, Hero rushed towards the hospital, praying that Mari would be ok.

…she wasn’t. By the time he’d gotten to her room, she’d already flatlined, a bullet embedded in her skull.

He barely got a glimpse as her body was bagged and rolled away. 

Hero couldn’t feel properly. He couldn't hear properly. His senses were numbing and his knees were getting weak. 

It was a nightmare. It was terrifying. But it was real. Mari is gone. 

Someone took her from him. Some computer stealing bastard. Someone who killed just to keep someone from talking. Someone who had been caught on camera and killed for nothing. 

The pain pierced through him. He felt his heart beat slowly as a hateful feeling sprang through his mind. 

Drying his tears, he had one goal in mind: find the bastard who’d done this, and bring him to justice himself.

Drag him to the cops with his own hands. 

Make him feel twice the pain he felt. 

Donning his mask once more, he slipped out the window of the hospital and searched the city for the criminal. They couldn’t have gone far

"These computers are busted, dumass." Tyler said, his gruff house echoing across the abandoned warehouse. 

"Look, I got you your stupid computers. Your Oscorp brand tech. I want what I'm owed." Rob responded. "I had to fucking kill someone for fucks sake." 

"Fine, just gimme a minute to grab the cash.” Tyler replies. "And don't try anything funny." He gestures to his two armed men to stay close. 

“Hey wait a minute…weren’t there four of ‘em?” Rob questioned. 

"Yeah, Tony, Gale…the hell?" Tyler looks around. "Where'd those two bozos go? HEY! IF YOU TWO TAKE A DAMN LEAK IN HERE, I'M NOT SPLITTING ANY PROFITS IF YOU LOT!" 

“They’re right where they belong: unconscious, in a dumpster, waiting for the cops.” A voice from above shouts as it leaps down and knocks out the last two armed guards in an instant, dropping massive wooden boxes onto them. 

“Who’re you?!” Rob shouts, readying his gun.

“Revenge.” The masked man says, grabbing the gun out of his hand with ease and chucking it at Tyler, who's knocked to the floor. 

"You killed an innocent woman today. A close friend. Someone I loved." 

The masked man holds Rob up by the throat and starts to choke him. 

As Rob gasps for air, his memory flairs up. 

"You…ack…you're that freak from the alley! Ye can- gck! You can try and hide it, but I know what you sound like!" 

Hero feels his memory suddenly burst as well. 

The mugger. That same bastard he’d let get away in the alleyway must’ve been scouting out for the robbery…and he’d let him go.

“YOU!” He lets go of the man’s throat, grabbing him by the arm.

“I made a mistake letting you go. Not this time. For all I care, you and your scumbag buddy can rot in prison!”

Rob laughs as he gasps for air. "The slammer? Buddy, I've been there before, it'll be nice going back again. You're just a kid, so I don't expect ya to understand why I do what I do."

“...then maybe you’ll understand why I do this.” Hero says before knocking the mugger out with a single punch to the jaw.

A bright light shines into the dim warehouse as the doors open up. Hero shields his eyes. 

"FREEZE! POLICE, HANDS IN THE AIR!" 

“Take these bastards to the slammer.” Hero says, tossing the mugger to the floor.

“It's not that simple buddy, you'll be coming with us too." The officer says, his gun and light still pointed right at Hero. 

“Understood, officer. If you need a witness for any crimes, I’ll be glad to talk. Just leave me anonymous.”

"You show up at the meet-up of the criminals. You take them out. And you've got no reliable witnesses of our own that can say you aren't involved. So I say, right now, you're pretty shady, and under arrest under suspicion of illegal activity." The Cop shouts out loud. "Now you're coming with me, in handcuffs, like the rest of these men and that's final." 

“...” Hero pauses for a moment. 

Then he quickly slides into the darkness of the warehouse and runs away. 

“HEY!” One of the cops runs into the darkness trying to catch Hero…but all he finds is a note.

“Check the cameras here, I’m sure that’ll prove my innocence. Courtesy of the one and only Spider-Man.”

Hero feels people staring at him as he walks down the hallway. Some of the stares are of pity, some of them are of ulterior motives. Hero ignores all of them. 

He opens up his dorm room door, and lies down flat on his bed in exhaustion. 

He bursts into tears. 

He feels his cheap mattress becoming soaked with tears, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care about much right now. Everything hurts. Nothing makes sense. 

Hero is tired. He's sad, he's angry. 

…what would Mari do to try and cheer him up if she saw him like this? 

He didn’t know.

It didn't matter. 

…she was gone. The girl he loved so much. The girl who earlier this morning was joking with him, laughing with him, laughing at him. The girl who never failed to make him happy. 

Hero felt his stomach turn sick. 

…he didn't want to be here anymore. 

He wanted to go home. 

He was going to, anyway. Mari's parents already knew what had happened. They were going to hold the funeral back home. And he was going. 

Maybe he would stay home for good. 

…he had to pack up. 

Slowly, drying his eyes, he stands up and begins to pack his things. There wasn't much. Some cups, files, a trophy or medal or two, his clothes, cologne…

After all that, he headed out, left a note for Jake, taking a bus home. Maybe the change in scenery would cheer him up.

He looked out the window. He remembered the first time he took this bus. It was when he came to check out the University with her. They were so excited, the both of them. 

…he couldn't stop thinking about her. 

A week had passed since Mari’s funeral. Everyone had their own ways of coping with what had happened. Kel kept going with life, convincing Hero to do the same…because Mari wouldn’t want everyone to stay sad over everything. Aubrey took her bat to a few mailboxes, mainly her own, just to let her feelings out. Basil had gone to make sure Sunny was ok, but…he’d ran away. He just couldn’t deal with the loss and took a bus to Closeby City, just to get away from everything. Right now, however, Hero was up late, thinking about the strange powers that had even gotten him into this.

“...For once, I guess Kel’s old comics were right.” He said to himself, reaching towards the wall of his kitchen. “With great power comes great responsibility.”

…people like that mugger, like those criminals…

The less of them on the streets, the better. Hero didn't want what happened to Mari to happen to anyone else. 

He had these powers. He could do something. He could be the change.

Slowly, he moved up the wall of the darkened kitchen…

Then the light came on.

“Mhmm, midnight cheese-huh?”

Kel had come downstairs for a midnight snack of…shredded cheese? He was eating it straight out of the bag when he noticed Hero, who was practically on the ceiling by that point.

"...hey." Kel said. "...what are you doing…on the ceiling?" 

“...I…got stuck?”

“Do you really think I’m dumb enough to believe that?”

"...would it be insulting if I said yes?" 

"Kind of!" Kel says. "When did you even learn to do that? Did you become a magician in University or something?" 

“...It’s a long story.” Hero said, dropping to the floor. “Just…don’t tell anyone, alright?”

"Sure, I guess? But I wanna know everything. In the morning, though. It’s late, Hero. Go get some sleep. Please." Kel says with concern. 

“Says the guy who’s also up at 2 in the morning just to eat shredded cheese out of the damn bag.”

“Fine.” Kel says, putting down the cheese bag and walking back upstairs. 

Hero looks down at his hands. These won't be enough. Wall climbing and punching won't make as much difference if they're all he can do. 

If there was only a way he could get around, like flying, or running quickly, summoning a car, anything like that…

A thought ran through his head, seemingly the answer. 

"PENDULUM. SWINGING. WEB."

He’d workshop the idea later. Right now…he needed some rest.

"WAKE UP!" 

Hero gets an earful as Kel screams into his ear. 

"Sorry, mom said if you're not going to University right now, best not slog around sleeping." 

“Sorry…but, where is mom anyway?”

“Her and Dad are out shopping in Closeby. That, and…”

“I know. So…you wanted me to explain something last night, right?”

“Oh yeah! I mean, I think I know what’s going on though…”

Hero was silent, but worried. Did he know?

“...not about whatever that was, but what’s happening. A superhero origin story!”

"I don't…I guess I'm technically a superhero, though…pretty sure most superheroes don't stay at their parent's house after dropping out of University." Hero says with a slight miserable laugh. 

“True. So…”

"...so what?" Hero asks. "What are you asking about now?" 

“How’d all that even happen? I mean, how’d you even get up there?”

"I got bit by a damn creepy spider. That's enough for you?"

“No. That’s not even an explanation!”

Hero sighs. "I got bit by a spider during a trip to Oscorp, it gave me gross spider powers, I became a street performer for like, an hour, and then-" 

"...and then that's it." 

“Hmmm…geez, Mari was right about that before she left. Your left eye does squint when you lie!”

“That’s all it is!” Hero says, frustrated. 

"Look, I don't understand why you're so interested. This is my thing, not yours." 

"I'm just saying, this could be something amazing! You could use your powers for good stuff! But I gotta know everything if I wanna help." Kel replies, clearly not understanding what Hero meant. 

"What I'm trying to tell you is…I don't want you to be part of…this…thing." Hero answers with a sigh. 

“What?! Cmon! You already told me your origin story, you could be a superhero like this! I even woke up early and made a damn costume! I had to stay on the phone with Basil for an hour at 5 in the morning!”

"You made a what?! I don't- I'm not going to be wearing a 'costume'!" 

“So you’ll just go around in…what, a jacket and homemade mask?” Kel says, pulling up a video of Hero’s performance.

"Yes! I don't want the cops to think a weirdo in…costume or whatever is going around beating up criminals, even if that is what I wanna do." 

“...not making a good argument. Just let me show you it!”

"It's a good argument especially after I've had a gun pointed at my face! Look, whatever it is you two made, I'm not gonna wear it." Hero argues, following Kel reluctantly. 

“Ta-da!” Kel said, showing off the…surprisingly well made outfit.

"...it's nice. But…why is it so…blue? "

"...is that really a nice thing to say about something we woke up at 5 in the morning to make?"

"I'm just saying, if I wanted to do this, I could've made it on my own!" Hero defends himself. 

"Then prove it, I'm pretty sure most heroes design their own suit anyway." 

“And what's up with the spider in the middle? It's kind of small, ain't it? The legs could be sharper." Hero continues to criticize the 'costume'.

“It’s simple, and out of the way. Just…try it on, see how it feels, that’s all.”

Hero sighs and gives in, putting on the outfit. 

"...a little tight. Is this spandex?"

“Parts of it! Mainly around the joints.”

"Shoulder guards? Really?" Hero complains, fidgeting. 

“You can take ‘em off if you want.”

"Wait, how did you two even get my measurements?" Kel couldn't see it, but Hero was frowning slightly. 

“I went through some old shirts of yours.”

"Right. Look, I uh, appreciate this…but…I don't know." Hero thinks for a moment. "...if I redesign this, could you two make it the way I suggest?" 

"Huh? How would you even know how to design something like this?" 

"I mean, I can try. You said most superheroes design their own suits, right?" 

“Yeah! Just send Basil the design when it’s done, alright?”

“Gotcha.”

Hero takes off the outfit and heads to his room. 

Designing his own 'suit', making his own 'webs'.... 

…being a 'hero' wasn't easy… 

Hero looks at his sketches. Multiple masks, suits. 

They weren't bad. They just weren't…exactly what he wanted. 

…the white spider symbol was okay, but it wasn't good enough. Sharper legs, maybe? Perhaps they could go around, or curve it. 

Something felt off about the eye lenses on the mask. The stark white worked for the logo, but not so much for the eyes. Maybe they could be more of a light yellow? Hero couldn’t decide.

…he picked up a light purple colored pencil and shaded the area around the eyes. 

The white eye lenses still didn't mesh as well as they should. Maybe…

He picks up a black pencil and shades the white into black. 

…creepy. Just like…spiders. 

He promptly erased the black shading.

There had to be something better. 

Blue, white, purple…what was something else within that range? 

Red? Yellow? Green? 

…not black. 

…maybe something to stand out. Yellow it is.

Hero looks triumphantly at the sketch of the design. It was great. 

Now to work on the other part. The web shooters.

…how do you even make something like that? Some sort of science mumbo-jumbo?

…if only he had studied more in the science department. He knows Mari did. He could've asked her. 

…but he can't. But maybe she had notes? No, it's not like he could've read them. 

Maybe he could look it up? Spider webs aren't "actually" strong, but something that could support his weight while swinging around like a pendulum. 

Like a rope, but compact, storeable. 

Shootable. Easily recreatable. 

…ugh, why didn't he take any science lectures? 

With nothing else to do, his mind wanders over to his bag of university files. 

As he checks them, he sighs at a complete loss. Then he spots it. 

Hero's files were yellow. He always kept them in the same color, so that it didn't get too confusing. He relied on labels to get things sorted. 

From the stack of files, he pulls out a dark purple one. 

In blue marker, the words "PROJECT FOR CHEM: MARI" were slapped across the front. 

Had she left this at his place by accident that time he got bit? She had gotten slightly clumsier ever since she entered University. 

…he didn't want to open it, but curiosity got the better of him. 

A series of well written notes laid within. How to make a chemical compound that worked like a super strong version of spider webbing. Knowing Mari, she would’ve used that to mess with him, probably by making some sort of giant, unbreakable spider web.

It wasn't just that though. The thinking process has been laid out. Her thinking turned from making spider-web to simple, quick decomposing thread. Something that could possibly hold entire bridges together, or at least that's what Mari wrote. 

…this was just what Hero needed. 

Even when she's gone, she had all the answers. 

Apparently, she had the formulas, she had the theory, but she had never gone through with making it in its entirety. 

…Hero was going to have to take that untested risk. 

He looked at the list of chemicals. He didn't understand any of it. But with some internet research, he’d understand whatever the hell he needed to do.

Kel frowns as he watches Hero struggle to close the front door while holding a massive cardboard box with FIX-IT's logo.

"What did you buy?"

"A lot. I bought a lot." Hero answers. "I don't think I understand what I've bought either, but check this out." 

Hero pulls out a strange mechanical…thing. 

“...okay?”

"Yeah, everything is going great. Thanks, by the way, I think this is exactly what I needed." Hero drags the box over to the basement and after watching him fail to open the door over and over, Kel walks up and turns the knob. 

"Have fun, I guess?" Kel says with a thumbs-up. 

“Oh, before I forget.” Hero says, handing Kel a sheet of paper. “Bring that to Basil, please?”

Kel looks at the paper, and Hero’s re-design of the costume.

"This is…good! Yeah, I'll pass it to him, but are you really okay?" 

"...what do you mean?" 

"Well, I know just yesterday you were still…thinking about Mari. And now that I think about it, maybe it isn't a good idea to become a superhero right now, you know?" 

"You said I needed to get over her, this is how I'm going to do it." Hero replies, still carrying the massive box. 

“Just…don’t overdo it, ok?”

"Sure, will do. See ya!" Hero walks down the steps to the basement and puts the box down on the nearest wooden table. 

"Right…let's see." He pulls out the various chemical bottles from the box first, and places them down on the dusty table. He pulls out the rolled notes and compares the symbols. 

"Okay, so beaker, test tubes, tripod stand…" Hero mutters to himself as he takes out the various equipment. He pulls out the bunsen burner and struggles to attach the small gas canister provided. 

"Okay uhm, so take this…and pour a little bit of it into the tube…throw in another and mix…warm up at low heat…"

"...and then throw this in while warming…done!...which will create a violent reaction if too warm. Oh." 

The beaker suddenly creates a small burst of sorts, as a sticky white liquid shoots out from the top. The whole beaker is filled with it. Hero quickly turns off the burner. 

“...and this is why I’m glad Mom’s not home right now.”

Hero looks at the beaker. He doesn't wanna touch it. He looks around for something to use. 

He finds a small toy magic wand of sorts. Or at least, Hero was pretty sure it was a toy. Using the handle, he slowly stretches towards it and lets the toy come into contact with the bubbly white substance. 

Sticky. Hero thought it was almost kind of gross. He pulls the wand up, and a thread follows, failing to break despite the force pulled against them.

“For one…ew. For two…we’re getting somewhere.”

Hero thinks about how he's going to get this all working together. For one, he bought the strange mechanical parts for "shooters" but the way the 'web' was now, he couldn't just throw it all in, or it’d gunk up the mechanisms.

He looked down at the notes and flipped through them. 

Apparently, Mari had theorized they would've come out smoothly, like thread. This didn't seem to be the case on Hero's end. 

"Great, what do I do now?" 

Looking back at the notes (and the reaction), it looked like the heat was what caused everything to happen. Either that, or a lot of pressure.

"...if I wait for it to cool down, maybe it'll become thread?" Hero looks at the beaker. 

“...wait. What if I took the unheated mixture and put it in the mechanism? Maybe the pressure would cause a reaction…worth a shot!”

Hero rushes up and grabs a spoon from the kitchen. Returning to the beaker, he scoops out the already sticky substance from the top. 

“Hope this works.” He takes the oozing, slightly molten form mixture and pours some of it into the container of the shooting device he got from FIX-IT. 

"Alright…here goes." Hero caps the container and holds the small shooter with two hands. 

He nervously presses the button. In an instant, what seems like a splatter of white sticky substance bursts from it and hits a stack of old junk. Not thread, but a blast. 

“...I hope there wasn't anything important in that pile I just hit."

Hero looks down at the device. 

"This…works. I'll need to adjust it if I want to swing though…but…"

Hero's mind swims with possibilities on what this new substance could do. Maybe another time. For now, he needs to work on making the thread…well, actually be the thread.

He opened the shooter and got to work. A few minutes was all it took, thank god he took engineering at one point. 

Making a makeshift nozzle into the inner workings that extended outwards, the shooter just needed a turn to switch from bursts and thread. Or at least, Hero was sure it would work. 

He turns the nozzle and gets ready for the test. Positioning what seemed to be an old Christmas gift box in front of him, he takes aim with the shooter and fires. 

A solid thick white thread latches itself onto the box, all while staying connected to the shooter. As it hits the box, the point of impact creates a pattern almost similar to a spider's web. 

Hero tugged on the line and dragged the box closer to him. 

It worked. He had done it. 

…Strong spider-web. Amazing. 

“YES!” Hero shouts and in that moment, he drops the shooter and it instantly starts to fire webs all around the basement. 

"CRAP!" 

This would take some refining…and a mop. Good lord, the cleanup would suck.

An hour later, Hero had finished up the work on his web shooters. Around the same time, his phone vibrated. Turns out Kel and Basil had finished the outfit.

A photo of the two of them standing exhausted over the suit is sent to him, which makes him laugh. 

He sends them a message saying he'll go over and pick it up, which he does right away, heading over to Basil's house. 

Hero felt great. He wanted to put it on right away. He wanted to get into this Hero thing. 

"So…how is it?" Basil asks. "My, uh, sewing experience and what not isn't top tier, but I did my best, and your design was incredibly detailed. The yellow lenses were uh… a little difficult to get, but we managed to get them, and here they are." 

“It’s perfect!” Hero says. "Oh, but I'll be wearing something around my wrists, is the suit okay for something like that?" 

"Y-Yeah? I think so, anyway." Basil replies. "There's really no problems if you wanted to wear a watch, the suit doesn't mess with anything like that." 

“Good to hear.”

"Oh, oh!" Kel says. "Ask me about the suit!" 

"Uhm…okay, what are the lenses made of?" 

"...Good question." Kel says, not answering anything. 

“I found some tinted glass at Fix-It, and Polly helped me add some plexiglass on the back to reinforce it.”

"Oh, cool, is everything I see gonna be yellow now?" Hero says with a small frown. "I don't know if I want that." 

“No need to worry. I framed it so that wouldn’t happen.”

"Alright then…here goes." Hero takes the suit, wearing it over his regular t-shirt and pants. 

Once he's done, he turns to a standing mirror. It's incredible, he can't even tell it's him. 

"...that spider logo is still creepy." 

"Hey, you designed it!" Kel notes. 

“I-I think it looks great!” Basil replies. 

"Maybe I should take this for a field test." Hero straps the shooters on his wrist. "Fits right..."

With that, he walks out the front door. 

"Here goes…" 

Hero shoots a web thread at the roof and pulls himself up in the air. As he soars through the air, he quickly shoots another thread at the pavement and pulls himself back onto the ground and lands with a roll. 

"Oh wow. That felt incredible!" Hero says with a laugh of amazement. 

Forgetting about Kel and Basil, Hero continues to soar through the air, before doing a perfect swing from a lamppost like a pendulum before continuing to move around at swift speeds. 

"...so uh, is he just going to leave?" Kel questions. "Like…just gone?" 

"...s-seems…like it?" Basil replies, despite being as confused as Kel. 

“Well, at least he’s having fun.”

From the top of the hospital, Hero looked over Faraway. Catching his breath, he noticed something in the distance.

A robbery. The police were backed up on the road leading to the bank.

Superheroes stop robberies, right? Regardless, it’s somewhere to start.

“Deep breaths, Henry. Time to make an entrance, and make a difference.”

Using two web threads, he launches himself across the sky. 

Too much, he goes rocketing, past the bank, barely saving it with a panicked shot towards a street lamp.

He spins around and flies into the bank through the window. 

He nearly loses his balance as he sticks the landing against the bank floor. 

"What the heck?! Where did you come from?!" A man with a bandana covering his mouth says, holding up an assault rifle. The other four or so people do the same. 

"Uh…through the window?" Hero replies before feeling a sense of danger, quickly jumping up to dodge a bullet shot at him. 

"Just kill him!" One of the robbers shouts, and instantly they all open fire. 

Hero quickly moves around, jumping up and down frantically to avoid any sort of damage. 

"Okay, this is starting to get unfair! My turn!" 

Hero jumps to avoid another bullet barrage, and as he's in the air, shoots a web thread and grabs an assault rifle away from one the robbers. 

"Alright, return to sender!" 

The gun is thrown back and knocks out the robber who held it. For a moment, the other guys are stunned. 

"What the hell did you just do?! What was that?!" 

"S-sorry, I make bad jokes under pressure." Hero replies with a nervous laugh. In an instant, the bullets once again start flying after him.   

“I need to get in close, else they’ll just keep firing!”

Another shot from the web shooters, this time towards the robbers as he practically threw himself at them.

The forge of his body knocks two of them off their feet. He quickly switches the nozzles and using the bursts, sticks the guns into the ground.

"Alright, that's it!" The last robber with a gun picks up a random civilian cowering in fear. 

“One more step, and it’s lights out for this guy! What’re ya gonna do, wiseguy?”

"Uh, I dunno, maybe negotiate for a nice cup of tea between the two of us?" 

Hero says, before quickly switching back to threads, dragging the rifle and civilian towards him. 

“What the hell even are you?! Some sorta insect guy?!”

“Nope.” Hero replies, hearing the familiar sirens of the police.

“That’s my cue to go. If anyone asks…tell ‘em you were caught by the one and only Spider-Man.” Hero shoots a web thread and zooms out of the bank as the police rush into the bank, with the robbers holding their hands up in surrender. 

“…and in other news, a robbery at Faraway Bank was thwarted by an unknown vigilante calling himself Spider-Man. According to an eyewitness…” 

Was that all that the news had? Milhael groaned. Turning off his phone, he turned towards his friend.

“So you’re saying that if I, THE MAVERICK, were to leap onto the live generator…you’d give me twenty dollars?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure a toxic waste management company’s truck crashed into it a week ago, but yeah.” His friend replied. "You'll probably live, but maybe you won't."

“As I’ve heard some say…fuck it, we ball.”

With that, he threw himself onto the generator.

"...ha! It seems as usual, THE MAVERICK has prevailed-" 

The generator sparks and, in an instant, Mikhael feels his body burn alive, his inside screaming and his very soul struggling and doing its best not to fail. The pain overwhelms him as he screams in agony. 

And then it stops as he drops dead. 

"Oh. He… he died. That's too bad. Eh, not like anyone would care.” The friend walks away from the generator, humming a tune as Mikhael's body lay on top of the generator. 

…all was silent in the junkyard for a moment. 

Then his corpse glowed a dreadful dark yellow as the generator's current flowed through his body. 

In mere moments, his entire body was covered in conducted electricity, and then slowly, the heart started to beat again. 

Mikhael gasps for air as he struggles to move his body. As he does his best to stand, intense electricity flows through the yard. 

Cars spring to life. Scrap starts to float, and the dust starts to swirl as Mikhael gets up, his wig falling off his head and onto the ground. 

"So…nobody cared about me anyways? Good to know." 

As his rage built, sparks flew from his fingertips.

“Fine then! If fate wishes for me to play a new role, then I shall! It’s as I’ve said before: if all the world’s a stage…”

His eyes glow a sinister yellow, lightning coursing through his veins.

“…let’s set it on fire. From today onward, The Maverick is no more! Call me…ELECTRO!”