Discovering Spiderman
Tony
It was almost four in the morning but I was wide awake in my workshop, as usual. I took a sip of my favorite strong black coffee as I scrolled through holograms that showed the plans I’ve come up for the new upgrades on my Iron Man suit. I was satisfied with what I saw so I told my AI assistant, Friday, to close all the holograms.
“Okay boss,” Friday complied and all the blue glowing lights disappeared on my desk, leaving just my usual mess of random bolts, screws, and a single wrench strewn across the large white table. There was nothing left for me to do so I decided to turn on my Stark tablet and look aimlessly at internet websites.
I found myself on Youtube where I saw a bunch of similar videos featured on the homepage. They all showed a masked guy dressed in what looked like a blue and red colored onesie. I clicked on one video that had 1.5 million views. The video was titled: Queen’s neighborhood hero saves the day.
The video began with a loud screech from a black car that was moving uncontrollably fast towards a busy intersection. It was about to hit a pedestrian and a public bus. Suddenly, the blue and red dressed guy comes in from nowhere using some sort of web-like material to swing quickly. He catches the black car right before it could crash unto the bus. He jumps high up, unharmed, and everyone around was safe. Those who witnessed what happened cheered for the blue and red wearing guy.
I’m quite impressed but just a tiny bit doubtful about the authenticity of the videos. However, something tells me that these couldn’t be fake. I want to find out more about the guy so I called out to Friday to do some research on this masked Queen’s hero.
“Friday, can you look up more information on this guy who’s all over Youtube?”’
“Right away sir,” Friday answered and a minute later a holographic screen pops up on my desk that showed a compilation of pictures, videos and news articles.
“Boss, this person seems to be called Spiderman,” Friday informed.
“Huh, that’s an interesting name. Thanks Fri,” I said and skimmed through the information Friday collected. None of the material tells me the true identity of “Spiderman”. I guess he wants to keep his identity hidden which I could genuinely understand. Back when I was still beginning the “hero” life, I also didn’t want the world to know that I’m Iron Man.
The Avengers could use someone like this guy on our team. I’m definitely going to keep tabs on this “Spiderman” person. But in the meantime, I can come up with some initial plans for a suit for him…
A few months later
“36 hours? Jeez,” I say to Natasha Romanov.
I’m seated while she’s standing right beside me. Both of us are in a conference room where the U.N. Secretary of State, General Ross, had just left us and demanded that Steve Roger’s and the rest of the Avengers that sided with him be brought in within 36 hours. With Sam, his super soldier friend Bucky, Clint, and Wanda, on Cap’s side, I don’t think I’ll be able to round them up in time for the deadline General Ross gave me even with Agent Romanov’s help.
“We’re seriously understaffed,” she states.
“It’d be great if we had a Hulk right about now. Any shot?” I glance up to her but I wasn’t really expecting her to have any news about Bruce Banner.
She smiles and shakes her head slightly, “you really think he’d be on our side?”
“No,” I say and a thought quickly occurred to me. I needed someone else on our team who had the capabilities of fighting against super powered people and that “Spiderman” guy from Queen’s who I discovered on Youtube a couple of months ago is definitely the guy that I needed.
“I have an idea,” Romanov says, I feel her staring at me intently. I looked up to face her and answer, “me too, where’s yours?”
“Downstairs. Where’s yours?” she says. She tilts her head skeptically but I just give her a small smirk.
Despite the big worry and great stress that I am in right now, I felt quite excited to meet this Spiderman guy. All I needed was to find out his true identity and, with Friday’s advanced capabilities, I’d be able to find out in less than an hour. I say goodbye to Natasha and left the conference room.
I headed straight to my private jet and immediately put Friday to work on discovering who’s behind the Spiderman mask. I got myself comfortably seated on the jet. The thing flies itself so all I needed was to input the destination: New York. I had to do something important while travelling which was to make a suit for Spiderman. I brought up the files that I worked on a few months back which contained my plans for the Spiderman suit. My jet had all the right materials needed to get the suit physically made.
About 40 minutes into the flight, Friday informs me that she found out who Spiderman really is, “Spiderman is a teenager named Peter Parker.”
The Spider-MAN is actually a kid and not a man?
“How old is he?” I asked.
“He’s fourteen, sir.”
That changes a lot of things. He’s very young yet he’s already putting himself in danger by helping other people and I find that admirable. Though, I’m starting to doubt whether I should really recruit Spiderman on my team. But, I’m desperate and I don’t want the whole Cap situation to go worse than it already is. I don’t have any other options but maybe I can make a compromise? I decided to add more safety features on the suit that would add extra protection for the kid who would be wearing it. I just hope that it would be enough to protect him.