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// Page 2 
// Story: Shimmering Spider 
// by Sense of Humor 
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Samantha didn't expect her day at school to turn out so...satisfying, by fifth period no less. She still didn't like moving or this school in particular, but there were some pretty nice points in the day. Like the fact that no one excluding the teachers had said much to her, leaving her alone and not bringing up the subject of her gloves. There was this one boy, Pete or something; he was the only one to say anything other than hi, but he was...clearly one of the weirder students. Possibly one of the one of the smarter ones too, until she wowed him with a brief suggestion in Chemistry. Man, from the look on his face, she guessed that no one could improve on whatever formulas he thought up. She hadn't had a sense of gratification like this back in Westview, even if this was a small thing.

And, as much she hated to say it...he was an okay guy. She didn't warm up to him entirely, but at least the first person she'd really talked to was nice. He was easy enough to conversate with and from the looks of it, wasn't too far down on the social scale to be laughed at by everyone in the school. If her mom asked her about any new friends, then Samantha could at least say she'd met a nerd(ish) kid. But since she was kinda smarter than him...that made her nerd(ish) and a hypocrite at the same time. Oh well.

Now it was 7th period: lunch to be specific. Sam took notice of most of her peers choosing to sit down before joining into a huge line for lunch, leaving their backpacks behind to mark their eating territory. It gave her ample time to be one of the first in line, but also enough to be stared at by a few guys and girls. She didn't know what they could be thinking of her, but it would be amazing if they didn't stare at her hair like she was Medusa. It couldn't be that abnormal for everyone to whisper about it or exchanges glances. The girl payed no more attention to them, picking up a chicken sandwich box and examining the box. "Well...at least it looks edible." She shrugged before picking up a small cart of fries and a regular milk carton. Entering her lunch number was a small difficulty; it would take a while before she could fully memorize it, and until then she kept it as a picture on her phone. The real problem came afterwards, ensuing her leave of the lunch line altogether...

Finding a lunch table.





"...Where did everyone come from?" She muttered in exasperation as she walked and stared at the massive sea of bodies. Countless students overcrowding the seats to be with friends and often yelling across the table just to talk to other friends,who were doing the exact same thing in another direction. She was sure more than half of them already had lunch in another period! Where was she supposed to sit now, when there were enough adolescents here to block an entire table from view?

The search took her down one row to the farthest wall, but didn't provide any results other than a few stares and at least one individual stifling a laugh.  Frustration building within her, Samantha leaned against the wall and took another wide scan of the cafeteria. Asking any of the rude students for a spot was out of the question. Moving into a classroom wasn't possible either. Maybe sitting against the wall wouldn't be a bad idea; it wasn't against school rules and there wasn't anyplace else to sit. The girl sighed,set her non-edible items down next to her feet and jumped ten feet out of her skin when a girl seemed to appear out of thin air next to her.

"Hi." The girl scratched her messy, dark brown hair and leaned against the wall. Her voice was unbelievably wry and bored, very similar to her own expression. "Peter begged me to get you to sit with us at our table...You are the new girl, right?"

"Er, Yeah." Sam blinked rapidly, casting a look down at the girl's boots and noting how noisy they looked. Was she a ninja? "I'm her. I mean--I'm new."

"Alright. Come on, then." 

She said that briefly, and left Sam behind without really waiting to see if she would follow. Perplexed and left with no other choice, the partially red-haired girl slowly followed her strange quarry all the way to the end of the left side of the cafeteria. A lone table sat there, the only occupant at the moment being Peter, who was scrolling through something very lengthy on his phone. The boy took notice of her quickly and made a face stuck between a full smile and nothing. "Hey again. I know this isn't the best place to sit down, but it's better than the floor, right?"

"The floor doesn't have losers," The girl deadpanned and sat, at a distance, next to him. " like you."

Samantha pursed her lips. "If this table is for losers, why are you here?"

"No friends. Same as you, if you aren't counting Petey here." The girl explained with the same level of boredom in her voice, though taking a bite of one of her steak fingers seemed to lighten her expression. So much so that Samantha was starting to regret not getting a few of those when she had the chance. "He said your name was Samantha, right? I'm Michelle."

"Hmm. I don't suppose I'm not the only other one that sits here...?"

"Until my friend gets back from being sick, you are." Peter said. "Speaking of being places, I never really asked about where you came from. Care to share?"

The girl thought over it for a long moment, mostly to provide time for her to eat.  "Oregon."

Michelle actually made a different face; halfway surprised. "You came all the way from Oregon?"

"Mmm-hmm." Sam couldn't help but vent just slightly since she asked the question. It felt pretty good to do just that. "My mom says it's for business and because of the building she bought down here. Thanks to its importance and popularity here, she needs to be in New York and of course...I'm dragged along for the ride.  The building is so big, they're barely halfway done moving their things out of it!"

"What building is that?" Peter asked.

"Huh? Oh, I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention to that when she abruptly said we were moving. Anyways, we're not even in a house yet. Just some apartment in Queens, really small and not that much space." She groaned semi-loudly and let her head fall backwards in the process. "It is a complete nightmare. This school has been the only break for me, and even this place is bad."

"Has anyone been throwing pick-up lines at you?" The only boy at the table asked in a mock quizzical way. "I know I'd be done with the school if that happened."

Samantha snorted, but then stopped herself with a lingering smile. He was definitely hard not to smile at, and it was hard to imagine how he was at this table in the first in the first place. Not to say Michelle was a loser; she really wasn't. "No, but...ugh! Everyone has been staring at my hair all day today, like it's gonna leap off my scalp and strangle someone."

"It looks like bacon to me. " Michelle shrugged. "But really cool bacon. The kind to make people jealous, because their bacon isn't as good as yours."

"...Thanks. I guess."

"So no one has commented on your hair or the gloves?" Peter pointed with a narrowed eye and a raised eyebrow. "If so, let me be the first to ask...what's up with that?"

Samantha snuck down a swallow and subconsciously caused her hands to clasp together. The heat in her palms had grown larger by now, enough to make the wool of her gloves feel weird and somewhat cooked. Sh!t; she should've played attention to it throughout the day--questions would rise if her hands suddenly caught fire or smelled like smoke. "Um, it's a really bad skin rash. It's super big and its on my palms and the back of my hands."

"Really?" Michelle's voice tilted with interest as her hand reached forward, plucking at the wrist of the glove. "Let me see. Is it--"

"No!" Samantha pulled her hands into her lap abruptly and finished. "I'm...uh... really conscious about it and I don't want anyone to see it. Plus it gets super itchy when exposed to air and it turns red and stuff. My doctor said it might be contagious too, so..yep."

"Ew."

To her relief, the girl didn't pry any further and Peter didn't do much more than apprehensively stare at her. "So, either of you know where Spanish 1 is for Misteeeeer...Jackson?  His room number is blurred out on the picture for some reason."

Peter piped up almost immediately. "Room 512. I have him next period, funny enough...or, I would have him. I get to leave a little early because of my job."

"He's got a job as Tony Stark's intern." Michelle added to explain things, while Peter tried not to look too proud of himself. "I guess he goes up in that tower everyday to build suits and fight with the Avengers and stuff."

The redhead gave him a lopsided smirk. "Oh really? Think you could lend me an Iron Man suit sometime?"

"Ha Ha. I just do intern work. A whole lot of it. " He stated with a satisfied smirk thrown at Samantha. "But I tell ya...it's a really fun job."




"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~HAAAAAAAAAH!"  

Spider-man landed on side of the building with no trouble, his fingertips slowing his descent down the glass side to a halt in seconds. After those few seconds, he shot up into the air again and set his white-lensed eyes on a stone gargoyle nearby. His webshooter caused a thick white rope to shoot out like a bullet, splatting onto the face of the ornament and remaining strong as he swung his weight forward on it. Letting go of the webline sent him flying through the air again--high enough to disturb a flock of pigeons and earn another whooping laugh from him. Peter was always reminded of how much fun web-swinging was when he aimed his wrist. The way the wind roared past him when he gained speed, the sudden drop when gravity caught up to him, the height records he broke all the time--it was all an exhilarating feeling that couldn't be beat by anything else. And the best part? This wasn't even the highlight of the job.

His lenses narrowed at the ground and gave him brilliant binocular vision; the streets suddenly looked like he was inches from it, as if he were standing on the ground amongst the sea of people and cars.He could see a guy walking a pretty big Labrador, going past a woman with a very expensive looking business suit, who  dodged a collision with an old lady, who just got her purse snatched by another dude, who walked past a kid and his...wait a second.

Spider-man began to swing in the man's direction and cursed under his breath when he disappeared around the corner of the sidewalk--This guy must've done some planning for this. Of course, if Peter were a thief, he'd want to have a means of evading Spider-man before he even saw him. When the webhead finally perched on the edge of the building, he heard an engine rev into life and saw the purse snatcher burst out of the alleyway at the back of the building. Nearby civilians shrieked and dodged the car as best they could, some of them coming dangerously close to being clipped. Peter managed to yank them out of the way while an entertained look spread underneath his mask. "A guy with backup plans? This is gonna be great."  He used a webline to catapult himself at quick speeds toward the car while the man swerved around the corner of a building at the end of the street. Peter tapped on his window to get his attention. "Hey! Hang on! I think you're my uber!"

The car veered towards the left in an effort to brush him off with a lamppost, allowing it to get ahead of him as he had to dodge the metal. He used a webline to try propelling himself at the back of the car again, but his highly perceptive eyes discovered that the car was about to hit a line of people crossing the street. Aw, Sh#t! Okay, hang on... Spider-man pressed a finger at the nozzle of his webshooter, angling it so that several strands of webbing latched onto the shoulders of the civilians. He lept a few feet ahead of the car and used a somersault to help yank everyone high enough to avoid a head-on collision, earning a chorus of screams for his efforts. Just seconds before he landed on the street, his aim created a giant net that caught everyone safely before they were to land in a painful way. It actually impressed himself, if he were honest.

"Everyone okay up there?" He called aloud while the civilians tried to make sense of what happened. Tire screeching drew his attention once more. "Uh, okay. Just  climb down from the left! Stay safe! No need to thank me!"

The chase resumed once again, but the thief seemed to pick up on Peter's need to keep people out of the way and immediately targeted the sidewalks to slow him down more. The boy gave a frustrated growl at having to leap ahead several times and pull people out of his destructive path. He would have at least attempted to stop the car with his bare hands, but the screaming lady or dude in front always took up that time. He was huffing and puffing after a full minute, and admittedly started to lose track of the car after the seventeenth citizen he rescued. But after making a specific  turn, the car discovered that there weren't any bodies to threaten or any pets to distract the vigilante with. 

Finally. Peter smirked underneath the mask. Now I can put the breaks on--wha?!

Thirty feet ahead of the speeding car was a lone figure, crossing the street and busying themselves with their hands for some reason. When his lenses narrowed, he could recognize the figure as Samantha, the girl from school. The thief seemed to notice her too, bexcuse the car lurched forward at a faster speed. Peter gasped as he realized he was too far back to pull her out of the way, and he frantically shot a Web line at the bumper on the vehicle. The chappy thing fell off and almost smacked him in the head.

"HEY!" He shouted at the top of his lungs and tried shooting another line. "WATCH OUT! GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

Things were a blur after he yelled that-- in a span of four seconds Samantha looked up in fear to see the car, the car came within a couple of feet of her and then she held up her arms with a shriek. Then there was a blinding orange light, then a lazer sound and the next thing he knew, the car was flipping up in the air--twenty feet or more-- and was hurting down onto an oncoming car. Spider-man's wrist propelled him forward in time to spray another web-net that caught the car inches from smashing the roof of the other car. The woman inside the latter sighed in relief, and her children waved to the vigilante eagerly.

After waving back, Peter tore off the driver's door of the Thief. "Geez, dude! You suck at driving! I gotta find your driving instructor so I can smack his head!"

"What was that?!" The thief seemed more focused on how he ended up airborne rather than being caught by him. "I almost blew up in here, man! She came outta nowhere!"

"Serves you right, too." Was the only response he got before a Web splattered over the Thief's face. Still, his words made him look at the front of the car, where a large black don't awaited it. It looked like almost the entire front of the car had been burned away and a smouldering husk was left. Peter scrutinized the damage in shock.

How did she do that? She'd have to a flamethrower the size of a minivan to... The science driven part of his brain shut off as another thought popped up. Hey. Where is she, anyway?