PETER
The city of New York was always bustling with activity. It was the city that never slept. No matter where you were or what time it was, there was something always going on. It may be a bit overwhelming to the more timid folks, but to Peter Parker it was amazing.
He swung through downtown Manhattan at incredible, yet nauseating, speeds. As he made his morning commute, Spider-Man spun and flipped playfully when he could. Even this early in the morning there were plenty of people on their way to work, some would stop and watch Spider-Man swing by in awe, annoyance or disgust. Mostly it was the last two ones.
Someone from the crowd yelled out, “SPIDEY, I LOVE YOU!”
Spider-Man swung down a little lower than usual, shouting, “I love you too random citizen!”
The crowd cheered as he called out to them and with a smile on his face he continued making his way through Manhattan. He had made his way to Time Square, aware that a news helicopter was right behind him as they got an overhead shot of the square.
Spidey looked at the screens as they flashed to the local news channel which featured Spider-Man in real-time. It was a bit odd to have these many people look up to him and respect him as a hero. There were a minority of those who disagreed with Spidey’s vigilantism but while they were the most vocal they were tiny in comparison to those who adored him.
It was nice but at the same time worrying. After all, the last two times he interacted with fans, one of them tried to kill him and the other nearly got hurt or killed by a mechanized rhino (long story).
Still, Spidey loved his fans and loved interacting with them. He’s made it his job to show up at comic conventions in his outfit to surprise people when they find out that he’s actually Spider-Man.
Spidey’s earpiece buzzed with garbled transmissions from the NYPD. He had cleverly modified his iPhone to act as a police scanner so that he could get a jump-start on crime. There was an apparent bank robbery occurring a block from here. Spidey swung and stuck to a nearby building and checked the time.
He groaned. If he went to help, he’d be late to work… More police chatter in his ear, talking about cybernetic arms and officers being thrown around like ragdolls.
Without hesitation, Spider-Man leapt off the building and made a beeline to the bank.
Dr. Otto Octavius swung his cybernetic arms and threw the police car at the officer. It exploded in a fiery blaze and the mad scientist grinned evilly at the inferno. Police officers scattered and took aim and fired. His cybernetic arms piled up in front of him, acting as a shield, and expanded to properly cover his entire body. The bullets harmlessly bounced off him.
One of his spare arms reached over to the left and grabbed a police officer. She yelped and was immediately disarmed. The sergeant ordered his men to cease fire as Octavius pulled the officer in front of him as a shield.
“Now then,” he said smugly. “I think that concludes our meeting, wouldn’t you say?”
Two of his arms went and grabbed the large bags of money behind him and he began to walk away, successful… a web got his face, temporarily blinding him.
“You aren’t leaving now, are ya? I just got here!” Spider-Man called out as he clung to the opposite building. Octavius growled as he pulled the webbing from his eyes.
“Spider-Man!” he roared.
“That’s me.” Spidey said smugly, standing up slightly and leaning against the building casually. “Who are you supposed to be? Robo-freak?”
“I am Doctor Otto Octavius!” he announced defiantly.
“You look more like a Frank to me.”
Octavius threw a car door at Spidey but he just dodged it and it bounced off the building, crashing into the ground.
“Otto Octavius,” Spider-Man repeated. “I dunno, bit of a mouthful. How about Doctor Octopus!”
“My name is Otto Octavius!” he roared.
“Nah, I like Doc Ock better!”
Doc Ock held up the police officer, one of his arms sprouted a dagger-like weapon and pointed it to her neck. The officer whimpered, looking helplessly to Spider-Man. Spidey held up his hands in surrender.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s calm down there, Ocky,” he said, descending slowly from the building.
“You prattle on and continue these games, Spiderman, and she will be the one to suffer,” threatened the Doc.
Spider-Man made it to the ground and was slowly approaching him. “Now, now, I know you ain’t that type of person, Doc.”
“Do not call me that!”
“So, just put her down and we can talk it out. Animal-based hero to animal-based villain,” he continued. The police officer looked Spider-Man in the eyes, although he wore a mask, she somehow knew what he was planning. Spider-Man whipped his hand to fire off a web, Doc Ock responded by stabbing at the officer but she was quicker. She elbowed Doc Ock in the face, causing him to hesitate enough, his robotic arms fell off balance.
His web stuck to the officer’s chest and he yanked her away from Doc Ock, catching her. The police officer was safe and her comrades opened fire on the criminal. Spider-Man held on to the woman and looked at her nametag.
“You alright, Anne?” Spidey asked.
Anne breathlessly nodded, hoping she wasn’t as red as she felt. “Thank you,” she managed to say.
“Just doin’ my job!”
Doc Ock had retreated up the building and onto the rooftop. Those arms of his looked tough, the police would have a hard time catching him. Spidey glanced at Anne’s watch. Agh, he was super late now…
“Gotta go, stay outta trouble, ya hear?”
Spidey webbed and swung onto the bank, scaling it quickly and made it to the rooftop before the police helicopters even got there. Doc was in the midst of escaping with only two bags of money, oh, he ain’t getting away.
He sprinted across the rooftop, webbing the very edge of it and using it as a slingshot to cover the remaining length. He shot at Doc like a bullet, tackling him off the rooftop. The two fell through the air, Spidey tried to pummel him but his arms kept getting in the way, grabbing and restraining him.
Before they neared the ground, Doc turned and forced Spider-Man to the bottom so he took the brunt of the impact. They crashed on top of a speeding train. Spider-Man groaned as they bounced like ragdolls on the roof of the train.
Spidey had to web the side of the train so he wouldn’t slip off and awkwardly scrambled to his feet. But Doc was already alert and snatched Spidey, his arms gripped his waist and neck and pulled him closer to the villain.
“You shouldn’t have gotten in my way,” Otto growled.
“You’d be surprised how often I’m told that,” Spider-Man retorted.
Otto threw Spider-Man off the train but he webbed the arms and shot back at him. He slammed into his chest, Otto would’ve fallen off if it wasn’t for his arms. Spider-Man connected with a powerful right and a liver shot but his arms were insanely fast. If it wasn’t for his reflexes he would’ve been knocked off.
Spider-Man had to dodge the arms including Otto’s actual arms. But he had enough of that. He webbed one of his arms to the roof and leapt over him, webbing another one of his arms to his back and his last two to each other.
True to his name, Spider-Man crawled all over Doc Ock’s body and webbed him up so tightly that even his super-powered arms weren’t enough to break it. Spider-Man swung off the train with Doc Ock in tow like a spider with a fly.
“Hey!” he called to Doc. “You got the time pal?”
“RELEASE ME!”
Spider-Man left Doc Ock hanging on a traffic light on Columbus Avenue and swung straight down to the Daily Bugle.
Peter Parker burst into the Daily Bugle, bedraggled and completely exhausted. His messy brown hair was even messier if possible, his hoodie and shirt was completely disheveled as if he got dressed at 30 mph (which he did). He shouldered his backpack and sprinted up the stairs.
As he ran up the stairs he ran through a list of excuses through his mind to explain why he was so late today.
Peter had finally been given an official position at the Bugle after months of working there. Apparently there was some sort of bylaw that prohibited Peter from working there for a certain period of time and being underpaid and not given an actual job. So with great reluctance J.J gave him a job with his own little desk and everything.
It was nice considering he was bad-mouthed by J.J about his job performance and Spider-Man. Considering he’s the only photographer in the entire city able to get a single picture of the famed superhero, J.J counted on him to acquire as many discriminating photos as possible.
Peter wondered if there was some sort of karmic law against him badmouthing his own alter-ego.
He’d finally reached the top floor and crashed into Mary-Jane Watson. The two would’ve went tumbling if it weren’t for his superhuman reflexes. Peter instantly corrected his balance, wrapped his arm around her waist and kept her standing. With his spare arm he caught the folders and binders she had dropped.
“Whoa!” she gasped as Peter smiled awkwardly handing her stuff back. “Nice reflexes there, Tiger.”
Peter let her go and stepped back, chuckling nervously. “It’s the coffee, ah, you know it winds me up that’s all.”
Mary-Jane took her stuff and stepped in, lowering her voice as she kept an eye on J.J’s office. “Then why are you forty minutes late, Pete?”
Peter fiddled with his camera (a recent gift from Aunt May considering his last camera was destroyed by a giant lizard, long story) and couldn’t meet her eyes. “My, uh, train was delayed.”
“You don’t take the train to work,” she remarked.
“Which explains why it took me forever to get in!”
MJ laughed which made Peter feel one part happy and one part guilty but she didn’t notice his default puppy-dog expression. “I covered for you, alright? J.J thinks you’ve been here this whole time, I told him you were in the bathroom with explosive diarrhea.”
“Really?” Pete smiled derisively. “You couldn’t think of something more mortifying than that?”
“Well, I was gonna go with wetting your bed, but I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
Pete couldn’t help but chuckle at how helpful MJ was being even if she went out of her way to embarrass him constantly. Since he had started working here, MJ made a beeline to him and asked for his help on her piece on Spider-Man. As mentioned he’s the only photographer that can get a clear shot of the Web-Head and MJ quickly took advantage of that.
MJ was an intelligent, insightful and very ambitious young girl. Vying to become one of New York’s top investigative journalist. She’d explain that she’d began her career the first year of high school, running around, interviewing teachers and students. Once she had exposed the principal of her school of embezzling money to fund his recent remodeling ventures he’d taken on his house. Granted, since it was a school in New York he only was able to get enough money to remove the carpeting in one room but still he was fired as a result.
Peter admired her and yet had reason to be wary of her. MJ respected Spider-Man enough but her hyper-inquisitive nature drove her to an almost obsessive need to oust Spider-Man’s secret identity. In her own office (which was a corner office compared to Pete’s tiny janitor’s room turned office) she had a wall of crazy in which she tries to deduce his identity.
Despite that, Peter felt if he revealed his identity to her she’d probably burst out laughing in disbelief. She was funny that way. MJ was around the same age as Pete but nearly as tall as him which meant that whenever they spoke, MJ deliberately tried to make herself taller by standing on elevated ground or even wearing heels, just to establish dominance. With fiery red curly hair and bright green eyes, attractive yet perpetually single for some reason. Pete supposed guys were intimidated by strong women.
“Still you better get in there, J.J is fuming,” she continued. “Apparently, Spidey stopped a bank heist and he’s trying to find another angle to make it look like he planned the heist himself.”
Peter looked over at the corner into J.J’s office and he was yelling at a few poor interns. Probably he’s telling them to come up with synonyms for conniving, scheming, bug-eyed Web-head.
“Alright, that’ll be fun,” Peter said with an awkward smile. “Listen, thanks, I owe you one.”
MJ waved her hand, still smiling. “It’s no prob, just take me out to dinner and we’ll call it even.”
Peter hoped his face wasn’t as red as her hair. “Uh, well, I-I that sounds, I-I mean that’s—“ He took a step back and bumped into a desk, nearly tripping over his feet and dropping his stuff as he continued to stammer awkwardly.
MJ furrowed her eyebrows and placed a hand on his arm. “Pete, you alright you look like you’re about to be sick.”
Peter recoiled at her touch and couldn’t meet her eyes. He couldn’t look at MJ without seeing her…
“Listen, I-I gotta go, J.J is-is waiting to tear me a new one and I can’t miss that,” Peter said in a panicky and worried tone. “I’ll talk to you later, MJ.”
Without waiting for her response, Peter turned on his heel and walked into J.J’s office.
J Jonah Jameson wasn’t exactly an intimidating man. He was average height, which meant he was shorter than Peter, with short cropped black hair but the sides were perfectly gray. He had a thick salt-and-pepper colored mustache and a thick Cuban cigar in his mouth. Peter heard an intern once explain that he had an oral fixation because of his smoking habit, he never saw that guy again.
He was always glaring and spoke at 100 mph and apparently never heard of an inside voice. To be honest, he could probably scare drill instructors.
As soon as Peter entered, J.J glared frostily at him like he spat in his breakfast.
“Parker! Where have you been?” he asked in a voice that was slightly quieter than a lawnmower on full blast.
Peter brushed his hair back awkwardly and approached his desk. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jameson, but I was just—“
“I don’t wanna hear your life story, Parker! Where are the pictures you promised me?”
“I emailed them to you this morning—“
“Do I pay you to just stand around tellin’ me what I get in my emails?”
“No, but—“
“That’s my secretary’s job! And by the way, those pictures were crap.” To prove his point, J.J pulled out a folder of a dozen perfect pictures of Spider-Man and tossed them on his desk.
“Well, what about this one?” Peter pulled up a picture of Spider-Man saving a kitten from a tree. “I think that’s pretty nice of him, huh?”
J.J scrutinized the picture for a minute, puffing out smoke like a steam train. “Fine,” he decided, handing the picture to an editor. “Put it on the front page, headline: Spider-Man Terrorizes Local Cat, Children Everywhere Cry!”
Peter wanted to protest but J.J raised an eyebrow. “What’re you still doing here? I don’t pay you to just stand around.”
“Speaking of that,” Peter said. “I was hoping I could get paid a bit more considering what I get now isn’t enough for even a decent meal every day.”
J.J laughed uproariously, slamming his desk and knee from his raucous laughter but Peter just stood there and stared at him. He stopped abruptly and frowned. “Fine,” he said, taking out a check and scribbling on it. “Take this to the girl up front.”
“Thanks.” Peter was about to leave but J.J called out again.
“Oh, don’t forget the benefit tonight, Parker. You and Watson are supposed to be down there by eight.”
Peter blanched. He stood there by the door, staring out the glass at Mary-Jane who was talking to a coworker, Eddie something. After that horribly awkward display, Peter figured MJ didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
But he said, “You got it sir, I love benefits.”
“And wear your best suit!”
“Always.”