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“See you tomorrow man!” Ned said, waving at Peter as they walked down the steps of the school.
“Yeah, bye dude!” Peter called in response, turning in the direction of his apartment complex. It was a Tuesday afternoon, which meant he would go home, change into his suit, and patrol for a few hours. Tuesday evenings were reserved for him and May to eat together before he tackled his homework.
Peter internally mused on what May might make for dinner as he made his way home. She'd had some success with a Greek dish the previous week... hopefully something similar would be tonight's fare. Arriving at the apartment, he quickly shed his backpack and shoes by the door before heading into his room and throwing on his suit. He pulled street clothes on over his suit – he'd realized that climbing out of his apartment window during the day was a bit obvious. Instead he would go out, find a quiet alley, scale the wall, and shuck his outer clothes.
He headed back outside, quickly finding a good spot to finish his shift into Spiderman.
“Hi Karen!” he chirped, tugging his mask over his face.
“Hello Peter. It's good to see you. How was school today?” Karen replied.
“School was pretty good,” Peter murmured, doing a few warm-up stretches. “Ned and I are working together on a science project. We're splitting the write-up portion. I think I'm going to ask MJ to look over my part.”
“Sounds good, Peter. I'm sure your write-up will be incredible.”
“Thanks,” he beamed. “Anything interesting happening in Queens?”
“I'm getting reports of some sort of accident and lots of traffic over in a residential area of Bayside,” Karen suggested.
“Okay, let's go,” Peter said, swinging in the direction that his HUD highlighted. He let out a few whoops of enjoyment while the wind whistled past his ears, waving at some curious onlookers that noticed him.
After a few minutes, the sound of honking and angry voices became apparent. Peter landed on the top of an apartment building and surveyed the chaos below him. A tractor trailer was taking up an entire intersection, sitting diagonally in the road and completely blocking traffic. A few mangled cars sat near the trailer, evidence that the driver had made some attempts to maneuver his way out of the situation but had been ineffective. People were walking around the intersection, some taking pictures or video, some yelling at others, and one enterprising kid was trying his best to break open the fire hydrant that had been damaged by the front end of the truck.
“Wow,” Peter remarked to Karen. “This is not what I was expecting at all.”
Looking over the people gathered below him, he pinpointed the driver of the truck thanks to the company-issued polo shirt with a logo that matched the one on the side of the trailer. Peter hopped off of the building, slowing his descent with a well-placed web and landing on the asphalt.
“Spiderman!” one woman shouted in surprise.
“Hey!” he greeted cheerfully. “I don't have a license, but I'm pretty sure that's not how you parallel park.” Someone groaned at his bad joke, but Peter just grinned under his mask. “So what happened here?”
“Some dumbass truck driver thought he could make this turn. Doesn't he know he shouldn't have even been here?” a man commented while recording the scene.
“That piece of shit wrecked my car!” another man screamed, his face red. He was pointing at the driver, who was standing with his head in his hands. “Web him up Spidey, he's gotta pay!”
Peter put his hands up in a placating gesture. “Woah, hang on. This seems like an accident and I can hear the cops on their way.” Sure enough, sirens could be heard in the background, but with the amount of traffic around, it was unlikely they'd be arriving anytime soon. “I think the bigger problem is how to deal with the truck so that traffic can start moving again.”
The angry man let out a huff and stomped away muttering curses, but Peter paid him little mind and approached the driver. A woman holding a toddler was standing nearby, frowning hard, but didn't say anything to either the vigilante or the driver. “Hey, man,” Peter started, “What's up?”
The driver, an average sized man with a pale complexion, scrubbed his hands down his face before looking at Peter. “I just followed my GPS, dude. The company didn't say I couldn't go through the city. I'm so fired.”
“Damn straight,” muttered the woman holding the toddler.
“I dunno what to do,” the driver continued, staring listlessly at his cab door. “I tried to make a wide turn, I tried to get out, I just kept hitting cars and it's too narrow for me to do anything. I don't even know how the cops are gonna get it out.”
Peter made a low humming noise to acknowledge what the guy said, while looking at the truck and intersection. “I might have an idea,” he said slowly, then leapt to the top of the trailer in a graceful move that left the nearby toddler pointing and giggling. The teenager made note of where cars were at, the sidewalks, and other key items like signs, before nodding to himself. He jumped back down to the asphalt to share his plan.
“I think I can move most of the cars out of the way, and then move the truck itself so that you have a direct route back to the roads you should be on,” Peter explained.
The driver stared at him in shock. “The truck weighs upwards of twenty tons, Spiderman. I mean it's empty but still heavy.”
Peter just shrugged. “I lifted a building off of myself once, I think I got this.” Ignoring the man's awed expression, he jogged towards one of the damaged cars near the trailer. “Is the owner of this car here?” he called to the group of people around.
It took a moment, and someone translated his message to Spanish, before a woman stepped forward with a frustrated expression. “Yeah, that's my car,” she said. “I can't open the driver door to move it, 'cause it's too banged up.”
“I'm gonna move it out of the way. Can you find a spot for me to put it?”
She blinked at him as his words sunk in. “You're gonna move it?”
Peter nodded. “Yeah, I can lift it. I'm pretty strong.”
“Okaaaaay,” she said, drawing out the word. “Maybe the next block over has space?”
“Sounds good!” Peter responded. He found the best grip he could on the woman's sedan before easily lifting it over his head. He tried not to blush as the excited rumbles of the crowd around him reached his ears, and instead walked slowly and carefully until he found a spot to place the car. “There you go. Maybe go ahead and call the insurance company now,” he said to the owner. She made a grumbling noise but smiled at him anyways.
Peter repeated the process six more times with vehicles in the near vicinity of the intersection and semi. People gawked at him with admiration on their faces as he carried out his feat of strength. “Way to go, Spiderman!” someone cheered, and soon the crowd was applauding for him. A number of individuals were streaming on their phones, drawing even more people from around the neighborhood.
Under his mask, Peter was barely breaking a sweat. Cars only weighted a few thousands pounds, so they were noting to his enhanced body. The real test would be the tractor-trailer... which he was now ready to start shifting around. “Ok dude,” he said to the driver, “I'm gonna get this moved, but just so traffic can get through. I don't think the police are going to want you going anywhere yet, so just hang out for a bit.”
The driver gave a miserable nod and plodded towards a sidewalk, where the crowd of people parted and he stood alone.
Peter hemmed and hawwed for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to get the truck cleared from the path of traffic without damaging anything else. He finally decided that the spot where a few cars had been previously parked was probably the best place.
Walking to the front of the truck, he positioned himself and grabbed the underside of the bumper. Grunting slightly, he carefully lifted with his legs. The truck portion of the semi slowly lifted up and Peter started to turn to get to the cleared area where the rig would sit until the police came. The vehicle made a horrendous screeching noise of metal and tires as Peter basically dragged it around. There was a scraping sound as Peter accidentally bumped a street sign, but within a few minutes, he was able to maneuver the large truck and trailer combo to the free space.
“Phew!” the teenager declared as he set the front end down. “I think I'll stick to swinging around town for transportation.”
He could feel the eye rolls of the people around him, but the sound of traffic flowing as normal helped to distract him. Well, that and the sound of repulsors, rapidly approaching.
“Incoming!” Peter warned, and not even five seconds later Iron Man landed in front of the crowd of people. There was a moment of silence before the people erupted into an uproar, with their friendly neighborhood vigilante and the savior of the universe standing next to each other.
The faceplate of the Iron Man suit retracted and Tony Stark's worried expression was revealed. “Spiderman!” he exclaimed, “I saw you were trending on Twitter and then I got an alert that you were carrying some heavy loads. Wanna explain?”
Peter gestured to the truck and then the line of vehicles moving its way sluggishly through the street. “Traffic jam,” he simply said.
Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, but before he could say anything the truck driver joined them.
“It was my fault, Mr. Stark,” the man said in a timid voice. “I... I just followed my GPS, I didn't realize that I couldn't bring the truck into the residential areas, and before I knew it I was blocking up the whole street. Spiderman really helped everyone out by moving all the cars and my rig.”
Tony turned incredulous eyes to Peter, who managed to look sheepish even through his suit. “Kid. Did you seriously lift that?”
“Um... yes?”
“That's gotta be thirty thousand pounds.”
“Closer to forty thousand, actually,” the truck driver interjected, only to shrink back as Tony shot him a glare.
“Yeah so? I've dealt with heavier things,” Peter said, shrugging.
“Not even Captain America can lift twenty tons, Spidey,” Tony said. “I thought we had talked about this?”
The eyes on the Spiderman mask blinked. “Huh. No, we definitely never talked about that. If we did, I would have challenged Cap to an arm wrestling match a long time ago.”
Chucking, Tony allowed his helmet to reform around his head. “C'mon kid, I'll give you a ride for a few blocks while the police clean up the rest of this mess.”
“Awesome!” As Tony flew off into the sky, Peter shot a web at him and was launched into the air. The masses of people watching below shouted their appreciation as Spiderman was carried away, ready to stop crime and help whomever needed aid in his beloved neighborhood.
Later, on Twitter, someone posted the following: “Did anyone notice that #Ironman called #Spiderman a kid? And Spidey said he doesn't have a license?? How young is he??”