Chapter Text
Okay, so let’s do this one more time! My name is Naruto Uzumaki, and I was bitten by a radioactive spider. For the past two whole years, I have been the one and only Spider-man! And I do all I can to protect the city! Sure, there’s also school, but who cares about grades when I can be out here, fighting bad guys? Because that’s what I sure am doing.
Even right now, I was bound in a fight. My chest was heaving, and sweat made my suit cling to my body even tighter than it usually was. There was a wound somewhere on my left leg, but I paid it no mind. My attention was focused on the guy in front of me, with a bag over his shoulder and his fists balled. A small fish. ‘Your suit looks ridiculous! I’ve always hated you, Spider-man!’, he shouted. I gasped and looked myself up and down. I always thought the orange on my suit looked sick. At least I was original!
‘Dude!’, I yelled back, ‘You wound me!’ Thief or not thief, an insult to me and my fashion choices couldn’t be ignored. So I charged. He barely had time to get back into position, let alone dodge or start a counter attack, before sticky webs shot from the holes in my wrist and pinned him to the nearest wall.
With a whistle on my lips, I strutted over to him and collected the bag of stolen jewellery from his grasp. He grunted and strained against my webs. it did nothing. ‘You will pay for this, you useless excuse for a Hero!’
I sighed, ignoring his words, ‘Can’t you guys do some actually bad shit? This is getting boring!’ Without waiting for an answer, I turned around where the police was already waiting.
This was exactly how it usually went. Something happened, I rushed in, saved the day and handed the bad guys over to the police. None of these wannabe-villain had ever done real damage. Or, maybe I was just the greatest? If I had the time afterwards, I gave the press a very small interview. Honestly, I liked the attention the media gave me. Ever since I had randomly appeared one day, I had been the darling of the press. When I had first seen myself on TV, I had almost screamed with joy. However, if I stayed for the interviews, I was usually late for class.
Today though, I was lucky. I had heard about this guy on my way back from school, so I didn’t miss dogshit. Well, if that was so lucky, I wasn’t so sure yet. I waved over to a couple of fans, who screamed and waved back, then I was off and on my way. Not in the mood to talk to the press today. Besides, that wound on my leg hurt.
I swung a little further before I stopped in a dark alley and stripped my suit off. It felt amazing to remove the tight spandex from my face. Next, I dug my schoolbag out from between a few trashcans and stuffed my suit in. Then I grabbed a few bandages from inside it, and tried my best to wrap myself up. It wasn’t that deep of a cut, I had been lucky. Still, it was embarrassing that that guy had managed to hurt me at all…
I ruffled through my blonde hair and swung my bag on my back. Then, I tried to exit the alley as non-chalantly as possible, and rushed home. What awaited me there, though, almost made me turn around again. Surely there was some other part of the city where I was needed… right?
When I tried to open the door as carefully and soundlessly as possible, I was met with the dreadful sight of my caregiver. He was a man in his mid-thirties, with long, brown hair he usually bounded up into a ponytail. And the look on his face was one of pure disappointment. ‘I told you to come straight home after school.’
Iruka wasn’t my father, he wasn’t even related to me by blood, yet somehow he was always there, always near me, watching over me, since my parents died. It was more annoying than helpful. Especially since he didn’t know I am Spider-man.
No one did, and I did not intend on telling anyone.
‘Yeah, yeah, got distracted.’, I mumbled and turned to my bedroom. Iruka, apparently, had other plans. He cleared his throat. Not in the normal, he-might-have-a-cold-way, but in that attention grabbing, definitely acted kind of way.
‘We are not done here, Naruto.’
‘Why, what else is there?’, I whined. I was exhausted, I was sweaty, and I needed to take proper care of that wound of mine. My body healed faster than it was normal, yet wounds could still get infected. And I didn’t want it to get nasty though. The look on Iruka’s face, however, allowed for no further arguing.
‘Your teacher is here, he wants to talk.’
I bit my lip and nodded. I dropped my bag into the door of my room and then trudged after Iruka with my head low. I remembered now. My class teacher had told me a couple of days ago that he would pay me a visit. Wasted time, I believed.
I plopped down on the couch next to Iruka and didn’t even look up at the man. Instead, I pretended my fingernails were highly interesting.
‘I believe you know why I am here?’, Mr. Kakashi’s words hung in the air for a second, before Iruka sighed and I felt him nod.
‘It is because of Naruto’s grades, isn’t it?’
I felt their looks on my body. The concern, the pity. It made me want to get up. So what if I was as dumb as hay? I was strong. I had proved to the whole city that I was strong. If only I could show them somehow…
‘Not just that.’, Mr. Kakashi said, ‘He doesn’t get to class on time, sometimes he skips entire periods just to come back looking roughed up. He doesn’t turn in his work on time, he—‘ Kakashi must have noticed how I had shrunken back, because he stopped talking. I knew exactly how it sounded. Like I was some wannabe-gangster, a failure, a parentless, bullying retard. But I wasn’t the one bullying. And that was not where I went when I skipped lessons. If only I could tell them both… ‘If he keeps this behaviour up, I will have to fail him.’
‘I am so sorry to hear this! I will talk to him about this behaviour thoroughly and do my best to lead him back on the right path!’, Iruka besides me had turned on his parenting mode. A mode he turned off so rarely these days. No, he was always on hawk-mode. Sneaking away got harder by the day. It had gotten so bad I had started to lock my room at night because he had randomly come in. Once, he had come in while I was out, fighting, and he had called me panicked in the middle of it, screaming, asking where in gods name I was. It had been difficult to explain. So now, I just locked my door.
I glanced up to see Mr. Kakashi shake his head. ‘We are thinking about putting him on a special program, for kids in need. We believe it will do him good.’ Wait, what? I sat up as if an electric shock had hit me and looked back and forth between Kakashi and Iruka frantically. They couldn’t be serious, right?
‘What? What kind of program?’, I asked before Iruka could say anything.
‘It it meant to help kids like you, troubled kids, kids with difficult backgrounds, mental health problems, or disabilities.’, Kakashi explained calmly, ‘It isn’t meant to limit you make you feel worth less, or anything the like. It is meant to help you.’
‘We will do it.’, Iruka beside me said before I could utter another word. Probably because he knew exactly what I would say it. More school activities meant even less free time, even less time to be active as Spider-man. I had too little time already, and now this? No, absolutely not. I jumped up, ready to argue, when sharp pain shot through my leg. Shit, the wound. I couldn’t stay in this room much longer, or I would bleed through my bandages. Then they would definitely stick me in that program.
Kakashi raised his hands to calm me down. ‘How about I talk to you father for a moment alone? We will call you back when we have figured everything out.’
Slowly I shook my head. I had always liked Mr. Kakashi, so why was he acting like this now? He had always been the one teacher who had never asked where I went, never questioned my wounds, never pressured me into talking. He had been the only teacher who had always just accepted me. My personality, the spurts of energy that I couldn’t control, the difficulties I had had since childhood. Now, though, he looked like a stranger to me. So I turned around, stalked down the hallway and locked myself into my room.
There, I sat down on my bed and turned my attention to my leg. Stupid Iruka, stupid Kakashi, stupid thief.