Chapter Text
Ah, New York. The City That Never Sleeps. The home of the Avengers. Well, the New Avengers. Semantics aside, it’s a pretty good place to live, at least in this universe. Rent is actually pretty cheap, what with the constant attacks the city takes. Aliens, evil magicians, more aliens, supervillains, even more aliens, a whole dimension powered by grief and misery, and of course, the worst of all; traffic. If Death and Taxes had a younger sibling, it would probably be Traffic.
Still though, in the beautiful city of New York (that is unfortunately hampered down by the Third Constant in Life) there lies a certain hero: Spider-Man. Peter Parker. The city loves the web-slinger. Kids look up to him, adults know they can count on him. Any time there is a villain causing trouble, Spider-Man handles it. A bank being robbed? Spider-Man handles it. The sewer system is clogged? Spider-Man handles it. An old lady needs help crossing the street? Spider-Man handles it ESPECIALLY well.
And where is Spider-Man right now?
Building a LEGO X-Wing with his best friend, Ned Leeds.
“Do you remember Night-Monkey?” Peter asks Ned as he hands him a LEGO piece. The hero is in his supersuit, albeit mask-off. Meanwhile, Ned is wearing his usual jacket-business shirt combo.
“Uhh, which part?” Ned asks as he puts one of the wings completely together, “When you flipped over that ferris wheel, or when you and Mysterio fought that element thing?”
“Wait, you remember Mysterio?” Peter asks as he connects some pieces together, another wing is now formed.
“Yeah, he was…” Ned thinks for a moment, while Peter takes the wing in his hand and connects both wings now in his possession to the toy ship’s hull. “Huh,” Ned says, completely stumped.
“You just said you remembered Mysterio, right?” Peter asks for clarification.
“I don’t know. Like, okay,” Ned takes a breath and tries to put his thoughts together, “I know Mysterio was a fraud, I know Mysterio tried to reveal your identity, but it’s all, y’know, weird. Hazy. Slow. Like I’m walking through water.” Ned says as he looks back up at Peter.
“Yeah, I get what you mean,” Peter says as he hands him another piece, “but you remember, and that’s what matters. It’s just been a few days, give it time.”
“But what if I’m not supposed to?” Ned asks in a panic, “What if the spell has some kinda, uh, safety measure? Like, it shuts the body down or replaces me with a whole other me from an alternate universe?”
“Pretty sure we’d have noticed it by now.”
“But what if it was instantaneous? Or what if it was done while time was stopped like in Jojo’s?” Ned asks as he hands Peter a piece.
“Ned, I’m not sure the spell had the power to stop time.”
“It tapped into the multiverse, what if it tapped into the Jojo universe?”
“Uhh,” Peter tries to answer that but can’t. “Really wish a crime happened. This conversation's just kicking our butts.”
*DING!*
“Lucky me,” Peter thinks as he immediately checks his phone, eager to get the hell away from this conversation. A building has caught on fire, 10th and Waverly. “Oh shit,” Peter says out loud before immediately putting his mask on and jumping out the window, swinging as fast as he can.
His house is on fire, after all.
Peter swings across the city, as fast as he can. “EV, gimme desktop camera.” Immediately, his HUD showcases the camera’s POV of his apartment and it’s… “Not good,” Peter whispers.
Peter’s room looks like a bomb had blown up inside it. Fire spreads everywhere as his treadmill’s plastic burns from the heat. A huge hole is in the middle of the floor, almost like a bomb blew up beneath it. His desk is flame-resistant—one too many suit screwups made him wise up to invest in that—but he knows it has its limits, especially if the fire is starting to spread below.
“EV, call Jean DeWolff, now,” Peter hastily says as he runs up the wall of a building and swings himself over its edge, using the newly-gained speed to bounce off the surface of the building next to it, giving him a lot of vertical momentum and a bird’s eye view of Greenwich. There’s some smoke in the air, but not enough to where Peter can assume the building’s burning down completely.
“Spider-Man?” Jean asks as Peter dives down and swings through multiple streets in less than a second.
“Jean! There’s a fire,” *GRUNT!* “At 10th and Waverly,” *GRUNT!* “Need,” *GRUNT!* “Some help!”
“EMTs and firefighters are already on their way, kid. But shouldn’t you be resting?”
“Look, I-” Peter stops himself as he wallruns across a building and fires two weblines at the building’s end and the end of the building across from him. He jumps off and pulls himself through, *THWIPING* through the air and sending himself flying across the street. “I’ll tell you when I see you there.”
“Kid, I-”
Before Peter can hear Jean say anything else, he arrives at his building. “I’m at the building right now Jean, I’ll do what I can.” Peter says before he hangs up on her. The fire is clearly still only on the top few floors, but people are already evacuating from the building. If Peter were to land at the bottom and help everybody out, he’d have a harder time getting up to the fire.
“Starting from the top down then,” Peter says as he *THWIPS* through the streets and pulls himself up to the rooftops. Just as he lands, he jumps in a flip and fires two webs, each diagonally in front of him on both sides. Peter uses them to launch himself across the buildings and uses the newfound momentum to spin himself into his apartment, *CRASHING* through his window. While still spinning, Peter webs everything he can.
Do you know why hitting a fire with a towel takes out the fire? Why doesn't the towel just get burned? Pretty simple; you hit something fast enough, enough times, you cut off its oxygen. You cut off the oxygen, you cut off the fire. All that really matters is how big the fire is, aka how fast you need to hit the fire and how many times it needs to be hit. X*Y=Z. Even for a fire as big as this one, it just needs something big enough and fast enough to stamp it out before it gets any oxygen. Even something flammable like paper can be put out just by putting it on the ground and stomping it fast enough. Tough? Certainly.
Not tough enough for the Amazing Spider-Man.
He sprays his webs all over his, bringing out massive webs in a single spin. He stops on one of his weblines and swings himself around it, picking up as much momentum as he can before diving into the hole in his floor. He does the same thing to the room below him; spin, web, swing, dive. Rinse and repeat, until he’s at the bottom of the hole. Peter immediately runs outside, eager to see his work. He turns around…
And the building is a complete mess! Webs line the windows while smoke jets out of the broken windows, which makes Peter realize he REALLY underestimated just how big the fire was. He also realized that he has underestimated just how strong he is now, too. His old webshooters never would’ve been able to make this much web in a minute, but Peter went through each hole in less than 10 seconds. And his speed and body control? Looking back, Peter was never able to launch himself in midair like he did before, or be perceptive enough to find a webline, swing around it and use that momentum to launch himself. Peter looks down at one of his hands, examining or even admiring it. Was this just the beginning of his powers? What else could he get?
And how powerful were they going to be?
Peter can sense the firefighters and cops coming with his Spider-Sense, so things are starting to look up. His Spider-Sense also catches a piece of debris coming down, so Peter immediately jumps up and webs it up. The first responders arrive on-scene. One of them says, “Thanks, Spidey! We got it from here!”
“Any clue how it started?” Peter asks them, but a civilian pipes up.
“T-top floor *COUGH*,” they say as they point up at the top floor. Peter’s apartment, specifically, “there was some kinda *COUGH* bomb or something. My ceiling fell and I managed to make it out, but I know what I saw!”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Peter says as he comforts the civilian.
“Sorry, Spidey. From the looks of it, these people will have to move out for a while.” One of the first responders says as they tend to the wounded.
“Wait, wait, everybody in the building? For how long?”
“No clue, but if it was a bomb…”
“Lucky me.”
“Thanks again,” the first responder tells Spider-Man as he shakes the hero’s hand.
“Yeah, no problem guys,” Peter says as he waves at them before he looks back up at his apartment. He *THWIPS* up to it and enters, looking through his now-trashed apartment.
Webs are everywhere while half-burnt things litter his apartment. His treadmill, his sink, and all the random stuff he had left across the room, burnt in some way aside from his screen set up, which are of course flame-resistant. No way was Peter forgetting THAT lesson. There is something that Peter notices though…
“If this was an explosion, then why aren’t things blown away?” Peter asks nobody in particular while he looks around. He’s right, of course. Despite the large hole in the floor, there is no other evidence of an actual bomb being placed in his apartment. His treadmill is still in its normal position, and none of his computers look like they were hit by some blast. They’re hot, of course, but that’s to be expected of something close to a fire.
*KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!*
Peter puts his guard up as the door opens on its own. He gets in a fighting stance, only for Officer DeWolff to enter his apartment. She’s alone, likely telling her cops to focus on helping evacuate people. “Kid? You wanted to talk?”
“Oh, it’s just you, Jean. Listen-” Before Peter can say anything else, Jean stops him in his tracks.
“No, me first. You promised me that you’d take it easy. Why are you out Spider-Man-ing?” Jean asks before she looks around. “And since when could you do something like this?” She asks, referring to the webs covering his apartment.
Peter stops himself. What can he say?
His mind goes back to what Frank told him a week ago; how he needs friends. At the end of the day, being alone sucks, and life is much better with friends. He remembers what he told Jean Grey in the prison; how he is both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. That kind of mindset made him stronger, strong enough to beat Jean’s puppets and unlock more of his powers. It’s pretty clear; he’s stronger when he accepts both sides of himself. Peter Parker, the guy with an actual life, and Spider-Man, the hero of New York.
“Jean… You’re right,” Peter says to her as he decides to take a leap of faith and takes off his mask; “My name is Peter Parker, and I am Spider-Man. This is, or was, my home, and I think it was targeted. The problem is, I don’t think this was a bomb. Not really any debris, and my stuff doesn’t look like it was blown up. Thankfully, I have a desktop camera monitoring my room. If we should start anywhere, it should be there.”
Jean takes a moment to take in what Peter just said. She leans on the kitchen sink that isn’t burnt and thinks long and hard about what he just said. Finally, she speaks.
“Do you have a place to stay?” She simply asks, and Peter nods.
“Hey Ned, can I crash at your place?”