Chapter 237: A Spider’s Insights

27^th September 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

I snorted, “You do realize that you’re the one in the wrong in this. You can’t just arrest people and put them in cells because you want to. I don’t know what you learnt at SHIELD, but taking someone without any official warrant or paperwork, is called kidnapping, even if it’s the director of SHIELD that’s doing it.”

Scott tensed, and I prepared to use the flashbang one more time, but I didn’t need to. A web was sent towards Scott’s glasses, blinding him, and I was suddenly picked up from the ground and swung towards the roof of the other building.

The figure was in a sort of red and blue spandex, and I could immediately recognize the infamous hero in front of me, “Don’t worry, Ma’am, I’ll take care of this.”

This was Spider-Man.

(Peter Parker POV)

Peter Parker, also known as Spider-Man, was patrolling like he always did after school. Who would have thought, that nerdy Peter Parker, the wimp of Midtown High, would be fighting criminals and gang members in his free time. The teenager snorted, he could imagine Flash fainting in fear and shock, when he realized that his beloved idol was the person he picked on the most.

It all started with a Lab Accident during a Field Trip to Oscorp just before the invasion. One of the genetically altered spiders escaped, something that was extremely irresponsible from their part, and bit him in the arm.

He didn’t even notice until he went back home, feeling dizzy and nauseous. It didn’t help that the damn arachnid was irradiated as well, something he figured out after some testing when he woke up. When he woke up, he was different, he had abs for one thing, and could stick to walls.

Other than that, he was easily able to make a connection between his situation and Captain America’s, when he was injected with the Super Soldier Serum and he didn’t want to advertise this, especially to a company with a reputation like Oscorp. Harry Osborn might be a close acquaintance, but that didn’t mean that Peter was blinded by the amount of shady shit and weird rumors that concerned his father’s company. The Spider was proof enough; no one could have genetically engineered a Super Spider by accident, and Peter knew for a fact that the moment anyone from the company realized that his powers were the result of their work, they would capture him and experiment on him, hoping to replicate what happened and militarize it.

Peter had always been smart, sometimes too smart, and he understood the consequences of his powers, even when he was barely fifteen years old. In the end, as much as it could help out his aunt and uncle’s financial situation, he chose not to advertise his powers to the public and keep his anonymity.

He was happy with the choice, until the invasion came. Peter did what any man, woman, or child, with a shred of intelligence, would do. He ran and hid. He grabbed his aunt and took her to the basement and hid there. His uncle Ben, on the other hand, was still at work as it happened. The man died, trapped underneath the rubble of a falling building. It was sad, horrifying even. His aunt May tried to put on a brave face, she tried to pretend that everything was fine, when the truth was that she was in agony. Peter, on the other hand, was just numb.

A question wouldn’t leave his mind, What if? What if Peter had chosen to come out and save his uncle? What if he had fought with the avengers? Hawkeye and the Black Widow were just normal humans and yet they fought an alien invasion and saved many lives. Could he have saved his uncle’s life, if he had chosen to fight and not hide?

The answer came to him during the funeral. Oddly enough, a lot of people attended the event, people that neither he nor his aunt May, had any idea who they were. And yet every single one of them spoke up during the speech. These were people that Uncle Ben had saved during the invasion. They were trapped under the rubble and yet he did his best to save their lives, until an unstable piece fell on him when he was saving someone, killing him. On that day, Ben Parker had saved over twenty lives on his own.

Every single person expressed their gratitude at the man’s actions and grief at the man’s death. They even paid off the funeral expenses and the coffin, and Uncle Ben’s boss, who he had also saved, had given him and aunt may around six months of Ben’s salary to help them during this time.

Uncle Ben, an overworked man with back problems, had saved many lives, and yet, Peter Parker, a superpowered teenager, hid in his basement. It was shameful, especially when he remembered Uncle Ben’s precious words, ‘when you have power to do something that would help someone, it is your moral responsibility to do it.’

Uncle Ben lived by that code and so will Peter. And thus, Spider-Man was born. It took some time to make the costume, even more to build his web shooters and gears, but a few weeks later, Spider-Man debuted as the city’s newest vigilante.

So far, Peter had only dealt with a few gangbangers, muggers, and so on. Nothing spectacular, but he saved lives every single day he went out. He honored his uncle well. The only notable person he fought was some dude named Shocker, who had some weird suit powered by Alien Tech that somehow wasn’t taken by the government after the invasion. The suit was able to release some form of vibro-shocks from his gauntlets. Peter wasn’t really sure about the specifics, since he had no clue how alien tech worked, and didn’t have any samples to experiment with.

The man was robbing a bank, by himself, in the middle of the day, while destroying anything in front of him with his gauntlets. In the end, Peter just targeted the obvious power source that deactivated the suit completely. Still, Peter kept investigating for any signs of alien tech being sold in the underworld, and so far, he had found nothing.

Shocker definitely had no idea how it worked – the man obviously had a low level of intelligence considering his ‘well planned’ heist consisted of him just walking towards the bank and blowing up everything in front of him.

Still, all signs pointed to the fact that New York was going to be a very interesting place in the future. As for now, he kept going on his patrol, until he saw armed soldiers getting ready to attack someone in a café of all places. He noticed that these were SHIELD agents.

The organization was very controversial, at least for the public. Well, New York citizens especially didn’t like them since they planned on nuking the city and killing everyone living here. If it wasn’t for the Morrigan’s sacrifice, Peter wouldn’t be here today.

But things were getting a lot worse for them as they were repeatedly hacked ever since they made that decision, the number of leaks about certain missions and projects had made everyone uncomfortable with the fact that the organization was still functioning today. The public was outraged, and things didn’t look well for the organization, especially with the UN vote in a few days, where everyone expected the agency to dissolve into nothing. Peter wasn’t even sure if they were allowed to perform missions today.

Peter didn’t know why so many agents were attacking a damn café in the middle of the day, but he decided to understand the situation before deciding to do anything. He snuck around the roof where the director of SHIELD was pointing a gun towards an unconcerned woman who was eating a carrot cake of all things.

It was an amusing sight, but what wasn’t amusing was the topic of the conversation. He could pick up on it due to his enhanced senses.

The mystery woman spoke, “So, by your own admittance, you have no proof whatsoever, you have no orders from any other government agency, you could be under the influence of a telepath that hates me, and for some reason, you still want to arrest me, keep me detained indefinitely, just because you want to?”

Fury responded, “Yes. It’s not like anyone will care about what happens to you. I’ll turn over every leaf, I will investigate every avenue and the world will finally see you for what you really are, a murderer.”

“You do realize that investigations typically happen before the arrest, right? The justice system doesn’t work like that.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about the justice system. I will put your ass in prison even if I have to make up the evidence myself.”

Well, that did it, SHIELD was planning on screwing over a woman, who could be innocent or not. The moment he planned on interfering, the woman revealed some pepper spray from her pocket and sprayed the director of SHIELD in the face, before electrocuting him with a taser and knocking him out. Damn, that woman was a badass.

Immediately, Peter’s spider sense told him that something dangerous was about to happen, and the danger immediately showed itself with a sniper on the opposing building. The teenaged hero couldn’t believe that someone was actually shooting at a café in the middle of the day.

The woman saved herself by hiding behind a table, and Peter decided to go take care of the sniper. He swung towards the roof, webbed the scope of the sniper rifle and used it as a projectile to knock out one of the agents guarding the sniper. He then jumped in the air and webbed up the feet of every agent in the roof before knocking them out one by one.

He prepared to see if the woman was alright, when his spider sense flared, and Peter dodged the incoming attack. He was able to do it, but he recognized the attack. It was Shocker’s. When he turned, he also recognized the suit. Did he get it from SHIELD or did SHIELD hire him after he was arrested. Anyway, the power core seemed to be hidden better, but its location was the same. All it took was a powerful punch to the front of the metal covering the core and grabbing the power source to disable the man.

As for now, he needed to get the woman to a safe location to be able to take out the agents without anyone being involved. For now though, the woman seemed to have things in hand, as she went through the door of the café with a man in a white hood and a weird suit of armor. A man, with a weird red visor, attacked her with a red beam.

The woman had put the hooded guy in front of her, meaning that the man was knocked out and his suit was in tatters. Peter listened with his enhanced hearing and heard that the man still had a heartbeat, thankfully, that is.

Still, the woman seemed to recognize the man attacking her. She was teasing him, really, like a friend of his parents that made baby noises in front of him and that exclaimed how much they had grown up. Truly, Peter almost pitied the red visor guy, who was getting angrier by the second and threatening to send out another beam at the woman.

Well, Peter wasn’t going to let this happen. He webbed up the visor, blinding the eye beam guy, and picked up the woman and swung her to the roof of the opposing building. The woman’s eyes visibly widened at this, and Peter spoke up in a hopefully confident tone, “Don’t worry, Ma’am, I’ll take care of this.”

It was such a cheesy line that Peter blushed in embarrassment, before turning around and returning to fight that eye beam guy. This was Peter’s first fight against a mutant, or he assumed that the man was a mutant, and he hoped that everything would turn out alright.

What's the worst that could happen?

Alright, this is it, we're finally caught up to the current events of the story. This means that there will be no more mass uploads. I generally post four chapters a week, on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursdays and Fridays. I tend to be consistent (I have been for more than a year now) but I will let you know if I miss an upload day.

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