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In his next-to-last class that day—chemistry—Peter stole some time from his regular lab work to tinker on his side project. In a cabinet under the lab table, he had a nice little setup for making web fluid. He poured it carefully into his specially designed cartridges when Mr. Cobwell wasn’t looking, and then he stared at the clock, willing it to reach 3:00, when the bell would ring.
When the bell finally chimed, Peter ran to his locker, grabbed his backpack, and rushed out of Midtown with the rest of the students. He cut across the grounds and—after a quick check to make sure no one was looking—leaped over a fence, heading for his favorite bodega, Dalmar’s. Spider-Man needed a snack if he was going to fight crime.
He slapped a bag of gummi worms on the counter in front of Mr. Dalmar, who greeted him. “Hey, Pete! The number five, right?”
“Yeah, with pickles, smushed down real flat, please.” The sandwich was going to get smushed anyway.
He paid for his food and raced across the street and into an alley. When he was out of sight of the street, he pulled the Spider-Suit from his backpack and struggled into it. In his excitement to get to work, he lost track of which leg he was starting with and lost his balance, falling over into some of the garbage that littered the alley. But he got the suit on, settling baggily over his shoulders. When he tapped the spider-symbol on his chest, the suit activated, fitting itself to his skin. He heard the faint sounds of its circuitry powering up.
He was almost ready. He webbed his backpack to the side of a dumpster and stuffed the sandwich into his boot. Then he crawled up the alley wall to a ledge that stuck out from the third floor of the building. From there, he could see most of the neighborhood.
“Hey!” a street vendor called from the corner. “You’re that spider guy on YouTube! Do a flip!”
“Only if you call me Spider-Man,” Peter called back.
“Okay, Spider-Man!”
Peter obliged and casually did a flip, landing again on the narrow ledge. The vendor cheered. Then Peter went back to scanning the area. It was time to get to work.
He heard a scream and almost jumped into action ... only to find a waiter startled by a rat as he took out the trash behind a restaurant down the block. No major crime there, although rats living so close to a restaurant had to be a minor violation of some kind.
Then he heard gunshots! Peter snapped a web out and swung across the street, landing on the roof of a building and running in the direction of the shots. He crept closer to the sound ... and saw it was just kids playing a video game with the volume turned up way too loud. Another false alarm.
As he shook his head in disappointment, he heard a loud mechanical sound come from the street just below him. He looked down and saw someone in the alley below trying to break into a car.
Aha! A crime! Peter shot a line of web out and stuck the thief’s hand to the door. “Gah!” the thief cried. “Gross!” He pulled at the webbing, but he couldn’t get free.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to do that,” Peter said. “The cops’ll fill you in on the details when they get here.” He dropped into the alley and gave the car a rap with his knuckles, hard enough to set off the alarm.
“This is my car!” the thief—who maybe wasn’t a thief ?—shouted over the noise. “I locked my keys inside!”
Spider-Man glanced through the window. Sure enough, a set of keys dangled from the car’s ignition.
Oh man, this was mega-embarrassing.
Neighbors opened their windows to complain about the noise. “Every day with these alarms!” an old man on the second floor griped.
“Sorry!” Spider-Man said. “I thought ...” There was no way to explain it. He shot out a web and leaped away.
After that debacle, Peter was more careful. He patrolled the neighborhood, not acting unless he was sure he’d actually seen a crime. The only criminal he caught was a bike thief he left dangling from a web over the sidewalk. But he didn’t know who the bike belonged to, so he left it leaning against a lamppost with a stern note: Is this your bike? If not, don’t steal it! —Spider-Man
By sunset, he decided it was time to have that sandwich. He sat on the edge of a building with his mask raised up to his nose and ate slowly, wishing he had something more important to do than catch bike thieves and do flips for sidewalk vendors. Just as he did every evening, he called Happy Hogan to report in. Happy never answered, but Peter wanted to make sure the Avengers didn’t forget about him.
“Hi, Happy,” he said after waiting for Happy’s voice mail. “Here’s my report for the night. I stopped a grand theft ... bicycle. Couldn’t find the owner, so I left a note. Oh, and I helped a lost old Dominican lady who was really nice and bought me a churro. But I really think I could be doing a lot more. Just curious when we’re gonna have our next real mission. Call me back. It’s Peter. Parker.”
He hung up and immediately wished he hadn’t added the bit about the churro. Why would Happy care about that?
The fill soon light on one of his web shooters was red. Peter decided to take care of it right away, so it would be ready for tomorrow. He grabbed a fresh cartridge from his belt and then almost immediately fumbled it. Before it could fall to the street, he shot out a foot and kicked it up, then lunged straight out into empty space to catch it. He hung there for a second, planking straight out over the street with only his feet on the wall. When he was doing stuff like that, it was pretty cool being Spider-Man.
Motion down at the street level caught his attention. An ATM booth was across the street, and four guys were inside. Peter’s eyes narrowed, and the eyes on his Spider-Man mask focused. They were wearing Avengers masks. Four guys in masks in an ATM booth? Now, this looked like a real crime.
One of them, in a Hulk mask, pulled something that looked like a gun from a duffel bag. He aimed it at the ATM, and a bright purple beam shot out of it, cutting into the ATM like it was butter. Peter dropped down to the street, ran across, and slid through the booth door without anyone noticing. A guy in a Captain America mask had another weird-looking instrument. He used it to pull the front of the ATM away with some kind of antigravity beam. Then, with faux-Iron Man standing watch, impostor-Thor started stuffing money into another duffel bag.
Peter thought this was the moment he should announce his presence. “Is this a bad time to ask for autographs?”