“I really don’t like fire” I said to myself, leaping from the building before swinging around to the wall face with the last of the slow dying flames. The upper floors were empty now, halls and rooms only filled with slowly dying smoke and destroyed lab equipment.

I swung around the building putting out the last of the fires with webs as a small crowd milled below. Sparing a glance down, I spotted cops, firemen and MDA agents speaking amongst themselves, the truck containing the glider villain beside them, already firmly secured and surrounded by a guard.

The faces of those visible were grim, and the last of the firemen exciting the building floor, helping out the last of the soot covered scientists told me more than I wanted to know.

I scanned the area for Joshua and found him – still in rock form - beyond the police cordon, posing for pictures with the public.

“Looks like someone’s enjoying themselves” I muttered. Then, after extinguishing the last of the fires I swung downwards, joining the agents, firemen, and cops.

They all glanced to me then broke apart, the MDA agents saying nothing as they quickly made for their armoured truck. The firemen only offered me small nods of approval before continuing on, but two of the cops made their way over. I braced myself for the conversation, but the first cop simply offered his hand.

“Well done, Spider-Man” he said, shaking my hand. “This could’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t shown up”

“I… uh… thanks“ I said, feeling my face flush with embarrassment.

“Took a bit of beating huh?” his partner said, offering her hand as well.

“Oh… uh… yeah I guess” I mumbled. They both chuckled.

“Not used to talking to us yet?” the first said.

“Oh. N-no I-”

“Ah, that’s ok. The first one was like that too”

“He’s still a bit awkward. But don’t tell him I said that” the partner joked. I chuckled,

“Uh, ok”

“Well, see you around”

“Uh… yeah. Likewise”

They both nodded, their smiles appreciative, then stepped away. I watched them go for a moment a strange sense of pride and embarrassment swirling in my gut.

Weird. I guess I still wasn’t used to the praise or attention. Especially from cops. I looked behind me up at the building as grey smoke rose from a few of the windows, the fire gone. Large swathes of the concrete and stone had blackened, but for the most part the lower floors were ok, and I hadn’t seen any bodybags.

It wasn’t the best, people had died, and the cleanup would probably take quite a while. But I’d stopped a villain and saved people. A lot of people. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. It might’ve only been a small win, but it was a win. I’d finally gotten a win on my own. I glanced to Joshua. Well not completely on my own.

Still, I guess I had done pretty well. Huh.

I scratched the top of my head frowning as I tried to make sense of the new feeling in my chest. Then a camera flashed in my face. I jerked back, as more camera flashes exploded in front of me, leaving black spots in my vision.

“You try to let this villain go too?! Huh? Huh new Spider-Man?”

“W-what?” I said, pulling away from the guy. He pressed forward, continuing to take picture after picture with the flash despite the abundance of light.

“You seem to like letting fire villains on the loose. Think it makes for better news?”

“What the fuck? Who are you?”

“How many people are gonna die because you want glory? Huh? How many more people are you gonna kill?!”

I froze staring at the guy as he kept flashing the camera in my face, other photographers slipping through the gap in the cordon now, all rushing forwards as they called out to me. “I see through you Spider-Man! We all do!”

Suddenly officers surrounded me, pushing back the paparazzi. The guy at the head pushed against them still snapping pictures. A cop slapped the camera down, finally revealing his face. I didn’t recognise him.

“Turn off the fucking flash!”

“Hey! Don’t touch my camera!”

“Just turn off the flash” the cop cried, slapping the camera again.

“Hey! Do you know who I am?! Eddie Brock! Brock!” the guy shouted. “I work for Jameson! The chairman of the Bugle! My mom’s on the fucking board!”

“Just get back!” one of the officers shouted, pushing him back.

“Don’t fucking touch me. I’ll sue you! Me and my mum will sue you all into oblivion”

“Just walk away buddy. There’s a cordon for a reason”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He let off a few more curses, then turned and walked away, glancing back as he sneered at me.

“Sorry about that” another cop said, looking back for me. I mumbled something, then looked to Joshua who walked over, back to his regular size now, but still in stone form.

“You alright?”

“Yeah. Let’s go” I said. He nodded and jumped into a piggy-back before I pulled us up off the ground with a concerted effort. I swung through the air, trying and failing to shake the words of the photographer out of my head.

How many more people are you gonna kill

I hadn’t understood what else he’d been talking about; it’d sounded like some conspiracy theorist nonsense. The kind of ridiculous rumours I’d seen about Peter in the past few years. But those words… they’d made my blood run cold.

Images of Ricardo’s final words flashed through my mind, and I felt my face twitch.

He couldn’t know. Could he?

“Man, that felt good!” Joshua bellowed, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah” I muttered.

“My first day and I already feel like a full-fledged superhero” he said grinning. “You think they caught me in action on camera?”

“I don’t know”

“Wow. I need a name now, don’t I? What about Hardhat? Or The Wall? Maybe Stoneman?” he muttered to himself, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Brickman? No, stoneman sounds better. But maybe Wrecking Ball works?”

“I don’t think a name is what you should be thinking about right now”

There was a pause, a moment of silence as he looked up to me, his eyes narrowing.

“… did I do something?” he said, looking to me. “You sound upset”

“Did you really have to hit the guy that hard?” I muttered curtly.

“Oh come on, he was a bad guy?”

“Yeah, but… he was done already”

“Sure, but he tried blowing up a building. He had it coming.”

“We don’t get to decide who does and doesn’t deserve things”

“You’re kidding right? We’re superheroes. The people’s justice”

“Justice? That didn’t look like justice?”

“Oh, give me a break. He deserved it. All villains deserve it”

“That doesn’t mean you beat on them when their down”

“Really? Like you’ve never gotten too rough with a crook once?” he scoffed. I stiffened, Ricardo’s dying screams echoing through my mind again. “ I mean, c’mon, you’re making me out to be the bad guy”

“Right,” I mumbled. “I just… you could’ve killed him”

“R-really? I mean you threw him the roof, so I thought-”

“That was an accident”

“An accident?” he said, disbelief colouring his voice.

“The roof was already damaged from the bombs” I said, swinging up to the roof of the meet-up spot. “Just try to be more careful ok”

“Right”

We landed on the wall face and I climbed up a few floors before pulling us onto the roof. Miles sat by the ledge, his back to the street as he rested against it.

“Wow, you actually waited here” I said nodding.

“Yeah” he muttered.

“That’s good” I said, setting Joshua down. Miles only nodded in response, holding his knees to his chest. “Uh… you, okay?”

“Well… I went to help you, then a bomb went off and… I got scared”

“Well… that’s fine. Good actually” I said. “It would’ve been dangerous for you to. I don’t know if I could’ve protected you”

“But how am I supposed to help people if I’m scared?”

“I mean, that’s what you’re here for right? You’ll get better with time. And training”

He looked to me, then nodded.

“So what now?” Joshua asked.

“Uh… it’s probably best to go home. I’m beat and I doubt I’ll be able to teach you much more”

“That’s fine by me. If I head home now, I’ll get home in about thirty minutes. I’ll be able to catch a couple Law & Order episodes”

“What? I thought you said you lived just over there”

“Uh… lying to you to fight doesn’t disqualify me from this or anything? Does it?”

I chuckled to myself, shaking my head.

“No. It’s fine.”

-

I sat on my bed; eyes closed trying to drift off to sleep. But despite my tiredness, I couldn’t. The words of the photographer still rung out in my mind, the echo consuming all other thoughts.

I hated feeling this way. Being reminded of what I’d done. But I hated the fact that I hated it even more. I didn’t deserve to feel angry for being confronted with something I’d chosen to do. Even if it’d been one of the worst moments of my life, I could’ve still done things differently.

I mean back on the other world, the others had mentioned the other me had captured Ricardo. In that world he was rotting in a cell. Even after everything he’d done, killing him had been wrong. And knowing he was locked up in a cell, paying for his crimes for the rest of his life would’ve been far better than this. Lying here, acting like a hero when I knew I was a murderer.

I clenched my fists. Emi had helped me deal with the guilt of everything else, of the things that I’d beat. But this? This was my fault. There weren’t two ways about it. I’d killed him. He’d deserved it, but that didn’t make it right.

I furrowed my brow, my words to Joshua earlier coming back to haunt me.

We don’t get to decide who does and doesn’t deserve things

But he had deserved it. Hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?

My phone buzzed on my bedside table and I sat up quickly, glad for a reprieve from my emotions. It was Peter. Good. Probably.

I answered, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Hey, Lucas”

“Hey Peter”

“Sorry about ditching you earlier”

“No, It’s fine. I… uh… so… everything ok?” I asked.

“Yeah. Nothing really happened it was just… yeah it’s fine” he muttered, clearly lying. “Anyway, how were they?”

“Uh… well we didn’t get to train all that much, but they seem eager. Probably need a better teacher though”

“What? Why?”

“Uh… you sure nothing happened? I’m pretty sure what we had to deal with would’ve been on the news”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, there was this whole attack, some guy dropping bombs on a science building or what not”

“…”

“Uh… everything okay?”

“…yeah” Peter mumbled. “Now Jess and Yu’s texts make more sense. I’ll give them your number then sort out adding you to the app”

“The app?”

“You’ll need to be able to take requests. It’s for people submitting help requests and stuff. I’m surprised more people don’t know about it”

“Uh… that might be somewhat of a good thing. You might get a ton of prank requests”

“We already do” he chuckled. “It’s not that bad”

“Well, uh… is tomorrow ok for that?”

“Yeah. Should be. We’ll bring the others as well, since they didn’t get to really meet me properly”

“OK. Uh, see you tomorrow then Peter”

“See you tomorrow Lucas. And good work today. Seriously. That could’ve gone south fast”

“T-thanks” I mumbled, before hanging up.

I stared at my phone for a second, smiling slightly to myself before slumping back against my bed, a new mixture of emotions filling me now. As I closed my eyes, sleep – finally – started to slowly take me.

“Lucas!” Sofia called out suddenly. I opened my eyes and slowly pulled myself off the bed annoyed.

“What?!”

“You’re going to wanna see this!” she shouted again. I stood quickly and exited my room, making my way into the main room.

“… and caused massive amounts of destruction to the lab as you can see behind me. Reports are saying that this new spider-man even attempted to assault one of our esteemed newspaper photographers and had to be temporarily restrained by police. It seems unclear whether any legal action will or will not come from this, but I can assure you all this is but more evidence of degeneracy from this new and very dangerous Spider-Man.

And that’s all from-”

I turned off the TV, staring blankly at my own distorted reflection in it’s surface, fists clenched.

“Did you…” Sofia started.

“No” I muttered, “No I didn’t.”