Spider-Man
Peter hoped the professor wouldn’t notice him as he walked quietly into his Chemistry 101 seven minutes after it began. The professor had his back turned to Peter, writing something on the chalkboard, so Peter believed he was in the clear.
“Glad you could join us, Peter,” said the professor, eliciting chuckles from the students around him.
Peter slid lower in his desk, already counting the minutes until class ended. Once it did, he grabbed his stuff and hurried out of the classroom, bumping into a tall, muscular classmate with long, blond hair and Greek letters on his shirt.
“Sorry,” said Peter.
“No problemo!” said the classmate. “Hey, what was your name again?”
“Peter.”
“Full name?”
Peter sighed. “Peter Parker.”
“Like Spider-Man!”
Peter faked a laugh and started walking again. The classmate grabbed his shoulder.
“Hey,” said the classmate. “With great power comes great responsibility!”
I haven’t heard that one a million times before, thought Peter.
The classmate let go of Peter and went into the restroom. Peter left the building and walked down a sidewalk were a woman was struggling with a mugger trying to steal her purse. Peter walked around them, and the mugger snatched the purse away a few seconds later, pushing the woman onto the street and running in the same direction Peter was going.
“Stop him!” cried the woman.
Peter rolled his eyes and stuck a leg out, tripping the mugger and causing him to drop the purse, which Peter then picked up. The mugger looked up at Peter with the intent of fighting him, but police sirens sounded in the distance and he abandoned such intentions, running away. Peter brought the purse back to the woman.
“I think this is yours,” said Peter.
“It is. Thank you,” said the woman, taking her purse back.
Peter started to walk away.
“I never got your name!” the woman shouted after him.
Peter smiled. “It’s Peter. Peter Parker.”
That night, Peter walked into his dorm room with his backpack fuller than usual. His roommate, James, was sitting on his bed, playing a video game and chewing on a vape pen. Even though James didn’t smoke, he thought he looked cool with a vape pen in mouth, and Peter didn’t have the heart to tell him that it actually made him look like an idiot.
“Yo, James, check this out,” said Peter.
Peter opened his backpack and dumped a Spider-Man costume onto his bed.
“Are you really doing this?” asked James.
“Yeah,” said Peter. “There’s people out there who need help, and I feel like it’s my destiny to give to them.”
“As a comic book character?”
“I didn’t choose this name, but I can choose what I do with it.”
Peter covered his head with the mask.
“There’s no talking you out of this, is there?” asked James.
“Nope,” said Peter.
James took out a switchblade, cut two holes in his pillowcase, and placed it over his head. He then tied his blanket around his neck.
“Then I’m coming with you,” declared James. “As a sidekick.”
After a moment, James pulled the mask back off and cut another hole in it before putting it on again. He put his vape pen in the third hole and jumped off the bed performing a superhero pose.
“Call me…Vape Boy!”
“Spider-Man and Vape Boy. We need to sell this to Marvel,” snarked Peter.
“Where do we go first?”
“Most crime happens downtown, so we should go to Nine Spots first.”
James pumped a fist. “Sweet! We get drunk and fight crime!”
“No, we’re just fighting crime,” said Peter.
James winked. “Yeah, just fighting crime. I get it.”
Peter pulled the vape pen out of James’ mouth. “The mask makes you look stupid enough.”
James took back his vape pen and returned it to his mouth as Peter put on the rest of his costume.
“Alright,” said Peter. “Let’s go.”
Nine Spots was busier than it usually was on Friday night. Long lines stretched out of every bar, even the bars most people hated, as college kids desperate to unwind after a long week of school sought fun, music, and alcohol.
Lots and lots of alcohol.
Peter and James walked through the neighborhood, attracting glances everywhere they went. One man, who was especially drunk, ran up to them.
“Oh, my god! Are you Spider-Man?” the man said at an unreasonably high volume.
“Uh, yeah,” said Peter.
“Oh, my god! I loved you in that one movie!”
“Which one?”
“The reboot!”
“Which one?”
A scream was heard in the distance.
“Sorry, sir, but my Spidey sense is tingling!” said Peter.
“Something of mine is tingling, too,” said the man.
“Do I want to know?” asked Peter.
“No, you do not.”
Peter and James ran towards the source of the scream, and they found a young man getting his head dunked into a fountain by a pair of older men with sunglasses.
“Sunglasses at night? This crime against fashion must be rectified!” said James, slamming a fist into his right hand.
“There’s also that guy getting drowned,” said Peter.
“That too!”
Peter and James pulled the older men off the younger one and threw them to the ground. The older men pulled out guns.
“Shoot, I forgot real-life criminals used those,” said James.
“Okay, we surrender,” said Peter. “Please don’t shoot us. We were just bored and wanted to be superheroes.”
“Without superpowers?” said one of the older men. “That was a big mistake right there.”
“And do either of you have the traumatic life experience that would necessitate becoming a superhero, like a dead parent, a dead grandparent, or even a dead uncle?” said the other man.
“I had a cat that died once,” said James.
“Neither of you are actually superheroes! You’re both frauds!” said the first older man.
“We may be frauds, but at least we saved the life of that person you were drowning!” said Peter, indicating that the younger man wasn’t there anymore.
“That person we were drowning embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars from a multinational corporation. We weren’t trying to kill him, we were just trying to recover stolen money. Guys like us, we’re the real heroes,” said the second man.
“But you get paid for it?” asked James.
“We get paid lots,” said the first man.
“Screw this superhero nonsense!” said James. “I want to do what these guys do!”
“Well, we are getting up there in age,” said the second man. “It might do us good to take on an intern.”
“You mean a sidekick?” said James.
“We mean an intern,” said the second man. “Unpaid, without anything resembling workplace rights.”
“I’ll take it!” said James.
“I won’t,” said Peter. “Even if you aren’t killers, you’re still criminals, and that makes you my enemy.”
“So would you rather we just shoot you?” asked the first man.
“Never mind, I’ll take it,” said Peter.
The older men pocketed their firearms, got into a car with their new apprentices, and drove to a bar outside of town that didn’t have a line coming out of it.
“Wait!” said James. “I don’t have a fake ID.”
“Trust me,” said the second man. “They don’t care.”
“Man, this superhero thing is working out great, isn’t it Peter?” said James, elbowing Peter in the arm playfully.
“Yeah,” said Peter, too terrified to speak his true mind. “It’s working out great.”
As Peter drank with James, the older men, and the friends of the older men at the bar, laughing at the inevitable “with great power comes great responsibility” quotes, he wondered if he would ever get a hero of his own.