Chapter 5: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

There were too many cemeteries in Queens, Peter decided. He never thought about it before, but it made sense. Manhattan was too crowded so it was the other boroughs' responsibility to hold the resting places of the dead.

The service outside was quiet, somber, Peter felt like he was nauseous as he stood next to his aunt, coworkers from the garage his uncle worked at, and a few other friends. Ben's grave was surrounded by friends and loved ones, all gathered to pay their respects and Peter felt like a phony standing with them.

"And though he's passed on, we know that Ben will always be close by, comforting us, making us laugh, offering words of advice when we need to hear them…" The chaplain continued on, but Peter wasn't listening. He was looking at the gravestone marked with his name his death and a few simple epitaphs.

"Beloved Husband, Uncle, and Friend."

"With Great Power, There Must Also Come Great Responsibility."

Is this all there is? A moment of time before the end? It could've been more than a moment if I had just…

Peter waited as one by one the mourners left, until it was just him and Aunt May. He hoped she would step away before he did. He needed to voice his apology to Ben and he couldn't say that in front of her. Not yet, maybe not ever.

But she remained, she stayed there as long as Peter did, and when he stepped away from the grave she soon followed. Undoubtedly, she felt he didn't want to be alone.

Neither one of them said anything on the way back to the house. It was only after they got in did May speak.

"Would you like something to eat?"

"No, Aunt May. I'm not hungry."

"Peter, you didn't eat anything last night or this morning. You need to eat something."

"Thank you, but I just want to be alone for right now," Peter walked quietly upstairs and into his room.

He sat down on his bed and looked around; all over his room were books on science, science fiction, and posters of the cosmos. Pictures of Copernicus, Erskine, Tesla, Fujita, Turing, Richards, Uchida, and the Curies. Science awards and accolades that he had gotten over the years, the earliest he had gotten when he was seven.

It all seemed like junk.

All except for a framed photo on his desk.

It was taken two years ago for his thirteenth birthday. He, Uncle Ben, and Aunt May had taken a trip to the Smithsonian, some kind tourist was nice enough to take a photo of them in front of the Air and Space Museum. They all looked so excited, so happy to be there.

Peter would give up everything to be that happy again. He'd give up his soul if he could tell the kid in that photo what was really important. To tell him to hold tight to his uncle, to toss that stupid ad into the trash and never look back. To be the bigger man and take some responsibility.

It was after midnight when May stirred from her sleep; she glanced at the window and realized that the porch light was on. Then she saw her nephew was out there. She hustled down and saw him painting the fence, still dressed in all black, getting flecks of paint on his slacks and jacket.

"Peter? Dear, what are you doing? It's the middle of the night."

"I know," he said, not looking away from his work. "But I thought…I owe him. I just needed to get this done, to finish what he started."

"The fence will be there in the morning. And besides, he'd be the first to tell you that you paint in the daytime, when you can see how the paint settles," as May spoke a loud growl issued from Peter's stomach and despite everything they went through that day, neither could help but smile at that.

"Come inside, I'll make you some eggs real quick."

What started as quick eggs soon turned into a full-course breakfast for dinner as May cooked up some bacon and toast to go with it.

May always overdoes it when it comes to food. Peter thought.

The two of them ate the impromptu meal, though Peter ate a bit slower his aunt had already finished before he was halfway through his eggs.

"Well, I'm off to bed, leave the dishes though, I'll get them in the morning," his aunt got up to leave.

"Wait, Aunt May, there's something I want to tell you." His aunt turned to look at him concerned. Peter noticed that her silvery-blonde hair looked closer to silver these days. He took a big breath and started.

"Before…Before Uncle Ben died, I…We had a fight, no. I snapped at him. I said a lot of terrible things, and I blamed him for some things that weren't his fault. He told me how you two were concerned by how I acted lately and I blew him off, acted like a jerk. And I didn't…I-wish I could've made things right. I don't like thinking how the last time I saw him-"

"Stop it right there, mister," his aunt cut him off with a gentle but firm tone before sitting down again to speak to him face-to-face. "Benjamin Parker was many things, but a bad-tempered man wasn't one of them and he wasn't one to hold a grudge either. You had a bad moment but that's all it was, a moment. You loved your uncle, he knew that and he loved you back. I have no doubt in my mind Ben wasn't thinking about whatever quarrel you might've had. He loved you, all the way to the end."

She took a big breath after that, like it took more energy out of her than she realized and neither of them said anything for a minute.

"I don't know what's going to happen next, but whatever it is, we'll go through it together," she gave him a kiss on the forehead and headed back to her bedroom.

Peter sat and ate, slowly. He hadn't come forward with the truth, but still, something felt like it came off his chest with that confession. But one thing was still gnawing at him, the words his uncle so often said, "With great power there must also come great responsibility." He had to make it right, he just wasn't sure how and what he could…

Another idea struck him. Something even crazier than before, and this time he'd be doing it for the right reasons.

He dashed to his room and dug around in his closet, his bookshelf, finally, he found it in the drawers of his desk. It was an old magazine his uncle gave him years ago, inside was a collection of comics starring the late Captain America, from all the way back during World War II. He stared at the old superhero who was currently smacking a caricature of Adolf Hitler right in the face.

He had a plan, he had his dispensers, no, his web-shooters, and he had three hundred dollars. That was enough to get some fresh material.

"Hurry up, old man! We don't have all night!"

The old man fumbled with his wallet, hands twitching as he tried to fish out his card for the ATM, even without the masked woman shoving him along he could barely keep himself together when her partner held a gun to his grandson.

"Please, just-just point the gun at me, there's no reason to get him involved," he stammered.

"We got guns for the both of you," the woman snarled, pulling her own piece out and pointing it at the grandfather. "Now move your ass!"

The grandfather tried to insert the card into the slot but it kept slipping out of his hands until dropped it.

"Dammit!" the gunman growled. "Pick it up or you're going to be picking up your boy's brai-AAAAHH!"

Something caught him up and dragged him out of sight. The woman only had a moment to gasp before the same thing happened to her. The grandfather grabbed hold of his grandson to keep him safe from whatever had happened. He heard what sounded like anguished cries before he saw both of the muggers with white ropes stuck to their backs swing at each other. Both could only give out a brief cry for help before they collided with each other and dropped to the ground.

"Grandpa, look!" his grandson pointed up and they both saw some strange man swing away into the night.

"I was just trying to be nice! Show you the best part of Central Park. But no! You had to act so stuck up!"

The woman in the man's arm screamed through the hand over her mouth and kicked and pulled, she was giving the best effort she could but he was simply too strong for her and he wrestled her down into the foliage.

"You know, nice guys like me only put up with so much before we decide enough's enough. Well, this is me not being nice anymore. You're going to learn the cost of pride!"

He didn't get any farther in his rant; something yanked him off of her and dragged him into the bushes. The sound of punches and a weird thwipping noise was heard before the man came flying out and landed at her feet, his arms and legs hogtied behind him. Another figure jumped out in front of the woman, a strange red and blue man with lines all over his body and unnervingly large blank, white eyes.

"You alright?" he asked.

The woman screamed and ran off, fast as her legs could take her.

"Get home safe! Have a good night! And maybe flag down a cop or something!" the strange man called.

The sounds of pained grunts and jeering laughter echoed through the subway station. Inside two homeless men were locked in a bitter struggle of hand-to-hand combat while four college-age boys cheered and hollered at the violent, if clumsy display. The old, bearded homeless man rushed the other, a shorter, twitchy, balding fellow, and tackled him to the ground. He swung a few times at the head of the twitchy man before he was suddenly grabbed; the twitchy fellow bit him hard on the hand and knocked him back with a punch of his own.

"C'mon, old timer," one of the college kids waved a twenty in his face like it was a worm on a hook. "Earn your money!" He gave the bearded man a shove and the two grappled for a moment before he headbutted the other man, the two fell to the ground after the blow and the twitchy man started weeping from the pain.

"Get up you pathetic schizo!" one of the other boys yelled over the cruel laughs of his compatriots. "I'm losing money on you!" He aimed a kick at the guy to send him back into the fray. "Christ, this is sad."

"Yeah, I suppose if you wanted something sad and pathetic, you would've stayed home and played with yourself," a new voice said, catching everyone off-guard.

Walking down the steps to the station was something none of them had seen before. He was dressed in a red and blue outfit that covered the whole body. A cobweb pattern began at the top of the mask and extended all the way down to the upper torso which was decorated with a black spider design in the middle. The eyes were plain, white lenses that made for a striking look to his face.

"The hell do you want, Pajama Sam? Isn't it past your bedtime?" one of the boys taunted.

"Cute," the masked figure replied. "Now, you've had your fun, so why don't you pay those gentlemen what you owe them and then head back to whatever varsity toilet you crawled out of."

The tallest and cockiest one of the group, undoubtedly the leader, laughed derisively and got right up in the face of the good Samaritan.

"Ah, see here's the thing, I don't take orders from freaks like them, or you. We do whatever we want to them because nobody gives a damn about what happens to them. So if we want to watch these two nobodies knock each other stupid, or stupider. Who's gonna raise a fuss? Now, why don't you get before I beat you like a rented mule?"

"Rented mule," the spider-themed hero scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Is that what you call your, ahem." He gestured down at the guy's pants.

"You sonofa!" The young man swung wildly at the costumed hero, who easily caught his arm and flipped him right at the closest column. Just as the punk hit it, the hero extended his hand a spray of webbing shot out of his wrist, pinning the would-be assailant upside-down to the column.

"Get that freak!" one of the others yelled and the remaining three charged at him.

"Do mommy and daddy know you're wasting your education?" the masked man asked rhetorically as he grabbed the first one to reach him, swung him around like a swing dancer with his partner, and tossed him into the column, sticking him to the first guy with another web.

"Seriously, colleges already get a bad enough rap about failing to teach students," he grabbed the two others with a strand of webbing. "You don't need to prove them right by somehow getting into Congress." Yanking the two of them into his hands, he shoved them into the same column and secured them with another layer of webbing. The four of them were all awkwardly positioned and protested quite loudly.

"While you're all getting to know each other a bit more personally, maybe you can answer my question, what do you owe these gentlemen?" he gestured to the two homeless men who watched the whole scene play out completely stunned.

"We promised them twenty," one of the boys grunted. "Forty for whoever won the fight."

"Well let's just say you were all feeling generous, and decided on sixty for the both of them," the vigilante dug through their pockets and fished out sixty dollars, ignoring the angry shouts coming from the column.

"You can't steal from us!" the leader yelled. "That's our mo-OOMPH!" his wallet, or one of the other boys, was stuffed into his mouth.

"Now, now," the masked man mimed a shushing motion. "Charity should be given quietly and humbly."

He walked over to the two stunned men and each handed them their money. The bearded man gave a look of disbelief before running out of the station. The other continued to sit on the floor, barely understanding what had happened.

"Hey," he finally spoke up as his savior jotted up the steps out of the subway station. "Who are you, Mr. Pajamas?"

The man turned and gave him a two-finger salute.

"I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

Surprise! A quick chapter to follow up the other one!

I wanted to wait before referring to Peter as Spider-Man, make sure he was worthy of the title. And the best way to do that was to step up as a crime fighter.

In-universe, Spider-Man's costume is inspired by the red and blue spiders from the Connors' lab, but also from Captain America. I figured it would make sense that a young man who grew up in New York would be inspired by the first and most famous at this point, superhero.

Stay tuned next time as Peter navigates the world of crimefighting, public perception and his first supervillain.