Web-Slinging in DC

New York

August 11, 15:22 EDT

After his mother gave him an earful for losing track of time in his bunker, Peter reheated and ate the plate of breakfast she had left for him. Thanks to his new physique, however, the single plate wasn't enough, and he ended up eating what was left of his birthday cake, three apples, a bag of potato chips, and four pizza pockets before he was satiated.

'I'm going to eat my parents out of house and home at this rate. Hopefully, this is just because it's the day after the transformation and it'll calm down. If not, I'll have to think of something.' thought Peter as he cleaned up after himself before a memory came to his mind, 'I remember seeing a video in my previous life about how the Flash has a super metabolism and eats calorie-dense bars. I could invent some of those if it comes to it.'

As he finished cleaning up, Teresa walked into the kitchen, earphones in, and focused entirely on her phone.

'What a familiar sight. Kids on their phones with not a care in the world. Time-wise, it adds up with my previous life. YouTubers exploded in popularity in 2009ish so it makes sense it would be the same here.' 

Though the world of DC was decidedly more advanced in various aspects of normal life, it wasn't to the point one might think. Considering flying men, Martians, and geniuses were everywhere, the world's technology level was quite normal. 

'Guess it makes sense since all those geniuses are either villains hellbent on taking over the world or heroes who fight the villains hellbent on taking over the world. Not much time for a personal life much less changing the world.'

"Ew. Peter, you stink." said Teresa, covering her nose.

"You know how it goes for us genius types. You get so lost in the z-" he said, stopping mid-sentence as she rolled her eyes and left, "That was rude."

~

After a quick shower and a clothing change, Peter was out the door, riding his skateboard to the nearest subway stop.

Unlike most of the privileged rich kids he had grown up around who had never ridden the subway or left their rich bubble, only ever seeing their skewed version of New York, Peter loved to explore all the boroughs.

His curiosity came from having lived his previous life in a small city and having always seen New York on comic pages. He loved to ride his skateboard through the city and revel in it; it was also how he found Ted Grant's boxing gym.

That was also how he knew where to find a completely abandoned warehouse near the pier to safely practice his web swinging before leaping off a skyscraper. As eager as he was to do so, he'd rather take it slow than die before he could get his dream off the ground.

Skating to a stop in front of a chained-up gate, Peter made sure no one was around.

'Hopping over an 8-foot tall fence should be easy peasy with my new physique.' he thought.

He did one more sweep for people, stepped back from the fence, got a running start, and jumped.

"Oh shit!"

He had indeed jumped over the fence as intended but also jumped high enough to clear the warehouse with the only viable landing spot being the roof.

As he fell back down, he instinctively knew how to orient his body to land safely; in the iconic Spider-Man stance, crouched low with one leg bent and the other stretched outward, body slightly leaned forward with his left arm on the ground and the other extended behind him.

"Swe-"

CRASH

His spider-sense tingled, warning him about the roof collapsing, causing his body to move instinctively out of the way before he fell through.

"Close one. It's not like I would've gotten hurt anyway from the fall but still." he mused out loud before jumping down the hole into the warehouse, only slightly bending his knees to disperse the momentum.

The warehouse inside was perfect for practicing his swinging. It was a big open space with support pillars sparsely scattered throughout and a pile of leftover shipping containers stacked up in a corner.

"If those shipping containers are empty I could move them and create a makeshift obstacle course to help with swinging through narrow spaces like you did to the water towers in the game." he said, "That'll be for later. After I've gotten more used to swinging."

With that, he put his skateboard down on the ground and walked over to the pile of shipping containers, quickly climbing to the top since it was the highest platform in the room.

"Okay, here we go." he said, exhaling and shaking his body to relieve his slight nerves.

He pointed the web shooter at the rafters about 50 feet ahead and let out a line that hit exactly where he wanted. Even though he had already tested the webbing in his lab and knew it was working as intended, he still gave the line a hard tug just to be sure.

Seeing the line was secure, he took a deep breath and clenched his fists around it before jumping off the containers. Immediately, the line went taught, and he started swinging forward, the stale warehouse wind rushing through his smiling face.

As happy as he was to successfully web-swing, he knew that this was a training moment before he started swinging through the streets of New York, so he had to focus. He quickly oriented his body as he remembered Spider-Man would when swinging before realizing that his momentum would soon stop as he was about to reach the apex of his arc.

His genius brain and spider-enhanced senses quickly worked together to find the optimal place to continue his swing. He cut off the existing line and shot out another at a rafter with his left web shooter, pulling on the line to generate momentum and start the swing again.

Whether it was due to his spider-related powers, his genius brain, or his previous experience with martial arts, he quickly mastered the basics to a point he felt satisfied with.

"Phew." said Peter, stretching his arms after landing. 

Looking up at the rafters of the warehouse, the place now looked like it was the home of giant spiders what with the webbing everywhere. However, it would only look like that for a few hours until the web fluid started to dissolve.

"That was more tiring than I thought it would be, but at least now I'm confident enough that if something goes wrong while moving at high speeds, I can do something about it."

After stretching, Peter checked his web fluid levels and saw that after swinging around so much he still had nearly 80% left on each canister.

"I spent around half an hour swinging around and only used up about 20%. It'll go much faster once I'm using the web for other stuff since I'll be using it for more than just swinging but conservatively, I can say I'll be using up around half of the fluid every hour. 1 canister for 2 hours with 12 canisters for each gauntlet means I should theoretically have enough for a continuous 24 hours which is not bad at all."

After spending a few minutes catching his breath and checking his phone, he pulled the skateboard to himself using some web before leaping back up the hole he had fallen through. Back on the roof, he quickly made sure no one was around before jumping off and over the fence back onto the street. He then went to the nearest subway station and took the train heading back to Manhattan.

After a rather long train ride, he reached his destination and made his way to the surface. He then made his way down 5th Avenue, heading to the Lagnham which he thought would make a good jumping-off point seeing as it was a 600' (182 meters) tall hotel.

At the base of the hotel, Peter looked around and saw that the streets were very busy, too busy for him to just leap on the side of the hotel and start crawling up it so he walked around until he saw an alley1 behind the hotel which he quickly ducked into.

He checked for any cameras and saw only one above an exit to the hotel, but it was pointing away from Peter's location, making the alley a perfect location. With one last look around to make sure no one was looking, Peter began scaling the hotel. At first, he used his hands to crawl up before gaining confidence and standing up.

'Standing on the side of a building with no effort. A little trippy.' thought Peter, looking back and seeing the ground before continuing.

As fun as it would be to freak people out by walking up the building, Peter decided otherwise and began to run up the building at full speed. Or at least he tried to until he forgot he wasn't on the ground anymore and picked both feet up, causing him to fall.

Luckily he caught himself quickly, using his right hand to stick himself back on the building.

"Running up a side of a building, different than running on the ground. Should've made that connection." he mused out loud before continuing his run up the building, being extra careful to never have both feet off the ground.

He hadn't yet tested how fast he could run, nor did he accurately know how fast Spider-Man could run in the comics since he was always traveling by web, but with how fast he traversed the side of the building, he was guessing he could run at around 100 MPH1 (160 KMPH). Though with a little more effort, he was sure he could run faster than that.

Reaching the roof, he looked around seeing there was a giant air conditioning unit and a crane used by window washers while down some stairs there was a door that most likely led inside the building. Besides that and some leftover trash, there was nothing else, not even a camera.

"Same thing as in the warehouse except you're 600' off the ground. This is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else you might face in the future." he said to himself as he stood on the edge, looking down at the street.

Mentally ready, Peter was about to step off the roof before he realized something.

"If a person is swinging around NYC, people might record and I don't have anything to cover my face. The chances are pretty slim but I'd rather not take that chance."

Checking his person for anything he could use to cover himself, he found nothing.

"Should I risk it?" he wondered, but before he could give it any more thought, he saw something in the pile of trash that made him smile.

He walked over to the trash and pulled out a brown paper bag. He checked it to make sure it wasn't stained or ripped anywhere, he also gave it a sniff and found it smelled like nothing, thankfully.

"This'll work. Just needs some holes." he said, smiling as he put the bag over his head and poked holes where his eyes would be, "Luckily my web crawling ability isn't just limited to my hands and feet so this bag will stay on my head even as the wind whips it around."

Face covered, Peter made his way back to the edge of the roof, took one final inhale to calm himself, and stepped off.

The first thing he noticed was the sound of rushing wind with it being all he could hear. The next thing he noticed was the feeling of weightlessness. It felt freeing.

"Whoo-hoo!"

As much as he would've liked to enjoy the weightlessness some more, he knew that at the height he jumped off, he only had 6 seconds before he hit the ground so he couldn't waste any more time.

"Just like you practiced."

Aiming at a building north, he let off a line of web that successfully hit its mark. As he fell, the line tightened and he began his swing, going much faster than he had at the warehouse.

Initially filled with a little panic, he realized he was still able to keep up with everything he was seeing which calmed him down and allowed for his excitement to rise back up.

"Whoo!" he shouted as he swung, releasing the line and shooting off another one to continue swinging.

This time, he aimed the line lower on the next building letting him swing closer to the ground and through the incoming traffic.

"Hello." he said as he swung in between two buses, looking at all the passengers looking at him.

HONK HONK

"Whoa!" he said, shooting off a line to a light pole to adjust himself as he was on course to collide with a taxi, "Hey, watch it, I'm swinging here!"

"I'm driving here!" he heard the taxi driver shouting back at him, causing him to laugh.

Continuing, he moved back higher into the sky to avoid another near-miss with a vehicle.

As he swung through the city, his spider-sense flared up, causing him to turn to look to the right where he saw four masked gunmen run out of a bank with duffel bags before entering a beat-up sedan and driving away from him.

Immediately, Peter changed his direction, swinging onto the street they were driving on and quickly catching up to them. He shot a line at the sedan and pulled himself to it, landing on the roof.

"The hell was that?" he heard one of the men say.

KNOCK KNOCK

"Roll down your window." Peter said as he lay on the roof, his upper body hanging off the car and looking into the driver's window.

Baffled at the situation, the driver rolled down the window.

"What's up? I'm Spider-Man." said Peter, calling himself Spider-Man even though he wasn't wearing his costume yet, "You guys late for a dinner reservation?"

"What are you doing?! Shoot him!" said one of the men in the back, the first to snap out of the weird encounter.

Before he could raise his gun to shoot, Peter webbed everyone in the car while making a sneezing noise, stopping them from going for their guns.

"Sorry, stuffy nose." said Peter, rubbing the area of the bag where his nose was, "Anyway if you could just press the brake there, it would be much appreciated."

"Screw you!" said the driver whose hands were webbed onto the steering wheel and who slammed his foot on the accelerator, causing the car to speed up.

"Buddy, it's safer to drive under the speed limit." said Peter, using the web to pull the driver's foot off the gas.

As he was about to enter the car and press the brake, his spider-senses tingled causing him to look at the road and see a lady with a stroller crossing the street, unaware of the speeding car.

Acting fast, he shot a web at the brake, pressing it down, before flipping over and in front of the car and then digging his heels into the ground to slow it down. Thanks to his activation of the brake and himself, he stopped the vehicle within a few feet of the now wide-eyed lady.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he asked to which she just dumbly nodded, "Good, but remember, look both ways before you cross."

"Thank you! For saving me and my baby!" she said, hugging Peter after having snapped out of it, "What's your name?" 

"Spider-Man." he said, earning a confused look from the lady as she stepped back.

"Spider-Man? Are you sure? There's nothing spidery about you." she said, looking him up and down.

"It's a ... work in progress."

"Are you a superhero? Like Superman?" she asked with stars in her eyes.

"Hero? Me? No, I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." Peter said, smiling under the bag.

WEE-OO WEE-OO

Hearing the sirens, Peter turned around to see a couple of cop cars pull up behind the robber's sedan.

"The boys in blue!" he said, making his way to them.

"Stop! Put your hands up! You in the paper bag, don't move!" said the one closest to him who like the rest of them got out of their cars with their guns drawn.

"You're talking to me?" he said, looking around and noticing they were aimed at him.

"Who are you?"

"Spider-Man." said Peter, noticing that a crowd had formed around them with many of them recording.

"Your real name!" shouted the cop.

"You don't seem to grasp the concept of the bag." Peter said, pointing at the bag.

As he pointed at the bag, one of the cops must've thought he was reaching for a weapon or something because Peter's spider-senses throbbed instead of tingling. Instinctively his body reacted, dodging the bullet fired by one of the cops.

"Hold your fire!" said the cop in the lead.

"That's not very nice." said Peter, leaping up into the air and using his webs to take away all the cops' guns before landing behind them, "I'm taking these away until you learn to behave."

"Stop him!" shouted the cop as they all began to run toward him.

"Got to go! Late for a ceramics class!" said Peter, dropping the webbed guns on the ground and getting a running start before shooting a line out and swinging away.