Avengers

Peter Parker had a very strange dream.

No, rather than a dream, it was an absurd fantasy—he dreamed that the spider that had bitten him had not died after he knocked it away, but crawled toward more people's necks. One Peter Parker after another was bitten, their faces flickering in the darkness: Tobey-Spider, Amazing-Spider, MCU Holland-Spider... Countless Spider-Men intertwined in his mind. It seemed that, starting with him, an enormous web had spread outward, with a different Spider-Man in every cell.

"Spider-Man..."

A distant, hazy voice was calling to him.

"You have to find—"

Find what?

"Another spider."

It was a gentle female voice, unfamiliar yet inexplicably familiar, as though it were right beside him and yet separated by dense fog. Peter wanted to ask what another spider meant. Were there other spiders in this universe? Or a Spider-Man from some parallel universe? But he discovered that he did not even have the strength to lift his eyelids. All he could do was struggle to break free from the darkness.

He let out an incoherent groan and barely opened his eyes. A young woman with short brown hair happened to enter, pushing a tray of fruit. When she saw Peter awake, she smiled kindly and warmly, looking at him with concern.

Was she the one who had called to him just now? She looked vaguely familiar.

"Are you all right?" she asked softly. "Don't worry. You need rest right now."

"I... Scarecrow..."

Memories came flooding back—the broken overpass, the roar of the subway, his body on the verge of collapse...

Where was Herman? Was the fight over? Where was this?

Peter sprang up from the bed and instinctively flipped onto the ceiling, hanging upside down as he warily surveyed his surroundings. Only then did he notice that he was still wearing his damaged Spider-Man suit. The torn mask had been folded and placed beside his pillow. Outside the window, Manhattan's skyline gleamed beneath the sunlight. In the distance, he could see the shorter Empire State Building and roughly make out where he was.

But from this angle, only one building was missing from view.

Peter finally realized why she looked so familiar. His voice rose involuntarily.

"You're... you're Ms. Janet van Dyne? Where am I? Oh my God, am I in Avengers Tower? Is this really it?"

Janet, or rather, Wasp, laughed at Peter's exaggerated reaction. "Relax, kid. This is Avengers Tower, of course. Can you come down from the ceiling first? Talking like this isn't great for my neck."

"Oh, uh, of course. Sorry."

Only then did Peter realize how badly he had lost his composure. He hurriedly flipped down, but his legs gave out beneath him and he nearly dropped to his knees. Every muscle in his body was protesting. Every inch of bone felt as though it had been crushed and barely pieced back together.

Janet picked up the transparent tablet beside the bed and glanced at the diagnostic report. "J.A.R.V.I.S. said you have severe tendon tears, widespread internal bleeding from ruptured capillaries, extensive alveolar damage, and dozens of hairline fractures... Under normal circumstances, you should be in the ICU and not worrying about anything related to superheroes. But you're doing better than any of us expected."

That mutated spider had given Peter healing abilities beyond those of an ordinary person. They were not as outrageous as Wolverine's, but they were enough for him to begin recovering from fractures after two or three days of sleep. He was not worried about his own body. There was something else he cared about more.

"What about Herman? That 'Scarecrow'? Did the Avengers catch him?"

Janet's expression stiffened subtly for a moment.

"This... someone else should tell you." She sighed softly. "I'm just a manager. I handle the Avengers' public affairs, press conferences, and apologies. Battle briefings aren't part of my job."

Peter grabbed his mask and forced himself to his feet. His instincts told him it was not that simple. The Avengers had not caught Herman.

"Sorry, but could I... look around?"

At that moment, the holographic projection in Avengers Tower's conference room was looping footage of Spider-Man and Scarecrow's battle.

Tony Stark had his feet propped on the conference table and leaned back in his chair, his tone as casual as though he were commenting on a game. "Good news number one: Herman Schultz is an insecure, arrogant idiot who would never share his 'masterpiece' with anyone else—so there's only one unstable Vibranium Suit in the world." He snapped his fingers. "To quote him exactly: 'Scarecrow stays outside.'"

"Good news number two," Tony continued, "he improved his weapons system, so his equipment is going out of control more slowly than expected. We still have time to catch this 'Yellow Mario.'"

As always, Tony Stark gave people nicknames without the slightest restraint.

Tony had unceremoniously given that sewer-diving, constantly hopping guy a nickname, but Steve Rogers did not laugh. His brow was tightly furrowed, his eyes fixed on Scarecrow fighting in the projection. The problem was not Herman's arrogance. It was that he had no idea how dangerous his weapon was—if the core overloaded and exploded, it would be enough to destroy everything within a one-kilometer radius. And this was New York, one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

At that moment, the conference room door slid open.

Everyone turned toward the entrance—Janet was accompanying a limping Peter inside. Tony immediately whistled and spread his arms dramatically. "Fantastic! Our Sleeping Beauty is finally awake! How are you, kid? What did your first life-or-death fight with a supervillain feel like?"

"Not great, Mr. Stark. I don't think I've ever been this tired in my life."

"Considering you practically held up an entire section of elevated roadway, I don't think tired really describes your condition right now." Bruce Banner smiled gently, looking nothing like the Hulk. As for Hank Pym, Ant-Man was absent again for some reason.

"Uh, where's Mr. Hank? Ms. Janet said he saved me. I wanted to thank him."

"Don't bother. That guy never goes anywhere but his lab. Just have Wasp pass along the message." Tony waved a hand and shoved Peter into the chair beside him. "Listen, kid, you just pulled off a heroic feat. You saved countless lives. So, how do you feel?"

"Did I?"

Tony Stark was thrown off by the boy's question. "Why would you ask that?"

"Uh... I completely lost consciousness at the end. I didn't know whether I saved those people, so... did I do it?"

The room suddenly fell silent.

"Yes, you did." Banner nodded. "You held on for around twenty more seconds. Everyone had actually evacuated already, and they were shouting that they were safe, but you couldn't hear them by then."

Peter's shoulders finally relaxed.

"That's great. Nobody got hurt. If I had..."

"All right, kid, you did enough!" Tony cut off his self-reproach and gave him a hard pat on the back, deliberately speaking in a lighthearted tone. "Stopping supervillains, getting beaten up, saving people—you completed the standard superhero routine. Now your mission is to go home, rest, do your homework, and don't make your family worry. Leave the rest to us."

What did he mean, leave the rest to us?

Peter sensed something troubling in those words.

"So Herman is still out there?"

"All right, Tony. Let me talk to the kid."

Captain sighed and took over. "Hank analyzed Herman Schultz's equipment. Its energy supply is extremely unstable, and there's a risk of explosion. Every time he uses it, the chance of causing a catastrophic explosion increases. Therefore, the Avengers have decided to take over this case completely. We hope Spider-Man will withdraw from the operation."

"But..." Peter opened his mouth to say something, then changed course. "I understand, Captain. But if I run into Herman while he's doing something, can I stop him?"

"Of course you can, kid. You can do that until the Avengers take over the fight." Captain did not completely reject Spider-Man's involvement in the operation against Scarecrow, but he drew a line. "But you need to understand that every fight with Scarecrow from here on out will be incredibly dangerous. Every battle could trigger an explosion in his weapon. Watch out for your own safety."

"Okay. I... I should go. If I get back too late, my uncle and aunt will worry."

"Have Banner or Janet see you out."

After seeing off the clearly disappointed Peter Parker, Tony asked Captain the question he most wanted to ask.

"So, Captain, what do you think of the kid now?"

Steve Rogers stared at the ceiling for a long time before letting out a deep sigh.

"He's a good kid." At last, Steve spoke softly. "He has a pure sense of justice and empathy... so pure that it hurts to see. Did you notice what he focused on? He wasn't even focused on how many people he had saved. He was focused on how guilty he would feel if he hadn't saved them."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"I've seen soldiers like that on the battlefield. They blame themselves for their comrades' deaths. They think that if they had done well enough, if they had just thrown themselves forward with all their strength, maybe someone else would not have died."

Steve Rogers studied Spider-Man as he fought again and again in the projection. "Those soldiers strive to become the first ones to die on the battlefield. They're walking a path of self-destruction."