At six in the morning, the alarm rang on time, shattering Peter Parker's sweet dream. He raised a hand and gently pressed the alarm instead of smashing it to pieces again.
"Day twenty-two of overcoming morning grumpiness. Great." Peter patted his face, got out of bed excitedly, dressed, washed up, and headed downstairs.
He saw Aunt May clearing the table in the dining room and asked in confusion, "Did Uncle Ben oversleep today?"
"Maybe Ben wasn't the one who overslept." Aunt May was a little younger than Uncle Ben and was not yet forty. As she cleared the table, she rolled her eyes at Peter. "Maybe someone forgot what day it is."
"Oh! I forgot school starts today." Peter suddenly understood why Uncle Ben had not gone running with him. "Is Uncle Ben in the garage?"
"Yeah. Could you go next door and call Gwen?"
Peter nodded, ran a hand through his hair, and headed next door. Gwen Stacy was his childhood friend. Since her father, George Stacy, was a single father and a sheriff with a demanding job, Gwen had spent most of her time in the care of the Parkers.
However, during the few months since Peter had become Spider-Man, Gwen had joined a London trip organized for middle school graduates. She had spent the entire summer having fun in London and had only returned yesterday. Peter had not gone because he needed to train with Uncle Ben and be Spider-Man, and she had been rather unhappy about that before she left.
Hopefully, the London trip had put Gwen in a better mood.
"Hey, Peter." Before Peter could knock, Gwen poked her head out from the second floor. Her blonde hair was a complete mess as she asked, "What time is it?"
"Only six. This is the first time I've ever seen you get up this early. Didn't sleep well last night?"
"Awful. I'm still dealing with jet lag. I barely slept at all." Gwen rubbed her messy golden hair. "Wait a minute. I'll be right down."
Peter waited patiently for around five minutes before Gwen came out and opened the door. Her formerly messy blonde hair had been combed and held back with a black headband, falling naturally to her shoulder blades.
"A turtleneck, long sleeves, and jeans. Huh, looks like London is a lot hotter than New York."
"Ah... whatever. I don't feel hot anyway. High school doesn't require uniforms, right?" Gwen looked over her outfit, then tossed something at him. "Catch, smart guy. I brought you a gift."
"Wow, a Sherlock Holmes-style Deerstalker Hat. Did you get it from a souvenir shop on Baker Street?"
"No, I just bought it from some random stall." Gwen joked as she shut the door.
Peter glanced into the Stacy family's living room. "Where's Uncle George? Already gone to work?"
"No. He worked until dawn before going to bed. I guess he won't have time to drive us to school today, so let him sleep a little longer. I'll eat breakfast at your house."
"Perfect. Aunt May has breakfast ready, and Uncle Ben just went to the garage."
Gwen smiled helplessly. "Looks like Uncle Ben and Aunt May know he should either sleep more or go to bed earlier."
The Parker family's breakfast was simple: several slices of toast with lettuce and jam, along with fried eggs. By the time breakfast had been set out, Uncle Ben had washed his hands and entered the dining room.
"Alright, young people. I'll drive you to Midtown High today. It's the first day of high school." Uncle Ben sat down and said with slight regret, "I have to go to work, so I can't attend your opening ceremony. I left George a message. If he wakes up early enough, he might still make it."
"It's fine. Let him sleep longer. He can figure out his own breakfast." Gwen viciously bit into her fried egg, and Aunt May and Uncle Ben exchanged amused smiles.
Peter did not say much. He finished breakfast quickly, then sat there. As Gwen ate, she glanced at the clock in the dining room.
"Not even two minutes? Since when did you start eating so fast?"
"Since summer started, Peter's been eating faster and faster. I thought he'd suddenly turned into a big eater." Aunt May made the sign of the cross over her chest. "Thank goodness he just started eating faster."
"I need to leave time to train in fighting with Uncle Ben..."
"Wait." Gwen stopped. "You've been practicing fighting over the summer?"
Peter paused, then nodded and gave the excuse he had prepared long ago. "Yeah. I need to avoid running into bullies like Carl again in high school... The worst part is that Carl also got into Midtown High."
Carl, the greatest enemy Peter Parker had encountered since being reborn, was a white brute over six feet tall even in middle school. He was the standard football-player-type American school bully who liked picking on classmates of all kinds, not just nerds.
Honestly, Peter had thought he would have to meet Flash Thompson before getting bullied. Instead, he had run into Carl in middle school.
Peter, who had not yet awakened his spider abilities, had naturally been bullied several times. Of course, Peter had pulled several prank inventions on him, and with Carl's brains, he could never figure out who had been messing with him.
Even Peter becoming Spider-Man had a lot to do with Carl. At the Osborn Tech Expo, when the radiation device exploded and the entire venue fell into chaos, that guy had somehow still had the time to grab the radioactive spider and put it on Peter's neck.
Peter had still been struggling over whether to become Spider-Man, carefully watching for the possibility of that spider ending up on his hand. Then Carl had simply put it on his neck.
"You'd better be careful. I don't think two months of fighting training will be enough for you to beat Carl."
Peter merely smiled dismissively.
"Ha. I'll knock him flat."
"Remember, you're learning to fight not to cause trouble, but to protect yourself." Uncle Ben added that reflexively, then realized that this was probably the last thing he needed to worry about. Smiling, he picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth. "Alright, kids. Time to go."
The Parker family car was a Toyota that was fifteen or sixteen years old, and its engine was already slow to turn over. Fortunately, Midtown High was not far away. It would take at most a little over ten minutes to get there in the morning.
In the car, the two of them kept talking about Gwen's trip to London—where she had gone, what kind of photos she had taken. Uncle Ben did not turn on the car radio. He simply drove along, listening to the two young people chat, unable to stop himself from smiling.
It looked like another ordinary, uneventful day.
"Uncle Ben! Watch out!" Peter Parker's sharp shout made Ben Parker slam on the brakes. The wall of the building beside them suddenly collapsed, and chunks of broken concrete smashed down in front of the car, only three or four meters away.
Uncle Ben, who had narrowly escaped death, let out a long breath and prepared to turn around and take another route. But the road behind them was quickly blocked by more falling wall sections. A massive slab of reinforced concrete crushed the engine of the car behind them, and its driver fled through the door in terror.
"Get out of the car!" Uncle Ben reacted immediately, ushering the two children out. Seeing the nearby subway station, he shouted, "Take shelter in the subway station!"
Peter looked at the building around them. Its walls were rapidly cracking. He glanced at Uncle Ben and Gwen, then left them behind and sprinted away.
"Uncle Ben, Gwen, hide first! I'll see if there's a safe route out nearby!"
"Be careful!" Uncle Ben warned, then grabbed Gwen's hand and pulled her toward the subway station for shelter. Gwen looked at Peter, who was still running with his backpack on, and was about to say something when she was interrupted.
Why is he still running with his backpack?
I knew becoming Spider-Man meant I'd run into something like this sooner or later, but on the first day of high school? Come on!
With his backpack on, he raced into a nearby alley. After confirming there were no cameras or pedestrians, he pulled out the Web Shooter and mask from his bag. Then he tossed the backpack dozens of meters into the air, leaped onto the wall, and ran upward as he put on the shooters and mask.
The backpack began to fall after reaching its peak, only for Silk to snag it and pull it before its owner. Peter stuffed his removed T-shirt and sweatpants into it, then took out the gloves connected to long sleeves, put them on, and pulled them up to his shoulders.
The suit beneath the T-shirt had only short sleeves, which could be zipped together with the gloves. This design had been made to make changing easier in summer and autumn, but he had not expected to use it so soon.
He put on one glove first, then switched hands and used the backpack to put on the other. Finally, he took out the Spider Belt containing spare Web Fluid and other small tools, holding the belt in his mouth first. He zipped up the backpack, tossed it upward again, fastened the belt, pulled down his mask, and leaped.
Facing the morning sun, the red-and-blue hero sprang high from the edge of the skyscraper. A strand of Silk stuck his backpack to the building's outer wall, and then he raced to the other side before jumping from high above.
The entire process was even faster than Peter had expected. He still had time to check the electronic watch on his left wrist.
"If I can solve this within half an hour, Uncle Ben won't be late for work!"
Uncle Ben and Gwen had just reached the subway entrance when they realized something was wrong. They were not the only ones who had found this shelter. Large crowds were pushing toward it, and the entrance was already becoming congested.
The situation with the nearby building had become extremely dire, and the sound of cracking was now clearly audible.
Amid people's screams, Uncle Ben and Gwen saw concrete falling from above—but the screaming did not stop.
Because the falling building debris did not hit anyone. It had been caught in a web.
Then a small, swiftly moving shadow spread over the crowd, and people looked up curiously.
"A bird? A plane?"
"No! Ha ha, it's Spider-Man!"
The self-answering Spider-Man shot countless strands of Silk between two buildings, weaving a giant net over the street that caught every falling boulder. After finishing all that, Peter finally had time to land on the building across from it and observe the situation.
"Alright, let's see what happened."
His gaze swept over the severely damaged building. Finally, accompanied by a blast, Spider-Man saw thick smoke billowing out from one spot.
It was a bank.
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