Chameleon's Defeat

"Hey, Peter."

The morning sun streamed through the gap in the curtains into the kitchen. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were unusually seated at the dining table early, with fried eggs, bacon, and golden toast laid out before them. Peter rubbed his bleary eyes and instinctively sensed that something was off—Uncle Ben was looking at him like he wanted to say something but couldn't.

Uncle Ben cleared his throat, his tone solemn. "Peter, listen, there's something we need to tell you..."

"What? Did something happen?" Peter's drowsiness vanished instantly, his fingers unconsciously tightening around the edge of the table.

"Don't listen to your Uncle Ben making such a fuss." Aunt May couldn't help cutting in, smiling as she patted the back of Peter's hand. "An old friend invited us to stay over for a few days. Considering your studies, we decided not to take you with us... You'll have to stay home by yourself for a few days."

"I just wanted to mess with the kid!" Uncle Ben burst out laughing and vigorously ruffled Peter's hair. "A fifteen-year-old young man ought to know how to change a lightbulb by himself, right?"

"Of course. I can take care of myself." Peter grinned, his gaze sweeping across the hearty breakfast on the table. "So... can we eat now?"

Laughter immediately broke out around the table.

After breakfast, Aunt May gave Peter a tight hug, while Uncle Ben lowered his voice with mock seriousness. "Sorry we can't take you to school on the first day back... Wonder which girl you'll ask to dance?"

"You'll find out next year." Peter winked.

"Stay safe." Uncle Ben pressed his thumb against Peter's shoulder—the reminder carried a code only the two of them understood.

Watching the car drive away down the street, Peter immediately rushed back to his room, pulled the Spider-Disc from beneath his bed and activated it, put on his new suit, then climbed out through the second-floor window. He scaled the roof and sprinted off toward school, swinging through the air with his backpack on his back.

"Strange day. Maybe strange few days. No Avengers, no Uncle Ben or Aunt May. It's like all of New York has been left with only Spider-Man and Peter Parker—though of course, nobody cares about Peter Parker."

"Hot dogs even Spider-Man loves! Hot dogs even Spider-Man loves! New York's only officially designated Spider-Man hot dogs!"

Peter landed in front of Spider-Man's one and only officially designated hot dog stand again. This time, wearing his new suit, he had planned to show it off to his old friends, only to find that the stand had noticeably fewer customers than before.

"Hey, Miller, business not so good today?"

"Your hot dog's in the usual spot, Little Spider." Without looking up, Miller pointed his spoon toward the top of the umbrella. "You don't spend much time online, do you? There's a video going around of you beating up some thugs and taking their money afterward. A lot of people think it's real."

The lenses of Spider-Man's new suit shifted, one growing large and the other small, vividly expressing his confusion.

"Yesterday afternoon? I spent the entire afternoon making my new suit."

"I saw. So your eyes can move now?"

Peter realized there was no way to talk to him about the upgrades to his suit, so he simply snagged his hot dog with Silk. "Sounds like someone's impersonating me to do bad things. Weird. Where was the video filmed?"

"Hell's Kitchen."

"Strange. I hardly ever go there. I should take a look—maybe I can catch this guy."

"Hey, Spider-Man? Is that Spider-Man?!"

A voice interrupted his conversation with the vendor. Spider-Man turned and saw a young student considerably taller than himself—not as absurdly tall as Carl at one meter ninety, but definitely at least one eighty-five. Beneath his jacket, he was wearing a Spider-Man cosplay suit.

"Oh my God, it's really you, I actually met you." The guy was so excited he could barely speak coherently. "Y-you changed suits, oh my God, the colors are brighter, it looks more textured, the web pattern's bigger, and your spider emblem changed on both the front and back..."

"Uh..." Seeing that this fan he had never met before had noticed more than many of his old friends, Spider-Man felt for the first time that being talkative was not a good thing. He decisively cut the other man off. "Buddy, calm down?"

"What? Oh, okay."

The big guy took a deep breath, seeming to calm himself down.

But the moment he opened his mouth, Spider-Man knew he'd been wrong.

"My name is Eugene Thompson, I'm a student at Midtown High School, I'm your biggest fan, look, I'm wearing your cosplay suit under this jacket, today is our school's theme day, the school told us to dress up as superheroes, so I had this suit custom-made right away..."

"Okay, Eugene, stop. Can I call you that?"

Peter hurriedly jogged a couple of steps, preparing to swing away with Silk. "Thanks a lot, but I've got something to handle. I'm going to Hell's Kitchen to catch the guy impersonating me. Bye."

Watching Spider-Man swing away, Thompson simply shouted at the top of his lungs, "I know you didn't do any of that, Little Spider! Go beat the shit out of those fakes!"

Having finally escaped Thompson, Spider-Man couldn't help sighing at Flash's level of enthusiasm. But he quickly focused and headed for Hell's Kitchen. It was one of the places in New York with the highest crime rates, but also one of the lowest reporting rates. There were barely any cameras, either, which made the new system he had designed yesterday nearly useless here.

But sometimes, you didn't need some elaborate method to find the person you were looking for. After all, someone swinging through Manhattan's skyline was impossible to miss from the same height.

"Another spider, or Mysterio?"

Spider-Man landed on a wall and watched the impersonator in his old suit drop into the street and begin viciously beating people up. Activating the infrared function in his tactical lenses, he discovered there was only one heat signature at the scene—the people getting beaten were all fake. He then flipped gracefully into the battlefield, only for light particles to erase his form.

"Light-particle manipulation. All the light reflected off me has been replaced by a preset scene. That means I'm invisible to him?"

At that moment, Chameleon, who was putting on his act, heard a sound but couldn't see anything. He could only ask his backup, "What happened?"

"What happened is, you didn't pay me any licensing fees!"

From somewhere Chameleon couldn't see, a fist slammed into his chest and sent him flying. Since he had moved beyond the preset "scene," even his own body was concealed by the light particles.

But that didn't stop Spider-Man from seeing him through his lenses.

"What's going on?!"

"I don't know... It looks like Spider-Man is here. He entered the reflection field?"

Chameleon was nearly losing his mind as he stared at the illusion zone, where no one could be seen. "How can he see me?!"

"I don't know!"

"Shouldn't you have done proper research on someone's image before impersonating them? You're awfully unprofessional for an imitator. It really disappoints me."

Caught by Silk from who knew where, Chameleon was yanked over, then punched away again and smashed into a wall. Spider-Man was still chattering on. "Quentin Beck, right? Can you tell me who hired you?"

"He knows me?!" Quentin's terrified voice came through the earpiece, while Chameleon cursed under his breath and roared, "Turn off the projection!"

"But he knows..."

"Turn it off right now!"

As the street returned to normal after it was shut down, Spider-Man stood there with his hands on his hips. Chameleon immediately noticed Spider-Man's new suit, then the old suit on himself, and cursed furiously. Across from him, Spider-Man finally realized that he had not been fighting Mysterio, but a guy actually wearing his old uniform, differing only in height.

"So you're not Quentin? He was just providing you with technical support?"

Spider-Man noticed the little ball on the ground, webbed it over, and stuffed it into his pocket. The impostor across from him pulled a small knife from who knew where. "Don't mention Quentin Beck!"

"So, should I introduce you? Spy Master? Taskmaster? Third-rate Hollywood actor?"

"Shut up, you damned bug." Chameleon charged forward with a tactical dagger, stabbing straight at him. After Spider-Man dodged, he immediately let go, switched the knife to his other hand, and threw an elbow strike at the same time.

"I received KGB training! I'm the Foreign Intelligence Agency's ace agent! I've killed countless people, I—"

Spider-Man kicked Chameleon in the stomach, sending him flying into a wall before he crashed to the ground. Then Spider-Man wrapped him up in webbing like a rice dumpling.

"And now you're facing someone who can hold up an overpass for two minutes. Sorry, buddy, that kick had a little personal grudge in it, but you'll be fine."

Hoisting the bundled-up Chameleon over his shoulder, Peter planned to take him straight to an NYPD precinct. This was Hell's Kitchen, after all. The cops called in might not be reliable.

"All right, Mr. Impostor. If you're willing, we can talk about your boss on the way. How about it?"