The mech dropped onto all fours and surged forward, charging straight at Captain Stacy.
"Watch out!" Peter shouted, shooting a web around Stacy and yanking him aside. The mech hurtled past them and smashed two police cars.
"Are you all right?" Peter asked.
"I'm fine. Thanks." Stacy was still shaken.
Seeing that his attack had missed, Rhino leaped straight across the roadway and fled toward the city streets on the other side.
Peter immediately gave chase, firing two webs around the mech's torso. Rhino was immensely strong and dragged him through traffic at breakneck speed. Peter used the momentum to swing onto the mech's back and plastered webbing over the three cameras on its head.
"What did you do?!" Rhino roared.
"Just a little trick." Peter adjusted his webbing to maximum hardness and wrapped it around the mech's legs. The enormous inertia combined with the resistance instantly threw Rhino off balance, sending him crashing to the ground.
Peter quickly sealed its weapon ports, then grabbed a manhole cover from the roadside and brought it down hard on the cockpit glass like a guillotine blade.
"Stop! You're destroying everything!" Rhino bellowed.
"Just your tin can." With a cold laugh, Peter struck again and again. The bulletproof glass finally shattered, and the shards cut the driver's face.
Peter felt around for the emergency release lever, yanked it open, and hauled the driver out.
"Who hired you?" Peter grabbed him by the collar.
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"You're so stupid you don't even know how to operate that tin can. Who paid you?"
"I really don't know! Don't kill me!"
Peter pointed at the manhole cover bent in half and the shattered armor. "That glass can withstand missiles. I smashed it and bent the manhole cover while I was at it. What do you think I want to do to you?"
The driver wet himself in terror. "His name's Gentleman! All he told me was that the client needed something stolen. He gave me money and the vehicle! I really don't know anything else!"
"Where's his hideout?"
Trembling, the driver rattled off an address in Manhattan. Peter tossed him into the air, then caught him with webbing at the last moment and stuck him to a streetlight, leaving him dangling there like a fly.
With the villain dealt with, Peter turned to rescue work.
A car had pinned a pedestrian beneath it. Peter walked over, braced his legs, and lifted the car with his bare hands, telling the bystanders to hurry and pull the injured person out. Elsewhere, an overturned car caught fire. Peter shot out webbing to smother the flames, tore off the door, and pulled out the mother and son trapped inside.
Dealing with the aftermath was far more exhausting than fighting. He worked for a full hour, using webbing to stop the injured from bleeding and swinging the critically wounded straight to the hospital.
When the ambulances and media finally arrived, Peter declined the reporters' requests for interviews, fired a web, and vanished into the night.
He followed the address to a filthy, rundown hideout in Manhattan. Climbing through a window, he crossed a room piled with garbage and found a relatively clean office. A board displaying detailed robbery plans hung on the wall.
Peter took out a miniature scanner and captured everything on the planning board. There were also night-vision goggles, a laser cutter, and an advanced decoder on the desk. He pocketed the goggles and decoder and left the way he had come.
Back at the Baxter Building's lab, Reed happened to walk in.
"Is that a decoder?" Reed recognized it at a glance.
Peter briefly explained what had happened with the Rhino mech, and Reed immediately pitched in. He quickly cracked the underlying system and traced its manufacturer.
A line of green text appeared on the screen: Osborn Industries.
Peter's brow furrowed.
"Osborn?" Reed rubbed his chin. "I didn't expect Norman Osborn to get involved in corporate espionage."
"What do you mean?"
"That Rhino armor was an unfinished product Hammer Industries developed to compete with Iron Man. Now that you've smashed it on the highway, Hammer's stock is bound to plummet. If Osborn was behind it, he was using someone else to do his dirty work to compete for military contracts."
Peter cursed inwardly. That made sense. But what worried him more was this: if Hammer was developing mechs, what was Osborn developing? The image of a green combat suit and a glider flashed through his mind, and he prayed Norman wouldn't mutate so soon.
The next day, Spider-Man was once again the talk of the school.
In history class, Flash enthusiastically played the video of Peter smashing Rhino's cockpit, boasting about how he had instantly defeated the villain in a minute. Even Harry admitted Spider-Man was pretty cool. Flash grew more excited as he talked, practically holding his phone up for the whole class as he repeatedly played the footage of Spider-Man wrenching open the cockpit and pinning Rhino to the ground.
As Peter sat down, Flash immediately spotted him. "Hey, Parker! See that? That's a real hero!"
Peter rolled his eyes. "I saw it, Flash."
"Do you think he could beat Iron Man?" Harry asked.
"I don't think so." Kong shook his head.
"Are you stupid? Of course he could!" Flash shouted. "Spider-Man's the coolest! What's Iron Man without his armor?"
"No, he couldn't beat Tony Stark," Felicia said. Peter glanced at her, and she smiled back.
"Are you crazy, Felicia? Of course he could!" Flash protested loudly. "Iron Man's cool, sure, but what does he have left once he takes off the armor?"
"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Peter instinctively recited the classic line.
"Shut up, Parker," Flash said through gritted teeth.
Still unconvinced, Flash shoved his phone in Peter's face. "Look! He finished the fight in one second. If that isn't a hero, what is?"
"That's impressive, but that alone doesn't prove he's a hero," Peter said.
"What?!" Flash's eyes widened.
"Peter, you were dressed like him yesterday," Harry said, looking at him in confusion. "Now you're saying he isn't a hero?"
"I didn't say he wasn't a hero." Peter took the phone, swiped past the fight, and played the following hour of rescue footage. "I'm just saying beating Rhino isn't what makes him a hero. How long did that fight last? A minute? It was great, sure, but look at what came afterward."
The whole class watched Spider-Man on the screen rescue people from one car after another, dragging unconscious people out of burning cars before rushing toward the next emergency.
"See?" Peter said calmly. "He spent an hour saving people. He saved a lot of them. Being good at fighting doesn't make you a hero, Flash. Any idiot who likes showing off can smash a machine. But this is Spider-Man. This is what makes him a hero."
The class fell silent. Flash stared at the screen, deep in thought.
"Pretty mature, Little Tiger," Felicia said with a soft laugh beside him.
Peter rolled his eyes. "I still think Muscle Man sounds better."
"No, Little Tiger's better. Once Xiaohong stops acting so aloof, I'll have to give her a proper thank-you." Felicia turned to look at Mary Jane, who was chatting with Liz.
Peter shrugged. "That's life. Sorry I interrupted our date yesterday. I didn't mean to."
"That wasn't actually a date, you know?" Felicia said with a smile.
Peter smiled. "Maybe we could have a real one sometime."
"Sure." Felicia readily agreed.
Over the next week, Peter focused on homework and patrolling the streets. Whenever he came across injured people who needed to go to the hospital, he was especially restrained, even forgoing web-swinging in midair for fear of accidentally hurting a passerby.