[David POV]
The Lower East Side was alive with neon lights and passing cars, but the rooftop where I crouched felt like another world.
From here, I saw everything. Silver hair, smooth and sharp under the moonlight. The Black Cat.
She slipped into the Museum of Contemporary Art, her movements smooth and sure. I crouched low, watching. My mind raced. What should I do with her here? Should I just step out from her shadow and scare her during the heist?
The thought barely had time to form before something else caught my eye.
A figure swung across the skyline, fast and agile, cutting through the night air. He landed on the rooftop of the museum with grace.
Yup. Superhero landing.
Red and blue suit. Spider emblem bold on his chest. No mistaking who it was, Spiderman.
I stayed in the dark, heart steady. This wasn't something I expected tonight.
A spider chasing a cat.
And then the System chimed. Missions. Five of them.
I read it once and found it interesting. Very interesting. This is was the first time I have received a missions like these. The rewards were good too. So just accepted and decided to make my move.
I stood and walked to the edge of the building. Then I leapt.
The drop was long, the air rushing past me sharp and cold. My body folded into the fall like I had done it a thousand times.
I hit the side of a lower roof, rolled with the momentum, and pushed off again. My sneakers touched concrete without a sound. I melted into the shadows of the alley beside the museum, vanishing from sight while inside the game between cat and spider was only beginning.
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[Third Person POV]
Peter Parker had been Spiderman for nearly two years now. He was only fifteen when the spider bite changed his life, gifting him powers he hadn't asked for. At first, he was reluctant to use them. But after Uncle Ben's death—and those words that would never leave him, with great power comes great responsibility—he made his choice.
As their debt kept piling up, Aunt May started volunteering at F.E.A.S.T., while Peter gained a part-time job at the Daily Bugle after becoming a crime-fighter.
Since then, Peter had tangled with a villain named scorpion, he also recently fought some guys using chitauri tech weapons, small-time crooks, carjackers, and the occasional fought alongside fantastic four.
He had also helped during the chitauri invasion by helping people in distress. More recently, he found himself running into the Maggia crime family. He hadn't planned on making enemies out of them, but after spoiling one of their operations, he was firmly on their radar.
Tonight was supposed to be another quiet patrol. Then a tip crossed his path. While at his part-time job, Peter overheard whispers that the Maggia were planning something at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was enough to make him swing by.
When he arrived, the first thing he noticed was the silence. The museum was closed, but there should have been guards on rotation. Yet no one patrolled the halls. Spider-Man crept inside.
In the surveillance room, he found the guards were alive, but unconscious, slumped in their chairs. Spiderman leaned closer. Their breathing was steady, their faces relaxed. Sleeping pills. That was… unusual for a gang.
Turning to the monitors, Peter frowned. The feeds showed the galleries, the stairwells, the lobby. But certain displays—the ones that housed the more valuable pieces—were grainy or completely blacked out. Someone had tampered with the cameras.
Spiderman followed the trail through the museum's winding corridors, heading toward the blacked-out stands.
That was when he saw her.
A figure crouched high above, silver hair gleaming faintly under the dim security lights. She was cutting a precise hole into the ceiling near a painting titled Maria. It looked like her escape route.
"Hey," Spiderman called softly. "Mind telling me what you're doing up there?"
The woman turned her head, mask glinting as she smiled down at him. Her voice was smooth, playful, with just the faintest purr. "Now that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?"
She winked.
This wasn't their first encounter. Felicia Hardy always had a way of making things complicated. Every time they crossed paths, it was never just about the crime. She closed distance with feline grace, dropping from the ceiling and landing silently a few feet from him. Her fingers brushed lightly along his arm as she stepped past, her touch deliberate, distracting.
"Come on, Spider," she teased, circling him slowly, eyes glinting with mischief. "You really going to stop me tonight? After all the fun we've had?"
Spiderman swallowed hard under the mask, keeping his stance firm even as she leaned close, hand trailing across his shoulder before tapping his chest. "Felicia," he said, low, warning. "This isn't a game. People could get hurt."
She tilted her head, smirk curling at her lips. "Oh, but you make it so fun. Always so serious. Relax... I'm just here for one little painting." Her words were sweet, but her touch which was resting briefly on his chest before slipping away, kept his senses spinning.
Spiderman kept his eyes on her, trying not to get distracted. "One little painting? Why that one, Felicia?" he asked, pointing at Maria behind the protective glass.
She opened her mouth, ready with some playful answer, when another voice cut through the silence.
"Could you guys please stop flirting around?"
Both Spiderman and Felicia froze. The voice was deep, gravelly. It hadn't come from either of them. It came from behind.
They turned quickly.
A black figure stood in the shadows. Half mask. Hood pulled low. Red eyes glowing faintly. He was tall, his presence heavy, almost unnatural.
Spiderman reacted first, firing his web-shooters without hesitation. But the figure moved with shocking speed, slipping out of the way as the webbing splattered harmlessly against the glass wall. In a blink, he had put more distance between them.
Felicia's body language shifted. She no longer carried her playful ease. Now, every move of hers showed caution.
"Hey, hood guy, who might you be? And for the record, we were not flirting. She was," Spiderman said, keeping his stance low and ready.
The figure's voice came back calm and rough. "I don't have names like you guys. I was walking by when I saw her sneaking inside the museum. You guys were talking about the painting, right?"
Spiderman's eyes darted to Felicia, then back. "The painting?"
"The painting has something inside it. Small. I think it's a drive," the figure said.
At those words, Felicia froze, just for a second. Her calm mask held, but Spiderman noticed the slight stiffening of her shoulders.
Before she could speak, the hooded figure turned his head toward the entrance. "We have company, it seems."
Noise followed immediately. Something heavy slammed into the museum's glass doors. Metal groaned, wood splintered. The sound of more crashing echoed from the stands, as if something was tearing their way toward them.
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[David's POV]
I activated my Eagle Sense, and what I saw made me curse under my breath. The lunatics were driving cars and a van straight through the museum's glass entrance. The sound of shattering glass and twisting metal roared in the hall.
I turned back to Spiderman and Black Cat. "Thugs. I don't know who they are, but they're coming this way. I think the painting is their target too. So what shall we do?"
I didn't wait for an answer. I summoned my crowbars into my hands with a flick.
Spiderman tilted his head. "Cool trick, man. Very Thor-meets-Home Depot. But what are you gonna do with them? Build a new display case?"
"What do you think? I'm gonna take them down." I glanced at Felicia. "And what about you, Cat? Are you gonna run away or stay and fight?"
And yeah, I know you're probably thinking of stabbing us in the back. I didn't speak those words out.
I didn't bother waiting for her response. My legs were already moving. I rushed toward the crashing noise, crowbars ready.
The first thug stepped out of the van with a shotgun. I smashed his wrist before he could raise it. The gun clattered to the floor, and I drove my knee into his stomach. He folded, and I tossed him across the floor like trash.
Another came swinging a bat. I caught it on one crowbar, twisted, and cracked the other across his jaw. Teeth flew. He crumpled to the ground, out cold. I barely had time to breathe before three more rushed me with knives. I spun my crowbars in tight arcs, blocking and striking. One went down with his arm broken, another took a crowbar across the chest, and the last one I kicked hard enough to send him into a glass case.
Spiderman swung in above me, webbing up four thugs at once and pinning them against the wall. "Guys, I get you want free art night, but this isn't how museums work!" He landed nearby, yanking two gunmen away from me before I broke their arms clean. He shot me a look, tension clear in his voice. "Man, you're hitting them like you're trying to put them in the hospital."
I didn't answer. I ripped past him and smashed my crowbar into another's ribs. Blood sprayed from his mouth. Another body dropped.
The hall was chaos. More than forty thugs poured in from the wrecked entrance. Spiderman zipped and swung, binding them in webbing as fast as he could, but even he couldn't cover everyone. His voice carried frustration every time he had to snatch one away from me before I crushed bone beyond repair.
Black Cat fought without hesitation. She moved like a dancer, flipping over men and striking with precision. Her figure was great too. Those
I wasn't graceful. I was brutal as usual, but I didn't kill anyone. I went for arms, ribs, legs—breaking them, disabling them, making sure they wouldn't get up again. Every hit landed exactly where I wanted, and each thug went down screaming.
Spiderman dropped beside me, firing a web line to yank another thug out of my reach before my crowbar came down. He spun the man into the wall and wrapped him up tight. "Man, you're gonna kill somebody! We're supposed to stop them, not bury them!"
I tore the web off my crowbar and shoved forward. "Not my rule Spidey. They should be grateful that i'm holding back. So keep up, Spidey. They're not slowing down."
The fight raged on. Webbing streaked through the air. Thugs screamed as crowbars broke against bone. Spiderman was everywhere at once, but I could feel it—his eyes never left me. He wasn't just watching the thugs. He was watching how I fought.
And he didn't like it.
But I didn't stop. Every strike was calculated, every break intentional. I avoided the head, always, but ribs shattered, arms bent wrong, and legs snapped under my blows. I knew exactly what I was doing.
To Spiderman, what I was doing must have looked like savagery. I didn't even know how he would react if he found out the hooded guy he was fighting beside was the same one who had orchestrated chaos in New York.
Felicia… she probably knew more than she let on. Maybe not about me directly, but about the black figure with red eyes. As per the intel I got from Tahani, someone had placed a $500,000 bounty on my head. With her ties to the underworld, she would have heard.
And speaking of her—my senses caught it. She had slipped away mid-fight. While Spiderman and I kept the Maggia busy, she was already cutting through the glass to steal the painting.
"Hey, Spidey," I called out, smashing a thug into the wall. "Instead of worrying about how I fight, maybe worry about your girlfriend. She's about to walk off with the painting."
Spiderman hesitated. "She's not my girlfriend."
I ducked behind a pillar as bullets sparked off the marble. "Yeah, whatever. Just leave these guys to me. Go after her. I'll handle this crowd."
When he didn't answer right away, I raised my voice again. "I promise—I won't even use the crowbars."
Spiderman groaned, like he didn't believe me, but he nodded. "Okay, Hood Guy. I'll go after her. Please hold out. I'll be back once I catch her."
To Be Continued...