Peter pushed the front door open, his shoulders slumping under the weight of his backpack. Pure, bone-deep exhaustion dragged at his limbs. The Shocker's relentless string of bank robberies had run him ragged. To make matters worse, his application for the Daily Bugle's IT internship hadn't just been ignored—it had been actively rejected. The flyer for the position was still pinned to the bulletin board at school, mocking him. They'd rather keep looking than hire him.
"Where is he, Ben? He's coming home so late every single night..." Aunt May's voice drifted from the kitchen. Her tone was tight with undisguised worry.
"Try not to worry, May. I'll talk to him." Uncle Ben's voice was low and steadying. "He's a good kid. He's not out looking for trouble."
Peter stepped fully into the hallway, letting the door click shut. May stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her brow furrowed. Before she could start the interrogation, Ben intercepted. He clapped a heavy, warm hand onto Peter's shoulder and steered him toward the side door. "I've got him, May. It's alright. Come on, kid."
The garage was cold, smelling faintly of motor oil, damp cardboard, and old leather. Ben flicked on the single overhead bulb. He dug into a cardboard box on the workbench and pulled out two pairs of worn red boxing gloves. He tossed one pair onto the hood of his station wagon and slid his hands into the other.
"Gwen stopped by today. She told me a little about what's been going on in your head," Ben said calmly, securing the velcro straps with his teeth. "But I'm guessing she only scratched the surface. Something tells me this has to do with spiders, too. Am I right?"
Peter swallowed hard. "I just—"
"Don't talk," Ben interrupted, jerking his chin toward the hood of the car. "Put 'em on. Let's move."
Peter silently slipped his hands into the heavy, padded leather. He dropped into the loose fighting stance Ben had taught him years ago.
"Listen carefully." Ben raised his guard. "You attack. I defend. Every time you miss a punch, I want you to think about exactly why you missed it. Dwell on it. Analyze it before you throw the next one. Go!"
Peter stepped forward, throwing a hesitant straight right. Ben slipped the jab effortlessly, tilting his head. Peter froze, his brain immediately trying to calculate his footwork and wrist angle just like Ben asked.
Whack. Ben's left glove snapped forward, popping Peter squarely on the forehead.
"Ow!" Peter stumbled back, rubbing his brow with the padded leather.
Ben dropped his hands. "See? There's no point dwelling on the past. Whether your last punch landed or completely missed air, it doesn't matter. It cannot affect your next move. When you're standing in the ring, the only thing you should be focused on is what's coming next."
Peter sighed, letting his arms drop. "I know, Uncle Ben. I just... I can't shake it off."
"Then let me give you something else to look at."
Ben pulled off his gloves, tossing them onto the workbench. He reached into the backseat of the wagon and hauled out his bulky, aging laptop. He popped the lid. "After my talk with Gwen, I figured you needed to see this. Probably should have shown you weeks ago."
Peter walked over, leaning against the car door. The screen flickered to life. A news clip of a burning apartment building loaded in the browser.
"Remember the fire?" Ben asked softly.
"Yeah," Peter murmured. "It was the first time I really used... you know. To pull people out."
"Have you seen this?" Ben clicked a bookmark.
The page redirected to a low-quality, cell-phone video uploaded to a forum. A woman stared into the camera. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face streaked with soot and tears. Her voice cracked. "I don't know who you are. I don't know if you'll ever even see this. But... thank you. The firemen told me it was too late. They wouldn't let me run back inside. But you did. You gave me my daughter back." The video cut out as she broke down into quiet sobs. Peter stared at the screen, his breath catching in his throat.
Ben clicked the next link. And the next. A montage of shaky, amateur footage played out across the glowing screen. Spider-Man webbing up armed robbers before Damage Control arrived. Spider-Man hauling a fire hose up the side of a burning high-rise. Spider-Man taking a grazing bullet to the shoulder to shield a pinned beat cop. The videos shifted to the mundane. Spider-Man coaxing an old man's lost pigeon down from a fire escape. Spider-Man scrubbing spray paint off a bodega wall. Spider-Man hanging upside down, handing a tabby cat back to a little boy.
Peter didn't even remember half of these things. They were just passing blurs in his chaotic patrols. But the people he helped remembered. They didn't have a phone number for him. They couldn't mail a letter. So, someone had built a forum. A digital corkboard of gratitude.
"I..." Peter's voice trembled. "I've never seen this site."
"You need to look at it, kid," Ben said, resting a heavy hand on Peter's shoulder. "Stop obsessing over the punches you miss. Look at the ones that connect. I don't care how the news spins it. I don't care how loud Jameson yells on TV. The people you actually reach? They know the truth." Ben paused, his eyes fiercely proud. "Spider-Man gives people hope. You think you're failing? You think you haven't done enough? Look at this screen, Peter. You've made this city better. You're a hero. And I couldn't be prouder to call you my nephew."
Ben squeezed his shoulder. "What you do matters infinitely more than what you don't."
Peter's throat tightened painfully. He always felt like he was just bailing water out of a sinking ship with a Dixie cup. He never stopped to look at the people he pulled onto the life raft.
"These people..." Peter murmured, staring at the smiling face of the little boy with the cat. "They're actually okay."
Ben smiled. "You did this. The help you gave them? It's permanent. Your past isn't defined by the mistakes. The mistakes are just a fraction of the good you've put into the world."
Peter swallowed the lump in his throat. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist, letting out a wet, genuine laugh. "I guess... if the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is walking around depressed all the time, he's not doing his job right, huh?" Peter straightened up, feeling the crushing weight finally slide off his chest. "I get it, Uncle Ben. Thank you."
"Ben? Peter?!" May's voice pierced through the door leading to the kitchen.
Ben quickly shut the laptop. "Alright, go inside and apologize to your Aunt May," Ben whispered, winking. "If you keep coming home this late, my excuses are gonna stop working."
Peter grinned. "Understood."
Back in his bedroom, Peter dropped his backpack. He knelt down, reached into the very back of his closet, and pulled out a battered leather briefcase. He clicked the brass locks open and carefully extracted a worn, leather-bound notebook. It belonged to Richard Parker. It was filled with his father's scattered work notes, theoretical equations, and chemical diagrams. It was the exact notebook Peter had used to synthesize his original web-fluid.
But the current formula wasn't cutting it. Shocker's gauntlets were tearing through the tensile silk like tissue paper.
Peter flipped open his own laptop and laid his father's notebook flat on the desk. Before, he had never dared to mess with his dad's original math. It felt like defacing a legacy. But now, tracing his finger over the molecular diagrams, Peter saw the inefficiencies. He pulled up a digital rendering program. He cross-referenced the chemical reagents available in the Midtown High AP Chemistry lab, mentally substituting polymers and adjusting the shear-thickening compounds.
"Guess you never know what you can do until someone tries to punch your head off," Peter muttered to himself.
He grabbed a few empty mixing vials from his desk drawer and shoved them into his backpack. He'd have to synthesize the new batch at school. Thanks to Midtown's heavy funding from Oscorp, the chemistry lab was practically a professional-grade facility. Mr. Cobbwell wouldn't notice a few missing ounces of salicylic acid and toluene. Running the new math, Peter calculated a structural density increase of at least twenty percent. That would be more than enough to bind Herman's gauntlets and absorb the kinetic feedback without snapping.
But a stronger web wouldn't matter if he couldn't find the guy. Herman had changed his tactics. He wasn't sticking around to fight anymore. He was using crews, hitting banks, and vanishing before the police or the Avengers could even arrive. If Peter couldn't track him, the Mk II web-fluid was useless.
Fortunately, Peter had resources. He had Amadeus Cho and Harry. And they had recently joined a high school "detective club." The club's president was a veteran high school detective. Between the four of them, they could find anybody.
Peter checked the glowing red numbers on his alarm clock. 3:00 AM. He could still catch three hours of sleep. He reached into his closet to put the briefcase away. His knuckles brushed against a hard plastic case hidden in the back corner. He pulled it out and unzipped it. It was his dad's old, vintage Canon SLR camera.
Peter popped the lens cap off and flicked the power switch. The battery indicator blinked to life. He stared at the lens. The Daily Bugle had rejected him for the IT job. But Jameson had a standing, front-page bounty for clear photos of Spider-Man.
Peter set the Canon carefully on his desk. He stripped off his clothes, collapsed onto his mattress, and stared up at the ceiling. A slow, confident smile crept across his face in the dark.
"Alright, Herman," Peter whispered. "My turn to hunt you."