Chapter Text
The pungent stench of burning rubber and machinery filled the nearby streets within Faraway City. The roaring flames soon burst out of the windows of the warehouse, allowing smoke to spill out and fill the night sky. A man with a cowboy hat stood in front of the warehouse several meters away, silently watching the building as it burned.
“Yo, Montana!”
“Did ya find it, Ox?” Montana asked while turning around and shifting his gaze to a semi truck, whose actual truck part was lodged into the wall of a nearby building. A large and muscular bald man wearing a dark yellow tank top stepped out of the semi-trailer.
“Nah I didn’t.” Ox replied. He glanced over to his side as another man stepped out of the trailer. This man wore a bright purple suit with his hair slicked back. “Hey uh… Fancy Dan? Why do you always wear that thing? Aren’t we supposed to be incopsicious?”
“ Inconspicuous. ” Fancy Dan corrected him. “And that’s because purple is way more fashionable than that disgusting mustard shade of yellow. If we’re going to be burning stuff to the ground then I want to at least look good while doing it.” He replied in a snarky tone.
“C’mon settle down. Boss wouldn’t be too happy with y’all squabblin’ like that.” Montana said to the two with a heavy sigh. “Either of you find anything worthwhile in there?”
“Well… I did find some sort of grenade in there, though a label on the box called it a prototype.” Fancy Dan responded, gesturing towards the trailer.
“Unfortunately that ain’t what we’re lookin’ for… But it’ll at least make for a fun explosion when we burn the truck down too. Speaking of which-” Montana pulled out a glass bottle with a yellowish liquid in it. Additionally, there was some sort of cloth shoved inside and also sticking out of the top of the bottle.
“So! Who wants to do the honors?” Montana asked while pulling out a lighter.
Ox quickly swiped the bottle out of Montana’s hand.
“I’ll do it, go ahead and light it up!” Ox said excitedly.
Montana extended his hand and flicked the lighter on, catching the cloth on fire after a little bit. Ox then pulled his arm back and promptly threw the bottle towards the semi-trailer.
THWIP
The three men stared in confusion as the bottle suddenly seemed to vanish.
“Up there!” Fancy Dan called out, and pointed up at the side of the building the truck was lodged in.
Up on the side of the building about twenty feet up was a figure who had their back against the structure and was seemingly… sticking to it? They were also holding the molotov that had just been tossed, which would help the men below see them from the illumination of the fire. The figure looked like they were wearing red sweatpants, a long sleeved red shirt, red sneakers, and a red ski mask.
“Yo! I didn’t know Faraway City was being overrun with pyrotechnics now!” A distinctively male voice came out of the figure.
“ Pyromaniacs. ” Fancy Dan responded.
“...Huh?”
“You’re thinking of pyromaniacs.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hey uh…” Ox pointed up at the figure and asked, “are you some kind of weird ninja?”
Before he could respond, Montana pulled out a revolver that was holstered on his leg. “Well well… Looks like the rumors are true! There is a vigilante that can stick to walls in the city! Let’s kill this varmint!” He yelled out, while swiftly aiming his gun at the weird ninja and firing a shot at the molotov in his hand.
The masked man threw the molotov towards the warehouse before the bullet could hit it, causing the bullet to instead impact the wall. The molotov meanwhile slipped through one of the windows, causing it to shatter inside of the already burning building. The vigilante then jumped off the wall, the momentum sending him hurling towards Montana.
“Wha…?!” Montana exclaimed while firing another shot at the pouncing guy. However in what could only be described as a miracle by some people, they shifted their body slightly causing the bullet to just barely miss them.
Before Montana could fire off another shot, the masked man’s fist was already colliding with his jaw. The impact of the punch instantly knocked the consciousness out of him and sent him flying back a couple of feet.
Fancy Dan would pull out a concealed pistol of his own, aiming at the vigilante. However this time he pointed his hand towards Fancy Dan and pressed his middle and ring finger into the palm of his hand. Suddenly a thick and sticky substance shot out of his wrist and latched onto the gun. The masked man gripped onto the substance and pulled back, yanking the gun out of Fancy Dan’s hand.
With his opposite hand he shot out the substance again, this time sticking to Fancy Dan. He pulled back again, this time yanking Fancy Dan towards him. “Eh?! What is this stuff?” He exclaimed while being pulled. On closer inspection the substance looked like some sort of webbing?
“What are you? Some kind of spider, man?”
“I’m not a spider, man! I’m a boy! Er… A man!” The masked ‘man’ responded before slamming his knee into Fancy Dan’s stomach, knocking him down on his back. He then released his webbing once more, pinning both of Fancy Dan’s hands to the concrete.
He turned towards the final criminal that was still standing, Ox. The vigilante then sprinted at Ox and knocked him into the wall with a single strike of his palm. He then pointed both wrists towards Ox and rapidly shot out a plethora of webs, affixing Ox to the wall.
“Well… It was fun hanging out with you guys, but I gotta go. Don’t worry though! A firetruck should be here soon to put out the fire! Oh, and the police will pick you guys up too. So just continue to stick around for them, okay? See ya!” And within an instant, he jumped high into the air and shot out a web onto a building, swinging away on it.
Ox stared at the swinging man with a dumbfounded look on his face. “...Nah… That guy’s not a ninja. He’s some sort of weird freaky… spider tarzan…”
After several minutes of prolonged swinging, the masked man had reached a residential area of the city. In order to keep a low profile, he ducked through various bushes and avoided well-lit areas until he stopped at a house around the center of the residential area. He then would sneak around the backside of the house and then proceed to crawl up the wall just by sticking his fingertips to it.
Upon reaching one of the windows, he slid it open and peeked inside. The bedroom door was open. “Time to be stealthy…” He whispered. Carefully, he climbed through the window and softly placed his feet on the floor. Slowly walking forward, as though his life depended on it, he reached the door and slowly closed it. Taking a deep breath, he removed his mask and turned around, only to suddenly stop like a deer in headlights.
“...Kel?” Hero sat on his bed while gazing at Kel, who was still wearing the crude red costume. “Did you just… crawl through the window?”
“A-Ah… Ah! I-It’s no big deal! I just didn’t wanna wake up our family..!” Kel responded nervously. “W-Why are you back here so soon anyway? College already started for you this year, didn't it?”
“Yeah, it did… But there was a hurricane that blew through just a few days ago and wrecked the school pretty badly. So for the time being I can’t go back for a while, so I figured I’d come back by and surprise you guys…” Hero said dejectedly. “But more importantly… Where were you?”
“...Oh! I was just sort of… swinging around… haha…”
“At nearly 2am? Where would you even be?”
“Y-Y’know… around… Hey let’s watch s-some TV!” Kel stammered while grabbing the remote and flicking the TV on.
Kel took a deep breath and handed the remote to hero as a commercial played. “See… isn’t that better?” Kel commented right as the commercial ended.
“This just in on Faraway City 24 Hour News! A group of criminals who call themselves “The Enforcers”, were just apprehended by the police minutes ago after they had set fire to an Oscorp warehouse on the east side of the city. However, according to both the criminals and the police, they were actually stopped by the same masked vigilante that has been popping up stopping crimes in the last two weeks. We even have an exclusive statement by one of the criminals, Daniel Brito. He’s also known on the street as ‘Fancy Dan.’”
“A-Ah! Hey, Hero! Give me that remote back?” Kel quickly tried to grab the remote out of Hero’s hand, though Hero just slid it behind himself while watching the news report. Fancy Dan appeared on the TV as he began to give his statement.
“While we were uh… Doing our thing… We were suddenly ambushed by some guy wearing a masked outfit that was completely red. It was super crumby too. It looked like he had bought the outfit at a clearance rack in some kind of thrift store…”
Hero shifted a glance at Kel’s attire, as Kel continued to struggle taking the remote from Hero.
“Anyway he uh… He knocked most of us down or completely out in a single punch! He even dodged bullets! It was so weird… The guy even shot out some sort of weird webbing out himself--”
Kel finally reclaimed the remote for himself and turned off the TV. “L-Let’s head to bed actually! It’s pretty late after all…!”
“...Kel… You’re that vigilante?”
“What? Of course not! I dunno why you would think that.”
“...Well for one you’re wearing the same outfit that was just described on the news.”
Kel glanced down at his attire."No wayyyyy! I am?!" Kel threw the mask into the corner of the room. He then quickly pulled the red long sleeved shirt off of himself and tossed it into the corner as well. “A-Ahahaha! No I’m not, see!” Although all that Hero could see now was the suspiciously toned muscles Kel had. Although Kel has definitely been pretty fit all his life, his muscles were more defined than they had been nearly two months ago.
Hero sighed. “I also sort of… flipped open your notebook on your desk. I was curious to see what you might’ve been doing in school. But the first thing I saw was a page labeled ‘costume ideas for being a crime fighting superhero.’ There were a bunch of colors listed off on the page, though you crossed out most of them aside from red, which you had circled. And then there was blue, which had several question marks next to it… Plus on the next page you had what you’re wearing right now--and what’s in the corner of the room--written out with their prices next to them, and then the total sum of their prices circled… And you told me about this vigilante about a week ago, a few hours before any news station initially reported on it.” Hero explained to Kel.
Kel slumped down onto his bed. “Alright I… might be that guy… I probably shouldn’t have told you about that as soon as I did.”
“Had you did I probably wouldn’t have been as suspicious of you.” Hero chuckled lightly. “Well… Suspicious as soon as I was anyway. What just happened now was the final nail in the coffin though. Are you alright?”
“Huh?” Kel sat up and tilted his head towards Hero. “You aren’t… mad at me?”
“Why would I be? I mean… I’m worried at the very least… you were fighting guys with guns, which is incredibly dangerous. Though it seems like you were able to get out completely unscasthed somehow, which I’m quite… relieved about.” Hero let out an awkward laugh. “I want to at least hear how all of this happened before I give my full thoughts on how I feel about this. So how did all of this exactly happen?”
Kel smiled brightly at his brother. “W-Well…! I was swinging around the city and I noticed a huge fire and-”
“I mean from the very beginning.”
Kel stared awkwardly before chuckling. “Oh! Right! Well… It all started about a month and a half ago. It was on August 27th I think… The day we went on a field trip to that small lab owned by Oscorp for our biology class. They were studying a lot of different insects there and were even trying to modify DNA theirselves! I remember Aubrey kept on messing with Basil during the trip too. Anyway one of their modified spider’s had gone missing and then later I ended up getting bit by it! Maaaan that sucked so much! It was super painful and my entire body was sore until the next morning. When I got home I ended up going straight to bed, so I missed out on the burger’s dad had made. There were leftovers of it the next day but it just wasn’t as good as it would have been if I ate it fresh. I’m honestly still kind of upset about that, I mean he’s only made burgers one time since that day! Can you believe it? He used to make them-”
“...I’m going to be here for a while, aren’t I?” Hero thought as Kel began to get off track talking about their dad’s burgers for the next 4 minutes.