The morning after his fight with the Lizard, Marcus woke up to discover two things.
First: his body had apparently decided that near-death experiences were excellent motivation for cellular regeneration, because every scratch, bruise, and minor injury he'd sustained during the warehouse battle had completely vanished overnight, leaving him looking like he'd spent the previous evening relaxing at a spa rather than fighting a seven-foot reptilian monster in a ski mask.
Second: he was famous.
Well, "Spider-Man" was famous. The distinction was important, Marcus reminded himself as he scrolled through news articles on Peter's ancient laptop, because Peter Parker needed to remain completely separate from the masked vigilante who had apparently become an overnight sensation in the greater New York metropolitan area.
"MYSTERY HERO SAVES DOCK WORKERS FROM MONSTER ATTACK," proclaimed the Daily Bugle's website, accompanied by a grainy cell phone photo of Marcus mid-swing that made him look approximately seventy percent more heroic than he'd felt at the time. "SPIDER-MAN: NEW YORK'S NEWEST VIGILANTE OR MENACE IN DISGUISE?"
"Menace?" Marcus muttered, scrolling down to read the article. "I saved like fifteen people from a giant lizard. How is that menace behavior?"
The article, written by someone named Eddie Brock, was surprisingly balanced—acknowledging the lives saved while raising questions about the legal implications of masked vigilantism and the potential dangers of superhuman individuals operating outside the law. It wasn't the frothing anti-Spider-Man propaganda that Marcus had expected from the Bugle, which suggested that either this universe's J. Jonah Jameson hadn't gotten his teeth into the story yet, or the timeline was different enough that the newspaper's editorial stance hadn't calcified into pure hatred.
Either way, Marcus had bigger concerns than media coverage.
He closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling of Peter's bedroom, mentally cataloging the list of problems he needed to solve before he could consider himself a functional superhero.
Problem one: the costume. The ski mask and hoodie had worked in a pinch, but they were completely inadequate for serious hero work. He needed something that would protect his identity, allow full range of motion, and ideally not make him look like he was about to rob a gas station.
Problem two: fighting skills. The Lizard battle had exposed a critical weakness in his current capabilities—namely, that he didn't actually know how to fight. His spider-powers gave him incredible reflexes and danger-awareness, but reflexes alone weren't enough against opponents who knew what they were doing. He'd won against the Lizard through cleverness and environmental exploitation, but that strategy wouldn't work against every enemy.
Problem three: money. Building the web-shooters had depleted most of Peter's chemical supplies, and restocking them would require funds that the Parker household simply didn't have. He needed a source of income that wouldn't interfere with his responsibilities as a student, a nephew, and a superhero.
Problem four: school. Because apparently, being reincarnated as a teenage superhero didn't exempt him from the American public education system, and Aunt May had gently reminded him at breakfast that he'd been absent for almost a week and really needed to go back before the administration started asking uncomfortable questions.
"One thing at a time," Marcus told himself, swinging his legs out of bed and beginning his morning routine. "Costume first. Everything else follows from that."
The costume design process began with a simple question: what did Spider-Man actually need from a suit?
Marcus sat at Peter's desk with a notebook open in front of him, sketching rough designs and making lists of requirements with the methodical precision of someone who had spent way too much time thinking about superhero logistics.
Essential Features:
Full face coverage (identity protection)Eye lenses (protect eyes from wind/debris during swinging, possibly enhanced vision?)Flexible material (allow full range of acrobatic motion)Durable construction (resist tearing during combat)Web-shooter integration (easy access, protected from damage)Distinctive visual identity (people need to recognize Spider-Man)
Desirable Features:
Insulation (temperature regulation for extended patrols)Padding (reduce impact damage without restricting movement)Utility storage (web cartridges, first aid, communication devices)Easy on/off (quick costume changes are essential)
The Classic Look:
Red and blue color schemeWeb pattern across red sectionsSpider emblem on chest and backLarge white eye lenses
Marcus studied his notes and felt a surge of determination. The classic Spider-Man design was iconic for a reason—it was visually striking, immediately recognizable, and managed to look heroic without being intimidating. He wanted to honor that legacy while potentially adding improvements that would make the suit more practical for actual crime-fighting.
The problem was materials.
High-quality superhero costumes required high-quality fabrics, and high-quality fabrics required money that Marcus didn't have. He couldn't exactly walk into a textile shop and ask for "something durable enough to survive a fight with a supervillain but flexible enough for acrobatics," especially not on a teenager's budget.
But Peter Parker was a genius. And Marcus had access to that genius now, along with all the creative problem-solving skills that came with it.
"Okay," Marcus said, pulling out Peter's chemistry notebook and flipping to a blank page. "Let's think about this scientifically. What properties do I need in the fabric, and how can I achieve them with materials I can actually acquire?"
The answer, when it came to him after two hours of research and chemical calculations, was both elegant and slightly insane.
He was going to make his own fabric.
Not from scratch—that would require industrial equipment he didn't have access to—but by treating existing materials with a polymer compound similar to his web fluid. A diluted version of the formula, applied to standard athletic wear, would reinforce the fabric's molecular structure while maintaining its flexibility. The result would be something approaching Kevlar-level durability with the comfort of a compression shirt.
The spider emblems and web patterns could be achieved through a combination of fabric paint and the same polymer treatment, creating raised designs that were both visually distinctive and structurally reinforced.
The eye lenses were trickier, but Marcus eventually settled on a design using one-way mirror film applied to curved plastic forms, allowing him to see out while preventing anyone from seeing in. With some creative engineering, he could even add basic polarization to reduce glare during high-speed swinging.
It wasn't going to be perfect. It wasn't going to be Iron Man-level technology. But it would be his, built with his own hands from his own designs, and that mattered more than any amount of billionaire backing could provide.
Marcus spent the rest of the morning gathering materials. An old red long-sleeve compression shirt from Peter's athletics drawer. Blue sweatpants that could be modified into the leg portions of the suit. Red fabric from a discount store that could be cut and shaped into the mask and glove sections. Safety goggles from Peter's chemistry supplies that could be cannibalized for the eye lenses.
By noon, he had everything spread out on Peter's bedroom floor like a superhero costume surgery in progress, and he was ready to begin the actual construction.
Six hours later, Marcus held up his creation and felt something very close to pride.
The suit wasn't perfect. The stitching was visible in places where his sewing skills—hastily learned from YouTube tutorials and inherited muscle memory from Peter's occasional clothing repair attempts—had proven inadequate. The web pattern across the red sections was slightly uneven, painted by hand with a steadiness that his enhanced coordination could only partially provide. The eye lenses were a little larger than the classic design, giving the mask a slightly more expressive appearance than he'd originally intended.
But it was Spider-Man. Unmistakably, undeniably Spider-Man.
The red and blue color scheme popped with a vibrancy that made the ski mask and hoodie look like a bad joke in comparison. The spider emblems—a large one on the chest, a slightly larger one on the back—were clean and professional-looking despite being hand-painted. The mask's eye lenses caught the light in a way that looked almost otherworldly, reflective and mysterious and exactly the kind of thing that would make criminals think twice before messing with him.
Marcus stripped off his civilian clothes and pulled on the suit, feeling the polymer-treated fabric conform to his body like a second skin. The material was lighter than he'd expected, barely noticeable against his enhanced senses, but he could feel the reinforcement in the way it moved—flexible enough to allow full acrobatic range, but with a structural integrity that would resist tearing and cutting far better than normal athletic wear.
He pulled the mask over his head, adjusted the eye lenses, and looked at himself in the mirror.
Spider-Man looked back.
"Oh hell yes," Marcus breathed, and his voice came out slightly muffled by the mask but still perfectly audible. "Now this is what a superhero is supposed to look like."
He spent the next ten minutes posing in front of the mirror like an idiot, trying out different stances and gestures, practicing the way he would carry himself when he was in costume. Confident but not arrogant. Heroic but approachable. The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, ready to help anyone who needed him while cracking jokes that would make his enemies question their life choices.
When he finally managed to tear himself away from his reflection, Marcus realized that he'd accomplished more in one day than he'd expected to accomplish in a week. He had a functional costume. He had working web-shooters. He had a basic understanding of his powers and how to use them in combat situations.
What he didn't have was fighting skills.
And that, he decided as he carefully removed the suit and stored it in a hidden compartment he'd created in the back of Peter's closet, was the next problem that needed solving.
Finding a martial arts school that would accept a teenager with no prior experience, no money, and a desperate need to learn how to fight as quickly as possible was, predictably, a challenge.
Marcus spent the next morning researching options on Peter's laptop, scrolling through websites and reviews and trying to find something that would fit his extremely specific and extremely unusual requirements.
The traditional martial arts schools—karate, taekwondo, judo—were out. They were designed for long-term skill development over years of dedicated practice, and Marcus didn't have years. He needed something that would give him practical combat skills as quickly as possible, something that would complement his enhanced reflexes and strength rather than trying to teach him techniques designed for normal human bodies.
Mixed martial arts gyms were closer to what he needed, but they were expensive and required regular attendance at specific times, which would be difficult to maintain given his unpredictable schedule as a superhero.
Boxing gyms were affordable and flexible, but boxing alone wouldn't be enough—he needed to learn how to handle opponents who kicked, grappled, used weapons, and fought in three-dimensional spaces that normal fighters never had to consider.
The answer, when Marcus finally found it, came from an unexpected source.
"STICK'S SELF-DEFENSE: Traditional Martial Arts with Modern Applications. First lesson free. All skill levels welcome. Located in Hell's Kitchen."
The website was bare-bones, almost amateurish, with minimal information about the instructor or the specific style being taught. But something about it called to Marcus in a way he couldn't quite explain—a spider-sense tingle that wasn't warning him of danger but was definitely pointing him in a specific direction.
"Hell's Kitchen," Marcus murmured, pulling up a map on the laptop. "That's Daredevil territory. Which means whoever's teaching there probably knows their stuff."
He memorized the address, noted the operating hours, and made a decision. After school today—because yes, he was going back to school, because Aunt May had asked him to and he wasn't about to disappoint the woman who had taken him in and loved him unconditionally—he would swing over to Hell's Kitchen and check out this mysterious martial arts school.
But first, he had to survive Midtown High.
Midtown High School of Science and Technology was, in Marcus's opinion, exactly what a New York public school for nerds should look like.
The building was old but well-maintained, its brick facade decorated with banners celebrating academic achievements and scientific competitions. Students streamed through the main entrance with the particular energy of teenagers who were smart enough to know they were smart and socially awkward enough to be constantly aware of it. The air hummed with conversations about homework and upcoming tests and whether the robotics club was going to beat Bronx Science at the regional competition this year.
Marcus walked through the front doors wearing Peter's backpack and Peter's clothes and Peter's face, trying to project the confidence of someone who belonged here while internally freaking out about the fact that he was about to interact with teenagers for the first time in over a decade.
Just act normal, he told himself. You have Peter's memories. You know these people. You know this school. All you have to do is not say anything that a twenty-eight-year-old comic nerd from Chicago would say and everything will be fine.
"Peter!"
Marcus turned toward the voice and found himself face-to-face with a teenage girl who his borrowed memories immediately identified as Gwen Stacy.
Blonde hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. Blue eyes that held an intelligence and intensity that most adults couldn't match. A face that was conventionally attractive but radiated a kind of competence that suggested she had better things to do than worry about conventional attractiveness. She was wearing a jean jacket over a band t-shirt, and she was looking at Marcus with an expression of concern that made him feel simultaneously guilty and confused.
"Oh, hey Gwen," Marcus said, trying to sound casual while his brain scrambled to process the implications of this encounter. Gwen Stacy. The Gwen Stacy. One of Peter Parker's most significant love interests across multiple continuities. Standing right in front of him. Talking to him. Looking at him with those blue eyes that somehow managed to be both analytical and warm at the same time.
"Are you okay?" Gwen asked, falling into step beside him as he continued down the hallway. "I heard about your uncle. I'm so sorry, Peter. I wanted to reach out, but I wasn't sure if you wanted space or..."
"I'm... I'm okay," Marcus said, and the words felt inadequate for the complex mix of emotions that were swirling through him—Peter's inherited grief, Marcus's lingering disorientation, and something else, something he couldn't quite identify, that had everything to do with the way Gwen was looking at him. "It's been hard. But I'm managing."
"If you need anything," Gwen said, and the sincerity in her voice was almost painfully genuine, "notes, homework help, someone to talk to, whatever—I'm here. We're lab partners, remember? That means we're basically bonded for life."
Marcus felt a smile tugging at his lips despite everything. "I remember. And thanks, Gwen. That means a lot."
They walked together toward their first class, and Marcus found himself actually enjoying the conversation. Gwen was smart—terrifyingly smart, the kind of smart that made him wonder if she might figure out his secret identity just by analyzing his behavioral patterns—but she was also kind and funny and surprisingly easy to talk to.
Don't develop feelings, Marcus told himself sternly. You're literally in the body of a dead teenager. Getting romantically involved with his classmates would be weird and wrong and probably a violation of several ethical principles that you don't have time to articulate right now.
But Gwen laughed at something he said, and her whole face lit up with genuine amusement, and Marcus felt his heart do something complicated that he absolutely refused to examine more closely.
Dammit.
The rest of the school day passed in a blur of classes that Marcus found surprisingly easy to follow, thanks to Peter's enhanced intelligence and his own decades of general knowledge that had apparently survived the trip between universes. Teachers looked at him with varying degrees of sympathy and concern, having obviously heard about his uncle's death. Students gave him space, the social dynamics of high school dictating that grief was to be respected even if the grieving party wasn't particularly popular.
By the time the final bell rang, Marcus was exhausted—not physically, but mentally, from the effort of pretending to be a teenager while his adult mind screamed at him that he should be doing literally anything other than learning about cellular respiration and the causes of World War I.
He said goodbye to Gwen at the school entrance, promising to text her later about a group project they'd been assigned in chemistry class, and then made his way to a secluded alley where he could change into his Spider-Man suit without being observed.
The transformation was quick and practiced now, his enhanced speed allowing him to strip off his civilian clothes and pull on the costume in less than thirty seconds. He stuffed Peter's backpack into a web-sack secured to the side of a fire escape—not the most elegant solution, but effective enough for now—and launched himself into the sky.
THWIP. THWIP. THWIP.
The feeling of web-swinging was just as exhilarating as it had been the first time, maybe even more so now that he wasn't terrified of falling to his death with every swing. His body moved with a fluid grace that felt completely natural, muscles and reflexes working in perfect harmony as he arced between buildings toward Hell's Kitchen.
The city spread out beneath him like a map of infinite possibilities, and Marcus found himself grinning beneath the mask as he swung. This was what being Spider-Man was supposed to feel like. The freedom. The joy. The sense that anything was possible as long as you had the courage to reach for it.
He was so caught up in the sensation that he almost missed the alert from his spider-sense.
DANGER.
Marcus adjusted his trajectory mid-swing, angling toward the source of the warning, and saw what his enhanced senses had detected: a commotion on the street below, in front of what looked like a small bank branch.
Three men in ski masks—the irony of which was not lost on Marcus—were running out of the bank carrying duffel bags. One of them had a gun. A security guard was on the ground behind them, clutching his shoulder and groaning in pain. Civilians were screaming and scattering.
"Oh good," Marcus said to himself, already changing course toward the scene. "Bank robbers. Classic Spider-Man territory. Let's see if these guys are ready to question their life choices."
He landed on the roof of the bank with a graceful crouch, assessed the situation in about half a second, and then dropped down into the street directly in front of the fleeing robbers.
"Hey there, fellas!" Marcus said, adopting a relaxed stance that communicated absolutely zero concern about the guns pointed in his direction. "Beautiful day for a bank robbery, huh? Nice weather, light traffic, only one security guard to shoot... wait, you actually shot someone? That's not cool, man. That's really not cool."
The robbers stared at him with the particular expression of people who had not expected their crime to be interrupted by a guy in red and blue spandex.
"The hell are you supposed to be?" one of them demanded, his voice rough with adrenaline and confusion.
"I'm Spider-Man," Marcus said, gesturing at his costume with both hands. "You know, the guy from the news? Fought a giant lizard yesterday? Saved a bunch of dock workers? This is really embarrassing that you don't recognize me. I worked really hard on this costume."
"Kill him!" the lead robber shouted, and all three of them opened fire.
Marcus moved.
His spider-sense had been screaming warnings since the moment the guns started to rise, painting a perfect picture of trajectories and timing in his mind. He twisted, flipped, cartwheeled through the air with a grace that would have made Olympic gymnasts weep, dodging bullets like they were moving in slow motion while closing the distance between himself and the shooters.
THWIP.
A webline caught the first robber's gun and yanked it out of his hands, sending it spinning harmlessly into the air.
THWIP. THWIP.
Two more lines caught the second robber's feet and pulled them out from under him, dropping him to the pavement with a satisfying thud.
"You know," Marcus said conversationally, ducking under a wild swing from the first robber's fist, "the average prison sentence for armed robbery is like five to twenty years. Add in the assault with a deadly weapon, and you're looking at even more. Is the money really worth it?"
He grabbed the robber's arm mid-swing, twisted it behind his back with precisely enough force to be painful without causing permanent damage, and webbed the man's hands together before shoving him face-first into the ground.
"Because honestly, I'm looking at your getaway car over there, and it's a 2003 Honda Civic. That's not exactly 'master criminal' energy, you know? That's more like 'made a series of unfortunate financial decisions' energy."
The third robber—the one who had shot the security guard—was backing away now, his gun shaking in his hands, his eyes wide with something that might have been terror.
"Stay back!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "Stay back or I'll—"
THWIP.
Marcus webbed the gun to the robber's hand, then webbed that hand to the man's chest, then webbed his feet to the ground, all in the space of about two seconds.
"You'll what?" Marcus asked, landing in front of the immobilized criminal with his hands on his hips. "Threaten me ineffectively? Because I gotta tell you, that's not really working out for you so far."
The robber stared at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, apparently unable to process what had just happened.
Marcus leaned in close, close enough that his masked face was only inches from the robber's terrified expression.
"Let me give you some advice," he said, his voice dropping into something that was almost serious beneath the quippy exterior. "You shot a guy today. A security guard who was just doing his job, probably making minimum wage, probably has a family waiting for him at home. And you shot him. For what? A few thousand dollars that you were never going to get away with spending?"
The robber swallowed hard.
"Think about that," Marcus continued. "While you're sitting in prison for the next decade or two, think about the choices that brought you here. And then, when you get out, make different choices. Because I'm going to be watching. And if I catch you doing something like this again..."
He let the sentence hang, unfinished, and watched the robber's face go pale beneath the ski mask.
"Anyway!" Marcus said, stepping back and returning to his cheerful demeanor like a switch had been flipped. "Police should be here any minute. Try to stay comfortable. Those webs dissolve in about an hour, so you won't be stuck forever. And don't try to run—I webbed your shoelaces to the pavement too, so you'll just fall on your face. Again."
He shot a webline at a nearby building and prepared to swing away, then paused and looked back at the immobilized criminals.
"Oh, one more thing. If anyone asks who stopped you, tell them it was Spider-Man. That's S-P-I-D-E-R-dash-M-A-N. Two words. Very important for the police report. Okay bye!"
THWIP.
Marcus swung away into the afternoon sky, leaving three very confused and very defeated bank robbers in his wake.
Behind him, he heard the sound of sirens approaching, and felt a warm satisfaction spreading through his chest. The security guard would get medical attention. The robbers would face justice. And somewhere in the city, three people who had made terrible choices were now questioning whether those choices were worth repeating.
This is what being Spider-Man is about, Marcus thought as he swung toward Hell's Kitchen. Not just stopping crimes. Making people think. Giving them chances to be better. And cracking jokes so good that they'll be replaying them in their heads during their entire prison sentence.
Stick's Self-Defense was located in a basement gym beneath an unremarkable building in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, accessible through a narrow stairway that looked like it hadn't been renovated since the 1970s.
Marcus—now in his civilian clothes, having changed in another secluded alley and retrieved Peter's backpack from its web-sack—descended the stairs with a mixture of curiosity and caution. His spider-sense was quiet, which he took as a good sign, but something about this place felt... different. Charged with an energy he couldn't quite identify.
The gym itself was spartanly equipped—a few heavy bags, some training mats, a rack of wooden practice weapons—and dimly lit by fluorescent lights that buzzed with the particular frequency of ancient electrical infrastructure. The air smelled like sweat and determination and something vaguely medicinal.
There was one other person in the room: an old man sitting cross-legged in the corner, his eyes closed, his body utterly still. He was bald, with a lined face that suggested decades of hard experience, and he was dressed in simple clothes that looked like they could have come from any era in the last century.
"You're late," the old man said without opening his eyes.
Marcus blinked. "I'm... sorry? I didn't think I had an appointment."
"Everyone who walks through that door has an appointment," the old man said. "They just don't know it yet."
He opened his eyes—and Marcus realized with a start that the man was blind, his eyes clouded and unfocused, staring at nothing. But somehow, impossibly, Marcus got the distinct impression that the man was looking directly at him. Seeing him, even without sight.
"You're the spider kid," the old man continued, his voice flat and unsurprised. "The one from the news. Fought the lizard creature yesterday."
Marcus felt his heart rate spike. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just here for martial arts lessons."
The old man's lips curved into something that might have been a smile but was too sharp to be friendly.
"You move wrong," he said. "Your weight distribution is off. Your center of gravity is higher than it should be, but you compensate for it automatically, like you're used to surfaces being in places they shouldn't be. And your heartbeat—it's too slow. Too controlled. Like your body is operating at a different level than a normal person's."
Marcus stood frozen, unsure whether to deny everything, run away, or ask how the hell a blind man could tell all of that just from listening to him walk down a flight of stairs.
"Relax, kid," the old man said. "I'm not going to turn you in. I've been in this city long enough to know that masks serve a purpose. What I want to know is why you're here."
Marcus swallowed hard. "I want to learn how to fight. Really fight, not just dodge and counterattack on instinct. My powers give me reflexes and danger sense, but I don't know any actual techniques. Last night I won because I got lucky and creative. Next time, I might not be so lucky."
The old man nodded slowly. "Honest. That's good. Most people who come to me lie about what they want. Say they're here for fitness, or self-defense, or personal development. But you just admitted that you want to learn how to hurt people more effectively."
"I want to learn how to protect people," Marcus corrected. "Hurting bad guys is just an unfortunate necessity."
"Hmm." The old man rose to his feet with a fluid grace that belied his apparent age, moving like water flowing uphill. "The attitude is good. But attitude alone won't save you when someone stronger than you decides to rearrange your skeleton."
He walked to the center of the training mats and faced Marcus, his blind eyes somehow fixed on the teenager's position with unnerving accuracy.
"I'll teach you," he said. "Not because I like you—I don't like anyone—but because this city needs protectors who can actually fight, and you've got potential. Raw, undeveloped, completely unrefined potential, but potential nonetheless."
"Thank you," Marcus said, stepping onto the mat. "I really appreciate—"
The old man's fist crashed into Marcus's stomach before he finished the sentence.
Marcus doubled over, gasping, his spider-sense screaming warnings that had come approximately half a second too late. The pain was incredible—not just physical impact, but something else, something that felt like the punch had disrupted his entire nervous system.
"Lesson one," the old man said, his voice calm and unsympathetic. "Your spider-sense is a crutch. It tells you when danger is coming, but it doesn't tell you how to respond. Right now, you rely on it completely. That makes you predictable."
He moved again, another strike that Marcus's spider-sense warned him about but that his body somehow couldn't dodge in time, catching him on the shoulder and spinning him sideways.
"Lesson two: knowing an attack is coming and being able to do something about it are two different things. Speed without technique is just flailing with extra steps."
Marcus stumbled back, trying to create distance, but the old man closed the gap with a speed that should have been impossible for someone his age.
"Lesson three—"
"Okay, okay, I get it!" Marcus gasped, holding up his hands in surrender. "I have a lot to learn! Can we maybe do that learning without you beating me up?"
The old man paused, considering.
"No," he said finally. "Pain is the best teacher. You'll remember these lessons because your body will remember the consequences of forgetting them."
He stepped back, folding his arms across his chest.
"But I'll slow down. For now. We'll start with the basics: stance, balance, breath control. Your powers have given you incredible physical capabilities, but you're using them like a child who found a sports car and doesn't know how to drive."
"That's... actually a really accurate metaphor," Marcus admitted, rubbing his sore stomach.
"I know." The old man moved to the edge of the mat and sat down. "Now show me your stance. The way you naturally stand when you're ready to fight."
Marcus took a breath and tried to adopt a combat posture, drawing on what he'd seen in movies and comics and video games over the years.
"Terrible," the old man said immediately. "Your weight is too far forward. Your hands are too high. Your elbows are pointing in the wrong direction. Did you learn this from a film?"
"...Maybe."
The old man sighed—the sigh of someone who had been teaching hopeless students for decades and had stopped expecting them to not be hopeless.
"We have a lot of work to do," he said. "Come back tomorrow. Same time. And the day after that. And the day after that. We'll train until your body knows how to fight without your conscious mind getting in the way."
"I can do that," Marcus said. "But I have a question first."
"What?"
"What's your name? The website just said 'Stick.'"
The old man smiled—a real smile this time, though it was no less sharp than before.
"Stick is what you can call me," he said. "Names are earned in my world. Prove you're worth teaching, and maybe I'll tell you more."
Marcus nodded, accepting this. In a universe full of superheroes and supervillains, a mysterious blind martial arts master who went by a single name was actually one of the more normal things he'd encountered.
"One more question," he said.
"What?"
"How did you know I was Spider-Man? I didn't say anything. I wasn't wearing the costume."
Stick's smile widened.
"Kid, I've been sensing supernatural and enhanced individuals for longer than you've been alive—either of your lives. You think a new body is going to hide the fact that your soul has been somewhere it shouldn't have been?"
Marcus felt his blood run cold. "You know about—"
"I know a lot of things," Stick interrupted. "Things that would make your spider-sense have a nervous breakdown. But that's not your concern right now. Your concern is learning to throw a punch without falling over. We can talk about cosmic transposition after you've mastered the basics."
He gestured toward the door.
"Now get out of here. Go do whatever it is you do when you're not wasting my time. And eat something—your metabolism is burning through calories faster than your body can replace them. You're going to pass out if you don't start consuming about twice as many calories as a normal person."
Marcus nodded, grabbed his backpack, and headed for the stairs.
"Same time tomorrow!" Stick called after him. "Don't be late!"
"I wasn't late today!" Marcus protested.
"Yes you were. You just didn't know it."
Marcus decided not to argue with the cryptic blind man and instead climbed the stairs back to street level, his mind spinning with everything that had just happened.
He had a martial arts teacher now. A terrifying, mysterious martial arts teacher who apparently knew about soul transposition and could punch through his spider-sense like it wasn't even there. That was... progress? Probably? It was definitely something.
And he still had most of the afternoon left to patrol.
Time to find some more criminals who need to question their life choices, Marcus thought, ducking into an alley to change back into his Spider-Man suit.
The criminal who needed to question his life choices the most, as it turned out, found Marcus before Marcus could find him.
It happened about two hours into his patrol, when he was swinging through the Garment District and enjoying the late afternoon sun on his masked face. His spider-sense suddenly spiked with a warning that felt different from the usual alerts—not immediate physical danger, but something approaching. Something powerful.
Marcus adjusted his swing trajectory and landed on the side of a water tower, scanning the area for the source of the disturbance.
He found it on the street below: a man in a quilted yellow costume with what looked like vibration-emitting gauntlets strapped to his wrists, standing in the middle of an intersection and shouting at the terrified civilians who were trying to flee the scene.
"Everyone stay back!" the man bellowed, his voice slightly distorted by what Marcus assumed was some kind of helmet system. "I'm the Shocker, and I'm here to make a withdrawal from the First National Bank of Kiss My Ass!"
Marcus stared at the scene for a long moment.
The Shocker, he thought. Of all the villains I could have encountered on my second day, I get the Shocker. The guy who's literally famous for being Spider-Man's punching bag. The villain whose entire career can be summarized as "lost to Spider-Man repeatedly while wearing a quilted costume."
This was going to be fun.
Marcus shot a webline at a nearby building and swung down into the intersection, landing directly in the Shocker's path with a dramatic flourish that he'd been practicing in his head for exactly this kind of moment.
"Okay, wow," Marcus said, making a show of looking the Shocker up and down. "That is... that is really something. Did you make that costume yourself? Because I'm not sure if you were going for 'intimidating supervillain' or 'quilted blanket that gained sentience,' but either way, you definitely committed to the bit."
The Shocker's head snapped toward him, the dark lenses of his helmet reflecting Marcus's masked face.
"Spider-Man," he growled. "I was hoping you'd show up. Been wanting to test these new gauntlets on something tougher than brick walls."
"Tougher than brick walls? I'm flattered! I've been doing a lot of core work lately, really focusing on my abs. I'm glad someone noticed."
The Shocker raised his arms, the gauntlets beginning to glow with accumulated vibrational energy.
"You think you're funny?" he demanded. "You think this is a joke?"
"I mean, a little bit, yeah," Marcus admitted. "I don't want to be rude, but... the Shocker? Really? That's the name you went with? Did you consider anything else? Like, I don't know, 'Vibrato'? 'The Quivering'? 'Sir Shakes-a-Lot'?"
"SHUT UP!"
The Shocker fired both gauntlets simultaneously, sending a wave of concentrated vibrational force directly at Marcus's position.
Marcus's spider-sense screamed a warning, and he leaped upward, flipping over the shockwave as it passed beneath him and shattered the pavement where he'd been standing.
"Okay, that's actually pretty dangerous," Marcus acknowledged, landing on the side of a building and clinging there like the spider he was named after. "I take back some of the mockery. Not all of it—that costume is still ridiculous—but some of it."
The Shocker fired again, and Marcus pushed off from the building, web-swinging in a complex pattern that took him around and behind his opponent.
The gauntlets are dangerous, Marcus analyzed as he moved. Direct hits would probably hurt a lot, maybe even cause real damage despite my enhanced durability. But the Shocker himself is just a normal guy in a fancy suit. No superhuman strength, no enhanced speed, no special durability. If I can get close enough to hit him without getting hit myself, this fight is over.
He landed on a car roof behind the Shocker and immediately fired a spray of web pellets at the back of the villain's helmet.
THWIP THWIP THWIP THWIP.
The Shocker spun around, clawing at the webbing covering his visor, temporarily blinded.
"What the—I can't see! I can't—"
"Yeah, that's kind of the point," Marcus said, jumping down from the car and approaching cautiously. "See, here's the thing about those gauntlets of yours: they're powerful, sure, but they're only useful if you can actually aim them at something. And right now, you're shooting blind. Literally."
The Shocker fired wildly, sending shockwaves in random directions that Marcus easily dodged.
"Come on, man," Marcus said, ducking under a blast that shattered a nearby fire hydrant. "You're just making this embarrassing. For both of us. Do you want to surrender now and save yourself the humiliation, or do you want me to web you to the pavement while making increasingly elaborate jokes about your costume?"
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
"Option B it is, then."
Marcus moved in, his enhanced speed allowing him to close the distance before the Shocker could react. He grabbed the villain's right arm, twisted it behind his back, and used his free hand to fire a webline at the left gauntlet, yanking it upward so that the next shockwave discharged harmlessly into the sky.
"Here's a fun fact about vibrations," Marcus said conversationally, maintaining his grip as the Shocker struggled futilely against his enhanced strength. "They travel through solid materials really effectively. Which means that if I were to, say, web your gauntlets to your chest and then trigger them..."
The Shocker went very still.
"You wouldn't," he said.
"You're right, I wouldn't," Marcus agreed. "Because that would probably kill you, and I'm not a killer. But I could. And I think that's something you should consider the next time you decide to terrorize innocent people in the middle of a busy intersection."
He webbed the Shocker's arms to his sides, then his legs together, then added a few extra layers for good measure before stepping back to admire his handiwork.
"There we go," Marcus said. "Nice and snug. Like a supervillain burrito. A villaino, if you will."
The Shocker stared at him through the webbing still partially covering his visor.
"You're insane," he said.
"Probably," Marcus admitted. "But I'm also the guy who just beat you in less than two minutes, so maybe insane isn't such a bad thing to be. Anyway, cops should be here soon. Try not to fall over—those gauntlets might discharge if you hit the ground wrong, and I'd hate for you to accidentally give yourself a concussion before you get to enjoy the wonderful amenities of the New York correctional system."
He shot a webline at a nearby building and prepared to swing away.
"Oh, one more thing," he added, pausing to look back at the immobilized Shocker. "Next time you pick a villain name, maybe go with something that doesn't sound like a kitchen appliance? Just a thought. Take care! Good luck in prison!"
THWIP.
Marcus swung away into the evening sky, leaving the defeated Shocker behind and feeling absolutely fantastic about his life choices.
By the time he got home, changed out of his costume, and snuck back into the Parker house through the window, it was almost dark. Aunt May was in the kitchen, making dinner, and the smell of cooking food made Marcus's enhanced stomach growl with a ferocity that was almost alarming.
Right, he thought, remembering Stick's warning about his metabolism. I need to eat more. A lot more.
He went downstairs, greeted Aunt May with a hug that surprised both of them with its intensity, and sat down at the kitchen table while she finished preparing what turned out to be spaghetti with meat sauce.
"You seem better today," Aunt May observed, setting a plate in front of him that was almost comically large. "Did something good happen at school?"
Marcus thought about the Shocker. About the bank robbers. About Stick and the training and the feeling of finally, finally starting to become the hero he wanted to be.
"Yeah," he said, picking up his fork. "I think I'm starting to figure some things out."
Aunt May smiled, and the expression was so full of love and hope that Marcus felt his heart clench.
"I'm glad," she said. "Ben would be proud of you, Peter. I know things have been hard. I know you're still grieving. But the fact that you're pushing forward, trying to make something good out of this pain... that's exactly what he would have wanted."
Marcus looked down at his plate, blinking rapidly against the sudden moisture in his eyes.
I'll make him proud, he thought. I'll make both of them proud. Peter and Ben and everyone who believed that Spider-Man could be a force for good in this world.
I'll be the hero they deserved.
"Thanks, Aunt May," he said quietly. "I love you."
"I love you too, sweetheart. Now eat your dinner before it gets cold."
Marcus ate. And for the first time since waking up in Peter Parker's body, he felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
End of Chapter 2
[Author's Note: Marcus is making progress! He's got a real costume, a terrifying martial arts teacher, and a growing reputation as New York's quippiest superhero. But the challenges are only beginning—and certain observant women are starting to take notice of the masked man swinging through their city. Will Marcus remain oblivious to the romantic attention heading his way? (Yes. Yes he will.) Find out in future chapters!]