MHA : Spider-Man

It took him a second before he realized that he opened up the fight with a Rocky V reference. By the time the realization hit, the Lizard was already on him.

The creature snapped his jaws down at him, Peter leaned his head away from the beast and pushed its face away with his forearm, forcing the creature to look at the ceiling.

His mind focused on the adrenaline running through his veins, Peter embraced that familiar feeling a bit too quickly.

"Woah, personal space! Stay out of my bubble, huh?" Tapping the triggers on his palm, he webbed the Lizard's jaws shut and punched it into a wall. Okay… He needs to think .

Yes, thinking is a great idea, one or his best, honestly.

It'd probably be smart to get all that thinking over with while his brain somehow fought off a concussion. Not really sure how that worked, but as long as he could make actual thoughts then he didn't really care.

As the creature crashed into the graffiti-covered brick, Peter took a breath and finally decided to pay more attention to his surroundings.

Old sewer tunnel made from decade-old brick and filled with water from a glance, Peter guessed the small area he had webbed off for them was probably 18 feet wide, 30 feet long, and at most 10 feet tall.

In about the center was a stone path 3 feet wide that stood above the knee-deep water. Not much in the terms of light, either, only small flickering lamps lined the upper section of the tunnel.

At least the reverberating sounds and eerie lighting helped the atmosphere, it'd feel anticlimactic to fight a giant lizard monster anywhere else.

Oh, and he was fighting giant lizard monsters in sewers now, apparently! Part of him couldn't help but feel a bit sad at the reality of that.

The sound of ripping echoed across the old walls, the Lizard yearning apart the webbing around its jaw and leaping at Peter again.

Spider-sense ringing, Peter leaped up and stuck to the ceiling, leaving the creature to crash into the water.

"Dude, are you sure you should be swimming in that stuff? It's probably not on the level of the Hudson River, but still!" The boy pushed off of the ceiling, punching the Lizard on the head as soon as it resurfaced.

It roared, claws shooting out to grab him while Peter did his best to stick to its mostly blind spots. Kinda hard to stay behind this guy when you threw his tail into the equation.

This was just so much more complicated than what he'd prefer, you know?

The sound of its snapping jaws filled his ears, the monster repeatedly trying to reach its head back at him as it thrashed around the sewer.

"I think it liked you better with your mouth shut. You wouldn't mind giving that a try again, right?" Tightening the hold his arm had around its neck, Peter aimed with his free hand.

Then, his spider-sense rung

Snarling, the Lizard reached one of its claws up and grabbed his wrist in what felt like a show of intelligence Peter didn't expect. The scaly hand tightened around him, Peter groaned as he felt his web-shooter be crushed and bits of webbing pathetically shot out as the cartridge burst.

In the middle of groaning at the pain, Peter couldn't help but notice the hand grabbing him had 4 fingers instead of the 5 on its other.

As bits of the metal began to dig into his skin, Peter's hold around the creature's neck weakened, letting it grab his wrist tighter and throw him into a wall on the far end of the tunnel.

Peter hit the wall hard, making dust rain down onto the water which he soon fell into.

Of course that thing went for his web-shooters, because he hadn't had those destroyed in a while, right?

With a gasp, Peter resurfaced and took a small breath of the air, quickly being reminded that he was, in fact, in a sewer.

Sometimes he wondered why he did things like this, you know? Willingly put himself in these stupid and dangerous situations.

He knew of course, the memories of Ben made sure of it, but let him monolog for a bit.

It was just that whole responsibility thing never really applied to stuff like this, before it was just about muggers and drug trafficking.

It almost makes him sad when he thinks about how there probably wasn't any outcome where he listened to Mirko and hung back.

He never was the best at self-preservation, but he was smart enough that what he normally did was the exact opposite.

"You know it takes me a lot of time to make these? You don't see me messing with your stuff, now do you?" He flexed the fingers in his hand, finding a bit of pain in the motion but nothing he couldn't deal with.

At least for right now, it was gonna be a total bitch later.

As he got onto the narrow stone pathway at the center of the tunnel, his mind couldn't help but wander back to his previous train of thought.

Thing was, over the last few months, Peter has had that sinking feeling he was a bit out of his league. It probably started back at the museum with Endeavor, or maybe with his arrest.

Hell, maybe Peter was out of his league the second he sewed that stupid mask together and put it on.

Roaring, the creature leaped onto the ceiling, digging its claws into the brick and frantically crawling its way to Peter as bits of dust rained down.

Because really, this was his life.

He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it.

Following the vibration in the back of his skull, Peter narrowly flipped back as the Lizard crashed down, quickly running back in and kicking it across the face.

Sometimes… sometimes he wanted to be something more than whatever this was, you know?

Screeching, the monster stumbled back before spinning, its long tail smacking Peter into a wall with great force.

A scientist or an engineer, the type of career he's always wanted to pursue since back when he was some twig of a kid who wore knitted sweater vests and ties while thinking he looked good.

Before hitting the water, Peter twisted his body and stuck to the wall, leaping back at the Lizard and tackling him off the pathway.

The water sent a chill through his body, blurring his vision and making bits of blood from his shoulder bleed through the badly applied webbing on it.

His fist met its snout, punching over and over while he felt claws make small cuts on his arms during the struggle. A tail wrapped around his ankle, swinging him into a wall and knocking the air out of him.

The fact that he was underwater didn't make the air leaving his lungs any better

Sometimes he wonders what his life would be like if he actually pursued his love for science, honestly. He wonders that a lot more than he cares to admit right now.

Like, he had always been fascinated by chemical engineering and biology, he remembers spending nights in his shitty Queens apartment reading about random breakthroughs and research papers on his shitty computer he built with Ben out of broken appliances and garbage.

He remembers babbling about all that stuff to Ben and May during breakfast, Ben always comparing him to the father Peter had but barely remembered.

His head broke the surface, coughing and bringing air back into his lungs before shooting a web and pulling him up to the ceiling, narrowly avoiding a clawed hand that tried to pull him back under the water.

Looking back, Ben probably meant that he wanted Peter to use his brain for others when talking about all that responsibility stuff.

And you know what? Peter actually liked the sound of that.

Growing up to be some big-time researcher that got to follow his dreams, studying and solving big problems you couldn't punch or web up. Making a difference without nearly dying every other week.

It sounded nice.

A pretty dream a part of him wanted to keep having, either out of stupidity or discontent.

Because Spider-Man wasn't his passion, not really.

At the start, it was more of an escape for him to be somethingother than Peter Parker, but it wasn't like his dream job.

It wasn't like how everyone he knew at UA somehow knew from day one that they wanted to be heroes for some reason or another.

When he looked at them, he saw that… sureness, you know? Sureness that this was what they wanted in life, that this type of job was something they wanted their life to be .

Someway, somehow, they just knew. So sure about being part of this life that the idea of being anything else sounded stupid.

Then there was him, Peter Benjamin Parker.

Dragging himself out of every fight purely with moral obligation and a bit of skill, while somehow finding it in himself to keep doing what he did day after day.

Some days it felt like he was running on nothing but guilt, luck, the right amount of stupidity and adrenaline.

It's gotten him this far, so it must be enough.

Hell, he was running on mostly adrenaline right now.

Spider-sense buzzing, Peter crawled away from the spot he was adhered to, just fast enough to dodge the Lizard slamming into it and sticking to the ceiling by its claws.

A claw shot out to slash him, Peter getting a small cut on his arm before he shot a web into its eyes. Thinking quickly, Peter dug into his belt while the creature tore at the webbing.

Sometimes, this whole Spider-Man thing felt more like a chore than he would like, you know?

It felt like being stuck in a dead-end job you stayed at for reasons out of your control. Not being rewarded enough for the effort you put in, but you still had to do it.

...

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