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Peter was at his best in freefall.
Thwip !
The web-line smacked against the wall and held, and he felt a primal rush as it pulled taut and he swooped high above the streets. The wind rushed past his mask and he whooped as he reached the bottom of the swing and began to pull up. He shifted his weight and drifted nearer to the buildings on his right, before letting go and hitting the wall with both feet.
He bounced off the wall, over the street, and kept flying. He drifted over the next two rooftops, feeling light as a feather before shooting a webline down towards the rooftop. Gravity and physics united to yank him down and he whooped again as his speed doubled immediately.
He held on as he shot down past the building, the glass and steel mere inches from his face. When the short line began to pull taut he shifted his weight forward as it pulled him up , catapulting him into the sky.
These maneuvers, while complex, took less than five seconds to perform. Entire blocks were crossed as easily as one crossed a room by a man who made bullets look slow, a man for whom gravity was a suggestion and free fall was a dance.
Some called him a hero, some a villain. Most called him a deadbeat. But everyone knew his name.
Kr-fwoom!
The Amazing Spider-Man registered the explosion immediately. He reached the apex of his swing, letting go just before gravity began to reclaim him. Two web-lines grabbed either side of the alley and arms that could bend steel yanked him forward.
He cannonballed onto the new street, holding the web-lines as they pulled tight so he'd slow down. He let go just before they pulled him back and spin two new ones, this time to either end of the street. He perched twenty feet above the street on his web, high enough to see any surprises.
A column of sand was flowing out of a smashed wall, pouring itself upwards and resolving into an approximation of a human form. Small columns of sand fell across his green striped shirt and pooled at his feet, where they were reabsorbed into his body again. He shambled down the street, moving like he was underwater and carrying bags of stolen money.
Spidey snapped his arm forwards and sent a ball of webbing careening through the criminal's face. “Seriously?” He asked. “Are you carrying actual bags of money, with the dollar signs on them and everything?”
The strange sandy-man turned. His face, which seemed to be trapped in a permanent scowl, managed to get tighter. “Spider-Man!” He shouted. “How did you find me?”
“Where did you even find bags like that?” Spider-Man continued. “Did you bring them from home?” He lounged back on the web-line, as comfortable as he was on his sofa. His apparent ease masked the way he checked up and down the street, trying to guess how long it would take the crowd to get to safety.
Behind him, the civilians had plenty of time to get away. However, since this was New York, they had instead formed an eager mob and pulled out their phones to watch. One even has a sign prepared. Naturally, it read Spider-Man Sucks!
Spidey turned his attention back to the supervillain, whom he had decided to call Sandman. “I’m not tryin’ to be mean here, but what is the plan? Exactly?”
“I’m a supervillian!” Sandman snapped.
Spidey waited. After what he felt was a polite moment, he prompted, “and?”
“I steal stuff!” Sandman said. The scowl was lessening now, and a tinge of awkwardness had crept in. “And then, I have the stuff,” he added.
“Okay, so to be clear,” Spidey asked as he leaned forwards, “This isn’t gonna end with you trying to turn the world into a desert?”
Sandman just looked confused. It wasn’t more attractive than the scowl, though few expressions could have made that square mug appealing. “Why would I want that?”
Spidey risked another look. A police officer was forcing the crowd to safety, though they were complaining. “And you aren’t from another universe and/or plan on turning me evil?”
Sandman was beginning to look uncomfortable. “Is that a thing?”
The street was as clear as it was going to get. He was going to have to lead the guy toward the rooftops. Spider-Man stood, cracking his neck and shaking out his shoulders. “This really is just a robbery?”
“Jeez, kid,” Sandman said as he started to transform. “You’re crazy.”
His body dissolved completely, reforming as a gigantic hammer bearing down on Spider-Man. He hopped backward, taking the two-story fall without even feeling it. The Sandman barely missed him, smashing into pavement apart and forming into swords that stabbed outward in all directions.
Spidey flattened himself under one of the blades, and then lept up through it. The sand broke apart as he hit it, but remained under Sandman’s control. The harshe grains skittered across his suit and tiny pinchers bit his skin, forcing him to jump away.
He flipped backward, landing four stories up and away from the street. “Woah, let’s save that until at least the second date…”
Sandman swore. Tentacles of flexible stone smashed into the wall and pulled him up faster than Spidey would have liked. Sandman’s verbal tirade finally became printable when he demanded, “ What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Well,” Spidey said as he galloped up the wall and around the side of the building, “A big crazy guy made of sand is trying to kill me, and he’s terrible at banter. I might have to leave a bad review—”
Sandman just shouted again. To Spidey’s horror, instead of continuing to chase him the quartz criminal smashed his way into the building itself. Spider-Man spun and charged back towards the hole before he could do anything, spider-sense shouted and—
Craaaa-ACK !
Spider-Man twisted around flying debris as the whole wall exploded outward. He tumbled end-over-end, catching a glimpse of Sandman, the the street getting closer, of the rest of the building face beginning to crumble, of the New Yorkers who'd insisted on staying put, of one in particular, a blonde that looked just like his dead--
No .
There wasn’t time to worry. Spider-Man jumped off the rubble and dove towards the street, repeating the familiar mantra of please don’t let me be late again, please…
He spun around as he passed the rubble, tossing several minuscule clips from a belt he wore under his suit. They were cartridges for his web-shooter, and when thrown hard enough they exploded.
They hit key points in the cloud of rubble and erupted in a gooey grey mess. He grabbed it with a webline and yanked himself back up. Spidey hit the bag of rubble harder than he meant to but worked without slowing down. Web-lines from both were cast out, again and again. It stopped far, far closer to the ground than Spidey would have liked, and [i]snapped [/i]back upwards. Vertigo tried to claim him as he crawled up, making sure to pin down the last of the loose rubble with more webbing and winced as the lines cast on the right side pulled free of the building they were attached to.
He fired three more web-lines, making sure to attach them away from the windows. The rubble vibrated in place, straining against the webbing but not snapping it. Spider-Man looked up to check on Sandman—
Aw, c’mon!
Sandman crawled across the front of the building, smashing it apart. The largest parts were targeted at Spidey himself.
He leaped backward, rapidly tying several lines to the rubble and using web-grenades to make them into makeshift nets, and then charged upwards to meet the debris. I can do this Icandothis Icandothis!
Spidey smacked into the lowest chunk and sent it spiraling towards a window. Swearing, he strung a webline to the far building before leaping again, reaching the next piece and tying the two of them together. He bounced back and forth, sticking webbing to the larger chunks and letting the smaller stuff go.
Again and again, he crisscrossed the air above the busy street, grabbing as many pieces of rubble as he could. His shoulders burned as he desperately threw himself across the sky. He wasn’t fast enough to intercept all of it, but as he tied more and more lines across the sky the debris would get caught in the web before it hit the ground.
A glance over his shoulder revealed the street finally be clear; most Manhattanites didn’t have an overtly functional sense of self-preservation, but even the most over-eager observers had fled.
There was a moment of quiet before he realized that Sandman had stopped throwing things, and then the colossal crook landed at the top of the web. The lines trembled but held firm as he began to pull his way down towards Spidey. His body thinned and elongated as he snaked through the web, and he formed extra arms to stabilize himself as he climbed after Spider-Man.
His head shot out and formed massive pincers, cleanly biting through the webs that Spidey had been sitting on mere moments before. "I'm going kill you as a giant spider in your own web!" Sandman shouted. "How's that for clever, you smug little shit?"
One of Sandman's arms winged him, but it was blunt. He rolled his body up and dove through Sandman’s body, briefly scattering him apart. Spidey landed on the street and stood, trying to work through the pain. Hus Spider-Sense buzzed again, letting him flip back as web-lines began to snap and a pile of stone, half as tall as he was, hit the street where he’d been.
Spider-Man frowned. Every superhero fight around civilians had a ticking clock on it, counting down to the point where he wasn’t fast enough to save someone. What do I have? There’s a bakery, some apartments and — A gym!
He darted across the street, overtop the re-forming Sandman, and through the door to the gymnasium. He took a second to see if it was empty and jumped over to the showers.
Sandman bust his way in after, barely holding his form together and bellowing curses at the web-slinger. He hesitated a moment in the door, trying to see where Spidey had went.
Spidey hung upside down from the ceiling, and waved jauntily. "I can't have a nemesis that goes to pieces on me like this," he said, faux-casual. "I'll have to speak with your supervisor."
Sandman blasted towards him, weights and exercise machines caught in a stupendous sandy wave. Spidey barely had time to grab a metal bench to hide behind as Sandman smashed him through the wall.
Pain exploded across his back and head, but he’d been ready for it. He rolled off the impact as they entered the room, letting Sandman continue until he smashed the showers apart.
Fwoosh!
Water burst through the shattered pipes, knocking Sandman apart. He shouted and tried to reform, but muddy particles refused to listen to him. He came apart in pieces as Spidey caught his breath and quietly marveled that this counted as an easy day…
His spider-sense went off again.
He leaped to the ceiling before looking to see what had set it off. The buzzing was passive; whatever it was, it wasn’t going to jump up and kill him. It was coming from Sandman's body, who’d stopped trying to get up. If Spidey didn’t know any better, it’d sound like he was trying to cry.
Some kind of potion spilled out from Sandan’’s body and began to flow down the drain. It was clear, but it glowed with some kind of energy and the floor under it turned bizarre shades of black and grey, like a film negative.
Wish I had a way of taking a sample , he thought to himself. The utility belts and fancy bases that the public speculated about were well out of his reach; he was lucky he was able to afford parts to construct his web-shooters.
“Please… ”
He looked down. “Sandy?”
Sandman was having trouble staying formed. He tried to come together, to make a mouth to form words before it crumbled under its own weight. Spidey took a step back and sealed the broken pipers with his webbing. The water stopped flowing and the piles of sand lay still. Everything left of Sandman’s body scooted away from the weird chemical that slowly went down the drain.
Spidey stopped the drain up too, so that Damage Control would have a chance to find out what it was. I miss having a lab , he thought. Hell, I miss having stuff .
A siren broke through his tired revere. A simple jump carried him outside, thirty feet from his starting position, and another jump took him six stories in the air. Then he was slinging away, left with more questions than answers.