I tore through the streets of Forest Hills at high speed. I slammed onto the ground in front of my house and saw the front door wide open, so I rushed inside.
Right in front of the entrance, in the middle of the living room, my worst nightmare was playing out live. Uncle Ben, who had been fast asleep when I left to patrol, and God only knows what he was doing awake now, was standing in front of a guy holding him at gunpoint. Seeing that, I couldn't just stand there, so I planted my boots against the floor and lunged toward the robber.
Even with the distance against me and panic freezing my blood, my reflexes operated in a flash. I extended my left arm and, using all my strength, delivered a brutal swipe to the living room coffee table, slamming it toward the criminal. The table soared through the air like it was made of cardboard and smashed into the robber's chest at the exact millisecond he pulled the trigger, startled by my entrance. The impact jerked his arm, causing the gunshot to bury itself straight into the back wall with a deafening roar that definitely woke up the entire neighborhood.
The force of the impact knocked the pistol from the thug's hands, and it thudded onto the rug, sliding exactly until it stopped right at Uncle Ben's feet. With his instincts kicking in within a heartbeat, he crouched at an incredible speed for his age, snatched the gun from the floor, and aimed it directly at the robber.
The thug, terrified to find himself disarmed and held at gunpoint, tried to take a step back to escape through the window. I moved in a blur and landed a sharp punch straight to his jaw. The guy dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the rug, completely unconscious. I bound him with webbing, leaving him wrapped up like a burrito for the police. I had actually managed to save Uncle Ben.
I turned around in silence, ready to take off and head back to my room to pretend like nothing had happened. I was about to shoot a web when a steady voice, laced with a strange calmness, echoed behind me, stopping me dead in my tracks.
"Peter"
An icy chill ran straight down my spine, and I froze in place. "Stupid spider-sense, you're good for dodging bullets but not for warning me that my uncle figured me out," I cursed internally. Slowly, I turned my head toward Uncle Ben. There was no fear in his eyes, only a deep certainty. I had been going out at night as a vigilante for nearly a month, and in a house this small where the walls feel like paper, a former Army Military Police officer wasn't going to overlook my nightly disappearances and my prolonged stays out on the streets during the day. "Wait, what? Army Military Police?! Is this canon?!" I was completely blown away, processing that thought in pure shock.
"Well, I'm cocked." I thought, ripping off the mask in one motion to reveal my face. We stood in silence for a second, but before I could even stammer out an excuse, the rushed creaking of the ceiling floorboards upstairs alerted us. The thunderous gunshot had awakened Aunt May, we could hear her running down the stairs, gripped by panic and screaming Ben's name.
With a silent leap, I pressed myself into the shadows of the living room ceiling, holding my breath the exact moment Aunt May appeared.
"Ben?! What was that noise?! Oh my God!" May pressed her hands over her mouth as she saw the mess and the tied-up criminal.
Ben calmly lowered the pistol, holding her by the shoulders to give her a sense of safety.
"Easy, May, it's over. Everything is under control." he told her in a steady voice that perfectly hid the adrenaline. "Some idiot tried to break in to rob us, but he ran into the wrong man. I managed to wrestle the gun away, and that Spider-Man fellow they talk about on the news rushed in to help me and left him tied up before taking off. Call the police, dear. I'll go check on Peter; he must be terrified in his room."
From my perch in the shadows, I couldn't help but smirk at my uncle's ability to improvise on the fly. Taking advantage of Aunt May heading toward the kitchen phone, I quickly scrambled across the ceiling toward the upper hallway, slipping into my room. I stripped out of the suit at super speed, stuffing it into the closet, and dove under the covers in my pajamas.
Barely a couple of minutes later, NYPD sirens flooded the street with red and blue lights. They arrived fast by the third-world standards of my past life, but luckily for me, Captain George Stacy himself was leading the operation after hearing the Parkers' address over the radio. I heard his voice from downstairs greeting my uncle; they had known each other for years due to my friendship with Gwen.
"Ben, good heavens. Is everyone alright?" George asked with genuine concern.
"We're fine, George, thanks for getting here so fast," Uncle Ben replied calmly. "May is in the kitchen a bit shaken up, and Peter is upstairs in his room, the gunshot gave him a massive scare, and I'd prefer if you didn't go up to disturb him unless it's absolutely necessary. I already checked the perimeter; the criminal was acting alone, and that vigilante from the news took care of leaving him tied up like you see there."
George Stacy turned his gaze toward the living room pillar, staring at the unconscious criminal wrapped in webbing. He let out a heavy sigh, scratching the back of his neck with obvious annoyance.
"So the famous spider was in your living room..." George murmured, crossing his arms. "The boys down in the financial district say he's a force of nature dressed in black and red. Don't get me wrong, Ben, I'm glad he saved your life tonight, but this vigilante is turning into a problem for the city. He operates with a ruthlessness that scares the prosecutors, and he doesn't respect due process. One of these days he's going to decapitate someone, and I'll have to hunt him down myself."
Uncle Ben glanced sideways toward the stairs, a faint, imperceptible smirk creeping onto his face before looking back at the captain.
"Well, George, the streets of New York are turning into a war zone, and the police can't keep up. Today he did what he had to do to protect me and my family. Personally, I have no complaints about his methods," Ben replied, subtly defending me with his words.
Fully trusting Ben due to their long-standing friendship, George ordered his officers to take the criminal and his weapon away while he took my aunt and uncle's statements right there in the living room. About an hour passed before the patrols finally rolled out.
During those eternal sixty minutes, I just sat on the edge of my bed, breaking into a cold sweat with my heart in my throat. I was genuinely terrified. Panic was eating away at me because I knew, with absolute certainty, that I had screwed up monumentally. "I haven't even been Spider-Man for a damn month. Nineteen days! I must be the only dumbass in the entire fucking multiverse to get his secret identity busted in record time," I thought, slamming my hands over my head as I paced circles around my room.
To make things worse, the silence in my head shattered. When George Stacy gave the order to leave, the chibi versions materialized floating over my desk.
"Right on time for the funeral of our secret identity!" the original mini Peter cheered, doing backflips in the air while holding a sign that read "Guinness World Record for Incompetence." Beside him, the college chibi was laughing his ass off, leaning against my nightstand lamp. "Spectacular! The mystery lasted a whopping nineteen days. You're an idiot, you used to make fun of Tom Holland because he told his secret to half the world, but at least it took that kid a couple of movies to screw up! You got busted before finishing your first month." The little angel Peter sat on my shoulder, patting my cheek with fake pity. "Imagine what people from our world would be saying if they saw this. They'd vote you the worst transmigrator in history."
Both chibis high-fived in perfect complicity and sat down together staring at the door, mocking my misery while waiting for the inevitable outcome.
It was then that I heard Uncle Ben's footsteps approaching my door. When the door swung open, Uncle Ben walked in and locked it behind him, looking at me with a knowing smirk that froze my nerves, and stood right in front of me.
"Uncle Ben... I... I'd better just show you," I started to say, bracing myself for a moral lecture of biblical proportions. I knew it was ridiculous to keep hiding the truth from the man who had called me by my name in the middle of the living room.
I showed him the false bottom of my closet, revealing the pistols, the assault rifles, and the thousands of dollars in cash expropriated from the mobs. I told him about my powers and my plan to clean up New York's underworld on my own terms. I was ready for a long lecture on morality and responsibility.
Instead, Uncle Ben stared at the arsenal in silence for a moment. Then, he walked over to the closet and pulled out an old, olive-drab metal trunk that I had seen dozens of times since my arrival in this world but had never bothered to open. When he lifted the lid, a memory from the past struck my mind.
Start of Flashback: March 29th, 2000.
I was only seven years old. I had been rummaging through the attic, looking for old Captain America comics that Uncle Ben had promised me were stored somewhere. Instead, my hands stumbled upon a heavy, cold olive-drab metal trunk. When I managed to lift the heavy lid, my eyes widened.
Inside lay an impeccably folded military uniform from the Vietnam era, Military Police patches, and a merit medal engraved with the name Benjamin Parker. But that wasn't the only thing. At the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a worn canvas, rested a World War II steel helmet alongside an old airborne forces uniform. They belonged to my grandfather, who poetically was also named Peter Parker and had fought as a soldier on the European front, surviving the hell of the Ardennes according to a letter I found in the uniform.
When Uncle Ben walked into the attic and caught me with my hands in the trunk, he sat down beside me on the dusty floorboards, took my grandfather's helmet between his hands with respect, ruffled my hair, and with a soft voice, gave me the advice that would change my life: "Peter, your grandfather and I saw horrible things, but we learned that when you have the strength to make a difference, your biggest responsibility in this world is to look out for your own, no matter the cost or what you have to do to achieve it. Your father knew that very well."
End of Flashback.
Back in the present, the impact of the memory left me buffering for a second. Much like when Otto Octavius took control of Peter Parker's body during his time as the Superior Spider-Man, I was a fusion between my past-life consciousness and the original Peter Parker of this world. Or at least that's what I thought, since I had access to the memories of both lives, but the personality running the show was the one from my past life. However, my own arrogance as a "future-knower" had stopped me from looking into this universe's Peter's memories, mistakenly assuming I already knew most of the lore from the movies and shows and that there was nothing interesting in those memories. "What a genius you are, you know how many clones of Peter Parker can exist in the future, but you had no idea your grandpa killed Nazis," I internally berated myself for that stupidity.
Uncle Ben interrupted my thoughts, letting out a short laugh as he looked at my arsenal and then his own uniform.
"Well... this definitely wasn't what I had in mind when I gave you that advice," the old man admitted, wearing a proud smile that caught me completely by surprise. "But I want you to be honest with me, Peter. Why are you doing this? Why did you decide to use whatever happened to you to get into all of this?"
I stared at him in silence, recalculating at top speed. I wasn't about to give him a moral lecture or get philosophical. So I decided to go with the most logical path, shamelessly stealing Daredevil's background from the show I remembered from my past life.
"After the bite... my senses were pushed to the limit, Ben," I confessed. "It's not just the strength or being able to crawl on walls. I can hear things others can't. The noise of the city was drilling into my head. I could hear the screams in the alleys, the robberies, the violence... and it just reached a point where I couldn't take the headache anymore, knowing what was happening and just standing there with my arms crossed doing nothing."
Uncle Ben stared at me for a few seconds before speaking.
"I understand" he said, patting my shoulder. "You've been doing good, kid. You have my word, I'll cover you with your aunt."
With that, we shook hands, and I felt a bit of liberation for the first time since I arrived in this world. The canon had gone straight out the window, my uncle was alive, and now he had become my partner and my future alibi with Aunt May.