As Peter listened to his brother, the shock in his heart slowly gave way to something else.
Emotion.
He looked at the man in front of him, tall, invincible, yet willing to spend more than a decade pretending to be ordinary just to protect the family.
And suddenly Peter understood why, tonight, his brother had descended beneath the Daily Bugle like a god.
Because Uncle Ben had been there.
Because his family had been there.
Thinking about that, emotional as ever, Peter's eyes filled with tears.
"Clark... you really didn't have to carry all of that by yourself. Now I have powers too. I can fight beside you."
"I know you can, Peter. And Uncle Ben and Aunt May would be proud of you. All of you have what it takes to become great heroes."
Clark said it like an old man giving life advice.
"But we need three rules between us. First, if it's something like tonight, military-grade heavy weapons, or any future disaster on a truly catastrophic scale, I handle it. You help me, but I take point. Second, your battlefield is the street. You go after the gangs lurking in the dark and ordinary criminals, but under no circumstances do you start killing people recklessly. Third, protect your masks. No one can ever know who Spider-Man really is."
He paused, then added dryly:
"After all, I'm basically an illegal refugee who escaped from another planet. S.H.I.E.L.D. already knows I exist. If you get exposed too, then I guess we'll all have to start colonizing Mars."
"Yes! But wait, Clark... Spider-Man? You mean us?" Peter asked. He actually liked the name. They still didn't have real hero names yet.
"Yeah. It fits you, doesn't it? Unless you hate it?"
"No, I like it. I mean, our powers came from being bitten by Oscorp spiders, and the suits fit the theme too, so Spider-Man works perfectly."
The next morning, the sun over New York was dazzlingly bright. Maybe Clark's stunt the night before had torn the clouds apart.
But for New York's political class and criminal underworld, today was a day of reckoning.
Possibly worse.
The moment the newsstands across the city opened, they were mobbed by frantic customers.
All of New York was staring at the fresh morning edition of the Daily Bugle.
Jameson, as editor-in-chief, had personally supervised the printing through the entire night. He had stayed up till dawn, and even handed out nearly a thousand dollars to everyone working there as a bonus for the last few brutal days.
As for Tony Stark's still-recent return, that story had already been shoved into some forgotten corner.
No one had time for that now.
Today's front page took up the entire paper.
No ads.
No celebrity gossip.
Nothing fake.
On the left side were several photos, the hard evidence Eddie had nearly died to obtain: Sal's transaction with Scorpion, along with images tracing some of the money flow.
On the right was a blurry but overwhelming photo.
Ben had taken it from above.
It showed Clark in blue, the S on his chest visible, rising from the crater and launching straight into the sky, while the street below was littered with defeated attackers.
Above both sets of images was the headline of the day:
The Judgment of New York: The Fall of a Criminal Empire and the God Who Fell from the Sky
Byline: Benjamin Franklin Parker
The paper exploded across America the moment it hit the streets.
Everyone who got a copy was talking about it.
"Did you see it?! Did you see it?! I told you this world had superheroes!" a young man shouted in the street, waving the paper overhead like a maniac. Clearly a comic-book fanatic.
"My God, the 'S' man is real! He took down an army by himself!"
"The real story's on the left! Wilson Fisk, that respectable philanthropist, is actually New York's biggest arms trafficker and mob boss?!"
And while the entire public was erupting into debate—
At NYPD headquarters, George Stacy stood in the conference room. He hadn't slept all night.
He slammed that morning's Daily Bugle down on the table and roared at the dozens of captains, inspectors, and SWAT commanders assembled in front of him:
"We have the evidence now. If we still allow politicians who live off taxpayer money to block this operation today, then I'll arrest them myself! Anything less would dishonor this badge!"
Commissioner Stacy drew his pistol and racked the slide.
"Citywide search operations begin now! Based on the evidence in hand, seize every company tied to Fisk, every underground weapons cache in Brooklyn, and hit Hell's Kitchen with maximum force! If they resist, use lethal force immediately! Today, I want New York's underworld torn apart and rebuilt from the ground up!"
He pointed the gun downward and shouted:
"If anything goes wrong, the responsibility is mine! The glory belongs to all of you!"
"YES, SIR!"
Within minutes, the commanders were moving.
And before the gangs could even react, the NYPD launched a sweep so fast it shattered most of Fisk's operations in a single morning.
They even caught Phineas Mason, the man known as the Tinkerer, while he was trying to escape through the sewers and flee the state. George Stacy personally led the team that arrested him.
Thousands upon thousands of pieces of high-tech scrap, half-finished weapons, and illegal equipment were seized and stacked in public display for the citizens of New York to see.
But when George Stacy led a full team into Fisk Tower and stormed Kingpin's office, he found nothing.
Only a handful of elite lawyers in expensive suits were waiting inside.
"Commissioner Stacy," one of them said, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses with a tone of polished arrogance, "my client, Mr. Wilson Fisk, is currently in Europe on a charitable visit. As for the baseless accusations made in both the press and by your department, Mr. Fisk is shocked and deeply offended. Certain executives in a few of his subsidiaries may indeed have engaged in improper conduct, but none of that has any connection whatsoever to Mr. Fisk personally."
George gritted his teeth.
He knew exactly what had happened.
The moment things turned bad, Kingpin had fled the country. He had abandoned his lower-level men, shifted legal ownership onto scapegoats, and used his money and connections to carve himself cleanly out of the swamp.
Sometimes the law looked painfully weak in front of capital.
George stepped close to the lawyer, so close their faces were nearly touching, and spoke one word at a time.
"Go back and tell your boss this."
"Half his empire is already gone."
"He'd better stay out of New York forever."
"Because if he ever comes back, I swear to God, I'll be the one putting the cuffs on him myself."