when the hero comes to the one who believes in him¹

CHAPTER FOUR

Sitting on the rooftop of one of the buildings in central Manhattan, Peter pondered.  Once, at the dawn of his career as Spider-Man, he came to the Chrysler Building to talk out loud with the gargoyles that guard the peace of the inhabitants of the house.  He loved that place, often sharing with him his problems, stories, experiences, asking the silent guards for advice and thinking about what Uncle Ben would have done in his place.  This helped the young man understand how to live and what to do next, what goals to set for himself ...

Now that Peter was twenty-two, not seventeen, he had moved away from the habit of interacting with gargoyles, preferring to look at New York.  Lazily sucking a strawberry milkshake into a tube and munching on a hamburger, the guy looked at the lights that adorned the tallest buildings in New York, at the ruins of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed almost ten years ago, and has not yet been rebuilt, at the distant lights of Long Island  - Island, where the native area of ​​Peter was located, for everything that he defended every day, selflessly giving himself to this city.  Giving all of himself, despite the death of his beloved, studying at the university, the danger to his own carcass, which was the Kingpin and his gang of thugs, the hatred of the owner of The Daily Bugle, who declared Spider-Man his personal enemy number one.  But he just wanted to live, helping those who needed it ... but as always, fate always had its own plans for any person, as a result, the young man went through Hell, like Dante, led by Virgil, and ended up in Purgatory, where  a lot of things hurt him, forcing him to clench his teeth and think about that "higher justice" about which the priests spoke.

Sighing and putting the trash in a plastic cocktail cup, Peter got up from the roof and looked into the distance.  Despite the fact that now it was only the middle of spring and the temperature at night did not reach fifteen degrees Celsius, the young man sometimes liked to sit on the roof, pensively looking at the city, which had taken away everything that was dear to him.  It was his little fetish, which no one knew about, at these moments he turned off the phone, chewing a hamburger, sipping a milkshake and enjoying the silence.  The buildings of lower Manhattan were silent at night, few people visited here, since the downtown area mostly lived only during the day, remaining deserted and forgotten at night, except for Wall Street, where life was always in full swing.

“Look who we have here,” a quiet, slightly ironic voice, which rang out behind the guy, was familiar to Peter that the truth did not mean the fact that the young man was glad to see / hear the speaker.  About two years ago, a company of mercenaries led by Silver Sablinova arrived in New York looking for their target - a young chemist who stole one of the Silver Sable International projects.  As a result, this led to a week-long voyage in New York, clashes with the police, villains and city defenders, as well as the promise of a short blonde model with a pleasant appearance.  True, not many models could fight like this girl, but the ruler of Simkaria did not go in open clothes, preferring to hide the gifts of nature under a cloak and some kind of body armor.  “Is it the Magnificent Spider-Man himself, dressed in a new suit and fighting better than before?”

“I'm glad to see you too, White Angel” Pete said with a chuckle. “Would you like to take a walk?  I'm even ready to walk you, baby.”

“Your jokes still suck, Spider,” said grimacing, looking at the Pete.  Following a glance at the guy's figure, lingering slightly on the bulge in the groin, Sablinova looked at the young man again.  “I thought I told you to change?  You look like a budding exhibitionist!”

“You will not believe it, but I still wonder why the hell did you cross the Atlantic again?” habitually not paying attention to negative reviews about his clothes, said the guy.  Many women, especially among those who tried to protect the "moral character of the city" issued such criticism, but as Gwen once said, "they just envy that this body does not belong to them."  “It seems that when you got on the plane, you said something like: "And my legs will no longer be in this nightmare city."  Or am I confusing something?”