Ultra Responsibility (My Hero Academia X Spider-Man Reader)

Issue 27 - The Boy With Ambition to Power the Sun Part 2

One moment can change your life. One moment you're saving the day, getting the girl, doing good.
Next, it's cold.
The next smoke and sirens fill the air.
The next taste on my tongue.
The next is me.

I'm on my knees on cracked pavement, lungs dragging air like they're hauling bricks. My costume is torn open at the shoulder, threads hanging loose like spider silk that forgot how to stick. One glove is split down the seam, and my fingers are slick.

Red slick.

Not mine.

My hands are shaking so hard it feels like my bones are trying to jump out and sprint away without me.

I stare down at my palms and my brain refuses to label what I'm seeing. Like if I don't name it, it isn't real.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It's such a small sound for something that feels this huge.

My mask is on the floor in front of me, half crumpled, the lenses smeared. I can see my own reflection in them if I tilt my head, warped and wrong. A kid in ripped fabric with blood on his hands.

Not a hero.

Not anything I recognize.

My stomach lurched.

I stared at my hands. I opened them, closed them. Like if I did it enough times, I'd wake up.

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

It wasn't supposed to go like anything.

Somewhere behind me, footsteps crunched over gravel.

Not running. Not panicked. Controlled.

A voice cut through the ringing in my ears.

"Spider-Man!"

I flinched so hard my shoulders jerked.

Another step. Then another. Shadows stretched across the ground, long and sharp under the streetlight. I didn't turn around. I couldn't. I didn't want to see their faces. I didn't want to see what they'd see when they looked at me.

"Put your hands up!" the same voice barked. "Now!"

My throat tightened.

There was a click. Metal. A gun being raised, or a baton, or cuffs. Something official. Something that meant the line had finally been drawn and I'd sprinted right over it with my eyes shut.

I lifted my hands anyway.

Slow. Shaking.

Blood slid down my wrists as I raised them, dripping off my fingertips like the world's worst countdown.

Drip.

Drip.

"Keep them where I can see them."

I swallowed hard, the sound loud inside my mask. My heart was punching my ribs, desperate to escape my body and go live somewhere quieter.

I turned my head just enough to catch them in the corner of my eye. Two officers. Maybe three. One had his radio up. Their stance said they'd done this before. Their faces said they hadn't expected it to look like this.

Like me.

Like a kid in a ripped costume with blood on his hands.

One of them took a cautious step closer. "On your knees."

I was already on the ground. My knees were already scraped raw. But I shifted anyway, lowering myself further like I could make myself smaller and somehow undo what had happened.