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

Issue 36 - End of the Beginning

I could barely see straight.

Everything was noise and light and heat, the kind that crawls into your skull and rattles around. The rooftop felt like it was tilting, like the whole city had decided to lean in and watch me fall over properly. My hands twitched on instinct, the webs on my knuckles sticking and pulling as my fingers curled.

Kraven's voice slid into my ear like poison in a velvet bottle.

"They see you now," he murmured. "They see you for what you truly are."

Then he threw me.

Not gently. Not like a person. Like a broken prop.

I hit the roof and rolled, grit scraping my cheek, blood smearing across concrete. Reporters gasped. Cameras whirred. The helicopter light swept over me again and again like it was trying to burn the image into the sky.

Across the roof, Jonah stood with his cigar like he'd been carved there. His face was unreadable. The kind of look a man wears when something stops being a headline and starts being... real.

My lungs seized. I coughed, and it tasted like pennies.

"Run," I croaked. My voice came out wrong, like it belonged to somebody else. "Get off the roof."

Nobody moved.

Of course they didn't. This was a story to them. A spectacle. A live broadcast. The moment Spider Man became a cautionary tale.

Kraven stepped in close, towering, all shadow and teeth. "Get up," he ordered, like I was a dog he'd kicked and expected to heel. "Make this a hunt worth remembering. Show them the death of Spider Man."

My vision swam. I could have stayed down. I should have stayed down.

But my body refused.

I dragged myself up, trembling. I fired webbing onto my open cut and pulled it tight, sealing it like a crude stitch. It burned, sharp and immediate. Then I wrapped my hands, layer after layer, webbing padding across my knuckles and palms. Not pretty. Not clever. Just enough to keep my bones from shattering on the first real hit.

I sucked in a breath that hurt and lifted my head.

Kraven smiled.

I screamed and swung.

It was ugly. Desperate. Pure animal panic dressed up as a punch. I threw everything I had, every ounce of rage, fear, humiliation, and pain.

Kraven stepped aside like he was dodging a child with a foam sword.

I landed a hit anyway. Then another. Then another.

His head snapped back with each one, and he laughed. Actually laughed. Like I was entertaining him.

"Is that all you have?" he asked, delighted. "After all that talk of responsibility. After all that posturing."

My stomach sank.

My punches always did something. They always mattered, even if it was just enough to create space, enough to breathe, enough to think.

These felt like punching a wall and hoping it would apologise.

Kraven caught my wrist mid swing, lifted me like I weighed nothing, and threw me down again. The impact rattled my teeth. I tried to rise, again and again, every movement slower, heavier, like gravity had doubled just to spite me.

Then he hit me.

Not with a fist.

With a paw.

His arm shifted, thickening, fur and muscle snapping into place. A lion's paw came down into my ribs and the world flashed white. Another blow landed and the roof seemed to leap up to meet me. I stumbled backwards, boots skidding, coughing so hard I thought my throat would rip.