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

Issue 56 - The Girl Who Played Villain Part 1

Penelope planted her feet like she was rooting herself into the planet, chin up, eyes blazing with the kind of confidence you only get when you've never been properly humbled by physics.

"Alright!" she barked, throwing her hands wide. "You wanna see my ultimate move?! Fine!"

She sucked in a breath like a stage actress about to die dramatically.

"COLLAPSING CASTLE OF THE HIGH MOON!"

And the forest answered.

Sand erupted from the ground in a roaring wall, a rushing, shredding tide that chewed through undergrowth and snapped thin trees like toothpicks. It wasn't just a wave. It was a tantrum with mass and momentum, a desert trying to be an ocean.

Penelope threw her arms up, grinning like she'd just solved villainy.

"I never get why people don't just throw out their killer move right away!" she shouted over the noise. "Like, hello?! End it fast!"

The sand tsunami surged closer, swallowing the path between us.

I stared it down, and for a second, the old part of me that liked jokes tried to whisper something stupid like, I hate the beach.

But the suit didn't joke.

The black moved, alive on my skin, and tendrils punched down into the earth like anchors.

Then they launched.

The ground pushed back, and I shot into the air, high enough that the sand wave passed underneath me like a roaring, hungry animal.

For a moment, it was quiet up there. Just wind and sunset light and the distant screams of my classmates getting bullied by dirt monsters. I looked down and saw Penelope craning her neck, eyes wide.

She recovered fast, face twisting into forced confidence.

"Hah!" she yelled. "Perfect! You're exactly where I want you! Wide open!"

"Sure," I muttered.

She whipped an arm forward. A sand pillar speared up, racing to meet me like a battering ram.

I let it come.

At the last second, I caught the tip with one hand.

The impact jolted through my shoulder, but the suit braced me, and I flipped, using the pillar like a rail. My shoes hit the sand, and I skated down it, sliding towards her at full speed like the dumbest surf lesson imaginable.

Penelope's confidence evaporated in real time.

"W-Wait, hold on, that's not fair—"

I landed into her with a shoulder check that sent her tumbling backwards into the dirt. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough to make a point.

Fear finally made it through her tough-girl act. I saw it in the way her eyes flicked around like she was looking for an exit that didn't involve admitting she'd started something she couldn't finish.

She scrambled up and threw sand spikes, sand fists, sand everything. Rapid-fire. Desperate.

And I... didn't even need to think.

My body moved before the attacks fully formed. My Spider-Sense guided the angles. The suit swatted one spike aside with a tendril, snagged another, snapped it in half like it was a breadstick.

She swung again, breath coming fast, arms shaking.

I fired a web.

It plastered right across her face.