Spider-Man: Earth-9576

Chapter 8: Letdown

(A week later...)

A businessman on his phone walked into a seemingly empty crosswalk, too engrossed in the call he was currently on to be aware of his surroundings.

That all changed in an instant, as something about the size and density of a softball hit him square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him as he fell back onto the sidewalk behind him. In that same instant, a large truck sped by, with a red and black figure swinging from a web close behind.

"Sorry, man!", Spider-Man called from above the truck, going back to attempting to slow down the runaway truck. The driver was still panicking as he futilely attempted to apply the brakes which were, at this point, obviously broken.

"Okay, bud, I'm gonna need you to just relax and trust me here, we're gonna be fine!", he said reassuringly to the driver as he hung off the side of the door.

The hero shot a large web-net in the gap of an alley. Seconds later, the driver flew into it, making the net bounced back and forth a couple times, but the civilian man was still safely stuck to it.

"Okay, now for this hunk of metal...", the webslinger muttered, vaulting over to the front grille of the truck, planting his feet to it before shooting webs down at the rapidly moving street, just inside the tires. "If I can gum up the axles, and stick 'em to the road, it might slow this battering ram down before it bulldozes through traffic...", he mused, emptying the web-shooters under the truck.

It felt like it was working, he could feel as much, and he looked backwards over his shoulder. "Yikes!", he exclaimed, just as he flipped onto the hood, avoiding the front corner of a cab that hadn't stopped in time to avoid the truck.

He jumped back down, this time pressing his back to the truck, his hands at either side while shooting more webbing at the asphalt below, with his feet trying to slow them faster.

It wasn't going to be quick enough, he saw, as the truck was still hurtling towards a crosswalk of panicked civilians, most of whom had gotten clear, but in the middle, one of them had tripped stumbled into a woman and her young child, all three of them in his path, still dazed and knocked over.

He couldn't stop it in time.

Suddenly, he felt the piercing ring of his spider-sense in his head, right before a web-line stuck to the first civilian, and yanked him a few feet off the ground, and out of the way, on the side of the street.

There was a flash of white in the corner of Spider-Man's eye, as the mother and her kid were both webbed too, and pulled across the pavement to the side as well, when a second later, he and the multiple-ton truck behind him moved over the spot where they'd been.

He'd glanced over at who had mysteriously saved him, but the white streak was gone somewhere else already. He then felt the truck slowing down even more noticeably, and eventually stopping about halfway down that block.

What the hero hadn't seen, was the stranger had jumped behind the runaway vehicle, and shot webs onto the back of it, planting their feet as they attempted to do the same as he was on the other end.

The red-suited vigilante collapsed to his hands and knees while panting in exhaustion, sighed in relief that the smaller crisis had been averted, with nobody being too badly hurt in the process. Looking up at his surroundings, he saw the group of bystanders cheering and applauding the save.

He stood, giving them an awkward wave as they responded to the save. It was then that he noticed, not all of them were looking at him, but a truck's length away from him. That then reminded him of the quick white-suited figure that had moved in front of him and disappeared, using what looked like webbing similar to his.