TROUBLE, peter parker

xii. the ideal first date

Why Maya ended up climbing down into a sewer at night was something she did not want to have to explain to anyone.

She had been perched atop the same bridge the lizard had attacked before, though she realized it was a bit stupid to hope for the same scenario to unfold again. She was planning on getting down and going home when she remembered her brother had loved lizards when he was younger and would always pause while walking (much to the annoyance of everyone else) just to watch some go into the sewers.

And that was how she found herself in the sewer with a go-pro video camera inconspicuously on her.

The trickier part was getting around. There got to a certain point where the walls were more mainly covered in cement and finding any metal to bind to was getting sparse.

Because of this, she had to embarrassingly climb back out of her sewer, find a sturdy trash can lid made of metal, and crawl back into the sewer. Luckily, only a drunkard saw her and didn't even seem bothered.

Maya stood atop the metal lid, lifting it and cruising it along the air with her mind while riding on it as if it were a skateboard. She was moving along the pipe slowly, following the direction of the water to try and figure out where to even start searching, one hand was grasping onto the lid in front of her as she crouched down, also looking down at the webs below her.

They were made too straight, long, and thick to be from an average-sized spider, and following her suspicions, she stooped a little lower on her lid, plucking one of them. The sound reverberated a bit in a volume that her ears wouldn't have picked up on if she wasn't paying attention.

Hearing the sound of the water rushing and falling, she picked up the pace. As soon as she saw where the tunnels met, all the web lines met, and the familiar body lying on top of it, she also felt something shoot out at her. Maya was sent flying off her trash can lid board and pinned to the wall by the all-too-familiar webbing.

As she collected her transportation, she saw her attacker briskly pull on his mask and she mentally slapped herself for not paying attention and trying to get a good look at his face. Maybe her go-pro footage would reveal it later.

"Sorry," he said in a hushed tone.

She muttered out something along the lines of, "It's fine," as she got out a random knife and started weaving it through the webbing.

It was only when they both heard the sound of another web string reverberating that both their heads perked up and she stopped, paying more attention to whatever was approaching.

As more and more strings started vibrating, Maya continued to cut herself out, clasping her knife in her hand and crouching back onto her makeshift hoverboard. She moved into the same opening that Spider-Man was residing in, though she stayed at the side of the wall rather than right in the middle, hoping to be able to get all angles.

The tension went down when it was only a small lizard climbing along the line, though it became a bit more unnerving when several lizards started coming out from all directions, making their way to the middle, forcing Spider-Man to reorient himself on his webbing.

The lizards started all going in the same direction. Spider-Man and Maya exchanged a look, though she could only read his comic-like mask eyes while he could see her actual eyes, expressing confusion, suspicion, tension, and all that jazz.

"What is this?" Maya muttered to herself.

As Spider-Man started slowly crawling to follow the lizards, Maya scanned her surroundings again and barely allowed any hesitation when she saw the giant lizard clinging onto the pipe above Spider-Man.