𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼- 𝓜𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓮𝓵 𝓞'𝓗𝓪𝓻𝓪

Fall From the Iron Sky

There was no nice way to say it.

Miguel fought like an animal. On all fours,
muscles rippling as he tore up the wall. His claws ripped and his fangs glinted in the reddish light. It was unnerving.

Higher up the wall, a spider-man recruit scuttled away, looking less like a spider and more like the panicked fly twitching in the web.

The recruit had been stupid enough to volunteer when Jessica had suggested the recruits spar each other.

"No." Miguel had shaken his head irritably. "It's too soon for that, I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"But I want to spar," the recruit had complained, addressing Miguel with a flippant yawn. "I think Jessica's right, we should."

"C'mere. What's your name?" Miguel's eyes narrowed, beckoning the recruit forward with an encouraging nod.

"Paxton Parker." Paxton's suit was the traditional bold red, with blue spots down the arms like runway lights.

"Paxton Parker," Miguel repeated slowly, sizing Paxton up the way he'd done to you yesterday. Much more quickly, though. "Alright, yeah, I'll let you spar." Just as Paxton crossed his arms with a lazy, smug grin, Miguel said, "Yeah. You'll spar me."

Now, in the heat of the sparring match, poor, terrified Paxton made a valiant effort to escape Miguel's slashes by web-slinging away.

Like a panther, Miguel pounced, colliding with Paxton mid-air and bowling him to the ground. Paxton rolled to his feet and landed a jab, but Miguel didn't flinch, as if the blow had been nothing but a raindrop on a tree trunk. His shoulder slammed into Paxton, who sprawled across the floor, his muscles smacking into the concrete, loud enough to leave a bruise.

Miguel stood over Paxton's crumpled form, chest heaving with heavy breaths. His narrowed eyes coasted over the crowd. Looking for something.

Then, he saw you. Clarity flooded his amber eyes, as if you'd been the one he was looking for. He steadily held your gaze, for a heartbeat too long. Two heartbeats too long. Three heartbeats too long.

Your eyes were the first to flicker away, your cheeks coloring. If Miguel O'Hara had scoured a crowded room for you, it couldn't mean anything good. He'd wanted to make sure that you'd witnessed his brutal victory.

When you glanced back up, you half-expected the force of his stare to still be burning on you. But the moment had fizzled out, and now he paced in front of the spider recruits.

"Anyone else?" Miguel boredly called, his massive hands resting on his tapered waist. Silence descended like a blanket of snow. You gladly melted into it. "That's what I thought."

"Let's move on," Jessica quickly hedged, with a light laugh. She patted Miguel on the shoulder the way you'd pet a menacing doberman who was all proud to catch a rabbit. "Today we'll be assessing your skill level. This training facility is called the Spider Center; it's perfectly engineered to practice your airborne agility."

Steel cables hung suspended from the ceiling, spun into gargantuan replicas of spiderwebs. Ledges and grips studded the towering red walls. Your fingers twitched, eager to crawl and swing and climb. Around you, everyone flexed their fingers and rocked on their toes. It felt like an aged-up jungle gym.

"Knock yourself out," Miguel said, surprising everyone with a slight smile at the eager reactions. He must have loved this room. "But we'll be watching. This is a test, so act like it."

Beside you, Arachnida shot you a quicksilver grin and launched into the air, clinging to the wall like a lizard. Her blond ponytail draped down her back. A whirl of blues and reds flashed around you as everyone swung up. You shot a web to one of the metallic spiderwebs, hauling yourself high into the air.

Beneath your hands, the metal felt cold, and you crawled along it on the balls of your feet and your fingers.

Jessica and Miguel shared a ledge, watching everyone leap and swing while occasionally pointing out recruits to each other. Jessica's legs dangled over the edge and Miguel's back leaned against the wall.

You noticed the black-and-blue spider-man who'd refused the wristband sticking to the wall without his mask on. Today, he didn't look belligerent and angry. He looked sickly and a little green.

As you swung toward him, he began spasming, morphing into colored, pixel-like squares. Glitching. He plummeted from his grip on the wall, knocking you off course and sending you spiraling.

Slightly annoyed, you launched out a web toward the metal spiderweb to recover. But it glanced off of the metal spiderweb, peeling away like cheap tape.

You shook your web slinger wristband in dismay, the wind shrieking by in your free-fall. A crack split your web-slinger, rivering straight down the middle. The glitching spider-man had broken it.

You tried again, panic mounting as each web shimmied uselessly away. You twisted in the air, your gaze desperately snagging on Jessica. Help, you mouthed, too breathless to scream. But her chin was tilted up, calling encouragingly to a spiderwoman doing a backflip. She didn't even see you. But Miguel did.

He watched your descent without any particular interest. His arms stayed relaxed and crossed over his chest. From his skeptical frown, you could tell he believed you were merely attempting a risky stunt. As you hurtled closer and closer to the ground, sudden understanding lit his eyes.

Without hesitation, he launched himself from the ledge, a jet-black bullet, so dark it looked blue in the light. Miguel crashed into you with a force that knocked the breath out of you. His arms curled around you. Expertly, he folded his body around yours to absorb the impact. As if he'd done this a million times before. He probably had.

Miguel grunted in pain as you both pounded into the concrete, the shock-wave of the impact rattling your skull even though Miguel took most of its brunt force.

You landed flush on top of him, your hands curled loosely against his chest. His heartbeat slammed against them through the thin film of his suit. His arms, which had locked you in a protective cage, immediately slid off your back. He propped himself up with his forearms.

"What   the hell was that?" Miguel coughed, blood trickling down the left side of his temple.