Guilty By Association

1

The air was humid and musty in a dead end alleyway, nothing but the pitter patter of tiny rodent footsteps decorated its wet pavements. The busy noises in the streets were muffled by distance and the concrete brick walls of buildings long abandoned to decay. Suddenly, to the audience of no one, a rift in the plane of reality opened, streaks of light swirling clockwise brought the rubble and trash pieces levitating off the ground for a mere four seconds.The portal had spat out a boy, beaten and spent with nothing to show for it other than the pain in his face, the heaving of his chest, and the tears in his eyes.
The night had ended with one more person added to the population of London.

-

Hobie Brown had run with his identity as Spider-Punk for eight whole years. A gig not a lot would take to be as difficult as it was.
So much has happened since the fateful night the radioactive bug from the trash had bit him. He'd made several more enemies than friends, performed for shows, and managed to secure a tiny boat as a humble abode underneath the reem London bridges. The job was taxing, demanding to say the least, but it gave him something to do other than seeth angrily at the pompous toffs that ran the place. And lo and behold, his career did capture a massive success down the line after having beheaded that fascist auto-crat clean with his guitar.

Things had calmed down after Osborne was guillotined. Only a handful of petty street-punks running amok with unusually high-tech weapons to keep him occupied—nothing the others couldn't handle by themselves. Captain Anarchy was pushing his luck at their whole 'friendship' arrangement and had started to bother him about going on a break, to take a leave from his duties. That he, Riri, Rick, and the rest of the band would take care of London well enough for Hobie to take a couple of months off.

He'd thought about it genuinely for five whole seconds today before dismissing it flat and going on his daily patrol.
Not much went on these days, but it still felt awfully good to swing around sooty structures he'd associate with the word 'home'.

"Oh? Tough aren't we, pretty boy?" An extremely condescending and puncheable voice grazed his eardrums from one of the turns in the less common paths.

"I don't wanna hurt you. Just leave me alone. Please." A younger male voice replied in a tone that wasn't begging as much as it was tired, and Hobie had made his way to the scene, knowing it was going to go ugly real quick.

There he saw a large, clearly intoxicated man towering over a boy maybe a few years younger than him. "You're gonna have to do a lot more than that to get me off your case, beautiful."

"I am serious, man. I can bash your skull in with one hand if you don't get off right now." The voice had started more agitated and tipped. "Oh, but I love it when pretty flowers like you pretend to be so tough. Turns me on."
The disgusting geezer had raised his hand to touch the boy, and Hobie had realized he'd watched enough and done so less, throwing his web on the thug's hand and flinging him back to a wall. The guy's entire backside hit the concrete with a loud thud.

"You don't want to do that, wanker."

The thug's eyes were ridden with fear at him dolled up in his complete attire, infamous mask and all, and had only said his name to himself before running off, terrified.

Once sure the perpetrator had gone, he made his way to the shaken boy staring at him with perhaps the widest eyes to contest his spider-mask with.

"Are you okay, mate? He didn't get to hurt you?"
He leveled his head with his', taking a good look at face to scan for injury. Nothing seemed a-miss. His hair looked perfectly unruffled, hanging more on one side than the other, and his skin remained unbruised. The stranger looked perfectly fine if not for the wild-eyed look on his face, like he'd seen a ghost. "Spider-Punk." The stranger said, asking, and he nodded. "That's a name I can never quite get used to, but yes. That is what I am called."