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

Issue 144 - From Me to You

Three days after Ultron fell, New York was still learning how to breathe.

Smoke remained above Manhattan, drifting between buildings in thin grey lines and carrying the smell of melted metal and wet concrete. Some streets had been cleared enough for emergency vehicles. Others remained buried beneath machines that would never open their red eyes again.

The city had survived.

Survival was only the beginning.

I held one side of a collapsed shopfront while firefighters pulled an elderly couple through the gap beneath it. My arms shook beneath the weight.

Star and Stripe's rule had disappeared shortly after the battle. The strength she had given me went with it, leaving behind every injury Ultron had forced me to ignore. My ribs were wrapped beneath a borrowed hoodie. Stitches ran along my left arm, and purple bruises covered most of the skin I could still see.

The doctor at the emergency shelter had told me to rest.

I had asked if moving rubble counted as resting.

He had threatened to sedate me.

That was why I had left before he found anything sharp.

"Clear!" one of the firefighters shouted.

I lowered the remains of the wall. My shoulder protested before the concrete reached the ground.

The elderly woman stood beneath a silver emergency blanket. Blood covered one side of her face, but she pushed past the paramedic and caught both of my hands.

"Thank you, Spider-Man."

The temporary mask moved when I smiled. Ms Marvel had found it inside what remained of a costume shop. It was little more than red cloth with two uneven holes cut around my eyes. Someone at the relief centre had drawn black lines across it with a permanent marker.

The rest of my outfit consisted of a dark-blue hoodie, sweatpants and shoes one size too large. It was not my best look.

It was still Spider-Man.

"Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen the bill."

The woman stared at me.

"I'm joking."

Her husband looked at the ruined building behind us. "She doesn't like jokes."

"I'm beginning to understand that."

The woman pulled me down and kissed the side of my mask before the firefighters led them away.

One of them passed me with a grin. "Careful, kid. That's how it starts."

"How what starts?"

He kept walking.

Nobody answered me.

I decided I did not want to know.

A crash came from farther down the street. Three men ran from a community centre carrying a portable generator between them. Another followed with two boxes of bottled water stacked against his chest.

People called after them, but the thieves continued towards a van parked across the pavement. The one nearest the driver's door saw me.

His face fell. "Seriously?"

"I was about to say the same thing."

He dropped his side of the generator and reached beneath his jacket. My Spider-Sense warned me before the pistol appeared.

A web covered his hand, trapping the weapon inside his coat. He pulled the trigger.

Something exploded beneath the fabric.