Masked ||Peter Parker||

Prologue

The day that Peter found out that there was a new superhero in town had already been pretty bad. He'd been on his way to school that morning when he'd managed to hear about a robbery happening downtown. He quickly slid on his costume, and swung his way over to where the robbery was taken place. It didn't take long before he had the two robbers covered in webs, and then he was off to school. However, with his little detour, he was running late for school. By the time he finally got to school, the bell had rung fifteen minutes prior.

He rushed into the office, and started to profusely apologize to the secretary.

"Look, I'm so sorry for being late! I was going to ride my bike, but someone popped the tire, so I had to run to school, and I live all the way across town. I'm sorry."

The secretary, Mrs. Fairchild, looked at him with the most bored expression on her face. "This is the third time this week, Mr. Parker," she told the boy. "Last time, it was because you were late for the bus. And if I remember correctly, you've already told us that your tire got popped a couple weeks ago. You must live in a pretty bad part of the neighborhood if your tire gets popped this much. Either that, or you just think it's funny playing games, and being late for school."

"Please," Peter begged. "I'm sorry for being late. I just, you can't tell my Aunt May! She'd be disappointed. I'll try not to let it happen again."

Mrs. Fairchild's blue eyes softened a bit. "I'll let it slide this time, Mr. Parker. But, don't be late again, or else I'll have to give you detention."

Peter nodded his head. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Fairchild." With that, he quickly left the office, and headed towards his locker.

The school day was pretty much okay though, except for the bullies picking on him, although that was pretty much normal and to be expected. What made everything worse though, happened during lunch.

Normally, when it came to lunch, he pretty much sat by himself. He was sure he could sit by others, if he so chose too, but he wasn't much of a fan of most of the kids in the school. None of them ever jumped to help him out, so why should he be friends with them? However, this was the day that he was going to actually sit with someone, and that someone was going to be the lovely Erika Smith.

Erika had just transferred to the school that year, and Peter actually adored her. She was an extremely bright young lady, and she was funny too. Or at least, he assumed she was, considering how her best friend, a boy named Gerald Henley was always laughing when Erika spoke. She'd never spoken a word to Peter, and he could understand why. It wasn't like he was all that popular. His only friend was Harry Osbourne, who had a different lunch than him anyways, and they almost never saw each other in school because of their vastly different schedules.

However, Erika was extremely popular. She wasn't on any sport teams or anything, but the other students seemed to flock to her like crazy. Peter had a funny feeling that she didn't particularly enjoy being popular however, as normally she tried to stick with just hanging out with Gerald, and another girl by the name of Julia Anderson.

After Peter grabbed his lunch, he made his way over to the table where Erika, Julia, and Gerald were all sitting, and talking about something. Erika was showing her two friends something that Peter couldn't see. He was busy trying to keep his mind calm, knowing that what he was about to do could very well change his whole world, for better or worse, that he didn't feel his spidey-sense tingling from danger until it was too late.

One moment he was walking, almost making it to Erika's table, and the next, he was laying face-down on the ground, his face full of his chicken and potatoes. Standing near him was the guy who'd tripped him. Needless to say, he felt extremely embarrassed.

It was made worse, when Gerald looked up from his conversation with Erika and Julia, and started laughing, which caused Erika to look behind her. Her hand instantly went over her mouth, as it was clear to Peter that she was trying not to laugh.

Too embarrassed to stick around, Peter quickly pushed himself off the ground, and rushed out of the cafeteria, the image of Erika laughing at him burned in his brain. That was even worse than him falling, because everyone else could've laughed at him, and he would've been fine, had Erika not of. But because she had, it had made everything ten times worse.

Ignoring the pang of hunger in his stomach, he hid in the bathroom for the rest of lunch.

So, yes. His day had already been completely horrible, by the time he got out and was making his normal rounds as Spider-Man, to make sure nothing bad was happening in the city. Peter was hiding out by a cop car, listening to the radio to see if there was anything going on, when he heard about the bank robbers. Why there were so many robberies going on lately, he had no idea. But, he refused to let anyone get away with crime in his city.

Web-slinging himself to the scene of the crime, Peter found himself actually happy that there was a crime going on right now. He could use a bad guy or two to beat up on right now, to take his frustrations about his bad day out on. It was a very therapeutic way to deal with his anger, it wasn't like he wouldn't of dealt with them anyways. And they kind of deserved it for being criminals.

And that was why he felt anger radiating off of him when he got to the scene, and found some other person dressed in a superhero costume, and flinging literal dirt and earth at the criminal. From his position perched on top of a building on the opposite side of the street, he couldn't tell much about the other superhero. He could make out a green suit that covered the person's head, and went all the way down to their feet. That meant it wasn't a fully onesie, like his suit was. The person hadn't turned his direction yet, so he couldn't see anything about their front.

He found himself watching as the new superhero seemingly controlled the earth and made it wrap around the criminal, covering everything but their head. Then, the new superhero turned around, and Peter caught sight of their front side finally. His jaw dropped when he realized that the person was a girl. It wasn't that he thought girls couldn't be heroes, it was just that he hadn't been expecting one to show up here.

He still couldn't tell much more about the superhero though, as her costume was just a giant green onesie, minus the feet. It was clear that it wasn't finished being designed, well either that, or she was just going for the most boring superhero costume ever.

Peter knew he should be nice, and go welcome her to New York City, but he found himself unwilling to move. Sure, there were other superhero groups in New York: the Avengers and the X-Men were the first to come to his mind. But, while they were more about fighting the major villains, and going out of the the city to take down bigger baddies, Peter, himself, stayed in New York to take care of local crimes like robberies. And it was just him, which was how he liked it. He didn't want to deal with a new superhero on scene who helped out others. Especially not one who also had powers.

His day had started off horrible, and it had definitely ended twice as horrible.