A Different Type of Game

Perfect Timing

Peter P.O.V.

After school, Peter changed into his superhero identity and began swinging through Queens. He always felt so free when he was Spider-Man. He felt like all the conflict in his life was just gone until he took off his mask. Yeah sure, there were the villains he always had to deal with, but sometimes those were almost easier.

He took refuge on a roof of an abandoned building and took in the view. He had been deathly afraid of heights before he obtained his powers, but once he stood on top of his first building as Spider-Man he realized how beautiful they actually were. He had no idea how he never saw it before, the beauty of the almost disappearing sun was unreal, like something from a book.

Oh shit, Peter thought. I have to meet Michelle.

He headed back to where he hid his bag of regular clothes and changed more speedily than he ever had before.

He was late. Michelle would ask why and he would have to lie to her. Peter wanted to tell MJ his secret so badly, but he knew he couldn't. She could be put in danger, or even tell the whole school. Even though he knew she would never do that, it still made him tense up at the thought. Although, she probably already knew about his double-life, and was just waiting for the right time to tell him. Or maybe she was waiting for him to tell her. Nah, she probably just liked watch him try to come up with excuses whenever he had to leave class or decathlon practice, she was that kind of person.

He stopped in front of the library and straightened up his hair to make it look like he didn't just run two blocks in order to meet Michelle in time. He walked in and gazed around, looking for MJ. She was at a small table reading what Peter figured was her favorite book: How to Kill a Mockingbird.

He slowly made his way towards her and when he sat down she calmly lowered her book.

"You're late." Here comes the excuses.

"Yeah, I'm sorry. My, uh, Aunt needed help with, um, setting up a new e-mail. She wouldn't let me leave until it was 100% completed." That excuse seems legit enough, right?

"Alright, but if you're late again, I will personally make sure you fail this class." Peter couldn't tell if MJ was serious or sarcastic. Then again, he never could.

"Okay, noted."

Michelle came up with some great ideas for the project and Peter felt like he wasn't contributing a lot. He wanted to do more but felt like his ideas wouldn't be quite as good as MJ's. He figured he'd just put a lot of work into all the other aspects of it.

You wouldn't believe how hard it was to come up with a math project. They had to create something that had to do with theoretical and experimental probability. It was easy math on its own, but to make it into a physical thing to share in front of the class was a bit difficult.

They decided to create a board game. It would require someone to roll a dice and if they got an even number, they moved onto the next step. Then the person would have to spin a wheel and land on a shade of orange or blue. If they passed these steps, all they had to do next was flip a coin and hope it landed on heads. If they made it through all of these steps, they would win the grand prize. Peter and MJ still needed to figure out what that was, though...

As they were sharing ideas about what a bunch of high school kids would want to win, sirens began to blare outside and Peter's spidey-senses went off. Perfect timing.

"Um, I should probably go check in with my Aunt, she hates when I'm out and something 'scary' happens in town." That was actually quite true. Ever since May found out that Peter was the hero of Queens, she began to be a little over-protective. She allowed him to continue to fight crime, although she didn't really have much of a choice, but that didn't change the fact that she still worried about Peter.

Peter quickly got dressed into his clothes and followed the police cars to the scene of the crime.

Good evening Peter, would you like me to update you on what's happening?

"Oh hey Karen! Yeah that'd be great actually."

Okay, there has been several reports of people collapsing in the street on 4th and 5th Avenue. Would you like me to give you directions there?

"No thanks, I know my way pretty well. But do you have any idea why the people are just randomly passing out?"

No, there are no signs of toxins in the air or anything else unusual. But, all of the victims seem to be O-Positive blood type.

"Huh, that's strange.."

When Peter arrived at the scene, people were screaming and dropping like flies. The paramedics were so overwhelmed that people began taking the fainted to the hospital in their own cars. Peter wondered what the hell could possibly cause this much chaos.

That's when he saw four men in all black and ski masks fun into an abandoned building. Suspicious. Peter slyly followed and ended up in a small room lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. He couldn't see all of the men that well, but could tell that there were indeed four of them and one person, most likely the leader, in the middle of them.

"Phase one is completed. Transmitting the disease through blood went perfectly. Now to see how transmitting it airborne will be." Yeah, this person has to be the leader, but what the hell was going on here?! These people are the reason for all those sick civilians!

"Yeah, I'm afraid I can't let you do that." Peter jumped out from the shadows and almost smiled at the shocked faces the four men had plastered on their faces. "Not very nice you see. Now, let's make this quick so I can get home in time for dinner."

"You made a mistake following us in here, boy." A different voice than before spoke and Peter saw it belonged to the biggest of the bunch. 

"I don't think I did, actually. You see, I, quite oddly, prefer my city to, you know, not be filled with dying people. That's just something weird about me, though."

Suddenly the man ran forward and attempted to bash into Peter, but failed. Peter's swiftness and agility overpowered all the other's, giving him a huge upper hand.

"You know, it probably would've been better to target a town that, oh I don't know, doesn't have a hero with superhuman abilities swinging around all day. Just a tip."

"Trying to be a smart alack I see." A new voice came from behind Peter, and when he turned around he saw the scrawniest of them all with a strange gun in his hand. It didn't look like a regular gun, the whole where the bullet would usually come out of was a small slit. What was the point of that thing?

"Nah, I like to think of it as constructive criticism."

Suddenly a weird smelling gas begun seeping its way through Peter's mask. Well, he found out what the gas did. 

Peter was blinded and began coughing profusely while the men got away. But even through all the tears in his eyes, he saw the men take off their ski masks to put on a gas mask. The thing was, however, they didn't look like men. Their faces were contorted and look as though they had rotten away before attempting to heal itself. At first Peter would've thought that they all had just been in a bad accident of some sort, but all of their faces looked the same. But maybe, hopefully, Peter was just seeing things wrong. Maybe it was just a side affect from the gas. But something was telling him that it wasn't.

And then everything went black.

(A/N) I'm not sure why, but I really like this chapter. I tried to throw in my own villains and I really hope I did well!