The marvellous spider-man

Chapter 20

Captain Stacy had finished his paperwork, and had taken to flicking paper footballs into the trash bin. He stopped for a moment. This situation with the cops having nothing to do was getting a little ridiculous. The detectives had work with a few domestic crimes. Obviously Spiderman could stop everything, but no one had even written so much as a speeding ticket in the last few days. This city was changing, and again Captain Stacey wondered what his place was in it.

He looked over at the letter of resignation he had written on his desk computer and thought very carefully about sending it.

Retirement could be nice, after all. He'd get to spend more time with his family, and wouldn't be worrying them. That was really the hardest part about the job, making family worry about you. Maybe this situation wasn't so bad.

And yet he still felt like he was falling down on the job.

Tap, tap, tap.

Captain Stacy whipped his head around to see something tapping at the window. Cautiously he pulled his gun out and approached. The tapping continued until Captain Stacy reached for the strings to pull back the blinds. He hesitated, readying himself for anything, and then yanked with all his might.

He found himself pointing his gun at an upside down Spiderman.

Captain Stacy was surprised, but he quickly put his gun away and opened the window. Spiderman moved so he could do that and Captain Stacy poked his head out to speak with him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked the man clinging to the wall of the police headquarters."

"You know that shuttle that's going out of control?" said Spiderman. "It's landing here, and it's going to pass over us. I'm going to see if I can help."

"Okay," said Captain Stacy, a little confused. "Why tell me?"

"Well," said Spiderman. "If any crooks catch wind that I'm on a shuttle making rounds around the earth and not in the city, they might take that as an...opportunity."

It took a second for Captain Stacy to understand, but when he did opened his mouth in shock. Spiderman was about to be gone for a while, leaving the city without the man responsible for putting so many crooks away. That was going to result in a massive crime spike.

For the first time in a long time, Captain Stacy had some serious work to do.

"Alright," said Captain Stacy. "Thanks for the info. I'll guess I'll just tell the rest of the cops a little birdie told me huh?"

"Well," said Spiderman playfully. "A little eight legged birdie."

Then Spiderman swung away. Captain Stacy chuckled and shook his head. He closed the window and went to make preparations for the next couple of hours. They were about to be very busy at the police station. He chuckled again, thinking about that eight legged birdie comment. That Spiderman was really quite a goofball.

It reminded him of someone.

....

A few minutes later, after a quick web swing through the city, Spiderman was perched on the pole topping of the building. Even without the help of the coin operated binoculars below him it was an impressive sight, and he tried to imagine it disappearing in an instant as he attached himself to a super-fast shuttle, but he still figured that it would be quite different once he actually did it.

He looked up to the sky, where he planned to catch a ride on the shuttle. He ran through the calculations in his head. There was no way he could just go there and do it. No, he had to calculate the shuttle's flight path and fire his webbing before the shuttle was even in view; at exactly the right time.