Why the world needs a Spider-man

8~ web fluid version 47

Blowing out a puff of air, Peter lightly shifted his weight from one foot to another before planting them steady again. His heart was pounding as the butterflies in his stomach tried to crawl up his throat, but he swallowed them back down with a large gulp of bitingly cold fall air that burned the whole way down. He wiped his sweaty palms against his pants, which was kind of weird because his hands were so cold. It was cold out, so he guessed they should feel like that, but it didn't explain why his face was so hot beneath his mask.

"Come on, Peter," he said to himself as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "You can do this. You can do this."

He could do this. He had done this before, so there was no reason for him to be so nervous. Okay, maybe he had been a little closer to the ground then, but was okay. It was cool. He could do this. He just had to, you know...do it.

Besides, what was the worst that would happen? He'd eat a little pavement? Hide some bruises from Aunt May? That wasn't to bad. Hey, he'd already done all that like this week. So, yeah, this was completely okay to do.

This was such a bad idea.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Peter shot the newest formula of webbing from his web-shooters. It hit the edge of the building down the street in the exact spot that Peter calculated it needed to in order for this to work, and now the fiber hung loosely between there and his hand. He'd been working on this formula for two months now and knew that this particular version should work – would work. He just had to...test it.

It's fine. This will work. He knew it would.

Bad idea bad idea bad idea.

Peter jumped off the top of the twelve-story apartment building.

The mostly empty Queen's street came rushing at him in a blast of burning cold air that easily cut through his sweats. His hands clutched to the webbing that had yet to pull taunt. There was a certain springiness to it, which in theory should help launch him back up into the air, but it had to stretch out first. Judging by the arc he would make, Peter wasn't worried about that. He was more worried about it not being as strong as he thought and breaking when it happened.

Peter's eyes widened as the ground got closer. Then, he felt the webbing pull, and he started to swing.

Holdtogetherholdtogetherholdtogether.

He didn't think he was breathing when he reached the furthest point of the arc. The webbing stretched unhappily, and Peter swore a couple of the strings popped. For half a heartbeat, he knew he was about to be street pizza.

Then he started to swing upward.

His shout of joy echoed down loudly down the street as the two people who had been walking down this particular street turned to look up. There were shouts of surprise and fear, and the woman dropped her bag of groceries to cover her face with her hands. Peter couldn't stop laughing, though he did feel bad for scaring her.

"Sorry," he said as he passed them.

He let go of the fiber and just let himself float in the air for second before shooting another web at another building further down the road. He did it again and again and again, and each time the wind cut though his thin mask or he just hung in the air like he could really fly was better than the last.

Other people saw him along his chosen test route. He knew they did, and he was pretty sure that one girl might have caught a picture of him on her phone. When he decided to test out his webbing, he'd been careful to try and keep out of a too populated area. But this was New York and there was always someone around. That was what the mask was for, right?