Chapter Text
Night City is sometimes called the ‘City of Dreams’. It isn’t, not really. People in Night City die in enough numbers that anything under 30 killings is considered a good day.
So when a group of Scavs cornered Melissa Gamble, she didn’t have much hope in her. The four Scavs had chased her through the streets for a few minutes. She’d tried to get the police on the line, but they’d hacked her agent. She’d tried to get home, but they kept blocking her.
And now she was in an alley. Watching four people with bright digital masks hiding their faces approach her. One, a woman, lifted a baseball bat.
“Help me!” Melissa screamed desperately. “Somebody, please, anybody!”
No answer. People die every day in Night City. And if it wasn’t a choom, nobody gave a fuck about the next one to go.
The Scav with the baseball bat went to swing for her head. Melissa screamed again. She was going to die. They were going to take her, rip her chrome out, and leave her in the trash.
Just before the bat could cave in her skull, a
thwip
sound filled the air. A bright red wire wrapped around the baseball bat, pulling it out of the Scav’s hand before she could hit Melissa.
A figure dropped down in front of Melissa. The glowing red wire sliced through the bat, reeling back into the figure's wrist. Melissa’s scream cut off. She stared at the figure.
A yellow jacket, an EMT one, glowed in the dim light, blue lights from the collar illuminating the figure. Like the Scavs, he wore a mask. A black one, with a webbed pattern across it, and large white eyes that narrowed mechanically as he glanced at her, then at the Scavs.
“Hey guys. You look like you’re having fun.”
“The Spider!” one of the Scavs, a tall heavyset man, shouted. “Get em!”
Melissa backed away, watching fearfully. The group of Scavs rushed her savior. And he began dancing around them.
“Oh come on, gonk,” her savior leaped over a kick, easily dodged a bullet from a pistol, and sidestepped a clumsy stab from a knife. “‘Get em’? That’s so boring! At least say something original. Or classic!”
He caught a punch in his palm before spinning around and throwing that Scav at another like a doll, then lashed out with a monowire to slice the pistol one was holding in half, before backflipping over a Scav woman and landing on the small of her back, punching her.
“How about, ‘rattle em boys!’ I saw that in an old holovid!” he grabbed the woman he was on top of and tossed her, smashing another Scav out of the air. Then he moved in, faster than Melissa could see. Later, she’d wish she’d recorded it with her optics, but she was just so mesmerized.
He danced around them, jumping from wall, to floor, to Scav, fists and feet flying. The Scavs tried to swing at him, to shoot him. But he was just never
there
when they tried to hit him.
Seconds later, the last Scav fell. He turned to look at her.
On his chest. A spider. A large emblem of a spider.
“Spider-Man,” Melissa whispered.
“That’s what they call me,” he chuckled. He looked around. “Okay. Should be good. You need a ride home?”
“Uh…” Melissa shook her head, breathing hard.
“Gotcha. Just glad the gonks didn’t hurt you. Well, the badges are on their way. Stay safe!”
He snapped a hand out. His monowire snapped out, longer than she’d ever seen one go, attaching to the side of a building. Then he was pulled upwards, moving high into the air.
“Holy shit,” Melissa said softly.
Spider-Man had just saved her life… ahhhh, she should have recorded it!
The sound of police sirens filled the air in the distance. Melissa ran for her home, smiling the whole way.
And high above, Spider-Man swung through Night City.
Let's do this just one more time…
The Multiverse is fucked.
This is not an opinion. It is a fact. The Multiverse, all multiverses, are a massive complete mess. Each universe is created, destroyed, melded together, ripped apart, condensed, and widened in a chaotic flow that only a madman can traverse.
In one set of universes, a man named Miguel O’Hara blames a young man named Miles Morales for this chaos. He is both wrong and right. The multiverse responds to our actions, but it is meant to. It will always change, flow, and destroy/create at random.
We do not live atop a solid foundation. Every universe is a set of bubbles bouncing within a storm. This is not bad, or good. It is.
The Multiverse is fucked.
David Martinez would learn that one day. But for today, he was getting punched in the face.
Metal fists crashed across David’s arms, chest, face, and stomach in a quick combination while David tried to understand what the hell was happening. A loud and whiny sounding ‘waaaaaah, tatatata!’ filled the air as David’s body exploded with pain.
A final kick sent him flying back, the feel of something shattering against his back followed by the smell of shit from the public toilet he smashed into. David weakly gasped, barely able to hear the sound of Katsuo Tanaka mocking him. Again.
Eventually the asshole and his asshole chooms walked off. Leaving David slumped up against the toilet. He kept his eyes closed, blood dripping off him as pain ebbed and flowed through him.
It was amazing he could feel anything crawling on him. David glanced at his hand. He blinked, slowly. A spider.
…He’d never seen one before. Not in real life. He’d heard of them. But he thought they were only in labs or something. He could count the number of actual animals in Night City he’d ever seen on one hand.
The spider was red and blue colored. About an inch wide. It stared at him. Then it, while David was watching, slammed its head into his skin, biting deeply.
David took in the painful sting of that bite. But, combined with everything else, it didn’t seem to matter much. Just a bit more shit in his cereal.
His agent started ringing about then. The hospital. David brushed away the spider and answered.
“Mr Martinez? I’m calling in regards to Gloria Martinez’s condition.”
As he took the call, he didn’t notice the spider dying on the ground next to his foot.
Hours later, he pushed his way into his apartment through the window. Carefully, he lowered himself in along with the jar holding his mom’s ashes, stumbling as he landed in the shower.
David felt sick. Wrong. He was shivering, sweaty. Weak. Cold. He’d planned on calling Doc, maybe cashing in on that implant. But he could barely move. He couldn’t think. His head was pounding. He carefully put the plastic container holding his mom on the table, shutting the blinds on the window.
So hungry…
He grabbed a burrito xxl. Then a tofu bar. And another, and one more. He was so cold though.
He moved over to the couch and tumbled down, clutching himself tightly.
Soaked in sweat, muscles and bones aching, still bruised from Katsuo beating the shit out of him, David stared at his mom’s jacket. Memories flowed through him.
His mom smiling. Then lying on concrete, blood pooling under her. The principal. Katsuo mocking him. The voice of the holographic teacher from class talking about biology. That spider. Staring at him.
And then… that girl. With the white hair. She was the last image in his mind before he passed out.
He never heard it when Katsuo called.
He woke up late for school. Who gave a fuck? His mom was dead and the school would probably expel him when they found out he couldn’t pay to fix the shit he broke.
David got up. Quickly. He blinked at how fast he moved. He felt… awake. Really awake. He’d never felt so full of energy. Had he slept for longer than normal or something? And he didn’t feel any pain from Katsuo’s beating from yesterday.
He went over to the bathroom. For some reason, he felt like the apartment was smaller. Or like he was more aware of it, somehow? David sighed, reaching the bathroom and looking in the mirror. As he came into view, he stared in shock.
David was taller. By a couple of inches, maybe more? And his body was…
He took off his black shirt, formerly just a bit baggy and now almost too tight, ignoring the sound of his necklaces bouncing across the tile of the shower as he looked himself over.
Muscle. Not the skinny muscles he’d had before. Real muscle, uniform across his entire body. He’d gone from a teenager to a fitness model out of a vid or braindance, or a guy out of a Mr. Studd ad for a runner or swimmer type.
“What the hell?” David poked at his chest. “What, did I go through puberty again?”
He pulled off his pants. Same deal. His whole body was bigger. He wasn’t a giant bodybuilder or anything, but it was still huge compared to his skinny ass before.
Then he smelled himself. Sweating through the whole night hadn’t done him any favors.
Shower time. He hopped in, turning the water on. For some reason, the cold water didn’t suck as much to get hit by as usual. The hot water wasn’t hot enough either. He cleaned himself off quickly, trying to understand what the hell was happening.
He was so full of energy. He always felt like that, always tapping his foot or something, but this was even worse. He needed to get out. Head to the streets. Fuck school.
After his shower, he pulled on his clothes. After a bit of thought, he wore his mom’s jacket, the Sandevistan inside pressed against his back. Better than leaving the expensive tech in the apartment.
He headed out. As usual, he fell down into the pile of trash, though his legs didn’t even feel the recoil he was used to when landing. Past the homeless guys masturbating, people heading out to shop, the guy trying to convince his wife he wasn’t sleeping with a Mox. Just aimlessly walking along.
Everything felt so weird. It was like his senses were clearer now. Like the world had become more vibrant, or he could see more of it. Everything still smelled bad, but even more than before somehow?
Mom was gone. David scowled at the thought. He just… how was he supposed to keep going without her? He had to pay the bills, so he’d need to quit school. And she was gone. He was never going to see her again.
He reached a crosswalk, stopping briefly before stepping out as soon as the robotic voice chirped ‘Walk. Walk. Walk.’ Halfway down, not really paying attention, David felt as though something started screaming in the back of his mind, a strange tingle that was telling him to
move-!
It happened without thinking. Putting everything he had into it, David jumped upwards. Rather than a couple of feet, he rocketed upwards, backflipping around, shock filling him. Below, he could see a car with Tyger Claw colors and decals roar through where he’d been walking just a moment ago. Then David landed on the side of a nearby building.
And attached. He stared at his hands, sticking to the concrete like someone had welded them there.
Then he looked down at the crowd of people. People currently glancing at him. Then mostly shrugging it off. After all, anyone with the right cyberware could do what he did.
Except David didn’t
have
cyberware. Not beyond the basic stuff everyone had, like an internal Agent.
David stared at the wall where his hands stuck to. “No fucking way…” Experimentally, he lifted a hand. It came off easily. When he put the hand up higher, he almost felt like some kind of suction effect took place.
Panic flooded him. And suddenly both hands detached. “FUCK!”
He fell for a few dozen feet before slamming back first into the concrete. “...Owwww.”
A woman with fancy clothes, cyberarms, and red shades stepped around him, ignoring his prone body entirely. David stared up at the sky, mind racing.
What was going on?
At home, he checked himself over. Still flesh. His legs, hands, everything was made of muscle and bone. So how the hell had he jumped like he had chrome legs? How was he sticking to walls?
It was during his inspection of himself that he felt where the spider had bitten him. The bite had somehow disappeared in a single night. And a crazy thought hit him. Spiders could walk on walls, right? He remembered vaguely reading something about that.
David sat on his couch, and quickly began looking it up. Spiders. They could walk on walls, yeah. They also spun webs out of their butts? Weird. Some species could leap 38 times their body length.
He thought back to how high he’d jumped before.
They were stronger than their body weight as well… David hesitantly lifted his couch.
Easily. With one hand. He didn’t even feel the weight.
David slowly lowered the couch again.
What had happened? A single spider bite and he got superpowers? If that happened to everyone, he would have heard about it! Maybe some crazy escape corpo experiment?
Maybe it had happened before?
Feeling a bit ridiculous, he searched it up. ‘Spider bite, gives powers, history’.
Once he put it in, he found a few links. He stared at them. Huh. He clicked one.
“...Spider-Man?”
The image of a guy in red and blue tights shone on the screen before him.