Peter walked up the stairs to Shining and Cadance’s apartment, conversing with Cassie about her choice on her body proportions.

“So, wait a second, did you search the internet to find the most popular body types for women, or what?” he asked.

“No, I looked through your phone’s internet history when I was installed on it, read your messages and saved images to find out what you liked,” Cassie explained. “And through that I found out that you and Harry both found the physique of the Wii Fit Trainer to be quite attractive, though there were multiple messages involving more racy interpretations of the character… no judgement. I also discovered that your preferred breast size was a G-cup and your favourite hairstyle, though not real, was that of Kirche Zerbst from the anime Zero No Tsukaima, and though your favourite hair colour is blood red, I went for regular black. But with the only colour this watch can project in right now is static-blue, colour doesn’t really matter right now.”

“You read through my messages… and looked through my KeepSafe Vault?” Peter asked in a horrified manner.

“Yes, and as far as pornography goes, I found it to be rather tame. Nothing freaky or unnerving, no macro or unbirthing fetishes, nothing strange like that. Just good ol’ fashioned sex,” Cassie said, joining her hands behind her back and grinning. “That reminds me, d’you like the outfit? Or is it a bit too casual?”

Peter studied the outfit Cassie had picked out, it being a pair of jeans, shirt and jacket. he didn’t think it was awful, but it felt a little too ‘Mary-Jane’ for Cassie. Thinking for several seconds, he came to a conclusion, describing the outfit he wanted her to wear from then on.

Cassie changed on command, now donning a pair of tights, black heels, a black skirt and a white office blouse, adorned with thick cuffs and a silk look.

“Huh, I quite like it,” Cassie nodded. “Has a very… secretary-ish look to it.”

“It suits you,” Peter nodded. “Now I’m gonna need you to go dark for me, just for a while, alright?”

“Okay, talk to you later,” Cassie nodded, her hologram disappearing and the morpher powering down.

“Right, here we go,” Peter said, knocking on the door to the apartment and waiting for someone to answer.

Several seconds ticked by before the door swung open, revealing an exhausted-looking Shining, his hair a mess and his eyes black with bags decorating his face.

“Oh… hey, kid,” he said, stifling a yawn before rubbing his eyes. “What d’you need?”

“Undercover work, mostly,” Peter said with a shrug. “More specifically, in the Vercetti family.”

Shining crossed his arms, examining the expression of the teenager before shaking his head.

“Rght, best we talk about this inside,” he said, waving Peter in. “I have a feeling you’ve got something crazy in mind.”

“Don’t I always?” Peter grinned, walking inside and following Shining into the living room. Peter immediately noticed the lack of Shining’s ball and chain, whether through the lack of her constant humming, singing or swearing in the house or the fact that the place seemed about one hundred percent less beautiful without her, it still wasn’t a welcome change.

“Where’s Cadance at?” he asked, stuffing his hands into his jacket pocket.

“Work,” Shining answered, heading towards the kitchen area. “You want a drink?”

“Only if it’s a soft one,” Peter answered.

“Right, Fosters it is then,” Shining grinned. “That’s the softest drink on the planet.”

“Very funny, pal,” Peter said, shaking his head with a smirk. “If you’ve got a couple of cans of coke, then I’ll be alright.”

“Very well then,” Shining said, taking out two cans of coke zero, washing them under the tap before throwing one across the room. Peter caught it by the tip of his finger before bringing it down to his hand, the cold, moist can sending a shock through his nerves, having to quickly switch back and forth to prevent freezer burn. “So… whatchu want?”

“Like I said, undercover work,” Peter answered, cracking open the can and taking a quiet sip, exhaling in satisfaction as the cool, crisp liquid flowed down his throat.

“With the Vercettis, right?” Shining asked. “Any specific reason? Or just for shits and gigs?”

“Well, my informant in the criminal underworld has informed me that the Vercettis are making a play for control of the city, and word on the street is that they’ve taken a high bid from Silvermane, or his darling daughter, to be his muscle when he gets out of prison,” Peter explained. “And my informant and I agreed that the best thing to do would be for me, not as Peter or Spider-Man, would be to go undercover to get evidence to sink their little friend-ship before it even gets out of the harbour, dig?”

Shining placed his hand on the counter, lowering his head and laughing under his breath before looking back at the smaller teen with a wide smile.

“Ah… fuck me, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody sound so white in my entire life, and that wasn’t even gangster slang,” he laughed. “Right, anyway, you seem to know what you’re doing, so why d’you need my help?”

“Well… I figure fighting the criminal underworld is kinda like driving a car for the first time, you have a basic idea of what you’re supposed to do and how to do it, but you need someone to help you along the way,” Peter explained, taking another drink, covering his mouth with his hand and continuing to speak as a new point appeared in his mind. “Also, I can bring the evidence to you and you can make the arrests after I’ve done so.”

“Right… so, where are you looking to start?” Shining asked, crossing his arms and swilling the liquid inside his soda can.

“I… honestly, I have no idea,” Peter sighed, rubbing the back of his ankle with his other leg. “I was hoping you’d give me somewhere to start.”

“And I can, but it depends what you’re aiming to do, if you’re aiming to be just a regular thug who might overhear a few things every now and again,” Shining began. “Or do you wanna be the centre of attention who these guys come to to get the work done?”

“Which is gonna get the job done faster?” Peter asked.

“Huh, that’s unusual,” Shining said, raising an eyebrow.

“What d’you mean?” Peter asked in response, sipping from his can once more.

“Most guys usually ask which position is safer,” Shining answered, leaning back against the counter and exhaling slowly. “You’re not worried about your own safety?”

“If I was, d’you think I’d run around in brightly coloured spandex in front of guys with guns, purposely trying to piss them off?” Peter asked with a grin.

“Fair point, centre of attention it is then,” Shining said with a shrug. “But I wanna warn you of something.”

“Which is?” Peter asked.

“The attitude you’ve got, the whole ‘Don’t come down until I’m struck down’ thing, it’s not impressive Peter,” Shining said. “The rebel without a cause attitude is attractive for teenage girls, but you’re not gonna be a teenager forever, you’re gonna grow up, you’re gonna work, make friends, fall in love. And when you do, you’re gonna have to realize that you can’t just throw yourself into the meat grinder and die with a smile on your face. There will be people who’ll miss you, people closer than your Aunt May, a wife, maybe even children who will be destroyed by your death.”

“Oh… right,” Peter said, scratching the back of his head with an awkward expression. “I… I never really thought about it like that… but I guess that the confidence helps me deal with all.”

“But it’s not confidence Peter, it’s arrogance, the arrogance that everyone has before they’ve tested themselves against the world and come away bleeding. With you throwing caution to the wind and sprinting through life at the pace you have been, being able to overcome all your challenges without understanding how you did it, you haven’t realized that you’re not making yourself stronger.” Shining continued. “The lack of challenge for you has only made you big-headed, thinking there’s nothing you can’t take. That’s the worst attitude to have in your line of work because you’re too busy patting yourself on the back to keep your defenses up. And when that crushing blow comes, it’s not only gonna hurt worse than anything before, it’s gonna destroy you.”

Peter stood, staring at Shining in disbelief at the words of wisdom he was receiving. Surely he was exaggerating slightly? Peter had been challenged before and he was getting better and better with every opponent he faced; each victory, each training session and every piece of advice he’d been given made him better and better at what he did.

But was he arrogant? Was he just a rebel without a cause? No, he knew what he was doing. He was helping the city, saving hundreds of lives a day one day at a time. He’d been arrogant when he’d first gotten his powers, wanting to fight everything that moved and look where that had gotten him:

His Uncle Ben had died, taught him the lesson that motivated him to do this. But then a thought struck him: why had he decided to become Spider-Man in the first place? Did he even think about the responsibility of it? From what he remembered, it was because he’d felt he could do this job better than the police could.

Because he was sure he was better at it than they were.

Because he was sure he was better.

Because he was sure.

Because he was over-confident.

Because he was arrogant.

Peter shook his head, beginning to question himself, his motives, and what exactly he was doing this for. He was doing it because it made him feel good? He had everything going right, he had the super strength, the muscular body, the hot criminal fuck buddy, the excitement that he’d never had before in his life.

He loved doing this because it was fun.

But what about when it stopped being fun? He’d heard it from Steve when they’d first started training that it was only gonna get harder. Enemies would learn about his abilities, learn how to combat them, and make the fights harder and harder. He’d fought the Enforcers and the Scorpion on his own and nearly lost.

No, not lost.

Died. He’d nearly died, there and then. His life could’ve, would’ve, been ended by those supervillains less than a year into his career if it wasn’t for Felicia. In fact, how many people had he defeated on his own? He’d faced three major villains so far, the first being Electro… no, Elektra, and she’d beat him so quick it wasn’t even worth a joke, then he’d been saved by an interruption.

He’d beaten Electro, sure, so that was one to him. Then there was the Vulture, a fight that had been ended instantly by Carol. Carol had ended that fight with no more effort than a grown man uses to pick up a lego brick. It was a waste of her time, an item on her shopping list that was slightly out of her way on the way to the other things she had to do that day.

Then there was the Scorpion, a fight he would’ve lost if it wasn’t for Johnny interference, allowing the two of them to overcome her in an unfair fight. And he’d been patting himself on the back as a great superhero, as the Amazing Spider-Man. The superhero who had one, single victory to his name while most of his battles had been won for him.

Then he thought back to before he’d begun training, the first fight with Felicia he’d lost, then he was taken down by both Captain America and Black Widow with no effort on their part whatsoever.

This realization sent a horrible shock through his body, the knowledge of how easy it was for him to fail, one wrong move, one weak step and he was dead. He’d been a match for one opponent, only being able to beat him through an enormous weakness, a weakness he’d exploited to beat him. So that shouldn’t have even counted as a victory for him, he’d cheated.

With Elektra, Felicia, Cap, Widow, Scorpion, the Enforcers, excluding the training sessions he’d lost, that put his record at zero wins to six losses. He was no superhero, he was some punk in a costume congratulating himself on victories that weren’t rightfully his, being considered to stand alongside such legends as Captain America, the man that almost single-handedly stopped the Red Skull, Ms. Marvel, the woman who’d stopped an alien invasion, Black Widow, the Saviour of Bethlehem, Hawkeye, the Hero of Cape Town, Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, the Incredible Hulk, the artist formerly known as “The-Strongest-There-Is”, Iron Man, the billionaire genius. Even Jessica Drew seemed to have a better chance at being a superhero than he did, she’d been trained to be a S.H.I.E.L.D agent since she was a child.

Putting a hand to his face, he sighed loudly, placing his coke on the side and feeling his fighting spirit deflate.

“D’you find something out about yourself?” Shining asked with a firm tone.

“Yeah… I’m a fucking failure,” Peter said, running his fingers through his hair, a knot in his throat and a sickening void in his stomach. “I’ve been carried through every fight I’ve ever had, been given chances I don’t deserve and training that somebody else should get.”

“C’mon kid, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Shining said, pointing at Peter with his can. “You’re fifteen, you’re still learning how to do this, you can’t expect to pull that mask over your head and be the world’s greatest hero in a day, do you?”

“I… I don’t know,” Peter said, rubbing his brow with a tired expression.

“Then let me tell you something, most amateur boxers start at around nineteen, twenty years old. They fight as hard as they can and someone sees them, takes them to the big time when they’re twenty-one,” Shining began, Peter looking up at the older man with a raised eyebrow. “And everyone who fights wants to be the champion, but it’s not something they just give away to people. Hell, they don’t even let you attempt to go the distance until you’ve proven you can do that.”

Peter nodded, his mind flashing back to all the times his Uncle Ben had sat him on his knee as a child after a bad day and had told him a story or a metaphor, just like this one. A tale about why you should never give up, or a tale about how failure is the best way to succeed, or a speech he’d told him years ago, one he later admitted he’d taken from a movie that he couldn’t quite remember perfectly, about how you need to keep going, even when the beating seems unbearable, it’s the fact that you can take it that makes all the difference.

So Peter was encapsulated by the story, his mind opening to the tales of grandeur he’d been brought up on of success and triumph over hard times.

“A boxer isn’t a champion the second they step into the ring. A boxer is putty, putty that is taken and moulded by a trainer, by a manager and, most importantly, by the man in the other corner of the ring. These men beat this boxer into perfection, they beat him to shape him, they beat him to condition him, they beat him to strengthen him. But most importantly, they beat him to perfect him; after all, you can’t dodge that punch unless you’ve been hit by it before, until you learn how he throws it. You can’t know the pain of having to go through twelve rounds until you’ve done it. And you can’t know how to win unless you’ve experienced how to fail. What I’m saying, Peter, is that a boxer goes through hell, every day of his life while he’s aiming for that belt, hardship after hardship that would break the weaker and strengthen the stronger, and once he’s holding that belt he looks back on those behind him, everything he’s overcome, and as he hefts that belt over his head, bellowing in victory, he realizes something, something important.”

“And what’s that?” Peter asked.

“He realizes, as I’ve told you, that nobody is born a champion, but they are born as contenders,” Shining said, taking a sip of his soda before finishing his speech. “And every champion was once a contender that refused to quit.”

“I… uh, wow,” Peter said, scratching his head, slightly overwhelmed at not only the relevance, but also the truth behind the tale. “You’re right, Shining, you’re completely right.”

“I know, I always am,” Shining grinned, swapping his soda into his other hand and standing up straight. “Now, let’s go draw up a plan for you and your undercover work.”

Next Chapter: Crushing Reality Estimated time remaining: 28 Minutes