Shining stood with his hands raised up to his shoulders, staring intently at the desk cluttered with objects that ranged from stacks of paper to laptops and empty coffee mugs.

“Gimme a sec, Pete,” he said with a sideways nod to the smaller teen. “I just gotta clean this up.”

And with that, he proceeded to place his hands on the left edge of the desk, and with a mighty sweep, threweverything off the side of the desk and onto the floor. Peter looked at the blue haired man for a long second with a surprised expression, Shining responding to the look.

“Don’t lie, you would’ve done the same thing too,” he said, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow.

“Indeed I would’ve, but you do realize you have to clean that up, right?” Peter asked.

“No I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m married?”

“So?”

“Why do you think I have a wife?

“Would it be, oh I don’t know, to slap you around the ears every time she catches you making remarks like that?” Cadance asked from the doorway, the apparently stealthy princess having made her way into the house with nary a sound.

“M… Maybe?” Shining said with a shifty look. There was silence in the room for a long moment before Cadance shook her head.

“What’re you two talking about?” she asked, looking at Peter with a wave. “Hiya, Pete.”

“Heil,” Peter responded, receiving a very puzzled look from Cadance, the woman shaking her head and turning back to her husband.

“Anyway, what’re you talking about?” she asked again.

“Y’know… nerd stuff,” Shining shrugged, scratching the back of his head.

“Oh really?” Cadance asked with a tone and expression so devoid of belief that somewhere in the world, a Catholic priest died. “What nerd stuff would that be and can I join in?”

“You wouldn’t be interested,” Shining shrugged, not fooling his wife for a second. “It’s really nerdy.”

“Try me,” she dared in a cold tone.

“Right, okay… uh, Pete… you were saying?” Shining asked Peter, his eyes screaming and begging Peter to come up with the best lie he’d ever told to get them out of the situation.

“Right, yeah,” Peter nodded, using a good chapter from the Parker Philosophical Pamphlet of Phucking Phoolishness to get them out of the beehive. “So, a lot of people have been in debate recently of whether or not a day-one release patch is better than them releasing the patches slowly over the course of the next coming weeks. The day-one is often looked upon badly as it seems like the developers, or most likely the publishers, rushed the game out the door in an unfinished state and merely told the developers to work overtime to get the patch ready before the games hit store shelves, this being the limbo time between shipping and selling. But the people that defend the companies as well as day-one patches say that they’d rather have to sit through a two, three or four gig download and play the game straight after than have to deal with lag, framerate loss, and crashing servers, the most common things found on day-one releases. Server crashing however is not a sign of an incomplete game, though it is a sign of either incompetence or poor planning, the latter being the case when Rocket League was released, an absolutely amazing indie game for the PS4 and PC that, despite being from a relatively small indie company, was brought to the forefront of gaming and had thousands upon thousands of people buying and playing it on both platforms. So much sothat the servers the company had bought to host the games were unable to handle the constant stream of data flowing into them, the players themselves accidentally commencing a DDOS attack on the company through genuine want to play, and seeing as how games recently have been devoid of freshness and by the numbers, especially with exclusives and supposed next gen titles having been nothing more than tech demos showing off mediocre to bad gameplay, like Killzone Shadowfall, Titanfall, Battlefield 4, Knack, Ryse Son of Rome,  and Watch_Dogs being this generation’s mediocre games that aren’t offensive but aren’t very good either, to games like The Order 1886, Batman Arkham Knight, and Destiny being the worst example of games that were either hyped to shit and nothing really good came out of them, this being Arkham Knight, to games that were overhyped and were absolutely disgusting to the point of smashing the disk. I actually ran over Destiny with my chair, as I was personally offended by how little content I got for what it was, especially when the game had ten years and five hundred million dollars spent on it to-”

It was at this point that Cadance became overwhelmed with useless information that she had no context for. Groaning loudly, stared at Peter with hateful eyes as she slowly backed out of the room before closing the door. The monotone sound of her pained groans being traceable by ear to pinpoint her location as the sound of several doors closing, more groaning, and then the shower turning on, the faintest sounds of groans being able to be heard over the water.

The two men looked at each other for a moment before bumping fists and continuing their plan.

“Right,” Shining said, growing serious and turning back to the table and leaning on it. “Let’s draw up a plan.”

“On what?” Peter asked. “You threw everything on the floor.”

Shining looked back at him with a determined look before nodding.

“You’re right, that was a poor play on my part,” Shining growled, now having gone from serious to joking again, playing the role of the cliche, over-the-top, obsessed cop as he spoke. “Pick up something to write with and write on, we need to solve this case.”

“What’d your last bitch die of?” Peter asked, crossing his arms.

“Not following my orders,” Shining said, pointing at the piles of paper and machinery. “Work, bitch.”

“Ugh,” Peter said, moving over to the pile and scooping out several pieces of paper, a pen and, most surprisingly a copy of Magic Mike. He stopped where he stood, holding up the movie and pointing to it with a raised eyebrow.

“Cadance bought it and watched it for the strippers,” Shining shrugged.

“Then why is it in your office?” Peter asked with a confused expression.

“Because it’s a surprisingly good movie,” he said with a splay of his hands.

“I know, right?” Peter asked with an agreeing tone. “I was surprised at how easy it was to watch without feeling amazing gay... as well as having a pretty good plot behind it, smart writing and well directed… not in the way you’re thinking though. Tatum was acting his pants off in this movie too.”

The two of them snickered over the joke as Peter tossed the movie aside, picking up the supplies they needed and setting them down on the desk. Shining arranged them into a strategic-esque manner and brought up a few files on his computer. That was after having to sit through the extremely long load time.

“So… what’s this thing running on?” Peter asked. “Processor-wise, that is?”

“I don’t know… the guy in the store got mad at me when I started asking stuff like that, said he wouldn’t sell me anything if I didn’t just buy it and get out,” Shining said. “He was a prick.”

“Tell me about it,” Peter nodded, crossing his arms. “Last time I was in a store with an asshole shopkeeper, my Uncle Ben got shot.”

Shining turned his head in horror to look at Peter, the teen seemingly hit by the joke he had just made and shaking his head.

“Jesus… I actually regret making that one…” he said, a look of genuine shock on his face. “I can jest about the Holocaust and make light of the World Trade Centre attacks but that’s the one that gets me to feel bad?”

“How many Holocaust jokes d’you know?” Shining asked.

“A few, wanna hear one?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“What’s worse than a bee sting?”

“Go ahead?”

“Two bee stings. What’s worse than two bee stings?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Holocaust!”

“Pete, c’mon.”

“What’s worse than the Holocaust?”

“I… tell me?”

“Three bee stings!”

“Alright, that’s about enough,” Shining said, trying to keep a grin off his face. “We need to get down to business.”

“Alright, taking down slash boosting the income of the Vercetti family, right?” Peter asked.

“Yeah… did we discuss the fall guy strategy last time around?” Shining asked.

“I… I can’t remember…” Peter said, scratching the back of his head. “Go over it again, just to be sure.”

Which is the author’s way of saying he’s too fuckin’ lazy to go back and reread previous chapters.

Shut up, Wade! You’re not supposed to be here yet!

You can’t stop me being here, can you? And anyway, I’m bored and wanna shoot stuff!

No, we agreed that you’d wait until after the party with Sable to go guns blazing, remember?

Could you tell me one more time? And focus on the gun part, I like that part. S’mah fave.

Can we have this conversation somewhere else please? Besides, I’m not done writing the chapter yet, and you distracting me right now is only keeping your official introduction at bay. You don’t want that, do you?

NEVERINAMILLIONYEEEEEERS

Good boy, now go and sit in the staff lounge with Sable, Doctor Strange, She-Hulk. and the others and wait for your turn to show up like a good boy. Go over a few of your lines with She-Rulk if you want to, maybe play ping pong with Doom for a while… just stay out of the story until you’re needed… okay?

Okay.

Wade?

Yeah, yeah…

Promise me?

Alright… I promise…

Good, now as a reward, go and tell Ultron you can borrow his throne until it’s his turn to show up.

Yay!

Is he gone? Jesus Christ… I love the guy, but fuck if he isn’t annoying. Right… where was I?

Uh, boss? A word please?

Yes, Jen? What d’you need?

It’s about Reilly… he’s kinda… stuck himself to the roof and can’t get down.

He’s been playing with the advanced webbing again, hasn’t he?

You know it, boss.

Can you get him down, Jen?

Oh yeah, easily. It’s just that, y’know, the web’s are too strong to tear off… it might bring the roof down on the place… we insured for that?

Yeah, no worries, the landlord’s the same guy who Strange rents the Sanctum Sanctorum from. He’s got guys that are used to buildings falling to pieces. Just pull Ben down, tell him to stop fucking around, and tell the landlord when he shows up my insurance’ll cover it.

Right, thanks, boss.

Yeah, see you around, Jen… right… where was I?

“Right,” Shining nodded, taking a deep breath. “Basically, the plan was to get the Vercetti’s power lay to work, to have them be in top form and on top of the criminal scene, so that when we take down the Big Man and they try to move up, we’ve got enough evidence to take them down without so much as breaking a sweat. Sound like something you agree with?”

“Yeah… that sounds simple enough,” Peter nodded. “What am I gonna have to do?”

“First off, make an identity for yourself, something that can’t be tied back to yourself or Spider-Man in any way possible. It’s gotta be something no one can see through… you’re still in with the Avengers right? With Natasha?”

“Yeah… why?” Peter asked with a raised eyebrow.

“S.H.I.E.L.D has technology that allows you to change your face into somebody else’s. You can use that to hide your face… but that still brings a problem up.” Shining explained.

“Which would be?”

“We need you to be in the centre of this, but you don’t have time to go through all their initiation bullshit that they usually do,” Shining continued. “You need to get to the top of the food chain in that world and fast… and I think I know how.”

“Care to share?” Peter asked.

“They’re not gonna take an ordinary crook seriously, just another thug with a gun and an empty wallet,” Shining said, walking closer to the door to listen for Cadance. “But if you’re something more, something that allows you to use your powers but not in a spider way, you might be able to impress them enough to earn their trust.”

“So… you’re basically telling me that in order to save people… I need to pretend to be a supervillain?”

Shining became still and solemn at this point, shaking his head before continuing the conversation in a grim tone.

“No, Peter,” he said. “Not pretend, you’re going to have to be a real supervillain, that includes robbing, murdering and destroying things… these guys aren’t supervillains themselves, but with you being more than just muscle, they’re gonna send you to big jobs. They’re gonna expect you to kill cops, kill civilians, other criminals and even innocent people. You’re gonna have to be a vicious murderer from dusk till dawn, Peter… are you prepared to do that?”

Peter’s mouth opened to answer with his usual attitude before falling silent. His mind beginning to work through all of the issues, problems and contradictions that came with it. Would be he helping people in the long run, or merely tarnishing the little difference he’d made in the city. Or by becoming a supervillain, even with good intentions, would he just make things harder for himself?

“Peter… I don’t know how much you know about philosophy, but have you heard of something called the Principle of Utility?” Shining asked in a calm tone.

“Yeah… ‘The maximum amount of pleasure for the maximum amount of people’” Peter said with a nod. “It’s the main point of Utilitarianism… at least the basic form.”

“I know it won’t make the hard decisions easier, but it might make you sleep easy at night if you adopt some form of philosophy to help justify your actions, if only to make yourself feel better.” Shining said, putting an arm on Peter’s shoulder. “I’d also advise finding someone you trust, and I mean trust with your life, and telling them your secret.”

“What?” Peter asked in shock. “Why?”

“So they can talk to you about it, so you don’t have to hide it from them…” Shining said, trailing off for a second before continuing talking. “And so you can have someone to wrap to wrap their arms around and tell you everything’s gonna be okay when the world starts crumbling down around you.”

“That… that’s not really something to worry about that often… is it?” Peter asked, getting no immediate response from Shining, this causing him to worry slightly. “Shining?!”

“D’you know why we have lifeboats?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What?” Peter responded, genuinely taken aback by the question that came out of seemingly nowhere.

“Answer the question,” he stated. “D’you know why we have lifeboats?”

“Yeah… to stop people drowning when the ship goes down, why is this important?” Peter asked.

“And what do we have to stop ships from sinking?” he continued.

“N-Nothing… we build them as best as we can and…” Peter said, his eyes widening as the realization hit him like a truck. “Hope nothing goes wrong…”

“And we have those lifeboats to save as many as we can when it does happen. They’re not there to stop the ship from sinking, they’re there to make surviving it easier. Do you understand what I’m saying now, Peter?”

“Yeah… you’re telling me that when it all goes down… when it all goes to hell, I’m gonna need something to keep me alive,” Peter nodded solemnly.

“Then find someone Peter, find something to keep you going when it’s all fallen apart,” Shining said. “And when the world’s burning down around you, just hold that person close and let them do everything they can to help keep the two of you above the surface. It’s the two things a man needs to keep him alive: his code and his lifeboat.”

“I already have my code, ‘With great power comes-”

“‘Great responsibility, I know Peter, but that code’s about as vague as they get. It leaves too much up to interpretation,” Shining said. “Responsibility to do what? Save yourself? Your family? The city? The cornerstore? Does it become your responsibility to view a crime and punish accordingly? Or do you just hand them over to the judge and let the system handle them? Where does your responsibility start and how far does it stretch too? With the Principle of Utility, you have the code of saving as many people as possible, by any means necessary.”

“R-Right…” Peter nodded, his eyes casting downwards. “Everything I do needs to be for the greater good.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Shining chuckled, a morose expression on his face. “Then let’s have a quick test to see if you know what that really means, shall we?”

“Uh… alright.” Peter nodded, not sure where this one was going.

“Then let’s begin: thirteen year old boy’s holding a gun at a crowd of people and threatening to kill them all, you have a gun yourself,” Shining explained. “Five seconds: what do you do?”

“I… uh…” Peter said, knowing what the obvious answer was, but unsure of whether it was the right one, thinking of other ways he could get past the kid with a gun to save the hostages without hurting the-

“Time’s up, he’s killed everybody,” Shining shrugged. “You failed. D’you know what you were supposed to do?”

“What?”

“Kill the kid,”

“What? Why would you expect me to do that?”

“It’s for the greater good kid, you take one life to save a lot more, it’s how Utilitarianism works… care to try another one?”

“Sure,” Peter nodded, feeling slightly sick.

“You’ve got the limo transporting Celestia being attacked, as well as a school bus of thirty kids, who do you save?” he asked.

“Easy, the kids,” Peter responded instantly.

“Wrong,” Shining said with a shake of his head. “You let the kids die.”

“What!?” Peter exclaimed. “But there’re more kids, Celestia’s only one woman!”

“Who runs a country, a country that would be thrown into disarray if she were to die. Power struggle, differing opinions, riots, destruction, job losses, murder, crime increase. It’s better if Celestia stays alive to keep control and order. So you let the thirty kids die. Care to try another one since you’re doing so well?”

“S-Sure.” Peter said. now feeling angry with himself for his incompetence.

“Alright then, masked maniac’s threatening to murder your Aunt May and MJ unless you save one of them and let the other die, who d’you save?” Shining asked.

Peter closed his eyes and thought, he cared more about his aunt than he did MJ, so that made one person. But MJ had her aunt, mother and father as well as her friends at school. MJ was also much younger than May, could do more, was still unmarried, and hadn’t become a mother yet. May was old and past it, couldn’t have kids, and would only leave one person behind. That was one for May and three or more for MJ, depending on how many friends and children she had.

Answer: Let Aunt May die.

“...Mary-Jane…” Peter responded, close to throwing up. “Save Mary-Jane.”

“It’s not easy, is it, kid?” Shining asked. “And remember the rule of the world: ‘You can’t please everyone’? Just remember that no matter what decision you make, you’ll always let somebody down, lose as many allies as you gain from that choice.”

“Are… are you trying to make me give up on doing this?” Peter asked with an angry expression.

“No, I’m just making sure you’re fully aware of what this entails. It’s not all about the fame, the adoration and the women, Peter. This line of work sucks everything you love out of your life and returns nothing but loss, emptiness, and pain. It breaks you down to the smallest remains of what you are and tells you to bring yourself back up, offering you no help to rebuild and taking every opportunity to break you again and again,” Shining explained.

“Then… then what the fuck is the point?” Peter asked, horrified to the core.

“Because you can go from being a stone to a mosaic Peter,” Shining answered. “You’re what you are now, that’s nothing to deny, but when you get broken again and again, when you have to rebuild time and time again, you’ll begin to arrange yourself into a shape, form a new pattern from the rubble, take every piece of you that you believed didn’t work and use it to make the perfect picture. With every time you’re smashed, you just get another shape to work with. You can take a bland stone and make something truly amazing out of it, Peter. It’s like I always say: what doesn’t break the man, makes the man.”

Peter lowered his head, running his hands through his hair and exhaling slowly, every second he spent in this house only serving to terrify him more and more. His teenage fantasy of superhero powers and pussy being brushed away by the truth of the harsh reality: there was no fun in this line of work.

By putting on that mask, he only opened himself up to more and more pain, thinking each victory was making him stronger and never stopping to acknowledge his own flaws. It was like Shining had said: ‘arrogance comes from never having tested yourself against the world and come away bleeding’.

He was right, Peter knew he was right. Shining was being straight with him, something the other Avengers had never done. While they were so focussed on building up his offensive and defense, they never once gave him anything to fall back onto, something to land on when the beating was too much to take.

Now that he thought about it: who was there for him? Who was in his corner when it became too much to handle? The other Avengers? Sure, he’d like to think they had his back, but to him, he was just another intern to train, maybe a friend for now, but once the word was given from a higher up they would kick him to the curb without a second thought.

Was it Twilight? No, it wasn’t. She didn’t understand what it was like to fight, to be beaten and to fail. If his legs fell out from under him she’d never be able to catch him, not a chance.

So that left one person: Felicia Hardy. The woman who’d shown no care for him outside of her bedroom, the woman that kept him alive only to see another sex session with her. Sure, he’d felt the same about her for a while, becoming enticed by her features and hooked by the claws. But he felt something more for her nowadays, an attraction to her, more than just her body.

It had taken the place of what he’d once felt for Twilight, his teenage crush had been replaced by a more adult feeling. It wasn’t love, he knew it wasn’t love. But now that he’d tasted the life of an adult relationship, he began to find the sex empty, meaningless. He might as well be sleeping with a blowup doll for all the emotion he received from Felicia afterwards, the Cat being ready to kick him out once he’d gotten her off.

He realized now and only now that he was alone. he had no one he could fall down beside, nobody he could rely on to be his rock when it became too hard to keep going. Even the mosaic comparison didn’t help. You need adhesive to stick things back together. He was the stone, but he had nothing to protect him from the weathering he’d face. Once he was carved and shaped into perfection… who’d keep him pristine? Who’d wax and buff him to keep him at top shape? Who’d be the one proud to stand beside the piece of art that had been crafted so amazingly?

No one was here now.

No one was there later.

He was alone… just a piece of art, left to fade away once it could be shown off no more.

Alone.

“Are you gonna answer that?” Shining asked, snapping his fingers in front of Peter’s face to get him to come back to reality.

“Huh?” Peter asked, his eyes focussing again and only now hearing the ringtone of his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket, checking the caller I.D before answering it.

“Mary-Jane?” he asked in a dull tone. “What’s up?”

“I was just… hey, Tiger, you alright there?” she asked, stopping speaking as she heard Peter’s wooden tone. “You sound a little down… everything okay on your end?”

“Yeah, just… yeah, all fine here,” Peter nodded, unable to even muster the bravado he would once carry around as if it were nothing, his soul crushed by the weight of the worries he’d just been handed by realization.

“No… no you’re not, Petey, you sound depressed as fuck,” she said, the sound of her switching the phone to her other hand being heard before her voice came back. “Hey… just stemming from me not liking my friends being bummed out and nothing romantic… would you be interested in another night on the town? Just the two of us.. platonically hanging out with no romance whatsoever?”

“I’d love to, but… I’m flat out broke,” Peter sighed, lowering his head to his hands. “I keep forgetting to get pictures of Spidey whenever he fights and I think Jameson’s about to fire my ass for not turning in work… sorry, MJ, I can’t.”

“My treat?” she offered. “I make nearly forty grand a year, Petey, a trip to the movies isn’t gonna be below the rim of my pocket it terms of funds.”

“I…” Peter sighed.

“Just say yes,” she pressed.

“I can’t,” Peter said.

“Wow, you sure pronounce the word yes differently with your accent… is it a New York thing?”

Peter smiled at the joke, the humour bringing him back to life slightly. He nodded, exhaling slowly before going for it.

“Alright, fine,” he chuckled. “You’ve twisted my arm, where should I meet you and when?”

“My place in about… an hour, hour and a half tops,” MJ said in a thankful tone. “I’m picking the movie as you’re playing the girl on this date.”

“Is that because you’re paying for it?” Peter asked with a smirk.

“Yes, baby, it is,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ll see you soon. Goodbye, you miserable bastard.”

“Bye, MJ,” Peter said, ending the call and stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

“So?” Shining asked.

“I’m going on a date, apparently,” Peter shrugged. “And since I’m being the girl, d’you think Cadance’d let me borrow one of her dresses and a tube of lipstick?”

“Sure, ask her about the Holland and Oaks dress. She’s protective of it, but I’m sure it’d go lovely with your eyes,” Shining said before growing serious. “But in regards to the undercover work, go out tonight, have fun, and think about it when you go to bed tonight, then come back here in a few days once you’ve made your mind up, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter nodded. “I’ll do that.”

Next Chapter: Setup For Actual Content Estimated time remaining: 8 Minutes