The average daily life of Peter Parker.
Now that would be a catchy title for a documentary or a biography of his life and would get the audience hooked on from the start since it alluded without alluding to his life not being completely average. Extra points to the director if they managed to perfectly catch the transition between the average daily Peter Parker life and the dark unordinary secret of his life that the title promised without promising.
It would automatically win a few Academy Awards if they stuck to the source material and added a few key Uncle Ben quotes in grey frames and somber music playing in low volume in the background at opportune timing, like when he found himself at pivotal crossroads and had to make a decision that drove his life further from average.
Junior high school would be the formative arc and the initial introduction of the core characters. Here is where the trauma/character development stimulus and (supposed)genius intellect will be briefly shown. Where the expected path of his life will be foreshadowed, which also foreshadows the pivotal divergence.
The template for his character will be exercised – nerdy, antisocial, purported genius, kind, pushover – which will lead to the most important arc: senior high school.
The failed romance, the pining, the rebellious phase, the tragedy, Aunt May's cold pasta, the bullying, the letdown, the pushback, the accident, the realization — the choice.
The audience will be left stunned as the tone suddenly changes and the dark clouds sets over. It will already be too late when they realize that the average daily life stopped sometime ago.
No mood will be allowed to settle in for too long as they will keep changing things up with flashbacks every time a decision is to be made. The decisions will be the highlight of the whole thing.
If the director needed a global recognition then adding key visuals of Aunt May and at least three scenes of her perfect Sunday pasta was unnegotiable. If executed perfectly, it would earn a few nominations and at least one major film award.
While it won't hit that legendary billion dollar summit, or even the five hundred million dollars greatness milestone, it would smash the box office in its opening weekend.
At the end of the movie, people will trudge out of the theater in dumbstruck awe and ask themselves the same question Peter was likely asking himself at every point of the documentary.
Like right now.
'How did I get myself into this mess?'
Almost a year since he got bitten by that one radioactive spider, and a few months of him officially being The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man – with the suit, logo and everything – and he'd been content with dealing with thugs, robbers, organized crimes and other no-do-gooders in small, normal Queens and its environs. He was perfectly okay with that. He had zero complaints when dealing with thieves and criminals with guns.
'How did I get myself into this mess?' He just hoped the documentary would get it right because he had absolutely no clue how this even started.
Why did he suddenly get a supervillain? Why before Christmas? And why did he look like the Explicit Content modern retelling of the Grinch?
"What did Christmas ever do to you? Guess who's still on the naughty list this year?" He might have or not have joked about the green imp's seasonal getup. That might also have been before or after he called the glider an inferior imitation and that it couldn't do what Rudolf did in one foggy night.
Something might have happened around or between the statements because he suddenly found himself crashing into a building and crashing into a family's lunch.
He had hardly gotten himself off the broken table and was in the middle of an apology to the terrified family when they heard the maniacal laughter careening towards them.
"You even got the laugh wrong. Do your research!" a web splurge covered the cosplaying Grinch's face as he flew over, and two stretched webs to either side of the broken walls shot him towards the blinded Grinch like a catapult.
"This is why no one likes sequels to classics." He punched the jade menace across the face, sending him flying off the glider which didn't hesitate to do a small loop and fly towards its rider.
"I will fillet your flesh off your bones, insect!" The open-budget Grinch roared which caused Peter to hang his head low in disappointment from where he was perched on the side of a building.
The. Grinch. Doesn't. Roar. He. Snarls!
"Get it right!" Peter shouted as he swung over with practiced flair. "If you're going to pirate a classic, at least get the subtitles right!"
He shot a few web bullets but the dude dodged them and rushed at him with his rebranded deranged cackling. Peter dodged the bull rush by hopping web strings but this new guy was even faster as he surfed his glider in a sharp upward turn and cut the webs and caught Peter by the neck.
"Insignificant worm." The shrill anger was grating to Peter's ears but he forced through it and the suffocating grip to croak out something of utmost importance.
"Your last words perhaps?" The weird elf asked with sinister glee.
"… rch…..d…et…..r…"
"Hahaha, be polite and speak loudly." The schizophrenic elf brought him closer so Peter tried again with more force through the crushing hold on his throat.
"A spider… is an… Arachnid. Get. It. Right."
"You vermin!"
"A..rachnid." Peter croaked as the new local bully wound his other hand up for a gut punch but Peter webbed up his face again and drew it in for a headbutt that rattled his skull a little, like a tiny bit. The guy faltered and his grip weakened but Peter did not instantly peel away as he instead pulled in the webbed head for another headbutt.
This one did the trick as the hover board wobbled erratically as its rider lost balance. Peter wasted no time as he wounded up the Spider-Man special as he pulled away and webbed up a nearby wall and the intense cosplayer.
Using the force of his swing, he grunted as the muscles in his other hand coiled as he used one hand to swing the guy into the wall of another building.
The moment the guy slammed against the building, he started peppering him with a rain of web bullets and instantly cocooned him to the wall before physics did its thing.
He landed on the wall and squatted above the masked head. "Guess who's not stealing Christmas this time?"
Instead of snarling— or roaring as this pirated copyright did— the first phase boss started laughing which raised Peter's hackles as he recognized that he just transitioned into a cut scene. His enhanced senses floored out and quickly drew his head to the whirring and clicking of the floating saucer.
"What makes you think you've won? How about this little gift to celebrate our first meeting?"
Two mini turret jutted out of the glider, Peter's spider senses that were ringing before started blaring, and then started shooting things into the sky.
"Pumpkins?"
"Hahahaha!" The psycho continued laughing but Peter had already kicked off the wall after the falling pumpkins as the pitched up humming and this particular tempo of his spider senses told him that those were likely explosives.
The laughter behind him grew even more deranged as it grew farther until it just stopped. The madman had escaped.
Peter did not dwell on it as he webbed up three pumpkins and held it tightly against himself like eggs on sale. He kicked another one towards him as he swung by to web up two more.
It was a tense midair juggle as he hurried to catch all of them as the humming turned into a high pitch. The last one had already bounced off a building and was falling over a crosswalk where people were gathered and watching him.
Things like wind resistance and angle of elevation came easy and instinctive to him when he started swinging so he didn't think too much about it and shot a web downwards that looked agonizingly slow to him even as it crossed the distance in a fraction of a second and grabbed the ticking pumpkin.
A simple thought and the relaxing of his danger sense made him pull the bomb up and threw the web of pumpkin bombs up as well, just a moment before it blew up in a huge explosion whose resulting force sent him flying to the ground as a potential red splat, which he narrowly avoided by webbing up an exposed beam on a billboard and used it to bungee jump onto the roof of a nearby building.
He waved down awkwardly as some people panicked, some cursed loudly, while some cheered at him.
"What the hell, Spider-Man? You made me drop my burger. Warn a brother next time before you pull shit like this!"
".. Sorry." Peter winced in embarrassment as he mouthed off a few apologies to the grumbling crowd before slinking away.
His mind was fully on the worrying appearance of whoever that man was as he swung down one of his preferred alleyways and changed out of his suit.
He winced at the welts that were on his shoulders, chest and back as he threw on his shirt. The guy was strong, strong enough that he was clearly enhanced in some way and psychopathic to boot.
Nothing ever happens in Queens, so why would a villain ever show up here? And there was the level of tech.
That was not something that could be knocked up in a sectioned room that gave away a part of its birthright to be half the room it used to be but also allows it to function as an all-purpose science lab, nor was it built in the garage of an obsessed ambitious engineer. Those refinements were hi-spec and that meant equipment that had acronyms for names and cost millions of dollars at a minimum.
"This is bad. This is really bad." And here is the part where Peter Parker belatedly realizes that he unknowingly just took another step that strayed him further from an average life.
If only he could have gotten something from their battle, like a dud pumpkin bomb or a part of the glider, that he could dismantle and start his search for clues.
"How did my life get to this point?" He moaned in misery as he hurried back home.
He was behind on two assignments and his attendance record was getting some splotches, and in return for the rising threats to his academics, the universe rewards him with a villain in the middle of the day and forced him to skip last period as well.
.
...…..
.
The Grim Reminder watched with complete apathy as the group of lowlifes skittered into the empty building through the front door that they easily picked.
To enable their sick gains, they had no qualms with killing anyone who they felt would be too much of a complication or might inadvertently lead the police into securing their arrest. The Punisher would endeavor to repay the favor. They would not live past this night.
He watched as they all entered the house. He could read the sheer excitement that rolled off their body at what they thought would be an easy job since no one was home.
He has been tracking them for days now and today just so happens to be their unlucky day.
He stepped out from where he hid in the darkness and strolled towards the house and entered it with a calm stride and silent footsteps.
The first guy that was still lounging around the living room looking for something of value to pilfer was the first casualty of the night, and he should have been thankful for it.
The Punisher covered his mouth from behind and snapped his neck without so much as a second thought.
One down. Six to go.
The second one was coming out from the lounge adjacent to the living room and had a second to register the shock before his friend's knife kissed his throat. He fell with an ungraceful thump.
"Dey, is everything alright down there?" a concerned voice called from the second floor but he got no reply so he called out again. "Dey, Beck, you guys alright?"
The concerned man came out from one of the rooms and leaned over the railings to confirm what was happening downstairs. He gasped as he saw his two friends lying on the ground in the low lighting.
"Gu—mmph!"
Crack.
The words hardly left his lips as someone covered them from behind and crushed his neck with a brutal twist.
"Hey Donny, what's up— holy shit!" The man who came out of the same room as the dead Donny screamed and hastily raised his gun, only for his hand and a part of his stomach to be blasted off by the Punisher's shotgun.
A commotion instantly kicked out and shouts and padded feet echoed from the other rooms but Frank Castle didn't care about it and instead walked towards the screaming man that was trying to hold his stump and stop his guts from spilling out with one hand.
He stepped on the man's stump, eliciting a shrill scream from the dying man, and levelled the barrel of his gun to his head.
"Your guns. They look clean and expertly modded. Your supplier. Give me his name."
"P…please, I-I didn't do— arck!"
His gargling groveling turned into a tortured squeal as Frank pressed down his foot.
"Name." He said again. The noises were near. He raised his head and raised his gun towards the bend of the hallway and mentally counted down.
The moment a shadow flickered past it, his finger clamped down on the trigger and the new assailant fell down to the ground with brutalized legs.
"Hector! Let's get out of here!"
"B-but Hector, he's… he's…"
"He's dead. Let's get out of here, Drew. He's dead!"
"He's…he's my brother."
Frank looked down at the man that was slowly going into shock and pressed his foot down on the hand despite the weak groans.
"Name."
"Pawnshop. D-Dre k-knows…." Frank dispassionately stepped over the man who just fainted and ignored the other one with the busted legs as he was currently on his last breath.
He turned back and went downstairs and walked around the house to catch the last two hopping over the small fence with their 'hustle' slung over their shoulders in a black bag.
He was completely calm and unhurried as he brought out a pistol and shot the both of them at their pelvis, effectively compromising their waist bone, i.e their motor functions.
They slipped down the fence with pained groans that came out as half whispers and half screams.
Two more shots to their shoulders stopped them from being able to grip their gun.
There was no joy to be had in this as he did not do it for vain satisfaction. Not for any moral justice or immoral revenge. He did it because he wanted to. Just the way they decided to kill and rob, so also did he decide to kill them. It was as easy as that.
He used his foot to flip them over and levelled the gun at their heads, eyes dead and empty.
"Guns. Supplier. Name. Now."
"W-why should we t-tell you—arghhh!" The bravado died prematurely as a bullet dug into his kneecap. Two more entered his thighs for good measure.
"Name. Now."
"Y-yes, yes. I'll tell you. Just let us go."
"Name. Now." Frank said and reinforced his words by pointing the gun to the other unharmed leg.
"Junk 'N Stuff." The man huffed with labored breath as feverish sweat coated his forehead and blood smeared his teeth. "Off Queens. Small… small pawnshop. Isaac. That's it. I swea—"
Bang. Bang.
Two swift shots put both men out of their misery as the Punisher got the information he wanted and left. It would be minutes later before the cops showed up but all they came to was seven dead robbers.
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