Autonomy Part 1

Ultimate Scarlet Spider anyone?

Months ago he had been ready to turn 16 and a half. At the time he thought it was important to make that distinction. He should have been telling himself to stay the fuck out of Houston.

While he cussed to himself about the rain, and how much of a nosy bitch Jean Grey was, he was physically hating Houston at night. That is, Houston, at night. At least the seedier parts of it where crooks and criminals couldn't help but to crawl out of the wood work… and where he couldn't help but to crawl to.

He left New York to get away from this, and this is where he ended up? Either the universe had a strange sense of humor or he really was his own worst enemy. New York was not Houston, and while he didn't want to be in Houston or New York, there were worse places. Like Chicago. He'd have his hands full there. BLM, the racial equivalent to Batman in Gotham City, probably wouldn't take kindly to him.

In one hand he held a glass he swiped from that bar he had been to for the last few nights – the one with the stained walls that acted as an impromptu but catcher and the suspicious smelling pooltable. He took a swig as, again, his thoughts turned New York. Aunt May, Clone one and two - affectionately named Tarantula and Quasimodo, the dead ones. Kitty, MJ, Harry, Gwen. …Even the Gwen-Chimera who was technically his daughter, and then the girl version of himself. Life had been getting weird.

He grunted as the alcohol burned his throat, but no one was going to pay attention to a hobo copping a swig on the street at night in this part of town, and that's exactly what he looked like. A hobo. A towering, shabbily dressed and hobo getting drunk in a dank corner in Houston, Texas, his long hair and dark visage keeping people away. If only Aunt May could see him now.

He swallowed. The plan had been to live life without responsibility. But that hadn't worked in the slightest. He only had himself to blame. Instead, he blamed the man who talked too loud.

He had swaggered into the bar, all hot air and aesthetic status with his friends. A slimy looking bastard by appearance who said that Houston was the busiest port in the country. That caught his ears. He didn't know jackshit about Houston, much less he was by the water. Go figure.

They were talking and bragging like they owned the place. Cranked up the radio, demanded drinks, hit on the chicks until they ran out. The man and his friends walked like people who thought they were untouchable, a gang that thought they were big fish in a bigger ocean. He knew the type.

He hadn't intervened, hadn't said a thing. They weren't doing anything wrong unless being obnoxious was a crime. Even then, he was just a citizen, it wasn't his place to do anything about that.

Then he heard it again. The 'port'. So busy. And the deal…

He'd been on his fifth glass already and his vision was beginning to haze up, but at least he was learning to handle his liquor. The 3 stooges and company present started to hush up and huddle in soft whispers. The Man Who Talked Too Loud hushed up, whispered about the 'shipment from Mexico'. He talked about the take and the meet up which, coincidentally, was so close to the bar. At the port.

He talked too much, too loud, and too carelessly. He thought he and his friends were untouchable. That was his fault.

That he was here? That was his fault too.

The Man Who talked Too Loud got some more friends, sauntered on down to the docks with his cowboy hat and white slacks before joining another group. Posting himself atop a streetlight as an afterthought, glass in hand, he watched as the groups faced off against each other. Thinking that a choreographed showdown was about to happen,. He berated himself for not bringing popcorn.

Instead, the assembly of men, who were uniformed in their own unique way that screamed unsavory, exchanged brief words. A big Mexican, Puerto Rican, Latin-whatever guy tossed two large, heavy looking bags in the center of their groups and The Man Who Talked Too Loud nudged one of his guys forward, but the squirrely specimen knelt hungrily almost as soon as it hit the ground.

He unzipped it and there was green. Green almost bursting from the seams, as if the Hulk had thrown up on paper and they had put it in there. His eyes widened. His wallet groaned and his stomach gurgled for more than just alcohol or something that wasn't a cheap bologna sandwich and soda.

"It's good," the guy, he was going to call him 'Squirrely', said, his twisted face bearing a vaguely Texan accent. "Really good."

He was only eyeballing the money though. He'd had to steal from those who stole, criminals, just to feed himself. Stomach empty and clothes ragged it hadn't been much of a choice, but he never took a lot, just enough. Now this.

He could take that money and live like a king for the rest of his life. He'd never make an iota of it back in Manhattan, trolling for chump change and selling pictures of himself to whoever would buy without asking questions like a camwhore.

It was bloodmoney. Dirty money. Good money, and he needed it more than they did. He deserved that much and they weren't going to doll it out to some charity. This was a drug trade, maybe heavy arms. Where would the money end up otherwise, in lock up? He could put it into circulation, help the… well, that may have been bullshit, but bloodmoney was like guns, only dangerous if used for the wrong purpose.

He wasn't in New York, and he wasn't Spider-Man. He was hungry, homeless, and really fucking tired of bologna sandwiches. He was disowned. What would Uncle Ben think?

Money changed hands. Ben had always wanted a sedan for the family. A bigger house, better food, more books for his nephew. His nephew got a new pair of glasses that Flash broke the next day. That set them back a few months. Bills piled up. Ben was taken by men like these, and not even for money.

He had seen enough.

He checked the perimeter, knowing better to jump into the thick of it. He could handle what they could deal, but gunfire attracted attention, and he didn't want that. No police, not yet. Police meant SHIELD, SHIELD meant Fury, and Fury meant a guilt trip destined for Queens.

Finding a lone guard as he skulked through the darkness, he rapped a staccato rhythm on the side of a rusted, scarlet storage container. The man froze, raised his gun, and waved it around. He didn't move. Smart.

"Yo," he said, affecting a vaguely latin accent, marred by a dry throat and slurred capacity. "I got the stuff!"

The guard wavered, and he knew he had him. A druggie. "What stuff."

"The stuff man! The stuff!" He whispered. "Come on and lets get a quick snatch before anyone feels it!"

The guard looked around before ducking inside. Hearing fingertips and footfalls on metal had him whirl around suddenly, but the last thing he saw were the glowing red eyes.

Unfortunately his fingers pulled the trigger and the gun opened fire. His body slumped against the wall in a heap. But the sound of gunfire ricocheting sounded like war. The rest of the group was alerted, no doubt, but that was okay. That was satisfying in some odd, primal way he didn't want to think about.

The rest came running, all grouped up, formally dressed and street savvy. One examined the place and got snatched up like a teen girl in a horror movie for his trouble. He screamed like one too. They started shooting.

"Hold your fire!" The Man Who Talked Too Loud shouted with his thick Texan accent. "Show y'self! We can negotiate!"

Negotiate. It was a smart move, which meant they were more organized than he thought. Smart meant connections. It was twenty of them and one of him. Those odds still weren't in their favor. Of course they'd want to negotiate.

They stared into the dark and saw only glowing red eyes. It said a lot about the man, de facto leader notwithstanding, that he was using his head like that. The eyes were emotional, unblinking, and when they finally did, it was obvious that they had no intention of negotiating.

The screams started shortly after the swarm of spiders skittered out with an audible clattering against the concrete. Some of the perps were dragged into the dark screaming. Others tried to run. None got away.

Bullets proved useless against the swarm of arachnids. Fist crunching bone was more effective. He didn't kill them, chaotic energy or no, he had enough power. The gunfire would already attract the police and dead bodies would leave even more questions in his wake. When they were arrested, if they were, they wouldn't be his problem. If they weren't, they still wouldn't be. If they became a problem… he'd find them.

When all was said and done, the unconscious lumps were in a pile and the money was where they left it. The money. Peter spared one look at the two large, heavy looking bags, and then another. His stomach gurgled, memories of sitting shotgun with Benjamin Parker as they rode in his old hatchback past a dealership. The bills, the fact that they had to heat water just to warm the house most times. Ben hunched over the table, unopened late bill payments in front of him.

The hospital bills that came because Flash Thompson was a little, lying bitch. The funeral expenses. The money. Always with the money.

Twin thwips had both bags them underneath his arm, his long limbs now easily holding so much money that he couldn't imagine what he'd do with it. That was good. It'd be a surprise, and surprises were good. Usually.

The spiders began to disperse after an offhanded comment. He told them not to devour or poison the bodies but didn't know if they listened. If they didn't, it wasn't his fault. As they left they parted around the bodies like water in a brook.

The faint skittering of them into the night quieted considerably and that was when he heard what appeared in its place. It was simple and almost silent, but he heard it. A cricket chirping. A girl's voice. Pleading, helpless.

"Por favor…"

He came to the conclusion quickly enough – it was a telepath. With his luck, she'd swap his mind with one of the lumps he'd just dealt with too. Jean Grey had done a number on his trust of psychics and mutants.

He stepped toward the sound, finding the cricket sitting on the side of another large, scarlet storage container. As the light of a building behind him cast his shadow over the insect, the cricket stopped, chirped once, bounced away. The air was heavier, faintly disgusting here. The girl's voice whimpered helplessly inside his mind, "Por favor," again and again, igniting something primal and protective, annoying and idiotic, but all the same, he tore the doors open. The stench that erupted from the inside made him want to puke. He did.

The 'shipment' was not drugs. He was wrong, he was surprised, and he didn't like surprises anymore.

Inside was a sea of bodies, rot and dead eyes and heated, putrefied flesh, shit, piss, and the humid air of degradation and death. This was also a surprise. A pretty fucking shitty one.

"Help… please…" inside his head, and he didn't like it, didn't like telepaths, and that was all that it could be. The girl was a telepath and that checked off two of four things that amounted to making him uneasy: female and telepathic, save red hair and being a part of the X-Men.

She said again, as loud as she could yet still very weakly, "Please…", as if it was a foregone conclusion that he would walk away.

Swallowing bile in his throat, he crawled along on the ceiling of the container, grimacing at the slick, wrong feeling of the condensation on the metal ceiling. A hand erupted past the sea of bodies, twitching, and yanked the corpses out of the way like paperweights. They were dead, all of them. He would have helped them if he could have, but… there was nothing he could do now except puke in their honor, which he would have done later if he hadn't already lost his meager lunch.

The girl's hand was weak, frail looking and he knew better to wrench her from beneath hundreds of pounds of flesh. When he reached her he saw that she was huddled in the corner, just enough that she wasn't crushed. Lucky. He grasped her hand, watched as it weakly tried to hold on, and started to tug with the smallest fraction of his strength.

He gently pulled her out and picked her up. Dark hair, latina, young, and covered in horrid things he didn't even want to think about, and smelling just as bad.

She looked up at him weakly. A whisper of a word on her lips, and his distrust in telepaths just got another point in its favor. His predilection for saving people did too, and specifically in the downtrodden, pretty girl type.

"Hombre… Aran..."

She passed out.