As he made his way along the bus to where Ned had saved him a seat, Peter thought he hid the limp that accompanied his sprained ankle admirably.

He sat down next to his best friend, allowing himself a quiet sigh of relief as the weight came of his minor injury.

"What did you do to your leg?" Was the first thing Ned said to him, and Peter let a breath of frustration lose from his nose.

Damn.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

He didn't ask how Ned could tell he was hurt. He obviously hadn't been as inconspicuous as he'd first thought.

"Was it a bank robbery? A mugging? Giant evil robots?"

"No, Ned."

"Aliens? Did The Avengers need you again?"

"No, Ned."

Peter was more assertive this time. Even though Ned was keeping his voice at a low pitch, they were still smack bang in the middle of a crowded school bus, and Peter was very concious of the many pairs of ears in close proximity to them, undoubtedly eager to tune in to the first whisper of alien gossip.

"Dude, you can't leave me in the dark like this." Pressed Ned. "I can't be your guy in the chair if you don't tell me all the crazy shit that goes on in your secret life. I've gotta assess these things, y'know? Besides, it's the most interesting part of my day."

"People, Ned" exclaimed Peter in an a low yet exasperated tone, gesturing generally to their public environment. "But if you've really gotta know, I got my foot stuck in a grate and fell."

"You what?"

"I got my foot stuck in a grate and fell." repeated Peter, louder this time. "Now my ankle's sprained."

"During a fight?"

"No, like five minutes ago."

Ned frowned.

"Aren't you supposed to have spidey-sense to avoid stuff like that?"

"My spidey-sense is for danger." replied Peter, hushed. "I guess a metal grate isn't technically all that dangerous."

At first, Peter had refused to call the unpleasant bombardment on his senses that emerged at times of imminent catastrophe his spidey-sense, thinking it sounded utterly childish, but seen as Ned was the only person it ever came up in conversation with, the term his friend had coined somehow stuck.

"Dude, you got your ass kicked by a grate."

"I'm having an off day, okay?"

And he really was. He'd felt increasingly spaced out all morning, unable to eat his breakfast, his limbs feeling distant from his body. His head felt like it was full of cotton, stuffing up his senses. And now he'd hurt his ankle before he'd even made it to the end of his road. Peter had been thrown from heights of thirty feet and suffered less damage, which he knew made little sense. Perhaps he was getting ill. Though he wasn't aware he was even capable of that any more.

Their bus got stuck in traffic ten minutes into their journey, just like it did every morning, on the patch of road that ran alongside the train tracks into the city. Although this time it was much worse than usual. As they pulled up to a set of red lights before a large crosswalk, Peter pulled out his phone to text MJ that they were probably going to be late, only to realise his lack of signal.

"Hey, you got any bars?" he asked Ned,.

"Nope, you either?"

Peter shook his head, frowning. He didn't think he'd ever lost signal in the city. It was a Stark phone after all, courtesy of the man himself.

That was when the whole bus jolted violently. It felt as if they'd been hit by a car. Peter dropped his phone on the floor, totally caught off guard. Students clung to the seats in front of them with several panicked yells.

"What the hell was that?!" exclaimed Ned, right before the bus was struck again and even Peter reached out to steady himself. Out front, people on the crosswalk were backing away, looking in their direction, fear on their faces. Peter followed their gaze to where the impact was occurring, but before he saw anything, whatever it was hit them again, and this time the force was enough to take the right two wheels off the ground. Reality tilted, and with an increase in surrounding screams, it became clear that the bus was going over. Peter pulled off his rucksack and began unzipping it for his suit, but before he could pull it out, the right side of the bus was crashing into the nearest car and it was Ned that cushioned his fall. Thankfully no one had been sitting across from them so Peter managed to avoid a face full of student himself.

"Peter, what's going on?" cried Ned, quite clearly terrified. Peter shook himself, trying to regain his bearings. He attempted not to crush Ned under his own weight.

No spidey-sense, thought Peter. That was supposed to mean they were safe. Well clearly fricking not.

"Cover for me." he said, before he began scrambling for the open door at the front of the bus, bag in hand, wincing at the sharp jolts of pain through his ankle. With adrenaline coursing through him, he ignored any of the disorientated and injured students that might be watching him go, as well as the now unconscious bus driver that he passed on the way out. He'd have to help them once they were out of further harm's way.

As he stumbled onto the concrete, there was no immediate sight of the attacker, so Peter rolled into the tiny space underneath the toppled bus and the half crushed car it lay slanted against, frantically tugging his suit from his rucksack. He changed into it quickly but not without difficulty in the too cramped space. Once he re-emerged onto the open street in full disguise, Peter fired the bag containing his clothes as far away from the scene as possible. It landed somewhere beneath the large arches upon which the trains ran.

There were other students climbing from the bus now; one of them caught sight of the neighbourhood hero as they landed on shaking feet. They tugged frantically at the arm of their friend who was following closely behind and pointed in his direction.

Oh boy, this was too close for comfort, thought Peter. He'd thank bad guys in the future for carrying out their villainy in a way that allowed him to become Spider-Man less conspicuously. Being outed was the last thing he needed right now. Still, keeping his identity under wraps wasn't currently his outstanding priority, for his friends were in danger and he needed to find out who the hell would decide to beat up a school bus full of kids on a Tuesday morning, and then he needed to put a stop to it promptly.

It seemed whatever was the cause of the commotion was no longer interested in the bus, because it was no longer in the close vicinity. He climbed onto the roof of the next car to survey his surroundings, but not without an unprecedented amount of effort and a near slip on his bad ankle. What was wrong with him today? Despite his disconcerting struggle with what should have been a simple task, it didn't take long for Peter to find what he was looking for. The guy wasn't exactly hiding himself.

In the time Peter was changing into his suit, whoever it was had moved out into the space that had opened up on the road in front of them while they'd been stuck at the lights. They were green now, but no one had made a move to drive.

The physique outlined by the thick metal suit was male. The man's identity was obscured by a masked helmet made of the same material, and there was some kind of tail that curved out from the back of his costume, similar to that of a scorpion. More stolen alien tech, thought Peter, a thousand questions rushing through his head.

"Hey numbnut," he called, "I've had a rough morning so let's wrap this up quick, okay?"

The man turned towards the sound of Peter's voice. His fist loosened and his head tilted as if beneath the mask a closed grin was spreading across his face.

"Spider-Man." he said. The voice coming off him was metallic and cold, but despite the distortion it sounded strangely familiar. "I was starting to think I'd got the wrong bus."

What?

Peter had to focus through the sounds of people running, yelling and the distant sounds of oncoming police sirens as his head swam with unsettling thoughts. This stranger knew which bus Spider-Man took to school, which instilled the more pressing fact that he knew Peter's identity. But how?

"So you're looking for me?" said Peter. "You know there are easier ways to get my attention. Destroying public property is nice and all, but at this point it's even less original than just sending me flowers, or chocolate, or y'know, a simple phone call."

Peter was actually slightly grateful that he seemed to be the target of this man's possibly murderous intentions, purely because it meant he had less people to worry about.

Mr Scorpion, for lack of a better name, started walking briskly towards him. It was clear that the heavy metal suit weighed him down a little, and Peter fired a web at his assailant's chest from his perch on the car, ready to pull the man to the ground and have this over with. He could ask questions later.

The web latched to the metal suit, and Peter tugged as Scorpion came to a halt, expecting the man to come crashing down, but he didn't move an inch, which immediately caused the first seeds of panic to split and bloom. Peter's arms felt utterly weak.

"Karen, what's happening? Why won't he budge?" he uttered, pulling at the web to no avail.

"It seems your normally alleviated strength has been subdued." responded the AI, the relative calmness of her voice at complete odds with the fear her statement sent raging through him.

"Having a little trouble there, Spidey?"

The man's voice had a touch of knowing about it, which only made Peter panic more.

"No trouble here." He replied anyway, tugging again despite the complete ineffectualness of his strength."But if you'd mind, y'know, falling over? That would be great."

With a suited hand, Scorpion grabbed the web attached to his chest and pulled in his own direction, taking Peter violently with it. Peter came crashing from the roof of the car onto the road, a fall that would normally do little to no damage, but now the impact shook his whole frame. He'd have been winded or worse if it weren't for the protective armour of the stark suit.

"Karen, what happened to me?" Peter gasped from his place on the ground.

His sprained ankle made a little more sense now, but only a little.

"I've carried out a full body scan," Karen replied, "and there appears to be a foreign device two centre-meters under the skin of your right calf."

"What?" Peter said the word aloud this time, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself stiffly to his feet. His hand shot down to his calf where he felt nothing but the fabric of his suit. This was so so so not good.

"It's releasing some kind of pulse." Karen continued. "Being the only thing that's changed since the last time you put on your suit, I can only deduce that this is what's causing your problem."

Peter stumbled back against the same car he'd fallen from as Scorpion began walking towards him again. All of a sudden, the man looked so much more intimidating, more creature than human.

"Is there any way to disable it?" Peter almost yelled.

"Maybe if I knew what the technology was, but I've failed to match it to anything in my database. I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Peter."

This is so not fair, thought Peter. Scorpion was almost on him, and Peter didn't know whether to fight or run.

"Activate taser web. Now, Karen. Now!"

Peter fired again, and this time when the web struck, electricity rattled through the frame of Scorpion's suit. However it seemed to have no effect on his rapid approach. The metal absorbed the electrical energy that was being emitted.

"Oh, come on." Peter exclaimed in utter frustration, and before he could fire another web, Scorpion was upon him and one of his large metal fists was striking Peter across the face hard. His body crumpled to the ground where his head hit the floor. The world scattered on impact. He should have run.

"Peter, you need to evacuate. You might as well be a regular civilian right now, which means your chances of surviving an attack on your life from this man are next to zero."

Peter barely heard Karen's words of warning. They were quiet and distant as he pushed himself onto his elbows, trying to shake himself back into reality. Some reality, thought Peter. His head felt like it was splitting along the point of impact from his assailant's fist, not to mention he was wholeheartedly freaking out. This man knew who he was. There was an unidentifiable alien device under his skin that was cancelling out his abilities. And now he was about to be killed by some jacked up guy in a stupid animal costume, most likely in front of his best friend. Though he didn't know the latter for sure because his vision was still blurred from a hit that should never have taken him down in the first place.

"You look like you're having a little trouble standing up there, kid." said the larger man. "Maybe you should stop trying."

And with that he sent a rock hard foot straight into Peter's stomach. Peter gasped as too much pain erupted through him and he collapsed again, face plastered back against the concrete. Shit. Shit. Shit. God that hurt. Scorpion leant over him and lowered his voice.

"You're not that threatening without your babysitters around, are you, Peter?" he said. The disparaging emphasis Scorpion placed on Peter's name left him more confused and fearful than ever. "I've gotta be honest though, it's not much fun when I have to hold back like this."

It dawned on Peter that if this man could topple a bus with relative ease, considering his current vulnerability he was lucky he wasn't already a lifeless pile of broken bones on the sidewalk. Right now Peter was merely being played with, like a cat toys with it's prey. He must've pissed this guy off bad.

"Who are you?" Peter gasped out before beginning to force himself up again, far too slowly. The many people who had fled the immediate vicinity were now stood at a distance, watching and filming in different degrees of awe and horror. Some people were still injured on the bus, and some were watching terrified through the glass.

Not waiting for an answer, Peter lifted his arm to fire again, but Scorpion lashed out, grabbing his wrist and enclosing the web shooter under thick metal. Scorpion's grip tightened and Peter's stomach dropped as he felt and heard his web shooter ruthlessly crushed under the pressure. Oh God, no. Scorpion lifted Peter's arm high, and with it his body followed.

"Karen!" Peter yelled. "I could use some help here!"

"I'm sorry, Peter. I'm currently assessing your options."

"Well assess faster!"

Peter lifted his other hand, but before he could do anything, his body was being thrown. His stomach swooped, and then he crashed hard into the wind shield of a recently emptied cab. Glass smashed. Then there was only pain. A deduction he'd previously failed to make came to fruition. No abilities. No healing factor. If by some odd chance he lived through this, he'd have a whole new appreciation for the latter. For as he tumbled back to the ground amongst fragments of shattered car window, he knew his injuries were more than mere bruising. A sharp, borderline unbearable agony radiated outwards from the lower right side of his torso. He struggled to move at all. His breaths came short and strained like hiccups.

"Toomes didn't want to give us your name at first." came Scorpion's voice from a short distance. "But at the end of the day, he's still a business man. And we know how to do business."

Peter desperately tried to regain control of his senses, struggling against the blinding pain in his side.

Toomes? We? How many people knew his identity now? How many of those people wanted him dead? In light of this new information, Peter found it difficult to accept how utterly and royally screwed he appeared to be.

"Karen, send a distress call to Mr Stark." he choked out. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But his situation was bad. Real bad. Hopefully he wouldn't already be dead before his 'babysitter' got here.

"I've already tried, Peter. There's something blocking my signal, as well as that of every device in the surrounding area."

And now it was worse. Much worse. Peter didn't know what the hell he could have done to warrant this amount of pre-planning. Someone really really wanted him dead.

The older man watched him struggle, winded on his front. Thank God he couldn't see the fear on Peter's face.

"Can't we talk about this?" Peter gasped, false nonchalance now his only defence. "We can talk, right?"

Scorpion sauntered over to him with an infuriating kind of ease. Peter tried to get up, crawl away, anything, but barely made it to his knees before his arms were knocked out from underneath him and he was being kicked again, and again, and again. The repeat blows to his already damaged torso were enough to make him cry out. Tears sprung to his eyes. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe.

Through the haze of pain, he thought he might have heard the echo of a man's distorted voice through a megaphone. Then a gun shot fired. A bullet ricocheted from Scorpion's armour, not even leaving a mark. Several more shots followed in ineffectual succession, and it seemed the man beneath the suit barely even noticed.

So the cops were finally here. But their weapons were as useless as Peter was. Just wonderful, Peter thought. He was quickly coming to the realisation that he was so, so going to die.

The older man was laughing as he bent down and took hold of Peter's left forearm, the one with the remaining web shooter. He then lifted him against his protesting bones and began to squeeze hard. Peter cried out again. Ouch. Ouch.

"Wait…" Peter frantically wheezed as the man gripped tighter. "Wait."

His arm was going to break. This maniac was going to break his fricking arm.

He was still winded beyond belief, his brain a badly concussed frenzy of panic. He didn't think. He just fired.

Bad idea.

The web hit Scorpion in the shoulder, but it was Peter that felt it. The electricity sparked, and Peter's mind went white as the jolt of power travelled through Scorpion's suit and straight into him. The shock was instantaneous but intense. Peter immediately let go of his web shooter, incapacitated. He felt as as if his muscles had shorted out. He went slack.

Electrocuting himself however, may have saved Peter from the broken arm he was expecting, for while he hung limp as result of his own infliction, Scorpion reached for Peter's web slinger, his goal all along, and with minor difficulty cracked the band open from his wrist. He then proceeded to drop Peter back on the ground, who stirred to clutch his bruised limb against his chest.

"Too easy." said Scorpion.

Peter glanced at his empty wrist and wondered where the hell this guy managed to get hold of technology that could tear through stark tech like it was paper. He was lost, scared, getting his ass handed to him in the most public way. People were filming. This would be on the news. May would see it. And now his lack of web shooters left him altogether defenceless. He'd never felt so much like the child he was.

He had to get out. He had to get out or he was going to die. It was as simple as that.

This time Scorpion let him stumble to his feet, even let him make it a few feet in the opposite direction, not before crashing into the same dented car he'd been thrown into before. Peter didn't know where he was running to, just knew he had to run regardless.

He heard someone cry Spider-Man's name, a civilian, and turned towards the voice. Then the owner of the voice instead let out a cry of horror at the site of their neighbourhood hero dropping to the ground once more. A string of Spider-Man's own webbing was suddenly latched to his back, sending pulses of sharp debilitating electricity through the powerless web slinger. Not far away, Scorpion held the stolen web shooter, watching in amusement as Peter suffered on the ground, a victim of his own tech.

Peter wasn't really aware of anything any more. Only that every muscle in his body was acutely seizing, forming tight ropes of fire under his skin. The worlds worst cramp had flared up in every part of his body, from his fingers to his thighs to his bruised chest. His brain screamed make it stop. But his brain wasn't holding the ropes any more.

It felt like it lasted a lifetime, but it probably wasn't any longer than five seconds. When the electricity waned, Peter didn't even try to move. He planted his head against the concrete, and instead focused on restraining tears.

"Now you're probably all wondering why I'm here."

Scorpion's voice was suddenly amplified as he turned away from Peter, who lay shaking, and instead addressed the small crowd of people watching from a distance, those who hadn't completely fled the scene.

"I have a message to give on behalf of myself and my associates, whose names I won't mention, and this is it… Your heroes can be broken. Your heroes can be killed. And for those out there who find themselves in the same predicament as Spidey here, stumbling onto these abilities. Be smart. Because if you choose the wrong side, don't think we're not coming for you next."

Peter knew he was bound to make enemies in this line of work, but not like this. He'd never anticipated this. If he were to be killed now, he'd die a symbol of fear and weakness, a deterrent for hope. He'd die as a kid, a kid who'd meddled in things he didn't understand, and Peter didn't understand, not even in the slightest. And that's why he couldn't die yet. He wouldn't.

"I know you think these people are your saviours." Scorpion continued his speech. And with him distracted, Peter started dragging himself along the concrete, wasted, wearied, wincing at the pain that was only growing in his side, back towards the broken glass on the ground next to the same dented taxi. "But there's an essential order to things. And that order keeps the world running. When people disrupt that order, things go wrong. People get hurt."

It was like the man was reading from a script, putting on a performance. These weren't even his own words. Peter might have cared, but he was too preoccupied with surviving. He stopped listening as he reached the shattered glass and grabbed the largest shard, wanting to throw up at the thought of what he was about to do.

"Karen?" he whispered.

"Yes, Peter?"

"I need you to show me where the device is in my leg. I have to see it."

He struggled onto his back, managed to half sit up.

"Commencing X-ray."

Peter had never X-rayed himself before, and for a moment was taken aback by the sight of his own skeleton. He actively chose not to focus on the mess that was his ribcage, because then he really would throw up. He went straight to his leg, and sure enough, there embedded in the muscle of his calf was an unnatural round object, just under two centimetres in diameter.

What the hell is that? Thought Peter, and more importantly, how the hell did it get there without him knowing? Somehow they'd turned him into a sitting duck, whoever they were. They'd gotten to Peter regardless of his powers, and if they could do that, it seemed the only reason he wasn't long dead already was because whoever was in charge needed to make an example of him. It was clear that Peter had web slung his way into something so much bigger than himself. But it didn't really matter now. He just needed it out. He needed to fight back.

Barely thinking, Peter held his breath and jammed the glass into the back of his calf, right over the spot where the foreign device was lodged. The pain was intense, but masked almost entirely by adrenaline and desperation.

Things became a fast and bloody blur. And then Scorpion was upon him, distracted from his speech, grabbing Peter by the throat. Peter's senses lit up, drowning him in his own panic. Scorpion lifted him until his toes were barely scratching the ground. He was dragged to the centre off the crosswalk, as if to give those left on the school bus a better view. Peter's windpipe felt like it was being crushed. It probably was.

"So how do I deal with our little insect problem here?" said Scorpion, still addressing those left watching in horror. "Do I squash him like the household pest he is?"

Peter's eyes were streaming beneath his mask. His lungs screamed. Blood dripped onto white paint.

"Do I rip off his head? I mean, that'll certainly send the message loud and clear, but there are kids watching."

I'm a kid, thought Peter with a mad kind of spite. Everything hurt. Everything hurt and he was a kid and he couldn't breathe.

Peter clutched onto the older man's arm and wrenched with everything he had. It shifted, only a little, but it definitely shifted.

"I could take off his mask; show the world what's underneath. But I wouldn't want to make a martyr out of anyone now, would I?"

Peter tugged, choked, felt movement. His vision swam.

"So I guess I'll just have to settle for-"

Peter kicked out with a half strangled scream, and this time both he and Scorpion went tumbling to the ground. He fell from the other man's lost grip and landed on his side, as surprised as his counterpart to be there. The device that had been inside his leg lay two meters away, covered in blood, blinking a strange kind of iridescent light.

"You little shit." came the metallic voice.

Peter had no time to recover, to even get a whole breath in. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the sidewalk, then the nearest building. He jumped, clung on, and climbed, trailing blood as he went. Halfway up, a familiar feeling raced through him and the hairs on the back of his neck rose up. He immediately let go of the wall, dropped and re-attached himself a meter down, crying out at the strain on his side. A string of his webbing hit the wall above him where he'd just moved from, sparking with electricity. He dodged it, kept going, thinking of nothing other than getting himself out of harms way.

As soon as he reached the roof he collapsed onto his back.

For a moment all strength seeped out of him. His senses were drowned out by the ringing in his head. He left the present, his mind drifting somewhere else. He wasn't here. This wasn't happening. A brief moment of reprieve.

It was far too brief however. The ringing quickly died down and now he could hear and feel way too much: the voices down below, the traffic from the next block, his own laboured breathing. Having his abilities reactivate so suddenly was almost too intense. Especially in combination with the pain that blossomed over various parts of his body, radiating outwards, unrelenting. He groaned, coughed, and then tensed at the immediate effect it had on his tightening chest.

"Karen, run diagnostics."

His voice was gravel.

"You'll live." said Karen.

Peter allowed himself a strained, half delirious laugh.

"Thanks." he said. She was right. He didn't really want to know.

Peter urged himself to stand up, to assess his situation, to fight through the panic. But fighting was the last thing he wanted to do right now. His right leg was a mess. The rest of him was hardly any better. And more than anything, he was afraid. He had his powers back, but the feeling of powerlessness lingered. So he lay, breathed, waited.

The sound of Scorpion's amplified voice had him jumping, wincing, shivering. Why was he shivering?

"Surely you haven't had enough, little Spider?" Peter heard from down below. "I'm not done with you yet."

Well I'm done with you, thought Peter bitterly. But he wasn't allowed to be done. There were people down there. Innocent people. His friends. Despite how much he wanted to, he couldn't just run.

Though he couldn't bring himself to get back down there either; to even stick his head over the edge of the building. His limbs felt like led weights. There was a bubble of precious air around him that would burst if he moved.

"Come on, Spider-Man" came the voice again. "Are you really gonna deprive these people of the show they stuck around for? You too scared? I wouldn't blame you if you were."

Peter had never been the sort to shy away from fear. It was what had kept him alive in the past. So Scorpion's attempt at taunting Peter's ego did little to encourage the kind of stupidity that would help him get back in the fight. Not that what had happened thus far could really be called a fight. A pummelling perhaps. Or a game of Whack-a-mole where he was the mole. An execution even. The real fight was yet to come, if only Peter could just get up.

Get up, Peter. Just get up.

It was quiet for a while, and the tension rose as Peter willed himself to just move. Down below he heard the unidentifiable but familiar hushed tone of a student utter "Where did Parker go?" and cursed the return of his advanced hearing, for at this point the stress of anyone else deducing his identity was just another nightmare to add to the pile.

"Spider-Man." came Scorpion's voice once more, less colourfully mocking this time. "Do I need to remind you that we know who you are. We know everything about you. That means we know who you love."

Peter sat up. He didn't wince.

"If you're down and out, that's fine. I'm not one to kick a dead horse." Scorpion continued. "But someone's going to pay for your cowardice, and they're gonna pay pretty soon if you don't wise up and let me finish this. We know who you love, Spider-Man."