Talk of the Town

[Monday, 26th October 2009]

When I arrived at school early on Monday morning, I noticed that everyone was talking about Spiderman. In the bus, in front of the school, in the hallways, it seems I had become an overnight sensation with videos and photos popping up all over the internet and news channels.

Any who doubted Spiderman being real are now silenced as thousands had seen me slinging through the streets of New York and beating up criminals.

"What do you think about this Spiderman?" Gwen asks me as we walk through the hallway toward our classroom for the first class of the day.

From her tone of voice, she doesn't seem to be as enthusiastic as most people about this.

"I think it's a good thing someone is helping keep the streets clean of all the scum that have only been gaining more power in the recent years," I answer, not wanting to diss myself. "What about you? You don't sound all that happy."

"Just a little worried about my father, is all. When the Fantastic Four started their activities, crime dropped so much that a lot of cops lost their jobs. If the same happens with Spiderman, then who knows if he will get to keep his job."

Knowing the future, I have a hard time imagining that could happen. I mean, even now, we have Electro and Sandman hiding somewhere in the city, ready to attack at any time.

"Isn't your dad a police chief and a well know one at that? If they are going to be firing people, I would think they would go after some cops lower down on the corporal ladder and chiefs with bad reputations first." This seems to cheer her up a little, but I get a feeling there is still something else, "What else is on your mind?"

She shakes her head, explaining, "It's not really anything significant, just dad has been worried since that guy Flint Marko broke out of prison. Apparently, he was the one that put him in prison and has been worried about him trying to come after me to get revenge."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that on the news. Has he still not been found?" I ask, trying to see if I could get any information from Gwen. Perhaps she, as the daughter of a police chief, knows more than the news. I could, in turn, help her and her dad by getting Sandman back in prison.

"Dad said that the police chased after him for several hours after the prison escape, eventually tracking him down to the outskirts of New York City, but then he entered some restricted research site, and they lost sight of him there, even the dogs couldn't pick up his scent anymore." She explains as we reach the classroom and sit down at our table.

That is something I didn't hear on the news channels, so probably some inside news she heard from her dad. I have a pretty good guess on what happened to Marko at that research site.

I take out a stack of books from my backpack and place them on the table with a thud. This catches Gwen's attention as she picks up a few of them reading the titles.

"Coding for idiots, C++ 101, Basics of Python… Why do you have all of these?" She asks me with curiosity. There are much more than just those three books on the table. But they are all about coding. Starting from the basics and getting more advanced.

"I just thought coding would be a useful skill to learn, you know, it leads to some pretty high-paying jobs." Completely true, the first part, I mean. I don't really care about the high-paying jobs this leads to as the system gives me a crap ton of money anyway.

I thought that I should spend my time more effectively at school instead of just sleeping through the classes like I did last Friday. That's why I decided I'm going to start reading all kinds of books on different topics.

Not only would this theoretically help train my intelligence and wisdom stats, but the assortment of skills I get would be helpful in the future.

I have already confirmed that crafting will be a feature in a future update for the system, so I want to get everything possible to assist me for creating a new suit when that finally happens.

I'm looking forward to getting rid of this boring, basic spiderman suit and getting something more cool-looking with lots of features like the Iron-Spider suit had with all kinds of drones and an AI. Who knows what kind of things I could stuff into that suit, but god knows I'm going to put everything possible into it.

I don't think I will have much time for being Spiderman during weekdays except maybe a few hours in the evening. I already have a lot on my list, including my daily training missions, visiting Jack for training, doing actual homework for school, and now leveling skills by reading books.

I guess I could go be spiderman during the night like Peter Parker usually did, I do remember him constantly being scolded by friends and family for not sleeping enough.

But you know what? Screw that, I enjoy my sleep, and I'm not willing to give that up even if it does feel like the system removes the need for sleep, letting me operate at full power as long as my health and stamina are up. Though I guess there could be some debuffs, the system can give me for not sleeping enough.

[DING!]

[This feature has yet to be implemented into the system.]

What feature hasn't been implemented? Debuffs? Requiring me to sleep? If you can hear me system, please take your sweet time in implementing both of those features. I really don't need them.

As the teacher enters the room to start the class, I pick up the first of the many books I'm reading today and get to it.