Trigger Part 2

Trigger: Verb

1. To cause an event or situation to happen or exist; to initiate, actuate, or set off, such as with an explosion.

2. To cause an intense and usually negative reaction in someone.

≈*≈ 

Spider-Man was leisurely swinging through Naruhata en route to the Oscorp building. He was getting close. Thankfully, up till now his trip had been uninterrupted, that is if he pretended not to notice the myriad reactions—overwhelmingly negative for the most part—of the civilians commuting below him as he swung through the streets.

"Public quirk use is illegal, ya crook!"

"Why don't you just take a cab like everyone else?"

"Vigilante filth!"

"Go jump off a bridge!"

Spidey ignored them.

"How can I ever get homesick when confronted with so much New York hospitality? Guess derision transcends all borders." He quipped to himself as he swung between the skyscrapers and turned a corner. ≈*≈

"I said, wait up!"

Spider-Man's attention was immediately turned towards the source of the sound. At first he was confused about why his spider-sense would blare at what appeared to be an adolescent pop idol bounding after a salaryman. That is until he caught sight of-

"Is that a dragon?"

Spider-Man adjusted his trajectory and intercepted the lizard creature before it could swoop down and attack the girl, kicking it out of the air and into a nearby alleyway. He then jumped out of his swing and landed at the alley's entrance to block off the villain's escape.

While they wore human clothes, the reptilian villain crouching on all fours seemed anything but. It leered at him with draconic eyes, its belly low to ground as it turned towards him, craning its long thick neck adorned with a line of dorsal spikes, and baring a row of pointed teeth. Its feral expression belying any semblance of humanity its street clothes would suggest. Combine that with its leathery bat wings, and the thing looked more like a pterodactyl than any animal alive today, human or not.

"Alright, let's get this over with. I'm Spider-Man. Me: hero. You: villain. We fight, you lose, yatta yatta yatta, just go ahead and monologue about your whole schtick so I can beat you up already, capiche? Or are you just gonna sit there and give me the evil eye like you're doing your best Sauron impersonation?"

GRIISSAAAAWWK! It screeched at him, black tongue flailing around in its gaping maw.

"Ah, lizard brained too. Must be one of those transformation quirks that makes the user go berserk. In that case all I gotta do is bash the lizard till he lies down, simple enough."

He jumped up as the lizard villain lunged at him, scurrying through the alleyway with surprising speed. But fortunately for him, his spider-sense had given him plenty of warning to jump above the attack. With the lizard scuttling past beneath him, Spidey attached two weblines to the floor to ground slam himself down onto the lizard's back. With his opponent now pinned beneath him, he wrapped his arms around its thick neck to further subdue them.

The oversized reptile squirmed and thrashed against Spider-Man as he tried to wrestle it to the ground, but they couldn't shake the arachnid off their back. So instead the lizard wrapped their prehensile tail around Spider-Man's waist and threw him off, slamming him against the back wall.

In an instant, the lizard twisted around to face Spider-Man, now on its hind legs, leaving Spider-Man cornered.

Crap, forgot about the tail. Faster than I expected too. The lizard lunged again, swiping with a claw that Spider-Man only had time to block by raising an arm before he could react. He quickly retreated immediately afterwards by jumping into a series of back handsprings straight up the back wall of the alleyway to put some distance between them.

"*wince* Hey, not cool man! I gotta sew this costume myself, you know." The tears in the costume revealed 4 openly bleeding parallel gashes. He'd have to take note to wear long sleeves today and tomorrow to hide them. For now he webbed the wound up in a makeshift bandage. "Can I just say again how awesome it is that I invented a sterile, biodegradable coagulant fluid that can both glue and bandage wounds instantly and dissolves on its own without reopening the wound? Because I am going to say it again: it's awesome."

GRAAASSK! His thoughts were interrupted by the screech of the lizard below as it clawed at the wall trying to climb up after him. "Oh, right, supervillain. Should probably handle that before they get the idea to try and escape."

Spidey put his hand on his chin as he planned his next move: I thought shoving them into this tight alleyway would have restricted their movements, but they're slippery and flexible as a salamander. Combine that with their weight, and I'm left at a distinct disadvantage when grappling. Even with my superior strength and agility, they'll get on top of me. His eyes flicked to the resulting web bandage on his forearm, reminding him of the result of his last attempt to do just that.

So I'll switch tactics and go for an out-fighter approach and keep them at arm's length. In this alleyway, they can only move forward or backwards, and there's not enough space for them to fly away either. With my better speed and reflexes, I can easily duck in and out of their range fast enough to stop them from getting a hold of me while I pressure them into a corner. And so long as they're facing forward, they won't be able to use that tail in here either.

Spider-Man sprung off the wall with a flip and retook his starting position blocking off the entrance of the alleyway.

"Okay Iguana breath, you won that round. But this ain't no wrestling match anymore, it's a boxing match!"

The villain hissed and punctuated his answer to the provocation with another blind rush. But right before it got in range to attack, Spider-Man lunged forward and delivered a right hook into the side of their head, derailing their charge and stopping them dead in their tracks. While the enemy was staggered, Spidey unloaded an onslaught of punches and kicks, each doing just enough damage to subdue the creature without doing permanent damage.

Of course it didn't take long for the lizard to adjust to the rhythm of the scrimmage. Swiping with claws and extending its long neck to chomp down on his foe in a deadly vice grip. Spidey, for his part, bobbed and weaved with little effort to avoid the creature, making sure to maintain a respectable few feet of distance with which to react by boxing the dinosaur street thug back into its corner.

"Float like a fly; strike like a Spider!" he quipped as he landed another stinging jab on the villain, and ducked under the responding swipe of its claws. "Man, you make this too easy. To your credit you're a lot stronger and faster than Shocker, but at least he was clever enough to banter back."

KRRIISSK!

"There it is, such stimulating parlance. But all good things must come to an end, and I've got somewhere to be, so let's finish this quickly." Spidey waited a half second for the lizard to inevitably lunge in another attempt to bite his head off, and extended his hand out in front of the lizard's face to meet it before firing a web bullet point blank into the villain's eyes. The response was immediate as it instinctively brought its hands to its face trying to wipe the gunk out of its eyes as it squealed and thrashed around with its hands now uselessly stuck to its face.

"Fun fact: some spiders are large enough to even catch small lizards and fish in their webs. Now, you're pretty overgrown for a lizard, but alas, I also tower over my arachnid peers, so this result is to be expected. Wouldn't you say?"

GGRAA- KRAASHH- GRISSAK- GRROOOM The villain continued to screech and flail to remove the bothersome webbing from its eyes with no regard for whatever Spider-Man was chattering about.

"I knew you'd appreciate my sense of humor. Such a good listener. Wish I could stay and chat, but I've got an appointment to catch, so if you don't mind, I'm going to knock out your lights, hopefully bringing you back to your senses in the process, and then tie you up for the police to find."

With no further delay, Spider-Man delivered a final blow to leave his opponent well and truly punch drunk. Upon which the monstrous reptile fell to the ground motionless before shrinking back down to a much more humanoid, but still distinctly lizard-like, appearance. Spidey noticed the punk kid couldn't have been more than a few years older than Peter himself.

"*groan* uhh… my head… where am I, whassh goin' on? Whassh all this gunk on my face?"

Oh? Still conscious. Good, I can get some answers.

The sudden shrinking has loosened the webbing around his eyes, and the kid was able to peel it away from his stiff scaly skin without too much difficulty, even without his previously enhanced strength. Though his hands were still stuck together. Upon having his sight restored, he was met with the sight of the masked vigilante Spider-Man looming over him in the shadows of a dark alley.

"Gah!" The kid tripped over himself as he tried to get up, landing on his butt and scuttling back until he collided with a trash can and winced, the bruises from before catching up with him. "D-don't hurt me!" he yelped as he swatted at the bugs that were buzzing around the trash covered youth.

"I want some answers, talk!"

"Anything you want, man. But I'm telling you, you've got the wrong guy, I don't know anything, I don't even know how I got here."

"Oh really? Well then why don't we start with why you were rampaging around town transformed into a giant flying lizard monster! That ring any bells?"

"Huh? B-but my quirk doesn't do that! I'm a mutant type, not transformation. I'm telling you, you've got the wrong guy!"

"Then how about you start by telling me just who exactly you are? What's your name?"

"Rapt- Raptor Tokage." he stammered. "Please, I'll do whatever you want, but I'm just some random dude in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't have anything you'd want."

Tokage? Peter thought. That's Setsuna's last name! And a mutant type lizard quirk too. Aww, don't tell me I just beat up her cousin or something.

"Alright, alright, relax. I believe you, Raptor. I just want to help. Why don't you start by telling me the last thing you remember?"

"Last I remember? I- I was with my buddies. And, and there was this guy- Ah!" Raptor dug around in his pocket and pulled out an empty syringe. "Yeah… now it's starting to come back. The other day some cockroach kid and his grappling grandpa made fools outta us. Anyway this guy—looked like a salaryman—offered us a way to get some payback. He had a briefcase full of these:" he explained as he held up the syringe. "He said it was some wicked new drug that would supercharge our quirks. It felt… exhilarating. Addictively so. I remember the first bit well enough, but then I started running, and, and flying. I was getting into the zone, blood pumping, ready to show those punks who's boss. And then things get blurry from there."

That was all because of a drug!? A drug that enhances quirks… That shouldn't be possible. At least not for another 10 years. I've studied the neogenics work done by Doc Connors so I know. Stimulating quirk factors? Sure, you can do that. There have been quirk enhancers in the past, but those are little more than glorified steroids and adrenal stims. But to activate and catalyze quirk factors to this extent; that'd be like if someone made a drug that caused you to put on an instant ten pounds of muscle, or heal ten times faster than normal. Even if you had a lizard-like regeneration quirk like Doc Connors, cells just don't divide that quickly. And yet this guy grew and shrank two feet in an instant right before my eyes without a transformation quirk! And if you can catalyze quirks to that extent, then it's a very small step to re-catalyzing them. Doc Connors spent his whole life trying to restore his quirk that way and he never even got close to this!

But that possibility is still off for another day it seems, according to Raptor, this drug still has some serious side effects. And it doesn't seem very well suited towards quirk therapy either.

"I see. So it's the drug's fault. Stay off that stuff, Raptor: it made you into a mindless beast. A drug that amps up your quirk to the level of a pro, I can't believe there's something like that out there."

"You said I went on a rampage? I… I don't remember any of that." Raptor bowed his head in shame, eyes downcast. "You called me a monster. And you were right. I totally lost myself because of the drug. I hurt people and all I could think about was how addicting the thrill of it was. Man, what have I done? One thing's for sure: I'm never touching that stuff again."

"Don't worry Raptor. You may be one responsible for what you did, but it was the drug's fault. You want to make up for it, right; make sure nothing like this happens again? I want to help. Will you let me?"

"Absolutely! Whatever you need, I'm there, I don't want anyone else to get hurt by this stuff."

"Great. Then why don't you start by telling me everything you know about the dealer who gave this to you."

≈*≈

A teen girl sat on the edge of the building overlooking the alleyway where the fight against Raptor had occurred. She kicked and crossed her legs, clad in black and yellow striped leggings, as they dangled over the side of the building. Beyond that she wore the regular skirt and blouse of a highschool uniform, all under a loose varsity jacket. Her hair was kept short, except for a large bang that covered her left eye to hide the cloth eyepatch she wore. A bee buzzed around her head and landed on her face, its abdomen replaced with a syringe carrying a blood sample. But the girl didn't react to it at all as the bee crawled under her eyepatch.

"Too bad. I thought that one would go further, but once again, they had to interfere. Knuckleduster's crew just finished taking out the other two. But this spider guy is new, seems pretty troublesome. Maybe we should do something about him? Not that I really care."

"No." A deep male voice responded through the static of her earpiece. "The vigilantes' presence actually affords us an advantage. We get real battle data without involving heroes or the police."

"Hmm, pretty sure they're trying to identify us and take us down though. Knuckleduster in particular. It'd be easier to just get rid of them."

"This current dynamic is worth preserving." The voice sternly reiterated.

"So you want me to be more like Kugutsu? Carefully pick who to give trigger to and play cat and mouse with the vigilantes, quality over quantity? Look how that ended up for him. The vigilantes took out all his insta-villains anyway, traced it back to him, and took him down. Eraserhead's handing him off to the police this very moment," she replied without a care for the chastising presence on the other end of the call.

"Then if you don't want to end up like him, you'll collect data without providing any to the enemy. That is how you'll prove your worth as a coordinator, Hachisuka."

"Is that how this works? Lame." She deadpanned. "Just saying, I'd rather load up a bunch of passersby with trigger, catch the wannabe heroes off guard, and overwhelm them with insta-villains. Problem solved. And with my bees I can inject the drugs without a trace."

"Yes, the trigger you've been entrusted with is yours to distribute at your discretion. But, it's a valuable commodity, not something to dole out so indiscriminately."

"Oh, who cares? You're getting your data, yeah?" Hachisuka retorted flippantly.

"It's a matter of efficiency. A person's physical abilities are heavily influenced by their strength of character. And quirks are no exception. A strong spirit is indispensable if one wishes to wield an uncommonly powerful quirk."

"Like how heroes are trained?"

"Precisely, the same applies to villains too. The resources we seek are the types who harbor explosive potential within. Ones who can pull the trigger on their own strength of will," He explained.

"Annoyiiiinnng. I mean, those types are usually a pain."

"Then deal with them at a distance as you're so fond of doing. So long as you deliver good data and DNA samples from the more promising test subjects, you're free to handle things as you see fit."

"Works for me, don't need any more of you guys cramping my style. Speaking of…" Her eyes darted to the next street over. "Seems the police and pros are starting to sweep the nearby area, that could be a hassle. Looks like my fun is over." With that she stood up from her rooftop perch, dusted herself off, took out her earbud and walked off without a care in the world. "Let's see… I think I could go for some karaoke right about now."

≈*≈

"Thanks for all the help, Raptor. Here, take this:" Spidey shot a spider tracer so that it stuck to the inside of his vest. "That's one of my trackers. It'll let me find you if you come across any new information, or if you get in trouble and need help. It's solar powered, so you won't have to worry about the battery unless you leave it on for more than an hour at a time. Unfortunately, it's still a prototype; I haven't found a secure frequency to attune it to, so I haven't calibrated the transmitters yet to prevent the chips from being traced back to me. The only thing I've got worked out is my GPS receiver that lets me pick up the signal whenever you ping your location. That means I can't find your location on my own, I need you to signal me."

Raptor furrowed his brow. "I'm not a tech guy, but if the tracker isn't always turned on, then how exactly does that help either of us if the signal only goes one way? You won't be able to track the location of any druggies to hunt these guys down. And what am I supposed to do, just hope and pray that you're available and nearby and you see my signal in time?"

"Unfortunately yes. There's a small secret button on the side of the tracer. You push that button for three seconds and it'll send out a beacon that'll be picked up by my receiver and alert me until you press the button again. That way, even if I'm tracking multiple targets. However, because the tracers' transmitters aren't linked to my device yet, the only signal they can send out is a generic one. That beacon would be picked up by every radio receiver in the city. Of course, no one's going to be out searching for random radio frequencies in a world where everyone is using their smartphones to access the internet via random radio signals all the time. But the point still stands: only push that button if it's for something important, otherwise you might just attract unwanted attention."

≈*≈ Speak of the devil. Peter thought as the familiar sense of impending dread began to creep up the back of his neck. It was faint now, but he was wise enough to know it wouldn't stay like that for long.

Raptor, for his part, was none the wiser to Spider-Man's sudden alertness. "Well that's rotten, but I guess I owe you. If I see that trigger dealer again, I'll be sure to let you know right away."

"If you understand, then let's hurry up and get out of here before the police start asking around about that dinosaur villain that was rampaging around earlier," he hurried along, his spider-sense building by the second. He had just raised his arm to shoot out a webline to swing away when his arm was caught in a bind and yanked back.

"Hold it right there. You're both under arrest. I'm off duty today so let's make this quick: come quietly for questioning and you might get away with a light sentence." a tired yet stern voice ordered from the entrance of the alleyway.

That voice! It was even worse than Peter feared. Following the cloth wrapped around his forearm back to its source, Peter's eyes were met with the man who had already caused him far too much grief this past week: Aizawa-sensei!? What's he of all people doing here?

Okay Pete, play it cool, there's no way he'll recognize you. "Who, me? Whatever did I do? I'm just your friendly neighborhood cosplayer. There's a convention going on nearby you see, and I'm gonna end up running late, so if you don't mind."

"Don't play dumb. I know who you are, Spider-Man. Vigilantism, manslaughter, destruction of property, need I go on?"

In a flash, Aizawa's quirk activated and immediately Peter felt a familiar wave of nausea and feebleness wash over him as his spider sense blared in protest to being smothered. Still, he did his best to appear unaware of Aizawa's erasure as he fought to stay standing, he couldn't let his weakness show. "Darn. Alright, seems I've been found out. Looks like you caught me stealing this kid's lunch money red handed, oh well. But I'm no sore loser, I'll let you hand me over to the police, let's just go and get this over with," he bantered dryly. At the same time he motioned with his free hand behind his back to Raptor to get out once the coast was clear.

"You must not have heard me right. I said you are both under arrest."

Spider-Man stopped in his tracks. "Both? Wait, you mean the wimp I just mugged? You mean he's a filthy cosplayer too! Man, I just thought his face was always that ugly," he quipped, quickly trying to play off Raptor's presence.

"Cut the act, Spider-Man. We both know he's one of the instant villains that was rampaging around earlier. Or are we going to add harboring a criminal to your rap sheet?"

Spidey grit his teeth beneath his mask. "Look, I get what I've done wrong, but leave the kid out of this. He's innocent! It's the guy that loaded him up with the drugs that you should be after. The kid's a victim just as much as anyone else."

"Oh? So you're admitting to drug abuse then? And regardless of his culpability, he's still heavily involved in the incident. He needs to be brought in for questioning."

"If you want the kid you're gonna have to go through me. I've already agreed to come quietly. I say you take the easy win. But if you insist on taking us both the hard way, then I'm afraid I'll have no choice but to unleash my ultimate technique, and you wouldn't want that."

Aizawa smirked, clearly under the impression that Spider-Man was ignorant that Aizawa had already erased his quirk and thereby nullified whatever trick Spider-Man was trying to pull. "Somehow I don't think that'll be too difficult."

"Well, you asked for it." And before Aizawa could engage, Spider-Man quickly fired a web bullet at his eyes, blinding him. In the instant Aizawa was stunned and his quirk blocked, Spider-Man immediately felt a rush of strength return to him, that window provided more than enough time for Spidey to grab Raptor and swing away.

"Tried to warn you!" he called back as he made his escape. I love you upgraded web shooters, you make my job so much easier.

Now, All that's left is to drop off Raptor and make my way to the Oscorp building.

≈*≈

Now left alone in the dirty alleyway, Aizawa eventually decided to stop struggling against the strange web gunk covering his eyes. He couldn't see a thing, and his hands were now hopelessly stuck to his face, but he had come to accept there was nothing he could do to get it off. He remembered from the report about Spider-Man's first appearance at the bank that his webbing dissolved after a couple hours. He would just have to sit tight, hope no one stumbled upon the embarrassed pro hero stuck helpless in an alleyway, and wait. "What are the chances that I'd fight two people that can counter my quirk in one day. That's pretty rare, even for heteromorphic types."

Meanwhile, overlooking the scene from a nearby rooftop through mini binoculars was the other person immune to Aizawa's quirk. "Heh," he snickered to himself at Aizawa's predicament before he lowered the binoculars and turned his attention to the retreating vigilante.

"He's pretty agile swingin' on those web things, wish I could use my grapple gun like that." He grinned as he pulled out said grappling hook launcher to pursue. Been itching to meet you for awhile, Spider-Man. Why don't we see what you're really all about?

"Ywa- AhH! S- Spider-Man, are you sure this is saaAAAHH! PUT ME DOWN! PUT ME DOWN!" Raptor cried as was jostled around by Spider-Man's wild swings, clinging to him for dear life.

"Don't worry. I've got this all under contro-*≈

No sooner than he had said this, Spider-Man was kicked out of the air by another figure swinging towards him from his blindspot. They smirked. Didn't expect a thing. You thought the air was your domain and let your guard down to the possibility of someone else swinging up here with you. Rookie mistake.

Spider-Man was just barely able to react fast enough to grab hold of Raptor before tumbling across the rooftop of a nearby building that the other figure had knocked him onto. Raptor had ended up on top of him, which broke Raptor's fall, but didn't make the landing any easier on Spidey. Meanwhile, their ambusher jumped out of his own swing and retracted his grappling hook.

"Raptor, you alright?" The two didn't even have time to stand up all the way and dust themselves off before the other figure landed before them. Fist bared out in front of him in a sturdy fighting stance.

"Nice of ya to swing by my side of town and take care of things while I was busy, but now, I'm here!" he declared with a manic grin on his face. The figure was a bulky older man. The top half of his head was covered with a black bandana, the exposed lower half of his face revealed a grizzled appearance with scruff along his jaw and a jagged scar going from his covered eye, across the left side of his face, and down his neck. He wore tactical gear: a skintight black undershirt, military pants and boots, all topped with a trenchcoat and large brass knuckles over fingerless gloves.

"Okay, first off, swinging is my thing, if you start climbing walls I'm gonna sue, second thing: Just who in the world are you?!"

Raptor for his part had no trouble recognizing their assailant. "Gah! It's that knuckleduster freak!"

"Huh? You know this guy?"

"He's the guy who beat up me and my pals the other day, he's brutal, real bad news."

Knuckleduster chuckled. "Raptor Tokage, your tongue's looking a lot blacker than it was the last time we met, a side effect of taking trigger. I just finished taking care of those delinquent friends of yours, looks like they weren't the only ones to sample the drugs."

Spider-Man narrowed his eyes at the burly brawler before him. "...Raptor, run."

"Don't have to tell me twice, I'm outta here."

Knuckleduster didn't make a move as Raptor scampered away, but instead turned his attention to the masked vigilante standing between them. "Don't worry, I'm not here for the punk."

"What do you want? And what do you know about the drugs?" All playfulness gone from his voice.

"What I want is right in front of me. You're the one they call Spider-Man, yeah? I've been looking forward to meeting you since I heard about the fiasco at the bank."

"This isn't about me. I asked you about those drugs, and you're going to tell me what I want to know, you- … whoever it is you are."

"You can call me Knuckleduster, I'mma janitor of the fist, keeping these streets clean of drugs like trigger and the punks who use 'em."

"Huh? So you're another vigilante. Why'd you attack me then? Shouldn't we be helping each other out; we're in the same boat here aren't we!?"

"The same? Like hell we are. I'm a badass ally of justice. You're just some wannabe kid playing dress up," he taunted.

"That may be, but people like you who use "justice" as an excuse to pick fights are nothing but trouble. What you think of me doesn't matter. What matters is protecting people. That's what I'm going to do with or without your help. And that's why you're going to tell me what you know, even if I have to make you."

Knuckleduster blinked in surprise and his grin widened as he shifted his fighting stance. "Haha, perhaps I misjudged you. Couldn't have said it better myself. Those are some pretty big words, punk. Why don't you prove it by letting your fists do the talking for a change?"

"Gladly!" And with that, the battle was set as Spidey lept into action.

Knuckleduster tensed in anticipation as he awaited the right time to counter. Charging in head first like that is going to end with you running straight into my fist!

The moment before Spider-Man entered his range, he shot a webline connecting to Knuckleduster's chest, pulling the larger man towards him.

Interesting! But it'll take more than one cheap trick to pull me out of my comfort zone. This is still my range! Knuckleduster gave only the faintest resistance as he allowed the web to pull him in and watched as Spider-Man pulled back his telegraphed punch. That's too much windup kid. Using the impulse from Spider-Man's tug to ignite his explosive counter, Knuckleduster moved in time with Spidey's pull on the web, allowing him to duck inside Spider-Man's guard much more suddenly than he normally could. Meanwhile, the sudden slack on the line combined with the slight overextension of his punch, delayed the smaller vigilante's attack by a fraction of a second, more than enough time for Knuckleduster to ram a fist into their stomach with all his weight and momentum.

Spider-Man was thrown off his feet—or at least he would have been. Before he had even moved back a step, Knuckleduster grabbed the webline left attached to his chest and now he was the one pulling Spider-Man right into the path of his follow up attack.

WHAM!

You'll be seeing stars after that one. Too bad I'm not going to give you time to recover. Knuckleduster made to launch the first blow in his barrage, but Spidey fell backwards and ducked under it completely, bending at the knees until his back was inches off the floor, acting as if Knuckleduster's arms were the world's deadliest limbo pole. Huh?

A quick acrobatic display and Spider-Man was out of the fray and back on his feet no worse for wear, wasting no time charging back in.

His blood was pumping, and this time Knuckleduster gladly met Spidey halfway with his own charge as the two participated in good ol' fashioned fisticuffs.

Jab. Jab. Hook. leg sweep. Ah, he jumped it. Uppercut. Cross. Parry. Straight, parry, dodg- block! Gotta put my guard up. Feint, dodge, feint. Duck. Heavy right hook. Gah, dodged it again! Jab, cross, jab, hook, jab. Kidney punch. Here comes the counter. Lean back and… Haymaker!

The downward blow hit hard and left Spider-Man dazed as he tumbled a few feet across the rooftop.

Knuckleduster went to catch his breath after his flurry of attacks. What's up with this kid? I could only land a couple of hits and he just shrugged them off. Hits pretty dang hard himself too. Good thing I kept my guard up. Let's see how he reacts when I switch things up.

The two clashed again in another quick bout before separating to catch their breath once more. Undeterred by their accumulating welts, they rushed back into the fray for another round again and again, too stubborn to back down until the other surrendered.

He sounded young and naive, so I thought he must be new at this, but he's reading me perfectly, the amount of experience he must have under his belt is incredible. No matter how often I switch up style; no matter how many feints, baits, and combos I throw in; no matter how quickly I change the tempo, he adapts to my new rhythm instantly and counters accordingly.

Meanwhile, I can hardly get a read on his style: So unorthodox and flexible, and yet so seemingly unrefined at the same time. Is he some kind of combat savant who can sync in to the flow of battle without any proper training of his own? No, there's still a few patterns I'm picking up on…

If he was a genius, the first place that'd manifest would be in how intuitive he is with his own movements, the follow-ups, lead ins, and transitions, not all these perfectly polished yet disjointed singular strikes. Add in the fact that he's getting inside the head of a fighter as amalgamated and brutally functional as me shows the opposite of how a fighting genius would think. That means he's either overly methodical, or this has got to be something to do with his quirk.

They clashed again and again, Knuckleduster doing his best to control the flow of battle.

So strange. He predicts my attacks perfectly when it comes to dodging and positioning—and he keeps creating openings and gaps in my style—but he doesn't slip into that niche long enough to flow into the next natural follow up movements to take advantage. No smooth combos, and only basic counters. His attacks don't lead into each other, and yet each individual movement responds to me perfectly. It's so choppy. Every time he goes on the offensive, he always precisely targets the weak spot in my guard. Hurts like the devil and he's almost broken through sometimes, but he's still trying to punch through my guard rather than using all those openings he's made to get around it completely and hit me directly.

After every attack or response, he resets back to a neutral stance. It allows him to react to anything in any way, but the tradeoff is he can't launch any complex moves that way. He tries a quick jab here, and then stops and backs up. He gives up control of the tempo of battle so easily, and leaves himself so wide open, that every time I'm sure he's just baiting me. And then when he predicts my move and responds perfectly every time, I can't help but brace for the punishment deserving of my blunder, but it never comes. He never exploits his opportunity, never pushes his advantage, it's infuriating as all get out! It's always a quick cross here, and then a return to rest, a dodge there, and then he retreats back to his neutral stance. It's not like any fighting style out there, so why does it still feel so familiar?

Knuckleduster redoubled his assault with renewed aggravation, pushing his opponent into the corner in hopes of getting them to reveal the secret of their style.

Wait… it's hard to tell with that mask, but with the way he hesitates after resetting, yes, I'm sure of it. He's frazzled. He's trying to give himself time to think. I get it, he's the over-analytical type that needs to run a simulation in his head before pulling off any complex combos. That's why he isn't following up, he's got the individual movements down pat, but his anxiety prevents him from chaining them together until he feels more in control, lest he does anything too brash by improvising. In that case I'll crank up the pressure and keep him overwhelmed.

The two briefly separated, but Knuckleduster charged back in and overclocked his efforts before Spider-Man could get any ideas, but his assault was met with the usual dodges, ducks, dips, dives, and dodges he had come to expect from the younger vigilante, with only a few of his strikes getting through, and only then because Knuckleduster strung together his attacks in a way that made it impossible for Spider-Man to avoid them all simultaneously.

But why is he so anxious to get away from me? To get the space to pull off some special move of his for sure, but why? He's finessing my combos and playing me for a fiddle, any cheap trick would probably work at this point, just commit to something and engage me already, dammit!

In his rage, Knuckleduster threw all tactics aside and launched a punch with all his speed and power behind it. Clocking Spider-Man square in the face, and knocking him back a few paces.

"AH! My nose, you really don't give a man room to breathe. Oh, I really hope this thing isn't broken," Spider-Man groaned as he hunched over holding his face in his hands.

Huh? That was my most telegraphed attack yet, and that's the one he doesn't dodge? Well, no matter.

Knuckleduster, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, continued his onslaught while Spider-Man was in a vulnerable position with his eyes covered. Despite that, Spider-Man continued to contort his body and perfectly avoid the pugilist's pummeling.

How is he still dodging? And why? If he can shrug me off without even looking, surely he doesn't need any more space to fight effectively. He's fully comfortable at this range already.

Spider-Man quickly pulled his head back into the game. They kept trading blows back and forth. Spider-Man eventually hopped back a bit for more breathing room. "I'll give you this Knuckleduster, crazy as you may be, I've definitely never fought someone like you: I can never get a read on you, but —"

Can't get a read on me? Hog wallop! He's been predicting all my moves perfectly this whole time. I don't what you're planning kid, but —

THIS ENDS NOW!

"THIS ENDS NOW!"

Knuckleduster went to close back into melee range, but Spider-Man held his distance and pelted the oncoming assailant with a fusillade of web bullets.

"Heh, clever trick kid, but I saw ya pulling the same trick on that pro, and the same thing won't work twice, especially against me."

Knuckleduster wasn't slowing down. Instead opting to pull in his guard and keep his head down to reduce his profile, letting most of the bullets sail straight past him as they seemed to move in slow motion to his trained eyes. The few still in his path he intercepted head on, punching them out of the air and allowing his trademark knuckle dusters to absorb the impact and save his fingers from some nasty bruises.

"Woah, hold up! Did you just punch my bullets out of mid air? What kind of cheat is that!? No other normal person is that fast, just what is your quirk?"

Heh, if only you knew, kid. "Even an old dog keeps some of his old tricks," he said as another pellet burst from its impact with his fist. The webbing from the projectiles had splattered across his knuckles, the thick sticky substance had prevented him from opening his fist, but had also coated his hands like finger wrappings, giving him the extra padding he needed to really lay into his opponent without worry of breaking his own fingers from the punches. Knuckleduster grinned as everything came into focus: that slip up will be your last mistake, I've seen through your real trick!

Knuckleduster burst through the salvo of spider silk and into Spider-Man's personal space, extending out of his defensive shell, and forcing Spider-Man to confront him in close quarters combat once more.

Knuckleduster continued his monologue as he finally put Spider-Man on the back foot. "You, yer a young pup, so let me guess, you found a new trick, it worked well fer ye so you got excited and made it your trump card. You spent this whole fight trying to get enough distance to pull out those web bullets, but now it's failed and you're out of options. That's how it goes with you greenhorns. They tunnel vision in on each new development, and forget how to fight without it."

Spider-Man did his best to keep up his guard as he suffered the full onslaught from the veteran street bruiser before him. But all his defenses were systematically dismantled.

"What's going on? Your speed and power is completely different from before!"

"Seems my hunch was correct. Took me awhile before I recognized the pattern, didn't think the answer would be something so familiar staring me square in the face. You don't actually know how to fight, do you? You're faking it, probably no more than a few weeks of practical experience."

"Fought well enough to keep up with you!" was what he said, but the proof was in the pummeling he was taking. When before they were going blow for blow, now Spider-Man was completely at his opponent's mercy. Somehow Knuckleduster had sussed out his improvisational fighting style and was punishing him for his lack of experience.

"Heh, you just don't know when you're beat, do ya kid? I like it, keep up that cocksure attitude of yours, it suits ya. But, it's only charming if you know how to take your licks. So accept this lesson from an elder, as I teach you a little humility:

"KNUCKLE SANDWICH!"

Spider-Man was launched across the roof in a heap as Knuckleduster was left standing alone with steam rising from his clenched fist.

Spider-Man struggled back to his feet, but was interrupted as his opponent spoke. "Easy there kid. It's over now, you fought well, just relax."

"I'm not…" Spidey stuttered as he stumbled back to his feet regardless, causing Knuckleduster to glance back agape. "I'm not some kid who's just going to sit down and quit while communities suffer from drugs because of an adrenaline junkie who would sooner get his fix from beating down on drug victims rather than actually helping them! You're the sick one here, not Raptor. Last chance, tell me what you know before I let loose and punch your jaw off."

Knuckleduster was momentarily struck dumb until a bout of snickering finally escaped his lips before developing into a long hearty guffaw. "Kid, don't you get it? You already won! I've seen what I needed to see, ya did well. I was planning on telling you about trigger from the start. Just had to make certain you were dependable first."

"W-what'd you do all that for then!? Brawling isn't really my preferred method of introduction you know."

"Hmm?" He shrugged. "Ya don't really know a man until you've traded blows, quicker than talking. S'also more refreshing that way."

"My broken nose thanks you for respecting my time, it feels quite refreshed."

"Eh, stop being a baby. Nothing's broken. I made sure not to rough you up too much, it'll bruise nicely, but you'll be fine in a couple days. Plus you're young, strong quirk, you'll probably bounce back even quicker than I would."

Spidey sighed as the adrenaline from earlier ebbed, tension leaving his frame as he calmed down. "Despite all that you still tore me apart, there was nothing I could do at the end there. You must have quite the enhancement type quirk to do that."

Knuckleduster chuckled as he lit a cigarette. "Yep, yer a rookie for sure. Truth is I'm quirkless, just too stubborn to let the upstarts get the better of me."

"Bu- then how?"

"Experience. But I'll give you this, that quirk of yours makes you hard as all get out to read. Took me awhile to figure it out."

"That's the same thing I said about you."

"That's right. That compliment of yours was the last piece I needed to figure out your trick. You responded to all my moves perfectly, thought you were mocking me when ya said you couldn't read me. That, and a couple other things."

"What do you mean?"

"When I countered those web bullets of yours, you said, 'no other normal person is that fast.' Implying that you think yer fast enough to dodge bullets yourself. And not only that, but you still consider yourself normal despite that. Meaning you're a rookie, not a pro, just a normal guy doing what he can. Which means your speed must be a background feature of your quirk that you've become accustomed to and take for granted—it hasn't gotten through to ya yet that it ain't normal. That's what solidified it in my mind."

"Alright, maybe I do think I'm that fast. All the more reason why it shouldn't be possible for some quirkless old geezer to beat me! So how?"

If Knuckleduster took offense, he didn't show it. "Hmmph... Bugs… they're tiny little pests, live short lives. And they're quick, twitchy."

"Huh? Yeah, so what? Stop avoiding the question."

"Why do you think it's so hard to swat a fly, hmm? They live life at a different frame rate than us. To them, all of us are moving in slow motion. And they got the instincts to match. Real sensitive too, got hair trigger reflexes, literally. For someone who calls himself Spider-Man, only made sense that the same would apply to you."

Knuckleduster paused to take a long drag from his cigarette. Spider-Man, for his part, just stood to the side as the weathered man gave his explanation.

"I know a bit about that, you get in the zone, adrenaline's pumpin, and to your eyes time seems to slow down so much that your whole life could flash past in an instant.

"Once I realized that, I figured where I had gone wrong. I was under the impression that you were predicting all my moves. Afterall, you said it yourself: 'no other normal person is that fast.' Been fighting so long that I started thinking the same thing. Thought no non-speedster could react to my moves, that's just not within the realm of normal human reaction time, so the only explanation was that you must've been predicting, not reacting.

"I learned a lot of little tricks to be more unpredictable. I switch up my style, throw in a lot of feints, hide my movements from the opponent's field of view, misdirect them, change the rhythm and tempo of my combos on a dime: leaves them bamboozled every time. I've only met a few with enough experience to predict my moves. Suffice to say, when I saw a kid like you pulling it off, left me more than a little frustrated. Especially the times when you perfectly countered my moves before I even started moving. Eventually I lost my temper and decked you in the snoz.—"

"Gee, I hadn't noticed."

"Quit whining punk! I'm trying to teach you something here!" he suddenly erupted.

Knuckleduster huffed, but pulled himself back down. "Anyway, as I was saying, that was my most telegraphed attack by far. Anyone with any experience in hand to hand would have seen it coming a mile away, and yet you didn't. After that, you abandoned your defenses and cradled your face in your hands like an idiot, but you were still able to juke me without even looking. So when you then told me that you couldn't get a read on me…"

Spider-Man's eyes widened as he made the connection. "…The idea must have sounded preposterous. Unless…"

"…Unless you weren't predicting me at all, but rather had the ability to sense what I was about to do, allowing you to react faster than should be possible." Knuckleduster picked back up. "Then I remembered how bugs slow down their perception of time, and from there it only made sense how you kept up with me."

"Amazing, to think you deduced how my spider-sense worked just from that."

"Spider-sense, eh? So that's what you call it."

"But even if you knew how it worked, how were you able to come up with a counter for it so quickly? My spider-sense couldn't do anything against that last burst of yours."

"Simple really, your fighting style became a lot less impressive once I realized there was no fancy trick or pattern to it. So I just stopped trying to make my moves unpredictable and switched to making them unreactable. I can attack a helluva lot quicker if I don't have to worry about telegraphing my moves you see. You may be able to react to attacks before you even see them coming, but everyone has a limit, even speedsters.

"You can't just rely solely on your quirk, eventually you've got to learn to fight properly if you're serious about this hero thing."

Spider-Man nodded. "Thanks for the tip. But why are you helping me? Scratch that, why did you come after me in the first place?"

"I make it my business to keep tabs of any new vigilantes that pop up around my side of town. I heard about how you saved those people in the bank. You coulda just run off after the escaping villain instead. That's what most self-obsessed vigilantes would do. And that's what you would have done if Picklepuss was actually right about you."

"Wait, Picklepuss?" Spider-Man asked in confusion at the strange nickname

"Jameson. He's the headstrong editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle. Mad as a hornet with a particular penchant for hounding us vigilantes. I'm sure you've seen some of the stuff he's written about you."

"Don't remind me, that guy framed me as a villain in cahoots with Shocker even after I took him down for the police at the docks!"

"Haha, yep, definitely sounds like something Picklepuss would come up with. That old grinch has no love in his heart for people like us.

"But like I was saying, your stunt at the bank got me intrigued. And then the way you tracked down and captured the Shockwave villain afterwards left me impressed. But still, I had to be sure. Hate to give Jameson credit, but the man's sharp as a tack. And even with his broken clock, he's turned out to be right far more than just two times in his day. So I had to come and see for myself what you were really all about.

"Like you said, 'people who use justice as an excuse to pick fights are nothing but trouble.' Unfortunately most vigilantes you meet are just that. By putting on some costume or disguise they convince themselves that they're different from their everyday selves. They put on a mask to really sink into the role, and boom, all the sudden they think they're some immortal superhuman. Guy's like that can be real trouble because they go charging in, ignoring common sense and safety, and then…"–Knuckleduster leveled a hard gaze at Spider-Man, the white eyes of one mask boring into the white eyes of the other–

"...they die," he stated with the grim finality of a tomb.

Spider-Man couldn't help but recoil from the cold chill that penetrated his heart at the older man's words, swallowing the dread pooling thick in his throat.

"We're human too in the end," Knuckleduster continued, "That's how it goes when a guy forgets that. Roleplayers like that may think they're hot stuff when they go around picking fights, but when someone goes after them for a change, turns out they're fragile. So you see I had to test ya, see if you were determined enough for the job. You passed, but take this warning to heart: This isn't a game. If you want to go after supervillains pumped up on trigger, your resolve can't waver for a second."

Spidey slowly nodded. "Thanks for the heads up. But just what is the deal with this trigger stuff anyway; that's the name of the drug right?"

Knuckleduster nodded. "Ideo-trigger. A new quirk booster circulating the black market. Crazy potent stuff, but it also weakens the user's ability to reason. Basically, it's a drug that turns normal people into instant super charged villains."

Spidey just shook his head at the thought. "To think there's something like that out there. A drug like this has the potential to change the world. Going by what I saw from Raptor, I'd say neogenics research is still ten years behind the curve. This could be used to revolutionize medicine or quirk development, and yet to think it's just being used to make more villains, it- it's downright deplorable!"

Knuckleduster's brooding tone deepened as he looked down at the busy streets below from their rooftop vantage point. "The worst part is that when they're not on trigger they blend in. These pop-up villains on trigger can emerge from any crowd at any time. And unlike normal crooks who don't rampage without a reason, these sense deprived monsters start causing wanton destruction from the moment they appear. The heroes and cops are always just stuck playing catch up, and by the time they arrive, it's too late, people have already gotten hurt or killed. Oftentimes, they never even catch the villain. The drug wears off and they scurry away before the heroes show up. That's where we come in, we pick up the slack and do what the pro heroes can't."

"How are we supposed to do that? I hate to admit it, but we're not exactly pros at this. What can we do that they can't?"

"The pros are often overworked. They manage big agencies and all the procedural baggage that comes with it. They spend most of their time on call, rushing from one big incident to the next. Because of that they don't have much time to patrol their own backyard. So sudden rampages by no name villains that appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly often don't even show up on their radar. And they certainly don't have the time to be searching normal looking civilians."

"I bet my spider-sense would pick up on a trigger user hiding in a crowd, but that would just be a vague sense of potential danger, I wouldn't be able to pick someone out very precisely. And I can't just shake down innocent bystanders because they might get transformed into a villain against their better judgment."

Knuckleduster intoned his agreement with a grunt and a quick nod. "Some of the time a random bystander gets jacked with trigger; in those cases all that spider-sense of yours can do is help you prepare to stop the incident as soon as it occurs, stop people from getting hurt in the first place. Useful for sure, but if possible we want to take down the junkies before they shoot themselves full of trigger. Lucky for us there's a tell. Most of these instant villains are repeat users, criminals and addicts looking for a quick power up, or trying to get the upper hand over their next target. And with regular use of trigger comes a particular side effect: it turns your tongue dark, almost black.

"Come to think of it, I remember Raptor's tongue was black when he was transformed, I just thought it was a part of his quirk."

"Our job is to keep an eye out for those black tongued delinquents and give them a knuckle sandwich before they can cause more trouble!" Knuckleduster raised his fist as his feral smile overtook his expression once again.

"Woah, woah, hold up, you've lost me a bit. How are we even supposed to find these guys? People don't walk around with their tongues hanging out, you know. And even if we could say for sure that every single person with a black tongue is a career villain, beating up random people off the street just feels wrong. What would that even solve? If they don't have any trigger on them, and they're not causing an incident, then wouldn't picking a fight only create a dangerous situation that wouldn't have happened otherwise? And a lot of these people are victims like Raptor, we'd just be pushing them further into villainy by attacking them."

"You're half-right, these insta-villains are a symptom, not the cause, but tracking the symptoms can still lead you to the root. We give the junkies a beatdown to make them spill the beans on their dealer. That's how we put an end to this whole drug trade. You don't think I'd just attack people without a good excuse, do ya?"

Spidey quickly looked from side to side in bewilderment to check if he was being punked. "Yes!" he exclaimed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That is exactly the kind of thing I would expect you to pull." He pinched the bridge of his nose as he knit his brow in consternation. "Alright, staying on task. The guys behind all this stuff, the guys dealing out trigger to all the insta-villains, what do you know about them? Surely you at least have a solid plan for that part."

"Yeah, yeah, I was getting to that. I've spent the last couple months tracking incidents involving trigger, zeroing in on the point of origin, I narrowed things down to this part of Naruhata. From there it's just a matter of waiting for the dealer to slip up and back himself into a corner."

"Raptor said the guy that gave him trigger was just your average salaryman."

Knuckleduster grunted an affirmation. "That's him. Smoked him out earlier today, he's out of the picture now."

"You already got him!? Why didn't you lead with that?"

"I wasn't the one who got 'em. Just the one that sniffed him out. He decided to go down fighting. Only problem is that his little rampaging insta-villians––your little friend Tokage included––already caught the attention of an off-duty pro that happened to be passing by. If I recall, you had your own little scuffle with him in the alleyway."

"Aiza–" he stopped himself. "Eraserhead. He'd make short work of someone that just relies on trigger."

Knuckleduster gave a silent nod as he looked off, cigarette in hand. "Yeah. The dealer didn't last a second. took'em into police custody before I had the chance to question him. Dead end, back at square one."

"Well that's it then, if the pros have got him, then the case is closed, with their resources they'll have all the loose ends tied up within the week."

Knuckleduster's broad shoulders bounced as he quietly chortled at the younger vigilante's naivete. "Nah, this ain't over. Not by a long shot. The attacks won't stop, there are other dealers out there, I'm sure of it. And now that this one has been publicly arrested, he's lost all value as a piece for either side. He was their weak link: our best shot. And now that their operation has been revealed and he's out of the equation, the rest of 'em are gonna cover their hides and get serious. Now the real game begins, things'll only get harder from here on out. So, you in?"

"Huh!?" Spider-Man did a double take at the sudden unexpected offer.

Knuckleduster walked up to his shorter counterpart with his usual manic grin on his face "You've got a lotta guts, kid. And we need all the help we can get. You want to do some good in the world, yeah? Then I'll show you what it takes to do hero work, license or no license. Because in the moment when it's clear what's gotta be done, do you take action, or don'tcha? All you need to be a hero is the right answer to that question!"

Spider-Man stepped back a step and shook his head as he brought himself back to the present moment. "Sorry, but no. Attacking random people is wrong. I'll deal with trigger my own way," he declared before turning and walking off in the opposite direction.

"Feh. It's better to attack them first before they have the chance to do evil. 'Sides, suspicious creeps like that got a knuckle sandwich coming to them regardless." Knuckleduster groused before turning back his own way.

"You're one bad-tempered guy, aren't you, Knuckleduster?" Spidey remarked, momentarily looking back.

"Takes one to know one." He replied with a grin as the two parted ways.

Eh, who needs 'im. Troublesome kid that one, too strong willed. I'm better off with just Koichi anyhow. Still, I don't think this'll be the last time I run into ya, till next time… Spider-Man. Knuckleduster just laughed to himself as he walked back to the streets he roamed.

≈*≈

Spider-Man swung through the streets of Naruhata, thoughts from his previous conversation still filling his mind:

In the moment when it's clear what's gotta be done… 'Hey, big shot, stop that guy!'

Do you take action, or don'tcha? 'Hey, sorry pal, but I'm a wrestler, not a cop.'

All you need to be a hero is the right answer to that question! 'He was shot, son. Trying to stop a crook.'

The light flashed. "Thanks!"

The painful flash caused him to squeeze his eyes shut, a blare of his spider-sense and he opened them again in time to see a large building enveloping his sight. He would have crashed straight into it if he hadn't quickly steered his swing out of the way.

He shook his head clear of the memories as he brought himself back to the present moment. I don't need more questions right now. What I need is answers. And now, after a month of waiting, I'm finally going to get them.

Reflected twice in the two white lenses of his mask, the Oscorp building got larger as he approached, standing alone as it filled his vision.

In and out, no more distractions. It was simple enough to crawl into the vents undetected, he had long since mastered the use of his spider sense in avoiding surveillance.

The server room will have access to the data collected by the North American labs. They'd need the research on hand in order to compare notes. And servers require a lot of ventilation to prevent overheating. All I need is to find one of the scientists, stick them with a spider-tracer, and have them lead me straight to either an access terminal or the server room itself.

It didn't take Spider-Man long before his search of the first floor bore fruit. Most of the people traversing the lobby walked to and fro with their briefcases and business suits, or sat on lavish sofas amidst plastic plants while talking on their cellphones, patiently waiting for the receptionist to call them for their appointments. All the more reason why the sole exception stood out like a sore thumb: A man in a white lab coat with an ID badge walking purposefully towards the elevator.

It took no time at all for Spider-Man to take a tracer, turn on its beacon, and load it back into his webshooter to launch the spider-tracer through the slits of the vent on the ceiling duct from which he perched and spied on the lobby from above. Too small and quick for anybody to notice, the tracer successfully found its target as the scientist stood waiting for the elevator. A couple seconds passed, and the elevator arrived, taking him out of Spider-Man's sight.

"Now just where are you heading?" Spidey pulled out the receiver for his tracers, and pulled up the 3D blueprint of the Oscorp building on the same device. He silently congratulated himself for the good bit of foresight to install that module. It had been surprisingly easy to use the publicly available floor plans and architectural schematics for the building to construct a 3D model that he could map the signal from the tracers onto. It was simple really, he planted a tracer at the front door of the building to act as a reference point, allowing the receiver to automatically calculate where the second tracer was in relation to the waypoint. Mapping that distance from the front door gave him a clear indication of where in the building the tracer's signal was coming from, rather than just a vague location to the north, east, south, or west of the receiver.

Spider-Man searched for the tracer's beacon, fully expecting a red dot to appear in the elevator shaft on his map. Only for an error message to pop up on his receiver.

'No other tracers active in range. A second waypoint is prerequisite to use this module, please plant another tracer.'

What!? His mind staggered in response to the message. No signal? What do you mean there's no signal! No matter, I can crawl through these vents to get to the next floor before the elevator arrives, I'll just follow the man to the labs the old fashioned way.

Spider-Man climbed through the vents as quickly as he could without making too much noise. Unfortunately, the vents weren't designed to give someone a quick and easy path to wherever they wanted to go in the building, forcing him to take a lot of unnecessary turns, the roundabout route being the only discrete option afforded to him. By the time he got to the second floor, the elevator would have already dropped off its occupant, he was too late. Nevertheless, he tried to head the man off at the third floor––the man would surely still have to be in the general vicinity––but to no avail.

The Oscorp building had over fifty floors, and Spider-Man's quick survey of the second and third hadn't revealed anyone wearing a labcoat that could lead him to whichever section of the building they used to conduct their research.

He tried restarting the receiver again for what seemed like the umpteenth time: same result as always. What's going on with this? Are the thick walls of the building blocking the signal? No, I can still pick up the signal from the spider-tracer I left at the front door totally fine. Maybe it's just something about the elevator shaft in particular that's blocking the signal. No, that can't be it either, there's no way that guy would still be riding the elevator. Does this particular tracer just happen to be broken?

Not willing to give up so soon, Spider-Man continued crawling through the vents for an hour as he scoured every part of the building searching for the labs of the R and D department, but he could only find regular office space with employees managing Oscorp's corporate affairs or dealing with their already established products, nothing at all about the current ongoing advances of neogenics research like he had seen during his field trip back in New York. By all accounts this was just a boring old office building.

Where could that guy have gone? None of the other workers wear lab coats as far as I can tell. He got on that elevator and just seemed to vanish, my spider-tracer's signal going along with it. Maybe there really is something about the elevator shaft that's blocking the signal and the tracer fell off while he was in there. I've exhausted my other options, I might as well investigate.

A short while later and Spider-Man was hanging upside down from beneath an elevator car by his web. He confirmed that it wouldn't block his tracers as he could still receive the signal from his front door waypoint while in there.

"As I thought, my spider-tracers still work perfectly fine. Could the one I placed on the scientist really have just been a dud? But I tested them all when I was doing the finishing touches just this morning! Did I not press the button for the full three seconds to turn it on? If I did turn it on, then the battery would be nearly dead by now, so it's useless to me regardless." he grumbled in aggravation.

He racked his brain for answers, he had found that hanging upside down like this helped him think, but even still his mind came back empty. And so he vented the same way he always did when he ran into a problem he couldn't solve: he talked himself through the problem. (More accurately he complained about how there shouldn't be any reason for him to be so stuck in the first place.)

"Even surrounded by the reinforced load bearing walls of the elevator shaft, my spider-tracers are still fully operational! I checked in both elevator cars, it's not there. I searched the whole building, couldn't find lab coat guy, so just what happened to that tracer?"

"Wait, load bearing walls? Why are there load bearing walls in an elevator shaft in the first place?" he asked while peering curiously at the reinforced walls supporting the building.

"And now that I think about it, why are there two elevator cars in the same shaft? With that setup, you wouldn't be able to get from the bottom floor to the top without transferring from one elevator to the other. And lastly, why couldn't I find that lab coat guy? People aren't made of smoke, they don't just disappear, he must have gone somewhere in the building, so where?

"This is the only Oscorp building in the city, I know they have research projects in Japan, and that guy was clearly an employee, and yet I still couldn't find any research labs where someone like him would work. Maybe I missed something, I don't know, it's not like I had the freedom to check every single room, or even every floor, while sneaking through vents, but I would think I would have found something after an hour of looking. The floor plan certainly doesn't seem to indicate anything that would hint at a lab, or a server room for that matter."

Spidey fiddled around with the 3D architectural model of Oscorp, scanning it for some kind of clue about the oddities of the building.

"I'm no architect, so maybe it's actually not all that uncommon for an elevator shaft to be load bearing in big high rise buildings like this, but the building should have plenty of support columns that do that work. I mean, not that it matters, but why would they use such an odd looking support frame? The building looks pretty typical otherwise. It just seems so excessive and expensive. Maybe it has to do with building accommodations for lab space that would need to meet different construction standards than office space or something. But then where are the labs? Ah man, I'm really grasping at straws now, aren't I?"

With no apparent solution to his current situation, and curiosity taking him into a tangent, Spidey scanned his model of the Oscorp building from every angle to try and get a clue as to where Oscorp kept its research data.

"The more I look at it, the more these strange little details add up. It doesn't make sense, unless… Unless what? I've looked at this from every angle, trying to make rhyme of something without reason!

"I've waited so long for answers and now here I am, hanging upside down beneath an elevator ca–"

He paused. "That's it! I've been looking at this upside down the whole time. There's one angle I haven't considered: from beneath." He turned the screen of his radio receiver upside down (technically rightside up) and took a closer look at the first floor. "How did I not notice this! This building obviously doesn't have a ground floor foundation. That means there must be basement levels not shown on the diagrams, which explains the strange support structure. An elevator shaft would obviously reach to the foundation, so it's only logical it would be load bearing. I didn't think to search for sublevel designs when making my model, so I didn't include them.

Spider-Man let go of his web and let himself slide down the wall as he climbed down the elevator shaft to the first floor where the second elevator car rested. Immediately he noticed something strange. "The floor of the elevator shaft is metal, not concrete. And this mechanism… That's not a floor, it's a gate. That's what the second car is for: to take people down to the closed off basement levels."

Looking closer he noticed another odd detail: a metallic mesh lining along the bottom of the shaft. "What's that about? Wait! That's a faraday cage! No wonder I couldn't reach my spider-tracer. The whole basement must have this lining. Talk about drastic security measures. That means any electrical signals would have to be hard wired in or out. Certainly prevents people hacking into their servers or transmitting their data. Looks like they anticipated people like me trying to spy on their work. Probably helps prevent any harmful mutagenic radiation from leaking out of their labs too." Peter thought back to the massive stream of radiation produced by the neogenic recombinator that zapped the spider who gave him his quirk. Not only did that look like something straight out of ghostbusters, but the spider it hit was so radioactive it glowed. He reckoned that a layer of protection against something like that was probably a good idea.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to find a way to get down there. Having crawled through the vents of this building for the last hour, I can say for certain that there are no external vents leading into that place. Guess I'm taking the elevator like a normal person."

He climbed up onto the roof of the elevator car and narrowly opened the emergency hatch on the top to get a peek inside. The elevator control panel didn't have any buttons below the first floor. He frowned and closed the hatch back up.

"I suppose I shouldn't have expected it to be that easy. But then how did that lab coat guy get down there then?" He facepalmed when the obvious answer came almost immediately. "His ID badge! There must be a scanner next to where you call the elevator. Great, there's no way I'm getting my hands on one of those things without someone noticing."

He hung his head as he sighed in exasperation. "So what now, do I just give up? Came all this way for answers just to come up empty? No way, I didn't crawl through cramped vents avoiding surveillance for an hour for nothing! There's got to be another way to find what I'm after. Their main server room may be inaccessible, but they are still other computers. It is an office building after all. But seeing the lengths they've gone to in order to protect their data, I can't imagine some simple office computer is going to have access to their database. Plus, there's no way I could use one of those computers without being caught on camera."

Spidey tilted his head as a thought came to him. "Hang on. Maybe being caught on camera isn't such a bad thing. The demonstration that gave me my quirk back during that field trip was almost certainly captured by the surveillance cameras in the lab. Meaning that footage should be in their CCTV backlog. If I can find that footage, I can see for certain what was going on that day that led up to that demonstration going wrong. Maybe I could see how they calibrated the recombinator, or just where that spider came from. Nezu said that with our current technology, a single blast of radiation normally wouldn't be enough to give an animal a quirk, and while whatever happened to me certainly isn't normal, I can't discount the chance of that spider being somehow special prior to that demonstration. On the other hand, if it was just a normal spider, then it wouldn't be the first time conventional knowledge on quirks turned out to be wrong." His mind flashed back to what he had learned about trigger earlier that day, another instance of something that defied society's current understanding of neogenics.

"The person running the demonstration even said that Oscorp was focused on amutagenesis in bugs. If checking Oscorp surveillance footage can confirm whether or not that spider was one of their test subjects, then I have to try."

Spider-Man crawled back into the ventilation ducts and began his search for the CCTV surveillance room. There was no guarantee his plan would work, but he had to have at least something to show for his efforts. Frankly, it was quite the longshot to think that a Japanese office building would have access to surveillance footage from a lab in North America. But then again, it also wasn't unreasonable to assume that Oscorp would archive all their video records in the same database. Ultimately, he would just have to cross his fingers and hope for the best.

It didn't take Spidey long to find the surveillance room. Thankfully there was a convenient vent on the back wall of the room custom made for him to keep watch of the watchman. The room was small and dark, little bigger than a closet. The only light coming from the monitors lining the opposite wall, each displaying the feeds from the various security cameras throughout the building. Between him and the monitors was a single tired looking security guard with deep bags under his eyes. He was hunched over in a cheap swivel chair at a wraparound desk. The desk housed the computer terminal for the surveillance cameras in the center, the rest of the desk was covered with cluttered documents, files, and other knick knacks and office implements. A single half empty coffee mug carrying the words, "Stan is the Man," sat on the only clean section of the desk, clearly the only thing carrying the man through his shift.

Besides the desk was a tall computer tower about the same size as Peter's locker back at Midtown High. The thought brought a touch of melancholy with it. What he wouldn't give to return to simpler times when Flash and his buddies would shove him into said locker before Harry would come bail him out in time for him to go home to Aunt May and Uncle Ben. But with luck, that computer tower would have access to Oscorp's archived footage, and with it he'd finally have an answer for why that was all taken from him.

All he had to do was get this chump out of the way for a little while, should be simple enough. Spidey waited and watched the guard while the guard watched the cameras, fiddling with the terminal every so often to pan the cameras, zoom in, or rewind a couple seconds. Once he had a good enough grasp on how the system worked, he put his plan into action. He shot a web bullet through the slits in the vent, hitting one of the desk's side panels, and causing the desk to shudder enough to tip over the coffee mug and spill its contents onto the desk and floor, staining some of the scattered documents in the process.

"Ah! Just great, look at this mess!" The man grumbled and groused as he begrudgingly got up to find a rag and get a refill of his coffee.

Once the door closed behind him, Spider-Man wasted no time in coming out from his hiding place and accessing the terminal, ten fingers blazing across the keyboard faster than a spider skittering across the floor on its eight legs.

"Okay, let's see here… exit live feed, open files, archive, archive… there! Access archived footage." He clicked through file after file until he found what he was looking for: Oscorp's security database. "Finally, a search function. And there it is! Select location." He quickly scrolled past all the Japan options. "Naruhata, Tokyo, Kamino, Okinawa, Berlin Germany! So they do have access to the archives from foreign branches. Come on, come on, US, US… It's actually here! New York, New York, USA." From there it took no time at all to find their main neogenics facility. "Jump to date February 10th." After filtering through the results he was met with a series of rooms and timestamps.

Finally, answers were at his fingertips, he scrolled down to the time of the demonstration. N/A. He paused. Every single lab camera had no archived footage available for review. "What, not available? Hold on, there's got to be a mistake." He scrolled back up and checked the top of the list. There was still footage available in the morning. He opened the video file from 7:00 to 7:30 AM in the main lab. He was met with the sight of the neogenic recombinator sitting exactly as he remembered it in a dim quiet room. He skimmed through the footage to find only the still image, no one entered or exited that room for the whole half hour, the only thing of note was the occasional flickering of one of the overhead lights. He went back down the list until the footage stopped. From 10:00 AM till 3:00 PM, a full five hours, none of the lab cameras had anything on record.

Spidey staggered back a step as he stared up at the glaring gap in the archive. "They scrubbed it! Someone went through and deleted all evidence that there was ever a demonstration that day. Which means…"

≈*≈ Spidey flinched as his spider-sense suddenly alerted him. The sound of approaching footsteps could be heard from the hall. Crap, out of time!

Fast as lightning, Spidey exited the archives, resumed the live feed, and jumped back into the vents, the grate popping into place right as the door opened. The out of sight patch of webbing on the side of the desk was the only sign that Spider-Man was ever there. In a matter of hours it would dissolve, leaving no trace of his presence.

≈*≈

Spider-Man had left the Oscorp building as a sudden state of panic overtook him. Now, catching his breath as he perched on the side of a nearby building, he finally allowed himself the time to reflect on what he had learned. "They knew…" he muttered with a hand to his head. The words themselves were quiet and easy to miss, but the weight they had in his mind was anything but.

"No… no, come on, you're just being paranoid here. The recombinator made you sick, remember? They were probably worried about a lawsuit over safety violations, and got rid of the evidence." He tried to convince himself, but his explanations didn't sit right with him.

"No, admit it, they knew. Or at least someone capable of hacking Oscorp knows. As for who it was that deleted those files, what they know now, and how much they knew then, I don't know. I- I don't really know anything I thought I did, and I don't know what to think now. I went in looking for answers, and only came out with more questions. But I can say one thing for sure, I can no longer deny the possibility—however unlikely—that whatever the intended purpose of that experiment, whatever effect it was supposed to trigger, maybe, just maybe, it didn't go wrong. It went right."

Spider-Man turned his gaze to the imposing sight of the Oscorp tower standing innocuously in the Naruhata skyline. "Which begs the question: Just what exactly is going on in that basement."

A/N: Well, I'm back finally. I said I would have this chapter done by Thanksgiving, and now it's May. But, the end result is the longest chapter of the Beyond Responsibility to date: 16k words, so hopefully worth the wait. No estimate on when the next chapter comes though. Between last chapter and this one, I started college, and there are other things coming up that will prevent me from writing at all. But onto notes on the chapter.

This chapter draws heavily on the story of the vigilantes spin-off manga, for those unfamiliar with it. This entire arc will take material from there. If you haven't read MHA vigilantes yet, I highly recommend it. I personally consider it to be much better than the original MHA story, and it's home to some of my favorite characters. For those of you who have read it, you probably noticed more than a few quotes incorporated into this chapter. But I doubt anyone will catch all the references.

Now before anyone asks, I am aware that the timeline of vigilantes is years before the main story, I'm making them somewhat more concurrent. (Just gotta figure out what to do about Tensei) What, you didn't expect this to just re-tread the events of canon, did you? Now that's a fast and easy way to broadcast that your story has no impact or consequences. I'm sure that would keep people's interest when they realize that Peter wouldn't make a difference in anything.

For those wondering, no, Raptor and Setsuna are not related. They do canonically share a last name: Tokage (it literally just means lizard). But they are spelled differently and use different kanji (symbols). Setsuna's name is written with the characters for take/grab and yin/shadow, whereas Raptor's name is technically Tookage with a rare double O, and is spelled with the characters for ten, day/sun, and summer. I should also explain why I've put his name as "Raptor." In the Japanese, it's written ラプト(Ra-Pu-To) which is explicitly the Japanese way of approximating the English word "Raptor" as in, velociraptor (weird then that he instead transforms into a pterosaur, though to be fair, raptor typically refers to flying animals). The translators I've seen have either just represented this literally as Raputo, or shortened it to just Rapt as is done in the official translation, and on the wiki. I respectfully disagree, I do not think it could be any clearer that the character's name should be Raptor. It's already the proper Japanese approximation of that very English word. So unless there's an official romaji rendering that I'm unaware of, I'm keeping it like this. While on the topic of Raptor trivia, he shares a birthday with Deku and Mirio.

With the fight between Spider-Man and Knuckleduster we see a weakness in Spidey's fighting style, the spider-sense can't do it all for him. A good point of development I think that opens the door to a lot of opportunities for growth as he struggles to overcome his use of his spider-sense as a crutch, and incorporate it into his fighting style to its full potential, rather than just letting it control him.

With the trip to Oscorp, the plot thickens and we begin the first big mystery of the series, what was really going on in chapter 1? I promise it's not as obvious as you may think. Can't wait to hear your theories.

This chapter is a big turning point in the story overall, you can almost say it "triggers" a lot of what's to come. Haha, ha… yeah, I really milked that theme dry for all it was worth.

Onto to Q and A comment responses:

1. Omni-Trickery: "Will 'insert Marvel character(s)' make an appearance, like Ice-Man and Star-Fire for example?"

A: That's a great idea. Ice-Man and Star-Fire are cool characters and a reference like that totally fits my sense of humor, I'm ashamed I hadn't thought of it myself. But I'm afraid the answer is usually no. I don't really see a way to integrate many marvel characters into the story. This story is strictly set in the My Hero Academia universe, it's just fleshed out using ideas from the Marvel universe. The Peter Parker in this story is not the Marvel character Spider-Man. He's an original My Hero Academia character based on the Marvel character Spider-Man. There are other characters in this story based on their Marvel counterparts: Harry/Norman Osborn, J Jonah Jameson, and Curt Connors to name a few. The idea is that these characters could potentially be canon characters in the MHA universe if you zoomed outside of the scope of the MHA story. They exist, they're just standing out of frame. Hatsume's homeroom teacher really could be a guy named Doc Connors, there really could be some small-time villain named Shocker wandering around Japan, or a random quirkless kid named Peter Parker living in New York. Is it likely? No, but it is possible. Many "Marvel" characters that show up in the story will actually be My Hero Academia characters who become analogues to Spider-Man characters because Peter's involvement in the story changes their destiny. For example, in this chapter, Spidey jokingly calls Raptor "The Lizard" and even makes a reference to Sauron, that's the feel I'm going for. In the same sense, I don't currently have any plans for Spider-Man's other canon love interests either. Harry Osborn can be his own character because he's just a rich kid who lives in New York, but Felicia Hardy isn't their own character because it doesn't make sense for her to exist in MHA. Does that mean there won't eventually be a character that plays the role of Black Cat? Or that Spider-Man's girlfriend won't get thrown off a bridge because she's not named Gwen Stacy? No comment on that. And who knows, maybe I'll change my mind and end up including those characters in the future. Where does that leave people like Ice-Man and Star-Fire? Someplace where they're unlikely to appear. Their analogues would be college students at the Xavier institute, so it would be difficult to make them appear without simply inserting them someplace where they simply didn't exist before. It would take a lot of consideration to make that not feel contrived, and with how much I already have planned, I don't think I could squeeze in more than an off hand joke or reference. This same pattern applies for most Marvel Characters one could ask about.

2. BobIsBadAtEnglish: Why'd you write this fic; how much was planned?

A: This was an idea I had bouncing around my head for about a week, but I was resistant to get into it because I knew it would completely distract from my novels, and would ultimately never be published, on account of being a fanfic. So I was worried it would end up as a time waster in the grand scheme of my writing career. But I was in a rut that week so I decided to get it out of my head and onto paper, and the words just flowed. I actually didn't have too much of what would become the first 9 chapters planned out on the first day. Most of my planning is broad outlines that have the details filled in over time, and then most of the play-by-play comes as I'm actually writing, or in the week before. I'd say about half of what ends up on the page is thought up as I'm writing the previous paragraph, prior to that I had bullet point objectives of what that scene has to fulfill. I had some broad ideas for themes, arcs, and snapshots of scenes I had played out in my mind, but that's about it. The first day, all I really had planned for the first arc was: a brief recap of the Spider-Man origin story, doing something with Shocker, Peter accidentally does the entrance exam, a lot of Aizawa's interviews were thought up early on, and then I wanted something to happen with Knuckleduster, which is where we are now. Most of the things I had planned in that first week were things that happen in UA, like the battle trial and classroom conversations. Though now that I'm almost 100k words into this, I have a somewhat solid outline for the story until after the first movie. And considering that we're only 4 episodes into the anime right now, that's quite a lot of content planned, and I'm doing a lot of the foreshadowing and groundwork now, if you go back you may be surprised to see how much foreshadowing there is in the early chapters.

3. North: Do you have any other story ideas that you are interested in writing in the future?

A: Yes, I currently have two other stories published that I'm working on which you can find from my Author's page on FF dot net. One story, "The Red Vestige" is an Avatar the Last Airbender story about Vaatu escaping the day Aang awakens from the iceberg, he gives a human a fragment of his power and story follows his (dark) Avatar journey as a kind of anti-hero/anti-villain. The other story is "The Wraith, The Waived, and the Waif" a Naruto story about original characters. It takes place in the canon storyline during the timeskip and centers around a genin team assigned to Anko Mitarashi consisting of a Hyuga medic-nin assigned to be his blind sister's caretaker, an infirm Aburame outcast slowly being eaten alive by a swarm of parasitic insects he's unable to control. His condition leaves him unable to use ninjutsu or taijutsu, so he tries to become a ninja using genjutsu alone. And Finally, the third member would be a prodigy of the extinct Iburi clan trying to discover the truth of her past. Be sure to check those stories out if you're interested in more stuff from me.

4. hibruh80: How does it feel to be one of the greatest Spider-Man/MHA fanfic writers?

A: Well now that you've said it, I guess it's official. Congratulations to me I suppose. It feels pretty cool to be honest. I didn't expect to do this well. The first 8 chapters all came out in the first two months since I started, so this is a pretty incredible amount of attention. Thanks to everyone for your kind words, it's good to know my writing can actually compete with the best of them when it comes time to step up to the plate. (the best of a niche category of 150 or so stories on FF anyway.) I think this story is halfway through the 2nd page when you sort by follows, which is quite the accomplishment I think. Can't wait to get to 100 reviews, that'll be a milestone.