CH10: Obligatory Rocky Reference

After about three weeks of resting and waiting for my health to be back at 100% I started training with Murdock.

After I accepted his offer, he gave me a note with the address to his gym and instructions to go there in civilian clothing. He mentioned that I could take a mask or something if it made me comfortable, but I said that if we were going to have a mentor-apprentice thing going on, I should be comfortable with him knowing who I am.

The gym was clearly abandoned, and there was a layer of dust so big on the floor at first glance I thought it was a fucking carpet.

Murdock was already there, walking around without really moving his head in anything's direction. If my hunch was correct, I'd guess that this was his old gym, the one he and his late father worked out in.

"Getting nostalgic?" I asked, walking slowly towards him.

He nodded slightly. "My father used to train here."

"Jack Murdock, right?" He turned his head towards me. "I saw some of his old fights on MeTube. He was a hell of a fighter. One time he knocked out a man with two punches."

A corner of his mouth tugged upwards, "Yeah. He was the best boxer I ever knew. Very little of that had to do with his fighting skill, though."

"I wish I could have met him."

"He probably would have disapproved of what we're doing. He would have disapproved of all this Cape stuff, really." Murdock tilted his head upwards. I wondered if he made those gestures to accommodate others, seeing how he couldn't, well, see. "He hated violence, ironically. He was a boxer because that's all he knew, and he wanted better for me."

"Is that why you quit? You finally hit the age when everything your parents ever told you suddenly makes a shit-ton of sense?"

"It was partially because of that, yes."

I took the hint that he didn't want to talk about it.

The truth was that no one really knows why Murdock quit. I looked it up once; Foggy Nelson and Karen Page were both alive and well, the last time he'd been seen wearing the tights was shortly after his identity was revealed, in one of those big battles between a crap-ton of aliens and a shit-ton of Avengers and he seemed fine.

I wanted to ask, but I decided against pissing off my would-be mentor so soon.

Murdock had me run a few laps around the gym to warm up. As I ran, he began talking.

"So, give me a run-down of your abilities."

"I have enhanced speed, strength, stamina and senses," I wasn't even winded as I listed off my abilities. "Also, the ability to cling to anything that touches my skin; which can be applied through thin clothes, a minor healing factor, my Spider-Sense, improved sense of balance, improved dexterity and improved contortionism."

I tried that last one and yes, I can put my knees behind my ears bending backwards. It didn't even hurt that much.

"What's Spider-Sense?" Murdock questioned.

"Basically, I have awareness of everything around me at all times. It's what allows me to shoot my webs despite being near-sighted and kind of a crappy shot."

"And you can't shoot your webs naturally?"

"No, that's from my shooters, which had run out of webs when you found me."

"Right, when I found you." I didn't care for the emphasis he put in that word. "I take it your friend was the one that designed them?"

"Yeah."

"Are you gonna tell me about him?"

"Not on your life."

"You know you put him in danger when you announced to the whole wide world that you had a partner, right?"

I stopped dead where I was. "What?"

"When you took down Fisk, you said that your friend hacked the cameras, which was transmitted to everyone everywhere. How long do you think until someone decides to find where you hang your tights?"

I couldn't move. I could barely breathe.

I completely missed that. I didn't even think about it when I was making my speech (which I had fucking practiced dammit). Peter hadn't said anything either, did he not notice? Oh god, May and Ben! It was bad enough that Ben had the copyright to Spider-Man's image!

At first I thought we could play that off as a clever old man that had gotten the idea before anyone else, but what if they thought he was my partner?

I was shaking with panic before Murdock suddenly clapped his hands in front of me.

"Kid, calm the hell down!" I stared at him, almost uncomprehending. "It's okay. You can't fix the past, but you can work towards never making the same mistake again."

I nodded. Once I was calm, I went back to running and talking.

Murdock had me work out with some of the equipment, to get a rhythm going with the work out. After a few hours, he told me to come back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and that he'd have a special training for my powers ready by then.

"Okay, I'm almost done," Peter said, making me look up from my Chemistry homework. "A little more work and your webshooters should be waterproof and capable of holding twice as much web fluid."

"Bitchin'," I glared at my messy notes. "Then you can get to work on poison so I can either kill myself or our teacher."

"I'd recommend the teacher," Peter joked, before getting serious. "Hey, I gotta ask you for a favour."

"Dude, if you wanna put on the suit, you can just go ahead."

"No, it's not that this time." Peter frowned, and pointed a screwdriver at me. "You have to go home as soon as this is finished."

"I am home."

"I mean your actual house, Jake."

I stared at him blankly for a second before realizing what he meant. "OH! Yeah, but why?"

Peter didn't respond, suddenly loosing courage and getting red.

"Peter…?" a teasing smirk started appearing on my face. "Did you invite Gwen over? Are you going to start spending time on the basement?"

Peter got even redder.

"My god," I said, as dramatically as possible. "I don't know if I can handle this betrayal; my own brother, asking me to leave for his girlfriend. Such a rupture of the Bro Code cannot stand. In my own house, no less."

"You don't even live here!" Peter shouted, finally losing his patience.

"Details," I laughed. I put my stuff on my bag, which took some manoeuvring, since I was upside-down. "Do you want me to take May and Ben out for a night in the town? See if you can reach third base?"

"… Could you actually do that?"

"Peter, you pervert," I laughed.

"You suggested it!"

Suddenly, someone knocked at the door of the basement, and as it opened, we heard Gwen say, "Hey guys, your aunt let me in. Are you two decent?"

I looked down (up?) at my body. I was almost fully suited up, minus my boots, gloves and mask. I was sitting on the roof. Peter was working on my webshooters. I didn't have my mask on.

Gwen entered the basement, and stared at me. Her jaw dropped.

Resignation filled me and I turned to look at Peter. "Pete, help, gravity stopped working."

I'm proud that I managed to say it in a perfect deadpan.

"You know, I'm starting to think I suck at keeping a secret identity. It's a lot harder than I expected."

"You do need to work on that, man."

Gwen carried on ranting, without pausing despite our talking. "- CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THIS IS SUCH-"

"Okay, stop," I said, raising my voice a bit. Gwen turned to glare at me, and before she could start ranting again, I continued. "This wasn't Peter's secret to tell, it was mine. And I had no reason to tell you."

Gwen opened her mouth, closed it, opened again and raised a finger, then closed it and dropped the finger. "Crap, you're right."

"Of course I am. I'm a hero. On that note, I'm gonna do the heroic thing and get the hell out of here so you two can work this out alone."

I jumped out of a window, my super suit hidden under civilian clothes already.

I could hear Peter muttering cuss words under his breath.

After did my basic body training, I stared at Murdock as he aimed a cylinder at me.

"… Is that a tennis ball cannon?"

"Yes."

"… What are you going to- JESUS!"

Apparently, the stupid cannon had been modified to shoot the damn things super-fast.

I barely managed to jump out of the way before I had to pull a Neo and bend backwards at the waist to dodge it, which then turned into a backwards cartwheel as he shot again.

"What the fuck, Murdock?!"

"You said your sixth sense-"

"Spidey Sense!"

"Sixth sense gives you tunnel vision when you get into a fight, right?"

"So what?" I said, right before a ball bounced off a wall and hit me in the back of the head when I jumped away from another.

As I stumbled, every single ball that Murdock had fired bounces in the perfect angle to hit me all over my body and face.

"I'm going to keep firing at you with these, and you're going to keep dodging until you learn to have perfect awareness of everything at all times." Murdock was smirking. "Now toss the balls over, I'm gonna hit you with them again."

"I was gonna make an innuendo, but with the given options, I'd really rather not."

"You mean an in-your-end-oh?"

"I hate you."

He shot me in the face.

"So, do you, like, lay eggs?"

"Do you use the word 'like' like a comma?"

Gwen gave me a look and threw a fry at my face, which I caught in my teeth.

"But seriously, do you?"

"I am neither a spider nor a female, so I'd have to say I probably don't."

"Right, that makes sense," Gwen took a bite out of her burger, then, without even swallowing, she asked, "Can you summon an army of spiders?"

I sighed. Peter had proposed that we go to a dinner to talk about the costumed elephant in the room. So far all that had been accomplished was that we ordered food and made Peter laugh his ass off.

"I'm not Taylor Hebert, so I'd have to say that no, I can't do that."

"Have you ever tried?"

I opened my mouth, stopped, focused for a little while, then answered. "Just did, I got nothing."

"Okay, who's Taylor Hebert, by the way?"

As I explained and Gwen asked her questions, the day went on.

Eventually, we parted ways. She gave me a nod and she gave Peter a kiss.

"So, that went well." Peter said while we walked home.

"You think so?" I said, ducking into an alley to stop a mugging before coming out and catching up with Peter, who didn't even stop.

"Yeah! I think you and Gwen might get along a lot better from now on."

I shrugged.

I knocked on the window, and Duke opened.

"Guys, our valiant hero is here!"

"Did he bring cookies?"

I raised the Tupperware I was holding.

"He did!"

"Let him in then!"

A few minutes later, we were all lazing around the apartment, munching on cookies and watching Lord of the Rings.

"I still like Harry Potter better," I said.

"I don't care for the racial insensitivity," Ace replied with her mouth full.

"Right, because these movies are so much better. There's not a single black person in the Fellowship, and when Gandalf died, he came back whiter!"

James coughed and nodded. "Spidey's got a point there."

"Personally, I really enjoy the Artemis Fowl series."

"Oh, shut up, Duke, you just like to feel smart." James flipped off his friend. "Percy Jackson on the other hand? Now that is a good book series."

We all voiced our agreement.

"Hey, how come you never seem high, man?" Ace asked me out of nowhere.

"I have an advanced metabolism. I think it has to do with my healing or whatever. I can't get drunk, high, or poisoned."

"Shit, really?"

"I mean, I can if I drink a shit-ton of booze and/or poison, or if I smoke all the pot, but that seems like a lot of effort for a high that'll last a few minutes at most."

"Man," James said, with the tone of someone that had just heard their dog had cancer. "I never knew being a Cape could have such horrible repercussions."

I nodded.

"Wait, does that mean you've been wasting our pot all this time?" Ace asked, suddenly scandalized.

"I mean, it felt rude not to?"

And then I was dodging everything Ace could find and throw at me.

"Eventually Ace forgave me, after I mentioned the cookies," I explained, catching one of the tennis balls and throwing it out of the way as I jumped out of the way off three different ones.

I was improving, slowly but surely.

Right as I thought that, a ball hit me in the mouth.

"How do you even get them to bounce like that?" I asked, no longer annoyed due to exposure therapy.

"I think the more important question is 'since when do you hang out with potheads?" Murdock said, in that judging 'all-drugs-are-equally-bad' tone people use when they don't know jack about the subject except for what they saw in PSA.

"Okay, first off, they're people with opinions, dreams and people-ish things," I caught a tennis ball and threw it at his head. He caught it and put it back in the cannon. "Second, they're my informants. They all have connections, and they let me know when shit's going down. And third, they're my friends, so maybe don't talk about them in that tone."

"I guess I just expected better from Spider-Man," Murdock said.

"Okay, pot is nowhere- OW!" a ball bounced and hit me in the eye. I didn't stop moving, though, so I stayed in the game. "Pot is nowhere near as bad as some of the other stuff out there. And you're not gonna sit there and judge me for relaxing with friends while the only reason our buddy Steve Rogers' formerly-asthmatic ass can breathe is that he took some drugs."

I bounced around some more, getting near Murdock. The rule was that if I managed to take the cannon out of his hands, I was ready for the next level.

"I don't agree, but I guess I am being a bit preachy." He shot the ground and the ball bounced right into my face as I was getting near. "You're still far from done with this particular exercise, though."

"I hate you."

"Shocker!" I greeted, feeling a smile appear on my face, "What's up, man?"

"Oh, you know," he gestured at the bags filled with money, "Robbing banks and shit."

"Cool, cool," I readied my webshooters, "You ready to fight?"

"Sure," he shrugged, before blasting me with his gauntlets.

Around an hour later, Shocker was webbed to the floor, I was sitting next to him and watching the clouds, and the bank workers were putting the money back.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," I said. "You made your gauntlets yourself, right?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"So, how come you're a villain? Mind you, I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that you could do some honest work as an engineer, or a hero if you're too attached to the mask."

"I dunno," Shocker sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I thought about the engineer life, but there's always this part of me that says 'not yet', you know. A part that pushes me to try and keep going until I finally get it right."

"And how would you do that?"

"I'll tell you when I get it right."

I chuckled. "And what about hero work? Personally, I find it pretty rewarding."

"Yeah, listen," Shocker turned to look at me as much as he could while webbed face-down to the floor. "Villains don't follow a code or anything, but there is this general idea that retiring is okay, retiring then giving up some of your former buddies is grounds for murder, and retiring to be a hero is grounds for Fates Worse Than Death."

"Oh," I went back to looking at the clouds, "Hey, Shocker?"

"Yeah?"

"If you ever go hero, let me know. I'll watch your back."

"Thanks, Web-head." Shocker went back to lying face down. "And my name is Herman."

"Why black and blue?"

I looked up from my biology homework. "What?"

"Why black and blue?" Gwen repeated. "Why not… green and black? Or red and blue?"

"Green is a villain's colour, and red and blue is too U.S. flag-ish for my taste."

"Green is my favourite colour!"

"Peter, your wife is a villain."

"If you weren't on the roof, I'd shout 'that's my wife!' and punch you." Peter said, completely deadpan.

"I'd let you," I replied in an equal deadpan. "A punch from you is like being slapped with a wet bagel."

We were all sitting around the basement, screwing around. Luckily, Gwen's questions had been slowing down lately, but they still popped up from time to time.

Suddenly, I remembered something.

"Hey, did I ever tell you guys about the sexy cat lady?"

"No, and I am horrified that you never did." Peter immediately responds.

"Okay, so I was patrolling one night, and I happen to swing by a museum…"

Just as I was about to call it a night, I saw something I couldn't believe: a grey-haired woman in a tight black leather outfit with kitty-ears and a domino mask, holding a huge diamond and slowly exiting the museum through a window.

I approached stealthily and, once I was in position, cupped my hands around my face like the Home Alone kid and made the loudest, fakest gasp I could manage.

"Oh my gosh!" I said, "Are you a cat-themed thief?"

The lady jumped in place, startled, before turning to look at me. Her eyebrow raised, and she gave me what I think she thought was a seductive smile.

"Why, yes I am! What, do you happen to have a-"

"I've been preparing for this since I put on the mask!" I cheered, before taking out a collection of flash cards from one of my pockets. I cleared my throat and read the first one: "I'm purr-ity sure that doesn't belong to you, miss. Eh?"

The look she gave me was worth all the diamonds in the world.

"Not to your liking? That's fine, I got more."

"Please don't-"

I put on my best 'cop' voice. "You're going away fur a long time! Eh?"

"Are all of those just stupid cat puns?"

"You betcha! Let's see, here's a good one: you might be headed for jail, but stay paw-sitive! I'm sure you'll paw-bational soon! Eh?"

"I'm going to attack you, now."

She jumped forward and swiped at me with sharp claws, but I flipped away, landing on the edge of the roof. I kept reading my cards.

"There's no need to give me that cat-itude, young lady!"

She chased me over a few rooftops, and I kept dodging, just making jokes.

"In meow-ments like this, I like to try and talk things out."

"Stop."

"What do you get when you put two cats together and stack one between them? A purr-amid!"

"Stop!"

"Oh man, you have cat to be kitten me! How can you jump a-rawr in that meow-fit?"

"Please, just stop!"

"You know, now that I got these puns out of my chest, I'm feline pretty good!"

"I'll give back the diamond, just please stop and let me punch you in the face!"

"I'm not into that, sorry. I'm no meow-sochist. HA! I came up with that one in the spot!"

"ARGH!"

We kept going like that until eventually I took the trade and let her punch me in exchange for the diamond. I still webbed her up and took her to the police, of course, but I think she wasn't even mad after she got to hit me.

After that, I took the diamond to the museum and went back home.

Gwen was rolling around on the floor laughing, while Peter stared at me with a hanging jaw.

"No way."

"Yes way."

"You did not defeat a sexy cat thief with bad puns."

"First off, my puns aren't bad, and second, it's the truth." I waited for a beat to pass before delivering the punch line. "I'm not lion."

I almost fell off the roof from how hard I was laughing at the face of pure hatred that Peter gave me.

I was almost managingto complete the dodge-training. I was almost completely rid of the tunnel-vision, and I had noticed that I was getting around faster whenever I swung around, but I still kept getting hit when I tried to approach Murdock.

I decided to try something new that day.

As soon as the first ball was shot, I caught it and threw it at the ball behind Murdock, making it bounce and go for the hand that held the cannon. Of course, he caught it, but it was proof of something: all this time, I haven't just been learning to dodge.

Murdock's special training had been slowly showing me how certain angles of impact and certain amounts of force could make objects bounce. He taught me how to do trick shots without me knowing.

"Murdock, you magnificent bastard," I was grinning, and so was he.

"Congratulations, kid. You just passed to stage two of your training. I'm going to be moving around now, and you have to nail me in the head."

"Do I get my own cannon?"

He answered me by shooting me in the face.

I caught it, of course.

"That's weird," Peter said.

"Did you find the meaning of life in your pizza?" I asked, not looking up from my lunch.

"No, Flash's getting rejected from Jock-land." I turned and saw that, indeed, Flash was frowning while his teammates (former teammates? He wasn't wearing his Letterman Jacket) laughed. He was standing, holding his tray and looking like a kicked puppy, while the rest was sitting on their favourite table, looking happy.

As he walked away, head ducked and frowning, I raised my voice. "Hey, Flash?"

He sighed and turned to look at me. "What?"

"D'you want to sit with us?"

Peter, Flash and I all expected me to kick him while he was down. But that wasn't me, despite how often it almost was.

"Uh, no thanks?" he seemed unsure. "I'm just gonna sit alone, I think."

"Right," I shrugged and went back to my lunch.

As Flash walked away and Peter gave me a look, I thought something good might come of that interaction.

After discussing it with Murdock, I placed two more orders on Peter. He was actually pretty excited about them; I was surprised how much he was getting into his role as my Tech Support Sidekick.

"Okay, with this, the modifications to your webshooters are finished!" my friend said, handing me the tools in question.

The webshooters, at the start, had been two bracelets that surrounding my entire wrist, with a little hole that the fluid came out of. You know what it looks like.

With further modifications, it had changed so it could be resistant to water and electricity, capable of storing more Web Fluid and using it more efficiently. The version I'd been using before Peter was done with his latest modifications looked like the one from the PS4 Spider-Man game: a strap around the top of the wrist, a little down the wrist crease, the little thing that shoots out the webs, and under that, the place where I put the cartridges.

The new version looked pretty much the same, except the strap was a little thicker and there was a thick box connected to it from the other side of my wrist. If I were to push down on the box five times fast, the shooter would start beeping before all the webs left in the cartridge would shoot out and wrap around my hand and wrist, working like those boxer-bandage-things.

The idea was that it would allow me to punch things harder without breaking anything, plus I'd be covering my fists in harder-than-steel wrappings. Spider-Peter sometimes did that, but it wasn't a trick he used often. I wouldn't use it all the time, on account of how web-expensive it was, but it would aid my fighting style a lot.

I tried them on and activated the Spider Wrappings (the name was my idea, and I'm damn proud of it no matter how much Peter mocked it), then threw a few experimental punches.

"I like it," I said. "How do I get these off?"

"Just press the box five times fast again." I did as he said and the wrappings cut off and fell to the floor. "Now, the other thing was tricky. I couldn't make it a ball like you said, because that'd be too big to be efficient, so instead I made pills. They still bounce, though."

He tossed me one of the pills in question and I gave it a look over. My idea had been that Peter could make some kind of web-bomb. Something that I could activate and bounce around before it trapped everything in webs.

After some experimenting, Peter explained, my friend came up with tiny pills that I could activate by crushing them and have five seconds before they burst. They were pretty tough, so anyone without my strength would need a hammer or something to activate them. Granted, there were tons of strong people around, but at least they wouldn't activate because I tossed my bag on my bed.

For testing, we went to some random warehouse. There, I activated one of the Web Bombs, and threw it hard so it would bounce eleven times before triggering on the roof.

As we stared up at the completely webbed-up ceiling, Peter smiled.

"So, I guess it ended up pretty strong, huh?"

"Yup," I said. "I should probably be careful with these."

We stood there in silence, still staring upwards.

"Wanna see how much you can cover in webs in a minute?"

"Stand outside, this is gonna be epic."

"I've been thinking of learning magic tricks," I mentioned as I caught a ball and held it with one finger. "I'm gonna try to integrate Confusion-Fu into my fighting style."

"You're gonna integrate what?" Murdock asked, sounding amused.

"Confusion-Fu! When you act too unpredictable for your enemies, so you always win." Once every finger held a tennis ball, I threw all but one of them in different directions.

They started to bounce towards Murdock, but the blind me neutralized all of them by shooting a single ball that hit every single one.

Unfortunately for him, while he was distracted lining up his shot, I threw the last ball straight, nailing him right on his forehead.

He looked surprised, actually, before he started laughing. "I see what you mean. I think I can get you some books on magic tricks, maybe ask some acquaintances for tips to give you."

"Thanks, Murdock."

"You can call me Matt, kid."

My training was more than just tossing shit around. Matt also taught me some of his fighting styles. Aikido, Karate, Kung-Fu, Drunk Irish Boxing (which is like boxing, but with the addition of using headbutts and beer bottles), Krav Maga, and some loose tips about civilized violence in general. Just stuff he picked up on years of fighting against and with Capes over the years.

"I can't do much about integrating your Wall-Crawling into your fighting style," Matt explained one day. "That's something you'll have to figure out yourself."

He also admitted that he didn't know much about Ballet or other dancing styles that might help me, but he said he would ask around.

I'd made some small progress on the magic-tricks front, but I was getting really good at being sneaky with the Web-Bombs, which I hadn't had a chance to use in a real fight yet.

One day, Matt asked me to give him a copy of my Super Suit and some notes on it. The next training day, he was waiting for me with a big box next to him.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked.

"I don't know; why don't you open it and see?" he asked.

Inside, there were several copies of an improved version of my suit. They had strategically armoured as to not impede movement, small utility belts, and two blue escrima sticks included with every copy.

As I inspected the sticks, Matt coughed into his fist and smiled awkwardly, "I know you never fought with escrima sticks before, but I figured I might teach you. I spent so much time teaching you, I wanted to pass down my weapons too. It's okay if you don't-"

That was as far as he got before I hugged him.

"Thank you!" I said, lifting him up and spinning him around. "Thank you thank you thank you! This is awesome!"

"I'm glad you're happy, kid," Matt said. "Now put me down already."

I was standing on a rooftop, dramatically looking over the city in my new suit while I twirled one of the sticks on my hand.

"The people of this town have lived in fear for long enough," I said, lowering my voice into a growl. "The Avengers are too busy smacking aliens out of the sky to help out the little guy, and nine out of ten cops are corrupt.

"New York needs a hero.

"New York needs a Dark Knight, someone that will fight the good fight and never give up or give in.

"New York needs me.

"I am the Dark.

"I am Vengeance!

"I! AM!-"

And then my monologue was interrupted by someone screaming for help.

"Oh shit!"