16. (Side story) Superheroics 101 Part 4

Just finished this

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Spider-Man had to give it to the new girl, she really had what it took to be a superhero.

"I'm gonna crush you like the beetle you are!"

Her quip game could use some pointers though.

"You know, that sounds a little too supervillain-y, try something more like this: Hey, Herman! I thought you were in New Jersey now! What happened? Did you realize it was Jersey?"

"What can I say? I was feeling nostalgic!"

How had Spidey found himself facing Shocker alongside some new superheroine he had never met before? Well, it started right after he had accidentally let Vulture go because his Spider Sense had gone off, distracting him. Apparently, the new girl, Nabe, was the cause, though he couldn't explain why. Trying to find out, he had started a conversation with her, apparently, she had gotten powers recently, though she didn't explain how, and had decided to be a hero. Not only that, but she wanted him to teach her.

"Well, he couldn't say he wasn't flattered, and it made some sense, he HAD been doing this since he was fifteen with no help whatsoever (even if some people seemed to think Iron Man was his mentor only because of their friendship, even if Iron Man started doing his thing long after Peter)"

Anyway, before he could ask her any questions, he saw something was going on in the bank, so he went there and she followed him.

And so Spider-Man found himself dodging Shocker's vibration blasts, trying to get close enough to get a good hit and throwing some webs, while Nabe, well...

"Lightning!"

Yeah, apparently, the girl had watched too much anime or played too many rpgs or both, because he had the habit of calling her attacks. Unfortunately, this allowed Shocker to know exactly when she would attack and allowed him to use his gauntlets to dissipate the electricity via vibrations (Peter wasn't sure it worked like that, but he had recently been split in two halves each with parts of his knowledge and genetic make-up, so who was he to argue with what he was seeing?)

Eventually, she seemed to get tired of not managing to hit him and decided to try and punch him. Somehow Herman managed to barely dodge, good thing too, because she was apparently strong enough to punch through concrete, as the hole in the wall of the bank could tell. Of course, this got her angry.

"I will burn you to cinders, you bee! Lightning!"

This time Herman was not fast enough to shield himself. And if she didn't stop he would die. So Spider-Man decided to stop her.

"Stop! You'll kill him!"

He hoped that just telling her would be enough, he had just been in two fights one right after the other, and he wasn't sure if he was in good enough condition for a third. Fortunately it seemed to jog something in her memory, if her expression was any indication.

Shocker managed to recover fast enough to use her distraction to hit her with a well placed blast, though this only seemed to anger her more. But she didn't manage to act on that anger, because Spider-Man had used Herman's distraction to close the gap between them and hit the stupidly-costumed crook hard enough to knock him out, before webbing his hands to the floor, preventing him from using his gauntlets, just to be sure.

"Don't worry Herman, I'll make sure someone feeds Silvermane's head for you while you are in jail"

And with that last quip, he left alongside Nabe.

"Now, you have potential, but it's clear you have a lot to learn, you nearly did something terrible just now." he told her, "So, yeah, I'll teach you."