The sound of the passing cars felt like music to his ears, the bits of moonlight that poked through the clouded night sky shone down on his spot sitting on the roof edge of a vacant office building as he dangled his feet freely in the air.
He loved night patrolling, too bad he could only do it when May took the night shift.
A thing which started to be more and more common since they lost the second income in their house.
This is Peter Benjamin Parker, a 14-year-old kid from Queens now known as Spider-Man, one of Musutafu's newest vigilantes.
And while he would love to go into detail on how he got to where he was, you can guess how things went down.
Random spider bite, quirkless kid given the ability to do whatever a spider can, underground fighting…
Dead uncle.
Yeah… you know the rest.
There were some things he'd rather not go into.
What matters is that when… it happened, he was thrown headfirst into the life of a teenage vigilante in the most vigilante-hating country known to man.
Lucky him, huh?
He didn't care, either way, it was his choice to put on the mask and go out swinging through town.
Things the past five months of doing this have been… eventful, to say the least.
He stopped drug deals, yakuza meetings, shootings and robberies, and everything that the more prominent heroes left to the underground heroes, met some quirkless guy in a mask and a dude in an All Might hoodie who became his vigilante friends and was on his way to graduate from Aldera Middle School.
In all honesty, Peter couldn't wait to leave that place, any school that let that blonde second-year bully that quirkless kid didn't deserve to still have kids attending it.
His gloved hand went through his messy brown hair, his hazel eyes looking down at what he currently wore.
Grey pants along with knee pads, a black undershirt that reached to just past his elbows, elbow pads, red fingerless gloves, red sneakers that had the soles replaced with those from ballerina slippers, a red and blue short-sleeved pullover hoodie with a black spider drawn on the front and a white one on the back, and an old one strap backpack over his shoulder.
Over his face was a red face mask that covered his nose and mouth, and over his eyes were his self-made goggles with expressive bug-like lenses. On his wrists were devices made out of scrap and different parts, his good old web-shooters.
Imagine what he could do with an actual budget instead of dumpster diving behind support companies.
His spider-sense rang softly as his ears picked up the sound of a soft landing, it was either someone trained to not make much noise or someone really tiny.
He was leaning towards the first option.
"Hey, kid." A tired voice spoke, Peter turned around and narrowed his lenses toward the man on the other side of the rooftop.
The man was the definition of disheveled, an entirely black suit along with a grey scarf-like object around his neck. His hair was black and hung over his bloodshot eyes, his face was unshaven along with a look of pure exhaustion.
Crawler told him about this guy one time, and Peter had a few run-ins with him a few months back.
Standing on the roof with him was the erasure hero, EraserHead.
Or as Peter liked to call him, scarf man.
"Hey, scarf man! I was hoping the next time we saw each other, I'd be in UA but whatever." Peter greeted back, patting the spot next to him on the roof edge. The hero pondered it for a few seconds before sitting a couple feet away from the boy.
They sat in silence for a couple of seconds, simply watching the streets below from their spot 12 floors up.
"How have you been, man?" Peter asked, eyeing the man from behind his lenses.
"Fine." He responded, his tired eyes studied the masked teen.
"Good patrol? I stopped a couple purse-snatchers and an armed robbery earlier, decided to sit here and take a small break." The boy continued to make light conversation, mostly getting no result.
Crawler did say this guy wasn't too into talking.
"I came here to ask you to stop, kid. I let you operate this long hoping you'd quit sooner or later, but I guess that was completely irrational. Naomasa is willing to cut you a deal if you come quietly." Aizawa got straight to the point, Peter's body tensed in preparation as to run away if he needed to.
"Look … It's not like I don't trust you or anything, if anything you're probably one of my favorite heroes, but I can't stop. People out there need help, and sometimes heroes aren't there, so I will be."
"You don't even seem to be in high school yet. You'll get caught sooner or later, and whoever finds you next won't go as easy as me." The man responded dryly, his hands slowly approaching his capture weapon.
"Why do you even do this, kid? You know it's illegal"
Peter could only sigh and hop into a crouch, Aizawa tightened the grip on the capture weapon at the sudden movement.
He would very much rather scarf man let him go quietly instead of playing cat and mouse all night, Peter had school tomorrow.
"I can help out, so I do help out, law's got nothing to do with it. Now, can I just go on my merry way and leave you to your brooding on rooftops? I got a math quiz tomorrow, and my aunt comes back from the night shift in like…" Peter pulled out a phone with an incredibly cracked screen, it was still visible enough for him. "three hours, can you just let me swing by?"
Peter added the last part with a small smile behind his mask and a semi-pleading tone. While Peter wasn't a pushover in a fight, a part of him doubted his chances against a seasoned hero.
A small bit of panic began to set in as he realized that this may or may not be his last night as a vigilante, he couldn't let this end yet.
Not while there were still people in this city he could help.
Silently, the man stood up and adopted a small fighting stance, Peter's shoulders dropped at the implications of that.
"You know I can't do that, just come quietly, so I don't get dry eyes. Sorry but we can't afford to have a child running around unchecked anymore, you need to understand this stuff is serious."
He stated with a commanding voice, gone was the semi gentle tone from before that Peter guessed he used to convince him.
Peter stood up and quickly checked his web-shooters were loaded and narrowed his lenses at the black-haired man, a scoff escaping his lips.
"You think I don't know this stuff is serious? I've got scars because of what I do, you guys probably want me off the table cause I'm doing a better job than you." He couldn't help the remark at the end.