Author's Notes:You know. I came to a realization. Writing is a lot harder than I thought lol. See because I have things planned, things with bullet points. Storylines thought of and excited to be written, but what gets me is the connecting part. Going from point a to point b smoothly. And right now that's sort of challenging, but something I'm definitely up to go against. Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter. Please read the notes at the end too. They are very important.
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It's been two months since the towers fell, and the country still hadn't quite caught its breath.
November had settled in with a chill, and with it came the uneasy quiet that only followed catastrophe. But while the city processed its grief and confusion from the towers, and its questions and astonishment about the red and blue hero, Joe had been focused on something else: catching up.
The coma had stolen nearly his entire sophomore year. He'd been unconscious for months—his body fighting battles he didn't remember, his mind somewhere between dreams and death. When he'd finally woken up, it had been spring. He was physically back, sure—but academically, he was a ghost. Entire units of coursework had blown past him while he was drooling in a hospital bed.
But then, a reprieve.
His principal had met with him personally, a stern yet sympathetic woman who understood extraordinary circumstances when he saw them. With a signed note from the hospital and a detailed discussion of Joe's condition, he was gifted a rare opportunity: his sophomore credits, unconditionally. No repeat year.
Still, pride wouldn't let him ride that gift forever.
Since September, Joe had been in overdrive.
He buried himself in textbooks, reading late into the night, memorizing historical dates, chemical formulas, algebraic functions, and essay structures. He plowed through study guides while eating breakfast. He listened to educational audiobooks while jogging on rooftops. Even his web-swinging practices were more efficient now, thanks to his increased knowledge in the physics side of things. He was desperate to keep up, to feel like he belonged in his own grade again.
His parents had noticed the change, and they supported it with happy smiles, probably glad that he was back like he used to be, always on the move, always wanting more.
Then there was his suit.
The original one—the makeshift prototype—had been scorched, torn, battered, and nearly destroyed during 9/11. He'd pushed it beyond its limits, pulling people out of burning rubble, dodging falling debris, and overall being to close to fires for his own good.
Now, it was better. Upgraded.
He'd spent weeks salvaging materials from abandoned fire gear and old safety uniforms—anything flame-resistant enough to survive what he'd faced that day. He reinforced the gloves and boots with Kevlar padding. He re-threaded the primary base layer with a heat-resistant carbon mesh. The color scheme stayed the same—blue dominant, red secondary, with black trim—but the fabric had a matte finish now, less reflective and more tactical. A white outline of a spider, faint but sharp, stretched across his chest, redesigned to pop in emergency lighting.
It wasn't just about looking cool anymore.
It was about staying alive.
Joe had learned the hard way that being a hero wasn't about flair—it was about function. Every piece of his gear had to serve a purpose.
And it did.
He could take more heat now. More pressure. More damage.
Which, in his world, meant he could save more lives.
And yet, despite all the upgrades and study sessions, one thing still lingered in his mind like a splinter.
The powers. His powers.
His senses. His strength. His speed. His reflexes.
All of it he had gotten while he was comatose. One day, he was dying in a hospital bed, and the next, he was leaping between rooftops and clinging to walls like a human spider.
There had to be some sort of underground shit that happened to him, because they way he got them really made no sense
So, when he wasn't studying or training, Joe had quietly been conducting a second kind of research—one far less visible.
He started with the hospital: Metro-General Hospital in Manhattan. It had a solid reputation, clean reviews, and competent staff. But it wasn't known for anything...unusual. Not at first glance.
Still, something didn't sit right with him.
He would sometimes just close his eyes and try to remember anything. It has been said that people in comas could actually hear people talking to them, but it would be like dreams, and so he tried to remember anything. All he got were flickers. Sensations. He remembered a burning behind his eyes. Something crawling under his skin. He remembered voices, though vaguely talking about him, not with concern, but curiosity. Not medical compassion. Scientific interest.
The good thing about going to a tech and science school like Midtown is that there were a lot of smart people, and with enough money and a little charm, it's possible to get them to teach you something, as it happened with good ol' Trevor. This time, he went over to Nadia, an Indian chick who is really good with computers. And so while using his notebook with all the notes he had written down from learning from her, Joe hacked into the hospital's public database. His short-lived joy of accomplishing such a thing didn't survive long when he found nothing suspicious about the hospital.
So he got bolder.
He started digging through old patient logs, trying to find unusual gaps in paperwork, entries from doctors that didn't exist, or times that didn't line up. Some nights, he stayed up past two, clicking through PDF files of outdated rosters and anonymized clinical trials.
So far, nothing concrete.
No names he recognized. No records out of place. No tampering he could prove. Even his file was simple and contrite. Just the regularly daily status report and how he was during his tenure as a living corpse.
But that only made him more certain.
It was too clean.
Too perfect. Or maybe this was just how normal hospitals are with their data and stuff. But this was a universe with crazy shit in it, so his paranoia and his doubt of anything normal about anything, he would say is justified.
He believed someone had covered their tracks. Someone who didn't want him or anyone who wasn't involved to know how he became what he was. How he not only survived that night, but how he woke up with power humming through his bones.
Joe didn't know if it was an experiment.
Or an accident.
Or a miracle.
But he wasn't going to stop digging.
Not until he knew the truth.
But for now, he should really start paying attention to class right now. But for some reason, he just couldn't, and he honestly didn't know why.
The classroom was quiet, the soft scratch of pencils on paper mixing with the low hum of the heater kicking in. Outside the window, the world looked ordinary—cold, a little gray, but calm. Peaceful, even. That's how the usual mornings were at this time of year.
Joe stared out of that window, barely hearing the teacher's droning lecture on the Reconstruction Era. His notes were half-scribbled, but his attention had drifted elsewhere. His eyes tracked a plane high up in the sky, flying east to west, steady and serene. But there was something about it. Not how it moved—but how it made him feel.
That feeling.
That creeping, sick twist in his gut. It was different from the anxiety he got by looking at planes, a little ptsd from how close he was to the September attacks.
This was way different, it was similar to how he felt when he knew the towers were going to get struck days before anyone else did.. It wasn't like his spider-sense—that came sharp and fast in the face of immediate danger. This was different. Slower. Subtle. Like his soul knew something the rest of him hadn't caught up to yet.
He leaned back slightly, lips tightening, trying to piece together why. He looked forward at the projector screen as he did, and then his eyes shifted to the right, and he saw the date barely covered written on the whiteboard.
November 12. That date clawed at his memory.
Something happened on November 12.
He narrowed his eyes at the plane again. It was just barely visible, a blinking dot against the cloud-streaked sky. He couldn't stop looking at it. His heart picked up its pace.
Then it clicked.
Flight 587. The unofficial 5th plane suicide in 2001.
It happened in Belle Harbor. Right here in Queens. He remembered now—the news reports. The plane fell just minutes after takeoff, right in the middle of a neighborhood. Fires, debris, chaos. everyone on board… gone.
Joe's eyes widened. The flight left JFK at early 9 something a.m.
He looked at the clock.
8:57 a.m.
His pulse spiked. He had around 15 to 20 minutes. 15 to 20 minutes until impact. If it was going to happen the same way it had in history… he had no time to waste.
But he had to be smart. He couldn't just run out of class—not without raising eyebrows.
He raised his hand, trying to keep his expression composed.
Ms. Roth barely glanced up from her book. "Yes, Joe?"
"I'm not feeling too good," he said, already putting a hand to his forehead like it ached. "I think I'm getting one of those post-coma dizzy spells again. It's been happening sometimes."
That part was true—he had gotten lightheaded once or twice during the first few weeks back. The doctors called it "neural recalibration." It sounded fancy, but it mostly meant his body was still catching up.
The teacher nodded, concern briefly flickering across her face. "Do you need to go to the nurse?"
He nodded quickly, already closing his notebook.
"Yes, please. I just need to lie down for a bit."
"Alright, take your things. Let her know to call home if it gets worse."
"Got it."
Joe slid his backpack over one shoulder and walked out without a single glance back.
The moment he turned the corner and was out of sight, he picked up his pace. The nurse's office was across from the main stairwell. He walked in, still selling the act, slightly bent, moving slowly like his balance was off.
The nurse, Mrs. Heather, a kind-faced woman in her late forties, looked up from her computer.
"Headache?" she asked.
Joe nodded, pressing two fingers to his temple.
"Yeah. Dizzy. It's been happening since the coma—doc said it's something to keep an eye on."
She frowned with sympathy and pointed toward the cot in the back. "Do you want to lie down a while?"
"I'd rather go home," he said, not pushing too hard. "My parents know about it. I just… I feel like I'm going to pass out."
That was enough. She nodded, picked up the phone, and made the call to the office. Joe leaned against the wall, counting the seconds like they were years.
By 9:01 a.m., he was out of the building with a written dismissal note, his heart pounding against his ribs like a jackhammer. He walked quickly around the corner, ducked behind the empty lot by the gas station, and yanked off his hoodie.
His suit was waiting underneath.
The blue-and-red gleam was darker now, more subdued, the fire-resistant material dull in the morning light. He pulled his gloves on tight, adjusted the mask from its place in his bag, and zipped it up behind his head. He had accustomed himself to always have it on in case shit happened that he felt like he really needed to intervene, but so far, luckily, he hadn't had a reason, not until now.
He ran, faster than most cars on the block, cutting through alleys and side streets, jumping rooftops, web zips and swings, until he reached the rooftop of the nearest deli, before jumping up high in the sky for another swing.
He heard below the excitement of the people in seeing him after his last appearance, but he also heard the concern. Because if he was out and about, what had happened to make him reappear? He launched himself skyward once more after landing smoothly on a rooftop, heading for Belle Harbor.
By the time he crossed Rockaway Inlet and hit Newport Avenue, the roar of the engines already sounded wrong—jittery, unstable. The plane wasn't just falling—it was breaking apart. Smoke poured from its fuselage. Its altitude was plummeting, fast.
Joe knew there was no miracle solution. The neighborhood was low and wide, dotted with power lines, trees, and homes. No high-rises to web between. No open fields to crash in. Just people.
He had to think fast.
Landing the plane intact? Impossible.
Slowing it enough so people didn't all die? Maybe.
He sprinted forward, launching himself onto a roof near Beach 130th. The plane was overhead now, maybe a thousand feet up and coming down hard. He looked toward the ocean. Not close enough. It was going down right here, in the middle of houses.
Joe fired web lines to the nearest utility poles and rooftops and began weaving—massive, thick, reinforced strands of webbing, forming a lattice net the width of the block. Not to catch the plane completely. That'd tear it apart. But to create resistance, to decelerate it—like dragging it through a giant spider web instead of hitting concrete, like how a regular spider web can stop a speeding bee.
He anchored the last line just as the tail of the plane gave way. The rest screamed downward.
Joe jumped. Mid-air, he shot four lines in sequence, attaching them to key points of the plane's undercarriage. He yanked back with all his might, pulling himself downward like a human parachute, trying to redirect just a few degrees of its path.
The impact came. A sickening shudder as the plane slammed through the web lattice, tearing chunks of it, but slowing—just enough.
The fuselage skidded, crushed two parked cars, knocked down a row of fences, then finally slammed sideways into an empty lot between two homes. Fire erupted at the back end, but the forward cabin—where some passengers were—remained intact. Crumpled, yes. But not vaporized.
Joe hit the ground hard, knees bending, momentum from his dive nearly wrenching his arms from his sockets. He gritted his teeth through the pain and ran toward the wreckage. Rolling his arms, he quickly went and opened the emergency exit with brute force, wrenching metal aside.
Screams echoed from inside. He began pulling people out. One by one. Men, women, children—bloody, bruised, but alive.
Smoke filled the air. Sirens approached in the distance. Joe went back in—again and again—ignoring the heat, the ache in his legs, the pounding in his skull. He dragged a flight attendant out who had collapsed. Then a toddler clinging to the seat.
Then a woman in shock, unmoving.
And then, finally, it happened.
The right wing exploded.
The shockwave threw him off his feet. He tumbled across the park, smoke trailing behind him. He hit a tree and groaned, coughing, suit scorched but intact thanks to the fireproof lining he'd added over the last two months.
He blinked upward.
The passengers he had saved—injured, bleeding, crying—were alive.
He had done it.
But then he immediately thought of the unmoving bodies inside the plane, ones he ignored for the more active passengers wanting safety. Could he have at least preserved them? What if one were just unconscious, and now they were there, inside? Burning. Dead. Joe sighed. 'Guilt's a bitch.'
As firefighters stormed in and EMTs descended, Joe slunk back into the trees, slipping into the shadows.
He needed to leave before the questions came. Before anyone noticed him.
But as he looked back one last time, he counted.
Over 40 people. maybe 50, out of 200 something.
Still breathing.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't clean.
But he did it. He saved what he could, and no one could take that away from him. He made a difference, a small one, but one nontheless.
He webbed to the nearest rooftop and vanished toward the skyline, blood pounding in his ears and the adrenaline still riding high.
Joe was 2 for 2 in changing history in a meaningful way.
And he doubted nobody would forget it.
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Joe stepped into Midtown High with his hoodie zipped halfway and his backpack snug against his shoulders. The hum of teenage chatter hit him like a wave—louder, more focused than usual. Eyes darted. Heads turned just slightly when he passed. He didn't need enhanced hearing to know what they were talking about.
They were talking about him.
His other persona.
It had been two months since 9/11. Two months since he'd swung through thick smoke and heat, dragging injured bodies down from impossible heights. Since he'd first heard the public talk about him in so many different ways in so many different formats.
Back then, he didn't know what to say, what can anybody really say after doing what he did.
Yesterday, though—Belle Harbor changed everything. It wasn't just an act of courage anymore. It was two moments. Two crises. Two miracles. And now, people weren't just whispering and questioning if it really actually happened. They were looking for him now, they truly believe and accept that there is someone out there doing the never-done-before.
"He was there again, wasn't he?" a senior said near the trophy case. "That same guy from the towers?"
"Yeah. I watched it on the morning news. They're calling him 'Blue Streak' now or something."
.
"No way, I heard 'Web Phantom.'"
Joe exhaled quietly as he passed them. The names were shitty. But he couldn't exactly step forward and correct them. He was hesitant to steal the name on his mind, knowing that the rightful owner of it was just a baby at the moment, and so for now, he just hoped that whatever the media called him, it didn't make him cringe
Someone else muttered near the lockers, "How's he even real? He just shows up when things are at their worst, like it's clockwork."
"I bet he's military or something. Some secret experiment."
"No way. You saw how he moved? That's not training. That's like… freaky shit."
Joe felt a flicker of pride. Not arrogance—never that, he wasn't that deluded, but he did feel that strange warmth that came with knowing he'd done something. Something real. But it was quickly followed by the weight again. He couldn't let it go to his head. Not when he'd seen what failure looked like up close.
In the hallway near the gym, someone had pinned a printed photo on the corkboard. A low-res image from the Belle Harbor wreckage—a blur of blue and red, half-shrouded by smoke. Underneath it, someone had scrawled in red marker:
"HE'S BACK."
Joe turned away before anyone could catch him staring.
The classroom chatter hadn't cooled, either. His history teacher walked in with a paper tucked under his arm and paused before starting roll call.
"I don't usually comment on tabloids," he said, adjusting his glasses, "but I'll say this—whoever that masked man is, he's got guts."
The class murmured in agreement.
"He's not just some guy in a suit," a Latin girl in his class added. "He was in the towers. Now this plane crash? That's twice now."
"Do you think he'll show up again?" someone asked. "Like, is he going to be New York's own—like—protector or something?"
Joe kept his expression neutral, staring at his notebook. Doodling fake geometric equations.
"Maybe he already is," someone else said.
The words stuck with him.
In the cafeteria, it only got louder. Joe caught snippets everywhere.
"I heard he webbed the plane and slowed it down."
"No way, planes are too heavy."
"I'm telling you, my brother's in the FDNY—he said they found some people still alive in the fuselage because of whatever that guy did."
Hearing that made the weight around Joe lessen, knowing that the people he left inside, some were still alive.
"He's gotta be government."
"He's not. He's a hero."
Joe tried to stay focused on his tray of food—barely touched—and the ticking clock above the double doors. A part of him wanted to leave. Another part wanted to listen more. To see what the world was really thinking about him.
He passed by a group of juniors at the vending machines before the bell.
"I wonder what he calls himself."
"I don't think he's said. Not yet."
"Well, he should pick something soon. 'That Red and Blue Guy' isn't very catchy."
Joe allowed himself a small smile as he turned the corner. He'll think of something if no one could agree on the name.
For now though, they didn't need to know who he was.
They just needed to know someone was out there. Watching. Helping.
And he'd keep doing it—for however long it took.
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Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. The reason I asked you to read this is because I would like maybe a sort of interaction with you guys if it isn't too much to ask. I would like some of your feedback on how you liked my chapters so far, what you would recommend, what you would like to see and so forth. I want to improve as a writer, but ai can't really do that without any input from the people who read it.
Also. A name. A name for this spider hero lol. I don't mind calling Joe spiderman, but I wanted to see if any of you, if you used just a moment of your time, to comment a name for him. I would really appreciate it. Anyway. Have a great guys, and maybe I'll see ya again on Saturday, no promises.