I do not own Spiderman or any of the characters.

New Friend

I walk down the sidewalk in silence, head low, earbuds stuck in my ears, hands in my pockets, and making no move, in any way, to look up or around. When I see someone's feet in front of me, I go around them. That's how I avoid being noticed in my life. I've walked within ten feet of muggings that ended with a corpse thirty three times and counting, and I've come within about three feet of being run over by long time terrorist super-criminal of New York City Prowler once. At least, before he was confirmed to have been killed. Don't know how, don't know who, don't really care. You see, my life is pretty easy to understand. If it doesn't directly effect me, I don't want to know about it. That includes muggings, super-criminals, hot girls that I'll never be able to get with, jocks that ignore me, nerds who are smarter than me, and even Spiderman, who has never once had anything to do with my life. The rest of New York either hails him as a hero, or condemns him as a hazard to the city, just like they did Peter Parker when he was alive as Spiderman. Personally, I don't care. I don't know Spiderman, and he doesn't know me. And that's the way I like it.

I push the door of my school open and immediately spin to my right, stepping around the person in front of me, glancing up just long enough to recognize Miles Morales. He seems like a good kid. He's a sophomore, but he's only been in school about a month. About three days in, he made a complete fool of himself by somehow getting his hand hopelessly stuck in some new girl's hair so bad she had to have it shaved off. She never came back to school, and he stayed gone for about a week. When he came back, though, he seemed a lot calmer than the skittish, terrified new kid he had been when he first showed up. Not that I can talk. I've been in this school for years and he's the only person who's name I actually know for sure because he was the talk of the school for weeks. I barely know my own teacher's names.

I sit at my desk, opening my notebook and beginning to write. It's a story about zombies, not a great one, granted, but I'm a tough critic on my own work. The main character starts out the story thinking he's the only survivor, I Am Legend style, only to meet his future girlfriend while he's scavenging food, and then promptly gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter by her a moment later because she thinks he's going to try to rape her. From there, the story has its high notes and low notes, the high notes being abut level with the floor, and continually sinks into a darker and darker place as the story progresses and the small glimmer of hope the main character's girlfriend brought him slowly fades. Needless to say, I probably need counseling for the dark shit that comes out of my head.

I look up as I hit a small writer's block and find class is about halfway through and I haven't even heard a single word over my music. As usual. I pull my earbuds out, switching to my notes sections and quickly copy whatever my math teacher has written on the board in no particular order. Once I'm done, I put my earbuds back in and flip back to the story. After a little while, the people around me get up and start to leave and I quickly do the same. This is how school is for me. I don't really need to pay attention in class, because I'm blessed with photographic memory and a naturally high IQ, allowing me to ace every test I take, and complete the homework without actually studying the subject. All the teachers know it, too, so they don't bother telling me to pay attention anymore.

School today is as normal as ever until gym. And I only say that because when I walk into the gym, there's a new gym teacher. It's a guy with ne eye barely, yet noticeably bigger than the other, curly red hair, and a crooked-toothed smile.

"Alright class, welcome to your new and improved gym class," he says, sounding like he was from Texas or some other country state where they seem to think that barely pronouncing your words is proper English, though his accent isn't the worst I've ever heard. "You can call me Mr. Kasady. And that's K-A-S-A-D-Y. Not like the girl's name."

Several people snickered at his name and I catch something flash through Mr. Kasady's eyes, not anger, though. Something much more terrifying, like he wanted to rip them apart piece by piece.

"Today, we're going to be learning something new, and much more fun," Mr. Kasady says. "Would anyone like to guess?"

"Sex?" a male voice from somewhere among the jocks asks, gaining a chorus of male laughter as the females, mostly being the cheerleading team, all made disgusted faces, as though they were all innocent virgins and not sluts who had all fucked the entire football team already.

"More fun than that," Mr. Kasady says. "We're going to learn boxing and wrestling."

I raise an eyebrow. Is that even allowed? Apparently so, because about ten minutes later, we're all paired up to fight, starting with boxing. I get paired with Miles, somehow, and I kind feel bad. Before my dad up and left our family about four years ago, he had spent years beating Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, and Karate into me, in a literal sense. I had always hated the lessons because he was not a patient or gentle teacher, meaning that after every lesson, I ended up covered in bruises that I'd have to hide after. However, after he left, I was finally free to stop the training. So, since my mother hated the fact that I knew martial arts, and I hated her for allowing me to be beaten like a punching bag for so many years, naturally, I decided to keep training on my own. Not enough to actually stay good at fighting, but enough to be able to win a fight, and enough to piss my mom off all the time.

As Mr. Kasady blows his whistle, I jab experimentally at Miles. And in the blink of an eye, he catches my punch and pins me to the ground in an arm bar. One which is made all the more impressive by the fact that we're wearing boxing gloves. I blink, staring up at him as his eyes widen and he backs away, wincing.

"Sorry," he says. "That was an accident."

"Some accident," I say, standing and rolling my shoulder, then grinning and raising my hands. "Boxing. Blocks and punches only."

Miles blinks, then grins and adopts a similar pose to me. A moment later, we're trading blows, blocking most with both normal boxing blocks as well as the ones that we both learned in martial arts. I don't know who taught Miles Morales to fight, but he's good. I can't land more than one blow to his two or three. Finally, Mr. Kasady blows the whistle again and I grin.

"You're good," I say.

"Thanks," he says. "You too."

We both turn, getting assigned new partners. I keep an eye on Miles as I'm fighting my new opponent. Miles is dominating his fight. I'm allowing my opponent to have the upper hand, because I don't really care, since it's just a jock who doesn't even know my name, probably. He keeps punching me in the forearms and shoulders, then grinning like he thinks he's causing me pain. Apparently he doesn't actually get into many fights. Or pay attention when he's playing football.

Once Gym is done, I finish out my school day and start to head back to my dorm room, only to stop as I see Miles leaning against the wall. He looks bored and annoyed. My guess is one of two things. Either he's locked out of the room, or his roommate has a girl in there.

"Locked out?" I ask.

"Yeah," Miles says. "I forgot my room key inside. My roommate says he'll be here soon, though."

"Well, if you want, you can come hang out in my room," I offer. "I have Mortal Kombat ten and pizza."

"Sure," Miles smiles. "That sounds fun."

He follows me to my room, then stops, staring at the three Sports Illustrated swimsuit model posters and the two fan-art posters of Korra from the sequel series to the Last Airbender and Lightning and Serah Farron from Final Fantasy XIII on my wall. Korra is standing back two shirtless and looking over her shoulder, a glowing white tattoo taking up her back, and Lightning is pressed very tight against her nearly-identical sister, keeping her against the wall, both completely bare but positioned to keep everything covered. For example, Serah's leg is wrapped around behind Lightning, her lower leg covering the crack of Lightning's ass, and Lightning's hand is covering Serah's only otherwise exposed breast. Yes, I know. I'm a fucking nerd. And probably a freak, and a creep, and a list of other insults you could come up with. I have a monumental nerd-crush on Korra, Lightning Farron, and Serah Farron, and I would love to have a threesome with Lightning and Serah. Actually, I'd probably kill to sleep with any of them, in any combination. Sue me.

"Uh...wow," Miles says. "You're...uh..."

"You have a problem?" I ask.

"Uh, no," Miles says. "Not at all."

I huff, turning and picking up a box of pizza, frisbeeing it at him and am actually surprised an impressed when he catches it, though I don't show it, then put in Mortal Combat and turn it on, handing him the other controller. We both randomly select fighters and Miles gets Jason, who's ridiculously over-powered, while I get stuck with Sub-Zero, who I detest. We begin to fight, and within about three minutes, shockingly, I'm dead. We choose new characters, again randomly. Miles gets Liu Kang. I get Sub-Zero. I die in about four minutes. The next "random" matchup is Scorpion. And Sub-Zero. As Miles again pounds me into the oblivion, I shout in annoyance, dropping the controller.

"Fuck this!" I say. "I fucking hate Sub-Zero! He's worthless! And his powers are fucking stupid! Oh my God, I'm in a fight! Here, let me throw a ball of cold air at you and let me see if that works. It's fucking retarded!"

"Just choose someone else," Miles says.

I sigh, picking up my controller and choose my go-to character, Takeda. It's not that he's strong, but he has one move where he spins his whips and is untouchable for a couple of seconds. One which I promptly use to beat Miles in five consecutive games.

"Wow," Miles says. "You're one of those. You find one good attack and you spam it until you win."

"You think this is bad, you should see me play Dragon Ball Z," I say. "I spam energy attacks like my life depends on it."

"Right," Miles sighs. "I'm gonna go see if my roommate's back. Thanks for letting me hang out."

"Yeah, see you," I say.

He leaves and I randomly select a character, once again getting Sub-Zero, this time against Goro. Even against a computer, I lose badly. I shut the computer off and lay on my bed, putting my headphones in and spend a few hours writing before going to bed.

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