"Peter, I don't think this is allowed." Ned stuffed his hands in his pockets, glancing at the door.

Peter's upper half was hidden in a mini-fridge at the back of the science lab. "I don't need that much." Peter drew his hand out of the fridge, holding a steaming block of dry ice in a pair of thick blue rubber gloves. He lowered the cube carefully to rest with its ten brothers and sisters in Ned's igloo cooler bag. "Maybe three-fourths of it, at the very most." He leaned back inside while Ned hissed at him.

"This is why we can't have nice things! You're going to land us in detention. For a week!" He amended when "detention" failed to spark any hesitation in his best friend.

"Dude, this isn't a container of dry ice," Peter said in his most convincing Jedi mind-trick impression. Ned pinched the bridge of his nose as Peter continued, "It's your lunch."

"The frog's in your mouth," Ned mumbled. He threw his hands into the air in despair. "There's no talking sense into you! None! If I-"

"Is there a problem, boys?" Mr. Brundt walked in the room cradling a break room coffee that his mustard vest already bore the stain of. Peter grabbed the lunchbox, slamming the fridge door in one swift motion.

"No. No problem," Ned replied before Peter opened his mouth and let the frog leap out, spilling all of their secrets as effortlessly as it scattered water droplets on the floor. "I forgot my lunch in your class." He snatched the bag from Peter with his best smile.

Mr. Brundt walked closer, nodding once. "Alright." He leaned against a lab table, gesturing to the fridge with his coffee. "Go to the lunchroom, then."

"Yessir," they both echoed, scampering into the hallway. Ned's week flashed before his eyes.

"That was close."

"But we did it," Peter smiled, taking the lunchbox back.

"No thanks to you. You better be glad I'm your best friend. Nobody else would help you steal dry ice for an at-home experiment you won't even let me come over and do with you." Ned's authoritative tone slowly slipped into a whine. They turned the corner, glancing around for teachers and keeping their ears open for the click of high heels. "Which is why you need it, right?"

"Ned, I told you." Peter pointedly didn't make eye contact.

"Actually! You didn't tell me anything. I'm just being supportive and not bugging you about it, even though I really, really, want to know." He stared at Peter with what he intended to be intensity. "This is the part where you give in and tell me."

"Or maybe this is the part where we stop talking about it?"

Ned narrowed his eyes. Peter thought he might start sweating.

"Is there a girl I don't know about?"

Peter gagged. "What would I be doing? Refrigerating her?" He shook the bag in the air.

"I dunno. Guys like us, we have no game. If you're not telling your best friend to infinity and beyond, it's gotta be a girl."

"I can't even respond to that."

"Technically-"

Peter felt less than menacing crawling around the vents with the igloo lunch box hung over his shoulder. Even so, that didn't stop him from singing to himself as he went about his patrols.

"Spider-Man. Spider-Man. He shoots webs and.. Sticks to walls." Peter shook his head, "no, that doesn't even rhyme." He slid down the next passage. "Man, fan, Dan, tan, can. Oh, can is good." He peeked down a vent, then continued to crawl, listening for the whoosh of air. "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he can do… anything a spider can! Shoots some webs. Sticks to walls. I don't know what else to sing," he continued to the same tune. "Wears some blue. And some red. But this song sucks so now he's sad." He kept humming the song as he went.

"Mm h-hm, mm h-hm, m hm hm hm-hm hm h-hm. La di da. La di di. La di da di da da di di-" A howl echoed down the vent. "Oh! Gotta fight now, chorus later." He spun himself around, scrambling to grab on the metal paneling below in the moments he was suspended in mid-air. He only bumped his shoulder once- ow, make that twice- as he bounded down. Peter slid to a stop over the vent, bursting with excitement.

A player was bent over a sink, gagging. His dark hair dripped with sweat and his hands slid as he tried to hold onto the porcelain. Peter dropped through the vent, holding a block of ice.

"Over here!" He leapt at the player, but the wind whooshed away, leading Peter to press the ice against the player's neck for a moment.

"Agh!" He flinched, grabbing the side of his neck.

"So sorry, I'm trying to-" he ducked when a hand swung his way and slid to the other side of the bathroom "-get the thing that was choking you!" The player stumbled back, gripping his neck with a meaty hand as it begun again. Peter threw the ice, barely a potato now, and it caught in the air, weighing it down like a net. Racing forward, Peter tossed two more beside the first. The shadow began to form again, writhing as it turned a barely-visible murky brown.

"Yes!" He threw another. It stuck to the shadow like it was caught in a web, sucking the air inwards, condensing it into a human form. Dark brown pools ebbed around the ice like halos as they continued to steam smaller and smaller. Peter threw three more in his excitement, two landing on what seemed to be the beginnings of arms and one on a leg. The football player was leaning against the tile walls, his eyes wide as they reflected the spectacle of steam and shadow before him.

"What is that?" He wheezed, pointing at the shadow. It had begun to make howls that sounded more and more human as the ice sucked the heat in.

"Uh, I'm not sure, but the heat in the gas is trying to find equilibrium with the cold ice and so it's leaving the gaseous state and it's WORKING!"

The player wiped his sweaty face, staring with clear confusion. "Wait, are you a vigilante or a scientist?"

The shadow howled, kicking a leg out at Peter. "Neither, get out of here, go, go!" Peter had anticipated the football player to play tough, not flee the room so quickly it was if he hadn't been crouched against the wall moments earlier. He looked into the lunchbox; three blocks sat at the bottom, steaming slowly. He took them in his hands, tossing them at the neck, right leg, and chest of the shadow. A mouth and nose began to form, open with a scream. Legs kicked and little toes stuck out of the ends of the feet. The moment it began to take a solid form, as dusty as it still appeared, Peter shot his first web, half expecting it to pass through still. To his surprise, it stuck.

"Sorry, but I've gotta apprehend you now." He shot web after web until the body was in a cocoon. By the time he had swung it into a wall, roping it down, the face was fully formed, a light brown reminiscent of the hazy shadow it once was. Peter moved forward tentatively. Shoot, so Ned was right. It was a girl. He made a mental note to tell him later.

"Hello, Miss Criminal? It's Spider-Man." Her jaw clenched.

"I've seen you before," she muttered in a low voice, shaking her tight curls out of her face.

"Yeah, when you slammed me into a wall, probably. Twice, at least. I've gotta ask, how do you release your body like that? Do you-"

"You burned me," she spat. Peter shook his head.

"No, I was cooling you down to force you into a solid form that I could…" His eyes caught a portion of her unwebbed neck. A raw red patch was seared into her skin and Peter started. "I'm…" She didn't wait for his apology.

"You need to get out of my way." Her dark brown eyes were seared with the same grief Peter had run from nearly all his life. She had met with loss, the old man with the cigar that spat ash on whatever he was finished with regardless if you were or not, before.

Peter crossed his arms, starting slowly. "With all due respect, and I'm sorry about the burn, but I've gotta stop crime, and I dunno why you've been strangling these guys, but you need to know… that's not the answer. You need to-"

"Don't lecture me." There was no doubt dripping from her words, but an image, solid and clear: authority. It wasn't natural to possess when webbed to a wall. Her strength reverberated, and Peter had to keep himself from hesitating.

"Fine." He pulled out his phone. "But it's my civic duty to call the police." He tapped the numbers, eyeing her for a reaction, a justification, maybe, but she had none.

In every way, she was entirely unexpected.

"This isn't your fight, Spider-Man. It never was." A lioness, he decided.

"Alright." He pocketed his phone, nodding to her. "Nice to meet you…?"

"Vaporizer." She tossed her head so that a small bit of unruly hair fell back into place.

"Nice to meet you, Vaporizer." With that, he left the room, Igloo lunch box in hand.

He didn't keep up the act for long and immediately asked the football player who had fled to the hall to call 911. What seemed like a brave move on the part of the superhero was honestly the realization that he couldn't give his personal number to police. For some reason, he found himself hoping she had been a little impressed, and maybe surprised. He shouldn't have expected so much.

Peter hadn't watched the news much before he gained his powers. Once he had, Peter tuned into every tragedy, wishing that he had the ability to step in and save the day.

Everything that he had expected then had been romanticized. What he thought was going to be fun, maybe even honorable, had ended up being a pile of terrifying hard decisions- decisions that he, Peter, had to make in the spur of the moment. Like yesterday.

If you asked him if choking people to death was wrong, Peter would say yes, no hesitation.

But had he known that this girl, bravely standing on the defendant's stand, visible on screens across the world, had been assaulted by the football player he had saved yesterday? That Mr. Derringer had made a public statement defending that same player's actions just a week earlier to the news, and the team physician was quick to cover up the tracks? To say he felt queasy watching the news coverage of her trial was an understatement.

Truth be told, it made him a little sick. Multiple times, in the toilet.

Peter moved his head from where he had it pressed in his pillow when he heard a knock on his door.

"Come in," he mumbled. May came in with a bowl of soup and a thermometer.

"Hey, sport." She sat on the edge of his bed. "When did you start to feel sick?"

He rolled onto his back. "Just today. But I'm not feeling hot."

"Nu-uh, no playing tough guy." She stuck the thermometer in his mouth and waited. She slipped the cold glass out of his mouth again and peered at the temperature.

"Looks normal," she admitted, "but you don't seem so good." She set the bowl of soup on his nightstand. The noodles sloshed and a few carrots floated on the surface.

"I just want to stay in bed today." He wished he could tell her why he felt so gut-wrenchingly awful, how the news had sapped all his energy and left him feeling like a shell. Yet despite not knowing, despite all the lies, May always reacted perfectly: with a soft smile and understanding.

"Alright. Puking is never fun, is it?" She tousled his hair in her fingers.

Peter shook his head. "No, it's not."

"If you need anything, I'll be a shout away. Mkay?"

He didn't want her to go, but he found himself nodding anyways. "Mkay."

She smiled, running her fingers through his soft chestnut hair once more, then rose, walking towards the door in the most ridiculous bunny slippers he had bought for her birthday. "Eat when you can and rest."

"Alright, May."

She smiled. "I love you."

He felt a little bit of his heart fill up again. "I love you too, May."

She didn't shut the door all the way, instead leaving it cracked open. Somehow, this made all the difference.