Spiderman Oneshots

If you're nothing without the suit

Spider-Man was in the stickiest situation he could imagine: he'd lost his stickiness.

A new villain had attacked the streets, and as usual the hero had swung in to save the people. What he hadn't anticipated was the trap, or the new villain's powers.

Rolling into a fighting position, Peter called to the children whose school bus the villain had attacked, telling them to get behind him. He dodged a couple of blows whilst helping one of the younger ones get free of the wreckage. He ignored the warning of an incoming punch in favour of handing the child to one of the older boys. He regretted that instantly when the villain, Dominion, made contact and a terrible numbness shot through his veins.

"What-" he managed, but the word felt distant to his ears as his knees crumpled and he dropped the child he was holding. The girl who hurried over to help was blurry and Peter flinched violently when she put a hand on his shoulder. His senses hadn't warned him she was going to touch him. What was wrong with him? What had happened to the world?

The villain was laughing with delight as he rose back to his feet beside Spider-Man until he was stood over the fallen hero.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen! And you were mighty, truly," Dominion took a handful of tarmac and crumbled it to dust in his hands. "This is even better than I could have imagined." Peter's mind, the only thing still running at full capacity, arrived all too soon at the bleak truth: the villain had stolen his powers. Fear trickled through his veins like ice.

"Your heart, I can hear it beating so fast!" Dominion laughed, turning in a circle to survey his surroundings using Peter's enhanced senses. Meanwhile, Peter was panicking. He was weak and powerless, and his breath was starting to catch in his throat in the beginning of an asthma attack he hadn't suffered from since the bite. "The mighty Spider-Man, reduced to a mere mortal! I thought I was starting small with you but with this much power it will be easy to storm the Avengers Tower, and soon I will be unstoppable!"

"Spider-Man! Spider-Man, get up!" The girl was pleading, shaking him. Everything was so quiet, so far away. It was becoming increasingly hard to breathe. "You have to fight him!"

"I can't," Peter said dully. "He stole my powers."

"You're Spider-Man," the girl insisted. "You don't need powers to beat the bad guys! Mummy says I don't need superpowers to be a hero!"

"You don't," Peter said quickly. He'd always stood by the fact that being powerless made you any less capable.

The child beamed broadly. "Then you don't either!"

She was right. The children cheered as he rose (only a little shakily) to his feet, and while the villain was flinching at the sudden noise (and wasn't it sort of nice, to listen to the joy of children without pain?), Spider-Man stood his ground and shot a web.

It was a nice gesture, but Dominion had all of Peter's powers, including his Spidey sense and reflexes. He caught the web effortlessly and used it to pull Spider-Man towards him with ease. Peter tried to fight, but his punch was pathetic and useless. The answering blow from Dominion was less so.

The next thing Peter knew, he was waking up to the scared voices of children. Distant, so distant. Everything hurt with an unceasing intensity that hadn't bothered him for years. Despite this he roused himself and did his best to comfort the worried children who surrounded him. One of them told him Dominion had run off. 

Peter made it back home in a blur. He considered going to the hospital - he could do so without discovery, now that he had no super healing to hide - but it was too expensive and he had no time. What he needed to do was stop Dominion as soon as possible. Peter knew his own strengths: knew how easy it would be for the villain to commit terrible deeds with such power. He also knew his own weaknesses, and how long it had taken for him to gain control of his new abilities after the bite. If he stood any chance of defeating Dominion, it was now, before the villain mastered his powers or gained any more.