Friendly Neighborhood Problem

New chapter is on the board.

Suit up. Queens is not getting quieter.

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J. Jonah Jameson did not invent the word menace. He only acted like he owned the trademark. By breakfast, three versions of Spider-Man existed in New York.

The first swung through phone videos, bright suit torn at the shoulder, hauling an armored van into a stop before it flattened half a block.

The second lived in comment sections, where strangers argued whether webs counted as assault, whether vigilantes paid taxes, and whether "friendly neighborhood" was cute or evidence of untreated delusion.

The third had Jonah's voice. That one shouted. May turned the kitchen radio down after the second "masked menace" and stared at the toaster like it had personally betrayed her.

Peter sat at the table with one sleeve pulled low over a bruise and a bowl of cereal going soft in front of him.

Ben read the Bugle on his tablet because print papers had betrayed him by getting expensive.

"He says you are a threat to lawful society."

"Does lawful society include stolen medical injectors?"

"He was light on that detail."

"Shocking."

May turned from the counter.

"Do not joke every time someone hates you in public."

The spoon paused halfway to his mouth.

"I'm not sure what else to do with it."

"You listen for the part that matters."

"Jonah thinks I crawl on walls because I hate America."

Ben coughed into his coffee. May did not.

"People are scared," she said. "Some of them will be cruel with it. Some of them will be wrong. But some of them will have questions you cannot laugh away."

It was unfair because it was true.

The city had not agreed on him yet. Jonah understood that before Peter did. A rescue was not a verdict. A joke was not a defense. A bright suit could make a child laugh and still make a parent wonder why a stranger in a mask had become necessary in the first place.

Intentions did not come with subtitles. Someone had to read them from the outside. Usually badly. Peter looked at the tablet. The headline used a blurred image of him waving at the little girl.

Under Jonah's framing, even that looked suspicious. Not a rescue. A performance. A masked figure making children trust him.

Gotham Mind flinched at the image. Not because Jonah had solved him. Because Jonah had found a pressure point: visibility let strangers write motive over action.

If Peter did not explain himself, others would. If he explained too much, he became easier to catch. If he stayed silent, every rescue became raw material for someone else's fear.

"I need better footage," he said.

May's eyes narrowed.

"Excuse me?"

"Not staged. Not a campaign. Just... if people are going to film, I need to act like the camera exists."

Ben set the tablet down.

"That sounds close to playing for the lens."

"It is close. That's the problem."

"Then where is the line?"

Peter pushed the cereal away.

"Save people first. Evidence second. Optics third. Never reverse it."

May studied him for a long second.

"Write that down. Tape it above the suit if you have to."

"What?"

"If you are making rules, write them where you can see them when you're tired."

He almost said he would remember. Then thought of the bruise under his sleeve, the photo through the library window, Ruiz watching him through precinct glass, and the statement he still owed her.

"Okay."

The house phone rang. All three of them flinched less than last time. Progress of a depressing kind. Ben had already muted two unknown numbers that morning before he answered.

"Parker residence."

His face changed.

"No comment."

He hung up.

"Bugle?"

"Some blog."

May wiped the counter too hard.

"We are changing the number today."

"I can do that today," Peter said.

"You can go to class today."

"I can do both."

"Can you?"

The question was not logistical. He did not answer quickly enough.

***

Campus had turned Spider-Man into weather. Everyone had an opinion. Nobody could do anything about it.

Two students near the library argued over whether webbing counted as organic. A guy in a Knicks hoodie claimed his cousin knew a guy whose boss saw Spider-Man lift a bus, which had not happened and sounded exhausting. Someone had already put a sticker of a red spider on a lamppost.

Peter walked past with his backpack on one shoulder and felt both too visible and completely invisible. MJ fell into step beside him. Peter had the ESU replacement slot on his calendar, with an eighteen-dollar charge and a report still missing his own results. Neither the Spider-Man chatter nor this conversation would make that absence disappear.

"Congratulations."

"For?"

"Becoming discourse."

"I always dreamed of being a civic disagreement."

"You joke, but my theater group spent twenty minutes deciding if Spider-Man is camp."

"Verdict?"

"Needs better posture."

"Harsh."

"I defended the shoulder line."

"Heroic."

She bumped him lightly.

"You okay?"

"Publicly or privately?"

"That's a bad answer."

"Then no."

MJ nodded like she had expected honesty and was annoyed to receive it in such poor condition.

"Gwen's looking for you."

"Is she angry?"

"Gwen is a renewable resource of angry."

"Also fair."

"This one has a folder."

"Oh no."

"And coffee."

"Worse."

MJ stopped near the steps.

"Pete."

He stopped too. The nickname, again. Familiar enough to hurt.

"If you're helping someone, good. If you're in trouble, less good. If both, you don't get to make everyone guess which part is killing you."

His chest tightened.

"You and May start a club?"

"We meet Thursdays. The dues are your excuses."

That got a real smile out of him. MJ returned it, then looked past his shoulder. The smile thinned. Gwen stood by the library doors with a folder under one arm.

Not angry. Focused.

"Good luck," MJ said.

"Coward."

"Alive coward."

She left. Gwen watched her go, then looked at him.

"We need Ruiz."

"That's a terrible sentence."

"It gets worse."

She opened the folder. Inside were printouts. Bugle screenshots. Traffic stills. The threat photo from the library window. A copy of the Oscorp access request. A map of camera angles around campus.

Very neat. Terrifyingly neat.

"You made a binder."

"Folder."

"It has tabs."

"Temporary tabs."

"Gwen."

"Someone took a photo of us inside a private study room, then sent it to me. Oscorp is expanding log requests. Fisk's people are testing civilian bait. Ruiz has legal authority we do not. We need a controlled handoff."

Peter stared.

"You said controlled handoff like that's normal."

"I have had a week."

"I don't want you closer to Ruiz."

"I know."

"And?"

"Your want is noted."

That should not have made him like her more. It did anyway.

"She's already suspicious of me."

"Fine. Suspicious people check things."

"They also arrest people."

"Then don't be arrestable in front of her."

"My hobbies are limited."

Gwen's expression softened for half a second.

"Peter."

"I know."

"Do you?"

He looked at the folder, the tabs, the steady hand holding too much danger because he had not kept it far enough away.

"No," he said. "But I'm catching up."

They walked together toward the science building. Halfway across the courtyard, a group of students near a bench started pointing at someone's phone. The shouting came before the video loaded on the public screen mounted outside the student center.

Live news. Smoke downtown. Not big. Not Avengers-big. Not world-ending. A bus had jumped the curb after a delivery truck cut through a red light. People trapped near a storefront. Cameras already there.

Spider-Man weather became Spider-Man gravity. Every head turned upward as if the city expected the answer to fall from the sky. Peter felt Gwen's hand brush his wrist.

Not stopping him. Grounding him.

"Go," she said.

"Ruiz?"

"I'll text her location and tell her not to shoot the helpful idiot."

"That's her love language."

"Move."

He moved.

***

The rescue took eight minutes and ruined the morning. Spider-Man held the bus frame while firefighters pulled two passengers out through the rear emergency hatch. Webbing kept cracked storefront glass from dumping onto the sidewalk. A cyclist with a broken arm cursed at him in three languages, one of which might have been English under stress.

No villains. No trap. Just New York making a bad day worse. Somehow harder. No one to punch. No Coyle voice to hate.

Just weight, fear, and the need to be careful where cameras could see. He kept his jokes small.

"Ma'am, I'm going to lift on three."

"Sir, please do not sue the bus until after we get you out from under it."

"No, I cannot web your ex's car. Different department."

People laughed when they could. Cameras caught that too. Ruiz arrived near the end and did not draw her weapon. It felt like a gift.

She pointed two fingers at him, then at a clear section of sidewalk. Stay. He wanted to leave. Gwen's words followed. Don't be arrestable in front of her.

Not exactly stay, but close enough to be annoying. Spider-Man landed in the indicated spot.

"Detective."

"You texted this in before dispatch had the full call."

"A friend did."

"Your friend has a name?"

"Several."

"Cute."

"I've been told."

Ruiz held up a hand before he could keep talking.

"You helped. Witnesses confirm. Fire says the webbing kept the glass up. I am still documenting every piece of mystery adhesive you left on a public bus."

"That's fair."

"Stop sounding reasonable. It makes this worse."

He looked at the cameras behind her.

"People need to know I'm not here to hurt them."

"Then act like it when nobody is filming."

That hit clean. He nodded.

"Okay."

Ruiz studied the mask.

"You are young."

"Depends who is asking."

"I am."

"Then yes."

"Young people think good intentions are evidence."

"Are they not?"

"They're motive. Evidence is what survives after everyone gets scared."

Before he could answer, his phone buzzed inside the suit. Not the police channel. Not Gwen. Not May. Old home alert. Basement sensor. Laundry vibration, too hard. Weight near the washer. Not May, not Ben.

His blood went cold. Ruiz saw the change.

"What?"

"I have to go."

"Spider-Man."

"Family."

The word stripped the argument down to bone. She stepped aside.

"Go."

He launched upward. For once, the cameras mattered less than the distance home. Queens blurred beneath him. The Parker house came into view with the front door closed, the windows intact, and no smoke.

It should have helped. It did not. He slipped through the bedroom window, dropped the mask, and hit the basement stairs in one breath.

No intruder. No broken lock. May stood beside the washer with his torn undershirt in one hand. Blood had soaked through the collar and dried almost black.

She looked up. The shirt did not shake. Her voice did.

"How many times?"

Peter stopped halfway down the stairs. No villain. No trap. Just the person who loved him holding the proof he kept bleeding where she could not see.

The worst part was not that she had found it. The worst part was that part of him had been relieved. Secrets were heavy. Evidence was heavier. May had lifted both with one shaking hand.

He had no joke. No answer came from anywhere inside him. For once, silence felt deserved.

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