6.1. Spider-Man

We open on a flashback of Peter working with James Rhodes and Luke Cage to save pedestrians from Jessica Jones, who is possessed by the Hammer of Skirn. In the aftermath, Peter asks to come with them to join the fight against the Worthy, but Rhodey refuses, saying he did good but he’s too inexperienced.

Weeks later, Peter goes to school, gets yelled at by Flash, and then Ned Leeds invites him to build the Lego Death Star with him. Peter refuses because he needs to do Spider-Man stuff, saying he needs to do his volunteer work. He was distracted by Liz as Ned suggested he should come over later in the night to work on the Death Star and agreed without really hearing it.

In class, Peter watched videos of himself as Spider-man on Youtube, and worked on his web fluid.

Peter is fixated on getting more heroing experience so the Avengers will let him join. He quits band and robotics club to give himself more spare time. He also quits the Scholastic Decathlon team, which pissed everyone off because Nationals were soon.

As soon as the bell rang, Peter ran out of school, excited to go do Spidey things. He stopped by a local Deli and chatted with the owner while he brought a snack. He then went into an alley and changed into his Spider-Man costume.

While swinging through the city, he stopped a bicycle Thief, but then couldn’t find the owner, so he left it on the sidewalk with a label signed by the ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’. He tried to find crimes to stop, but couldn’t find any, so ended up just doing random acts of kindness like helping an old woman who had got lost. He tried to stop a car thief but it turns out to be guys own car, and all the neighbours shout at him for setting off the car alarm.

He spots a group of thieves robbing an ATM. He managed to take out most of the thieves, his confidence building, but one of them produced an Anti-Gravity gun made from Chitauri tech. During the fight, the Deli is destroyed, although Spider-Man rescues the owner and his cat. Damage Control and the NYPD turn up to deal with the robbers.

Peter goes home and sneaks back into his bedroom and starts to change out of his suit, only to realise Ned is there with the Lego model. Peter tries to think of an excuse, but Ned doesn’t believe him, and realises that Peter’s ‘volunteer work’ is being a vigilante. Ned asks if he’s an Avenger, and Peter says he ‘nearly is’. May Parker comes to say they’re going out for dinner, because her cooking went bad, and invites Ned, but Peter says Ned has to leave, and promises to answer his questions at school the next day.

While they’re out for dinner, a report on Spider-Man fighting the robbers plays on the news, and May tells him never to get involved in anything like that.

On their way to school, Peter explains to Ned how he got his powers. On their route, they pass the destroyed Deli, where Damage Control are cleaning up.

Throughout the day, Ned continued to ask Peter questions about being Spider-Man, his powers, and his ‘team up’ with the Avengers. Peter tries to get Ned to stop, but Ned refuses, eventually asking if he can be Peter’s ‘man in the chair’ to assist him during missions.

They overheard Liz and her friends talking about Superheroes, and Liz confessed to having a crush on Spider-Man. Trying to be a good wing-man, Ned told her that Peter was friends with Spider-Man, and he could get him to come to Liz’s birthday party.

Peter was nervous about the party, but Ned and May convinced him to go. On their way up to the house, Peter showed Ned that he was wearing his suit under his clothes.

Peter initially refused to change, wanted to just enjoy the party as himself, but Flash mocked him for not bringing Spider-Man, annoying Peter so much he left to go “get Spider-Man”, sitting on the roof to put on his costume. He started to practise how he would greet everyone as Spider-Man, but spotted an explosion of blue energy in the distance. He immediately abandoned the party to go and investigate, but realised that being in the suburbs meant there was nothing for him to swing from, and he was forced to just run.

At the location of the explosion, he finds Jackson Brice and Herman Schultz selling alien weaponry to Aaron Davis. He demonstrates the Gravity Gun from the bank robbery, and an Ultron bomb, but Davis says they’re too destructive, and he’ll stick to his gun. As Brice was preparing to demonstrate a Dark Elf black-hole grenade, Peter’s phone rings. Brice & Schultz believed this was a set-up by Davis and threatened him, but Peter intervened to protect him. When he told them to shoot him instead, Brice put on the Shocker Gauntlet and punched Spider-Man.

They made it to their van, but Peter webbed himself to the back of it, being dragged through the streets while Brice continued to fire back at him any time he skidded into view. Eventually they took a corner fast enough to swing Peter into a brick wall, making him lose his grip.

He did his best to follow, but just as he was about to catch back up with the van, Vulture appeared, grabbing him and flying him up into the sky before dropping him into a lake.

Peter created a webbing parachute but when he hit the lake, the webbing began to melt, weighing him down when he tried to swim up. He almost drowned when War Machine arrived and fished him out.

Peter asked how Rhodey knew where he was, and Rhodey said "certain people" had been keeping a close eye on Peter, which Peter took to mean he was a potential Avengers recruit. He told Rhodey about Vulture, and Rhodey told Peter he should drop the investigation as it sounded dangerous, before leaving.

As Peter left, he got a call from Ned telling him not to come back to the party, as everyone was mocking him for pretending to know Spider-Man. As they talked, he found a Chitauri Energy Core that had been dropped by Brice and Schultz during the chase. He took it with him, hoping it might help them find the weapons dealers.

Back at Vulture’s base, Brice was talking excitedly about the chase when Toomes confronted him, saving that he’d asked him multiple times not to fire the weapons in public. Annoyed with Brice’s refusal to listen, and his self-proclaimed title of the Shocker, Toomes fired Brice.

Brice said that if Toomes fired him, he would report their operation to the police, and to Toomes’s wife. Furious, Toomes picked up what he thought was the Anti-Gravity gun, only realising when he fired it that it was a Chitauri gun, and Brice was vapourised. Although clearly upset by the mistake, Toomes took the Shocker Gauntlet from Brice’s ashes and gave it to Schultz, telling him he was the new Shocker, and as such, it was his job to track down the weapons Brice lost.

Peter and Ned began trying to figure out the Chitauri core, taking it to school to study. Unbeknownst to them, Toomes’s crew had put trackers on their tech, and Schultz and one of The Other crew members, Vale, tracked the Core to Midtown High.

Seeing them, Peter realised there must be a tracker on the Core. He and Ned managed to find it and remove it, and Ned tuned in to the tracker’s signal. Peter then followed the pair through the school until he got a chance to web the tracker onto Schultz’s shoe.

After school, Ned and Peter used the tracker to follow the gang’s movements, until they eventually stopped in Maryland. They discussed how Peter could get there, and Ned pointed out that the Academic Decathlon final was in Washington DC, close to where the tracker had stopped.

As the team were preparing to leave for Washington, Peter asked to rejoin the team, and although they had replaced him with Flash, Mr Harrington was delighted to have him back and immediately accepted.

As they arrived on the edge of DC, they passed the Triskellion, now the offices of Damage Control. Their teacher pointed it out, talking about S.H.I.E.L.D and the Morse Papers, while Peter, Ned and MJ speculated about the kind of things that might be inside.

Seeing Schultz was on the move, Peter told Ned to look after the energy core, and prepared to leave. On his way out, he met Liz, who asked him to come swimming with the rest of the team, but Peter chose to follow Schultz, saying he was going to study.

Bringing up the tracker on his phone, Peter followed it to an abandoned gas station, which Peter assumed was their base. He spied on the crew. He hears them mention that Shocker’s gauntlet was taken from Crossbones, and then that they’re intended to rob a Damage Control convoy carrying alien tech through DC.

The trucks arrived, and Toomes used the Vulture Exo-Suit to land on the truck, and then used a Matter Phase Shifter to get inside. Peter confronted Toomes as he left the truck, and they fought, but Peter fell back through the Phase Shifter into the truck, and was knocked unconscious, allowing Toombes to leave with the stolen tech.

Peter woke up and realised the truck wasn’t moving. He busted his way out, expecting to be confronted by Toomes’s crew but instead found himself in a massive Damage Control warehouse. He tried to force the door but was unable to, and found himself stuck. He passed the time experimenting with different things he could do with his webs.

Eventually getting bored, Peter went hunting around the warehouse. He found a computer, which had the password taped to the back of the keyboard, and accessed Damage Control’s files, having fun looking at all the different weird stuff they found, including the Matter Phase Shifter.

He found an entry on the Chitauri Energy Cores, which he recognised as being the thing he and Ned had, but discovered that they were highly unstable, and unless properly contained, would randomly explode.

By messing with the fuse box and the door code, he eventually managed to escape, beginning his trip back to DC and trying to call Ned to warn him about the Core. He hitched rides on different vehicles on the Freeway until he got close enough to DC that he could swing the last bit. He kept trying Ned, but was unable to find him.

At the Decathlon, Flash took Peter’s place, but they still won the competition.

Peter tracked his friends to the Washington Monument just as the Energy Core exploded, causing massive damage. MJ, who hadn’t gone in, told him that their friends were inside the monument, trapped in a damaged lift as they had called her to ask her to get help.

Peter crawled up the outside of the monument to the top, trying not to think about the crop below him. As he neared the top, a police helicopter responding to the emergency ordered him away. He tried to explain, but they demanded he either get on the ground or be shot. Ignoring them, Peter managed to enter the monument by jumping over the helicopter with the help of a webbing parachute before swinging back around towards the monument and smashing through a window.

As he hit the floor, the elevator began to fall, but he managed to catch it using his webs, holding it in place as everyone climbed out. However Liz, the last to leave, wasn’t fast enough and the elevator started to fall and she fell after it, but Peter dived into the lift shaft after her and caught her in midair. Her got her to safety, and then just as Flash asked him if he really knew Peter, his web snapped, though he managed to catch himself before suffering any serious injuries.

Peter was delighted by the positive attention Spider-Man was now getting, thanks to the rescue. Ned asked him what it was like to be famous, and Peter reminded him not to tell anyone. He said that he was intending to skip class to work on tracking Toomes, as he was certain the Avengers would be recruiting him any day now, so he didn’t need to worry about school, however a teacher overheard and gave him detention.

In detention, he watched the Captain America video, and then realised the supervising teacher cared so little he could literally just walk out, so he did. Collecting some of the web fluid he had been making at school, he returned home.

He’d heard Schultz address his buyer as Davis, so he recruited Ned’s help and the two of them searched facebook for anyone called Davis in the New York area, and after hours of scrolling, eventually found him and learned from his likes and posts roughly where he lived.

He webbed Davis to his car and questioned him, trying to appear intimidating but Davis was unimpressed, managing to scare Peter by slamming the cat bonnet suddenly. Davis asked Peter if he knew anything about the Deli being destroyed, which Peter said was Toomes’s fault. Carrying about the neighbourhood, and worried about his nephew’s safety with such dangerous weapons on the street, Davis told Peter that Mac Gargan was looking to buy weapons from the crew, and that Gargan was dangerously unstable at the best of times so he was worried what he’d do with superweapons. Peter was so excited he almost forgot to ask the location, learning the trade was happening on the Staten Island Ferry.

Peter raced across the city and snuck aboard the ferry. He went looking for the crew, finding Schultz and a man he guessed was Vulture discussing the trade they were about to make.

Rhodey tried to call Peter, intending to tell him about the FBI investigation into the Vulture’s crew, but Peter spotted the handover taking place and hung up on him before he could explain. He was in time to interrupt the trade, stealing the keys to the truck containing the weapons, and then fought Toomes and Gargan’s men, including Shocker. He managed to defeat them, knocking Gargan overboard and webbing Schultz’s arm to the ferry.

He webbed Schultz’s associate, and then spotted the man he assumed was Vulture escaping. Before he could confront him however, he was interrupted by the FBI who began arresting everyone including Spider-Man, who they assumed was an ally of Gargan’s.

This distraction was enough for Vulture to get to his suit and begin attacking the FBI. Peter saved the agents, but Vulture was able to free his men. While they escaped, he fought Peter. The fight eventually resulted in a Chitauri weapon Vulture was using malfunctioning. Peter webbed up the weapon, trying to contain it, but it exploded, cutting the ferry in half.

While Peter tried to hold the ship together which his webs, Vulture and his crew escaped. The public cheered for the apparent rescue, only for Peter to realise that he’d missed a key stress point, and the webs began to snap as water rushed in. Just as all seemed lost, War Machine and Vision arrived and saved the day.

Once the passengers were safe, Rhodey asked Vision for some privacy and read Peter the riot act, telling him if he ever wanted to join the Avengers, he needed to learn to think before he acted, and listen when people gave him important information.

Getting home, he found May was scared and angry, as she’d been trying to call him, and when she called Ned’s mom, she learned about him skipping class and getting detention. She said that she knew he’d snuck out of the hotel in DC as well, and demanded to know what he’d been doing. He told her there had been an internship with SI he applied for, and he hadn’t told her because he wanted it so bad and he was worried he’d jinx it, but he’d just learned he hadn’t got it anyway. He apologised for making her worry about him, and she told him she used to sneak out as well. Seeing how upset he was, she asked if there was anyone who knew more about the internship he could talk to for advice.

Taking May’s suggestion, Peter sought out Luke Cage at the bar where he worked. He asked Luke why he wasn’t an Avenger, when he had powers, and Luke said that while the Avengers were necessary, it was also necessary to have people at street level, looking out for people day to day. He also told Peter that being an Avenger wasn’t what made him special, it was his determination to help people.

Not wanting to admit that he had fucked up, Peter said his dream of joining the Avengers was doomed anyway since they weren’t based in New York City anymore, but he took Luke’s advice, deciding to focus on returning to normal life.

He focussed on school, improving his grades, and he and Ned finished the Lego Death Star. As homecoming was coming up, Peter decided to apologise to Liz for all his weird behaviour. He admitted that he liked her, which she said she already knew, as he was bad at keeping secrets, and asked her to Homecoming, which she accepted.

Returning home, Peter asked May to help him learn to tie a tie and dance.

On the night of the dance, May drove him to Liz’s house. His excitement turned to dread when her dad opened the door, and he realised that Liz was the Vulture’s daughter. They made awkward small talk until Liz arrived, and her mom wanted to take photos, and then Adrian said that he would drive them.

On their way to the dance, Adrian asked Peter about himself, and learned that he had a Stark Internship and gets to hang out with Iron Man and Spider-Man. Adrian commented that he thought they might have met before, as Peter’s voice was familiar to him, which Liz explained as being due to Peter being on the Decathlon team with her, and went on to talk about how he’d vanished in DC.

At the school, Adrian made Liz get out so he could give Peter the shovel talk, however when they were alone, he revealed that he had worked out Peter was Spider-Man, pulling a gun and asking if Liz knew. When Peter said no, Toomes said that he would give Peter a pass this time due to him having saved Liz, but after the dance he needed not to interfere with Toomes’s upcoming final heist, or Toomes would kill everyone Peter loved, included his aunt.

Realising that even if Toomes was intending to retire, the heist would mean masses more unstable alien tech on the streets, Peter chose to go after Toomes, even though it would mean Liz losing her father. He went into the dance, apologised to her, and then left, picking up his a suit and some web fluid he'd had in his locker on the way out.

Putting on the suit, Peter left the school, only to be immediately ambushed by Shocker, who had been posted there to kill him if he broke the agreement with Toomes. He was taken by surprise, and lost his webshooters when Shocker hit him. Shocker uses the gauntlet to throw Peter through a bus.

Peter was loosing the fight badly, getting beaten to hell, when Ned arrived looking for his friend, found the dropped webshooters and distracted Shocker. Peter used Shocker’s distraction to reclaim his webshooters and trap Shocker, leaving him for the police while he went after Vulture. Peter told Ned what was going on and told him to call the Avengers helpline and ask them to tell Rhodey what was going on. He told Ned to track his phone so they could say in contact.

Peter then demanded Flash give him his keys, taking Flash’s car to follow Vulture. As he drove, he used Flash’s phone to call Ned, telling him he left his own phone in Vulture’s car so they could track him. Ned called the Avengers, but got a recorded message system, having to go through a complicated menu before he could even speak to a person, who then didn’t seem to know who Spider-Man was.

With Ned’s help, Peter tracked Toomes to an old warehouse. He snuck in and discovered computers with information about Start Tower and an unmanned plane which was taking Avengers and Stark tech up to the New Avengers Facility upstate, which he realised must be Vulture's target.

Venturing further into the warehouse, Peter found Toomes waiting for him. Peter webbed Toomes to a table and tried to persuade him that what he was doing was wrong, but Toomes was convinced this was the only way to support his family, and refused to listen. He pointed out that Iron Man’s money came from weapons dealing, and the only real difference was that Stark weapons had been used overseas, rather than in America.

Toomes revealed that he could remove control the Vulture wings, and they attacked Peter. As he dodged the attacks, he taunted Toomes that he missed, only for Toomes to reveal that he wasn’t aiming for Peter as the wings smashed through the last of the warehouse’s support beams. Vulture put the wings back on and flew away as the ceiling collapsed on Peter.

Peter came too to discover he was draped under the debris. He tried to move the rubble on him, or to call for help, but without success.

Seeing his unmasked face reflected in a puddle nearby, Peter remembers Luke’s words, telling himself that he had to stop Toomes in order to save people. With new resolve, he mustered all his strength, and pushed the rubble off himself, reclaiming his masking and going after Vulture.

He snuck up on Vulture, and as Vulture leapt into the air to follow the plane taking off, Peter webbed himself to the back of his wings. Vulture noticed a slight drag, but didn’t spot him, following the plane.

When he reached it, he used tools created by Tinkerer to attach himself to the plane magnetically while he got the Matter Phase Shifter into position. Peter discovered that his webshooters were useless when moving at such high speeds, and focussed on moving Vulture’s suit, which was covering the hole into the plane.

Moving it caused air to rush into the plane, allerting Vulture to his presence, and the two fought, damaging one of the plane’s engines when Vulture nearly threw Peter through it. Unable to fight back without his webs, Peter focussed on just dodging, but this lead Vulture to damage the plane further, and the plane began to loose altitude.

Realising the plane was about to crash into a major population centre, Peter used his webshooters and strength to try and redirect the plane, while Vulture used the distraction to load up on stolen tech.

Peter managed to stear the plane away from NYC, but his webs snapped and he was thrown from the plane as it crashed into a beach on Coney Island.

As Peter recovered from the crash, Vulture attacked him. Exhausted and injured, Peter was barely even able to dodge, even with Vulture’s wings damaged. He picked Peter up and threw him into the ground multiple times, but just as he was about to strike the killing blow, he saw a crate of Arc Reactors which had survived the crash, and abandonned the fight to salvage them.

As Vulture took off with his prize, Peter realised the wings were about to explode, as they were glowing the same way the power core had. He tried to warn Vulture and pull the wings off him, but Vulture cut his webs and took Flight. As he did, the wings exploded and he crashed back to Earth, hitting the remains of the plane.

Peter fought his way through the flames and dragged Vulture back out, saving his life.

When he had recovered a bit, Peter webbed Vulture to a large piece of the plane and stuck a note to him explaining that he was the Vulture and apologising for the destruction of the plane.

A couple of days later, Peter returned to school. He learned that Liz was moving away, due to her father’s arrest. Peter apologised to her for disappearing during homecoming, and she told him she hoped he sorted his life out.

With Liz leaving, MJ was made the new Head of the Decathlon team, and Peter was invited back as a member. During practice, he received a message to come to the roof. He left practice and changed into his Spider-Man costume and went to the roof where he found Rhodey and Vision waiting for him. They told him he’d done great managing Vulture, and apologised for not taking him more seriously. Rhodey then asked if he still wanted to join the Avengers, but Peter said no, he was happy being a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.

He swung home and began to change out of the suit, where there was a noise behind him and he turned around to see Aunt May standing there.