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When Owen and his friends had decided to take a trip to New York City, he had expected the normal, touristy stuff. Walking around the city, probably getting lost, visiting the major sights like Times Square and the Statue of Liberty.
The absolute last thing he expected was to be caught in the middle of a supervillain attack.
He, with the rest of the world, knew about the Avengers. He knew about supervillains like Loki, Thanos, and Doctor Doom. Enemies that popped up and were defeated by the Avengers, time and time again.
What he didn't expect was for there to be so many. There seemed to be no end to the costumed freaks, dressed in bright colors and spouting long-winded speeches straight out of a movie. He even recognized some—but had to admit that he was surprised to see them, as he had assumed that they were part of the long list of fake super-people that New Yorkers liked to fabricate on the internet to fool the tourists. Urban myths like the Fantastic Four, or the Sinister Six, or Spider-man, or Daredevil.
But since coming to the Big Apple, Owen had seen three supervillain attacks. Three. And he'd arrived just two days ago. And, as if that weren't crazy enough, they had all been supposedly fake supervillains. The first night there was those idiots in weird mesh-netted helmets—F.I.R.E. or A.I.M. or something like that. He'd heard about those guys somewhere on Twitter, but it was on one of those New Yorker accounts dedicated to creating stories of fake superhero interactions. He hadn't even considered that they might be real. Then this morning, when he went to grab his coffee, he stumbled upon Iron Man (which, wow) defeating a literal shape-shifting alien that he thought he remembered from another fan account. He vaguely remembered it being called a Skull.
And now, there was this green demon-looking dude on a flying hoverboard, throwing gas bombs at the panicking crowd.
How were New Yorkers even sane?
Shaking his head in disbelief for the third time in this godforsaken trip, Owen pulled out his phone to start recording.
“You getting this?” his friend (and fellow observer of this madness) Nora whispered.
“Yeah,” Owen affirmed uselessly, though she could clearly see the camera in his hand. “What's this guy called again? I know I've seen pictures of him.” Again, he had been convinced they were doctored at the time, but he did recognize him.
“I don't remember.” Nora squinted at the clearly mental man flying above them. “Green something, I think.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Owen admitted, watching the entirely green-clad figure terrorize the block. Such a creative name.
Maybe it was the shock of seeing a previously-believed-to-be-fake supervillain up close. Maybe it was the fact that he was focused on his phone screen, making sure that he captured every second of the battle. Or maybe it was just how sudden it all happened. Whatever the reason was, Owen did not see the glowing orange ball heading straight for him until it was right there.
He didn't even have time to scream before he felt impact.
But it wasn't the impact he was expecting. Not an explosion, not a cloud of gas.
It was an arm snatching him off the ground.
And now he was in the air, wind rushing in his ears and stinging his eyes and oh crap he could see the ground, it was so far down—
And then he was on solid ground again, and he nearly cried with relief.
“Sir? Sir, are you alright?” Owen could hear a voice—presumably, belonging to whoever just freaking snatched him into the sky—but didn't turn to face the owner. Instead, he held a shaking finger in the general direction of the voice as he turned and heaved the contents of his stomach onto the ground.
New York pizza didn't taste nearly as good coming up as it did going down.
“Oh! That's—um, that's alright, I guess. Just let it out.” A hand patted his back awkwardly as he swallowed, throat burning. “Nothing to be ashamed of, really. Everyone throws up. One time I threw up on Tony Stark. All over his thousand-dollar suit. He hasn't let me live it down. But, uh, I won't tell anyone about this! We're cool!”
Owen turned to send an amused glance in the direction of his rambling rescuer, but froze as he caught sight of the large, white bug-eyes.
Red-and-blue full-body suit. Mask concealing his identity. Spider emblem on his chest.
Now, this one he knew. This one everybody knew.
“Spider-man?” Owen squeaked. “You—I—you're real?”
Judging by the way the superhero flinched back, he wasn't expecting that question at all.
“Am I real?” Owen didn't know what he imagined the clearly-not-fabricated superhero to sound like, but this wasn't it. “Of course I'm real. What—what kind of question is that?”
Owen couldn't find it in him to answer. All he could seem to do was gape at the living, breathing superhero in front of him. He was definitely one of the most popular New York myths—one that people seemed to have grown quite attached to. Only, now he wasn't an urban myth. He was real.
Spider-man was real.
Maniacal laughter cut through the air, and Spider-man abruptly dropped something into Owen's hand with a muttered, “Here, you dropped this,” before leaping into the air, higher than any human possibly could, and shooting a thin white wire from his wrist.
If Owen remembered the posts correctly, they were his webs. Because he was a spider. And that was his thing.
Wild.
Owen gripped his phone (the object Spider-man had dropped into his hands) as he watched the battle, a blur of red, blue, and green fifty-plus feet in the air. Numbly, he trained his still-recording camera on the battle.
He tried to watch the fight, but he could hardly focus. Spider-man was real. And if he was real, did that mean the stories about him were, too? Because some seemed too impossible to even consider as real. Did he really hold two halves of a ferry boat together? Take five bullets in a fight and walk away, injured but alive? Break through the Washington Monument and rescue an elevator full of high school students? Yesterday, he would've chuckled at these stories on the internet. Would've laughed and scrolled past it to read similar accounts of seeing a ghost, or Bigfoot.
But now? After being rescued by Spider-man himself? After watching him swing from a thin white web, just like in all the stories?
Owen wasn't sure what to believe.
It was soon over—Spider-man had used some absolutely crazy acrobatics and managed to knock the Great Green Devil-thing (Owen's best shot at its name) out cold. Then he wrapped it up in webs, like a spider with a fly.
Owen just kept recording, planning to turn it off as soon as Spider-man was out of sight.
But then, to Owen's surprise, Spider-man swung into the air, flipped a few times, and landed in a graceful crouch right in front of him.
Owen was just about having an out-of-body experience, at this point.
“Hey, uh, out of curiosity,” Spider-man said—to him— “why didn't you think I was real? I mean, what rock have you been living under? I'm literally out here, in plain sight, every day. I don't know how you missed that, what with the bright primary colors.” He gestured at his own brightly-colored suit.
Finally, Owen spoke—something that he would be immensely proud of later. “I'm from Chicago.”
“Ah, a tourist,” Spider-man nodded. The casualness of the action was astounding to Owen, after seeing him flipping through the air on a thin wire from his wrist just seconds ago. “But—do people in Chicago think I'm not real? Is that a thing?”
“Dude—you're a legend,” Owen breathed. “You're like Santa Claus. Or Slenderman. Nobody thinks you're real.” Except for the gullible ones, or the children who believed just about anything they were told. Owen had refused to be one of those people. But now he was going to second-guess every internet myth to grace his phone screen.
Spider-man just stared at him, expression unreadable. It was actually kind of unsettling, not knowing what his face looked like behind the mask. He couldn't even really picture him with a face.
Finally, he admitted, “I don't know whether to be offended or honored.”
From the crowd, Nora met Owen's gaze with wide eyes, seemingly as awestruck as he was. She tried to mouth something to him, but he couldn't read whatever it was from this distance. Or with a literal legend right in front of him. Made it kinda hard to focus.
“Anyways,” Spider-man shrugged, “I'd better get going. You good?”
“No! Wait!” Owen blurted before he really even knew why. Did he really even need a reason? Spider-man was a famous superhero, even if everyone thought he was fake. He'd never get an opportunity like this again.
“You—uh—” Owen began, trying to think of something.
Spider-man waited patiently. The eyes on his mask widened a fraction, making Owen's eyes widen as well. How did he do that?
“Did you really hold a ferry boat together?” he finally choked out.
“Oh! Uh, yeah?” Spider-man scratched the back of his head. “For like ten seconds, at least. Then Iron Man showed up and pushed it back together.”
Whoa. Sick.
“Did you get shot five times and walk it off?” What was he doing? Why couldn't he shut up? “Did you save an elevator full of students in the Washington Monument? Or help the Avengers take down Thanos? Do the webs come out of your wrist? Are you really a secret Avenger?”
Spider-man's eye-lense-thingies had widened significantly during Owen's humiliating case of word vomit. Way to make an impression. “I, uh, really gotta go. But, um, yes? To the first three, at least.” And with that the superhero shot a web out of his wrist (they definitely came from his wrists) and swung high into the air. The extraordinary strength he must have had to be able to do that...
“Owen!” Nora's voice carried over the sounds of the crowd and the police sirens (when had they shown up?). “Owen! Oh my—did you—Spider-man?”
Owen simply nodded at her, eyes wide.
“Dude,” she breathed.
Owen had to agree.
“Well, did you get the video?”
Owen nearly dropped his phone at the realization.
“Oh my gosh,” he whispered. “YouTube is going to love this.”