Chapter Text
New York never stops making noise. Cars speed through the streets, people rush through life too fast, and no one seems to care about what happens around them.
Well, except for Oscar Piastri.
Oscar had always cared deeply about everything happening around him, whether it was an injured plant or a person left hurt after being mugged. The problem with being someone like him is that, in New York, scenes like that are ordinary, and nobody ever seems willing to do anything to stop them from happening again.
The New York police force had been ineffective for years, serving more as propaganda for the image of a perfect city than as a public institution truly focused on civilian safety. Of course, they tried. But sometimes trying simply is not enough. Sometimes stronger measures have to be taken until something finally works, or at least works partially.
Oscar always hoped someone else would do that, that someone would take harsher action until the city’s problems finally started being solved. But as he watched from his apartment window, the problems only kept growing, and nobody ever got up from their chairs to fix anything.
Until one day, he believed he had found the solution to his city’s problems.
Or at least, that was what he thought.
On a sunny day with mild weather, he went on a school field trip to visit a very famous research center, owned by a man rich enough to buy the world if he wanted to. The laboratory’s research focused on spider species and how they reacted to different substances and types of radiation.
Despite spending an entire week listening to his best friend, Lando Norris, complain about having to visit a place researching spiders, Oscar was excited. He was the very definition of a nerd, and even the physical stereotype matched perfectly. A tall, skinny boy who wore glasses and was painfully clumsy. That was Oscar Piastri.
Getting the chance to visit a research project like that and see everything up close felt almost like a dream to him.
And finally being there was even more impressive. So many spider species and so many different results caused by small DNA alterations. It was a dream come true for him.
But, since nothing ever stays perfect for long, he somehow managed to ruin everything.
With his usual clumsy nature, he was admiring one of the enclosures when the spider inside suddenly jumped against the glass, straight toward his face.
Oscar immediately stumbled backward, startled by the spider’s sudden attack, and bumped into another enclosure positioned right behind him. The glass lid shifted open just slightly. Nothing too noticeable, but enough for the spider inside the container to escape and attack him.
The spider bit him before quickly disappearing into a dark corner of the room, climbing along the wall until it vanished into the shadows.
Oscar tried to act like nothing had happened so he would not get scolded by the researchers or his teachers, but the pain in his wrist was excruciating. Within seconds, the area turned red and swollen at an alarming speed. He did his best to hide the wound for the rest of the trip, but his excitement was gone, and his body was already beginning to react to the venom.
Lando Norris did not take more than two seconds to realize something was wrong with Oscar Piastri and spent the rest of the excursion trying to convince him to tell someone about the bite, because something like that could be dangerous. But if no serious symptoms had appeared yet, then it would not kill him, right?
At least, that was what Oscar thought.
The symptoms did not go away. By the time night arrived and he was curled up in bed, aching from the bite, every sound around him began to feel unbearably loud. The world spun and spun until he passed out on his bed before he could even properly think about the bite or everything that had happened that day.
And that was what led Oscar to the present moment. The moment where strands of protein silk shoot out of his wrists as naturally as mucus running from his nose during a cold, while everything around him feels overwhelming to his senses, and Lando stares at him wide-eyed from the edge of his bed.
“Oscar, are you sure you do not want to go to the hospital? I think we are both hallucinating right now. You because of the bite, and me because I’m listening to you.”
If he were not so dizzy from the feeling of his body becoming completely unfamiliar to him, he probably would have laughed at Lando and his unintentional dramatics. But right now, everything around him feels blurred.
“Oscar, are you listening to me? Hey, Oscar, I’m talking to you! For God’s sake, could you please pay attention to what I’m trying to tell you?”
Oscar has his back turned to Lando, trying to ignore every question his friend throws at him because he simply does not have answers for any of them. Until, at some point, he starts feeling a tingling sensation at the back of his neck. Something faint at first, but slowly growing stronger until it becomes unbearable.
His subconscious tells him to turn around, toward where Lando is sitting. He does not know why, but he obeys anyway.
The moment he turns around, the first thing his senses catch is the sound of something being thrown. The second is a giant blue blur flying toward him. The third is the feeling of his pillowcase against the tips of his fingers.
When his vision clears completely again, he finally manages to understand the scene around him. His arm is stretched out in front of his face, gripping his pillow. Lando is frozen on the bed, staring at him wide-eyed, and the tingling in the back of his neck has suddenly disappeared.
“How did you do that?”
Lando asks, his eyes darting rapidly between Oscar’s face and the hand holding the pillow. He looks like a terrified deer, mouth hanging open wide enough for a bird to build a nest inside.
“Did what?” Oscar Piastri has absolutely no idea what is happening or why Lando looks so shocked.
“Oh... I don’t know. I just felt this weird tingling in the back of my neck, and something told me I should turn around. So I did, and then I saw that blue blur coming toward me and reached my arm out. I didn’t realize it had been that fast.”
“Oscar, I think that spider turned you into some kind of... superhuman. Your reflexes are enhanced, you sensed when I was about to throw something at you, and literal webs are coming out of your wrists. At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised if you suddenly started climbing walls.”
That immediately sparked a flame of curiosity inside Oscar Piastri. Could he actually climb walls?
He had already done things that should have been physically, biologically, and visibly impossible. He had probably broken a few laws of physics, biology, and maybe even chemistry too. Testing more abilities could not hurt.
Oscar focused on the ceiling of his bedroom and tried to jump as high as he could. The second his feet left the floor, his hands instinctively latched onto the ceiling, followed by his feet, leaving him stuck upside down compared to the position he had been in moments earlier.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”
If Lando said he would not be surprised, he had clearly been lying.
And the scream startled Oscar too, causing him to lose balance and crash from the ceiling onto the floor within seconds. The impact his body made when it hit the ground definitely must have annoyed the neighbors downstairs.
“And I guess I can climb too.”
“Can you control the webs coming out of your wrists, or do they just happen automatically, like sweat?”
Lando asked while grabbing Oscar’s wrist and inspecting it carefully, turning it from side to side as if searching for the switch of a toy.
Oscar grimaced at the comparison. Was sweat really the best thing Lando could compare the webs to? Biologically, the two had absolutely nothing in common, but he understood what his friend meant.
“I don’t know. I guess we need to test it to find out.”
Oscar lifted his wrist and focused on the webs, trying to force them out, but nothing happened. He tried again, putting more effort into it this time. Again, nothing.
He shook his wrist, twisted it into different positions, but still nothing happened.
“Oscar, what did you do earlier today when the webs first came out of your wrist?”
Lando’s question pulled him back to that morning.
He had woken up dizzy, with a pounding headache and barely able to see. Not only because he was without his glasses, but because his vision itself had been almost completely darkened. When he got out of bed, his body stumbled toward the bathroom while he tried to steady himself against the walls, his head throbbing nonstop.
Trying to ease the pain a little, he had pressed his index finger against his temple. Somewhere in the movement, without realizing it, he had lifted his pinky finger as well and applied pressure while touching his temple.
That was when the web had shot out of his wrist.
“That thing with the pillow. Like, it was really, really fast.”
“Lando, if you do not explain what happened, I’m not going to magically guess it!” Oscar has no clue what just happened. All he knows is that he caught a pillow and now his best friend is staring at him like he is some kind of alien.
“Oscar, your back was completely turned to me, and when I threw the pillow, you were still facing away from me. Then, in literally milliseconds, you turned around and caught it, even though you had no idea I was throwing it at you. How did you do that?”
As he remembered what had happened that morning, Oscar repeated the same movements with his fingers. He closed his hand and lifted only his index finger and pinky. He focused on his body, concentrating only on the webs, trying to force something through his wrist until he felt his blood rushing harder through that part of his arm and an icy sensation spreading through his veins.
He was pulled out of his concentration by the sound of Lando screaming again.
“EW! Oscar, did you really have to shoot that at my McLaren hoodie? It’s fake, but it was expensive, okay?”
That day, the two of them kept testing Oscar’s abilities until Lando started trying to use them for his own benefit and Oscar eventually kicked him out of the apartment, claiming he was too loud and acting like a shameless freeloader.
The situation that became the starting point for Oscar’s possible solution to the city’s problems happened on a Wednesday after school.
Oscar had never been someone with many friends. The only people he truly had in his life were his uncle Fernando, his best friend Lando, and his uncle Mark, who had passed away a few months earlier. At school, Lando had always been his only real company, and honestly, that had never bothered him. Not even the bullying he constantly endured from classmates for being a clumsy nerd.
Lando always tried to defend him, but things usually ended with him suspended and Oscar forced to endure even more insults from the other students.
That day, Lando would not be walking home with him, so Oscar did not need to take the longer route to accompany him to his front door. He was calmly heading home when he passed by a dark alley and suddenly the base of his neck started tingling again, his instincts practically screaming for him to turn around and look inside the alley.
The sensation became so intense that Oscar felt like he had no choice except to go back and check.
He slowly walked into the dark alleyway and, as he stepped deeper into it, something inside him whispered that things were about to become very different from that moment on.
The farther he walked, the darker it became, despite the pleasant New York afternoon outside.
Then his ears caught the sound of a pained groan, almost like a whisper brushing against his ears, followed by the unmistakable sound of a punch landing.
His body moved naturally toward the source of the noise, his feet guiding the rest of him forward. A very small voice inside his head told him to leave, reminding him that he was too skinny and had already been beaten up enough at school to involve himself in a fight that was not his.
But he ignored that voice.
He silenced it and kept moving forward.
Little by little, the sounds of the fight grew louder. Oscar felt alert every second, the hairs on his arms standing up while the tingling in the back of his neck remained constant.
When he finally reached the end of the alley, he could properly see what was happening. Two large, broad guys were cornering a boy who was clearly younger than them, shorter and thinner too.
The compassion Oscar felt for the kid was immediate. He could see himself in that position through so many moments of his own past.
“Hey, you two, why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
Oscar almost regretted involving himself in the situation.
Almost.
Because the moment he saw the look in the boy’s eyes, something shifted inside him. The kid was looking at him like he was a hero, a savior.
The two thugs clearly did not feel the same way. They exchanged a glance between themselves and, without saying a single word, charged straight at Oscar.
Oscar felt completely unprepared, but his body seemed to know exactly what to do.
The moment the two boys lunged at him, his reflexes took over. With astonishing speed, he dodged their punches effortlessly. Just as quickly, he struck back. He landed a punch straight into one of their faces, then ducked beneath a right hook from the other and drove his fist into the boy’s stomach.
The two stumbled backward, but Oscar did not let up.
He kept attacking before they had a chance to recover, alternating between punches to their faces, sharp kicks to their shins, and blows to their stomachs. The two thugs did not even manage to lay a hand on him.
Until Oscar remembered the boy.
He suddenly stopped and turned to look at the kid, who was still curled up on the ground only a few feet away from the fight.
The expression on the boy’s face was pure shock. The bright look of relief and admiration that had been there moments before was gone.
Those few seconds of distraction were enough.
His opponents recovered and rushed him again.
A fist connected with his jaw, sending him stumbling backward, and instantly all of his focus snapped back to the fight.
It did not last much longer after that.
The two boys were already exhausted, weakened from the beating Oscar had given them, and one punch was not enough to bring him down. Eventually, realizing they could not win, they made the obvious choice and ran, retreating before they could get hurt any more.
Oscar’s breathing came in heavy gasps. Every muscle in his body begged for rest. A thin trail of blood ran from his nose, and his jaw throbbed from the punch he had taken.
But none of that mattered right then.
He turned and walked toward the boy still crouched on the ground, ready to help him.
“I’m sorry you had to see that. Do you need any more help?”
Oscar Piastri asked, extending his hand to help the boy to his feet.
The boy stared at him with wide eyes for a few seconds before accepting his hand.
The moment he stood up, he immediately wrapped his arms around Oscar in a sudden hug.
Oscar froze, caught completely off guard by the unexpected affection.
“Thank you so much. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been here to help me. Thank you, really.”
The boy’s voice was full of excitement as he pulled away from the embrace.
Oscar laughed softly.
He had never imagined himself as anyone’s hero, especially not because of a fight.
He reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair before picking up his own backpack from where it had been dropped on the ground. As he turned to leave, he looked back at him one last time and smiled.
“Be careful, okay?”
Then Oscar walked back toward the street, his mind overwhelmed with thoughts.
The look in the boy’s eyes had carved itself into his memory. The unmistakable gratitude shining there.
For the first time in his life, Oscar had been seen as the hero.
A champion.
A savior.
Going home was not an option.
His uncle Fernando would give him the lecture of a lifetime for getting into another fight, and even worse, for willingly throwing himself into one.
The only person who might actually support him right now was Lando.
So Oscar changed direction.
Instead of taking the familiar path back to his uncle’s apartment, he headed toward Lando’s house.
The only thing Oscar could think about was the look in the boy’s eyes. The expression of fear when Oscar had become too violent, and the overwhelming gratitude when he helped him afterward.
What if Oscar helped more people?
What if he used the special abilities he had gained to do good, just like he had today?
Maybe it would not completely end crime in New York, but he could make it decrease. His uncle Fernando would never allow him to do anything remotely close to this, but he did not have to know. In fact, nobody needed to know who he really was. He could do everything anonymously.
For the first time in a long while, Oscar could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. He could picture a less violent New York.
And despite becoming a hero to others, that was not his real motivation.
All he wanted was a safer city. A New York where people would have fewer chances of losing the ones they loved. A world where maybe his uncle would still be alive.
Mark had died months ago, and Oscar still could not stop thinking about him or about how much his presence was missed in the tiny apartment they had shared.
That night, his uncle had gone out to the corner market because Fernando had been craving paella, but they were missing one ingredient, so Mark volunteered to buy it.
When he arrived there, he found the small store being robbed.
And just like Oscar, Mark had wanted a fair and safe world.
He tried to stop the robbers, and all it earned him was a bullet through the chest and a life cut short.
Oscar tried not to think too much about that day, or about how Uncle Fernando had never wanted to eat paella again afterward.
“Well, what exactly do you need from me? My irresistible charm or my incredible ability to steal food without anyone noticing?”
Lando was in the bathroom changing his soaked shirt for a dry one, somehow managing to make Oscar laugh again less than five minutes after almost giving him a heart attack.
“Well, I had an idea on my way home today. My senses warned me again that something dangerous was happening nearby, and it turned out there was a kid getting beaten up in an alley. I had to help him, you know? I couldn’t just let him get hurt.”
That was the exact moment Lando stepped out of the bathroom and finally got a proper look at Oscar’s face.
His expression shifted instantly from playful amusement to endless sadness.
“You got into a fight just so you could get beaten up alongside him, Oscar? I’ve seen you make stupid decisions before, but this is honestly impressive.”
Lando walked back into the bathroom and returned holding a bottle of saline solution, cotton pads, and a few bandages.
“Lando, it wasn’t exactly like that. For the first time ever, I actually hit back, okay? They got beaten up way worse than I did. My senses kept warning me about the punches they were going to throw, and my reflexes made me dodge before they could even touch me. I only got hit a couple of times because I got distracted.”
The look Lando gave him was deeply skeptical, like he did not believe a single word coming out of Oscar’s mouth.
“Mhm. Sure.”
“I’m serious, Lando. But that’s not even what I wanted to talk about. Today I helped a kid escape from some bullies, and what if I did more than that?”
Oscar barely even felt the cotton brushing gently against his face as Lando cleaned away the blood and dirt gathered on his skin.
“What do you mean by that?”
Lando stopped what he was doing and looked directly into Oscar’s eyes. His expression was serious, nothing like the carefree Lando Oscar was used to.
“What if I do more than just help one kid getting bullied? I could stop robberies, help people, stop more deaths and violence in New York, Lando.”
The hope in Oscar’s voice was impossible to miss.
There was so much hope packed into those words that they almost sounded like a prayer dragged from the depths of his soul, begging mercy for all the people who did not deserve to suffer.
“Oscar, that’s way too much responsibility for a seventeen-year-old kid. And besides, you’re not supposed to be the one doing this. Leave that to the police. You could get seriously hurt.”
Lando clearly did not agree with the idea, but Oscar could still hear the faintest trace of hope hidden underneath his concern.
“Uncle Mark always told me that with great power comes great responsibility, Lando. And now I’m the one with the power to stop more people from dying the way he did. I have the chance to make this city a little better.”
Oscar hated talking about his uncle’s death, but the thought never left his mind.
His voice carried both pain and hope, and he could not bring himself to look Lando in the eyes anymore. Instead, his gaze wandered everywhere around the room except toward him.
“How exactly are you planning to avoid being recognized? Your uncle Fernando would absolutely hate this idea.”
Lando’s voice softened as he brushed Oscar’s overgrown fringe away from his eye with his fingers.
“Well... that’s where your genius brain comes in.”
Oscar flashed his brightest smile and gave Lando his best pleading puppy-eyed expression.
Lando only scoffed and returned to bandaging Oscar’s nose.
And that was how Spider-Man was born.
That day, the two of them sat down and discussed every possible strategy to make the idea work.
First, they focused on deciding on a suit so Oscar could hide his identity. They decided to honor the spider that had bitten him and given him his bizarre powers and spider-like abilities. Lando grabbed some old bedsheets he had lying around the house to sew the costume together and, even though they tried to make something discreet, the only fabrics available were blue and red.
After finishing the design for the suit, they moved on to the next problem on the list.
How were they supposed to know when someone needed help?
The strategy they came up with was patrols.
At night, Oscar would wear the suit underneath regular clothes and wander around the neighborhood until he found someone who needed help. If he did, he would slip into an alley or somewhere hidden, pull on the mask, and help whoever needed him.
And then came the most important problem of all.
Uncle Fernando.
Lying was the best option they had.
School projects, fake appointments, sleepovers at Lando’s house just for fun. Anything that could slip past the Spaniard’s dangerously sharp instincts.
In theory, it worked.
And in practice, it worked too.
Oscar’s first patrols were a success. His uncle suspected nothing, every victim made it home safely, and Oscar himself did not get seriously hurt.
The real problem came afterward.
Some people saw him as a hero.
Others saw him as a vigilante.
Someone taking justice into his own hands, someone dangerous.
A freak.
Why would a man have spider powers?
Why not leave crime to the police?
But the biggest question was not any of those.
There was one specific question splashed across the front page of every newspaper.
WHO IS SPIDER-MAN?
Oscar avoided reporters whenever he helped people, but that was not enough to stop the media from putting enormous pressure on him to reveal his identity. After all, if he was not doing anything wrong, why hide who he was?
Cruel words were thrown at him constantly.
By civilians.
By newspapers.
By the police.
Even by the mayor himself.
None of it mattered to Oscar. As long as the city became safer, he did not care if people hated him.
But little by little, things became more dangerous.
The criminals he faced started becoming harder to fight.
Bank robberies.
Organized crime schemes.
And the police.
No matter what crime Oscar tried to stop, the police would always show up. Not to help him fight the criminals, but to fight him instead.
Spider-Man had become a pest they wanted exterminated.
The harder missions left him increasingly exhausted and injured.
Bruises, cuts, and even fractures became part of the routine of being a hero.
Hiding those injuries from Uncle Fernando was nearly impossible, but Lando’s makeup skills ended up being far more useful than they had ever been for cosplay.
Eventually, Lando started disapproving of the whole hero idea altogether.
According to him, everything was becoming far too dangerous for a teenager and, if the police ever caught Oscar, nothing would stop him from ending up in prison.
The public criticized Spider-Man constantly, claiming he was just a reckless vigilante, and Uncle Fernando was no different.
“These vigilantes are dangerous, Oscar. They only make things worse.”
Those words destroyed Oscar from the inside out.
He was doing all of this for his family. For them to live in a safer world.
And without even knowing it, Fernando hated what Oscar had become.
“Understand who Spider-Man really is: hero? a charlatan?”
“Is he the new neighborhood guy?”
“Who is the Spider-Man?”
The questions never stopped coming.
Neither did the pressure.
Oscar kept telling himself he did not care.
Everything went wrong on a Wednesday.
Oscar was at Lando’s house once again, trying to cover up his injuries before going back home. It was already nighttime, and his body felt completely exhausted after fighting the previous night, staying awake for hours afterward, and then dragging himself through an entire school day.
Lando stared at him with that familiar look of disapproval Oscar was almost getting used to.
The atmosphere in the bedroom felt unbearably heavy. The only sounds filling the room were Oscar’s strained breathing as he unsuccessfully tried to clean one of his wounds. The smell of blood seemed soaked into the walls themselves.
Lando held the first aid kit in trembling hands.
Not from fear.
From anger.
“Oscar, you’re destroying yourself, piece by piece. You do realize your powers didn’t make you immortal, right?”
Lando’s voice started soft, but there was a layer of fury buried underneath every ounce of care.
“I’m not doing this for fun, Lando!”
Oscar tried to stand up, but the pain in his ribs made him stumble, his face twisting in agony.
“I’m trying to do what nobody else will. If I stop, who’s going to make sure someone else doesn’t end up suffering the way Uncle Mark did?”
“You’re killing yourself over a ghost!”
Lando’s patience finally snapped.
All the anger and pain from watching his best friend come home injured night after night spilled out at once. His jaw was clenched so tightly it almost shook, and tears of frustration rolled down his cheeks.
“What do you think is going to happen to your uncle when he finds out his nephew is some vigilante slowly getting himself killed over a passing idea? What’s going to happen to me when I get a phone call saying they found your body dead in an alley somewhere?”
His voice rose louder and louder with every word, more tears streaming down his face while he pointed accusingly at Oscar, like he was pointing at destruction left behind by a reckless dog.
“You think you’re doing this for other people, but you’re only thinking about yourself. You want to be a hero so badly that you forget you bleed too!”
Oscar had no response.
Lando’s words hurt more than any punch he had ever taken.
Ignoring the pain radiating through his body, he grabbed his jacket from the bed and walked toward the bedroom door.
Oscar stepped through it without looking back.
The silence left behind in Lando’s room felt louder than any scream.
He walked down the stairs carrying the weight of the world alongside the ache in his ribs. All he wanted was to get home, hide beneath his blankets, and pretend the rest of the world did not exist.
The cold New York night air hit his face the moment he stepped outside, but it still could not cool the heat of the argument burning inside him.
He did not even make it three blocks.
The tingling at the back of his neck, his cursed warning, did not come gradually this time like it usually did.
An electric shock ripped through his body starting from the base of his skull, making him freeze instantly, every muscle tensing at once.
A matte black SUV without license plates sped onto the sidewalk, cutting off his path.
Before Oscar could even process what was happening, the doors swung open and four men dressed in tactical gear, masks, and military vests jumped out, surrounding him in a perfect formation.
Standing at the center of them was an older man with calculating eyes and the posture of someone who hunted for pleasure.
“Oscar Piastri.”
The man’s voice carried no emotion whatsoever.
“Spider-Man.”
Oscar felt his blood turn to ice.
They knew.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. My name is Victor. There’s no need to be afraid. We’re simply here to retrieve our spider experiment that somehow ended up inside your body.”
Oscar immediately tried to leap toward the top of a nearby building to escape, but a sonic blast, a high-frequency ringing noise, exploded through the air around him.
The sound was so sharp that he collapsed to his knees, clutching his ears while his vision spun violently.
His Spider Sense had been completely overwhelmed by the frequency.
And with horror, Oscar realized these people were not here to talk.
They wanted to capture him like a specimen.
He looked around quickly.
The street was empty for now, but the noise from the fight would draw attention within seconds. Uncle Fernando lived only a few blocks away.
He could not let this battle get anywhere near home.
Out of the city, he thought desperately.
I have to get them away from New York.
Oscar forced his exhausted muscles to move.
With one quick motion, he slammed a powerful kick into the SUV’s windshield, creating an opening before firing a web at the nearest streetlight. He dropped onto the asphalt and launched himself toward the edge of the city.
Behind him, the SUV’s engine roared to life.
The hunt had begun.
Oscar knew he was at a disadvantage, both technologically and numerically, and he knew that if he tried swinging between buildings with his webs the way he normally did, they would catch him almost immediately.
So his legs moved instinctively.
He ran to survive.
The wind tore through his hair while his lungs begged for mercy, but his legs refused to give out. The SUV chased him relentlessly behind, its speed merciless.
As he crossed the George Washington Bridge, the sky finally began revealing itself in its truest form, free from the visual pollution of yellow streetlights. In a strange way, Oscar missed the yellow-tinted sky already.
It meant he was home.
Behind him, the SUV lunged after him with terrifying speed.
Oscar could feel his body beginning to fail, but stopping meant surrendering his freedom.
Now there were no more streetlights left to brighten the sky, and the highway stretched empty except for Oscar and the vehicle hunting him down.
He glanced around desperately, trying to think of some way out of the situation, but nothing around him favored his abilities.
His webs were useless out here.
His body was too exhausted from running to survive a physical fight.
And his senses were completely overwhelmed.
Oscar was going to die.
At least he would die with the beautiful sight of the Catskill Mountains illuminated beneath the starlight.
His speed began slowing, his ragged breathing almost making him collapse onto the road.
Then he felt another sonic blast erupt behind him.
His legs failed instantly.
His body was launched forward with brutal force, sending him plummeting down the ravine below. His vision blurred violently while his consciousness teetered on the edge of collapse.
He could feel every impact as his body slammed against tree trunks and jagged rocks on the way down.
The tingling at the back of his neck became unbearable.
His ears rang nonstop.
And even through all of it, the only thing he could think about was the fact that he had left Lando behind.
They had fought.
And now Oscar’s body was tumbling down a fifteen-meter drop while everything inside him shattered apart.
As he caught another glimpse of the Catskill Mountains, Oscar finally realized just how far from home he truly was.
No one would ever find him out there.
He would probably end up dead in the middle of the night, eaten by a bear before sunrise.
His body finally came to a stop beside a creek.
Every breath escaped his chest painfully. His ribs throbbed harder than before, his legs screamed from running for dozens of kilometers, and despite the deafening ringing in his ears, he could still hear the sound of rushing water and crickets singing somewhere nearby.
Little by little, his consciousness began fading away.
And the very last thing Oscar saw before blacking out was the look of pain on Lando’s face before he walked out of the house.
Maybe, with these abilities, he could build a better world.
When he arrived at Lando’s house, he walked inside without even knocking. He knew Lando’s parents would still be at work, and if he rang the bell, he would probably stand outside for an hour because his best friend would never bother getting up to answer the door.
He headed toward Lando’s bedroom and found an adorable sight waiting for him.
Lando was sprawled across the bed asleep, his entire body laying diagonally while one leg and one arm hung off the mattress, drool staining the pillow.
To Oscar, it was one of the prettiest things he had ever seen.
Whenever he had the chance, he found himself watching Lando.
Lando was one of the most beautiful people Oscar had ever met, even if the brunette could never recognize it himself. His warm tan skin, messy brown curls, green eyes, and the tiny mole near his nose all made Lando look almost angelic in Oscar’s eyes.
Oscar walked closer to the bed and started shaking his friend aggressively while calling his name over and over.
“Lando, wake up. Lando, Lando, wake up. I need to tell you about an idea I had.”
Lando remained completely motionless.
Not a single muscle twitched.
Oscar did not have the patience to deal with Lando’s ridiculously deep sleep right now, so he grabbed the glass of water from the nightstand and dumped it directly onto the sleeping boy’s face.
“LANDO, WAKE UP!”
Lando reacted exactly like a cat would in the same situation. He launched himself off the bed, twisted his entire body dramatically, and ended up collapsing onto the floor.
Oscar found the scene hilarious.
Lando soaked in water, spread out on the ground with wide eyes and heavy breathing.
“Oscar, are you actually trying to kill me?”
Lando stared at him with complete disbelief and indignation while climbing off the floor and grabbing a clean shirt from his closet.
“No, absolutely not. Actually, I have a plan, and I need your support to make it real.”
Suddenly, the room felt far too small for Oscar. The walls seemed to close in around him until they almost crushed his lungs, his breathing growing uneven.
What if Lando did not support him?
There had never been a single moment in Oscar’s life where Lando had not stood beside him. He could not imagine doing something this massive without his best friend supporting him.
Lando was the light at the end of the tunnel on Oscar’s darkest days.
Without him, who would pull him back up after everything went wrong?
He needed support.
Especially from the brunette standing right in front of him.