Spiderman Oneshots

Identity numbers (1)

Everybody, at some point in their lives, will create a second identity for themselves. Writers have pen names, actors have stage names, musicians have nicknames too. With the rise of the internet came more and more second identities: Youtubers, fanfic writers, influencer accounts. 

At the start of time, identity numbers were rare. Everyone knew everyone, and that was fine. But secrets grew and second identities were forged, so nowadays almost everyone but young children have a glowing number over their head. The number signifies how many people are aware of your second identity - for example, the person behind an anonymous popular social media account would have their follower count on display. Some people choose not to keep their second identity secret, others did. This was considered normal.

Peter Parker's first secret identity was a photography account he'd created on Instagram, where he anonymously posted pictures of the city. He'd been proud to show off his number as it ticked up from 20 to 200 over a few weeks, but had been too shy to tell the few people who'd commented on the increase what it was for.

Then he became Spider-Man. As the view count on compilations of him face planting skyscrapers increased, so did his identity number. At school he was mostly able to hide it among the higher numbers of his social media star classmates, and evade any questions from people who noticed how odd it was for someone like him to be so popular. Thankfully there was a general respect for people's second identities so he was mostly left alone.

Aunt May, however, was not so easy to fool. She didn't have an identity number at the moment, but that didn't stop her from noticing when Peter's mostly-stable glowing 312 began to climb - and kept climbing. When it reached a million her subtle hints turned into a full-on interrogation. 

"Peter, honey, your number has been going up very quickly lately. Being so well-known can be a real strain, I'm worried about you. Won't you tell me what it's for? I'm sure it's very impressive."

Peter felt awful but he couldn't tell her, so he sat mutely until she gave a disappointed sigh and went to bed. Not long after, Tony Stark showed up at their house, and then Peter was back from Germany with a brand new suit and a link to the Avengers and his identity number was rising faster than ever. 

This obviously piqued May's interests further and she started paying much more attention. It really wasn't a surprise when he crawled back into his room one day to find her waiting. That was a difficult conversation.

School carried on, and Peter's number was now far too big to escape attention. Even Flash's snide comments had dried up in complete shock at the apparent popularity of nerdy Parker. He stuck out like a sore thumb: Ned had 1621 that he refused to explain but Peter was pretty sure was because of Star Wars fan fiction, MJ had an impressive 3000 from her blog, and Peter was sat between them with an ever-growing number that had long passed 4 million.

And then there was Spider-Man. Time passed, he defeated the Vulture and his fame kept on growing. Along with it came conspiracy theories and a search for his true identity. When he was in the costume a different number was displayed: the 200 or so people who knew him as Peter Parker. That meant his fanbase could figure out that he was a fairly average person, not a celebrity like Tony Stark. From there they were constantly running calculations to try and figure out what sort of number Spider-Man's civilian identity would sport, so that they could look for it in a crowd. Peter watched these online forums with growing unease: his number was becoming a liability.

There were only two ways to decrease your number. One was for your number to change to show a different identity which you felt more connected to. Spider-Man was such a big part of Peter that he couldn't imagine that ever happening. The other was for people to forget about you - some five minutes of fame person who made it into the news might have their number rocket overnight, only to slowly tick back down to its normal level over the next few months. Again, Spider-Man was so famous that he doubted people would ever forget him, even if he dropped off the streets completely.