- Black Tarantula - Male Reader x Marvel

Chapter 8: Just Another Day

[The [L/N] Residence, Forest Hills, Queens]

It was long past midnight by the time [Y/N] finally stumbled through the door of his modest home in Forest Hills. The downpour outside hadn't let up, the rain masking his return under its unrelenting rhythm. It was a small mercy, considering the state he was in. Each step came with a searing jolt of pain radiating from his injured ankle, the makeshift cloth wraps around it soaked through with blood and rain, stiffening into a grim testament to the night's events. His hands, battered and torn, throbbed in protest, coated with a dried layer of blood, some of it his own, much of it not.

He leaned against the doorframe to catch his breath, letting the adrenaline ebb away. Yet, the flood of memories began anew, unbidden and vivid. One by one, the night replayed itself in his mind, the isolated mobster crumpling under his fists, the four taken down in the maze of shipping containers, the three who thought circling him would save them, and finally, the frantic man in the trunk. Each moment was seared into his consciousness, each face a reminder of what he'd done. Not what someone else had done, what he had done.

It was no badge that had stopped the trafficking deal tonight, no mask from the Fantastic Four, no government task force swooping in at the last moment. Just him.

The thought settled heavily in his chest, part triumph, part burden. He looked down at his bruised knuckles, now trembling slightly as the weight of the night's violence caught up with him. What could have happened to those women if he hadn't been there gnawed at his mind. He didn't want to imagine it, but the possibility loomed like a dark spectre. Their freedom was no stroke of luck, no miracle, it had been his choice to intervene.

For years, he had wrestled with that choice. The city had plenty of heroes, men and women who could do things beyond imagination. What difference could someone like him make? What business did he have wading into the world of mobsters and human trafficking? But tonight, he had found his answer.

Crime hadn't changed. Criminals were just as callous, just as greedy, just as unrelenting as the night his mother had been taken from him. Gunned down in a nameless alley, her life ended with the same indifference as one snuffing out a cigarette. And no one had helped. No one had even looked twice.

That thought burned in him now as it had then. His mother's death had been a brutal lesson, people didn't step in. They didn't intervene, not when it mattered most. Not the bystanders, not the police, and certainly not the criminals who thrived in the shadows of apathy.

But he could.

He limped toward the small table by the window, the rain outside painting shifting patterns of light across the room. His breath was steady now, but his resolve was anything but calm. The brazenness of tonight's operation, the gall it took to conduct human trafficking just out of view of the East River, had cemented what he'd known for years. No one else was going to fix this.

If the system wasn't enough, if the heroes in the city's headlines couldn't spare their time for the filth festering in its alleys, then it fell to him. His fists may have been raw, his body broken, but tonight he'd delivered a message to the criminals of New York. This city would not sleep idly while they thrived.

His reflection in the rain-streaked window caught his eye. A bruised, battered figure stared back, but beneath the scars, there was something new. A clarity. A purpose.

It wasn't about revenge, not entirely. This was about fear. The same fear that had choked him that night in the alley as a child now had a new target. He would take it from the innocent, the helpless, and he would return it to the predators who had preyed unchecked for too long.

"I'll make them afraid." He whispered to himself, his voice hoarse but resolute.

He clenched his fists, ignoring the sting as his knuckles tightened. This wasn't a single battle, it was the beginning of a war. His war. A crusade to drag the criminal element from the shadows, to remind them that their power wasn't absolute.