Miguel felt her lift his chin up so that he could look her in the eyes. He had no idea how well she actually knew the original Spider-Man, but her reassurance meant a lot considering she had first-hand experience with early-century heroism.
She asked a question about how he became the new Spider-Man, and he thought a bit about how to answer. “I guess it started when I had the gall to stand up to Alchemax. They were making Corporate Raiders – super-soldiers, basically – based on my genetics research. I thought they were going too far, too fast. They wanted to experiment on humans. I objected and tried to quit. Tyler Stone, that jackass we saw back at the lab, slipped me a designer drug called Rapture. It bonded to my DNA, making me genetically addicted to it and therefore loyal to the company.
“So I used the gene-altering tech I’d designed to rewrite my DNA back to what it was before. My immediate supervisor sabotaged the equipment, and I guess some spider DNA files were mixed in. So now I’m an unauthorized hybrid, and because the accident destroyed Alchemax property, I became a fugitive. I started wearing this costume to hide my identity, and the local Thor-worshippers started calling me Spider-Man. And … here we are.”
He paused, thinking about this for a bit more. He realized it sounded like he didn’t care about being Spider-Man. “But the thing is… I used to ignore the way the world was. I had a cushy job, a promising career. I was groomed from childhood to be in the good little corporate scientist I ended up becoming. My world was so limited, and I was perfectly content to ignore what the world was really like. Then the more I started wearing the mask, the more I started seeing the world through Spider-Man’s eyes. The first time I found myself here in Downtown, I couldn’t understand why anyone could live this way. I was in a hurry to get back Uptown as fast as possible, but now I keep coming back to it. I’m amazed at how tough people are down here, being able to live their entire lives this way. And I want to help. I want to help reshape this world into something I – and Spider-Man – can stand to look at.”
Looking at her, he scratched the back of his head. That was deeper and more painfully-honest than he usually got with pretty much anyone other than Lyla. “How about you? How’d you end up as an Avenger?”