The Roof Is On Fire Who: Miguel O'Hara and Greer Grant Where: Tigra's place, Metropolis, DE When: January 18th, 10pm-ish. What: Miguel -- in costume -- makes a surprise visit to Greer's place. Losing his apartment to a fire might have something to do with it. Rating: TBD
Burning buildings in Gotham City normally didn't make the evening news in Metropolis. But when costumed crimefighters were involved, the media and the public tended to take notice.
"...costumed vigilante work tirelessly to save twenty people from a burning apartment complex in Manhattan earlier today," the anchorwoman reported. "Witnesses describe an adult male wearing a dark blue costume with stylized markings at the scene, ushering entire families to safety within minutes of the fire's outbreak."
The news report showed footage of the blaze being extinguished by firefighters, then cut to video -- obviously from a cell phone -- of a familiar figure zipping in and out of the burning building, carrying more soot-covered people each time he emerged. After dropping off a woman, the figure spotted the person with the cell phone and started striding toward the camera's POV. He stopped next to a fire hydrant, studied it and the positioning of the fire for a moment, then kicked the top of the hydrant to pop off the top. A spray of water blanketed the area, and the man cupped his hands in the spray to direct it toward on of the windows. He had to cut this short when the fire engines arrived, and he leaped away.
The report package cut to sound bites from witnesses and firemen at the scene. The witnesses were grateful, as most of them had been saved from the building, the firemen were annoyed that the costumed man had wrecked the fire hydrant, and the teenager holding the cell phone commented that the man looked and moved kind of like Spider-Man, but with a different costume.
That man in the costume was busy climbing up the side of the building, quickly finding the window to Greer's apartment. He wore the same dark-blue costume with red markings that was seen in the footage; that costume still smelled like smoke and ash.
The anchorwoman was busy identifying him as the same man who had publicly defeated Vulture late last year and had assisted the real Spider-Man, Captain America, and other heroes in the Raft breakout in early January. Various news outlets still had no idea what to call this figure, who'd never bothered to reveal his name (superhero codename or otherwise) to the public. Thanks to a staff writer at New York's Daily Bugle newspaper, "The Scarlet Spider" was starting to become popular.