Miles Morales and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Miles Morales' body ached like hell.

Every single pain-ravaged cell in his exhausted body cried out for relief as he finally pulled his bruised and battered frame over his window frame and onto the floor of his room, whereupon he let out a muffled curse as he impacted the solid floor face first.

For a few minutes, he lay stationary, waiting for the throbbing to die down a little. It had been a rough night, to say the least. He'd been tracking Kingpin's shipments for weeks now; one of his front companies had been making deliveries like clockwork every night, straight from the docks to some abandoned construction site on the edge of Manhattan. Each shipment easily took a dozen lorries to transport, accompanied by a convoy of incredibly well-armed and highly aggressive mercenaries. All of this activity was highly suspicious, of course, but a handful of greased palms ensured Kingpin's shipments went unmolested by the PDNY. Miles had overheard his father grumbling about it when they went out for birthday pizza a few weeks ago and had decided to do a little nocturnal investigating of his own.

If only he'd been a little more cautious.

He'd done some snooping around using his handy camouflage ability, and what he'd found inside those containers confirmed his worst fears; Kingpin was trying to rebuild the collider. The site was directly above several abandoned sections of subway tunnels; the cylindrical structure perfect to accommodate the newly rebuilt universe-blender. Despite coming within minutes of destroying the whole of Manhattan, the crime boss had once again shrugged off the tenets of basic morality, and once again Miles was the only one who could stop him.

His mistake was being too hasty, immediately tracking down the central control room where Miles planned to download the plans from the central computer and immediately forward them to the cops. Although Kingpin's lawyers were successfully able to argue that there was not sufficient evidence to prove their client was directly responsible for levelling the facility or transmutating multiple lamp posts and other parts of city property into pieces of modern art, the police were well aware of the device that had. Standard issue smuggled goods were one thing, but hard proof of an experiment that could destroy the city? No amount of dirty money could turn that many heads.

The room was empty when he entered, and unlike Doc Ock, the latest bunch of boffins didn't seem to put much effort into securing access to their multimillion-dollar physics-defying project, as the password turned out to be 'password.' If the doctor was overseeing the operation and not going through the last rounds of reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy, Miles had thought to himself, then things could have gotten a lot more complicated.

Unfortunately, things did get a lot more complicated.

Upon exiting the room, he'd walked straight into a four-man patrol, having not bothered to memorise the guard rota before making a move.

His second mistake was his split-second decision to try and incapacitate them, rather than flee. He was able to take out three of them, but the fourth managed to yell out a warning into his radio before Miles could web him up.

His third mistake wasn't a mistake at all, just bad luck.

The fourth guard had managed to get a burst of gunfire off as the of Miles' webshooters his arms up, and his bullet just so happened to strike a key bolt on the container that was being moved by a crane directly over Miles' head, springing open the door, and dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars of sensitive, valuable, but most importantly heavy equipment-all over Miles.

His spider-sense had saved him from the worst of it, but he'd taken some pretty bad hits and was briefly knocked . That's when Tombstone had found him, dragging him from the wreckage and beating him to a bloody pulp. The grey enforcer's superhuman ability made every punch feel like Miles was being pummeled by solid stone. He tenderly brushed his hand over his chest at the memory; he was fairly sure that Tombstone had broken one rib and fractured another with a particularly heavy blow, although thankfully none of the shards had pierced his lung or else he'd be in big trouble.

That punch was able to trigger his venom strike out of pure desperation, sending Tombstone flying backwards, and thanks to the darkness he'd been able to limp away without suffering any further injuries. Even worse for Miles, New York had decided not to make things any easier for him that night. By the time he'd dragged himself back to Vision's, he'd foiled five muggings, three assaults, two attempted robberies, and carried a girl who'd overdosed to the emergency room.

He wasn't sure how he'd held himself together through all of it. The fact he was still conscious was a minor miracle to Miles.

Slowly, Miles picked himself up off the floor, exchanged his battered and vomit-streaked suit (that girl must have been on something really bad) for his favourite pyjamas, made himself a mug of hot cocoa, and slumped into his comfy desk chair, finally allowing his aching, throbbing, bruised body to relax.

Although Miles felt utterly drained of all energy, he resisted the urge to sleep, wanting to check on the schematics before he embraced his duvet as a long lost lover. After scanning through page after page of technical data, his eyes rested on a section that made his jaw drop. He read through the blueprints again; surely Kingpin wasn't completely delusional? Surely his eyes, longing for sleep, had misinterpreted what was in front of him.

The first supercollider was partially tapped into New York's electricity grid, alongside dozens of on-site generators. But the schematics for this showed a section for a nuclear reactor to provide the collider with the insanely high levels of energy required.

The collider tearing apart New York was bad enough. But combine that with a likely nuclear meltdown? The casualties could reach millions.

Miles did some more scrolling and found that the uranium fuel was arriving today, but couldn't find an exact time. He glanced out the window, seeing the first tendrils of the sun poke their way above the horizon, and then at his watch. It was almost 5 am. If Kingpin got his hands on the uranium, he could have the device running in days, longer than it would take the PDNY to get the warrant from the DA to shut the site down. And whilst his relationship with the police had somewhat improved, they weren't at the level that they'd accept a tip-off from a teenage vigilante who they officially opposed. The web-head made up his mind; there was no way he could let Kingpin get the uranium. And only he, Miles, this earth's Spider-Man, could stop him.

He began to rise from the chair, only to immediately slide back down again due to the painful response of his body. Now that the adrenaline was out of his system, his ribs were now especially starting to act up; his whole torso was wreathed in flames every time he took a breath. The monitor in front of him had timed out, and Miles could make out a gleaming bruise over his left eye. His arms, exhausted from the constant web-swinging, also added to the mass of pain Miles felt over his whole body.

If things weren't looking great already, he was also mentally exhausted to boot. He'd been in near-constant action from sunset to sunrise, and he'd already been limiting rest opportunities by surveilling Kingpin's deliveries most nights. Frankly, all he wanted to do was to have a long, hot shower, take a few paracetamols, and sleep for the next two days. Already, his eyes were starting to close...

Miles jerked himself awake, mentally scolding himself for almost nodding off. But he could not deny the reality of his situation. He would have to be on constant stakeout all day if he was to intercept the uranium, plus the fact that it would be heavily, heavily guarded by as many gorilla-like mercenaries as Kingpin could buy. His body simply couldn't handle another combat situation, especially when the odds were so stacked against him to begin with.

He gritted his teeth.