The streets of New York City had become a living nightmare in the nine months since Jin— the man the tabloids once called "the real Spider-Man" — had vanished. Not died in some glorious battle against Thanos or Galactus, but simply… gone. One day he was there, swinging through Hell's Kitchen with Carnage's red tendrils whipping behind him like bloody banners, taking down Kingpin's last major shipment and leaving a note on the NYPD roof: "Tired of carrying it all. Someone else's turn." The next day, He committed suicide. No body. No portal flash. Just an empty web-line dangling from the Empire State Building and a city that suddenly remembered how heavy its own weight felt.
No one wanted the job.
The Avengers were the first to wash their hands of it. In the rebuilt Avengers Tower, a holographic meeting played out under the cold blue lights.
"Street-level is not our mandate," Steve Rogers had said, shield resting on the table like an accusation. "We handle global threats. Hydra remnants. Skrull incursions. The kid handled muggers and symbiote junkies. That was never our wheelhouse."
Tony Stark swirled a glass of scotch, eyes hollow. "I offered him suits. He said no. Said the suit made him 'just another billionaire with gadgets.' Fine. Let the neighborhood sort itself out. I've got a moon base to finish."
Carol Danvers crossed her arms. "I'm not babysitting bodegas in Queens. I've got Kree fleets to worry about."
The meeting ended in ten minutes. No vote. No discussion. The official statement from the Avengers PR team was a single tweet: "Spider-Man's legacy lives on in all of us. New York is in good hands."
It wasn't.
The street heroes lasted longer, but resentment festered like an open wound.
Daredevil stood on a rooftop in Clinton, rain hammering his red suit, listening to the city scream. "I can't be everywhere," he muttered into the comms. Jessica Jones answered from a bar in Hell's Kitchen, glass already empty.
"Then stop trying, Murdock. Jin took the bullets for all of us. Now the bullets are ours and I'm done catching them for free. I've got a daughter. Luke's got a bar to run. Danny's off meditating in K'un-Lun again. We're not him. We never were."
Luke Cage's deep voice crackled next. "Man carried Carnage like it was a backpack and still smiled for kids at the Y. I punch one Rhino and my back hurts for a week. Let the cops earn their overtime."
The Punisher didn't even bother replying. He just loaded another clip and kept hunting. At least Frank Castle was honest: he'd always preferred the dark anyway.
The result was visible in every borough.
Muggings tripled. Symbiote cults—small-time dealers who'd scraped residue from old Venom fights—now operated openly in abandoned subways. The Daily Bugle ran daily headlines: "WHERE IS OUR HERO?" "NEW YORK ABANDONED." J. Jonah Jameson, for once, wasn't screaming about costumed vigilantes; he was screaming for one.
And the villains noticed.
Tonight was the breaking point.
A news helicopter fought turbulence above 42nd Street as the reporter clung to her mic, voice shaking.
"Live from Midtown Manhattan—this is Channel 7 Action News. For the third night in a row, the city is under siege by two symbiote-enhanced super-villains. Green Goblin and Mysterio have turned Times Square into a warzone. Civilian casualties are rising. The Avengers have issued a statement saying they are 'monitoring the situation.' The NYPD has declared a citywide emergency. And still—no sign of any hero willing to step into the void left by the Deceased Spider-Man."
The camera zoomed in.
On the roof of the old Condé Nast building, Norman Osborn floated on his glider, now a nightmarish fusion of Goblin tech and Carnage biomass. Crimson tendrils snaked from his spine, forming extra arms that ended in bone blades. His pumpkin bombs pulsed with living veins, ready to hatch into smaller Carnage spawn on impact. The Goblin Formula had always made him a monster; Carnage made him a god of slaughter. He remembered watching Jin and Carnage tear through the Kingpin's empire years ago—blood painting the walls, laughter echoing like madness given form. Norman had wanted that power ever since. He had finally taken it.
Opposite him, Quentin Beck hovered in a warped Venom suit—matte black with glowing white eyes stretched across his illusion dome. The symbiote had burned away his theatrical flair; all that remained was brute hunger. Tendrils lashed out like whips, shattering billboards. Beck had once been on the receiving end of Jin's Arachnid-Venom experiments during a botched heist. The raw power had haunted him. Now he wielded it.
"Die already, you psychotic freak!" Mysterio bellowed, voice raw and distorted. He lunged, tendrils spearing forward.
The Goblin laughed, a sound like breaking glass and wet meat. "Come and try it, globe-head!" He hurled a pumpkin bomb. The explosive detonated in a shower of symbiote shrapnel that shredded concrete and sent a taxi flipping end-over-end into a storefront. Pedestrians screamed and ran.
Below, the Sinister Six had gathered in an alley, watching. Doctor Octopus adjusted his tentacles. "We should intervene. This level of chaos—"
Vulture cut him off. "Are you insane? Let them kill each other. The winner will be weakened. Then we strike. Besides… without that spider brat, who's going to stop us?"
Electro laughed. "Exactly. New York is finally ours."
But the fight was too loud, too bright. Windows shattered for blocks. A family of four huddled in a subway entrance, mother crying into her phone: "Please, someone—Spider-Man used to save us. Where is he? Why won't anyone help?"
That was when the sand rose.
A living dune exploded upward from the street, forming a twenty-foot wall between the two symbiote titans. Flint Marko stepped out of it, body compacting into dense, iron-laced muscle. His eyes glowed with quiet fury.
"You two. This ends now."
The Goblin tilted his head, tendrils writhing. "Sandman? You're still playing hero? Pathetic. Jin's dead. No one's coming to back you up."
Mysterio's helmet flickered with static. "Walk away, Marko, or I'll turn your grains into glass."
Flint didn't flinch. "Jin taught me something before he left. Said I was wasting my potential swinging fists of sand. Showed me anime—One Piece, JoJo—stuff about hardening, density control. I listened." His right arm morphed into a massive mace of black iron-sand. "This? Iron Sand. Hits like a tank. Holds like steel."
He swung.
The mace connected with Mysterio's chest. The impact sounded like a wrecking ball hitting a car crusher. Mysterio flew back thirty feet, cratering the side of a building. Cracks spiderwebbed across his helmet.
"Gah—how?!"
Flint was already moving. His left arm became a rapid-fire cannon. Iron-sand bullets tore through the air in a gatling barrage. Each shot punched holes in the Goblin's glider, shearing Carnage tendrils that tried to regenerate.
The Goblin snarled and dive-bombed, extra blades slashing. Flint let the blades pass through his torso—sand parting like water—then reformed behind him and slammed an iron fist into the Goblin's spine. Norman screamed as Carnage biomass cracked.
Mysterio recovered, illusions exploding outward—dozens of fake Venoms charging. Flint simply expanded, becoming a sandstorm that swallowed every illusion whole. "Jin always said your tricks were just smoke. Guess he was right."
Beck thrashed inside the vortex. "Let me out—!"
Flint compressed. Mysterio's body folded inward, trapped in a living prison of iron-hard sand. The villain's screams muffled as Flint grew larger, absorbing the mass.
The Goblin hovered, panting, prepping his final Carnage bomb. "You're next, you oversized—"
The symbiote on his back suddenly convulsed.
*{WHERE IS SHE?!}*
The voice was not Norman's. It was wet, rasping, ancient—pure Carnage panic. Red tendrils whipped wildly, rejecting their host. Norman's eyes widened in horror as the biomass peeled away in violent strips, ejecting him mid-air. He crashed onto the rooftop, glider sparking and dying.
Carnage reformed into a towering, independent mass—eyes darting in every direction, tendrils flailing like a creature in full-blown terror.
*{No no no NO! She escaped that place?!}*
It fired a wild web-line, swinging away into the night toward an impossible direction—east, across the river, toward the faint dimensional ripple only symbiotes could feel.
Flint stared, sand swirling uneasily around his feet. "What the hell was that?"
On the ground, civilians slowly emerged from cover. A little girl pointed up at Flint. "Mister Sandman… you saved us. Like Spider-Man used to."
Flint looked down at his iron-hard fists, then at the chaos still burning across the city. Sirens wailed in the distance. No Avengers. No Daredevil. No one.
He sighed, voice heavy. "Kid… I'm no Spider-Man. Never was. Jin carried this city on his back for years. Symbiotes, gangs, Wilson Fisk, everything. We all let him. Now he's gone and nobody wants the weight. Not the big teams. Not even me, really. I just… couldn't watch it burn tonight."
He dissolved into sand, drifting away on the wind, leaving two defeated villains groaning on the rooftop and a city that finally understood the cost of letting one man carry everything.
Across the dimensional veil, in the rain-slicked outskirts of Gotham, Jin slammed the rear doors of the battered van. The vehicle was loaded: Beta's half-built frame strapped down, duffel bags of scavenged tech, the silver chain with Delia's photo tucked safely under his hoodie. The Iceberg Lounge job had left Penguin's entire organization hunting him. Staying meant a bullet in the back or a cage in Blackgate. Time to move.
He leaned against the van, lighting a cigarette with a small spark of purple mana. Smoke curled into the night air.
"Marvel's probably still burning," he muttered to himself. "Avengers too busy playing gods. Street guys too tired to care. I gave them nine years—nine years of blood, broken bones, and Carnage trying to eat my soul every other Tuesday. Told them I was done. Left a note. And still… nobody stepped up. Guess that's the real superpower—making everyone else realize how heavy the job actually is."
He exhaled, watching the smoke drift toward the city lights. "At least here I can start clean. No symbiotes chasing me. No responsibilities I didn't ask for. Just me, Beta, Dahlia if she follows… and whatever this world throws next."
A soft, wet sound echoed from the alley behind him—barely audible, like silk sliding over concrete.
Jin didn't turn. He'd learned long ago that some things you feel before you see.
In the shadows, Agatha—Double—watched with glowing red eyes. Her form was mostly humanoid tonight: tall, feminine curves wrapped in shifting crimson-black biomass, long tendrils forming hair that moved with a life of its own. She had torn through three demonic realms to find this world. She had reshaped hell itself into a twisted wonderland just for Jin and her. And when he had driven her back with wind-magic and that ridiculous Air Mustang suit, she had waited. Patient. Obsessed.
Now Carnage's distant scream had reached her across the veil. The parent had sensed the child's escape.
"Soon, my sweet love," Double whispered, voice a loving, hungry caress that only symbiotes could hear. "You ran so far. You tried to leave the weight behind. But I am the weight you can never drop. I will build you a new world here—Gotham will be our wonderland. No more heroes refusing the burden. No more city that forgets you. Just you and me. Eternal."
A single tendril extended, tasting the air where Jin had stood moments ago. The van's taillights disappeared around the corner.
Double smiled with too many teeth.
"Just wait a little longer…"
She melted into the shadows, following the faint scent of purple mana and old memories.
Back in New York, the rain kept falling on a city that had finally learned the hardest truth: when the one person willing to carry everything finally walks away, the weight doesn't disappear.
It crushes everyone left behind.
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Author's note: I use "ia" to make it better and more fluid, so sorry, I just want the best for you all...