If New York was any less lively at night than it was during the day, the difference was hardly noticeable.
Countless streets were lit by streetlights and electronic signs, crowds of pedestrians went about their business, and the traffic jams showed no sign of disappearing.
Sometimes, when I read comics or watched superhero movies, I got the impression that all I had to do was peek into the nearest dark alley to stumble across a crime in progress.
Some ridiculous statistic about the number of crimes committed in New York every day that I once came across online only reinforced that impression.
Surprisingly, though, our superhero debut was going remarkably smoothly.
Of course, we hadn’t chosen the most dangerous parts of the city for our first outing.
Going to Hell’s Kitchen, for example, would have been nothing short of suicide.
We needed to gain some experience before taking on anything genuinely dangerous.
Moving across the rooftops of skyscrapers, even with teleportation, was exhilarating.
I’d already done it during our tests and training sessions, but I still hadn’t completely gotten used to it.
I guess every boy dreams of becoming a superhero at some point during childhood.
And now, one of those dreams had actually come true.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy about it, though.
I could already see a mountain of problems waiting for me.
Teleportation was an excellent ability.
To be honest, I would have preferred something with greater offensive and defensive potential, but I wasn’t about to complain.
It could have been much worse.
Besides, this was Marvel.
Around here, superpowers seemed to be handed out on practically every street corner.
You just had to make sure you grabbed a few while they were on sale.
It was a joke, of course, but there was some truth to it.
Opportunities would come.
I just had to make sure I didn’t miss them.
I remembered how, in Homecoming, Vulture and his crew had put together a flying suit and a whole collection of impressive gadgets almost in their own garage.
If I managed to get my hands on something useful from the Chitauri and let Penny take it apart and modify it, my little genius would probably be able to turn it into something incredible.
Making friends with Stark could also be a good idea.
Even if she only helped us with materials, that alone would be an enormous advantage.
After all our preparations, my finances were already scraping the bottom.
The suit, bulletproof vest, and stun guns had cost me a small fortune.
Magic could be another excellent option, but I had absolutely no idea how to get started with it, or whether I could even use it.
I didn’t know where Kamar-Taj was, and I wasn’t aware of any other way to learn magic.
Some members of the Hand apparently knew how to use it, but that definitely wasn’t an option for me.
Just because I’d decided to become a superhero didn’t mean I’d decided to become suicidal.
There were also various serums, radiation exposure, and symbiotes, but those were options reserved for the truly desperate.
The chances of turning myself into some bloodthirsty monster were simply too high.
Asking the Hand to teach me magic might actually be safer.
I also couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that I might develop additional abilities over time, although that seemed extremely unlikely.
If I assumed that I was a mutant, I couldn’t remember any mutants who had suddenly awakened completely new powers later on.
There was that storyline in the Spider-Man cartoon where his mutations continued developing and he began turning into some kind of spider-like monster, but that was hardly an encouraging example.
As for my teleportation, it was pretty damn good.
I could teleport within a radius of roughly two city blocks and take other people with me.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured out exactly how many people I could transport.
After all, Penny was the only person I had to help with the testing.
The only real limitation was that my destination either had to be within my direct line of sight, or I had to be able to clearly visualize where I wanted to go.
A flicker of flames in the distance pulled me out of my thoughts after another jump.
“Spider, looks like there’s a fire in a residential building on 57th Street. I’m heading there.”
I contacted my partner through the communicator she had built herself.
According to Parker, the devices were extremely basic and fairly easy to intercept.
So we’d agreed to be extremely careful with them and never use each other’s real names over the radio.
The communicators, web-shooters, stun guns, all of it was thanks to our young heroine.
Was it normal that, despite being the founder of a superhero team, albeit one consisting of only two people, I felt like the most useless member?
Yeah, Penny and I had decided to split up so we could cover more ground.
We could both move through the city incredibly quickly, and if either of us ran into trouble, we could regroup almost immediately and fight together.
“Got it. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Be careful, Raven.”
Yeah, my superhero name wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of originality.
Raven.
The costume wasn’t much better.
I’d never been too proud to admit that creativity wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
I reached the scene within seconds.
A couple of jumps later, I was already standing on the roof of a building opposite the burning apartment block.
Most of the residents had already been evacuated.
They stood below, watching helplessly as their homes burned.
The firefighters had arrived and were already working frantically to rescue anyone who hadn’t managed to get out and contain the flames.
Penny hadn’t arrived yet.
I spotted a girl trapped in one of the rooms, with the fire cutting off her escape.
She was my first priority.
With one jump, I appeared beside her.
With the second, I teleported both of us directly onto the pavement beside the firefighters.
The girl hadn’t even had time to realize that she was safe before I was gone again.
I might have found my calling.
When it came to evacuations, I was practically unbeatable.
Two jumps and someone was safe.
Of course, not every rescue was as easy as the first.
Not everyone was conveniently positioned near a window, so I had to move through the burning building myself.
Things didn’t always go smoothly.
Being able to teleport outside whenever I needed a breath of fresh air was incredibly useful, but the disadvantages of my metal mask quickly became obvious.
It heated up so badly that I felt as though it was melting along with my face.
All I could do was hope I wouldn’t end up with burns.
Once Penny arrived, things became much easier.
She would locate people and report their positions through the communicator, and I’d get them out.
The problem was that I had to teleport outside just to hear her properly.
Inside the burning building, the roaring flames were so loud they made my ears ring.
I couldn’t help being impressed by how accustomed New Yorkers, and especially the firefighters, already seemed to be to superheroes.
Two costumed strangers had basically taken over part of the firefighters’ job, and nobody seemed particularly bothered.
Then again, maybe it was simply a case of not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
We were saving people.
In a situation like this, that was what mattered most.
The firefighters weren’t standing around doing nothing either.
They prevented the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings and quickly began getting the blaze under control.
The last person I pulled out of the fire was an enormous guy.
The moment he realized he was safe, he immediately threw himself into the arms of four women who were apparently his wives and burst into tears.
Yeah, I couldn’t really blame him.
In this world, men weren’t ashamed of crying over practically anything, and this guy had come within a few millimeters of death.
When I found him, the flames had already nearly reached him.
Come to think of it, could I consider my theory about being able to teleport more than one person confirmed?
This guy alone could probably count as three people.
“Are you okay?” I asked Penny.
“I’m the one who should be asking you that! You were in there longer than I was!” she huffed.
“What could possibly happen to me?” I waved it off casually.
We were both fine.
Our costumes had scorch marks here and there, but nothing serious.
Naturally, we’d attracted plenty of attention.
People were filming us on their phones and shouting questions.
Most of them were simply curious onlookers.
The residents of the burned building had more important things to worry about.
Honestly, I’d handled the whole thing much more calmly than I’d expected.
I’d been far more nervous while safely patrolling the city by teleporting from rooftop to rooftop.
When you don’t know what you’re about to face, it’s much easier to imagine all sorts of horrors.
I suppose it was like ripping off a Band-Aid.
You could spend all day being terrified of doing it, but once you actually pulled it off, you realized the fear had never been worth it.
“Excuse me.”
The commander of the firefighting team approached us.
“Allow me to thank you on behalf of the NYFD. You were a tremendous help.”
“Oh, there’s no need,” Penny said awkwardly as she shook the woman’s hand.
“We just did what we could.”
“How modest,” the firefighter said with a grin.
“I haven’t heard of you before. Are you new heroes?”
“Yes. I’m Spider-Girl, and this is Raven,” Parker introduced us.
“Pleasure to meet you.”
I politely shook the woman’s hand.
“You’re a man!”
The firefighter stared at me in shock.
I probably should have been offended.
But that was just how this world worked.
Apparently, women found it easier to assume I was a flat-chested girl who had simply been unlucky in the genetic department than to believe that an actual guy had put on a costume and gone out to save people.
The firefighter’s exclamation had been loud enough to carry.
News that one of the new heroes was a man spread through the scattered crowd of onlookers behind the fire barrier at record speed.
Apparently, quite a few people had been listening to our conversation.
We hadn’t been standing very far away from them.
A wave of astonished whispers swept through the crowd.
Phone cameras started flashing even more frequently, and the questions became louder.
“I’m sorry,” the firefighter said apologetically when she realized what kind of commotion her words had caused.
“It’s fine,” I waved her off.
“They would have found out sooner or later anyway. But I think we’d better go.”
With that, I teleported to the nearest rooftop.
Penny soon joined me.
Things hadn’t gone quite as planned.
I’d never expected our first night out to involve fighting criminals.
Instead, I’d ended up working as a rescue worker.
But people had been saved, and our careers had officially begun.
What more could I ask for?
As for our plans, I supposed I’d better get used to the fact that things rarely went according to plan in this line of work.