[Hider=Withdrawn][CENTER][IMG]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/0199cfa1-c26b-7198-bb79-11788f9e3c07.webp[/IMG][/CENTER]

[color=35aaff]"Huh."[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]It had been about six months, two weeks, and three days since the spider bite. In that time, Spider-Man had directly intervened in what he assumed to be just about every type of petty crime imaginable. And despite an effort to improve, the vigilante had only recently felt that he was starting to learn how to navigate a given scenario. An armed robbery in Soho? That had been a matter of divide and conquer, jumping and moving too fast for the gunmen to be able to spot him, let alone nail him. A high-speed chase wrecking its way through Greenwich Village? It called for gumming up the tires with a careful shot of web fluid, getting the vehicle slowed down enough to whip the passengers out of their seats before delivering the hurt. A hostage crisis at the Themysciran Embassy in Midtown? Well, apart from being an utterly stupid place to be waving around a rifle, given that most of the volunteers were trained in some sort of crazy Greco-Roman style martial art, that had been a matter of stealthily picking off each of the perpetrators room-by-room, sticking close to the ceiling and moving as quietly as possible. 

The point was that it had all felt like another form of science. Solving a problem with some improvisational hypothesis, putting the theoretical into practice, and eliminating the variables with experience. Before eventually whittling it all down to an effective strategy that could be relied upon in situations that demanded quick thinking. The webslinger had never claimed to be an expert at any of it, especially given that he was still over a year away from graduating high school. These kinds of scenarios were far from normal for a teenager to even have to consider, let alone put into practice. People his age were generally more interested in sneaking in a house party beyond their parents' notice, or whether to try out for the next season of football. They didn't have to wonder what the hell to do when faced with a rampaging nine-foot-tall great white shark. With legs and arms, appearing to be breathing air.

And yet, here they were. On one hand, Spider-Man's initial reaction had been momentary denial. Surely, he wasn't [i]actually[/i] seeing what was standing right infront of him, which was a creature bigger than anyone that he'd ever encountered and reeking of half-devoured fish. Was it some elaborate cosplay? It didn't seem likely. Even most blockbuster movie productions didn't think to put gills that actually moved on the sides of their monster hybrid's head. A mutant or a metahuman seemed more within the realm of possibility, but even that explanation left the webhead with more questions than answers: in all of the documented cases, most mutants woke up sometime after puberty with swatches of reptilian scales or something. They didn't just suddenly have their entire biological makeup eroded with the traits of an aquatic predator.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff]"I'm tryin' really hard not to tell you that we're gonna need a bigger boat. I totally [i]won't[/i], but I figured I'd let you know... the temptation's there."[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]The creature simply stared back at him, quizically. A fresh halibut limply fell from its massive hand and landed with a splat, the only thing cutting the tension that was hanging in the air. In all honesty, Peter could feel his heart pounding out of his chest. He was rightfully terrified, doubly so whenever the giant shark man - or person, or whatever their gender technically could be in this corner of the animal kingdom - moved forward with more curiosity about what it was facing than anything. Everything in Spider-Man's body was screaming at him to run about as far away from the area as possible, to forget this had ever happened for the sake of his own sanity. 

But he knew that he couldn't. This thing had caused a ton of property damage and created a pretty sizable disturbance. People were panicked and probably right to be. And the police were probably about as prepared to deal with this as any random passerby. More to the point, someone was gonna get hurt if this wasn't contained.[/COLOR] [color=35aaff][i]Guess this still fits the whole great power, great responsibility bill.[/i][/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]After sustaining another moment of silence, where the brute seemed to sniff at the air before deciding whether to advance, Spider-Man leaped off the ceiling and landed upright. He wasn't trained in the ways of animal control, but he certainly felt like his only choice was to wing it until something seemed to work. Holding his hands out infront of him, the teenager tried desperately to ignore the laughable height difference between them before gathering up what was left of his draining courage.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff]"Nice fishy. Calm, calm fishy-fish person. Let's not get any ideas. I've seen [i]Deep Blue Sea[/i], and let me tell you, I am not about to go out like Samuel L Jack..."[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Then it did exactly what Peter feared. With his spider-senses racheting up to eleven, the wall-crawler let out a quiet "yipe!" as the shark-guy lunged directly at him, baring its horrifying rows of razor-sharp teeth. Retracting his hands immediately, Spider-Man spun and fired a webline out of the market and yanked as hard as possible. The maneuver, operating purely on instinctual survival, worked enough to pull him directly out of the way of certain death before the brute's jaws could chomp down on his comparatively tiny frame. Launched towards the street at a breakneck pace, Spider-Man grabbed onto the same street lamp that he'd perched on right before entering, spun his body around in a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle, and stomped both feet onto it to secure himself. Just in time to watch as big, finny, and gruesome smashed his way through a vacant wooden stand of cocktail shrimp varieties.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff]"Whoah, whoah, whoah!"[/color]

[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/01999a6c-a19d-73c5-b3cb-f5d265db0eec.webp[/img]

[COLOR=darkgray]Holding out his hands again, two fingers pressed into each palm, Spider-Man fired off twin strands of webbing that hit eachother mid-stream. The fluid instantaneously formed into a massive screen of sticky netting that blanketed the destroyed entrance of the market, catching the toothsome giant off guard as it barreled directly into the wall of goop. For a moment, the wall-crawler watched as an indent of his pursuer warped the netting, evidently confused as to what the fluid was and why it suddenly had trouble moving. For Spider-Man, it was the first moment in a harrowing few minutes that a sense of relief washed over him. To the point that he couldn't help but taunt the creature's feeble attempts to break itself loose.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff]"Yeah, that's right! Time the frak out, ugly!"[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Then the sound of ripping started. Panicked, the webspinner readied himself to fire off a reinforcement layer to coat what was already there, but he couldn't even react in time if he tried. Within seconds, the teeth of the shark pierced through the webbing like tissue paper, and the sight of its massive fingers appeared in another, bigger tear beneath them. With a pull, the sticky entrapment came down around the shark and splintered into hundreds of strands that looked like a pile of loose wiring. The monster stood revealed once again, ripping its legs free with a concentrated step forward. 

The urge to head in the opposite direction only increased in Spider-Man, but he noticed a crowd of onlookers starting to build on opposite sides of him, clearly horrified as to what was happening. If Sharknado caught a whiff of the rest of the fresh meat in the area, there was no telling what kind of a feeding frenzy it'd go on. He couldn't take the chance.[/COLOR] 

[color=35aaff][I]Please don't let me die doing this very stupid thing.[/I][/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Valiantly, Spider-Man somersaulted off the lamp post and fired another webline. This time, it sailed over his approaching enemy's head, securely locking onto a section of the brick wall that hadn't been compromised. Wrapping it around his wrist, Spider-Man jumped back a few paces, strategically waiting for the brute to get to where he wanted it.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff]"Okay, big guy. Let's be reasonable. Arachnids are about as far away from tuna as you can get."[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Pulling back at it until his elbow locked into a sharp arch, Spider-Man dug his heels into the concrete, creating as much tension in the line as possible. The shark guy remained thankfully oblivious, focused entirely on the red and blue morsel infront of it.[/COLOR] 

[color=35aaff]"For one thing, we're [i]really[/i] bad for the gut."[/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Throwing his heels behind him, the webhead allowed gravity to do the work for him. With the inertia building from the outstretched line, Spider-Man shot at Fish N' Chips with the velocity of a missile. Using less than the fraction of a second he had, the wall-crawler flipped through the air and lined the bottom of his heel directly for the creature's abdominal area. With his combined strength and the speed at which he was going, Peter had quietly done the equations in his head, reckoning that he'd hit zero G with enough force - at least, if the space hadn't been so enclosed.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff][i]C'mon, Spidey. This has to be enough.[/i][/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]The kick connected, and... nothing happened. The brute looked down at him, once again puzzled, watching the teenager bounce off its stomach and hit the pavement, equally as dumbfounded. It had felt like kicking a wall that refused to give, and hurt enough to cause the vigilante to question whether he had just broken his ankle. But his adrenaline was running too high to worry about it right now. Because by the time Spider-Man looked back up, the shark guy was on him, grabbing that same ankle and effortlessly hoisting him into the air. This was it, he thought - this was where he ended up eaten alive infront of a crowd of spectators. He wanted to panic and cry out, begging for his life, but he found himself unable to do anything. The fear had frozen him solid.

So whenever the creature made its next move, a tiny part of him felt relieved. One sniff of Spider-Man's body had caused his enemy to lose interest immediately. Whether it was simply because Peter had used too much AXE Body Spray that morning or that the shark guy could sense the bizarre cocktail of whatever rested in the blood flowing through his veins, the webslinger didn't know. But the shark guy simply shook its head, turned towards the fish market, and tossed him back inside like a frisbee. 

Spider-Man went flying into a cardboard crab standee that read [i]"ALWAYS FRESH!"[/i] and collided with a case of filleted salmon, causing tiny glass shards to explode everywhere and rip at a couple of spots of his costume. His head spinning, Spider-Man nevertheless grabbed at the edges of the case and pulled himself out, already feeling more battered than he ever had and now reeking of seafood - but still very much alive.[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff][I]Well. Know one thing.[/I][/color]

[COLOR=darkgray]Hearing the screams from outside the building, Spider-Man shot upright and limped his way forward. Firing another pair of weblines at the gaping hole where an entrance used to be, the wall-crawler sighed to himself, arched his aching body back, and pulled again - launching himself right into the fray before anyone could enter the food chain in the worst way imaginable. He didn't know how, given that the creature was strong enough to withstand even a superhumanly charged hit, but he'd find a way to gain the advantage.

After all, how tough could a mega fish truly be?[/COLOR]

[color=35aaff][I]I'm never eating calamari again.[/i][/color][/hider]