Sama and Spider-man

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                "Um, you aren't going to jump or anything, are you?"

                I slowly turned my head to the guy in very tight-fitting blue and red spandex who had somehow miraculously appeared on the edge of the rooftop next to me.

                "No. Are you? Wait, stupid question, of course you are." I shook my head.

                "Well, it is just a widdle bit dangerous for a normal person to be, you know, sitting atop a twenty-story building like that." He looked at my expression. "Not that I can't totally empathize. The view is much better up here, you know? You get to see all the SHIELD vehicles flying by so much better."

                I sighed. "If you put your head down on the concrete, you'll actually see I'm sitting about an inch above the edge."

                I saw him blink inside his mask. He sort of shifted most of his body backwards while he bent down, holding tight to the stone with his feet and bending with flexibility most men didn't have. "Oh. Well, that's a big relief off my back. You can fly?"

                "No. It's a ki-field, maximum radius two inches from my skin. Just keeps my ass from sitting on bird poop."

                "Ki-field? Martial arts? Like Iron Fist?" He hopped up next to me again, crouching with the ease of someone with a high strength to weight ratio and perfect balance.

                "No. He uses chi. Much higher order energy. Kind of like comparing an electric outlet in your house to a lightning bolt, or a particle beam. Kinda at two different levels, you know?"

                "No, I did not, but now I am enlightened. Ki with the sharp k and chi with the cough are different things. Got it!"

                "Who said martial arts were hard?" I riposted easily.

                "Every single martial artist I know. They're all like 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' and all."

                "Ah, so I've made you a dangerous thing. Well, look out world!"

                He stood up, struck a pose akimbo. "Hoo-ha! I've been recognized! Spider-man, Dangerous Thing!" He air-framed it. "Trademark pending!"

                "20% of royalties, my cut," I replied evenly.

                "30!" he retorted.

                "15!"

                "35!

                "12.5!"

                "40% and that's my final offer!"

                I grumbled aloud. "Fine, have it your way, you big meanie."

                "Spider-man is also a master negotiator!" he declared to the world, cheering himself with both arms.

                "Your fluid grasp of contractual language has defeated me, I acknowledge it." I sighed heavily. "But I bet you don't have a… pen in that suit to seal the deal, do you?"

                He patted himself down quickly. "Curses! Must have left it in the kevlar outfit!"

                "A reasonable mistake. Pens, bulletproof, they just go together naturally. You can draw targets on yourself with them, and everything!"

                "I use them to touch up the webbing lines," he whispered sotto voce. "They get scuffed a lot when fighting."

                "Gotta look good for the cellphones," I nodded back sagely. "Broken lines are the worst. Makes it look like you let something get away."

                He shot me another glance. "Flirting! Are we flirting? I don't think jumpers are allowed to flirt!"

                "Given how much you bounce around, then, you must have no sex life whatsoever," I deadpanned back.

                "I'm Spider-man. I don't jump, I spring!" He did a little ballerina hop in the air, even spun around once, landing right en pointe.

                "Pretty sure springing is a small, non-crucial part of jumping. And a fouette jete is a leap, not a spring."

                "That was not! No tutu!"

                "Tights," I pointed out. "Insult ye not Baryshnikov."

                "Please! At least Travolta!" he whined.

                I gave him a strange look. "You're a little young for disco or greasing… and your life is stranger than fiction, not pulp."

                He put out his hand, stopped. "Okay, I was going to say that he was at least a New Yorker, but he's from Jersey. You got a name, not-a-jumper?"

                "Sam!" I replied firmly.

                "You are?"

                "I am!"

                He looked around me suspiciously. "No eggs. No ham."

                "Bleu Cheese. Pickles." I pulled out the fresh containers of both, popped them open. "Would you like them here, or there?"

                "I do not want them here, I do not want them there. I do not want them anywhere. I do not like bleu cheese and pickles, I do not like them, Sam I am!"

                A minute later, our respective geekdom established with boats, goats, rain, trains, boxes, and foxes, he pulled up the lower half of his mask and took a bite of one. "Hey, good pickles, Sam-I-am!" He sounded surprised. "Um, I like bleu cheese and pickles! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!"

                "Sam could be a… sous chef," I leaned over and whispered to him. He groaned aloud as I pun-ished the quoting.

                "That… was just wrong." He laughed despite himself. "Seriously, these are really good!"

                "Yeah, I can't eat most gagfood, so I have to make my own." Crunch, crunch, crunch. "Seriously, why the full face mask? You could get your fill on bugs just swinging around."

                "Oh, that's just cruel." I grinned despite myself. "Now, I'm no martial artist, but I know ki mastery is some pretty buff stuff. What's a martial artist like you doing in a place like this?" He leaned back. "And, you know, carrying a concealed weapon." He looked behind and above my ass pointedly.

                "Oh, that's right, carry the weapon UNDER the shirt." I facepalmed. "Sorry, keep forgetting the definition of proper concealment."

                He laughed despite himself, grabbed another pickle. "It's subtle, I know."

                "Well, it is, because that's a sword, not a knife."

                He paused, again leaned impossibly far back for someone that couldn't stick to walls. "Seriously?" he asked, munching away.

                "Seriously. 94 centimeters of warsword."

                "Wow. Can I get one of those? For, uh, storing my clothes in? I could trade you a cartridge of web fluid for it, or something."

                "Eh. You're just trying to stick it to me now, aren't you?" He shot me another grin.

                "I take it back. That's a seriously well-concealed weapon." I bowed in place. "And why are you running around with a sword? I mean, um," he kind of trailed off awkwardly.

                "Yeah, it's a sharpened metal implement designed for the sole purpose of killing lightly armored sentient bipedal opponents." His smile kind of faded at that. "Happily, there's something called the Merciful enchantment that changes lethal damage to merely subdual, which is really convenient if you don't want to really kill people."

                He looked abruptly relieved again, pulling the lean back trick one more time. "It fits into a knife sheath-"

                "Dagger! Straight, two edges!" I wagged a pickle at him threateningly.

                "My mistake. Dagger sheath, and it won't kill people it cuts! Must be a magic sword."

                "It is!" I affirmed.

                "I thought all martial artists had to use scimitars or katanas or something. Or those flexy Chinese light swords."

                "Meh. Broaden your view of what a martial artist is, little grasshopper… eating spider," I amended.

                "Martial arts and ki powers and a magic sword. Do you have anything like the iron fist?" He made a showy roundhouse punch motion.

                "No. I've got a hard soul, like most people do. Can't send out ki into the world. I have an absolute range of two inches here. Granted, you can do a lot with two inches, but blowing through walls and rending steel ain't it."

                He hauled back and gave me a look. "You don't sound profound enough to be a martial arts master. You don't look old enough, either."

                "You don't look old enough to be a Spider-MAN, either. Do I need to report you for underage webslinging?" I shot right back.

                "That is SO unfair. I'll be able to drink, like, soon!"

                "Drinking and webslinging has been deemed hazardous by the Surgeon General and should be avoided at all times." I held up my hands, made pew- pew sounds. "See? No webslinging, I can drink all I like."

                "So unfair!" he repeated, and snatched away one more pickle by just tapping it with a finger before I could draw it away as he hopped to his feet. "Ha ha! Bleu cheese and pickles, Sam I am!"

                I grabbed the last one and munched it away with a scowl. "You liked them in a box," I accused him.

                "I liked them with a fox!" he retorted, and I could see his wink through the mask.

                And then the high-rise across the street from us blew up, sending fire and glass shards and remnants of furniture and walls out into space for long, spiraling falls.

                "Crap!" He had excellent reflexes, and shot out a web-stream precisely centered to the densest clusters of falling rubble and glass, sticking them all up and making a controllable cluster out of them. They fell in an arc into the building below us as people scattered, and could be dropped safely once they were out of the way. I was sure the taxi and bus below appreciated the difference.

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