Author's Notes:It's here.
Warning: A traumatic Event is the main focus. Not meant to offend. Not meant to joke about the lives lost and sacrificed.
Also fancast for Joe is David birtwistle, dude looks like he's related to Tom Holland. They look alike in a certain way.
Anyway. Hope you Enjoy.
---
The morning of September 11th arrived cloaked in an unsettling silence. The kind that made your skin prickle and your instincts whisper warnings you couldn't place. Joe Parker stood in front of his mirror, half-dressed, staring at the reflection as he pondered over the inevitable. He tugged down his undershirt and adjusted the blue, and red fabric hidden underneath.
The room around him still held the scent of coffee drifting in from the kitchen and the far-off, muted chatter of the morning news playing in the living room. His parents were awake. Another day. Another "normal" school day.
But this wasn't going to be normal. Not even close.
Joe sat on the edge of his bed and opened his backpack—not to check for homework, but to re-count his cartridges. Eight filled web cartridges lined the custom pouch he had stitched to the inside. Two loaded, six in reserve. He popped one of the loaded ones out, weighed it in his hand, then clicked it back into place. A soft thwip confirmed the shooter was functional. Then he went through it again. This wasn't a day for errors.
He checked his gloves. His grip pads. The miniature retraction system on the shooters. Everything had to be right. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, breathing slow and deep, his mind already on Manhattan.
"Joe! You're going to be late!" his mom's voice cut through his thoughts.
Joe stood, grabbed his bag, and forced a grin onto his face as he stepped into the hallway. "Coming!"
He played it well. Light jokes at breakfast. A quick goodbye. A confident wave as he left the apartment. He turned the corner and walked silently, taking in the usual sights as he walked for two blocks until he saw the Bus stop that he always took to school, the Queens Blvd/41st St. He walked past it. He instead walked across and entered the subway station nearby, the one on 40th St-Lowery St, and took the next available train to Manhattan, getting off at Grand Central-42nd St. He took out his Nokia from his pocket as he walked out of the station, it was a 3310. It read 08:22.
As he got out of the station and into the city, he faced south, and there they were. The Twins. Standing taller than anything nearby. It was amazing that despite being an hour or so from them from a walking perspective, Joe could still feel and take in their height and magnitude. Especially with what he knew was about to come. He exhaled and proceeded to walk in their direction.
He walked for a while, crossing streets, overhearing conversations, smelling good scents and the horrid. He dared a "peek" while closing his eyes, and the way he perceived everything was like it usually was, fascinating and disturbing, but this time, there was a massive difference. The difference was that he had more available vibrations around him, so he had the privilege and the burden of witnessing so much more than anyone could possibly ever see... anyone that is human anyway.
When he read 8:37 on his phone, he shivered suddenly as chills went down his back, as the realization that he was about to witness something in person he had only seen on video in only a few minutes. And not only that. He was intending to be right in there too, risking his second chance to save some people, and despite the advantages he had, he was scared, because things could still go wrong; this might change. It suddenly felt way too real. This was going to happen, whether he was ready or not.
Joe detoured into an alley. Out of sight, behind a dumpster, he changed. Shirt off. Pants off. School shoes tucked away. Everything was tucked into his backpack in under a minute. He stood there looking at the mask in his hands while his bag was on the floor, his heart pounding from nerves and anticipation. He inhaled. He exhaled. He did it again, inhale, exhale. "Here we go," He whispered to himself before putting on his mask.
Joe put on his backpack and then ascended the building with ease. His fingers and feet stuck instinctively to the brick. When he reached the roof, he crouched near the edge and looked out over the streets of Manhattan. His suit shimmered under the light morning sun.
And now he waited. It honestly felt like time was going by much slower. Joe never understood why some people said that, he had always thought that the saying was just hyperbole. People just being dramatic. Well, he finally saw where they were coming from.
From his rooftop perch, the city buzzed beneath him. Cars honked. People's steps pounding on the ground in uncoordinated unison. Pigeons dotted the sky in the far distance. His fingers drummed nervously against the rooftop edge. Minutes passed. His stomach clenched.
He wasn't used to this part. The waiting. The unknown.
He was ready for action, for movement, for a purpose. But now? Now all he could do was be still, perched above a city that didn't know it was about to break.
And then it came.
A thunderous roar tore through the sky like a scream. Joe's head snapped up just in time to see the explosion bloom across the North Tower.
The New York skyline from this moment on, would never be the same.
Time slowed.
Joe's breath caught in his throat.
Flames licked the air. Debris rained like ash. The gaping wound in the building smoked like hell had clawed its way through steel and concrete.
People screamed far below, pointing, crying, running. Sirens howled. News helicopters buzzed the air, circling the devastation like flies around a wound.
"This is it," he whispered, voice muffled behind the fabric of his mask. "Alright, Parker, let's go," he said, and then he jumped.
The wind slapped against him, but he moved like he belonged in the air. With a thwip, a web latched to the nearest buildin, and he shot forward, streaking toward the chaos like a missile with purpose.
He wasn't going to school today.
He was going to war.
A war against time.
---
Thwip!
He launched forward, wind rushing past his ears, momentum snapping his limbs into motion as his web-line pulled taut. He released and tucked into a twist, spinning mid-air before shooting another line higher.
As he swung, he didn't have the cover of night to hide him, so he heard all the exclamations of those who looked up at him in wonder. Eventually, around five minutes later, he arrived on the scene. He stopped on top of the World Trade Center 7, just next to the damaged tower. He noticed that the fire department was already at the scene as firefighters gathered in the North Tower's lobby. "Time to get to work then," Joe said to himself as he did a run and jump towards the injured twin, reaching about 250 feet in distance, but he was 120 feet short, so before he descended, he shot a line at the building and swung himself to it, landing on glass with a flip. Then he began to run up.
It took him 10 seconds as he reached the 95th floor, and he burst through to find nearly twenty people—panicked, coughing, bloodied. The entire side of the floor was torn open by the plane's impact. Furniture burned, alarms screamed, and air was thick with ash.
Joe jumped onto a desk.
"Everyone who can walk—grab someone who can't. You're going with me!"
A few looked up in shock. One man shouted, "Who the hell are you?!"
"That don't matter right now, what matters is that I'm your fastest way down."
He ran over, scooped up a woman who was unconscious, then pointed to a group of five huddled together. "Link arms. We're going now!"
He webbed each of them around the waist with a connected line, anchored it to himself, then shattered a window with a kick.
"Hold tight!"
Joe sprinted, dove out the hole—and fell.
The world blurred. Wind screamed past them. The people clutched each other and screamed.
At the last second—Thwip!—Joe fired a web line to a distant building. His timing was almost perfect.
They swung in a wild arc down through the canyon of skyscrapers. Joe grunted, absorbing the force in his shoulders, using momentum to roll them forward before letting go and webbing again, slowing further.
He landed hard on a rooftop three buildings down. The survivors spilled onto the surface, crying, gasping.
"Head to the stairwell and get to the street. Emergency responders are on their way."
"Wait! You—how—" one woman started.
But Joe was already running.
He launched back into the air, rising fast—too fast. The burn in his thighs and chest reminded him he wasn't invincible, just enhanced.
He vaulted back up the building, rebounding between ledges. In fifteen seconds he was back at floor 95.
Another group.
He tied three together, held a fourth, and leapt again.
He repeated the process—up, gather, down, swing, release, up again. Sometimes he got up there quicker because of him saving people who jumped to their deaths.
His mind fell into rhythm. His lungs screamed. His web cartridges were depleting, and he mentally calculated how many more drops he could do before switching.
Back up. This time, flames nearly cut him off. The office he'd been entering was crumbling at the far end. A woman and a child were coughing in the corner, stuck beneath a beam.
He slid in, lifted the beam, pulled them both out.
"Almost there—almost—"
BOOM.
The building shook. A shockwave rolled through the floor beneath him.
Joe looked east.
The South Tower had just been hit.
"Fuck," he whispered. "I'm running out of time." He pulled the child and mother into his arms and jumped.
Midair, he twisted his body so he took the brunt of the swinging force. They careened down through the air, and he released at the bottom of the arc. They crashed onto a parking garage roof. Joe grunted but rolled with it.
The mother sobbed and clung to him. "Thank you—thank you—thank you—"
Joe smiled weakly through the mask. "Stay low. Help's coming."
And again—he went back, this time to the South Tower. Joe began to alternate between the twins.
By now, smoke blanketed the city. The top of the tower was nearly invisible from below. Helicopters circled like insects, and sirens blared from every street corner. Joe ignored all of it.
He went up.
He found another three.
Then another two.
He ran out of webs—shit—and swapped cartridges mid-swing in freefall, fumbling with shaking hands before snapping a new one into place just in time.
When he hit the building again, he saw one man refusing to leave his coworker behind. In simple terms, the coworker was a heavy-looking person. Joe nodded and tied them together.
"Grab my shoulder," he said.
"You sure you can carry both of us?"
Joe gave a strained grin. "Watch me."
They dove. Wind roared. Web-line stretched. Swing. Roll. Down.
Back up.
By the eighth trip, Joe's arms burned. His legs were numb. But he couldn't stop.
He had to be faster.
People were counting on him.
---
Joe had just landed with another trio of survivors on a rooftop two buildings down from the Twin Towers when the ground trembled beneath his feet.
RUMMMMMMBLE.
He turned—just in time to see it.
The South Tower crumpled like a paper straw.
It folded into itself, floors pancaking downward in a horrifying, thunderous descent. Dust exploded outward in a cloud of choking gray. Screams erupted from the ground, from nearby buildings, and from Joe's own lungs.
"Holy Shit!" The up-close, personal view sent Joe to his knees in shock.
He stared at the vacant spot in the skyline, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His knuckles clenched. The survivors behind him were crying, praying, hugging.
He couldn't stop now.
He forced himself to stand.
There was still one tower standing.
There were still people who needed him.
He turned back to the North Tower—its top still burning, windows blown out, black smoke rising like a death shroud.
Joe grit his teeth, webbed up, and launched himself skyward once more.
This time, he stuck to the higher floor levels as they needed the most help.
All the way up.
It took everything he had to scale the last floors. His limbs were sore, his grip slipping from the condensation and sweat beneath his gloves, but he made it.
Floor 101.
Flames were creeping in from the west side. A chunk of the fuselage remained jammed in the center of the building, warped and smoking.
Joe slid inside through a shattered window. The heat hit him like an oven. His suit already clung to his body, sweat soaking through, but he didn't flinch.
People were up here—maybe five, six, scattered among the ruined floor.
He ran to the nearest one, an older man trying to help a woman with a busted leg stand. Joe didn't ask questions. He picked her up and webbed the man to his waist with a tug of the line.
Two others were trapped beneath fallen ceiling panels. Joe dropped the woman near the window, turned, and used both arms to lift the debris.
His muscles screamed. He ignored them.
"Get to the window! Now!"
They scrambled that way. One more man, sitting in a daze by the wall, wasn't moving.
Joe crouched next to him. "Hey! Hey, I'm getting you out of here. Stay with me!"
The man blinked sluggishly. Joe grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet.
"You're good," he lied. "Just lean on me."
He webbed all six of them together—some anchored to him, others to each other.
Then he looked at the drop.
From this height, with this much weight…
It'd be a miracle.
Joe tightened the lines, steadied his stance, and whispered, "Let's hope physics is feeling generous today."
Thwip!
He swung out.
The descent was a blur of screaming wind, panicked cries, and violent strain. His arms pulled like they were about to come out of their sockets. The webline hissed under tension as they dropped five stories, ten, twenty.
He shot a secondary line mid-swing to stabilize their arc, then a third, finally slowing them just enough to drop onto a nearby rooftop without turning into paste.
Everyone collapsed in a pile.
Joe rolled, dizzy, breathless.
He looked up.
The North Tower groaned.
Cracks spiraled down the sides like the skin of an apple about to split open.
"No," he whispered again, pulling himself upright. "Not yet. Not—yet."
He turned to the survivors. "Go. Get underground, get inside. Don't wait for anyone. Go!"
He fired another web and launched back into the air.
Back to the top.
Smoke now poured out of every floor above the impact zone. Screams were fewer now, but still there—trapped, weak, desperate.
Joe blasted through floor 102, eyes burning.
He found two women cradling a child in a hallway filled with rubble. The child was unconscious.
Joe didn't pause.
He took the kid and slung both women to him with his remaining webbing.
This time, he didn't even try to swing the full arc.
He dropped straight down, freefall, like a missile.
The wind sucked the air from his lungs. The building screamed behind him.
Thwip!
He fired a long-range web ahead, jerked his descent, caught another, and landed on a crushed news van.
He felt something in his knee give—but no time to care.
People screamed as he emerged from the cloud of soot carrying a child and two survivors.
He stumbled forward and laid the boy down gently.
"Get him help," he rasped to the nearest EMT.
The woman blinked. "Wait—who are you? What's your name?"
Joe hesitated.
He looked around. At the fallen South Tower. At the still-burning North Tower. At the chaos that had turned this city into hell on Earth.
He straightened.
"Just a dude who so happens to have great power, and using it with great responsibility," he said.
The EMT gave a tight nod, awe flickering in her soot-covered face.
Joe turned.
The tower above groaned louder.
Steel bent.
Beams buckled.
And then—with a sound like thunder splitting the earth—the North Tower began to fall.
BOOOOOOOM.
The earth shook again.
Joe didn't move at first. He stood frozen, watching the North Tower collapse in real time.
A tidal wave of dust and steel roared downwards, chasing after itself in an unstoppable avalanche of horror. Windows shattered from the pressure wave. The crowd of onlookers scattered. A gray tsunami of ash surged toward him like a sandstorm from hell.
His legs finally unfroze.
Joe launched himself upward with a desperate web swing, narrowly avoiding the rolling dust cloud. It still caught him midair, slamming into him like a wall and sending him into a spiral.
He caught a light post, twirled, and landed hard on the roof of a nearby brownstone, coughing violently.
Below, the street was chaos.
The world was muffled. Sound was distorted. Sirens, screams, voices all blurred in the choking fog.
They're gone, he thought.
Hundreds—maybe thousands.
He had saved as many as he could, but the aching guilt still lingered in his chest told him it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
His gloves trembled as he stood, frozen in place as he watched where the North Tower used to be. He closed his eyes to shut doown the view, ad instead, just listened to what the vibrations said.
Down below, through the haze of falling ash and debris, firefighters, police officers, and EMTs still moved. People still called out. Survivors staggered through the gray, clutching wounds and each other.
And suddenly, he moved again.
Joe leapt down.
If there were people still alive, still trapped, still breathing—he wasn't done.
Not yet.
He began clearing debris with his hands, tossing aside chunks of concrete, beams of twisted rebar. His muscles burned, but he welcomed it. He lifted a fallen awning off a trapped officer, then webbed it to a streetlight so she could be pulled free.
"Thank you!" she gasped.
He nodded once and ran.
He used his webs to stabilize teetering wreckage, sealing cracks in broken walls. He fashioned a makeshift stretcher by webbing an old door to a wheelchair he found. He carried the wounded when no one else could. One girl clung to him like a lifeline as he pulled her from under a flipped fire engine.
Around him, police began organizing perimeter lines. National Guardsmen started to arrive. Helicopters hovered overhead. The chaos slowly began shifting into coordination. Triage zones formed. Streets were cleared.
Joe kept working.
At one point, he caught a sideways glance from a sergeant in an NYPD vest. The man looked at Joe's suit, the dirt and blood covering him, the weary stance—and gave a sharp nod of respect.
Joe blinked, surprised.
"Hey!" another officer called. "You've done more than your part! You need to rest!"
He hesitated.
"I'm fine," he replied hoarsely.
"You look fucked up," the officer shot back. "We've got it from here. You did what you could. Go."
Joe looked down at his shaking hands. His suit was torn at the shoulder. His cartridges were empty. His ribs hurt. His body throbbed with exhaustion. His lungs felt like they were breathing concrete.
More than anything, he wanted to keep helping.
But he realized… they were right.
He had done what he could.
He nodded.
Without a word, he turned, webbed up, and vanished into the gray skies.
After collecting his bag and deciding to swing back home, knowing the traffic would be too immense for him, Joe slipped in through the fire escape of his apartment building and crawled in through his bedroom window, barely making it over the sill before collapsing onto the floor in a heap.
His suit was torn in three places.
His knees were bleeding.
His mask was half melted from heat exposure.
And his heart felt like it had been shattered in fifty different ways.
He lay there for a long moment, eyes closed, and still hearing only the soft hum of distant traffic and the faraway cry of a police siren.
He was safe.
But too many others weren't.
He forced himself to sit up, peeling the mask from his face. Ash fell from his hair as he dragged his fingers through it. He stood, wobbling, and staggered to the bathroom. He turned on the sink, splashed water on his face, and stared at his reflection.
The eyes that stared back were different.
He could still hear the screaming. Still feel the heat of the fire and the rush of the air as the towers came down.
And yet… he had done something.
He had saved lives.
He had made a difference.
But it wasn't just pride that bloomed in his chest. It was grief. And guilt.
He walked back to his room, stripped off the suit, folded it, and dropped onto his bed face-first.
Everything ached. His body was wrecked. His mind was worse.
And yet, before he could even process everything fully, sleep took him.
Not gentle.
Not peaceful.
Just… sleep. The kind you collapse into when your soul can't stay awake anymore.
Tomorrow, there will be questions.
Tomorrow, the world would feel different.
But for right now, all Joe cared about was a nap.
---
September 12, 2001
The TV was already on when Joe stumbled into the living room, his body stiff with exhaustion, though a far cry better than it was yesterday. His mom and dad sat silent on the couch, eyes locked on the screen, coffee untouched.
Joe hovered in the doorway, half-listening, half-dreading.
The screen displayed aerial footage of the ruins of the Twin Towers—smoke still rising, debris still being cleared, responders still working tirelessly. Then the feed cut to a news anchor in the studio.
"...and while recovery efforts continue, we're beginning to piece together a clearer picture of what happened yesterday—not just in terms of tragedy, but also in the stories of courage."
A new clip rolled.
It was grainy, like someone had filmed it on a low-end camcorder. But the image was unmistakable: a man jumped from the tower window and fell fast towards the ground, only for a blue-and-red blur to swing and catch the man, and swing down safely towards the ground, Another clip is shown where the same dual colored figure was attaching to himself three people from a broken floor and leaped off a ledge. Dust exploded around him, but the figure moved like a ghost through the chaos—fast, precise, unrelenting, before breaking his fall with a well-timed web swing.
The camera zoomed as much as it could, capturing him from the back. The red and blue suit shimmered under ash and firelight. The white spider emblem on his chest was smudged but still clearly visible.
"This individual, seen rescuing dozens of people from the upper floors of the North and South Towers, has now been confirmed by multiple sources to have pulled survivors from areas even emergency responders could not hope to reach."
A new report cut in. A young woman, her voice trembling, spoke from a stretcher.
"He—he came out of nowhere. We were stuck on the 93rd floor, just smoke and fire everywhere. The stairwell was gone. We thought we were going to die. And then... he just showed up. Like some kind of—demon-looking man, we were scared. He grabbed me and two others and jumped out the window. I thought we were done for, a devil appearing to drag us to hell. but then he swung us down. He saved us."
Joe's breath caught in his throat. That was her. One of the women he'd carried out on his fourth run up the tower. He'd barely registered her face then—just her fear, but he was too focused to give any explanations and comfort, he was just in grab and go mode..
Another EMT added to the story.
"Whoever this guy is, he moved through that building like it wasn't on fire. Carried people. Shielded them. He had some kind of webbing he was using to lower folks down. We'd turn around and there'd be another dozen civilians standing there, dazed but alive."
The broadcast returned to the anchor, her tone grave but respectful.
"Early FDNY reports estimate this figure was responsible for the direct rescue of over 170 individuals, many from floors 85 and higher. If confirmed, it would make this unnamed hero one of the single most impactful responders in yesterday's tragedy."
Joe's eyes widened as mouthed a wow, and suddenly he began to choke up.
He turned and walked back to his room. The door clicked shut behind him. He stared at the suit folded across the chair, still streaked with soot, and exhaled.
'I was there,' he thought. 'I made a difference.'
He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
And now... there's no going back. Because they know him now... And he's here to stay.
---
Here's the Research I did for Joe using the Spiderman games and the internet.
Lifting Capability: 15-20 tons.
Running Speed: 45 mph or 72 km/h
Swinging Speed: 75 mph or 121 km/h
Vertical: 150ft
Long Jump: 250ft
Durability from falling: 521ft+ = Death.