As it turned out, President Maya hadn't just provided Gatorade for her marathon-running classmates—she'd also arranged their dinners afterward.
The main reason was that during her earlier Shadow Clone inspection tour of students' homes, she'd discovered many of them missing their evening meals entirely. And unlike Jennifer, their parents weren't the type to save leftovers for the kids.
To keep their bodies from breaking down, President Maya had negotiated with the school cafeteria cook to put in a few extra hours. Since it wasn't going to be a permanent arrangement—just a handful of days—the cook agreed without even asking for overtime pay.
And calling it a "marathon" was generous. Who'd ever heard of a marathon where you could stop and rest whenever you wanted? Most of her classmates' total mileage barely added up to half an actual marathon, and they took twice as long to cover it. Besides, with President Maya's super-perception monitoring them every step of the way, not only did none of them collapse—their bodies actually toughened up considerably.
In truth, this whole stretch of leading a pack of goofballs through their marathon training had also been hugely beneficial for Her Excellency—though not so much in terms of physical improvement.
What had leveled up was her exercise biology knowledge. Thanks to the ultra-fine resolution of her sensory field, all those textbook concepts she'd only read about before were now live data. The various hormones secreted by the cerebral cortex during exercise, the differing activation patterns in the left and right hemispheres, the lactic acid concentrations in muscles at varying fatigue levels—all of it, observed in real-time down to the cellular level. President Maya's understanding of human biology had received a thorough practical upgrade.
As the old Chinese saying went: "Book knowledge alone is never enough—true understanding comes only from doing."
Even after the ten-day training period officially ended, President Maya put together customized, scientifically tailored exercise plans for several classmates, announcing that she'd personally track their progress at regular intervals.
Well, experimental theory has to be validated against real-world results, after all. Though of course, that particular thought stayed safely inside Her Excellency's head.
Because the evening running sessions dragged on until seven or eight o'clock every night, President Maya had been getting home quite late recently. Forget about her part-time job—even Spider-Man had barely made an appearance.
But Spider-Man news hadn't died down at all. If anything, it was getting hotter. Every variety show under the sun had some talking head or self-proclaimed expert weighing in on the web-slinger.
Some tried to deduce Spider-Man's character based on his behavior.
Worth mentioning here: the cause of the Gold Crown Building fire had eventually been identified. The fifteenth floor had contained large quantities of flammable and explosive materials, and the twentieth-floor fire barrier had been illegally stacked with chemical feedstock.
Whether the violation was negligent mismanagement or deliberate arson, the fire clearly had nothing to do with Spider-Man.
So at long last, nobody was smearing Spider-Man as a self-staging arsonist anymore.
Wonderful news, truly cause for celebration—NOT. Since when did a so-called expert have trouble digging up dirt on someone?
Sure enough, a fresh take emerged almost immediately. Based on Spider-Man's frankly cringe-inducing costume, the experts deduced that Batm—er, Spider-Man was actually a deeply traumatized individual with deviant tendencies!
The theory went like this: Spider-Man was an orphan raised in a church. Certain outwardly pious, inwardly corrupt clergymen had subjected him to, shall we say, unmentionable things during his childhood.
And so, the young Spider-Man had stood before the crucified Christ, ripped the priest's cassock from his body, and hurled it onto the bronze savior's head. Then, without a backward glance, he'd donned the spider-suit that symbolized his deviance. In that moment, a crack of thunder split the sky. In that moment, lightning bleached the shadowy chapel a ghostly white...
At that very minute, President Maya—home at nine o'clock as usual—was slurping a bowl of scallion-and-shredded-pork noodles she'd cooked herself, while watching some Ivy League psychology professor on ABC deliver the Spider-Man edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
She had to admit—the story was twisty, atmospheric, richly detailed, and genuinely immersive. An impressive piece of improvisational fiction.
Good thing Jack wasn't in the living room tonight. The poor man would have been absolutely devastated. Here was a college talking head riffing off the top of his head, and his improvised story was more compelling and entertaining than the screenplays Jack slaved over for months. Where was the justice? Where was the cosmic fairness?
Through her sensory field, Maya detected that Lucius and his boys next door were watching the same program. In fact, over sixty percent of households within her perception range were tuned to ABC, watching with rapt attention and obvious delight.
President Maya couldn't have cared less. She wasn't Peter Parker. Spider-Man was nothing more than a fun little persona she'd been playing around with.
There was an expression for this kind of thing: Post from someone else's account, and even the shyest shut-in starts spouting cheeky lines nonstop.
Or to put it another way: at school, Peter Parker was the quiet, well-behaved student—outwardly meek, secretly cheeky. Slap a mask on him, and suddenly the motormouth Spider-Man went live.
That was exactly President Maya's situation right now. Talk all you want. It's not even about me. And all this heated discussion is feeding me a lovely stream of Influence Points!
But a moment later, President Maya changed her mind.
Because a breaking news bulletin interrupted the broadcast: "MYSTERIOUS SPIDER-MAN RETURNS TO NEW YORK—AND THIS TIME, HE'S EVEN MORE OUTRAGEOUS!"
The reporter on screen was the same brunette beauty from ABC—Anna—standing in the middle of Times Square, pointing at a figure swinging between skyscrapers. "Wow! As you can all see, our good friend Spider-Man appears to have changed his outfit! He must be watching the news commentary too! But does he realize his new Spider-suit looks even more ridiculous?"
The broadcast cut to a zoomed-in snapshot.
This Spider-Man also wore a red bodysuit with black web-patterning and a similar black spider emblem on the chest—clearly modeled after Maya's. But the craftsmanship was miles ahead of hers. The overall quality was on another level entirely.
What set him apart, though, were the two large silver boxes strapped to his waist. Far bigger than President Maya's—and bearing a genuine resemblance to the Omni-Directional Mobility gear (ODM gear) from Attack on Titan.
But what really made Her Excellency mutter "yeah, that's definitely more ridiculous" was the helmet. The guy was wearing something that looked like a perforated hard hat, and it was studded with tiny green lights that flickered and pulsed.
At least, that's what it looked like on camera.
When the green-hat Spider-Man whooshed past the camera again, President Maya confirmed it: someone had actually gone and built real ODM gear.
This Marvel world was terrifying. The gas-powered system from Attack on Titan was pure fantasy—a device that fundamentally shouldn't exist in reality.
Yet in less than a week, someone had taken Maya's few offhand remarks and turned them into functioning hardware.
How is anyone supposed to live with this?
Her Excellency declared her Gold-tier Lv. 8 brain officially insulted. Could any random Marvel-universe bystander just casually outclass her in the intelligence department?
No way. I have to go see who this green-hat Spider-Man is. Whoever he is, he's seriously impressive.
President Maya scarfed down the rest of her noodles in three bites, chugged the broth dry, and—not even bothering to wash the dishes—bolted straight to her room. Nine hand seals later, a Shadow Clone materialized.
The clone glowed, expanded, pulled on the Spider-suit, clipped on the black box, activated Shadow Stealth, and vaulted out the window in one fluid motion.
Only after all of that did the real President Maya stroll back to the kitchen to wash the dishes. She still had a live news broadcast to watch, after all.
Sure, the clone's memories would transfer back to her once it dispersed, but that would take forever. Her Excellency was already too impatient to wait.