Chapter Text
The sound of sirens pierced Peter's ears. He had been slumped over, splay-legged, his head resting on his forearms, trying not to fall asleep in his politics lecture. Now, however, he was wide awake. It was hard enough to block out the various little sounds that went on in a classroom setting. Pencils thwacking against the covers of textbooks, the clock cracking each second out like a gunshot, the way Ned's nose whistled almost imperceptibly every time he inhaled – Peter had learned to focus through the sensory input. But sirens, he couldn't ignore.
On the other hand, his classmates all looked as though they could sleep through just about anything. Only a couple of Alphas, who had more sensitive hearing than others, had even glanced toward the window. Nobody had even noticed that “Penis” Parker, the distant, nerdy Beta, had shot bolt upright, scanning the wide swath of windows on the east side of the classroom, waiting for telltale flashing lights. Nobody except Michelle, who had briefly glared at him out of the edge of her vision before returning her gaze to her copy of Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil.” Peter swallowed and glanced at the clock.
Thirteen minutes left of class.
The sirens were woo -ing ever closer, and now Peter could see red, flashing light tinting the edge of the upper windowpane. Of course the police cars were speeding by below his view out the window, but he knew they were there. The practically deafening sound was proof of that.
He shot his hand into the air and waited all of two seconds before losing his patience and saying loudly, “May I use the bathroom?” Ms. Gonzalez, somewhat startled, shot him a look not unlike the one that Michelle had sent his way a moment before. Peter tried to look as innocent as possible.
“I would appreciate it if you could wait until class is over, Mr. Parker.” She gestured toward scribbled text on the whiteboard. “You’re not going to get out of the assignment, you know. Everyone is writing the essay about the logical flaws in the Sokovia Accords and the aftermath of the battle of the Avengers in Germany.”
I definitely know more about it than you do, Peter thought impatiently, entertaining briefly the thought of Ms. Gonzalez’s face if he were to turn in the essay in the first person. Still, he stood up and sidled past Ned's desk toward the door. “Essay, Sokovia, Germany, superheroes, got it. Sorry, I really gotta go.” He was out the door before Ms. Gonzalez could get another coherent sentence to him.
It was a short sprint to his locker. He spun his code, grabbed his backpack, and slammed the door shut, the groaning of the metal ringing in his ears along with the now-fading sirens. It would have been a straight shot to the front door if he didn't need to avoid Principal Morita, who was coming out of his office at that very moment. A few seconds of crouching behind a trophy case, and he was home free.
As the November air hit his face, Peter couldn't help but think that this what he lived for. It had been about a month and a half since he'd been forced to set aside his life as Spider-Man, even very briefly, after the Staten Island Ferry incident. But now, with his high-tech suit back, Queens was essentially his oyster. And he had promised Mr. Stark that he would be a “friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man.” If that meant stopping petty theft most of the time, so be it. However, he figured the occasional felony-scale activity was something he could assist the police in handling. Even though he didn't always know what they were for, he had a habit of following police cars with their sirens on now. If it was something he could help with, he'd swoop in and save the day. If not, he'd watch in case there was something he could do. Already he'd saved a middle-aged woman from a fire in a restaurant kitchen, webbed up a burglar who was escaping from a mini-mart, and stopped a high-speed chase (or as high as a speed could get, in Queens).
Today, Peter was in the mood for something exciting.
He ducked into an alley a few blocks from his school, in the general direction that the sirens were headed. It had taken the loss of five backpacks to learn not to web them to dumpsters, so instead he wrestled into his suit, slammed his chest to make the fabric skin-tight, and slung his backpack on again. If he was about to get into a tussle, he'd ditch it somewhere safe and come back for it. Hello, Peter, Karen greeted in his ear.
“Hey, Karen, we're gonna go check out those sirens,” he told his suit absent-mindedly, judging his surroundings and double-checking his web shooters.
Normally, Peter would have instantly shot a web up to the corner of the nearest building to get airborne as fast as possible. Somehow, though, something was different. As he placed his hand on wall of the alley, felt his hand catch the textured brick, and began to climb, there was an odd tightness about him. A strange prickling sensation, unlike his usual spidey sense, was annoying the back of his neck, but it was in his armpits, the backs of his knees, and – he swallowed hard – his groin, too. Peter allowed his hips to give the wall wide berth as he scaled it. When he reached the top, he paused and inhaled the New York air. He felt oddly hot.
The wail of another siren trained his focus. This one was speeding by about two blocks west, heading south. Suddenly, the pop of gunshots cracked the city's constant hum of traffic. There was the sound of screeching tires, and a scream.
“Oh shit.”
Faint lights across the eyepieces of his suit zeroed in on the location of the gunfire. Would you like directions to your intended destination?
“No thanks, Karen, I got this.”
Forgetting the odd feeling in his body, Peter thrust his arm forward and pressed his middle two fingers to the mechanism on his palm. A string of silky white web fluid shot across the street and stuck to a less-than-sturdy-looking traffic light post. In one smooth leap, Peter had caught a firm grip of the silk in his hands, flung himself off the roof, and swung, like a pendulum, over cars and past apartment windows, until he reached the top of his arch, aimed, fired, and swung again. He'd had these powers for months, and still this was exhilarating.
Everything Peter did was calculated. He knew now (especially after a few times of face-planting spectacularly), how often he needed to place a web in order to avoid crashing. It was more of a risk in Queens, where many of the buildings were fairly low to the ground. He even accounted for the extra weight of his school books in his backpack, jostling around on his shoulders. The angle of the sun was low – the wintery, early sunsets starting – and he purposely avoided any path that would blind him. It took him less than fifteen seconds to find the police cars, which had stopped in the middle of the street. The officers were barricaded behind their doors, guns drawn, aiming at something. One of them looked up at Spider-Man with a flash of surprise, then disdain. He kept his gun poised but looked over his shoulder to shout, “Fuck off, man!” as Peter landed nimbly on the edge of an iron balcony. As the cop's attention was still on Peter, there was a deafening crack that rebounded off the buildings overlooking the crowded street. Someone screamed and started running. Well, this is the place to be, Peter thought grimly, and slid his backpack off his shoulders to web it to the underside of the balcony above him.
Across the police-blocked intersection, there was a small bank with an ATM. Peter had seen Aunt May use it a handful of times; she insisted he wasn't quite old enough to handle a bank account and a debit card, so she usually gave him a twenty every few days, which he could stretch into an awful lot of food if he was smart about it. Now that same ATM was floating about a meter off the pavement, held in place by alien tech that Peter had hoped was going to be less of a problem after Liz's dad's arrest. Obviously there are still some weapons floating around. Behind the floating ATM were about five or six people, dressed in black, one of them holding the flotation gun and the others carrying a variety of weapons. Even though Peter had great eyesight, it wasn't easy to tell which weapons were of the alien kind and which ones were just regular guns.
A second echoing crack answered his question partially. One of the criminals, a blond woman with a bandana tied around the front of her face like an outlaw, had fired her weapon at an upwards angle. It was clearly a plain, bullet-firing gun – Peter's gun-classification skills weren't great – and of course, the bullet was whizzing toward him. He easily dodged it, heard it ping off the iron balcony just above him (missing his backpack by two inches), and eventually hit the pavement below. However, he definitely had the bad guys' attention.
It was probably now or never.
As Peter stood to sling a web, he felt a sudden jolt in his stomach, like a kick in the gut. For a heart-stopping second, his head spun, and the street below him swam out of focus. His left hand gripped the wall of the building. Standing on a narrow piece of iron railing was probably on the list of top-ten worst places to lose your footing, especially when standing three floors above the ground. Legs shaking, he dropped back down to a crouching position, left hand sliding down the wall for guidance. The air inside his mask felt too close for comfort.
Your heart rate is elevated and your breathing is erratic. You may wish to return to street level to avoid injury if you faint, Peter hazily heard Karen say.
Shooting erupted on the street below. The sounds of the controlled explosions and the propelled bullets ricocheting off of cars and pavement pulled his body back into itself. Slowly, his proper vision returned and his head seemed all right. But he'd now lost his opportunity to solve the situation without collateral damage, and he wasn't even sure why. What the hell was going on with him today? Maybe he was getting sick? Can I even GET sick?
Another bullet was incoming fast. Peter jerked out of the way at the last second and shot a web diagonally across the intersection, grabbed it tight, and dove off the balcony. As he swung hard over the street, he twisted back, aimed another web for the bank building, and let go of the one he was swinging on. His trajectory took him right through the group of bad guys. When his feet made contact with the first, he felt the impact all the way up his spine. But now he was built for this sort of thing. Standing over the moaning mass of the dude he'd swung into, he rapid-fired webs at the five gun barrels pointing at him (missed one, webbed the guy's face instead, dodged the bullet, and kicked the gun out of the guy's hand and down the street). Peter could feel his heart pounding against the spider drone installed into the chest of his suit.
The police on the other side of the intersection had stopped shooting as soon as Peter had swung into the path of their bullets. And while Peter was grateful that he didn't need to focus on more bullets whizzing by, it did mean that the bad guys were relatively free to gang up on him. He had somehow webbed the blonde lady's gun to her hand and she was preoccupied with undoing the webbing – which isn't gonna happen, Peter smirked – but two burly guys had dropped their guns and one with a particularly impressive mustache peeking over his bandana made a lunge at him from the right. Peter jumped, pushed off the guy's head like he was some kind of fleshy parkour obstacle, scissored around the other guy's neck like he'd seen Black Widow do, and flipped backward, snapping the guy's face down to the pavement. By now, Disoriented Mustache Guy had turned around, and, scrambling to his feet, Peter webbed the guy's forearm, grabbed the end of the fiber and webbed it up to the traffic light overhead. The man was pulled upwards by his forearm and was left dangling, but mercifully out of the way.
A tingling in his neck made him duck as a massive arm swung over his head. Pavement Face had recovered, albeit with a massive swath of road rash. Peter swung his left leg back, took out the guy's ankles, and shot enough webbing to anchor him to the ground. Now it was just the blonde, a black guy holding – come on! – a crowbar, and a brunette chick with the floating ATM. Unfortunately, the brunette was already halfway down the street, taking the ATM with her.
“You guys aren't making this easy,” Peter groaned through his mask, hurriedly surveying the situation. He slung a web at blonde lady, yanked her towards him, twisted around and webbed her gun and hand to a nearby Chevy. He felt the crowbar coming, leaned back, Matrix-style, out of the way, and grabbed the cold metal as it flung over him. The glimpse of the guy's face when Peter stopped his swing in mid-air was priceless. “A crowbar, dude? What, you draw the short stick?”
“Nah,” the guy mumbled under his bandana. His left hand flew to his hip. “I got a gun, too.” He let go of the crowbar and Peter, who was still in an absurd leaning position and had put his weight into the crowbar to stop its swing, lost his balance and fell to his back. The gun's progress from the man's holster was in slow motion to him; Peter simultaneously reached back, planted his hands by his face, swung his legs up and over his body, and flipped over his head into a standing position. In the back of his mind, he knew that the brunette with the ATM was getting away. Maybe if the cops would get the lead out of their pants, he found himself thinking angrily as he grabbed the top of the gun, chopped the man's wrist with the edge of his hand, wrested the gun away and flung it into the air behind him along with a shot of web silk that firmly adhered it to the side of an apartment building.
The Guy Previously With Crowbar was furious now, but as he was unarmed, Peter didn't really care. He used both arms to shoot webs at the bank building and took a step back to sling shot himself closer to the brunette.
Another unholy jolt shot through his abdomen.
Peter couldn't help but grunt as he tried not to double over in pain. There was something very wrong with him. The street around him started blurring, and then, in his strange disorientation, he smelled a horribly strong scent, which only served to make his eyes water and his body throb with nausea. He didn't remember letting go of the web silk in his hands, but suddenly his back was on the pavement again. Peter couldn't get enough air through his mask.
The unarmed guy standing over him began laughing. Vaguely, Peter knew that there were other guns lying around, and that, though the man was unarmed at the moment, he could easily pick one up and make Peter an easy target. He blindly shot a few jets of web in the man's general direction, hoping to impede him in some way. Instead, a shiver ran down his spine as he felt breath directly in his left ear. “Did the itsy bitsy spider fall down the waterspout?” Then, a stunningly painful blow to Peter's chest – unmistakably crowbar in nature – forced a groan from his throat. He was blind, he couldn't hear properly, his whole body was throbbing, and he had to puke.
Peter, you have experienced a cardiovascularly threatening blow, Karen said quickly. Another of this nature could lead to fibrillation or cardiac arrest. But there was nothing Peter could do. He could hear the whistle of the crowbar coming down again; he shielded his face reflexively, but the whistling was still coming....
The whistling didn't stop. Instead, it formed a weird melody, like that made up by someone who was bored. Suddenly, there was a loud thud and screech of metal: something heavy hitting a nearby car. “Pick on somebody your own, massive size,” a snide voice was saying, and Peter realized it had been the owner of this voice who had also been whistling. Rapid-fire grunts and even the sound of a sickening crack that sounded horribly like bone echoed around the abandoned cars. Recognizing his chance, Peter rolled unsteadily onto his front and pushed himself upward, still half-blind. A wave of nausea spilled up from his stomach and he fumbled his mask upward, rolling it over the bridge of his nose as he fought not to vomit. He braced his forearm against a car in front of him and leaned his forehead on it, breathing deeply. The whole street smelled like gunfire, sweat, and something obscenely heady that was making Peter's hair stand up.
“Ooh, is that somebody nearly entirely getting away I see?” the snide voice quipped again. “Can't have that.” Several rounds of gunfire went off in a row, piercing Peter's ears. Somewhere down the street, there was the faint crash of the ATM hitting the sidewalk.
Then, another shot terrifyingly close banged to Peter's right, and a searing pain cut through his right shoulder. He jerked away from the vehicle, blinking in the clarity brought by the pain. He had been bracing himself against the same Chevy that he'd webbed the blond to. She hadn't even needed to move in order to shoot him; now she was grinning as Peter reeled back and stumbled to the ground. You have taken a nine millimeter bullet in your right deltoid muscle, Karen told him. Medical assistance is on its way.
“Hey, Spidey, fancy seeing you in this fanfic. Jesus, you're not doing well,” the voice said. Peter looked up.
Standing over him was a man dressed in a somewhat disturbing, skin-tight red and black costume, with white eyes. It almost looked like Peter's own getup, except with a slightly different color scheme, two katanas strapped to his back, and a revolver in his hand. The man pointed the gun at the blond webbed to the Chevy. “No!” Peter choked, holding a hand out to stop the katana man.
“Geez, what is she, your girlfriend? She just shot you like you were a crime-fighting baby rabbit,” the man said, gesturing animatedly at the woman. “Yes, that was a good analogy,” he suddenly added, seemingly to himself.
“Hand her to the police,” Peter argued, now bracing his shoulder. He could feel blood running down his right arm. The pain, however, was somewhat clearing his senses. In front of him, the man visibly rolled his eyes – How does he do that with a mask on? – and moved the gun a fraction. He fired a round, but into the woman's right arm. She screamed, but the blood was minimal and the bullet had obviously missed any major arteries.
“There ya go, softy,” the katana man was saying. “An arm for an arm. Now let's get you out of here and let the good city of New York clean up this shit.”
Peter shook his head. “No way, man, I don't even know you. Besides, an ambulance is on its way.” As soon as he said it, he realized what a mistake it was for Karen to have called an ambulance. Unless it was driven by one of Mr. Stark's private employees, there was almost no way that the medical personnel weren't going to find out about his identity. Plus, if they tried to cut off his suit, Mr. Stark would probably kill Peter himself. If Aunt May didn't when she found out about the emergency room co-pay.
The man looked around. “It's not getting here in this gridlock. Allow me to get you at least to your next destination. I have a particularly good cabbie.” Peter was not about to go with this crazy, gun-wielding dude, but he did stand up shakily. It seemed like a step in the right direction to the mysterious man, because he held out his hand and said, “Deadpool's the name, taking out people who need to be gone and/or annoying people is the game.”
Peter shook the man's hand reservedly, still clutching his shoulder. “Hey, I'm Spider-Man,” he managed. “Karen, can we put the kabosh on that ambulance? I'm just gonna swing home.”
That is ill-advised with the state of your shoulder, Peter. I can call Tony Stark instead.
“Hey man, talking to voices in my head is my thing,” Deadpool pouted. Peter felt himself becoming quickly overwhelmed by the combination of the pain and the loud-mouthed mercenary in front of him. He turned away, catching a glimpse of the fallen ATM down the street. “Damn, but with that ass you can do anything you want, Spidey.”
Peter ignored him. “Don't call Mr. Stark, Karen. I'll just walk.”
You need to have the bullet in your shoulder removed. Even with your healing ability, a lodged bullet could permanently disable some of the muscle function in your arm.
The phone started ringing in his ear. It was all too much; the pain in his shoulder was building, the ache in his stomach had spread into his pelvis and throughout his limbs, he could feel a bruise spreading across his sore chest, and the sensory input from Deadpool, Karen, and the phone were making his head spin again. The moment when Tony Stark picked up the line was the same moment Peter felt his knees slam into the pavement.
“Hey, hey, Spidey, you cool?” Deadpool was saying. Mr. Stark was calling Peter's name.
Instead, the street flickered out of sight, and Peter closed his eyes, feeling the cool November air across the uncovered, lower half of his face.