Look Another Way
James had been having quite a wonderful night.
His shift at the hospital had ended early because they accidentally scheduled too many people to train (which is uncommon for an understaffed hospital) and James had been cut from his fourteen hour shift three hours early.
Maybe his bills can’t handle the smaller pay this week, but his sleep schedule is undoubtedly grateful.
He’s grateful even, for this spectacular turn of luck, of maybe getting more than two hours of sleep before the apartment’s shitty daytime air-conditioner kicks in above his head and creates far too much rattling for anyone (much less James the lightest sleeper in the world) to continue sleeping.
It’s like an alarm if an alarm couldn’t turn on and had been consistently unpredictable for the last five years James had lived in this apartment.
Obviously this streak of luck had been bound to end, and end it did.
The clang behind him on his fire escape had become almost normal at this point (once an accident, twice a coincidence, three a pattern).
James spins, already expecting the lean shadowy build of Spider-man staring at him from behind his window, he’s met with a Spider-man that’s leaning heavily on the railing and even from here James can see his chest heaving for breath.
Wasting no more time, James swipes the new first aid kit from his counter–he hasn’t quite yet figured out where to put it–and jumps over his ratty couch to get to the window, shoving it open and sliding under it when it gets stuck halfway up.
Spider-man sways on his feet, even with how much he’s leaning against the railing and James is slightly worried. Spider-man starts falling forward and James is more than slightly worried.
He catches the guy (he’s shorter than him, leaner too even though he could probably pick up the whole building) and guides him down slowly to a sitting position on the ground, brows wrinkling in confusion when his hands come away wet.
A slimy thick horror starts trudging like cold sludge through his veins.
He’s covered in Spider-man’s blood.
“Shit,” he curses, running a gentle hand over Spider-man’s torso to find where the wound is.
Spider-man stirs in his slumped position, “Whazzit?”
James grasps the opportunity and tilt’s Spider-man’s head up, trying to get the guy to make eye contact with him, “Where’s the wound?”
“The…” Spider-man is obviously not working with all systems firing at the moment.
“The wound,” James says as calmly as possible as New York’s favorite hero bleeds all over him, “Your wound.”
“My side I’think.”
Unable to waste another second, James grabs his surgery scissors that are still in his scrub pockets and finds the wound, a stretched out stab wound fresh enough that Spider-man obviously took out the knife.
Cursing Spider-man under his breath helps in no way, but it doesn’t hinder so James doesn’t stop himself from muttering profanity as he cuts away the fabric around it and gets out the miniature suture kit within the first aid kit.
James gets a clean rag doused with antiseptic and starts dabbing, listening to the man’s slightly hitched breathing as he does so and wincing in tandem with the guy whenever he hits a particularly sore spot.
“How far away were you?”
Spider-man jolts at the question and James nearly has a heart attack, the guy can’t pass out, he just can’t, James does not want to know the kid’s identity.
“Huh?” Spider-man asks softly, barely a sound coming out his mouth as his forehead wrinkles so much it’s visible through the skin tight mask.
“How far were you when you got stabbed?”
The question makes him think more than it should, but James lets him think in silence as he finishes up the first stitch.
“Not more than five minutes, a few streets down.”
James would contradict, but he can hear the police sirens of whatever precinct Spider-man called from here, so he truly couldn’t have been too far away if it’s in James’s earshot.
“What happened?”
“I helped a guy, the traitor stabbed me in the back,” Spider-man huffs before letting out a slightly pained sound that has James making a mental note to look at his ribs later, “Get it? Stabbed me in the back?”
James tries his hardest to resist the smile tugging at his mouth, turning the slight chuckle that comes out of his mouth into a cough. Spider-man isn’t allowed to be funny while bleeding all over his floor, it’s a direct contradiction. It makes his brain hurt.
Spider-man goes quiet again as James continues stitching, after around a minute, James tries to get him talking again, if only to make sure he stays awake until James finishes, “How many guys?”
Startling again (it’s getting slightly worrying how jumpy the guy is) Spider-man tilts his head, “Not too many, hardly the most I’ve fought. One of them just got a lucky hit tonight. It doesn’t happen often.”
James is almost afraid to ask, “And before me…when it did happen…who’d you go to?”
Spider-man shifts, wincing hard enough for James to recognize the signs of it from behind the mask, “I dealt with it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s amazing how much pain the human mind can ignore, did you know? If you get to a certain point where your brain thinks you’re dying, everything just stops hurting. The tricky part is staying awake until that happens, but I’ve gotten good at it. Adrenaline too, when I can help it, if I can get to it fast enough it doesn’t even start hurting until I’m done.”
James genuinely doesn’t know how this guy is alive, but the thought of him being dead sends a chill down his spine.
He ties off the last stitch, inspecting his work before bandaging it. It’s a little messy, but perfectly functional.
Checking the guy’s ribs while he’s at it, he rolls up the top half of the suit to reveal black and blue mottled around the purple skin of his ribs.
“Jesus, what the hell did you do?”
Spider-man shrugs, far too nonchalant for James’s liking, “Got knocked down in a few too many fights. It’s fine, I can barely feel it, I'm used to it.”
Horror and revulsion battle in his stunned mind as he stares at the guy’s sibs, not knowing where to even start. How does someone get used to this?
“You can’t be serious,” he stifles a smile at the inside joke. Serious. Sirius.
“It’s not too bad.”
“Not too bad? What the hell? I can practically move them around.”
Spider-man winces, shifting slightly from his seated position that must be no help on his ribs.
James hushes any more attempts to talk as he bandages and wraps his ribs, trying to set them in a way that will make them heal correctly as he rubs bruise cream into the skin, ignoring how he can feel scars underneath his fingers.
Spider-man showed up eight months ago, so how come he has decade old scars?
As James finished bandaging, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answer to that question.
Spider-man sits up, rolling his shoulders as he moves to stand, pausing when James lays a hand on his shoulder.
“No swinging.”
Spluttering, Spider-man steps away, “What do you mean?”
“Seriously, you’ll rip your stitches. No swinging until that cut, and your ribs, are healed. And the bandages need to be changed every twelve hours.”
Spider-man gestures out at the city, “How am I supposed to get home?”
James shrugs, “Subway?”
All he gets in return for his suggestion is a flat look, “In this attire?” He gestures down at his suit, which now that James is looking at it properly, does look rather frightening.
The material sags slightly on the left side where a portion of it has been cut away, revealing crisp white bandages and dried blood under it. The rest of the suit has minor scratches and tears, some of which are stitched back with black thread, and different patches are completely soaked in blood, like drenched. It makes James sick just looking at it.
“You can borrow some of my clothes?”
Spider-man reels back at that, “What?”
James blushes at the obvious insinuation in that word, trying not to make it weird, “Oh don’t even, you can keep the mask on if you really want, and you can return them later. It’s not like we won’t see each other again at this rate.”
Catching Spider-man wince, James scowls, stepping closer in a way that he hopes is threatening, “We will see each other again, yes? Because at the rate you’re going, you’ll get yourself killed if you don’t have help.”
Spider-man runs a hand over his head, like he’d be running it through his hair if the mask hadn’t been a barrier, “Look, you’re a civilian-”
“-A qualified medical professional-” barely, he had been so tired this morning that he couldn’t remember the difference between pneumonia and ammonia.
“And I don’t want to involve civilians in this line of work. It gets messy,” he continues like James had never interrupted him.
“I’m very good at cleaning up messes.”
Spider-man’s voice takes on a dark quality, dropping as he scowls, “Not these kinds of messes.” The tone and the traumatic memories behind it send a shiver down his spine, but James is nothing if not stubborn.
“But,” James argues, trying to think of a valid reason to continue to put himself in danger just to help a superhero dead set on working alone, “I want to help.” It sounds feeble and stupid to his own ears.
“Honestly,” Spider-man sighs, “You’ll help best if you don’t get involved with it.”
“Do you only work alone?”
“It’s better for the sake of everyone if I’m a solo act,” Spider-man says, sounding more dejected and lost than James has ever heard.
James softens, sympathy for the man seeping past the anger.
He looks so small against the backdrop of the night sky, a heavy weight resting on his shoulders for him and him alone to bear.
Atlas holding up the sky, struggling under a weight he never had to carry.
The solo act he’s describing sounds like the loneliest thing in the world.
James seems to attract people that don’t know how to accept help, Sirius, Lily, Spider-man, and he’s gotten good over the years of breaking down the walls people put up. Once an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern, and Spider-man’s his third.
“Okay fine,” James compromises, “You can be as angsty as a batman solo act as you want during patrols, but after, you come to me, your doctor. It isn’t teamwork, it’s you staying healthy. I don’t care about the risks, I know they’re steep, but it’s fine. I trust you.”
Stricken, Spider-man steps backward slightly out of shock, “That’s not a good idea.”
“Trusting you?”
Spider-man nods, “You really shouldn’t.”
James shakes his head, “You’re a good guy, I want to help you.”
He’d bet anything that Spider-man is pale as a sheet right now, watching the hands gripping onto the railing like it’s the only thing keeping him up, “You shouldn’t,” he says softly, barely a sound, and James wants to find any person that ever made Spider-man think he had to shoulder the weight of the world on his shoulders and bury them alive.
“But I do. So it’s settled, you aren’t swinging home and I’ll continue being your doctor.”
“I can’t get home without swinging.”
“Oh boo,” James says, fake sympathy oozing from every syllable, “You can’t swing. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re a nurse.”
“Residency nurse who’s finishing school, I’ll be a doctor soon enough.”
The eyes of the spider-suit blink in confusion, “I don’t know what a residency nurse is?”
James nods like that solves everything, “Now that we’ve established I know more than you, will you please come inside so I can give you a change of clothes?”
Spider-man still looks hesitant, but he does come in and change into James’s fuzzy red plaid christmas pants that he wore for a card five years ago and are completely too small on him now and an I survived NY shirt that Sirius gifted him when he moved into this shitty Queens apartment.
Both items of clothing, while tight and small on James, nearly drown Spider-man. Spider-man is athletic in a lean way, the perfect nimble gymnastics body, while James played baseball and rugby all the way up highschool and through college and has the wide shoulders and tall stature to prove it. He isn’t buff by any means, but he’s definitely bigger than the man in front of him.
The clothes fit Spider-man awkwardly and are made even more so by the mask that cuts off just below his Adam's apple.
The whole outfit is bizarre and slightly stupid, but not an unusual or even eye catching thing to see on the subway, so James thinks he’ll do fine.
He lets the guy borrow a backpack to put extra bandages and his suit into and walks him to the door, making him promise he won’t swing away once he’s out of eyesight and that he’ll come back the next time he’s hurt.
Spider-man still looks conflicted about the whole thing, but James isn’t worried.
After all, three’s a pattern.
Skeeter is even more annoying on the phone than she is in real life.
Regulus spins around in his chair, turning to where his personal laptop is lying on the desk and pulling up the newly edited and developed pictures he had taken last night before the catastrophe of the fight that landed him at James’s house.
Rita blathers on in his ear as he clicks through the best photos and sets them up in his email for her.
“Look,” he interrupts, shifting the phone to his right hand as he picks up the screwdriver and finishes off his third prototype of the morning, “if you don’t want to grant me anonymity, I can just sell my pictures to someone else with a higher bid-”
“No, no, no Mr. Black, that’s not what I had been trying to do at all,” Regulus rolls his eyes, clicking on a photo on his computer as something in the corner catches his eye.
It’s a photo of Spider-man at the scene of a fire, the bright orange blaze stark against the shadow of Spider-man’s arching body as he twists to avoid stray sparks.
That isn’t what catches his eye, it’s the man on the edge of the scene with a mask on watching from across the street that made him glance twice. The same mask as the muggers last night.
It shouldn’t be a big deal, though he flags the photo anyway, moving it into a different photo folder, he twists around to his holographic station while pulling the photo up on a bigger screen and zooming in as Rita drones on about how helpful his pictures are.
Of course the lady doesn’t want him to go anonymous, his name under the photos of Spider-man is drawing more attention than the articles about Spider-man being a menace are.
It had been helpful at first, to keep attention away from negative media and on himself, who read an article when you could watch ten conspiracy videos about Regulus Black becoming a photographer? Now it had caused too much trouble to be worth it.
Rita continues talking as Regulus sets the phone down on the desk, pushing his chair back to get to the open engine he has laying on his metal desk, popping out the metal cylinder next to the engine and bringing it back to his holographic desk.
He sets it down in the scanner and picks the phone back up, “Wonderful conversation. Can I go anonymous or not?”
“Well,” Rita splutters, obviously reluctant but not willing to lose her best superhero photographer, “I suppose you can.”
Something flashes in the corner of his eye and he glances over at the zoomed in picture, information on the man flickering across the scene.
“Great,” Regulus says, wincing as he twists too harshly and aggravates his ribs, “As soon as you have a new contract sent to me and signed that details every single photo I take from now on will be cited as anonymous I’ll send you my next batch of photos for you to take your pick of.”
Pulling up the information, he adds it to the folder he’s created specifically for this group, hesitant to label them as a gang when he’s only spotted them twice now.
“Well actually Mr. Black,” he hangs up, setting his phone back down as he opens up the holographic version of the metal cylinder he just scanned, enlarging it and running a scan for it being made out of a different metal.
The metal is cheaper and just the slightest bit weaker, so he’ll run simulations on it until it fails and then try the next cheapest metal that he prefers anyway.
While the simulations run to the right of him, he moves back over to his miniaturized half built battery, taking out his tweezers as he waves a hand above his head, “Kreacher, play my rock playlist please.”
Kreacher doesn’t bother responding as the speakers whirr above his head before music starts spilling out, filling up the entire room with a better energy.
Regulus finds he works better when he listens to music that makes him feel like the main character, sue him.
Kreacher pops up on the screen next to him, a line that moves with the vibrations of sound when he talks, “Input desired time before break?”
“Override,” Regulus says with an eye roll, spinning around in his chair to grab his smaller pair of tweezers.
Regulus coded Kreacher (Knowledgeable, reactive, enriching, and chill helper + emergency responder) back when he had been a college student, setting him up to run background tests and problems for his homework and company schematics, back when he had just been Kreach. He added the er when he became Spider-man, coding him into his newer suit that he’d been working on for ages, but hadn’t yet found the balance between too much help and too little, so he had opted to keep him out of the designs until he figured it out.
He doesn’t quite remember where the inspiration for the acronym came from, he’s pretty sure it has something to do with Sirius’s naming abilities, he’s also pretty sure he doesn’t want to examine that too closely.
Kreacher, the only true AI of his kind, had been developing growing and learning ever since Regulus coded him, hence the new break protocall he had added, requiring an input time of how long Regulus would be allowed to work (with stipulation, he couldn’t just say for the rest of time) and a shut off feature when time ran out.
Luckily, Regulus had override codes to get past the tricky little AI, but soon the stupid thing would probably figure out how to get around that.
Usually out of spite, Kreacher would add random songs from Regulus’s sleep playlist into his work playlist to make him sleepy, Regulus didn’t mind, most of the songs from his sleep playlist just made him stop and think slowly, which would always be great when he often needed reminders to step back and focus on the bigger picture.
“Sir,” Kreacher interrupts about halfway into Regulus’s finishing touches of the prototype magnet.
Regulus is pretty sure he makes some sort of noncommittal humming noise, and he must because Kreacher continues, “I have five new files on James Potter and predict he will be back in his apartment around five today for you to return the clothing items.”
“Kreacher drop the whole James thing will you?” Regulus mutters distractedly as he pulls up a blueprint for the magnet to compare the prototype to.
“It would be most beneficial for you to continue your interactions with James Potter, your wounds have been healing with a 10% increase in time because of the medical treatment you are reciev-”
“Mute for ten minutes.”
Thankfully, Kreacher finally shuts up.
For some reason, his AI has become borderline obsessed with James, thinking he’s the savior and solution to Regulus’s every problem, and while this is not true, he has been less pushy about Regulus’s sleep schedule, so Regulus has reluctantly put up with the James Potter hero worship.
Almost on cue, ten minutes later, Kreacher pipes up again, “In the past few minutes, I have gathered data of James Potter hanging out with the filthy little blood traito-”
Shuddering, Regulus interrupts, “I don’t want to hear about my brother right now.”
“No brother of yours, the filthy, narcissistic little dicked deserter.”
Usually he would find Kreacher’s obvious hate towards his brother funny, where James Potter is involved, it just makes him feel vaguely ill.
“Are you hacking into New York’s security camera system again?”
Kreacher goes silent as Regulus keeps working and it’s a nice breath of air before he undoubtedly brings Sirius up again.
Yes, Kreacher is annoying, invasive, and strangely opinionated for a chunk of code.
Yes, Regulus loves him in a way he loves nothing else.
“You also have two messages from Mr. Crouch on your group chat with Mr. Crouch and Mr. Rosier. Mr. Crouch is enquiring about your plans for next Friday.”
Spinning in his chair again, he gets to his holographic computer interface and pulls up Kreacher’s feed, a security camera feed from an hour ago plays in high speed, catching up to present time before looping back. It shows Sirius entering a coffee shop first and sitting down before James meets him minutes later and they talk. Both of them get coffees and Regulus blinks at the cup in Sirius’s hand.
“A venti flat white made with blonde espresso and an extra shot, three vanilla beans, four brown sugar scoops and three cinnamon dolce. Cup lined with caramel and mocha and top with vanilla cold foam and cinnamon dolce,” Regulus mumbles as he drops out of the camera feed, pulling Kreacher kicking and screaming from the system and setting up a bar so his coded little gremlin can’t get back in it again for at least a day.
“Sorry sir, could you repeat that order.”
Jerking, Regulus pulls away from the keyboard, staring at his hands as he dismisses Kreacher, “Nothing of importance Kreacher, thank you, if you could pull up the heir file please?”
The heir file started when he had been skimming the dictionary out of feigned boredom, not focusing on the book as he stared at his father over the top of it in a business meeting that discussed the future of the company.
His future.
While the first written version had been on paper, he has since digitized and expanded the plan, an executable theory meant to both put his parents out of power and regain control of the company.
It’s something like a comfort to review and revise the plan every now and then, plotting his parents downfall soothes his nerves he supposes.
It’s slightly dramatic.
The multi-step plan is separated into different parts, the first part of which Regulus clicks into, stirring media unrest into his parent’s lives and finding a way to have the public call for their removal as heads of the company while simultaneously rising Regulus up as the ultimate savior the world needs for the future of Black Industries.
Destroying the company from within its very walls.
It all really fell into place years ago when his father started tweeting borderline offensive comments that the majority of the living world brushes over and ignores, it’s a fine line that Regulus will be happy to bring up in court.
A very fine line Regulus himself has to be careful not to step over.
After coding until his eyes are blurring the screen in front of him and his fingers are cramping with overused muscles, Regulus leans back in his rolling chair, tilting his head to the side to check in on his simulation tester.
A red flashing 54% success rate gleams back at him and Regulus smirks, raising his voice above the music, “Kreacher, rerun the simulation with the poly-crafted hypermetal from experiment 828.”
The metal Regulus had manufactured himself had been a beta test trial for materials to make his suit out of, something strong and durable but flexible. Eventually, he settled with a modified spandex that housed thousands of dollars of technology beneath its multilayered surface to help with the suit’s interface.
A challenge that he hasn’t yet been able to find a happy medium in yet.
Exiting out of his zone, Regulus stretches his arms up, muttering commands to Kreacher as he pushes himself to his feet and moves over to his practical area where bits and pieces of machinery are spread out around three work tables.
“Kreacher, power up the atom fuser and the coffee machine.”
He grabs his suit from the floor compartment, his trial two thousand at this point, a metal infused spandex that shimmers with technology-blue light under his touch.
Plugging it into his interface, he powers up the suit, watching all the wires hidden under the surface glow blue for a moment before dying down, the suit opening up on the holographic screen like pages of a book unfolding and revealing their contents.
It’s fucking gorgeous.
He checks all the levels of the suit and powers up his simulator to run a thousand mock trial patrols to see how likely it is that the new suit will give out on him as he moves over to his chemistry station, grabbing the cabinet with all his hazardous chemicals inside of it and opening it.
Or trying to open it at least.
“Kreacher, unlock the chemical drawer.”
No whirring, no nothing, “Sorry sir, sleep lock has been put on it, you can’t access it if you’re running on less than two hours of sleep in twenty-four hours.”
Rolling his eyes, Regulus commands, “Override.”
“Denied.”
“Override Black two,” he says, using his personal override code.
“Denied.”
Gritting his teeth, he rolls his eyes as he tries one last time, “Override padfoot alpha one.”
A challenging silence, Regulus tugs on the drawer to emphasize his point. With the air of someone conceding a kingdom, Kreacher says, “Accepted.”
The drawer opens with a click.
He really should change Sirius’s override code in his own lab at least, it’s been nearly eight years since Sirius ran away, abdicated, whatever, and his Override code still outmatches his own and his mother’s.
Opening his mouth to tell Kreacher to make a mental note to change that, he notices his simulation flickering out of the corner of his eye and rolls his eyes, “Kreacher, run the simulation again and remove probability of a volcano eruption in New York.”
“The odds are surprisingly hig-”
“Mute.”
Being back out on the streets after the night prior and the day he’s had is a breath of fresh air.
Flinging himself around a corner, Regulus can feel the angry tension seeping out of his shoulders, giving way to exhilaration and the light headed feeling one gets after a hard workout.
He skids to a stop on a rooftop, surveying the streets from his higher vantage point as he tunes out the honking and screaming of angry people and listens for any cries for help.
The night’s been relatively quiet so far, one robbery that he stopped in less than a minute and and helped five people find their missing animals/tiny children.
How people can lose whole humans just by looking away will never not astound the man who can tell exactly how many people are in a room from a block away, who’s always aware of where exactly everyone he cares about is at every moment.
So what if he tails Sirius sometimes? The guy likes to get drunk at his favorite bar and then walk the three blocks home alone.
He’s doing him a favor.
Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he twists to see five guys entering a bank.
All of them are wearing the creepy masks the guys from last night and the guy in the picture were wearing.
He still hasn’t made headway on who they are yet, but he supposes third time’s the charm.
He sneaks over quietly, watching the guys work for a moment before scaling a wall and climbing onto the ceiling, leveraging himself directly above the middle of the group.
“Dude the worm’s already pissed with us for last night, you gotta be quieter if you’re trying not to be caught.”
Shooting a silent web at the ceiling, Regulus starts slowly lowering himself while upside down.
“Shut up, will ‘ya Snivels? ‘M ‘being plenty quiet.”
“And yet,” Regulus says, already smiling, “Not quite quiet enough.”
One of the guys curse as they all scramble to turn around and get out, Regulus shoots a web at the door, sticking it shut for at least the next half hour unless he uses his solvent on it.
“Fuck, Ferret, do something.”
“What the hell kind of name is Fer-”
The laser cuts him off, a glaring red that he scrambles to avoid touching as he glances behind him.
The back wall is completely fried through, he can see outside.
Regulus turns back toward the group with wide eyes, adrenaline kicked up high enough he can hear his heart in his ears, “Is that a double pixelated heat laser? How the hell did you magnif- shit!”
He shoots a web aiming for the other side of the room, narrowly avoiding another laser beam.
Great, so there’s two he has to avoid now.
The guys have some sort of stick-like contraption that the lasers are shooting out of, Regulus would genuinely do anything to get his hands on them.
“Oh great,” he mutters as the remaining three guys pull out their matching stick-like weapons, “You guys got a family pack.”
Dodging five lasers is much harder than avoiding one.
One of the guys makes a decisive twitch that almost gets him, muttering about shutting him up.
“Hey,” Regulus says as he weaves back and forth across the room, trying to build a trap that the lasers keep cutting through, “What do laser guns and churches have in common?”
Nobody answers, he thinks he might hear an annoyed groan.
“Pews.”
The guys get more spiteful in their aiming after that.
He swings up in a tight ball, soaring down to straddle a guy’s head and use his momentum to flip him over his head and into the wall behind him, disarming him as he goes.
“Get it? Like pew pew in guns and the pews you sit in in a church?”
The lasers have shut off for a moment, the guys trying to avoid frying their own teammate to a crisp, but he swings past another guy and gets nicked for his trouble at the fry the guy behind him.
“What the hell!” Regulus exclaims, trying to listen for the guy’s vitals. He’s already bleeding out.
His own arm burns where the lazer nicked him as he tries to regain control of the situation.
“Hey! Dickhead! I’m over here!” He shouts as he uses his swing momentum to propel him into the third guy.
The laser in his hand goes haywire and arcs in a wide destructive streak, cutting through the wall to the store on the corner across the street.
Everyone inside watches as it goes up in flames, vaguely, Regulus can hear someone inside shout in alarm.
“Shit,” he mutters, shooting out a web to propel him across the street.
Cop cars are already appearing so he supposes he has to rely on the city’s protectors to get the guys.
He doesn’t have high hopes.
Swinging into the fire and smoke, he locates the guy inside pretty quickly, wrapping one of the guy’s arms around his shoulder as he pulls them both out.
Mental note: add a smoke filter to the suit’s mask.
The cops are setting up and doing perimeter checks when he gets the guy out, firemen already arriving on the scene and washing out the store.
They both drop on the floor, Regulus trying to catch his breath as the man begins sobbing about his store.
He feels for him, he really does, but he doesn’t have time to stop.
Jumping back up, he uses a web to fling himself into the air, trying to get a glimpse of any of the guys from the robbery, eyes scanning the crowd as he branches out his hearing, focusing on heartbeats and trying to find the ones that match the guys he had just been fighting.
No dice, the guys have completely gotten away.
He lands hard in an alley about a block away from the crime scene, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath, rolling his mask up to his nose as he does so, inspecting his arm.
The skin is badly burned, and the suit around it is sputtering and flickering slightly in a concerning fashion.
“Kreacher,” he mumbles as he warily pokes at the wiring sticking out of his arm, “disable any electric currents in my left arm.”
The glowing wires power down and one shorts out a final time before dimming.
He barely winces at the flash of electricity against his arm, rolling his shoulders as he prepares himself to swing again, determined to find the man.
“Spider-man?” Someone from the mouth of the alley calls, walking closer.
A cop, just lovely.
Pulling down his mask, he clicks his voice modifier back into place before answering, “Yes?”
He watches the shadowed frame relax as he comes closer, holding out a badge, “Please, if I could just get your statement.”
The cop shifts into the light and Regulus comes face to face with Sirius Black, head detective of the NYPD queens district.
Fuck.