Strange City
Everything ached.
Peter felt like he had a blanket of bricks on him. He winced, not too sure how he got here.
He remembered being with Mr Stark and that he had fought some merchants, and then he found that room and then...
Oh yeah.
Peter inwardly groaned as he remembered what had happened, this was not good. He had fallen through the portal thingy. Of course it had to happen to him.
Opening his eyes slowly he tried to take in his surroundings. He was in a new room or what was once a room, now it was more like a pile of rubble and glass. The portal was still there but there was no swirly wind coming from it, it looked like it had broken a bit from him falling through, chunks having fallen out the side leaving sharp pieces all over the ground. He could still see the dull purple glow coming off the portal.
Peter pushed himself upwards. Rubble, glass and dust rolled off him as he sat up coughing. His body groaned in pain. Peter stretched his arms out in front of him and he heard his shoulders pop. He felt very stiff.
Standing up, Peter looked around the room. It honestly looked like a bomb had gone off. He sighed dropping his head. “Why does this always happen to me.” Peter muttered under his breath.
Peter tapped his earpiece and spoke. “Mr Stark?” No response. “Mr Stark can you hear me?” All that came back was static, this was not good.
Rubbing his forehead with his hand, Peter tried to form a list of things he should do in this sort of situation.
1) Find out where he was.
2) Find a phone.
3) Call Mr Stark.
4) If Mr Stark doesn’t pick up call Happy.
5) If Happy doesn’t pick up call Aunt May (and try to come up with a good reason about where he was).
6) If Aunt May doesn’t pick up call any number he remembered.
Nodding to himself Peter slowly started to climb his way through the wreckage of the room, trying to find a way out. Spotting a fire exit in the corner he slowly made his way over. On his way, he took in the less noticeable details of the room; he might as well gather some information to give to Tony when he eventually got back to him. He saw the crate that had flew by him before he had fallen into the portal on the floor upside down, he saw the guns laying across the floor, having fallen out of the crate. Rolling his eyes he continued to look around.
He noticed some tools across the floor and what appeared to be a workshop table broken in half. Picking up a screwdriver Peter inspected it and saw what looked like a white W on it. Rubbing the dirt off to get a better look, he tried to recall all the tool brands he knew which turned out to not be that many. Shrugging his shoulders, Peter dropped the screwdriver sure he could describe what it looked like to Mr Stark when explaining everything that had happened to him later.
Finally reaching the door Peter gave one last look around the room trying to take in any last bits of information he thought may be important before opening the door to head down the stairs. He didn’t feel like swinging right now, not when he quite literally had a pile of bricks land on him give him a break.
Once he reached the bottom of the stairwell he pushed the door open and was welcomed to a pitch black night, which was weird because Peter swore that when he and Tony has left to go on the mission it had been five at the latest. He wondered how long he had been knocked out for.
He walked out into an alley by the side of the building. It was quiet. Too quiet in his opinion. His spider sense was going off it was dull yes, but he was aware of it taking it into consideration as he looked around. Walking towards the street he noticed the lack of people out. It was dark but typically there were people out at night. Partying or whatever. Peter furrowed his brows, where was everyone.
Wandering over to the near by lamppost, he studied his suit under the light, inspecting the damage. There were many rips in the fabric and dust covered all over him. He looked at the hand he had cut earlier and saw the dried blood on his skin.
Peter huffed to himself shaking his head slightly, he had just finished fixing his suit. He also severely regretted not wearing the Iron Spider, so much for wanting to be independent in his hero work.
Looking from left to right Peter weighed up his options, empty street one way and empty street another way.
Choosing to go right he tried to stick to the shadows as he limped his way along. Those bricks that had landed on him really hurt, he didn’t even want to think about the bruises he’d get but they should heal quickly so he hopefully wouldn’t need to explain them to school when he rocked up to PE with massive bruises all up his leg.
Peter waddled along the streets taking lefts and rights trying to find something that might indicate where he was. He did eventually come across some people that didn’t set his spider sense off, well not anymore than it already had been, but they gave him odd looks that made him uneasy and he kinda didn’t want to ask them because of that. It was weird, Peter was pretty sure he was recognisable maybe they were confused why he was here, whether here was.
After 30 minutes of limping slash walking Peter had made no progress and felt even more lost that before, he’d even crossed over a river!
As he had been walking, Peter had seen a change. For starters the intensity of his spider sense had increased considerably and he had noticed more people around but they were unusual, keeping to the sides of the street and muttering to themselves darkly. The buildings had become more run down and damaged, the overall atmosphere had just darkened.
Peter felt very out of place in his spider suit, the colours had slightly dulled thanks to the dust covering him but he was still drawing attention to himself, attention his gut was even telling him he shouldn’t want.
Peter was starting to get very tired, he had found no indication to where he may be and no phone to call Tony on. His plan was not succeeding.
He came to a stop near the entrance to an alley. His spider sense didn’t alert him to any immediate danger in there and he couldn’t see anyone so he decided to walk down until he was covered by the darkness of the alleyway.
Leaning back, Peter shut his eyes resting his head against the hard brick wall. He took some deep breaths but immediately regretted it as he started coughing harshly. Something was wrong with this place, the people were weird, either not out on the street or appeared threatening and Peter had met his fair share of threatening people to know what they were like. But his job as Spider-Man was to actively go out and find these people, not see them on the street as he walks down it. The air quality was terrible, he hadn’t really noticed it at first but it was definitely bad, and everything seemed broken or abandoned especially in the area he was in right now. Sure he knew buildings got destroyed he’d seen it happen but this was uncommon to see basically every building in a street destroyed.
Peter was still trying to figure out what to do considering his Plan A was clearly failing. He was pretty sure Tony had put another secret tracker in his suit without his permission, and if he was missing Peter was sure Tony was already trying to track him down and would come find him soon enough. So maybe it would be best if he stayed in one spot. Pleased with himself, Peter internally patted himself on the back for his amazing Plan B.
Looking between the building Peter weighed up his options. He was quite chilly and didn’t particularly want to stay outside and wait for Tony especially when his spider sense was tingling persistently. Not wanting to wait around for it to get worse Peter decided to use the left building as his safe base for the night.
It had its windows boarded up with wood panels, which gave him the indication that no one would be able to get in there so it should be empty.
Reaching out with his hands he started to climb his way up the building ignoring the dull ache in his bones as he crawled. He reached the bottom of one of the boarded up windows and went to pull the first wooden board off. It came off with a loud creak to reveal the bottom of the window. He shoved the piece of wood under his right arm and reached forward with his left hand to try push the window up. It didn’t budge.
Sighing Peter repositioned, he stuck the wood to the wall with his webs and crouched below the window. Using both his hands he reached forward and pushed the window upwards. After a few moments it opened screeching loudly, he winced slightly at the loud noise.
He pushed the window up till it was hidden behind the remaining wooden boards still nailed up. Peering in Peter could see a dark room with some furniture in it.
Carefully, Peter shimmed his way through, contorting his body to fit through the small gap he had made to get into the room. If Mr Stark could see him now he would probably make some joke about how Peter was a contortionist or something.
Once through Peter reached his arm back out to the wall to grab the piece of wood he had stuck there. He pulled the window shut again and balanced the wood against the wall by it.
Turning around Peter took in his surroundings once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The room was small, it appeared to be a living room or what was once a living room, there was a coffee table missing a leg and a very dusty moth eaten sofa. The floorboards were scuffed up from what he figured was someone pushing heavy furniture around the room. Walking in further he saw a very broken kitchen that had missing draws and cupboard doors and a broken stove. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.
He found a light switch and flicked it a couple times not expecting anything to happen. He dropped his hand from the switch when no light came on and rubbed his neck instead. He was extremely tired and could feel it all throughout his body.
Peter walked over to the sofa and bashed the pillows a couple of times to get rid of some of the dust. When he was satisfied with the amount of dust he had managed to remove he collapsed onto the sofa. He may as well take a quick nap while he waited for Tony, for all he could know Peter could be on the other side of the world and Tony would be a while before he got to Peter to pick him up.
Pulling his mask off Peter chucked it onto the floor next to him before closing his eyes and falling into a deep sleep.
———
Tim had been on patrol when it had happened.
It had been a quiet night for Gotham which was definitely unusual, no rouges on the lose, no bank robbery’s to stop, not even a cat to help out of a tree. Tim had been sat on a rooftop with Dick and they had been talking when Babs had come onto the comm.
“Red Robin, Nightwing, there’s been what appears to be an explosion in one of Wayne Enterpirse’s buildings, I’m sending you the location now.” Babs voice echoed over to them. Tim turned to glance at Dick before they shot off into the night using their grapple guns to get to where Oracle had sent them the location of.
Tim recognised the building immediately. It was the Wayne Enterprises research facility that Poison Ivy had attacked a few months ago for who knows what this time, Tim had lost track. But from what he had been told, the building had been left destroyed beyond use and was considered a danger to be in so it was currently undergoing construction to be rebuilt.
The building now however looked worse off than before. Glass and rubble were covering the street below and half the scaffolding that had been covering the building had fallen over and was laying in pieces on the ground.
“What do you think caused this? Another attack from Ivy?” Tim asked Dick from where they were perched on the building across from the research lab.
“Nah there’d be more sign of well life.” Nightwing responed snickering at his own joke, “Come on let’s go see.” He nudged Tim’s shoulder and Tim watched as Nightwing swung away and landed inside the building going through one of the destroyed windows.
Shaking his head chuckling to himself at Dick’s stupidity, Tim followed after him and landed inside the building.
The interior was no better than the exterior. It looked like a tornado had flown through it. Glass and rubble still littered the floor but what looked like abandoned equipment from the research facility were also broken and laying all around the room.
Tim stepped over debris on high alert for any danger that may appear. He noticed what looked like a crate in the corner. Walking over to it he saw that it was upside down. There was no logo on it that indicated it was Wayne Enterprises’ but what looked like weapons were discarded around it that had fallen out of the crate. Crouching down Tim inspected the weapons, they looked almost alien not the typical type of weapon you would find in Gotham.
“Red Robin could you come here for a second.” Tim heard Dick’s voice travel over to him. Turning around Tim went to walk over in the direction of Dick’s voice.
The first thing he noticed was Nightwing stood with his hand on his hips looking up at something, diverting his attention to what Dick was looking at Tim took in the object in front of him.
It was massive and appeared to be a portal. It was made of the same material that the weapons he had found where made of and it had a purple tint to it that was slowly fading away, like it was powering down.
“What is it?” Nightwing questioned turning to look at him.
“No clue, a portal maybe. But I don’t think this is what the research team were investigating before the attack.”
“Everything they were researching got moved to the new facility anyway.” Dick sighed rubbing his head with his hand. “Whatever it is definitely caused this explosion.”
“Maybe one of the rouges are making some new weapons, I saw what looked like a crate of weapons over there.” Tim gestured in the direction of the guns. He walked towards the portal to get a closer look and saw out the corner of his eye as Dick walked over to the crate behind him.
“It’s not the rouges.” A voice travelled across the room. Tim and Dick swivelled around in the direction of the voice and watched as Batman walked out of the shadows, living up to his name. Tim wasn’t shocked he had come here. Bruce was always near by when there was action.
Tim waited for Bruce to continue, when he didn’t, Tim asked. “Who is it then?”
“Not sure.” Was all he got. Tim looked over at Dick who shrugged his shoulders, Dick had been dealing with Bruce much longer than Tim had and if he don’t know then Tim had no idea what to do.
Bruce had walked over to the portal and was inspecting it doing his usual Bat thing.
“Care to share B?” Nightwing asked coming to stand by Tim.
There was a moment of silence before Bruce replied. “The mission the Justice League and I went on led to us finding this, it didn’t seem like it did anything. We needed a place to keep it while we figured out what it was, I offered this place up.”
Bruce was wandering around the room now to look at the damage. Tim watched as he crouched down to look at the crate of weapons Tim had found earlier.
“So what it’s been here for like a month?” Dick questioned crossing his arms. “And you didn’t mention anything to the rest of us, we could have helped, I don’t know protect it?”
“We didn’t know what it did, once I had figured it out I would have mentioned it.” Batman replied turning finally to look at the two of them. Tim knew Bruce liked to hide things from the rest of them occasionally when he deemed it too dangerous or to have some potential danger. Which was weird considering Bruce was technically letting them run around and fight crime at night and some people might say that that was more dangerous. But Tim figured this was Bruce’s own way in attempting to protect them.
“Did you see anything suspicious when you first got here?” Bruce asked looking between them.
Tim spoke up. “Other than the upturned crate of weapons over there and how it looked like a tornado blew through here no.”
Bruce nodded before spinning around and leaving.
“Do you recon Oracle knew?” Tim asked looking at Dick who he could tell was lost in thought.
“Knowing Bruce, no I’m sure if he had had it his way he would have got here first and just told us it was another rouge attack.” Dick pushed at Tim’s shoulder in a brotherly way. “Come on he’s more likely to tell us more if we are in the Cave.” Nightwing gave him a small smile before turning away to head back to the cave.
Tim gave one last scan of the room; he noticed the camera in the corner. He wondered if maybe he could access the footage that would hopefully show what happened.
Thinking about it now, it was probably for the best Bruce had kept this on the down low because Tim was very interested and wanted lots of answers.
Following after Nightwing, Tim was already coming up with theories of what this portal object could do.
———
When Tim and Dick landed back in the BatCave, Bruce was sat at the computer with his cowl off already researching into what Tim figured was the portal and what had caused the explosion.
Damien was sat with BatCow who was somehow in the cave and was flicking between looking at Bruce and stroking BatCow. His eyes flitted over to where Tim and Dick were stood, he gave them a quick look over before turning his attention back to BatCow.
Steph and Cass weren’t in the Cave, so Tim assumed they were either still on patrol or had gone to bed, it was around 3 in the morning.
Dick walked over to Bruce and looked at what was on his screen. Tim could see from where he was stood what looked like camera footage, so Bruce had had the same idea as Tim, to look at the footage to see if it explained what caused the explosion.
“Found anything?” Dick asked, leaning over Bruce’s shoulder. Tim stood observing the two as he pulled off his own cowl off and chucked it onto the side. He wondered whether Bruce would say anything.
“Nothing yet.” Bruce replied. Tim walked over to them and stood on the other side of Bruce. The footages Bruce was looking at all seemed to end as soon as the explosion happened. A purple wind would appear in the portal, it would go from gentle to ferocious, the crate flew out of the portal and moments later the footage would ended.
“Do you not have any hidden cameras that would have avoided the explosion.” Damien spoke up from where he had moved to the side of Dick. Tim jolted slightly, Damien had stopped sneaking up on people but every so often he did it and it still made Tim jump slightly, not in fear just in surprise.
“No, we do not.” Bruce replied as he rewinded and played the same footage over and over again.
“Did you try the camera in the corner behind the portal.” Tim indicated towards the screen, pointing at the corner on the footage they were looking at.
“According to the researchers who were in the building before Ivy’s attack it didn’t work.” But Bruce nonetheless clicked onto the camera and pulled up the footage.
The quality was terrible, it kept cutting in and out but it did vaguely show what was happening. They all sat in anticipation as they watched the scene play out.
The wind picked up in the portal and they watched as parts of the room began to lift and fly around, glass was shattered as rubble flew into the windows and smashed into the walls. The crate flew out of the portal and landed on the floor upside down and the weapons fell out. The wind in the room picked up and the camera started to shake, there was a blinding purple light before something shot out of the portal.
Then the portal exploded, everything that had been flying around the room dropped to the floor with a loud crash. The wind in the portal evaporated and the room was left in a mess.
Tim tried to focus on the object that flew out the portal causing the explosion but he couldn’t make it out. It was hard to see in this footage but Tim could just about distinguish what appeared to be a blue and red object.
Bruce tapped away on his keyboard and the screen was filled with a zoomed in version of the footage focused on the blue and red object.
“What is it?” Dick asked.
No one replied as they waited for Bruce to try and make the image clearer.
After a few moments they could just about see the object. It was slowly moving, getting up groggily. Once stood at its full height did Tim speak.
“It’s a person.”