The apprentice spider

Peter was quickly tiring of waking up in unknown places.

Blinking back sleep, he forced his eyes open and yet again, took in his new surroundings. As he looked around he slowly became aware of the fact that these surroundings were not new. He was in the same room as the one he had been in when he’d first woke up in this new universe. Although this time, he notes, he is not wearing any handcuffs. He knows his powers are being dampened as his vision is slightly blurred, he can’t hear anything outside the room and he feels much weaker than usual.

The room was as cold and boring as ever. The same thin mattress, grey walls, small television and toilet in the opposite corner. Mr Stroker could enter at any moment and Peter did not like that fact nor did he like how completely powerless he was as of now. He needed to come up with some sort of plan. The major problem he had to solve right now was keeping the red haired man safe. Gosh, he didn’t even know the man’s name.

Something that had been nagging at Peter for a while though, was why the red haired man had been threatened, but not his father. Would his father not be the obvious hostage? How could the orange egg head know that using his dad’s fiancé would even work? There must be a reason why his finance and not the man himself was threatened. But what is it?

His father most definitely had some relations with Peter’s capture in the past, that much was obvious. A man doesn’t go to another universe and specifically take the alternate version of someone’s son for no reason. Maybe his dad and this man still had some type of relationship to this day. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

It can’t exactly be a healthy friendship if the one eye wonder is willing the threaten to kill his dads fiancé, so perhaps it’s not a friendship. Peter has somewhat steady alliances with villains all the time, maybe that’s what this is. But Peter himself would never work with someone who would kidnap a member of his family, the same universe or otherwise, so he doubts (hopes) that his dad of this universe would work with this man if he finds out he kidnapped his son from another universe, and even if he would (Peter hopes on everything that he wouldn’t) work with someone who could do that, he certainly wouldn’t work with someone who would threaten to harm his own fiancé.

Peter doesn’t exactly have any allies in this universe, so if he could just get a message out to his dad somehow, maybe he’d be willing to help him out.

Standing up, Peter begins to look around the room he is being held in with to hope of finding something, anything that could help him send out his message. Before he can get a good look at anything though, the door swings open and the mercenary himself walks in. Peter notices a small old fashioned radio attached to his utility belt, right next to a small hand pistol.

He quickly averts his gaze from the radio and moves it back up to the man’s face with the hope that he didn’t catch him looking at it, or his already half-backed plan is going to go completely out the window.

“Back again so soon? I’m starting to think that you might be a little obsessed with me.” Peter subtlety edges closer to the man’s side.

As it turns out, being subtle is not necessary as the man storms toward him, grabs him by the neck and throws him up against the wall. Seeing his chance, Peter quickly regains himself and runs toward the man, he attempts to get a hit in with his right hand, aiming straight for the face, while his left hand speedily grabs the radio off o his belt and hides it in the waist band of his pants.

He is thrown even harder back against the wall for his efforts, but the other man doesn’t seem to notice his missing radio.

“It seems you need more time the think about who is in control here, and when I come back we can decide on your punishment.” Slade storms out the room, slamming the door in his wake.

Peter quickly rises from his place on the floor. He pushes his hands on the floor to help himself up and bites his lip to stop himself from letting out a pained yelp when he puts weight on his left leg only to realize it must be fractured. He knows that it is not broken, he’s had enough injuries of this nature to be able to tell the difference.

He limps around the room, searching for cameras. He checks every crevice and corner before satisfied. When he is, he pulls the radio out from his waistband and lays it gently on the mattress. He himself sits down on the floor and inspects the machine.

The radio wasn’t as old as he had originally thought. It seemed to mix older and more modern technologies. The radios Peter was used to were still much more advanced than this. Stark tech was used in basically everything. What company wouldn’t want to use clean energy to power their products. But being the genius he is, he was able to figure out a way to send a beeping signal out to any radios in a four mile radius. He didn’t know how far away his dad was staying or if anyone at all would even get this but he could hope.

While his hearing wasn’t currently enhance, when your heart is pounding out of your chest and you’re this nervous, your ears are listening out for any minuscule sound, so Peter hears the footsteps that are getting closer to him and hastily shoves the broken apart radio back in his waistband. He sits down on the bed and leans his back against the wall, trying to look as casual as he can in the cell of a madman.

“Did you really think I would be stupid enough to let you have access to a radio?” Shouted Slade as he advanced on the boy, “Did you really think you would just be lucky enough for me to come in here with a means of escape ripe for your taking!”

Slade pulled the boy up by the collar and held him suspended in the air. The sudden movement dislodged the radio from the waistband and caused it to fall down his pants leg onto the floor.

“So bold, so unfortunate. I don’t want to do this, but you have to learn.” Slade sighed.

“If you say that this is gonna hurt you more than it hurts me, no joke I will kill my self.”

Peter laughs. He laughs because as long as he’s laughing he can pretend that he’s four years old, laughing and telling his dad to stop tickling him. Not being beat into the ground by a mercenary, being kicked repeatedly in the ribs when he can no longer get back up.

When he’s on the floor bruised bloody and alone, he can pretend that he’s just waiting for aunt May to come back from the bathroom with disinfectant, bandages and loving reassurances that he’s going to be alright.

He can pretend that he believes her.

-

Jason needs to get out of Gotham. Being here, with the bats, it’s too much.

Last night, the riddler escaped Arkham, he was threatening the blow up an apartment building in crime alley, filled with invent civilians if his r riddled were not solved. Jason met with Red Robin to try solve to riddle and save the civilians. That’s when he showed up. That’s when Nightwing showed up.

All smiles and plans and jokes. Effortlessly bantering with Red Robin, treading the line between insults and jokes in a way only siblings could. In the same way he used to with Jason. When he noticed Red Hood behind his younger brother, his face hardened. He saw only a rogue with the capability to harm his brother, not the person behind the mask. At times like these Jason wanted to scream “I was brother too” but he knows he can’t. It wouldn’t be worth it. They don’t deserve to know that the cautionary tale Robin isn’t as much of a cautionary tale as they thought.

“What is he doing here?” Nightwing asks Red Robin with a disapproving tone.

“He’s here to help with the riddler.” Red Robin responds.

Nightwing simply hums in response and moves to position himself between the two. Protecting this brother the way he couldn’t with the last.

They stopped the riddler, Jason ran back to his safe house the moment it was over. Not like anyone noticed he was gone anyway. Not like anyone would notice if he just left Gotham. He had nothing tying him here. He didn’t need to live in Gotham to run his operations. He had people he trusted to do that. He could move somewhere with no bats, somewhere nicer where the sun actually shines. In fact, expanding his operations to another city might even be a good idea.

Now just to decide where. Jason grabbed a map of cities in America out of his cupboard and rolled it out onto his kitchen table. The table was small and the edges of the map flopped off the sides. He pulled an old bullet casing out of his pocket and gripped it in his fist. The casing fell from his hand onto the map. It bounced slightly as it rolled around the paper. It began to slow and come to a stop. Jason looked down at the location marked by it.

Central city didn’t know what was about to hit it.

-

Nightwing hated Arkham breakouts. They happened too often, no matter how much the Wayne foundation paid to upgrade the security.

Red Robin was already on the scene so Dick headed over. They were talking for a few minutes before he notices the large man with the red helmet standing behind his little brother. Red hood. Red hood was a crime lord and somewhat ally of the Gotham vigilantes. He was an odd one. He just appeared one day and overtook a large portion of Gotham’s underworld. When he first showed up Batman didn’t sleep for days at a time trying to figure out who he was and where he came from.

They still know so little about him. Batman was able to recognize some of his moves as league training and the leading theory was that he was a defector. They had tried asking Talia but she had been quite tight lipped about the man, neither confirming nor denying his league origins. Damian had even tried asking her and still came back with nothing.

Nightwing didn’t have much of a problem working with the man himself but Red Hood seemed to avoid him more so than the other bats. Dick was stumped as to why. He can’t remember ever even meeting the man before, so why does Red Hood seem to dislike him so much? Dick disapproves strongly of Red Hoods methods, but he’s never tried to scream at him or lecture him like Batman.

Nightwing looks at the large man and then back at Tim.

“Why is he here?” Dick asks curiously.

“He’s here to help.” Tim respond simply.

Dick hums. He supposed that makes sense as it is his territory after all. He walks around to Tim’s other side, showing his back to Red Hood, hoping he sees the sign of trust, and starts strategizing.

Red hood doesn’t contribute to the conversation, and he avoids Dick whenever possible throughout the team up.

After they stop the riddler, Dick decides to finally ask Red Hood why he is so adamant on avoiding Nightwing, but when he goes to look for him, he’s gone.