Peter Parker had just finished school for the day. It hadn’t been the best day since Ned was sick, MJ was on a school trip for one of her classes, and he had tests in three of his four classes. The block schedule really wasn't helping him in this scenario. Flash had also been a huger dick than normal today since he had no one to back him up. It was fine though.
So maybe his day hadn’t been the best day in the world, but he could go be Spider-Man for a couple hours, get his homework done, and have a general good time. There was something about being Spider-Man that generally helped him feel better. Peter slipped into an alley and webbed his backpack to the wall before changing into his suit. With a click of his wrists everything was sound, and Karen greeted him.
“Heya, Karen.” Peter loaded his web cartridges and swung up to the roof to get a look at the city. “Anything happening right now?”
“There’s nothing on the radar.” She responded. “How was your day at school today, Peter?”
“Well Ned and MJ weren’t there. Flash was also more of a pain than normal.” He sighed. “I also have a lot of homework.”
“I could help with that.”
“Unfortunately I think an AI developed by Tony Stark helping me is academic dishonesty.”
“Only if you get caught.” Peter had to hold back a laugh at that.
“I’d feel bad. Besides, it’s not hard. There’s just a lot of it.” With a running start he leaped off the roof and swung down above the streets. The sun was warm against his skin when he was standing still, but as he started to swing the wind almost made it cold. Oh, crap. He had forgotten to buy a sandwich before spider-manning. Now he was going to be starving later.
“Car crash three blocks to your left. Two cars and a bike.” Karen said, causing Peter to pivot on a dime and head towards the crash. Now that he was aware of it he could hear shouting and smell burning rubber from that direction. He hoped that no one was injured.
When he saw it he cringed inwardly. It appeared that the cars had t-boned each other, skidded, and pushed the bike into the building. “Karen, 911 has been alerted, right?”
“Yes.” He nodded and landed into a roll near the bike to see the biker on the ground a couple yards away. The biker did not look good. He was wearing a helmet so some of the damage must have been mitigated. His arms and legs were scratched up though, and there was more blood on the concrete than he would’ve liked.
Peter ran over to him and checked the guy's pulse. He let out a sigh of relief when he found the heartbeat. It was faint, but it was still there. There was currently nothing he could do to help this guy other than make sure the medics knew where he was when they arrived. That meant it was time to help the other two.
The first car, presumably the one that caused the crash, had a smashed front bumper, and he could smell the burning rubber against the asphalt just by looking in its direction. Inside he could see someone passed out against the airbags. When he got closer he saw that the driver wasn’t injured, and there were two people in the back who appeared unharmed.
Next car. The second car was flipped onto its top and stuck on a light post. When he was close enough to see what was going on the inside didn’t look good. Neither the driver or the passenger were moving and there was a lot of blood around the driver’s head. The air bags clearly went off, but he wasn’t sure how effective they’d been.
Thankfully he was able to hear the sirens by now. He could smell smoke and didn’t want to risk leaving them in there. Normally moving people was something he avoided doing, but being burnt wouldn’t help them. Peter went for the passenger first because they looked easier to access. He used his webs to pull off the door and crouched down next to the person.
He did his best to not shift their body too much, and judging by the fact that the person didn’t seem to be badly injured he thinks it would probably be fine. As he set them down a couple yards away their eyes opened and they blinked up at him. Their mouth opened, but they were out again before they managed to say anything.
On the driver’s side the door was harder to open. Any other time he probably would have left it for the paramedics, but he had picked up a thing or two during his time. That and the burning smell was getting progressively worse, and although he couldn’t see it he wasn’t going to bet on that fact. The sirens were getting louder at least. That was somewhat reassuring.
While being as careful as he could, he pulled the injured driver out of their seat and onto the concrete. As soon as he got the driver over to where he had laid the passenger the inside of the car lit up in flames. Thank goodness he hadn’t waited for the paramedics.
With one last check on everyone he hopped up onto the roof of a nearby building as the paramedics arrived. Not that he had anything against the paramedics, but it was probably easier for them to do their job when a spider-person wasn’t in the way. Once he was sure they were properly taken care of he moved on to finish his patrol for the afternoon. He might be able to go into the night a bit as well if he did some of his homework on patrol!
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Stealth. Be sneaky. Become one with the shadows. Maybe thinking it to himself would help him do better at it. While swinging back towards where he had left his backpack a couple hours ago he had heard a thud followed by a cut off cry from someone. He had come to the conclusion that the people were down this alley somewhere, and it would be easiest to come in a little bit stealthily to get the jump on someone if they were being aggressive.
He slipped around the corner to see a guy slumped against the ground as someone in all black rummaged through his clothes, a briefcase, and what looked to be a bag of groceries. “Karen, make sure the police are notified,” he whispered.
“Already on it.”
“I read somewhere that it was bad luck to open someone else’s briefcase.” The person in all-black whipped around and opened his mouth only for Peter to interrupt him. “Or I could be totally making that up. Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” He shot a web towards the guy’s foot to distract him before making sure he was in the way of the guy and the victim.
The guy managed to dodge a couple webs sent his way while fumbling with something on his belt that Peter assumed was a weapon. In the darkness he couldn’t quite make out the shape though. He wasn’t going to risk it so he jumped to the side and webbed one of the guy’s hands to the wall before following that up with getting his feet.
His other hand was still free though and in those few seconds of Peter celebrating the little victory he had pulled out a gun and was holding it in the direction of the unconscious guy. He leapt in front of the guy on the ground, ignoring the way his spidey-sense blared at him to move away from that spot.
When his side erupted in pain he bit down his tongue, and shot another web at the guy. He ran forwards and knocked the guy out with a quick whack to the head. The pain in his side only seemed to be getting worse. That wasn’t a good sign.
Quickly he webbed the guy to the wall securely. He checked the second guy for any injuries, and it appeared that the worst was probably going to be a bruise on his jaw. Not even a bad one at that. It would hurt, but with some pain killers he would probably be fine.
Now it was time for him to take care of himself. As the police sirens got louder he crawled up the wall and onto the roof where he promptly collapsed against an air vent. At least there would be no one up here to bother him while he assessed his injury in peace.
At a first glance it looked absolutely horrible, and as he looked further into it he found that it was in fact absolutely horrible. The gunshot had embedded a bullet right under his rib cage. His blood flow wasn’t as strong as it probably should be which clued him in to the fact that it was probably still there. At least his backpack was only a couple blocks away. He could make it there and patch up with minimum difficulty.
Hopefully.
Peter dragged himself to his feet, groaning quietly so as not to alert the police officers below. It would probably be easier to just take the roof over instead of trying to swing while in pain. On the downside, it would definitely take a bit longer.
By the time he got there the pain in his side had seemed to fade a little bit. Peter wasn’t necessarily sure whether that was a good sign or a bad sign, so he just decided to take it as something. He let himself fall to the ground gently before pulling his backpack over and rummaging around for his first aid supplies. He probably needed to restock it to be honest, but that would be done another time. When he wasn’t in pain.
The first step to solving this problem would be cleaning the wound area. This also required him peeling away the ripped bits of his suit. He hissed as he picked around the wound to make sure that nothing would block him while he was cleaning and removing the bullet. A little more blood ran out at his efforts, and he elected to ignore that it was starting to look bad.
“Peter, you are losing blood quite quickly, and you seem to have a bullet in your side. Would you like me to call Mr. Stark?” Karen asked.
“No, no. No! I’m fine. My healing factor will take care of it once I get the bullet out. Which I need to do before it heals over with the bullet trapped inside.” Peter replied. There was no need to get Mr. Stark out here when he would be able to take care of this just fine on his own. He grabbed an alcohol wipe and bit back a couple tears at the stinging pain it caused as he wiped away some of the blood.
He grabbed some tweezers from the fist aid kid and wiped them down with a clean alcohol wipe. “Sir, I’m required to alert Mr. Stark if your health is in a concerning condition.”
“Shush.” He said sharply, feeling a bit bad after snapping at Karen. “Sorry, I just need to be able to focus.” Karen didn’t say anything else as he inserted the tweezers into his side and pulled the bullet out. Thankfully he had gotten used to this enough that he wasn’t squeamish at the sight of sticking something into his own side.
A wave of dizziness crashed into him as he finished fishing out the bullet and dropped it on the ground next to him. He took a deep couple of breaths to try and quell the dizziness. It worked okay enough that he was able to grab the bandages and a couple more wipes for his side.
Now that it was gushing blood it was obvious that the bullet had gotten a little deeper than he had originally thought. He also wasn’t going to be able to bandage it properly without at least temporarily removing the top of his suit. Peter pressed the spider on his suit and let it expand and fall down off of his arms and torso and settle around his hips.
At least it hadn’t ripped his binder! That would be annoying to have to ask May for another one since they’re so expensive.
He used the alcohol wipes to clean up the surrounding area before applying pressure to try and stave off the bleeding enough that he wouldn’t immediately bleed through any bandages. After a couple minutes of waiting, and admittedly a few more dizzy spells, he was able to grab the roll of bandages and start wrapping up his entire midsection.
The way the red spread across the white, although kind of calming in appearance, worried him a little bit. By now his healing factor should have kicked in, and he should have started to heal. To be fair, he also hadn’t eaten since lunch time when normally he got a sandwich right after school. That might be affecting it a little bit.
Peter inhaled sharply as he moved his suit around so that he could swing back to his apartment. May had a late shift tonight, so hopefully she wouldn’t be there until well after he was home, asleep, and healing. Once it was properly on again he stuck his hand to the wall, and used that to pull himself up.
His vision whited out for a second, and he thought about sitting back down on the concrete until he could move again. No, he needed to get home. He ignored the way he swayed a bit as he tried to take a step towards his apartment. Peter would be fine.
Then two steps later the black spots took over his vision and he collapsed onto the pavement.
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“Peter? God, kid. Where are you… shit, Peter. Friday, make sure there's free space in the med bay.”
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When Peter awoke the first thing he noticed was the way his head pounded. It felt like his brain was attempting to relieve itself of his skull. Generally not a good sign. Everything felt heavy, and his thoughts were foggy. Given, the fogginess was starting to clear up.
Assuming that the smell was in fact medical equipment, he could make the assumption that he had ended up in the medbay at the tower. Shit, did that mean that Mr. Stark had found him? What had even happened? The last thing he remembered was getting ready to try and head back to his apartment.
Oh well, Mr. Stark would probably tell him all about it once the older man found out that he’d woken up. Speaking of waking up, it would probably be helpful if he opened his eyes. His eyelids were heavy, but he managed to get them open. The fluorescent lights temporarily blinded him. “Friday, turn down the lights.”
Although his voice may have been scratchy and rather quiet, the AI still heard him. The lights were dimmed to about 25% of what they had previously been, and Peter couldn’t help his sigh of relief. Lights were always so bright, and for no good reason.
He slowly moved his arms so that the heaviness would go away and leave him actually able to move. Once he was sure that they wouldn’t give out on him he slowly attempted to push himself into a sitting position. Given, his side started hurting like hell halfway through, which made him give up. Maybe later.
“Mr. Stark is on his way.” Friday alerted, to which Peter groaned. He was about to get a talking to for getting injured. It’s not like he intended to get injured! It was just an unfortunate happening on an unfortunate day. Besides, he was healing fine now. It still hurt, but from the noticeable lack of IVs he figured that he would be okay.
A couple seconds later Mr. Stark barged his way into the medbay. “You should’ve alerted me the moment he woke up!”
“You needed a few extra minutes of sleep. Pepper is never happy when you’re sleep-deprived.”
He groaned at Friday’s comment, and Peter couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle. “Oh you don’t get a word in this matter, Underoos. I found you bleeding out in an alleyway, and according to Karen you told her not to call me. Why?”
“I would’ve been fine! My super healing would have healed me. Maybe it would have taken a bit, but I would have lived.” Peter said, throwing on his puppy dog eyes and a guilty look to try and avoid the worst of it. It didn’t seem like luck was in his favor today though.
“Kid, what have I told you before? If you’re bleeding out to the point Karen thinks it’s a problem, it’s a problem. I literally wasn’t doing anything better! If I had gotten to you sooner this situation would probably have been better, actually.” Now Peter felt guilty. He had it handled though! Well, he had passed out. Maybe he hadn’t had it handled.
“Sorry, Mr. Stark.”
Peter looked up towards Mr. Stark who was pinching his brow in thought. “Kid, it’s fine. Just don’t do it again. I’m going to go gray next year at this rate.”
“You’re already looking a little gray, to be fair.” Wrong move.
Mr. Stark turned to him with his mouth opened in shock. “Did you just say that to me? Friday, did he just say that to me?”
“He did, sir.”
“Wow, I am astonished.” Peter couldn’t help giggling a little at Mr. Stark’s dramatics. “I already texted Aunt Hottie and told her that you’re staying the night here. Happy’ll take you to school in the morning if I deem that you’re healed enough to go. And no patrolling tomorrow.” Peter opened his mouth to argue only to shut it again at the look Mr. Stark gave him. “Now let’s go watch your favorite movies or something. What are they, Star Trek?”
Peter groaned, before using Tony to help support himself as he got up. It was a lot easier when you could use someone else to get up in a way that hurt you a minimal amount. “It’s Star Wars, Mr. Stark.”
“It’s Tony, kid.”
“Got it, Tony.” He said, putting emphasis on Tony as the two of them made their way to the common area to watch a movie.