staten island
Peter was panicking.
Full-on panicking, at all times.
Norman Osborn had said that Oscorp didn’t exist, but clearly he hadn’t been looking hard enough, otherwise Peter would have had some sort of warning that there was illegal human experimentation (is there a such thing as legal human experimentation) groups forming right under his nose. He’d known the name of it for months.
And then there’s… the other thing.
Peter had spent years wondering who had cursed him to endure all this suffering and grief. By all means, this group could totally make a spider like the one that bit him.
He’d been somewhere in Staten Island, Peter didn’t remember why, when a jitter had gone up his spine. He’d assumed that he was just itchy and thought nothing of it until he got home and there was a giant bump on his wrist. The day the cold passed, he’d found the spider, dead, on the kitchen floor.
Peter had looked for leads. He’d looked through the old HYDRA leak, spent a night in a lab with Mr. Stark — don’t think about him — looking through old lab projects, he’d even looked through Mysterio’s files for anything on that damned spider.
And now Peter had everything he’d been wondering about handed to him on a silver platter. He found this world’s Green Goblin and a new lead on the spider. Or a possible one, anyways.
But, infuriatingly, Peter was terrified, because this was the exact type of evil he always wanted to avoid, being handed to him on a red white and blue platter.
Two nights later, the four met up in Staten Island, per Ben’s request.
“Hi,” Ben greeted quietly. “I don’t really know where they’re locations are, but I’ve got a hunch.”
Kate arcs an eyebrow. “We’re following hunches now?”
Ben drooped. “Alright, it’s more than a hunch. I’ve actually been looking for something like this ‘round here for a while now.”
Sam sighed. “Take these, call us if you find anything.” He held out two comms to Kate and Ben.
They both nodded and grabbed them.
Ben’s tip turns out to bring up a few results.
There was an old, abandoned lab that had hundreds of containers on the desks, all of which were empty. In the very back, there were blueprints that Kate couldn't decipher, all signed by one Spencer Smythe. Underneath some of the tables are random pieces of junk-tech, some of which have the letter A taped onto them. The lab also seemed to be some sort of over-night space, there being a fridge that Kate didn’t want to open because everything in there was probably expired.
Kate takes all of it and then turns to leave the lab.
“–don’t have a good enough power source! It’d need arc-reactor levels of electricity.” Kate ducked behind a support beam, watching as a man with a brown mullet walked out of a hidden door (holy shit), pinning a phone to his ear with his shoulder. “No, I can not use a car battery. Unless you want me to try using an actual car for the job? It’s not going to do anything.”
Kate reached an arm up to her comm as whoever was on the other line spoke.
“I get it. I get- yes, I get it. Just- yes, for the last time, I get it. You are not the mechanical engineer. I know what- I know what you are offering, sir. I’d never forget. Just, give me time, okay? I’ll figure it out.”
They viciously hung up the phone and slid it into his pocket. “Fuck you too, J-ass.” The man yanked the fridge open and grabbed a beer bottle, quickly downing it. “ Car battery, ” he grumbled, walking back into the secret room, the door vanishing behind him.
“ The hell was that? ” Sam asks.
Kate waits a full minute before ducking out of the lab. “I found another lab. Think this guy’s name is Spencer Smythe. Can you guys look into it?”
“ What’s his area? ” Ben asked.
“Mechanical engineering is what he said. I’m not really that into the science-y stuff. Probably makes their machines, most things were blueprints.”
Ben cursed under his breath. “ Not the guy I’ve been looking for, then. ”
“ Maybe the guy you’re looking for moved shop? ” Bucky suggests.
The line goes silent.
Kate really, really doesn’t like silence. “I’m collecting a bunch of blueprints in my apartment if anyone wants to come check it out. I think that I’m nearing six sheets by now.”
“ Know what they are? ” Sam asks.
Kate grabs one of the papers and takes a good look at it. Well, she wasn’t exactly the smartest person, but she could definitely see a pattern, if nothing else. “Nah. A lot of them look unfinished. They all have a name on them, but it’s at weird spots. Or at least the one I’m looking at, but I think they were all like this. Really strange”
Looking closer, she can see a couple erased doodles on the side of the page. Maybe Spencer used to have a lab assistant?
“ What does he look like? ” Bucky asks.
“Yeesh, this an interview?” Kate comments. “Didn’t get a good look. White guy, brown hair, in like a mullet, bleeding into edgy territory while still looking like a guy you’d see at a board of directors meeting. That make any sense?”
She received no reply.
Groaning, Kate started mentally preparing herself for the weird looks she’d surely be receiving as she started walking back in the direction of home. It’d be a long way but damnit, she was tired.
When the girl finally leaves his lab, Alistair drops the ‘stoner scientist’ facade. He calls his boss back.
“ Alistair, ” he greets. “ Coming back to apologise? ”
Alistair sighed. “Nothing to apologise for, sir. There was an intruder. I have found a viable replacement and I am working on fitting it into my machine as we speak.”
He sighed. “ Should have mentioned that, Mr. Smythe. I was beginning to reconsider our… arrangement. ”
Alistair stilled. “I swear to you, I won’t let that happen.”
“ Good. ”
The next week is relatively tame, with them going on two more searches for labs and ultimately coming up with nothing. Sometimes Kate finds herself at that warehouse in Brooklyn, willing herself to go in and save them, but knowing that she can’t without critically injuring them.
She’d ranted about this to Clint on a voicemail, because he never listened to what she sent anyways. Part of her hoped that someday he’d come out to work on another job with her. What she was looking into now seemed like something that would be on his radar, but clearly the Caps were more down-to-Earth than Clint.
Ben had changed since they’d heard about Project O. He was constantly on the lookout, and quipping a lot less. Whenever it was brought up, he’d know things that he by all means shouldn’t, and somehow already has an idea in his head of what he should be looking out for, even though he had said on multiple occasions that he’d just started making plans on how to infiltrate it. Only god knew what was going through his head right now.
Coming to his night-job, Peter could feel the aura of something bad, or maybe that was just his Peter-Tingle.
(Stop thinking about her. Don’t think about her. You can’t think about her.)
Taking his usual spot behind the bar, he resigned himself to a long night.
“It’s been a day, Weasel. He has cancer. You think he what, got a job? ”
“Look, Vanessa, wherever he is, I’m sure he’s fine. He’s Wade. He’d say no to god just to fuck with him.”
Wow, something interesting already. A missing person’s case that wasn’t caused by somebody in this shitshow. Maybe there was something he could look into later.
“He already has, Weasel. That’s the problem. ”
Weasel sighed.
Everything in Peter wanted to switch into Spider-Man mode and get all the info he could. He couldn’t let that happen, because he was working in a bar for criminals. If he let this place get found by the police he’d be sourceless and down a job.
Speaking of other jobs…
“Riley!” Jameson screeched.
Peter nearly groaned in boredom. He’d gotten well acquainted with Jameson’s voice screaming in his ear, to the point that his voice was constantly in the back of Peter’s mind, reminding him that he killed himself a little more with every introduction as Ben Riley. At least it was better to hear it in Triple J’s voice as opposed to Mr. Stark’s.
“You’ve been slacking. I need fresh footage!”
Peter hadn’t been slacking. He really, really hadn’t.
About the opposite, in fact.
He’d been searching every nook and cranny for a sign of Project O.
Peter had spent a long time in the territory of organised crime. Right before the blip, Peter had been looking into a drug ring at the edge of his territory. He’d had red yarn and everything. In the back of his head, he knew that taking Project O was going to be a challenge, after fighting some of the alternate universe versions of the guys it can create had only solidified his new fears.
“Sir, he’s been getting out of his normal stomping grounds a lot. He went to Staten Island this week.”
“Cut the shit, Riley.”
Peter huffed. “I’m not magic, despite what you think. I’m just trying my best. You’re still getting footage, you still have unused footage, and I’m not slacking. I will eventually catch up with his pattern and I’ll get you photos.”
Complete and utter bullshit, but he was an old man, so it didn’t really matter.
“You better make good on that.”
It had been a normal night.
Kate had been eating a pre-patrol taco, one of her favourite pastimes, when a low growl had caught her attention. She’d thought it was her stomach for a moment, too focused on the cliffhanger in a book she’d been reading before she’d set out, but then it had come again, this time accompanied by the screaming of civilians.
Kate sighed, slid her mask over her mouth, and began making her way towards the noise.
R.I.P that taco, she thought. It had been a damn good taco.
It didn’t take Kate long to arrive. She wasn’t exactly a parkour goddess, nor could she scale walls, but she could run and she could run fast.
It was the same lizard that Spidey had fought last week, albeit it looked a little like a mummy, its skin wrapped in something white and skin-like. It sent shivers down Kate’s spine without even having to touch it.
She was not looking forward to fighting this thing. It’d left a truly nasty scratch on Spidey’s side, and he was enhanced.
When they locked eyes, Kate got ready for a fight.
The Lizard grabbed something off the ground and lunged forward, and before Kate knew what was happening there was a stabbing pain in her shoulder and her vision started to turn… green?
Yeah… that didn’t feel good.
What the fuck was that?
Ugh, I’m drowsy.
Maybe sleep would be good.
Yeah.
He’d seen the lizard on the news.
Peter had seen the rampage and had come running, knowing exactly what Connors wanted to do.
He’d swung in a second too late.
Peter had the cure tucked safely under his arm, having re-read Peter-3’s notes and maybe, possibly have stolen chemicals from Midtown.
He’d seen Kate and the world seemed to freeze.
Connor’s arm was moving away from her shoulder, a needle in his hand. Kate’s skin and eyes were beginning to stretch and turn green.
He didn’t have enough cure for both of them. Not when they were moving as fast as Connors could.
Peter could either save Kate, or pray that Connors had somehow made a lizard hivemind and taking him out would take the rest out.
Yeah, that was an easy enough choice.
He leapt towards Kate, and the next thing he registered was a stabbing pain in his leg.
Kate woke up on a rooftop, her head laying on something. A jacket maybe? Some sort of fabric. She was cold. Not just cold, exposed. Had she been stabbed? What had happened?
“Sorry,” a voice said from behind her. “I’d’ve gotten you a blanket, but I don’t thermoregulate.”
Who?
Ben. That was Ben’s voice.
It sounded off. A little hoarse.
“What happened?” She grunted.
“What do you remember?”
“I left my taco to face a tragic demise,” Kate sighed. “Probably because of a mugging or something. I can’t remember.”
Ben huffed. “Little more… intense than just a mugging,” he sighed.
Kate arched an eyebrow.
“Remember the lizard? From last week?”
Kate nodded. Then her head swum and she stopped the motion.
“Well, he was trying to… he was trying to make you into a lizard, I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
Kate didn’t really understand, so she assumed that she’d just misheard him.
“It was a close call. I didn’t have much serum on me. But at least we’re safe?”
Kate had no words coming to her throat.
“Okay, I’m going to take you home. We can talk more about what happened tomorrow. Just, promise me, you’ll stay away from the news?”
Kate gave a thumbs up and let herself drift back to sleep.
She forgot that she was not in her bed.
Kate woke up in her bed, her entire body screeching in pain.
And then it finally came back to her.
The roaring, the fear, the taco (R.I.P), the blur of red and blue as her vision began to morph.
But then everything seems to cut off.
In a daze, Kate grabs her phone and opens up the news app.
LIZARD DUO WREAKS HAVOC ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK by Mary Jane
Hadn’t the Lizard been a solo act?
Spider-Man had known the Lizard, or at least knew of him, but had withheld almost all of his information.
And suddenly, Kate began to panic, because she looked at the images to see that the Lizard had a very familiar gash on its torso. The same gash Kate had received the day of the dusting, when her car window had shattered and glass pierced her skin.
It just had to be a coincidence.
(The stretched black fabric just barely covering the lizard’s body that was suspiciously shiny for clothing. Kind of like leather.)
(Ben screeching in pain as Kate lurched for him blindly.)
Dropping her phone on the bed sheets, Kate takes a moment to get her thoughts in order.
She was not the Lizard on the news. That was literally impossible. Had to be.
(Her skin felt damp.)
Slowly tugging off the sheets, she takes a look down at herself and notes approvingly that she got into clothes before collapsing. And then she sees that she is wearing an MIT hoodie, and she thinks I didn’t go to MIT.
Holy shit.
I didn’t go to MIT.
Where the fuck did I get this hoodie?
Taking a deep breath and trying to wipe away her imagination, Kate opens her eyes and finds that she is still, in fact, wearing the hoodie.
Resigning herself to searching through her contacts to one who attended MIT, Kate yanked the rest of the blanket off.
So…
Kate was still wearing her suit.
Except it was… sagging? Like it’d been stretched to the point of nearly ripping.
Huh.
Oh fuck.
Coming to find and yell at Ben just an hour after getting her new suit was not the brightest of ideas, but Kate still ended up finding him, at least.
“What the fuck happened!?” She roared.
“You just nearly fell off the roof and plumbited is what happened!”
“You know exactly what happened, you fuckhead. I read the news.”
Sometimes.
Ben took in a deep breath before plopping himself into a sitting position that could vaguely be called criss-cross. “The lizard got you. I tried to stop him, but you cut my leg before I could cure you, and by the time I caught up, keeping in mind my limited webbing, you’d already done damage.”
“ Damage!? Is that what you’d call that shit!?”
“Calm down, Kate.”
Kate wanted to be angry at him. She really, really did. But this wasn’t his fault, and he was being emotionally expressive in a way that told her that he wanted to have a calm conversation, like adults.
Kate hated being an adult, but what other choice did she have?
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t,” she said before her brain caught up with her mouth. “You really, really don’t.”
Ben laughed.
“Did I ever tell you about the day I created Spider-Man?”
“DId I ever tell you about the day I created Spider-Man?”
He’d never told anyone the story before. Not even May. It’d always been his thing to tell, and he’d never wanted or needed to.
It still plagued his nightmares sometimes, but using it as a motivator was what had kept it out of Mysterio’s illusions.
“No,” Kate said softly.
Peter patted the spot next to him.
Dumbfounded, Kate sat.
“Spider-Man wasn’t always some glorious superhero. People always ask me, ‘why did you become a superhero?’ They always ask ‘why didn’t you use your powers to your advantage?’ And my answer is always the same. It was never my first idea.”
“Spider-Man used to be the Spider, fighting in boxing rings and winning cash. He was testy, and a fool.”
Peter didn’t like telling the story like this. It felt exposing, and talking in third person made him feel… less real.
(I kind of sound like Left Brain, Right Brain.)
“Then one night, I had a fight with U- my father figure. Went out, tried to buy some Sour Patch kids. The cashier didn’t let me because I didn’t have seven cents or something like that for tax. Then, as I’m getting ready to negotiate, a mugger comes in and points a gun at the cashier. I’d had my powers for two weeks. Could have helped. But instead, I let them leave.”
The next part always hurt.
“My father figure saw the mugger. Could have left him alone, just like I did. But instead, he stands in front of the mugger, and then he gets shot for trying to be a hero. Bled out in my arms because the police were too slow to get him some help. That week, had a lot of time to think.”
“When I was, like, 6, I went to the Stark Expo. The one that was taken over by Hammer, A bot landed in front of me, and I was damn near petrified. I didn’t know where my family were. But I raised this cardboard Iron Man gauntlet and the real guy landed behind me and told me I’d done a good job.”
“The only reason I was there was because my parents had died. It was to make me feel better.”
“In the HYDRA leak, really hidden, my parents were targeted by HYDRA because they were SHIELD specialists, apparently. M- my mother-figure was pissed for days. Shouting that it wasn’t real. I was just happy to know what had happened to them.”
“So I created Spider-Man. Finished off my shitty suit with some goggles and went on the hunt for a random-ass mugger. By the end of that, I’d gotten a thing for crime-fighting. Helping out the little guy. So I went with it.”
Peter never tried to arrest anyone at the ring. Couldn’t bring himself to do it without turning himself in.
“Those days, I felt a lot like you do now.”
There was more to this story, something she needed to hear if she wanted to continue being Hawkeye. He just needed to bring himself to say it.
“In the Battle of Earth, I had the stones for at least two minutes. Could have done what Mr. Stark did at any point. Maybe I’d even make it out with a cool metal arm. At least Mr. Stark could be alive. Took me a while to accept that it wasn’t a mistake.”
Taking a deep breath for the last part, he pushed on.
“I can’t say when this was without you knowing who I am. All you need to know is that I fought a bad guy, and it killed M- my mother figure. Her last words were ‘with great power, comes great responsibility.’ And that- that’s the fuel that drives Spider-Man, and will for years to come.”
“Wow,” Kate mumbled.
“All of us have a guilt complex. Some of the aliens in the battle of Earth never said a word to Mr. Stark, but they still came to his funeral because we all felt like we could have done something to save him. Hell, I almost had the gauntlet off back before the snap, but I was too weak to grab it. It piles up until you find someone else to blame it on. And once you’re not mad at them for it anymore, the bigger picture becomes pretty clear.”
And with those words, he left Kate to her own thoughts.
Hopefully she wouldn’t fall off the roof. Again.