36 Hours
“I don’t suppose you have any idea where they are?”
Back inside, Kara sat with Tony, Natasha, and Secretary Ross as they reviewed what had happened.
“We will,” Tony told him. “GSG 9’s got the borders covered. Recon’s flying 24/7. They’ll get a hit. We’ll handle it.”
“You don’t get it, Stark. It’s not yours to handle.” Ross informed him. “It’s clear you can’t be objective. I’m putting Special Ops on this.”
“What happens when the shooting starts?” Natasha asked, knowing Kara wanted to know but couldn’t ask without getting a sarcastic answer. “What, do you kill Steve Rogers?”
“If we’re provoked.”
“What?” Kara finally found her voice. “You’ll just kill Captain America? How will you justify that to the world?”
“He’s a fugitive,” Ross told her. “Besides, this is all your fault.”
“Excuse me?”
Ross sighed. “You should have been able to take him, no problem! You’re invincible!”
“Maybe she could have taken him if you didn’t have a room filled with Kryptonite!” Tony hollered back. “She was doing pretty well until that came into play.”
“Thank you.” She told her brother. “That stuff knocks me down, but I’m guessing you already know that considering you’re hoarding the stuff.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do if we ever have an ‘evil Supergirl’ situation again?”
“We know what caused that, and we’ve gotten rid of it,” Tony told him. “It won’t happen again.”
“Well, in any case, you were able to find them outside, so you have to know where they are headed.”
She shook her head, water droplets finding their way to the floor. “I don’t.”
“A lie! You’re covering for him!”
“No, I’m not!” She yelled back, standing from her spot at the table. “He used one of my weaknesses against me. Maybe if you guys didn’t use lead to build some of your structures, I’d know where they were headed, but he knows I can’t see through lead, so they’re missing.”
Tony squeezed his hand on her shoulder, knowing she was hurt. Her fiancé had used her weakness against her, which was a brutal betrayal to come to terms with.
“Listen, Barnes would have been eliminated in Romania if it wasn’t for Rogers. There are dead people who would be alive now. Feel free to check my math.”
Stepping in before the man could berate his sister anymore, Tony spoke. “All due respect, you’re not gonna solve this with boys and bullets, Ross. You gotta let us bring him in.”
“How would that end any differently than last time?”
“Because this time, I won’t be wearing loafers and a silk shirt.” Tony snapped back.
“And I can talk to him,” Kara said, hope in her voice. “I can get him to listen.”
“72 hours, guaranteed,” Tony told him confidently.
Ross stared at them. “36 hours. Barnes, Rogers, Wilson.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tony spoke, and then they were left alone.
Kara watched Tony press a hand to his chest, rubbing it in circles. “My left arm is numb. Is that normal?”
Natasha stood and walked to him, squeezing his shoulder. “You alright?”
“Always.”
“What about you?” She asked her female friend.
“Far from it.” Kara sighed.
“36 hours. Jeez.” Tony whispered.
“We’re seriously understaffed,” Natasha told the siblings.
Kara nodded as Tony sat back in his chair. “Oh yeah. It would be great if we had a Hulk right about now. Any shot?”
“Tony.”
Natasha waved off the blonde’s protest. “Nah. You really think he’d be on our side?”
“No.” Tony consented, and Natasha glanced at Kara, who knew what she meant and nodded.
“I have an idea.”
“Me, too.” He said to her. “Where’s yours?”
“Downstairs.” Then she furrowed her brow. “Where’s yours?”
“Hey, May.”
“Hey. How was school today?” The woman responded as she watched her nephew walk through the apartment.
“It was okay.” He told her. “There’s this crazy car parked outside….”
Then he caught sight of Tony Stark sitting on his couch and trailed off.
Tony smirked, holding a piece of date loaf in his hand. “Oh, Mr. Parker.”
“Um…” The teenager took his headphones out of his ears. “What…what are you doing…Hey! Uh, I’m…I’m…I’m Peter.”
“Tony.”
Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you…what are you…what are you doing here?”
“It’s about time we met,” Tony told him and gave him a look. “You’ve been getting my emails, right?”
“Yeah? Yeah. Regarding the…”
“You didn’t tell me about the grant,” May told her nephew.
“About the grant.” Peter nodded.
“The September Foundation,” Tony spoke for him, trying to fill in the story as much as possible. “Remember when you applied?”
“Yeah.”
“I approved! So now, we’re in business.” Tony sipped his tea.
“But you didn’t tell me anything. What’s up with that?” May questioned, facing Peter. “You keeping secrets from me now?”
“Well, I just…I just know how much you love surprises, so I thought I would let you know…” He trailed off. “Anyway, what did I apply for?”
“That’s what I’m here to hash out,” Tony said quickly.
“Okay. Hash it out, okay.”
“It’s so hard for me to believe that she’s someone’s aunt,” Tony said, referring to May.
She chuckled at his words. “Yeah, well, we come in all shapes and sizes, you know?”
“This walnut date loaf is…exceptional,” Tony told her.
“Let me just stop you there,” Peter said before Tony could continue flirting with his aunt. “Is this grant got money involved or whatever? No?”
“Yeah…it’s pretty well funded,” Tony said as if it was apparent. “Look who you’re talking to.”
“Yeah? Wow.”
Looking at May, Tony sighed. “Can I have five minutes with him?”
“Sure.”
Once they were quietly closed off in the teenager’s bedroom, Tony locked the door and spat out the date loaf. “As walnut date loaves go, that wasn’t bad.”
Then he looked around the room at the computer parts and other technology Peter had managed to piece together on his own.
“Whoa, what do we have here? Retro tech, huh?” He gestured to it. “Thrift store? Salvation Army?”
“Uh, the uh, garbage, actually.”
“You’re a dumpster diver?” Tony asked him.
“Yeah, I was…anyway, look, um…I definitely did not apply for your grant….”
“Ah-ah! Me first.” The billionaire cut him off. “Quick question of the rhetorical variety. That’s you, right?”
Peter watched as he held up his phone to display a video of a person in a red and black suit swinging through Queens like a spider. “Um, no. What do you…what do you mean?”
“Yeah.” Tony nodded. “Look at you go.”
They watched as the video showed him stopping a car from hitting a bus.
“Wow! Nice catch. Three thousand pounds, forty miles an hour. That’s not easy. You got mad skills.”
Moving past him, Peter gestured to the screen. “That’s uh…that’s all on YouTube, though, right? I mean, that’s where you found that? Because you know that’s all fake; it’s all done on the computer.”
Looking around the room again, Tony let him continue to ramble. “Mmm-hmm.”
“It’s like that video. What is it?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He lifted a bat to poke at the ceiling tiles. “Oh, you mean like those UFOs over Phoenix? Oh, what have we here?”
As the spider suit fell from the ceiling, Peter ran and caught it, throwing it in his hamper. “Uh…”
“So…you’re the Spider-ling. Crime-fighting spider. Spider-Boy?”
“Spider-Man.”
Tony shook his head. “Not in that onesie, you’re not.”
“It’s not a onesie,” Peter told him, attitude evident in his voice as he moved past him again to sit on his bed. “I don’t believe this; I was actually having a really good day today, Mr. Stark. Didn’t miss my train, this perfectly good DVD player was just sitting there…and Algebra test, nailed it.”
Looking at the heap of clothes Peter had just hidden, Tony sighed. “Who else knows? Anybody?”
“Nobody.”
“Not even your unusually attractive aunt?”
Now Peter seemed to get worked up. “No. No! No, no! If she knew, she would freak out. And when she freaks out, I freak out.”
“You know what I think is really cool? This webbing.” Tony tossed it to the kid, who caught it with ease. “That tensile strength is off the charts. Who manufactured that?”
“I did,” Peter said as he tossed the web cartridge into the hamper.
Looking at the suit again, Tony continued his questioning. “Climbing the walls, how you doing that? Adhesive gloves?”
Peter sighed. “It’s a long story. I was…”
“Lordy!” Tony interrupted him as he looked through the goggles on the teen’s suit. “Can you even see in these?”
“Yes!” Peter grabbed them away from the man and shook his head. “Yes, I can see in those. Okay? It’s just that, when whatever happened, happened…it’s like my senses have been dialed up to eleven. There’s…there’s way too much input, so they just kinda help me focus.”
“You’re in dire need of an upgrade,” Tony told him. “Systemic, top to bottom, hundred-point restoration. That’s why I’m here.
“Why are you doing this? What’s your MO? What gets you out of the twin bed in the morning?”
Peter played with his hands in awkward silence for a moment before responding. “Because…uh…because I’ve been me my whole life, and I’ve had these powers for six months. I read books; I build computers. Yeah, I would love to play football, but I couldn’t then, so I shouldn’t now.”
“Sure, because you’re different.”
“Exactly. But I can’t tell anybody that, so I’m not.” Now he looked down and sighed. “When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t…and then the bad things happen…they happen because of you.”
Tony thought about that momentarily, realizing the kid was more like him than he thought. “So, you want to look out for the little guy; you wanna do your part? Make the world a better place, all that, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just looking out for the little guy.” Peter told him. “That’s what it is.”
Standing, Tony moved to sit next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You got a passport?”
“No, I don’t even have a driver’s license.”
“You ever been to Germany?”
“No.”
“Oh, you’ll love it.”
“I can’t go to Germany,” Peter told Tony suddenly.
“Why?”
“I got…homework.” He said lamely, and Tony rolled his eyes as he stood.
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.”
“No, I’m being serious. I can’t just drop out of school.” Peter said to him.
“Might be a little dangerous.” Tony continued, ignoring the boy. “Better tell Aunt Hottie I’m taking you on a field trip.”
Suddenly Tony found his hand webbed to the door and looked up to see Peter staring at him.
“Don’t tell Aunt May.”
“Alright, Spider-Man.” Tony agreed. “Now get me out of this.”
“Right, yeah, sorry.”