Chapter 43
BATCHAT
Barbara (06:08pm): Justice League network is quiet. I’m not getting anything from outside of the city. That portal is causing a lot of interference.
Steph (06:10pm): Lots of green light coming out of that spire.
Bruce (06:11pm): Energized Kryptonite.
Barbara (06:12pm): It’s pretty unstable when it’s used as a battery, isn’t it?
Bruce (06:14pm): Extremely.
Bruce (06:15pm): Approaching the spire. Target spotted. Fall in.
* * *
Felicia’s grappling gun shatters the moment she clears the entrance to the spire. There’s always a payoff to using her skill, which is why she doesn’t use it all the time. She’s certainly pushed it to the limit now after using it to help Peter, and in a way she’s never used it before. Which means she’s going to pay for it:
For example, having her grappling gun jam up and crack in the unluckiest way possible just as she jumps up onto a platform at the top of the spire. A platform where Clayface, Bane, Scarecrow, some weirdo in an electric suit, and a few lingering outriders are gathered around a complicated machine made of black steel, humming with power.
They stare at her for a moment, clearly taken off guard by her sudden appearance, and she returns the favor before turning around and sprinting for the edge of the platform. A moment later, she hears Bane snap out ‘grab her!’ and the snarling pants of the outriders launching themselves into the air to give chase. She leaps off of the spire.
She slides slides down the side of the shifting spire sprouting from the center of Crime Alley. Her shoes jitter across the uneven brick and cement surface of the building, and she leans back, letting luck guide her as much as skill. Her heart is pounding, her head is starting to throb with pain from overexertion, and her hands tremble from the rush of adrenaline. She isn’t a fighter like Peter; she’s used to tense games of hide and seek, not full on combat, and if she wasn’t able to use her special skill during that escape, she would be dead three times over. She might still die, if the outriders catch up.
Two dark shapes rise past her, moving too quickly for her to see clearly. The outriders behind her suddenly scream in confusion and pain. Something--someone?--has met them head on. And it sounds like they’re winning the fight. Felicia lets out a quiet breath of relief, and focuses on trying to survive the next ten seconds. She needs to get the hell off of this thing and find a way to signal Batman for help. After that, she’s going to go crawl into her bedroom closet in Selina’s apartment and have a complete panic attack while the Bats help Peter.
The storm above rumbles threateningly. The building beneath her feet lets out an answering grumble, shifting on its uneven foundation, leaning towards another building. When the building shifts again, an intuition strikes her, and she leaps from the spire, landing on the edge of the other building clumsily. She starts to slip, curses, instinctively reaching for her power. It comes up empty, and she starts to panic--
A black gloved hand reaches down and grabs her arm, lifting her up easily and with a surprising amount of gentleness. Felicia clings to the hand, half stumbling against whoever it is before she catches her balance. When she looks up, she sucks in a breath.
Batman is every inch as intimidating as the stories say. Tall, imposing, and carrying an aura of stoic threat, he watches her from behind his mask, his mouth set in a grim line. In the dim half light of the storm, it looks as if he’s half hidden in shadow, occasionally lit by the flickering lightning above. The growling thunder from the storm only adds to the image, and his cape flutters in the wind.
She stares at him for a moment, and then re-engages her brain. Selina always told her that if Batman tailed her, just give up the chase; Felicia might get away from the other Bats if she’s lucky, but she won’t win against Batman. He knows all of Selina’s tricks, and Felicia hasn’t quite matched Selina’s skill. Selina had said even her trick with changing someone’s luck probably wouldn’t have much of an effect on him.
And he won’t hurt you, Selina had added after a moment. Just tell him to call me if you get in trouble.
Well, she’s in trouble now, but not because she’s been breaking into WayneTech buildings.
“Peter needs your help!” she blurts out. “He’s fighting them alone and I think he’s going to try and get Signal and Nightwing and Red Hood free but--”
“How do we get inside?” Batman asks, cutting off her ramble. His voice is deep, gravelly, and it matches the blunt, almost rude tone perfectly. He lets go of her arm, pulling his hand back slowly as if afraid she’ll topple off of the side of the building. Given how much she’s struggling to keep it together, that’s probably wise of him. And unexpectedly kind, given his reputation for dangling people over the side of buildings.
“There’s an opening at the top, but Bane and a few others are up there,” she says, turning to point at the flat area near the tip of the spire. “They have a lot of vats of liquid and some kind of machine. I think they’re going to spread it across the city while they pull in their invasion fleet from the portal--”
“I know,” Batman says. He pulls out a small grappling gun and holds it out to Felicia. Felicia stares at the grappling gun for a moment before the implication hits her.
“You want me to help?”
“Only if you want to. I know better than to force a cat to do anything,” Batman says, his tone turning wry. He adds, not unkindly, “You can just as easily take it and go home.”
Felicia hesitates. She’s at a crossroads.
She can run, head for Selina’s apartment and beg the woman to flee Gotham City for her own safety before the invasion comes. They could outrun whatever’s happening here, get ahead of the terror and death. It’s tempting. The Invasion of New York is still fresh in Felicia’s mind, and she doesn’t want to relive the horror of that day again, not in a city she’s slowly started to think of as home.
Or she could stay. Help Peter. The only other person from her home that she’ll ever see again. Stupid, brave Peter, facing an army of monsters alone after suffering more than he should have.
Her instincts tell her to run.
For the first time in her life, she ignores them. She takes the grappling gun Batman’s hand, steadies her aim, and begins to swing after him. She catches up to him, swinging alongside him. She isn’t surprised when Spoiler and a dark form in a Batgirl suit silently join them, falling in behind them. She’s even less surprised when the hooded form of Robin appears from the shadows, swinging alongside Batman with an eerie, silent grace, sword hidden within his cape.
“How do you know?” Felicia calls out to him.
“Killer Croc,” Batman replies. “I questioned him. He kept insisting he was being controlled, that he couldn’t stop himself when he attacked Spider-Man. He kept forgetting details while in custody here, and my line of questioning kept going in circles. I took him outside of the city. He was able to think clearly there.”
“He could’ve been lying,” Felicia points out.
“He couldn’t fool me if he was,” Batman says, calm and confident in a way that would seem arrogant on anyone else. “And he wasn’t lying.”
Another form falls in beside them. Batman glances over for a moment, then back to the spire.
“Cat,” he says.
“Bat,” Catwoman replies. She looks at Felicia and raises an eyebrow, a silent question. “Black Cat?”
“I can explain,” Felicia says.
“Later. Stay close, and let the Bats take the lead,” Catwoman says. She pauses, and adds, quietly, “If things get bad, run, grab the cats, and go to the manor.”
“I just got kidnapped from there,” Felicia says.
“Alfred will have the shotgun out by now,” Catwoman says, as if she’s personally familiar with the Wayne family butler.
“Spoiler, Robin, focus on the machine at the top of the spire,” Batman orders. Robin lets out a quiet tt in acknowledgement, while Spoiler responds with a salute that feels half sarcastic, half sincere. “Black Bat, we’re going to help the others with the Black Order.”
The near silent form of Black Bat nods, shifting away from Robin and Spoiler. Batman glances at Catwoman, clearly ready to give her orders and just as clearly aware that she probably doesn’t want to hear them. She smirks at him briefly and glances at Felicia.
“We’ll help with the spire.”
Batman gives the briefest of nods to her before swinging ahead of the group, disappearing into the storm just as a crack of thunder erupts from the portal.
Felicia swings alongside Catwoman and hopes that she’s making the smart decision.
* * *
As it turns out, they are very much ready for round two. Peter barely finishes his taunt when Ebony Maw rips a car sized chunk of brick, steel, and concrete from the wall of the spire and flings it directly at Peter’s head. He dodges it easily, leaping up and using the debris for a handspring further up into the air before shooting out another length of web to swing through the air, flying past rows of eerie green lights interspersed with more regular, normal halogens and fluorescents. He instinctively keeps away from the green ones.
“I’m taking this as a yes!” Peter calls out, yanking himself out of the path of another massive chunk of warped steel and jagged brick. It passes by in a whoosh of wind, smashing into a wall and shattering, the pieces falling into the mess of dirt, cement, and brick below the platforms everyone is standing on.
He sprints along the wall, trying to reach Signal. Ebony Maw yanks Signal out of his reach before he can get close, shooting out spikes of cement at Peter. Peter curses, backflips off of the wall, and swings away from Signal and Ebony Maw, avoiding the spikes and the outriders skittering up the walls to try and ambush him. The spikes bounce off of the wall.
Ebony Maw isn’t trying to hit him; he’s distracting Peter. The Black Order is recovering from their initial shock and Peter’s blitz through the outriders, regrouping. If they start to fight smart, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. Peter doesn’t have much time to even the odds. In a fair fight, he could probably handle the Black Order, but he’s going to have trouble with the Black Order and their outriders. He can’t reach Signal, and Tim isn’t going to be much help at all in this situation, no matter how much he tries to wiggle free of his chain restraints. The guy looks half feral with frustration at the moment, and Peter hopes the outriders and Black Order both continue to ignore him.
“Attempting to connect to the Stark Industries satellite network,” FRIDAY reports, her tone even and neutral. “Connection failed. I won’t be able to call the boss in on this one, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, Tony’s out of reach,” Peter replies. An outrider dives towards him from above, letting out a near deafening battle shriek. Peter catches it in a web and whips it away from him and into three of its friends behind him. The whole group falls into a tumble of limbs, wings, and claws. He picks up speed. “By a lot. Can you try to find Oracle’s network? She’s tapped into a lot of places around the city. You’ll know her network when you see it.”
“Beginning search.”
He dodges a third swirling mass of broken concrete, kicks an outrider sweeping up from below into the wall hard enough almost flatten it, and flings himself back up onto the platform with the glowing green rock. He’s got his suit now, this should be fine--
Shockingly, it somehow feels worse: the suit suddenly feels five times heavier, the weight of it dropping across his shoulders just as the air wheezes out of his lungs. The joints begin locking or jittering in place, as if struggling to function at all. Even his mask begins to fuzz at the edges, the clear image lagging and turning staticy in spots, artifacting in others, like a magnet being placed near highly sensitive electronics. There’s less nausea this time, but not by much: he can feel every weak spot in his suit. FRIDAY was right when she said it was only seventy five percent whole.
“What is this thing?” Peter mutters, staggering back from the rock again. “FRIDAY--”
“I don’t know. It’s emitting something that’s interfering with the Arc reactor tech powering your armor,” FRIDAY responds. “Your suit isn’t airtight anymore and whatever it’s doing to your suit, it’s doing to you. I recommend you keep away from it until I have a chance to analyze it.”
Dammit. Peter does as she suggests, slinging a web out and launching himself back into the air, circling the interior of the spire while he tries to think. He leaps back towards Nightwing and Red Hood’s cell, slamming both of his heels into glass. It cracks, but doesn’t shatter, and the metallic reinforcement is keeping the cell firmly in place. He can break through the glass if he had enough time, but time is a luxury in battle and he’s running out of it.
As evidenced by another round of cement spikes sent his way courtesy of Ebony Maw. Peter’s senses ping against the incoming threat and he leaps back into the air half a second before the wave of spikes reach him. They shatter against the cell, adding a few cracks but no closer to breaking through than Peter had been. That’s probably a good thing; it’d be just his luck to get Red Hood and Nightwing speared by magical spikes when he’s trying to rescue them. Red Hood would never let him hear the end of it.
Peter swings away from the cell, making another circuit of the room. Tim tries to catch his eye, but Peter ignores him, too focused on avoiding another swirling chunk of brick to chance helping him. Tim’s still in danger, but none of the outriders or the Black Order are paying any attention to him at the moment, and Peter can’t risk freeing him. There’s nothing beneath Tim’s feet but what used to be a warehouse floor; Peter would have to carry Tim out of here and leave the Bats to their fate. He can’t risk that.
He dives for Signal again. Signal is yanked out of his reach a second later. Peter curses, chasing after his would-be ally, frustration beginning to simmer at the edge of his consciousness. He’s not doing this smart, and he knows it, which is making things worse, but--
The Black Order keeps yanking Signal around, dangling him like a carrot in front of Peter, hoping to lure him close so they can attack him. Peter swings for him, and then quickly adjusts his swing just as Ebony Maw begins to pull Signal out of his reach again. He slams an armored fist across the sorcerer’s face, staggering him and interrupting Ebony Maw’s magic. He draws back for another punch when Ebony Maw recovers, flattening his palm and jerking his arm up. The platform they’re standing on jerks upward, as does every other piece of the warehouse, throwing Peter off balance just long enough for Ebony Maw to shove him into a pile of outriders.
For a brief moment, Peter’s vision is filled with images of claws, black steel armor, fangs, and wings. He fights blind, dodging the heavier hits, bracing himself against the smaller, and ducking out of the mass of outriders altogether a few moments later, barely escaping what would have been a deadly dogpile.
“That was too risky,” Fury says. He can hear other distant grumblings, too.
Yeah, now isn’t time, thanks.
“You think one Avenger is enough to stop the tide?” Ebony Maw shouts, clearly furious by Peter’s strike. And a little shaken; it’s clear the guy hasn’t been punched very much in his life.
“Depends on the Avenger,” Peter shouts back, ducking down and around the nearest monsters. Every time he gets close to Signal, ten more appear and chase him off. If it comes to it, he could fight through the crowd, but that’s a deathtrap. They’ll overwhelm him with numbers alone, drag him down by weight and number before he manages to free him. Dammit, he needs to think of something--
“There will be no fight,” Ebony Maw growls.
“Awesome!” Peter shouts, interrupting whatever the hell the alien is about to snarl at him with a web bomb. The sticky fluid tangles up another wave of outriders, and his follow up shots of web fluid slap across Ebony Maw’s face, blinding him just long enough for Peter to duck out of view. “In that case, I accept your surrender! Call off your goons, let my friends go, and we’ll have you arrested in no time!”
“Insolent child--”
“God, I hear that one a lot,” Peter mutters, sheltering himself behind Nightwing and Red Hood’s prison pod while he checks his web fluid levels. Half a tank left. That’s not exactly ideal. He’s going to have to be more sparing with this stuff. Nightwing watches him helplessly, clearly frustrated. Peter idly knocks on his tank, scanning the warehouse-turned-alien invasion staging point. “Hold that thought, Nightwing, I’ve got an alien invasion to fend off. You can yell at me for accidentally stitching a giant bullseye on your suit once I kick this guy’s ass.”
Red Hood punches the glass near Peter’s head, hard. It doesn’t crack the thick glass, but it does get Peter’s attention (and scares the hell out of him, good god does that man move fast). Peter startles in place, looking at the other hero through the glass.
Red Hood points at the weird green rock again, mimics Peter’s web shooting motion, and then leans back as if reeling in a fishing line. The message is pretty clear: throw something at it, dumbass.
He isn’t spoiled for choice on that front: most of the stuff around here isn’t heavy enough to do any damage to that thing. But the big alien, Cull Obsidian, who stands as tall as the Hulk with muscle and thick armor to match, is. Or, at least, he will be. Right now, the big guy is hauling himself back up onto the platform beside Ebony Maw, holding a dripping chain axe in one massive hand. He’s moving stiffly, still shaking off the punch Peter gave him earlier. Peter swings over to the far wall, planting himself against the brick where he’ll have a clear angle to hit the green crystal.
"Hey! Ugly!" Peter calls out, waving at him excitedly. “Over here! Bet you can’t reach me with that stupid axe!”
The alien’s head snaps towards Peter, and he snarls at him. He winds up his chainaxe with a couple of slow twirls before flinging it out towards Peter.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you fell for that,” Peter says, impressed by his opponent’s stupidity.
The axe head flies towards Peter. He catches it with both hands, shifts his feet to engage his sticky powers through the Iron Spider, twists his hips, and bodily flings the alien over his head and into the green glowing crystal. The alien smashes into the crystal with a metallic ringing sound.It cracks, sending sparks of sickly green energy flying in every direction. The sparks are startlingly bright; they flash bright enough that FRIDAY slams a filter over his mask to protect his vision from the sudden flare. For a moment, the crystal holds its shape. And then a single crack appears on its surface.
The green crystal does more than break: it explodes. A second flash of blinding white light fills Peter’s vision one moment, followed by a sense of nausea, and the next he’s falling, his skin on fire, his suit half shattered. It takes his brain a moment to fill in the gaps.
The big alien shattered the crystal like Peter wanted. The crystal exploded, sending shrapnel and arcs of energy everywhere. That shrapnel struck Peter, shredding half of his suit’s mask and tearing searingly hot holes through other parts of his suit.
A shard of the green crystal is sticking from his shoulder. He can feel every part of the thing pressing into the flesh on his shoulder, burning him from the inside out. He can’t move his arm; it’s locked up, frozen in place from the pain. His malfunctioning suit keeps his free arm pinned, the joints unable to bend correctly thanks to the still sparking crystal. The nausea isn’t helping his predicament any. FRIDAY positively lights up what’s left of his HUD, struggling to function at all with the crystal so close.
“I’ve got you!” a voice shouts above him, cutting through the pain.
Nightwing is diving headfirst towards him, arms tucked to his sides to build up enough speed to catch up to Peter. When he reaches him, he flips in midair, grabbing Peter’s good arm with one hand, and using the other to rip out the crystal and fling it into the distance before launching a grappling hook from his escrima stick. It’s neatly done; all one smooth motion, as if he makes a habit of catching people falling to their deaths.
The moment the crystal is gone, FRIDAY reboots his suit, and the pain drains away so quickly it’s almost disorienting.
“Suit integrity is now at forty-five percent. There isn't enough power left to reform the broken nanobots,” she reports, a hint of disapproval in her tone. “Theboss isn’t going to be happy with that, Peter.”
“Spider-Man, are you all right?” Nightwing asks. He’s swinging them away from the fight, back towards the shadows, and managing to do it at a shockingly quick pace considering he’s only able to use one arm to swing away. His voice is all business, but there’s a sharp thread of anger and panic just under the surface. “If a piece of that got into your bloodstream--”
“I’m fine,” Peter gasps, shaking his head. He shifts in Nightwing’s grip, and the man catches the hint. Nightwing flings Peter back into into the air, allowing him to use his webs again. They swing side by side, but he can tell Nightwing is watching him closely. “Glad I had the suit for that. Looks like I’m down to half of a suit for now though.”
“You’re lucky that shard didn’t catch your eye,” Nightwing says tightly. He starts to say something else, and then thinks better of it, turning his attention to the Black Order. “What’s our game plan?”
“Get Signal free first, and then we focus on Ebony Maw,” Peter says, nodding towards the furious alien. Red Hood is busy flinging outriders at the sorcerer, charging for Signal, shouting obscenities and insults in equal measure. It’s more than effective; Ebony Maw seems both furious that he’s free and baffled that he’s managing to fight his way through a horde of outriders with his bare hands. “We need to stop him from fixing whatever’s wrong with the portals before the invasion force comes through, and we need to keep Signal out of his reach.”
Nightwing nods. He glances at Peter. “We’re so having a long talk after this.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” Peter says. “I’m pretty sure Tim’s going to leap out of those chains and strangle me the first chance he gets.”
“Only if Red Hood doesn’t reach you first,” Nightwing replies dryly.
“Yay,” Peter says. He adds, a little cheerfully, “On the bright side, I didn’t have to go to a fancy dinner party at Wayne Manor tonight.”
Despite the tension in his shoulders and the strange tone to his words, Nightwing smirks. “Trust me, you won’t escape them forever.” He says this with far more assurance and authority than Peter expects; as if he’s been to more than his fair share of such occasions. “Red Hood needs help getting Signal free. I’ll distract the bad guys, you help him with Signal. Got it?”
Peter shoots him a thumbs up and swings back towards the fight on the platform.
Red Hood cuts a bloody swath through the outriders. Ebony Maw’s annoyance quickly shifts into confusion and then worried fury. Red Hood is on a warpath, bull rushing through every enemy that gets close to him. The only thing that slows him down is Proxima Midnight, who steps out of a pack of outriders on Red Hood’s flank, swinging her sword towards the back of his head. He ducks it easily, grabbing hold of an outrider and shoving it onto her blade. It’s a smart tactic; her weapon is now buried inside an ally, and essentially useless to her. She drops the sword with a curse, leaping back into a pack of outriders. She fails to hurt him, but she does slow him down. Red Hood loses his forward momentum, and the outriders sense an opportunity to swarm him.
Peter drops down from above, grabbing two of the monsters leaping for Red Hood and bodily flinging them off into the distance before they get close to the Bat; the man startles, and gives him a look that could peel paint. Some people are never happy, apparently.
“Cover me, I’m going for Signal!” Peter says to him. The man gives a terse nod, shifting his attention to the rest of the outriders, shielding Peter from their attack.
"Gotta hand it to you, that was a pretty good entrance," Signal says when Peter closes in on him.
"Couldn't have done it without your help," Peter replies, doing his best to ignore the sounds of combat behind him. Nightwing and Red Hood are clearly holding their own without him, but this whole situation is from hisuniverse. He feels responsible for handling it.
He clamps his hands around the chains, letting his sticky powers flow through completely before ripping the chain links apart like fabric. Pieces of metal fall to the ground as the links snap apart. He has to rip at the chains a few times; unlike his chain cocoon, Signal’s chains keep trying to reform. Probably a side effect of his constant struggle earlier. Signal helps, shifting back and forth in the chains until he manages to drop out of it completely, landing lightly beside Peter.
"You should thank Dr. Strange instead."
"I'd rather eat glass, thanks," Peter replies cheerfully.
Dr. Strange scoffs quietly somewhere behind him. Signal grins, falling into Peter’s left, covering his flank the same way Red Hood is covering his right. Nightwing finishes with the pack of outriders he’s been fighting, kicking one of the larger ones into a pack of its fellows before gracefully backflipping into place with the others.
“Show off,” Peter says. Nightwing smirks and winks at him.
“Nothing wrong with a little style.”
“Nice to see you’re still alive, Spider-Man,” Red Hood says tightly.
“If it makes you feel better, I did almost die a couple of times before Tim found me,” Peter says helpfully. "But hey, at least I came back in a sufficiently dramatic fashion to save your life, right? For the second time, by the way."
“Yeah, thanks, asshole.”
“Sure, take that tone.”
“The important thing is that we’re all handling this so very well,” Signal says.
“They’re regrouping, get ready,” Nightwing shouts.
And the Black Order is doing just that. Ebony Maw flashes away from them, reaching out with one hand and yanking it towards himself to create another platform, the cement and brick shooting out to obey his silent command, twisting around to avoid one of the slowly rising vats of fear toxin. He lands on it lightly, obviously annoyed, and makes another sharp gesture. The rest of the Black Order and a swarm of outriders gather around him; the big alien with the chain axe is still half wet from the liquid fear toxin Peter threw him into, and half charred after being flung into the green crystal after. He twitches in place, gripping his chain axe tightly, gnashing his teeth in a way that causes the others near him to shift away nervously.
“Bring me the spider, kill the rest,” Ebony Maw snarls. With another violent wrenching motion of his hand, the platforms around the spire begin to rise, heading for the top of the spire. Tim is dragged along for the ride, rising up alongside the platforms.
The Black Order and the outriders, whose number seems to grow by the moment as they clamber inside the spire, come towards them in a wave. Peter and the Bats are forced off of the central platform, swinging away with webs or grappling guns, covering one another as they move.
“I’m guessing he’s the one we need to take out?” Red Hood calls out.
“The portal is more important,” Peter says. “We need to cut it off.”
“How did you do that before?” Nightwing asks, swinging past him to take the lead and guide them up towards the top of the spire.
“Tony flew a nuke through the portal and detonated it,” Peter says, twisting in midair to fire both web shooters into three outriders diving for Nightwing, blinding and binding them at the same time. They fall, tearing and ripping at one another in blind fury.
Actually, he’s not entirely sure about that. He always assumed Iron Man had caused the portal to close, but he’s never asked. Tony always had a vaguely haunted look on his face whenever he mentioned it, even in passing, and Peter instinctively steered away from the topic. That seems like an oversight now.
“The Widow did it,” Loki says dryly. “I suppose there’s something poetic about spiders sealing off invasion portals.”
“That explains your dramatics,” Red Hood swinging past him to kick an outrider diving for Peter’s back.
“Man, you’re one to talk,” Signal says, using Red Hood’s shoulder as a springboard to launch himself into another pack of outriders. Peter doesn’t see what he does, but half a second later most of the outriders fall to the ground, sporting broken wings. “Too easy. Look for weak points on their wings, where they meet their backs!”
Red Hood acts on this immediately, swinging past Nightwing to drive the heels of his boots into the delicate spot between wing and shoulder on one of the more heavily armored outriders diving for Nightwing, who ducks aside to give him room for the maneuver, seemingly on instinct. Peter’s impressed; each Bat is moving in concert with one another like a well oiled machine, moving with and around each other easily, and doing the same with him. Not even the Avengers work that smoothly with one another.
The next few minutes play out like that: Nightwing and Peter switching off to take the lead, dodging past Ebony Maw's platforms, debris balls, or spikes while Signal and Red Hood trade off on covering their backs. The main platform with the portal’s controls, the smaller one Ebony Maw has restricted himself to, and Tim rise quickly to the top, stopping near the opening in the spire’s roof. A few of the lights shift up the wall, leaving pools of shadow between eerie green light. Peter can hear outriders skittering across the brick and concrete wall in those shadows, and briefly wonders where the rest of the Black Order have disappeared to.
He doesn’t have to wonder for long.
“Now!” Ebony Maw shouts.
The big alien, still twitching grinding his teeth from the fear toxin, launches himself out of the darkness, grabbing Red Hood in a lightning fast tackle back into another pool of shadows. Corvus and Proxima Midnight both leap for Signal, who manages to react in time to avoid Proxima’s sword and Corvus’ spear by dropping from the sky to land somewhat gracelessly on the platform below. They follow, clearly intent on finishing the hero off. A swarm of outriders follow both Red Hood and Signal as they fall.
A flash of his senses warns Peter of incoming danger, and he looks up just in time to see Ebony Maw fling another debris ball directly at Nightwing and Peter. Nightwing deftly swings around the incoming projectile, avoiding it completely. Peter takes a different approach. He waits until Nightwing is safely clear of the swirling mass of brick and steel before attaching a triple thick rope of web to its surface. He lets go of the web he’s swinging from and grips the thicker rope. He’ll need two hands for this, a bit of luck, and a lot of his strength. Fortunately, his frustration is giving him plenty of fuel to work from.
He shifts in midair, changing the trajectory of Ebony Maw’s latest weapon, hauling against it with all of his strength to fling it right back at the alien’s face, with the same speed and force behind it. He even compensates for the rapidly rising platform, aiming it perfectly. There’s no way he can avoid it--
Ebony Maw flings out a surge of energy, shattering the projectile. Shards of steel and brick fly in every direction. Nightwing takes a hit on his shoulder, interrupting his swing. Red Hood’s helmet catches a twisted piece of steel in his helmet, shattering it. He curses, staggering back to rip it off, revealing a stream of blood and a smaller, fabric mask beneath his helmet. Signal manages to come out of it unscathed, dodging the debris before it hits him. He snaps his head up and stares in open mouthed horror.
At Tim.
Steel and brick fly into Tim’s chain cocoon, striking hard enough that Peter can hear a solid thumps as the bricks and steel strike home. Worse: one of the sharp edged pieces of steel slices through the chain that kept him suspended above the ground. Tim has just enough time to give Peter a startled, confused look before he falls into the darkness of the spire below. Signal sprints and dives off of the platform, clearly meaning to catch him, but Tim’s fall was so sudden and fast that it’s almost definitely a lost cause.
That doesn’t mean he won’t try. Peter drops out of his swing, preparing to dive for Tim the way Nightwing dove for him, readying the last of his dwindling web fluid fling himself down the side of the spire--
A twisted piece of rebar strikes one of the fear toxin vats near Peter’s head, tearing through the metal like paper. Peter is overwhelmed by the smell of diesel and rotting lavender, as well as blinded by thick, blue liquid that seeps into the holes of his suit, running down his face, chin, and neck in a sensation that feels both hot and cold at the same time, leaving his skin tingling and painfully overstimulated. He jolts in place, coughing as the thick, syrupy liquid worms its way into his mouth and up his nose. His mouth feels like it’s on fire, and his nose fills with the scent of the toxin, burning the inside of it until his eyes begin to water.
Panic fills him, and his only thought is to get away, as fast as he can, this is worse than when he was shot--
The moment he tries to move, he’s slammed back into place by twisted pieces of steel, brick, and concrete. Every time he twists out of his makeshift restraints, more replace them, followed by outriders who wrestle him back into place whenever he begins to break free of their hold. Ebony Maw appears next to him, grabs him by the throat, and shoves him under the torrent of fear toxin. Peter sputters, wrestling against the alien, unable to use his strength strategically in his panic. Ebony Maw is strong, either through magic or by nature, but in a fair fight he wouldn’t be able to withstand Peter’s strength.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a fair fight.
He yanks Peter’s head out of the torrent of fear toxin, locking eyes with him and raising his other hand. Two small gems flash in the palm of his hand: blue and gold. Infinity stones. He knows that on an instinctive level; these stones call out to something inside him, thrumming on the same frequency as the soul stone. Ebony Maw presses the golden stone to Peter’s forehead.
“I was hoping to turn you slowly, like the others,” he says. “You have forced my hand, however. Hold still.”
It isn’t so much a mind reading as it is a mind reaping. He uses the stone to tear through Peters thoughts and memories, looking for something to use. He finds it, buried in the nightmares the ghosts have struggled to protect him from.
“All of this is your fault,” Ebony Maw says. “You had the Gauntlet. You could have stopped it. But you got distracted, and let go of the gauntlet. You’re strong, you could have held it if you had been paying attention. Half your universe died. Because of you.”
An unseen chorus of furious denials follow that. The dusted Avengers shout and curse. Bucky Barnes, who looks as though he’s reliving one of his own personal nightmares, wildly swings at the back of Ebony’s Maw’s head. Peter can’t focus on his own Stone; Bucky’s hit is as immaterial as his body.
“What?” Peter asks, turning to face him. Half his mask is gone; the suit runs on nanobots, but it isn’t like Tony’s suit. It can’t repair itself on the fly like his can. His vision is going hazy, tinged with blue, and he’s seeing things at the edges of his vision. Faces hidden in the shadows.
“Do you know what Thanos did when he finished with you Titan?”
Ebony draws back his hand and, as before, shows an image of the past. This time, it isn’t Wanda and Vision.
Captain America is overrun by outriders that savage him like wolves, tossing him back and forth between each other while they tear, rip, and bite his struggling form. Rhodey swoops down from above, rescuing Wakandan warriors cut off from their troops and dropping them back into the battle line until a chain hammer knocks him right out of the sky and into a pack of outriders. He curses bitterly, firing every weapon his suit has into the monsters swarming over him.
Peter stares, horrified, unable to look away.
If Dr. Strange had kept the stone, Vision would be alive--
“You gave him the stone?” Wanda hisses.
“There was no other way,” Strange replies, distant, wary, and defeated.
Captain America appears. Then Thor. The fight is brutally short; Thanos has more than enough power and strength to handle them. He’s simply giving them the appearance of a fair fight, not quite toying with them.
And then Thanos snaps.
The first to die is Bucky, who only has enough time to let out a trembling, confused “Steve?” before collapsing into dust.
The rest follow quickly.
T’Challa, running towards a fallen warrior, reaching down to help her up. He’s already flaking apart, but he doesn't realize it. His concern is only for his fellow Wakandan. “Up, General, up! This is no place to die!”
When he collapses in front of her, she screams in horror. T’Challa, the ghost, mutters a quiet curse beneath his breath.
Sam cringes in the dirt, his expression a mask of agony as he flakes apart in the tall grass. Rhodey limps past, and then through his ashes, damaged suit rattling as he walks. He’s wounded; he shouldn’t be moving at all, but he’s too stubborn to stop. “Sam? Sam! Sam, where are you?”
Shuri stumbles towards her mother on shaking legs, nursing a head wound from the attack on her lab. She collapses into a pile of ash and dust in front of her.
Janet, Hank, and Hope stand in a parking lot discussing something they call a quantum jump; the three of them collapse at the same time, which is the most merciful thing to happen so far. They die alongside one another, unaware that it’s happening at all.
Nick Fury and Maria Hill speed through a city falling apart around them, and Peter gets a glimpse of the horror that must have followed Thanos’s snap on Earth. Cars careening into each other, into pedestrians, into buildings, a chopper falling from the sky, trailing ashes that swirl among the blades--
And then Titan. The Guardians. Drax staring at his own hand in confusion before aiming a desperate look at Quill, before collapsing. Quill, at a loss, mutters a quiet oh man before falling apart himself.
Peter fights back another wave of nausea. He doesn’t want to see this. He doesn’t--
“There was no other way,” Dr. Strange says to Tony, tired and defeated. He steels himself against the pain and collapses. Tony stares at him in numb disbelief.
And then Peter hears his own voice. Sick. Scared. Dying.
“I don’t---I don’t feel so good--” He sounds so young.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Nightwing, swinging for him, shouting something. The outriders holding Peter in place leap off of him and swarm Nightwing, forcing him away. Nightwing curses, forced to retreat.
Peter snarls, furious and terrified and overwhelmed by seeing the Avengers, his heroes, die in front of him. And desperate to not see his own death again. “None of that was my fault!”
In the image, Peter can hear himself stammering out a shaky, "I don't wanna go--"
Proxima Midnight’s sword sails through the air behind Ebony Maw, spearing two of the outriders near Nightwing. Distantly, Red Hood shouts: “Help him, goddammit!”
“I can’t get through!” Nightwing shouts back.
“Wasn’t it?” Ebony Maw says.
He motions with a hand; the image zips back to the moment where Peter, the Guardians, Dr. Strange, and Tony have Thanos immobilized. Tony wrenches Quill away from Thanos, doing his best to shout sense into the grief stricken man. Thanos stirs.
Peter yanks the Gauntlet free off Thanos, stumbling backward from the force of his own pull. He focuses on regaining his balance, clumsily fumbling with the Gauntlet.
“You stole a part of the soul stone and then you lost the one weapon that would have won the war. You let yourself become distracted. And because of that, you made them lose the war,” Ebony Maw says.
He’s right.
“And now, we’ll spread our crusade to this universe, too. Because of you.”
Something dark and sharp flies out of the shadows above them, stabbing deep into Ebony Maw’s hand. He draws back, hissing like a snake, and pulls the batarang lodged deep into his skin out of his arm with a furious growl. He looks up at the shadows above, distracted from maintaining the debris ball keeping Peter trapped.
Peter doesn’t notice it. His mind is overwhelmed in a wave of blue, and he has a brief moment of panic that quickly disappears under a numb blankness. The anguish from seeing the deaths of the Avengers, the fuzzy headed panic from the fear toxin, the lingering effects of the Joker serum still inside him, all of that disappears. And he almost welcomes the peace it brings, even though a small part of him fights against it bitterly. He’s tired. Why not let someone else carry the burden for awhile?
Still, a green spark of fury burns against the blue inside his mind.
* * *
“Mantis? Let him off his leash,” Nick Fury says.
“Okay.”
* * *
The blue disappears in a flash of green rage. Peter’s eyes narrow, a roaring noise fills his ears, and a red haze settles over his vision. When the rage fully takes hold, he almost becomes calm. He whips his head up and glares at Ebony Maw, breathing hard. Ebony Maw actually pauses at the sight of it.
“My fault? We’ll see about that,” Peter says. He smashes through the debris keeping him contained, shattering most of it into dust. He shoots out a web and yanks himself into the shadows above.
Two eyes peer out from dark: one a pinpoint of red light, sullen and electronic. The other glittering in the dark with a predator’s eyeshine, green and wholly unnatural for a human eye. Golden spider legs begin to slowly erupt from the back of his suit, their needlepoints gleaming in the eerie green light of the spire. Something clicks in the dark.
A cheery Irish voice, heard clearly in the sudden silence of the spire, says, “Instant Kill Mode engaged.”