Monday, October 29, 2013. New York City

"Peter Parker, age 18. Started as a student at NYU this fall. He moved from the west coast, where he led a very interesting life. His high school was the sight of a massive gang war in February of 2011 that caused tremendous loss of life and destruction of property."

Reese looked at the pictures Finch had posted on the glass backboard. "I'll say. You said a gang war caused this? It looks more like a war zone."

"Yes, a gang war, although the news outlets are unusually tight-lipped about such a dramatic event. A massive gang war in a private, Catholic school in a middle-class neighborhood is quite an unusual occurrence. It would seem that one Roger Chang, head of an international crime syndicate, was masquerading as a computer teacher."

"That sounds oddly familiar."

"Mr. Chang was arrested after the fight and is currently in maximum security prison in Texas."

"You think his organization might be going after Peter for something he did in the fight?"
"Possibly, although as I said, the news reports are sparse on details, and Mr. Parker's name doesn't come up until several days later, when he was reported missing. He stayed missing for a year and a half, until he suddenly turned up in September 2012, reporting that he had been kidnapped by Chang's organization until he was rescued by Iron Man."

"They held him for a year and a half? What did they want with him? That's how long you hold political prisoners, not kidnapping victims."
"I wondered the same thing myself. It seems there were no ransom demands to Mr. Parker's family, and he claims not to have been abused during his captivity."
"Maybe he was working for them. They might have held him for all that time if they could make him do something for them, but what?"
"I don't know, Mr. Reese. Mr. Parker did come out of the experience an exceptionally driven student; despite missing a year and a half of schoolwork, he still managed to graduate on time and with good enough grades to be accepted at NYU. But that doesn't explain what a criminal organization would want with him. He has no criminal record of any kind. There was only one other thing I could find about him that was odd. He purchased an airline ticket to Illinois earlier this month, during the Decepticon invasion. He had no family or friends in Chicago. In fact, I can find no reason of any kind for him to fly towards the aliens!"

"Maybe he has a death wish."

.

John Reese stood on the roof of a building, looking through binoculars at the window to Peter Parker's apartment.

"How goes the examination of Mr. Parker's bedroom, Mr. Reese?"
"It's typical college housing, they'll be up for another 5-6 hours still. I couldn't get in without anyone seeing, so I'll have to watch from outside for now."

"Just keep me posted."

A few minutes later, Reese called him back. "Finch, I think I know what kind of trouble Peter is in. The Machine gave us the Number of New York's other famous vigilante." He looked through his binoculars as a red-and-blue-costumed-figure crawled out of the window and up the wall of the building. Peter Parker was Spiderman.

.

"You wanna know about Spiderman? Alright." Detective Lionel Fusco's gruff voice came through Reese's earpiece. "I thought he was an urban legend at first, but he started turning up at crime scenes. Nobody can decide whether he's trying to help or if he's somehow involved in all the crimes."

"Could Mr….Spiderman be planning a murder?"

"No way, he's not a killer. That's the one thing everyone agrees on. He leaves criminals beat up or tied to some freaky giant web, but he doesn't kill them. Doesn't even kneecap them." Reese could hear the smirk in Fusco's voice. "And anyway, did you see those videos of him fighting the Decepticons in Chicago?"

"I've watched them, Detective," Finch said.
"Just because he's willing to fight an alien invasion doesn't mean he's not a killer," Reese said.

"I guess he could be, but from what I hear, he's just an asshole vigilante. A lot like someone else I know. Seems like a good man though."

"Also like someone else you know?" Reese asked.

"Don't push it. Anyway, is that it? I'd like to go to sleep sometime tonight."

"One more thing, Detective," Finch asked. "Do you know if he has particularly angered HR or any of the gangs?"

"I'll have a look at his file in the morning, but I don't think so. The talk is that he's mostly bringing in small-time criminals, muggers and the like. Nothing like who you usually go after."

"Thank you, Detective," Finch said, and hung up.

.

The next morning found John Reese sitting in the campus café, nursing a coffee and pretending to read the newspaper. Peter Parker sat at the table behind him, trying to simultaneously drink a coffee, eat a pastry, and cram for an English quiz. Reese force-paired his phone to Parker's and whispered, "Finch, you get that?"

"I'm looking through it right now, but nothing seems particularly suspicious. I'll let you know if I find anything."

"He seems to be trying to do all his homework in the last hour before classes start."

"Well, he's certainly had a late night, something that is not uncommon among college students."

"I'm surprised, Finch, I thought you would have been one of the insufferable people who finished everything early."

"I will admit, I didn't find much of the curriculum difficult, so I spent much of my time pursing more challenging pursuits."

"He's leaving. Fortunately we can track him now."

"I hope you can keep up."

.

While Peter was in class, Reese took the opportunity to break into his room, bug it, and have a look around. He found a couple Spiderman costumes, but nothing else incriminating, not even when he used a flash drive Finch had given him to hack into Peter's computer.

"Mr. Parker's class is ending," Finch warned him.

"Thanks for the heads-up, but I'm almost done. Let me know if he's getting close."
"Not to worry, he is stopping to make a phone call." Finch patched the call through to their earpieces so they could listen in.

.

Peter tried his hardest to concentrate during his class, but he was quite preoccupied trying to decide whether he was overreacting to what he had heard. That man had said "he's leaving" right as Peter had walked out of the coffee shop. He had tried to discretely look around, and he hadn't seen anybody else leaving at the same time as him. Still, they weren't necessarily talking about him, right? "We can track him now" was quite a worrying statement. Peter couldn't help but think that even if that man wasn't following him, he should probably have kept an eye on him in case someone else was in trouble. Too bad he'd been running late for class, and he wasn't quite ready to let this superhero thing get in the way of his school work if he could help it. Even if it was much more interesting.

Class ended, and Peter hurried out. Fortunately he had a long time before his next class, so he rushed off to a secluded area of campus that he had found was good for working without being disturbed. Then he called Tony.

"Hey man, what's up?"

"We might have a problem. I might just be paranoid, but I think I'm being followed."

"You're being followed? By who?"

"Some guy in a suit. I'm not entirely sure he's following me, but he was talking to some guy, on an earpiece I think, and he said, 'He's leaving, but we can track him now," right as I left! So he's definitely tracking somebody."

"Well be careful, man. I'm still rebuilding after a few weeks ago, I've got this great new idea I've been working on…but that's not important right now. You should see if Patrick can back you up if you need it. He should still have his blaster. And keep in touch. Make sure you check in at least once a day or I'll set up a search party."

"Thanks. It's probably nothing I can't handle, but just in case, it's good to hear you've got my back."

"Of course."

.

When the call was over, Reese was already safely on his way out of the apartment complex. "Mr. Parker has identified you. It would seem his superpowers include an enhanced sense of hearing. I'll have Miss Shaw take your place in staying close to him."

"Fine by me. I need a nap anyway."

"Finally feeling your age?" Shaw snarked, joining the call.

Reese didn't bother responding as he navigated his way down some stairs and around some students who gave him odd looks for his age and fancy suit. "It really sounds like he's our victim. Fusco thinks he's a good guy, and he and his friend almost seemed prepared for him to be followed."

"Perhaps they are wary of him being recaptured by Chang's organization."

"His friend seemed to think he could have helped if he wasn't busy. What do we know about his friends, Finch?"

"Tony Stark, age 19. He was in Mr. Parker's class in high school, along with their friend, Patrick Dunne, age 18. Mr. Stark is a Mechanical Engineering student at Stevens University in Hoboken, New Jersey. Mr. Dunne is studying Mechanical Engineering at NYU. Besides being rather exceptional students, I can find nothing out of the ordinary about them. Well, except for the gang war at the high school, of course."

"Oh, is that all?" Reese asked drily.

"I have also not had any luck identifying what Mr. Stark might have meant by Mr. Dunne's 'blaster'. Is that slang for a weapon?"

"Not that I've heard of," Shaw said.

"I bow to your expertise, Miss Shaw, but in that case I have no idea to what he was referring. Maybe you should look into Mr. Dunne's dormitory since you're now free, Mr. Reese."

"So much for your nap," Shaw said.

.

Reese's search of Patrick's apartment didn't turn up anything helpful, although he did bug the place.

Later in the afternoon, Fusco called Reese. "I pulled your buddy Spiderman's file, and it turns out he might have pissed off a gang the other day when he broke up a drug deal. I'll send you the information."

"Thanks, Lionel." Hanging up the phone, Reese headed off to stake out the gang's location. When night fell, he took a break to get some dinner before going back to the stakeout. Shaw gave him a heads-up when Peter headed out for the night as Spiderman, fortunately taking his phone with him. That was when they found out how Spiderman kept turning up at crime scenes: he was listening in to the police broadband.

After an hour or so of boredom, Reese watched as eight armed gang members loaded into the back of a white van and drove off. He tailed them to the fourth floor of a mostly empty five-floor parking structure. Parking on the third floor, he climbed the stairs and watched through a barely-open door as the gunmen moved in to positions with clear sightlines of the outside air. "Finch, something weird's going on here."

The driver and passenger of the van, also armed, walked to the middle of the open space, and the passenger lay down on the ground. Then, the driver pulled out his phone and dialed 911. "There's a bunch of gangsters here, I, I think it's a drug deal, but one of them's on the ground, and there's so much blood, I think he got shot," he said in a nervous tone of voice totally at odds with his calm exterior. He gave the 911 operator his location. Then, he hung up the phone and glared pointedly at the gangsters around him. "Not a word."

Reese urgently whispered, "It's an ambush!"

.

Peter stood on top of a building and looked down at the people around him. So many people living their lives down there and he had no idea who was about to commit a violent crime. The movies made it look so easy: the superheroes would swoop in and save the day from the criminals. But how on Earth did they figure out who the criminals were? Listening in to police scanners was somewhat effective, but all too often he showed up too late to stop the crime.

At least I can get around a lot easier in New York than when I was stuck in suburbia. The many tall buildings and, unfortunately, many crimes in New York meant that Peter could tell he was making a much bigger difference here than he ever had back home, but it was still frustrating, time-consuming, and not good enough.

Peter was pulled out of his thoughts by a voice on the police line. A drug deal and a shooting; I can help with that! He took a second to orient himself with Google Maps before stowing his phone back in his suit, taking a running leap off the building, and swinging through the city to his destination. But when he swung himself into the parking structure, ready to fight, all he found was ten gangsters lying on the ground, moaning over the bullet wounds in their knees, and their guns kicked in a pile in a corner. "What the hell?"

"Some fucker in a suit! He just appeared out of nowhere!" one of the gangsters groaned out.

"Doesn't look like you'll be going anywhere until the cops get here," Peter said. Might as well find out where this mysterious shooter went. Using his super speed and heightened senses to his advantage, Peter ran through the parking structure, making sure to check the staircases, but whoever had done this was already gone. Peter quickly crawled up the wall of the parking structure to the roof and looked around. There weren't too many cars in this part of New York at this time of night, so he picked a direction and swung off, not even entirely sure what he was looking for. New York was never empty, and there were tons of people in suits. Then, Peter experienced a jolt of recognition: it was the guy from the café in the morning! That can't be a coincidence! Right? Hoping he hadn't been spotted—people were notoriously bad at looking up, so surprisingly few people noticed him swinging through the city, especially at night—he swung himself to the top of a building bordering the street and started running. He could usually keep pace with a car this way, although it was more tiring than swinging. It was stealthier than swinging, though, which made it more useful for tailing somebody like this.

Peter started to get tired after tailing the man around the city for half an hour. No, you couldn't have been going somewhere close, could you? But it was around the one hour mark that he finally decided he'd been made at some point. Still, even if he saw I was following him, how long is he going to drive around trying to throw me off? Unfortunately, it seemed to be longer than Peter was going to be able to keep up with him. Peter pulled out his phone and called Tony, who, despite the late hour, was still awake working. "Hey, Tony, if I give you, a license plate number, can you track a car?" Peter panted out between heavy breaths.

"You're chasing it right now, aren't you?"

"Have been, for an hour now. He knows I'm following. He's trying to throw me off."
"Seems to be doing a good job, too. No, sorry, I think I'd have to look in police databases or something, and hacking's not really my thing. Is there some reason you can't just take him out right now, whoever this guy is?"

"I was hoping, not to make a scene. Breaking into a moving car, wouldn't be good, for my image."

"And I take it there's some reason you can't just call the cops on him?"

"Yeah. Actually, wait." Truth be told, Peter simply hadn't thought of it. He'd assumed the guy would quickly go back home or to some base of operations or something, and Peter would be able to learn more about him. But he had shot a bunch of people, the police would definitely arrest him. "Could work. He shot a bunch of people, in the knee. But it's the guy, from this morning. I couldn't question, him that way."

"Let's mark that down as Plan B. If only I could get a tracker to him, but right now I'd have to take the train over there and give it to you. The handoff would be hard and I get the feeling you don't want to wait that long."

"Got that right."

"Hmmm…I can also track your phone. Do you think you could stick it on his car? Set it to silent and not to vibrate, of course."

"Yeah, I can do that. I guess I can, go get my laptop, to get in touch with you, until I get, my phone back. Thanks for the idea."

"No problem. Let me know if you need anything else, I'll be up for at least three more hours."

Peter hung up the phone and carefully scanned the area as he ran after the car. The key was going to be doing this without being noticed. Or actually, he can notice me as long as he doesn't notice the phone. They finally turned onto a street with a convenient tower for Peter to attach a web to so he could swing down until he was only a couple feet above the car he was following. As he swung past, he threw the phone toward the underside of the back of the car. The phone had a large gob of sticky web on it and a thin tendril of web extending from it. The end of the tendril stuck on the back bumper, and the momentum of the throw made the phone swing forward like Spiderman until it stuck to the underside of the car. Peter came to the top of his swing, used a couple more webs to pull himself to the roof of a nearby building, and lay down to finally catch his breath. He felt like he had run a marathon, but that was actually underselling how far he'd just run by quite a bit. I just hope he's not the kind of guy who obsessively checks his car for dirt every day.

After several minutes had gone by and Peter had finally caught his breath, he reluctantly pulled himself to his feet, groaning at his sore legs as he started walking. Fortunately his usual method of transportation didn't require his legs all that much. He jumped off the roof and headed back to his apartment.

.

"Mr. Reese, either he's right on top of you or he stuck his phone to your car like he said he would."

"I just watched him swing on top off a building. I guess we can't track him anymore."

"And more to the point, as soon as you remove his phone, he won't be able to track you either. You stopped the threat, so he's no longer our responsibility."

Reese drove around aimlessly for a few more minutes, hoping to outwait Spiderman if he decided to stick around after dropping off his phone. Then he drove into an abandoned lot where Shaw was prepared to provide sniper cover with a smoke grenade launcher, parked the car, and removed the phone from the underside. He briefly considered destroying it, but threw it in a bush instead, reasoning that it would be more suspicious if the signal stopped entirely. Plus, he had a niggling feeling that the threat actually hadn't been handled, and if Spiderman retrieved his phone, it would save Reese the trouble of force-pairing with a new one. He voiced his concerns as he drove away. "I'm not sure the threat is dealt with. Those gangsters were complete amateurs. He might have been able to handle them on his own, and your machine doesn't give us the Number of someone who can handle a threat on their life or we'd get the Number of half the cops in the city."

"Nevertheless, we have a new Number, and as you pointed out, Mr. Parker can take care of himself. We should all get some sleep, and we'll start on the next Number in the morning."

"Won't hurt to leave the bugs," Shaw suggested.

"No, I suppose not."

Author's Note Explaining the Crossover (Skip if you'd rather figure it out as the Person of Interest people do):

I'm sure you've noticed this isn't a crossover with any standard version of Spiderman or Iron Man. In fact, it's a silly story I wrote for and with my friends in high school, so lots of things are different. Spiderman and Iron Man only share their powers with the original superheroes; their personalities and life stories are completely different, as you can tell by Tony being a college student at Stevens. There are a bunch more stories merged/fused into this one, one of which will appear next chapter, and there are a couple of "straight crossovers" as well—Person of Interest being the obvious one, but also the background Transformers: Dark of the Moon crossover that happened a few weeks earlier when Spiderman helped fight the Decepticons invading Chicago.

In short, please don't post comments saying things like, "Tony Stark would never do that!" or "Why isn't Tony super rich?" or "Where's Mary Jane or Gwen Stacy?" That's not the point of this story.

A note on dates: I'm trying to be canonical with dates as much as possible, at least until the crossover changes things. I figured when the Decepticons attacked Chicago based on Sam's age and assuming the first Transformers movie took place when it came out, and it just so happened to be slightly before this story. Similarly, the story I'm crossing with Person of Interest exists elsewhere (not online) and had a preexisting timeline, and 2013 happened to be when Spiderman and his friends moved to New York. There will be consequences to the Person of Interest timeline in a few chapters. I'm excited! (This chapter takes place in Season 3 after E8, "The Perfect Mark" ends. It's never entirely clear how long each episode takes, so I'm hoping I picked a date after E8 ends and before E9 starts.)