Peter watched as the woman huffed in frustration and marched back to where her driver was waiting nervously for her. Ever since he and the girls had made their first appearance a week ago, they had become the various news outlets' favourite subject. So far, no one had any clue who the three mysterious youths were that appeared at night when the various gangs of National City came out to wreak havoc. Well, no one except Cat Grant. He had looked her up and found that she used to work for the Daily Planet in Metropolis before coming out west and building herself a little media empire nearly from scratch. Kara was smitten with her, and had immediately asked Peter for help with finding a job with her. Luckily, they had learned that the young Kryptonian had even more of a knack for photography than Peter did, and she was now raking in a small amount of cash. The woman had made J. Jonah Jameson seem downright pleasant, but Peter couldn't deny that she was a journalist through and through as she went between homeless shelters in an attempt to track him and the girls down. She also seemed to have a good side to her, as he had watched her scold a man for attempting to rob her before taking him out to lunch. When they came out of the small diner an hour later, the man was borderline crying as he thanked her profusely for his new employment as a janitor at one of her buildings.
Having seen everything he needed to, Peter leapt from the building where he had been crouched and swung back to the rundown apartment building where he and the girls were holed up. It had taken a couple days, but Peter was able to finally scrounge up enough cash doing simple things like juggling and dancing in the street before having Kara fly him to a casino in Gotham. He had researched the Iceberg Lounge thoroughly, and felt very little remorse using his prodigious mind to turn eighty dollars into eight thousand in a matter of hours. By the time they got back, with a firm understanding of why Felicia Hardy enjoyed what she did so much, they had enough money to rent an apartment in one of the worst parts of National City and feed and clothe themselves for a while.
Donna had also found employment with a small barbershop down the street from their apartment after throwing some goons into a dumpster when she saw them shaking down the owner, a nice old man named Lenny who insisted on being called Pops. With living expenses out of the way, they had enough money to buy equipment so that Peter could get to work analyzing the blue vial of liquid he had grabbed at the facility a week earlier as well as construct some decent uniforms for the girls.
Using the disassembled pieces of the armor the girls had worn from Themyscira and a deflated white-water raft he had bought online, and a couple hundred dollars worth of thick leather, Peter cobbled together a pair of suits consisting of leggings that would easily fit underneath a regular pair of jeans as well as hooded jackets with special electromagnets he sewed into the fabric to keep them from pulled off. The final touch was a pair of paintball masks that Peter modified with small radios so they could keep in contact with him. He had offered to sew on Kara's family crest but she and Donna both insisted on not having anything that would easily identify them in relation to their families. Both outfits were black with green trims, so as to match Greg's primary colour scheme as he transformed into a simple leather jacket and jeans with Peter's mask and the spider symbol on his back being the only things that could identify him from any other person walking down the street. Lastly, Peter took some inspiration from Captain America, and used the remaining pieces of armor to cobble together a pair of shields for them both. They weren't much bigger than standard bucklers, but with one on each arm, and the girls' phenomenal reflexes, he was confidant they'd be more than enough to do what they needed to. Not only did he not want Kara relying on her invulnerability too much, but he hoped that, like Steve Rogers did in his universe, the pair of them could be seen as symbols by the people they helped.
With their suits finished, the girls were more than ready to join Peter during the nights as he fought to help keep National City from tearing itself apart. The only thing left were the names they wanted to be addressed by while in costume. He had suggested Supergirl and Wonder Girl, but both were immediately shot down. Neither Kara nor Donna wanted to be thought of as little more than copies of their respective relatives. Peter could respect that. He explained to them that they didn't have to come up with names right away, telling them the story of how he had originally wanted to be known as the Human Spider, before someone with knack for appealing to the masses had changed it without his consent. Both of them could tell he was still holding something back concerning that particular story from his past, but chose not to push him. They decided to give the matter some thought, and decide at a later date when they weren't overwhelmed with saving people.
He still found it odd that all criminal activity seemed to suddenly come to an end once the sun rose, but set it on the backburner as he read over the results of the tests he had been running on the blue liquid.
"Near as I can tell," he explained when Donna and Kara joined him in their little apartment that afternoon. "It's a sort of performance enhancer. A small sample of this stuff could make an average person nearly as strong as us for a short time."
"If regular criminals start taking this potion, the police will be overwhelmed in minutes," Donna said gravely. "They can barely contain these nightly battles as it is."
"But how do we track it?" Kara asked.
"There is the slightest radioactive signature coming off it," Peter said. "But I don't have the materials to build a Geiger counter sensitive to pick it up - and, even then, we'd have to canvas the city. Our best bet, then, is probably the hospital."
"Why is that?" Donna asked.
"This stuff might make whoever takes it nearly as strong as us," Peter elaborated. "But that's all it does. On top of having enhanced strength, the three of us are more durable as well. Our bones and muscles are tougher. Someone who took this would be too strong for their own body. At best they would tear muscles all over their body, at worst, their bones would start to break under the strain, and they would risk tearing themselves apart just from wincing in pain."
"So, we're going to the hospital to see if anyone has been admitted with strange internal injuries?" Kara deduced.
Peter nodded. "That's right. Unfortunately, though, the odds of these guys going to a hospital are virtually zero. So we're gonna have to check the next best place."
"And where is that?" Donna asked.
Peter smiled grimly as he stood and Greg transformed into his suit. "The morgue. But that's gonna have to wait. The sun's going down, and you both know what that means."
Donna and Kara nodded and quickly changed into their suits before following him out the window as they heard the telltale pops of gunfire breakout not far from their apartment.
"One of these days, I'm going to get my own way of getting around the city," Donna muttered as she once more maneuvered herself to sit on Kara's back.
"Aww, but Donna," Kara whined. "I like carrying you around!"
"And you two look so cute together!" Peter added, flinging himself higher than them and doing several flips as he dropped back down. Donna flushed and crossed her arms with a harrumph as the other two continued teasing her before they approached the source of the gunfire and found the police in yet another shoot-out.
Peter spotted Detective Sawyer shouting at the officers as they seemed to focus more on fighting the various gang members than the civilians who were caught in the crossfire. He spent another moment analyzing the scene below him as Kara and Donna dropped down and immediately began blocking bullets from both sides as they helped the people still outside get to safety, and filed it all away in a section of his mind to ruminate over later.
"Hey guys!" He shouted as he dove between bullets and fired a web at a man and a woman dressed in bright red and holding what looked like assault rifles. "Is this party invite-only, or more of a community event?" This attracted the attention of several differently coloured gang members, one of whom he had to tackle to the ground as his spider-sense went off and a bullet whizzed overhead, just missing the gangster, who he now saw was probably a year or two younger than him. He could hear Sawyer screaming at the officer he presumed had fired the weapon, but she was quickly distracted by a molotov cocktail that crashed into the top of the cruiser she was crouching behind, bathing it in flames.
Tossing the kid towards a wall and quickly webbing him there, Peter sprang to his feet in time to catch another molotov while grabbing another gangster's gun and yanking it out of his hands as he bent backwards to avoid a hail of gunfire.
"Didn't anybody ever tell you guys it's dangerous to play with fire?" Peter asked as he extinguished the flaming rag and swung his confiscated gun around knocking another pair of thugs off their feet and hurling it at a third. Moments later, the three of them were wrapped up like christmas presents and tossed down an alley. "I mean, really, what would Smokey the Bear think?"
He continued to steadily immobilize the gangsters one after another until one of them had enough sense to yell for them to get in their cars. Unfortunately, Peter easily had the strength to put a stop to that plan, and quickly ensnared the getaway vehicles in webbing, trapping the criminals within.
"Come on!" He shouted at the men yelling at him soundlessly from the inside of the cars. "Even you guys have to appreciate the irony of being trapped in your getaway cars!"
"Spider-Man!"
Peter turned and saw Detective Sawyer running towards him. In the past week, Peter and Kara (after a couple introductory lessons into Earth's 'primitive' technology) had made use of the National City Library's computers to carefully hack into the Police Department to see who could be trusted while Donna dove into books about the history and culture that had changed in the one hundred and twenty years since Diana had rescued and brought her to Themyscira. They had all been relieved to find out that, while there was clear evidence of more cops being dirty than clean in National City, Detective Margaret Sawyer seemed to be one of the good guys.
"Detective," he greeted. "What's a place like you doing in a girl like this?"
Sawyer opened her mouth to respond when Peter's spider-sense went off once more and he saw the officers behind her raise their guns. Grabbing the woman by the waist, he leapt into the air just in time to avoid another wall of bullets.
"Put me down!" Sawyer shouted.
"Oh, no, Detective please, no need for thanks," Peter replied sarcastically as he landed on a nearby rooftop and placed her on her feet. "Saving people's kind of my thing."
"Spider-Man!" Kara shouted as she and Donna landed next to him.
"Are you okay?" Donna asked.
"I'm fine," Peter replied. "The good detective here warned me before anything could happen."
"There's a warrant out for the three of you," Sawyer explained. "Which, in this city, is about the same as having a bounty on your head."
"Man, we really picked a great city to set up shop," Peter muttered.
"At least it's warm here," Kara teased and he felt Greg give a mental purr of agreement.
Don't you start too, he thought as he turned back to Detective Sawyer.
"If there really is a warrant out for us, why aren't you arresting us right now?" Peter asked.
"I've seen what the three of you can do," Sawyer replied. "I'm not bringing you in unless you come willingly or I've got every officer in National City holding you at gunpoint."
"So what did you want, then?" Donna followed up.
"For the last week, deaths by violent crime have been at record lows," Sawyer replied slowly. "And while arrests have gone up, it's not nearly as significant. Why is that?"
Peter sighed and rested his hands on his hips. "We're not cops, Detective. We're just three people who have some extraordinary gifts and feel a responsibility to use those gifts to help others. We don't have access to police resources, or the authority to press charges. If my friends here wanted to, they could take probably take out every single criminal in the city in a day or two."
"Then why don't they?"
"Because, that's not our job," Donna replied. "Who are we to force ourselves onto this city as arbiters of right and wrong?"
Sawyer frowned and crossed her arms. "And how is that not what you're doing right now?"
"The only thing we're focussed on is keeping people safe," Kara explained. "You're so busy trying to destroy your enemy and keep yourselves alive that you aren't doing the same for those you've sworn to protect."
"I spend the night incapacitating these thugs as humanely as possible Detective," Peter finished. "I only do that so that the bullets stop flying and people don't have to worry about being caught in the crossfire. Whether or not these guys are punished by the law isn't up to me, though. That's your prerogative."
Sawyer looked conflicted as her radio went off, giving Peter, Kara, and Donna the opportunity to escape unnoticed.
"Can you two handle things for a bit?" He asked as he swung from building.
"Why?" Donna asked. She had taken to running across the rooftops in order to save herself a modicum of dignity while Kara flew right next to her.
"I want to check out the morgue," he explained. "I figure that I'll have a better chance of finding a lead on our blue goo thieves now than in the morning when they're bound to be swamped."
"And you want to go by yourself?" Kara asked.
Peter came to a stop and smiled under his mask at the expression of concern both his friends wore as they stared at him. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. I have plenty of experience in sneaking around creepy places I'm not supposed to be - something the three of us haven't been able to practice much."
"All the more reason for us to join you," Donna argued.
"Maybe," Peter conceded. "But there are still people who need help. When I worked alone in my universe, I'd always feel guilty because I couldn't be in multiple places at once. If I took time off to investigate something, it was almost inevitable that someone would wind up getting hurt because I wasn't there. Now, though, there are three of us. We can afford to multitask."
Both Donna and Kara looked as if they wanted to argue further, before they shared some sort of silent conversation with one another and turned back to him.
"All right," Kara said before she and Donna wrapped him in a hug that made his ribs creak. "But you better come back to us."
"Don't worry," Peter said, laughing as he felt a warmth fill his chest that he was unwilling to admit felt painfully familiar. "We all have our communicators, and I'll make sure to keep you guys updated to what's going on. That being said, the signal isn't encrypted yet, so be careful what you say over it."
"What should we do about the criminals that you usually take care of?" Donna asked.
"Just keep doing what you have been. Defend yourselves if necessary, but leave them to the police. Neither of you have complete control over your strength when it comes to dealing with regular humans, and we could wind up losing what little goodwill we've gained with the people if someone got hurt and they could tie it, no matter how loosely, to you." Both of them nodded and Peter took the opportunity to wrap his arms around them both and squeeze them tightly. "Be careful," he whispered. "Both of you."
"You too," Kara replied, her voice wavering.
"Don't make us have to come and rescue you," Donna teased as they separated.
"I'll try," Peter laughed. "Try not to give the police too hard a time."
Diving off the rooftop, Peter swung himself away, ignoring the ache in his chest and the gnawing worry in the back of his mind.
Stop worrying so much, he told himself. Donna has decades of combat experience with some of the most powerful warriors on the planet, and Kara is literally bulletproof. They'll be fine for a couple hours.
Swinging as fast as he could, Peter quickly found himself perched on top of a building across the street from the National City Morgue. The morgue, like many other vital buildings, was located in the North side of town. Unlike the slums in the South Side, which became a virtual ghost town by twilight as the resident prepared themselves for another night of battle between the various gangs and the police, the North Side remained quite active. Crime was minimal on this side of town, with the break in at the lab when he first arrived in the city being the only notable event in a long while, and quickly being sweeped under the rug to preserve the image of a shining coastal city. This was just more proof that there was something bigger going on with respect to how crime worked in this city, and Peter made sure to remember anything he observed as he investigated the thieves from a week earlier.
He easily leapt across the busy street and landed on the roof of the morgue. With a little transformative help from Greg, he quickly unscrewed a vent on the roof and dropped himself inside. He made a mental note to hack the city planner's office as he attempted to navigate the maze of vents throughout the building, and was about to give up and drop down into the hallway beneath him when he heard a door open and froze in place.
"God, why did we have to be the ones to deal with this?" One voice asked.
"Man, would you shut up?" Another scolded.
"Hey, screw you, man!" Thing 1 exclaimed. "I left a good thing with the Kings to make money, not drag steal dead circus freaks from the morgue!"
"I don't give two shits why you left," Thing 2 grunted. "The Boss don't want no one looking into this, so we're gonna take care of it. You got a problem with that, you can join this heavy sunnova bitch in the incinerator."
Peter narrowed his eyes and quietly shuffled along the vent as he followed the two thugs through the building.
"This woulda been way easier if the boss would just let us try some of that product," Thing 1 complained.
"It'd be easier if you shut up as well," Thing 2 grunted.
"Oh, come on man!" Thing 1 exclaimed. "One sip and you could take on Superman himself! Don't tell me that's not tempting."
"Never said it wasn't," Thing 2 agreed. "But it's only been, like, a week, since we jacked it from that lab downtown. Now we got these wannabe superheroes crashing in every night, too."
"Sure, but they're just as busy as the police," Thing 1 continued. "National City's got the best nightlife in the country."
"What about Gotham?" Thing 2 countered.
"Eh, they've got the bat. Even when he's off with his little friends saving the world, do you really wanna run with nutjobs like the clown? At least here we can still make some decent scratch. And once that little bitch Haly packs up and gets the show on the road, we won't have to worry about a thing."
"Not unless we don't hurry up and get rid of this body," Thing 2 growled. "Now shut up and get moving! Boss expects us back at the tracks before morning."
Peter considered dropping down and stopping the men from incinerating whatever corpse they were carrying; it had a chance of setting the police on the trail after them. However, if he took these guys down, whoever they worked for would be spooked. They would pack up and go into hiding before the police could even begin connecting the dots. There wouldn't even be enough time for Peter and the girls to properly investigate what was going on. Sighing internally, and thanking Greg for the mental equivalent of a comforting pat on the back, Peter slipped back through the vents and made his way outside.
Looking out over the streets he listened to the sound of sirens, figuring that would be the best place to find Donna and Kara. Taking a deep breath, he jumped off the roof and sped back into the chaos that nightmarishly mirrored the sparkling city below him.
A/N: So, this chapter took longer than I would have liked, and, while I'm still not terribly happy with it, I know that there's a point where I just need to declare it finished and move on. Either way, it did what it needed to in terms of moving the plot forward. Also, for those of you wondering, Peter's current suit is similar to the Last Stand outfit from Amazing Spider-Man 500, with Kara and Donna's being similar in style. The difference however, is that their suits are mostly black with a green trim. The shields he made for the girls are similar in shape to the twin shields Cap used in the Infinity War movie, though they're a little bigger.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and tune in next time when we get a step closer to the one behind the lab heist and maybe meet a beautiful sorceress along the way!
