Work has been doing it's best to murder me. I had to pick up some extra shifts because one guy quit without two weeks notice and then, at my other job, I had to do the same because a teenager we hired had a break down because her boyfriend broke up with her. I'm talking she disappeared into the back room when we were at out busiest and began wailing. We sent her home because that sucks and all, but then when she comes in the next day, she decides she's not up for it and just walks out. So, I had to cover shifts there too because we were understaffed as it was.
So, most of this chapter was written in chunks on my phone while being sleep deprived. I don't want to miss my deadline again, so I'm going to put this chapter out a few days early even if it's a bit shorter than usual. You get a chapter early, so I think it balances out.
Also, let me know if there's a caffeine god. I'm willing to convert.
The building the kids said they stayed at looked like it belonged in Crime Alley. Most of the first story was covered in various gang tags and the little that wasn't was weathered brick. Even then, Peter spotted nearly a dozen missing bricks on the front of the building alone. The door was also covered in artsy graffiti, thought it was on a board that sealed the front door off.
The windows got the same treatment, all except a small one that hung over an arch thing. It was shattered, probably from one of the missing bricks, and Peter saw an ill-kept birds nest on the inside. The steps were missing more than a few boards, and they needed a coat of paint a decade ago. All in all, it looked like a condemned building. He didn't even need the giant sign slapped on the door to tell him as much.
With a frown, Peter entered the alleyway by moving a rusted chain link fence and stepped over a ripped trash bag. His spidey-sense tingled, making him pause mid-step. Because of that, the rat that was eating something in the garbage bag scurried out towards the house instead of chewing on his ankles.
"Lovely," Peter said sarcastically, completing his step and looking for a less obvious entrance. The windows on the side of the building were also boarded up, so Peter continued until he was behind the building. The back door was also boarded up, puzzling him for a moment before Peter saw a window on the second floor was open.
After checking to make sure no one was looking, Peter made quick work of the obstacle path that lead up to the window before slipping in. The smell hit him like a brick, making his nose scrunch up and he could only wonder what had died here. It was an unholy combination between mildew, rot, and BO that would have made him nauseous without his senses dialed up to eleven.
However, with practiced ease, Peter ignored the stench, silently hoping that he would quickly get used to it, and looked around him. It was similar to the room he used to trick Batman in, except this one looked...well, lived in gave it a little too much credit but people had been here recently. They hadn't cleaned, but people had been here.
With a small sigh, wondering why everywhere he went he always found himself in stink holes like these, he walked towards the door and grabbed the handle. Only to let it go a half second later when his spidey-sense blared.
"What?" Peter asked himself in a low voice, eyes darting for the source of the threat but his spidey-sense stopped blaring the moment he let go of the knob. Eye's narrowing, he traced the door frame, and it was then that he noticed the string attached to the door hinge. Pressing his lips into a thin line, he grabbed the end of it and pulled.
When he felt it go slack, he grabbed the door knob again, and he didn't feel his spidey-sense go off. Slowly, he turned it and suppressed an annoyed hiss when it squeaked. He paused and focused his hearing, but he didn't hear anything other than the occasional squeaking from...great. Rats. A lot of them.
Peter opened the door and came face to face with a double barrel shotgun. The string was attached to the trigger and the other side of the door knob, which explained his spidey-sense. It was a legitimate booby trap. Letting out a soft breath, he sidestepped the gun and flicked the safety back on.
He looked around the hallway and didn't see anything else that looked trapped. Even if it was, his spidey-sense would warn him, so he began his search.
He didn't even need to go down stairs to know that he couldn't let the kids stay here. Peter didn't curse often, but he could only describe this place as a complete and utter shit hole. What wasn't filthy with mold, dirt or other fluids that Peter didn't want to think about, the walls were missing altogether. The drywall was rotted, and all along the top floor, there were holes from where someone leaned on it or a rat chewed through.
The floor was missing boards as well, exposing wire and old insulating fluff. Which, in turn, was moldy and filled to the brim with rat droppings. None of the lights worked, not that he expected them to, and the water from the tap was a black color that Peter identified as, you guessed it, more mold. To make things worse, in one of the bedrooms, the ceiling caved in so it was filled with snow. That didn't exactly help how bitterly cold it was in the building if it deserved to be called as much.
"This place is a dump," Peter muttered to himself, his nose curling at the sight of a half frozen dead rat. He saw enough to know that he was going to have to figure something out for the kids, but his small apartment wasn't going to cut it for his nightly activities. He had been lucky he convinced aunt May that he turned the shack out back into a science lab and it was dangerous to go inside because it had been stuffed with odds and ends that he needed.
His little room wouldn't be enough for him to make more web fluid and have a work bench for potential upgrades he was toying around with.
Thinking of web fluid, Peter frowned, mentally marking it as a high priority. He hit empty late last night, and he wouldn't have anywhere near enough to make it through the night. The stairs squeaked and groaned underneath his weight, but Peter didn't feel his spidey-sense tingle, so he continued down unperturbed. It would take a few hours to start distilling the soaps and stuff into it's baser chemicals, so he needed to get started now.
As Peter came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, his frown deepened considerably. The bottom floor was just as bad as the second floor, possibly even worse because this was where people lived. Ratty sleeping bags were scattered around what once was a living room and kitchen. A few bobbles were next to each sleeping bag, the few things that those who slept here owned.
At the center of it all was a fire, or rather the remains of one. It was in a beat up barrel. Some drifted up from it steadily, meaning it hadn't been all that long since it burnt itself out. The embers also gave off some light, but if Peter didn't have his superior vision, he doubted he would be able to see in this darkness.
However, it was for that reason that his hearing sharpened to the point he could hear a heart beat coming from the closed entertainment center. The squeaks from the rats and the howling wind masked it earlier. It also didn't help that he was trying to avoid focusing on his sense because of how awful this placed sounded and smelled.
"I'm not here to hurt you," Peter called out, hearing the heartbeat lurch and quicken. "My name's Peter Parker; May, Johnny and," Peter realized that he didn't know the little leader's name. "The kid with the potty mouth are staying in my apartment right now, but they mentioned they live here. I'm just checking it out if they can actually stay here." Peter explained, focusing on the heartbeat.
"You're breaking the rules," the voice of a kid said, somewhat sullenly. He didn't sound as young as May or Johnny, but he was still experiencing the wonderful world of puberty if his voice cracking was anything to go by.
Peter's eyebrows drew together at that, "rules?" He questioned, and the heartbeat picked up when the kid realized that he had moved forward a little bit or he knew that Peter knew where he was at.
"This shit. Breaking and entering, stealing out shit; you're breaking the unwritten rule," the kid explained, only confusing him further. However, then it clicked in place.
'I guess that's why the gang war waits until night,' Peter realized with a frown. While it was very convenient to know when a crime was going to take place, it just was puzzling how a rule like that came to be.
It was basic common sense to do a crime when people weren't expecting it. Admittedly, that fact seemed to go over some of the criminals heads he's busted in his time, but the point still stands. Someone, either a person or an organization, made that rule and they, who ever they might be, had enough sway that people followed it instead of their best interests.
That wasn't ominous at all.
"I'm not here to steal anything. I'm just checking out the building. It didn't pass, so I guess I'm going to have to figure something out for them," Peter explained, squatting down with the doors the kid was hiding behind. Like Peter expected, his heart pounded in response, but as a few moments ticked by, his heart rate slowed.
In that time, Peter wondered just how he was going to do that.
"So, uh, you got a name?" Peter asked, glancing around the room again. He counted nine sleeping bags in total, but he hadn't seen the rest of the bottom floor yet.
"Alex," Alex answered after a couple of seconds before he slowly pushed the door open, revealing a teenager around the age of fifteen or so. He looked at him with cautious eyes as he left the confining space. When he straightened out, Peter saw that he was a head and shoulders shorter than him, making him appear younger than he was.
"I'm Peter," Peter introduced himself again, "do you live here too? With the, uh, Vice Lords?" He questioned, noting the kid looked just as rough as he did.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that. I'm what's left of the Vice Lords. The Southern Skanks came in last night and just," Alex shrugged suddenly. "You know how it goes. Doesn't matter now. The Vice Lords are gone, and I'm just here to get my stuff before one of the brats nick it." Alex said in a resigned tone, shrugging again.
"Yeah," Peter said, ignoring the ache in his chest. "I know how it goes. Before you go, how many people live here? I thought it was just the three of them, and the Vice Lords, but I'm seeing more sleeping bags than I was expecting." He asked, gesturing around the room.
Alex shifted uncertainly, "thirteen? Maybe more? I don't know. With the Vice Lords gone, the numbers going to be smaller but once we move out, it's just going to be a matter of time before someone else moves in." He answered and Peter drug a hand over his face.
"How old are they? Does anyone look after them-after all of you?" Peter asked, his mind racing.
"The fuck do you want to know? Are you some kind of-" Alex spat, getting defensive but Peter cut him off.
"I'm not," Peter let out a sigh. This was the second time today he was being accused of that. "Spider-man dropped the off at my apartment, and I told him I'd look after them. I'm not the kind of guy that can just ignore this," Peter stated, keeping his voice calm.
Alex's eyes narrowed, but he didn't press the accusation, even if he didn't seem to believe Peter fully. Not that he blamed him. It sounded doubtful to his own ears.
"Yeah? So? What are you going to do about it?" Alex asked, striking right at the heart of the matter. Peter could tell that he had plenty more questions, whether he cared enough to ask them was another matter entirely, but he asked the one that Peter had been asking himself since he looked at this building.
He had to admit; it was a good one.
Peter tapped his phone and his foot bounced impatiently as he waited for the page to load. That, and to keep his blood moving when a stray breeze blew snow in his face. He wanted nothing more than to go back inside, except, maybe, doing away with the seasons of winter altogether. Unfortunately, that just wasn't possible because his spot was the only one that had free wifi and a decent view of the orphanage.
From his view of the park, he saw a whole lot of nothing. A lot of kids, more than there should be, enjoying their day off from school or on their beds in utter silence. The caretakers ran around the building, being pulled in a hundred different directions from kids of all ages.
It was...nice? It wasn't anything like he prepared himself for. He was expecting old ladies that hate kids and punished them for any perceived wrong. He was expecting kids that had the life just sucked out of them to the point adoption was their only hope.
Thankfully, the orphanage didn't meet those expectations.
Sure, it had it's fair share of gang members if the clothing was anything to go by, but Peter was coming to realize that was just to be expected now. In New York, joining a gang was a way to live, to thrive even in the worst sort of way. In Gotham, joining a gang was one of the few ways to survive.
Which was why he was currently looking through the orphanage's financial records for any hint of nefarious activity. He found it pretty quickly, but it wasn't anything directly connected to the caretakers. There was some missing money, but he couldn't follow the trail too far with the tech he had. However, he was sure that the money wasn't being pocketed by the caretakers. A quick look at their balances told him that.
The question became where the money was going, but Peter couldn't follow it. At least he couldn't follow it and not get caught. It was difficult enough hacking on an iPhone on free wifi, but hacking in the upper crusts bank accounts? That was a bad idea all around.
"Maybe hey were just exaggerating?" Peter wondered as he read through the numbers. It was possible. They were young, and they were in the orphanage, so they lost their parent. Maybe they did something similar to Peter-2 and just left because they weren't getting the attention they needed?
So many questions, so little time and no ways to get answers.
With a sigh, Peter resolved to ask the kids when they woke up to get a better idea what he should be looking for. As of right now, he wasn't doing anything productive when he didn't have any time to waste. After brushing off the snow that gathered on him, Peter began making his way back to his apartment building.
He needed to start making his web fluid now before it was too late.
Peter's thoughts drifted towards that building as his feet carried him. It had the room that he needed to set up shop, even if it was a bit run down. The rats would be a problem for sure, but he could take care of them easy enough.
But what was he going to do about those kids?
"What are you going to do about those kids," Leslie said, appearing from nowhere and startling him out of his thoughts enough he nearly jumped a foot in the air. He looked at her, then around him and saw that he was already in Crime Alley. Apparently, the orphanage was closer than he thought, for better or worse.
She must have taken his silence as an answer because she let out a breath and crossed her arms. "They're still asleep for now, but they'll be up soon. You need to figure it out before then," she continued, pinning that dull stare of hers on him yet again.
"I'm trying-" Peter began, but Leslie was quick to cut him off.
"Trying isn't good enough. This isn't something you can try and fail at. This, those kids, if you fuck this up then it's them that pay the price. They look up to you, to Spider-man. You were all they would talk about all night, and they trust Peter Parker because Spider-man told them to," she said, jabbing a finger in Peter's chest.
Peter tried to stand up tall, but each word was like getting hit by the Hulk.
"I understand you're trying to help," she said after a moment. "Damn it; I'm happy that you are. There are too many kids like them, and there's no one that cares about them. Those kids either fall into gangs, or they're going to freeze to death this winter," Leslie continued, taking a breath. She closed her eyes for a moment before she looked back at Peter with a \n expression that seemed kind.
"But, Peter, you can't take care of yourself. You haven't showered in days, everything you own came from a garbage can and there no need to even mention your nightly activities. I understand you want to help these kids, but you can't. Maybe," she said quickly when Peter's expression turned stormy, "maybe you need to start thinking about putting them in the hands of someone who can."
"Who?" Peter snapped, both out of anger and exhaustion. "You just said that they're not enough people who care and if someone doesn't then they'll die. I already had to save them from getting murdered! Who's going to take them? The orphanage? They left that place, and if I send them back then they'll just leave again," Peter shot back, running a hand through his hair so quickly he pulled a few stands.
"Some billionaire isn't going to swoop in and adopt them because he's just a good man. I can't let them just go off and do their own thing! That building shouldn't even be used as firewood, and there're more rats than I want to count. I..." Peter cut himself off, trying to find the words, trying to get the point across that he was it. He was the one responsible for those kids.
"I-...They can stay in my apartment for now. I'll pay their rent," Peter said, his hand dipping into his pocket and pulled out a hundred before passing it to Leslie. "Do you have another room available," he asked, and Leslie pressed her lips into a thin line. That wasn't the answer she wanted or expected, but he didn't care.
"I don't. I have the cheapest rent, so my apartments are snatched up pretty quickly," Leslie said, rubbing her eyes with the tips of her fingers.
"That's fine, I'll figure something out for myself," Peter said with a nod. He looked away before Leslie could look at him again. Odds were she was going to have opinions about that, but Peter figured she couldn't initiate that unwanted conversation if he wasn't looking at her. Girls did it to him all the time, and it worked every time.
It was for that reason he saw a man in a business suit walking down Crime Alley. He seemed to realize that was a horrible, terrible dreadful and other -le words Peter couldn't think of at the moment because he looked like he was about to take off running every time someone looking at him. Nevertheless, bad idea or not, he had a mission, and he was going to see it done.
Peter watched in fascination as he took out a sign from underneath his arm and stapled it to a wooden pillar in front of an abandoned building. He glanced at a similar sign, or rather a pile of similar signs, and sighed loudly before he began walking towards another building at a brisk pace.
Peter didn't believe in fate. Not anymore. However, it did seem like a pretty big coincidence that he had a perfect view of the sign and its price tag was less than the money he still had in his pocket.
Peter never considered himself brilliant, not matter how often he was called such. More often than not, he felt like he wasn't smart enough. However, once he saw that three-digit price tag, the idea appeared immediately. All that they just talked about, all the reasons no one would look after a couple of street rats and all the problems of why he couldn't look after them properly just clicked into place with a solution.
"Actually," Peter said, turning away from Leslie, "I think I just figured it out."
