Chapter 12:
This was almost too good to be true. Peter half-believed it was, actually. Maybe he was just dreaming all of this up. Sitting on the park bench with four other people who had taken time out of their day to come visit him. He was a little drowsy, but much less so than he'd been the last time he'd seen these three. They'd also handed him a blueberry muffin, which tasted like actual heaven after a few days of going off nothing, and had then proceeded to give him some much-needed human contact after four days of loneliness.
The bird jokes were a little corny, but both parties had seemed like they were having fun with it. So Peter let himself enjoy the mood around the whole thing rather than the actual jokes. He didn't even know who the corny bird man was, besides the obvious 'Sam 4' joke Peter could make to himself. But with him added it felt like Natasha was a little less stiff than times before, which balanced out the whole group. Good for corny bird man. Or Clint, Peter thought it was? The encompassing atmosphere around the whole gathering was light, happy, and really refreshing for Peter after the last few days he'd had. Fighting off thugs and gangs in dark alleys with almost no break tended to darken your whole perspective somewhat, so this brief respite felt like exactly what the doctor ordered.
Or at least it did until Peter's Spider Sense went off like a fire alarm in an erupting volcano. Peter's head snapped up from where he had been watching Sam goof off with Steve while they sat on the ground, turning every which way in hopes of seeing what had triggered it. It was idle, not immediate danger to him, so he assumed it was something like a nearby kid falling into a well or whatever, but there was no one else around. It was just them, no matter which way he looked. Nobody was even above them, about to crash a helicopter or something. What was going on? Sam and his friends had noticed Peter's tense state, and were staring at him worriedly. Peter was only paying a fraction of attention to them, though, still trying to isolate why his Spider Sense had gone off. Was it the muffin, food poisoning or something? Something the others were holding? He'd learned a while ago that his Spider Sense never malfunctioned unless some supervillain like Doc Ock messed with him or whatever, but he'd only fought normal criminals for the past few days, so that wasn't it. Something was wrong, no doubt about it.
Suddenly, it changed. The danger wasn't idle anymore. Peter didn't hesitate when his instincts screamed at him to duck. He tossed his weight to the side, into Natasha, and hooked his arm around her shoulders before pulling his body down into the fetal position, landing on Sam and bringing him to the ground in the process. There was a somewhat worrying thump as Sam's head thwacked against the sidewalk, but Peter figured it wouldn't be anything worse than a nasty concussion, which was better than being dead. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, Peter heard gunshots ringing out, but didn't even time to brace himself for pain before he felt one graze his arm and another near his shin. One of Sam's friends grunted in pain, though Peter wasn't sure which one it was. He just knew it wasn't Sam, since Peter was currently dog-piled on top of him. He hoped it wasn't anything urgent—or worse, fatal.
A second later, Peter opened his eyes. His face was buried in Sam's shoulder, and one of his knees was jammed into Sam's stomach, which must have knocked the wind out of him. Peter rolled to the side, off of his older friend, and looked at the scene around him.
There were bullet holes littered in the sidewalk in front of the bench, and even a few in the back of the bench itself. There were also a few splatters of blood around the area, though Peter wouldn't be able to tell you whose blood it was just yet. Going from the position of her body, it seemed like Natasha had realized what was going on around the time Peter threw an arm around her, and had made a mad dive to get Steve down to the ground. Steve had scrapes across both of his arms from where he'd hit the concrete roughly after being tackled by Natasha from such an angle, but neither of them looked like they had any bullet holes in them. Clint, however—the new friend—was a different story. He'd been the only person not tackled from the bullet spray, and had virtually no warning. His body was bent over in a crumpled position, so Peter assumed he must have started moving soon after Peter had, but his shoulder was dripping blood onto the ground. It didn't look like he'd gotten hit in any vital areas, but Peter knew a bullet to the shoulder wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Peter felt guilty, but he knew he wouldn't have been able to grab Clint over Natasha's shoulder, so he pushed the guilt back for now.
His Spider Sense started ringing in the idle kind of way again, but this time he knew they had less than a minute to move before each of them would resemble slices of Swiss cheese, and that wasn't even a joke. His shin and arm tingled a little from where bullets had grazed him lightly, but he didn't pay them any mind in favor of grabbing onto each of Sam's forearms and heaving him to his feet. Luckily for Peter, Sam seemed to get the concept as Peter was pulling. And got his feet under him before rushing over to Clint, who had managed to get up off the bench in spite of the now painfully obvious bullet wounds in both his shoulder. Which Peter had noticed, and his thigh, which Peter hadn't.
"Nat, you alright?" Clint called, looking over at the red-haired woman who was busy simultaneously helping up and being helped up to her feet by Steve. She grunted in assent, looking over and adopting a worried expression when she saw the state Clint was in. Inner panic rose in Peter, because even though they weren't making a mess of themselves and screaming like Peter had feared, they weren't running. They needed to move, now!
Unfortunately, he couldn't shout at them, so he settled for lunging for the nearest pair—Natasha and Steve—and grabbing each of them by the arm, tugging them viciously towards the path that led away from the bench. Thankfully, that seemed to snap all of them out of whatever form of shock had kept them from running like sensible people. Sam supported Clint on the side of the leg that had gotten shot while Steve and Natasha started running with Peter instead of making him pull them along. Peter ran back to Clint's other side and ignored his protests that he was fine without the extra help, pushing everybody faster. Pride would make them slower, and slower would make them dead.
As predicted, the second shower of bullets came down just seconds after they'd managed to get away from the edges of the guns' apparent range. Luckily for them, it seemed that sniper assault rifles or whatever these guns were didn't load very quickly, and were instead built for one round of pure death. On the other hand, if Peter's Spider Sense wasn't so on the dot, they'd probably all be dead right now. Ugh, the thought made Peter's stomach churn. Once again, he was glad for his spider powers.
Though, his spider powers might be the only reason they were all in this situation in the first place, so maybe he wasn't so glad. Honestly, he was almost positive he hadn't done anything to let out the Spiderman secret anywhere in the recent past, so he didn't know if that was why they were being shot at or not. Honestly, when it came to a hail of bullets from an unknown, unseen, enemy, Peter's philosophy was run first, ask questions later. He just hoped the others held something of the same belief. Peter blanched as they reached the bottom of the path, realizing they were at a crossroads that very well might determine whether Sam and his friends made it out of this without a few extra bullet holes.
They could hide in the park, but there would be no running away if the enemy caught them, and Peter didn't know if they'd be able to fight off the enemy or not. They could run into the busy streets and try to lose their enemy in the crowd until they got to a safe place, but if the enemy found out, Peter could be putting innocent people at risk. Their last option was to head straight into the abandoned alleyway across the street and try to lose their enemy in New York's twisting, complicated maze of backstreets and closed areas. Personally, it was the last option that spoke to Peter the loudest. After over two years of swinging all over this dang city, he was probably at least on the top twenty list of people who knew how to navigate every part New York. This area especially, considering how much time he'd spent around here recently due to the bench and all. However, he wasn't sure how well his companions would be able to keep up with him, and it's not like he was going to leave them behind.
He only spent a second or two thinking this over, but those two seconds were long enough for Natasha to choose which way to go. Directly across the busy, traffic-ridden street and into a dark alleyway. Couldn't say he was complaining, but he was nervous. Crossing the street was not fun. They were in a desperate situation, so you couldn't blame them for being kind of rude by cutting directly across the street instead of running to a cross point, but that didn't stop the downright murderous glares of the people sitting in the cars they were passing in front of. Peter was genuinely afraid one of them would try to run them over.
They made it to the alleyway, and then Natasha really started running, though Peter was pretty sure she wasn't going to leave all of them behind, thankfully. Steve seemed to be having trouble with his left ankle, favoring it much more than he should, so Peter figured it must have gotten hurt in the bullet spray somehow. Sam seemed to be handling Clint just fine, mostly because Clint was taking the two bullet wounds extremely, almost suspiciously, well. Even so, they really didn't have time to think about that right now, so Peter let go of Clint's side and ran forward to push Steve's arm up to hook around his shoulders, tugging on his wrist until the much taller, more muscular man was leaning on him. It must have looked ridiculous to most people, since Peter was tiny compared to Steve, but if Peter couldn't lift this much weight, what kind of superhero would he be?
Natasha led the way, motioning the direction of each turn she thought they should take. Peter did his best to keep track of where they were in his mental map, but it seemed to him like Natasha was acting less like a guide and more like a beacon so they wouldn't conflict in which way to go every time they came to a fork in the alleyway. It was both useful and resourceful, but Peter kind of thought it would be better if he could point them to one of his safe houses instead of just wandering aimlessly. Natasha was also doing something weird with her hands, and it took Peter a moment to realize that she was texting. Texting who? Who in the world would she be texting right now? Help, he supposed, but who did these guys know who could help in this situation, besides the police? Was Natasha texting 911? Did 911 even accept texts?
Peter was actually genuinely contemplating this, which meant he was nearly blindsided when Natasha inhaled deeply as she back peddled from the corner she'd just looked around and reached into her jean pocket to draw something out. A moment later, a dozen guys in Kevlar vests came around the bend, wielding guns. Natasha pepper sprayed one in the face and kicked another one to the ground ruthlessly before they even had time to aim. That was enough time for Peter to let go of Steve and sprint towards the guys. They seemed a little surprised at the teenager running towards them, which gave Peter a small amount of hope that maybe it wasn't him they were after. He didn't know why they might be after them otherwise, but he knew for certain that people who annihilated innocent park benches with machine guns were also the type of people who typically worked for supervillains, so these guys were probably somebody he wanted to fight.
So he did.
The first guy he ran at didn't even have his gun ready, so he was nearly powerless as Peter launched himself at him and wrapped his limps around him like a cuddly octopus. Leaning forward enough so that the guy lost his balance and toppled to the ground. Peter rolled up off him and swept the legs out from under the next one before he even knew what hit him. That's where the surprise factor stopped, unfortunately. Their guns were awkwardly large to be fired at such close range, but that didn't mean the next guy had any problem using his as a baseball bat to hit Peter in the stomach. Peter gasped as all the breath was knocked out of him and stumbled back to recover. Another guy grabbed him from behind before he could regain his breath and the guy who'd hit him before came back for another hit. On the third hit, Peter exhaled with a whoosh as the butt of the rifle hit a luckily spot and a crack came from his torso. Peter guessed it was one of his ribs breaking.
He started twisting his hands behind him to get better leverage on the guy holding him, but it was hard to breathe and move when some smirking, sadistic douche kept hitting you in the stomach with his gun. Peter finally managed to twist his hands around so that they were pressed flat into the small of the man holding him back. He dropped his weight a little so the man's hold loosened, and then swung his body up around the guy so he twirled over his head, breaking his hold on the process. Hoo boy, Peter was lucky he was flexible, or else that would have hurt a lot more than it did.
He kicked the man who had been holding him into the guy who'd broken his rib, hard enough to send them both tumbling to the ground. He turned around, but found there currently weren't any enemies for him to engage.
Natasha had apparently already taken out four while Peter wasn't looking, and working on a fifth. There were the four Peter had taken down, and each of the others had their own guy. Peter was just making his choice on who to help (Clint, because he was the most wounded) when Sam finished off his guy with a nasty blow to the head and ran to help Clint. Peter squinted at the scene in front of him curiously, hesitating slightly as the gears in his head fired into motion. He knew Sam was a veteran from all their conversations, but why did his friends all know how to fight so well?
While he was pondering, Steve finished his guy, and also ran over to help Clint. Apparently nobody thought Natasha needed help. Hell, Peter didn't think Natasha needed help. She seemed to be doing just fine; almost bored, even. However, he didn't want to overwhelm the poor guy left fighting three very muscular, if wounded, men, so he turned back to check if any of the guys he'd taken care of were getting up—just in time to get hit in the ribs again. What was with these guys? Why did they hate Peter's ribs? Peter scowled as he pulled the gun away from the guy who'd hit him with it without difficulty and tossed it behind him, leaning back to get momentum enough to throw his weight into the punch he delivered to the man's jaw. The guy crumpled, leaving Peter with a sore hand and throbbing ribs. Jeez, this was probably going to take an unfairly long amount of time to heal, too.
The fighting sounds had ceased behind him. Peter could hear someone coming up behind him, and turned his head to see Sam staring at the man's he'd just sucker-punched. Sam let off a low whistle and clapped Peter on the shoulder. "One hell of a left hook." he remarked, a smile tugging at his lips. His hand slid down Peter's shoulder to grab his arm and tug him along, and Peter fell into step beside him.
There was tension in the air that hadn't been there before, like they were all expecting some more heavily armored and armed men to pop up around any corner. For a moment, Peter worried if the fighting moves he'd pulled had been too advanced. He hadn't really been thinking in the heat of the fight, but he did have a secret identity to keep. They all seemed pretty tame looking back on it, though. He could easily excuse everything except the little flip he'd done as street fighting, but everybody had been caught up in their own fights by then, so he was fairly sure nobody had seen it.
After a moment to let everybody regain their breath, they grouped up again, except this time, instead of going to the front, Natasha jogged over to Clint's side. After adjusting both his and her own arms so that she was supporting his side comfortably, she looked over to where Sam, Peter, and Steve were standing. "Sam, you've got Steve." She ordered, in a tone that made it clear there would be no arguments. "Peter, you take the lead. Just pick any direction, it doesn't matter which. We just don't have time to argue directions. Just make sure there's nobody around the corner, and that the way you choose isn't a dead end." Peter nodded in agreement as Sam hurried over to Steve, and ran up ahead. This way he could lead them to a safe house, so he wasn't exactly complaining. Besides, from the others' perspectives, the arrangement made the most sense. Peter was the smallest of the group, so it must have looked strange at least to see him supporting the largest of the group, even though Steve hadn't actually been leaning on him all that much.
Peter took the first turn without thinking, the others following close behind. It would probably be good to get away from the battle scene just in case one of the men had radioed in their position, which was more than likely. Besides, he hadn't been paying extremely close attention to the turns Natasha had been taking, so he needed to find something familiar to get re-oriented before attempting to lead the group to one of his safe houses.
There was a problem even with that plan, though, Peter realized as he raked the area with his eyes for anything that he would recognize. He may not know where exactly they were in the maze of alleyways, so he didn't know which turns to take just yet, but he knew they had to still be fairly near the park where the bench was. Unfortunately, that park was only blocks away from Stark Tower, which meant the area surrounding it was booming real estate. There was nothing but occupied skyscrapers around for nearly a kilometer in radius, and even past that it was a while before there was anything foreclosed or abandoned that Peter could possibly use as a safe house.
As soon as he got oriented, he had two options. One, go for the closest safe house, which was still dreadfully far, mind you. The problem with that safe house was that he wasn't sure they'd even be able to get inside. The small, abandoned storage building had been boarded up very well only a year ago, and the only way inside was through a broken skylight at the top of the building. The only way to access that skylight was if you had the ability to climb up vertical surfaces, and even if Peter helped the others up, he wasn't sure he'd have the finesse to pull it off without his webs. Also, if they got cornered in the building, there was only one way out, and there was nowhere to hide. The other option was farther—much, much farther than the other safe house. /Much/ farther. It had easy access with just a door on the ground, or any one of the several broken windows. It was large, open, and easy to hide in if the need arose. But, as already mentioned, it was very far from their current position. Peter knew the longer they were out in the open, the more they ran the risk of getting caught again. Which way to choose?
In the end, Peter went with the closer one. They could always hide in the shadows next to it if they couldn't get in, but who knew, maybe they'd be able to break the boards off one of the ground windows if they all worked together? It was kind of a risky gamble. But running for the far one could count as such a gamble as well. If this particular risk didn't pay off, well...In an emergency, Peter made a very good human shield. He was practiced in the art making sure the bullets hit him, and yet, didn't get any of the important areas, like his brain or heart.
The others followed him without complaint, though Peter found forced himself to wait every so often. Fairly uninjured and unburdened, he was just a lot faster than the others. Especially since he had a destination in mind.
Crossing streets was probably the most difficult and nerve-racking part of the whole run. It was slow, complicated, and terrifying all in one go. There was a bigger chance of whoever was chasing them to spot them while crossing the streets, because they were so open. And that didn't even take into account how many New Yorkers they irritated by crossing in front of their cars. Thankfully, nobody got angry enough to try and run them over or anything crazy like that, though some people looked like they wanted to.
Finally, they came to a sudden halt when Peter's Spider Sense triggered just as he was about to peer his head around the next corner. He froze in his position, hearing the others come up behind him, and then took a few careful steps back. His eyes scoured the alleyway in front of them for any hint of danger, but it looked just like any other New York alleyway to him.
Peter crouched down, grabbing a mostly unbroken beer bottle off the ground before carefully standing back up. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sam and Clint. giving him weird looks, but he waved them off. He shifted his grip on the bottle, careful not to cut his hand on the one ragged edge, and gently tossed it into the alleyway before them.
The reaction was instantaneous, and so surprising that Peter flinched back hard and nearly lost his footing. Several muffled gunshots rang out and the mostly unbroken bottle shattered into a couple dozen tiny fragments before it had even made it a foot into the alleyway. Peter saw the others scramble back in surprise as well, though they weren't really what his attention was on.
"Holy crap!" Sam cursed in an emphasized whisper. "We could have walked right into that."
"A trap." Natasha muttered, maybe more to herself than anybody else. "It's familiar. There are highly sensitive motion detectors rigged to machine guns on either side of the alley. There're probably also men on call somewhere around here who would be alerted if anything set off the trap." She looked over to the group, her expression focusing in determinedly. "If we don't move, now, we're going to be in trouble."
"Too late." Steve grunted, and Peter turned his head around to see that Steve was looking down the alley they were currently in, at a group of heavily armored men who were pouring around the corner. Oh boy.
"They're going to try and herd us towards the trap." Natasha informed, turning around to face Clint head on, while she jogged backwards down the alley. "Get as far from it as possible!"
There was something a little weird about how she was saying her words, like she was enunciating them a little too much. The fact that she'd been staring at Clint while speaking instead of facing forward was a little weird too. But right now wasn't exactly the time to question something like that. Peter was too busy worrying about the dozens of armored men coming straight for them.
Thankfully, none of them were armed with guns, which meant that Peter didn't need to worry about getting shot along with making sure that nobody got pushed into the trap that lay at the end of the alleyway. Some of them did have Tasers, but on terms of what Peter could deal with, Tasers were much higher than bullet wounds. Peter could, and had, gotten Tasered once or twice and then had gotten right back up and kept going. Bullet wounds were harder to get over.
Unfortunately, there did seem to be the occasional projectile that rained down from the end of the alleyway, but it seemed to be only one shooter, and they were preserving their ammo. Peter didn't know what was being shot, exactly, but he knew it wasn't bullets because bullets wouldn't be treated so reverently. Something to worry about later, when he wasn't being attacked by several armored men with Tasers.
There was a small symbol on each of the men's arms, he noticed, as he sidestepped one of them. A tiny octopus, a symbol Peter could have sworn he'd seen in his history text books from high school. The symbol for the Hydra organization, the one that had had such a large hand in World War II. The very same one Captain America had taken down, right? Wasn't Hydra done and gone? It would be so incredibly unfair to poor Captain America if he woke up in the future and Hydra was still active.
Peter dodged the current man who he was fighting's swing, and reached out to grab his elbow, flipping around to throw him into another charging guy. He gained a brief respite from fighting and looked around to see how the others were fairing. Turns out, a lot better than expected. Sam was kicking butt easily, which Peter thought made sense because he was a veteran of the army. He had to be a butt kicker; it was part of the job description. Natasha seemed to have gained hold of two Tasers and was ruthlessly using them on anybody who came within range, which resulted in most of the men wearing very hesitant looks as they approached her. Steve was holding his own just fine, using a piece of the armor the men were wearing like both a shield and a weapon in the same breath, blocking attacks and battering the men easily.
The real surprise was Clint. Not that Peter had assumed he wasn't capable, but two bullet wounds weren't exactly easy to work around or fight with, and Peter knew this from experience. Clint was managing fine anyway, using a strategy similar to Peter's. Which involved using their own numbers against them by shoving anybody who attacked him back into the crowd, oftentimes resulting in an almost comical topple of men. It was oddly reminiscent of bowling pins, or at least to Peter.
As he evaded another attack easily, it occurred to Peter how strange it was that these four people he was tightly alongside were doing so well in the fight. Or, how well they had taken being shot at. Or how well they handled the injuries, or the navigation of the alleyways, or the former attack. They didn't even really seem all that shocked at being shot at. Evidently, Peter was missing something. Probably something obvious, and he was just being a dummy and stupidly overlooking something. Right now really wasn't the time to be thinking it over, but he could acknowledge that there was something he was missing about Sam and his friends. He'd have to think it over later, in detail. Preferably when they were somewhere safe.
Another man swung clumsily at Peter, and Peter used his smaller physique to his advantage by ducking down and away so the man stumbled forwards and hit one of the other men who had been coming up behind Peter. The advantage to having this many guys all crammed into the alleyway was that Peter was easily able to duck and dodge through them while they had troubles avoiding collision with each other. His flexibility and reflexes weren't exactly detrimental either. Steve, Clint, and Sam seemed to be having issues maneuvering, but with the unconscious bodies of men piling up on the ground movement was slowly becoming easier and easier, as long as you could watch your step.
Natasha was a one-woman army. She would run at the man closest to her and head directly for the open patch of skin on his neck, Tasering them all the way down to the ground before moving onto the next target. Clint had basically built up a fortress of fallen men around him, and it looked like he had also gotten a hold of a Taser, so he was fine. Steve had upgraded himself to two pieces of armor as shields, and was using one to bash the enemies' unconscious while easily fending off attacks with the other. Sam had slowly worked his way closer to Peter and seemed to be taking on most of the men headed towards the smaller teen, as if protecting him. Peter was simultaneously annoyed and flattered.
Unfortunately, no matter how good the others were, five against fifty wasn't very good odds. Nobody had gotten out of the fight unscathed. Steve's limp and gotten worse and his shirt was torn and stained red on the right side. Natasha had a nasty-looking head wound and was favoring her left arm. Clint had already been badly wounded, but he seemed to have avoided getting hit the best, though his leg looked much worse. Sam had received a dislocated shoulder, from the looks of it, as well as a split lip and what looked like the beginning of a nasty black eye.
Peter hadn't been able to entirely avoid injury either. He'd gotten Tasered once, though he'd been able to recover from that rather quickly, due to all the practice he'd had in his early days of Spiderman. He'd missed something in his first assessment: the fact that around a quarter of the men had small knives concealed, which had earned Peter a nasty cut across his forehead that was dripping blood into his eyes. They'd also gone for his ribs like mad when they'd realized he was already injured there. Which meant that his ribs were even worse off than before. Great. Still, it was impressive that five unarmed people had managed to take down so many armored, armed men. Peter was proud of the others. As soon as this was over, a pat on the back for everybody.
Peter's Spider Sense went off again, just in time for him to step to the side as something colorful whizzed past his face. Dang, that power was coming in handy! Peter officially loved his Spider Sense.
One of the men fighting Natasha yelped in pain and toppled to the ground before Natasha even got him with one of the Tasers. There was a small, feathered dart sticking out of his shoulder, which, from Peter's experience at least, either meant poison or tranquilizer. Peter wasn't sure which this particular situation was, but either would be bad, so it was probably in his best interest to avoid the darts.
Steve used his armor plates as shields, basically like he'd been doing before, but now he was fending off darts. Clint and Natasha each used the fallen men as shields of some sort, while Peter's Spider Sense earned its keep several times over. The few remaining enemy men dropped like flies. Evidence that whoever was shooting the darts didn't care whether or not those men got shot or not.
Sam was the only one left uncovered. Just as Peter was heading towards his friend to assist in this matter, his Spider Sense went off, but in an idle sort of way. The way it did when it was warning Peter about somebody about to get hurt that wasn't Peter. He sprinted for Sam, knowing what was about to come next.
Peter tackled Sam to the ground clumsily, throwing the older man off balance and sending them both tumbling. He angled his body away from the incoming dart, but wasn't able to completely dodge it. He felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as the dart dug in, and realized that the end was probably barbed so it would be hard to get out.
While they were both on the ground, they were momentarily immobile, and the shooter took full advantage of this. In this position, though, Peter was unintentionally shielding almost all of Sam's body with his own. That meant that within the next few seconds, just as he was trying to shove to his feet, Peter ended up with three more darts buried in his back. His fast metabolism might have been able to fight off one dose, but four was far too much. Peter barely managed to stumble to his feet while swaying like a drunken sailor before blindly groping out Sam's arm for balance. When his searching hand didn't find anything, he staggered two steps forward before his knees gave out and his whole world turned to darkness.
