"P- please! Don't hurt me!"

The mercenaries had their Target surrounded. It had been an exhilarating chase; Deadpool was almost sorry there wasn't anyone around to see it. Now he was standing, swords drawn, over the trembling form of Spider-Man.

He sounded kind of young. Maybe Jameson was onto something. But the way he shrunk into the ground before Wade's katana made him pause.

"What are you waiting for, Wilson?" Macendale called. "Finish the job."

"Job isn't to kill him. It's to bring him in to face justice."

"Oh, thank goodness," Spider-Man collapsed. "Finally someone I can talk to to clear this up."

Deadpool dropped his stance and rolled his eyes.

"Oh boy. Everyone, I think this is a false alarm. This little spaz wouldn't kill anyone."

"No, this is the guy," Denning said, unstrapping his weapon. "The Spider-Man."

"Yeah, I know who it is, my costume has eye holes," Wade said shortly. "But just look at him. C'mon, Paulie. If he's a murderer then I'm a Pikachu."

"Do we wanna get paid, or not?" Shocker waved his hands angrily.

"Just give him here," Gargan snarled. "I'll beat him unconscious, drag him to the client, and when he wakes up he'll be unmasked, thrown in jail, and I can kill him there. Easy."

"Um, maybe I spoke too soon," the webslinger tilted his head. Before Wade knew what had hit him, a webbed robe grabbed onto his ankle and pulled, sending him face first into the paved ground.

Deadpool heard a chaotic struggle as he righted himself, saw Shocker live up to his name as he pounded the side of the building to shake the fleeing Spider down.

"Get him. Now!" Gargan screamed, just before a webshot plastered him in the bad half of his face. Macendale tried to block out the cacophony as he lined up his weapon. He saw the vigilante in his scope turn and glance at him a second before he intended to fire, leaping out if the way and onto the other building that made up the alley. Then with a final strand fired from his wrists he was gone.

"I'm disappointed, gentlemen."

The mercenaries were gathered on a rooftop the next morning. Jameson paced back and forth in front of them.

"He is just one child. A boy! You are four highly trained men."

"He's got this sense to him," Macendale defended. "He can anticipate when you're going to hit him, and correct for it. Makes him hard to catch."

"Not to mention Deadpool wussed out on us," Schultz grumbled. "Had the kid dead to rights and wouldn't follow through."

"And now he's not even here," Denning raised his arms.

Jameson looked around.

"That's right. I thought it was too quiet in here. Where is Wilson?"

"Doing 'research,' Schultz rolled his eyes.

"He's checking out the area where we lost the Spider last night," Jason clarified. "Not a bad play. We know he's somewhere in the city, he has to follow some kind of logic in his path through it. A pattern."

"But Wilson is an idiot," snapped Gargan. "He couldn't find gum in a subway. How's he going to find one twerp in a city of 2 million people?"

Work meetings are boring, but it's generally good practice to go to all of them. I; however, have never accused myself of being a role model. Besides, I had barely been in the Big Apple for a day and it was already starting to smell a little mealy...

"Biodegradable. Nice!"

Deadpool picked through a few hanging tatters of webbing as he traveled down the fire escape to the street below.

"Always glad to see a killer with a green thumb."

He was looking for signs, not of Spiders but of teenagers. The webhead was going this direction for a reason - he was heading from one place to another. He looked up the tag for Spider-Man on social media. There was a frankly excessive number of posts from the Daily Bugle, but also a number of "spider sightings" from the previous week.

A lot of them had come from an area south of the alley the mercenaries had cornered him in last night, but that was still too large a group to work with.

Deadpool liked when people thought he was as dumb as he looked. It made it easy to do his own thing. Now, if he was making the big bucks, he could string up this whole block with cameras and look for the kid from his hotel room. But he would have to go with the old-fashioned way today.

Step 1: Find the busiest street. The police haven't found him, so he's avoiding traffic cameras.

Step 2: Look for anyone being shifty. Hoodies up in the summer, erratic street crossings, head down, any of "the signs."

Wade pulled out a photo of Peter Parker. He was too high profile to ask around about, and if for some reason the person he asked didn't know about the Spider Stuff, he'd probably have qualms about helping a man in a red gimp suit find a high school age boy.

It went on like this for hours, until Deadpool finally had an ounce of luck. He saw a grey hoodie flash behind a dumpster, and peeked around the side. Running down an alley was a boy with wavy brown hair. He looked around to check that he wasn't followed, and darted up the side of the building in seconds.

"That explains how he keeps out of sight," Wade muttered. But now that he had him, it was fine for...

Step 3: Tail 'em.

In his apartment, hidden from the world, Peter Parker wished his aunt a somber goodnight. It was the most recent of many, as of late. As he turned to shut the door to his room, the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. There was the shape of a man kneeling through his window, a handgun aimed at the boy.

"I'm gonna ask you this one time, kid," Deadpool said. "And I want you to look me in the eye when you answer it. Did you kill Quentin Beck?"