A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Since yesterday I turned 25, I wanted to celebrate by posting a new chapter. I hope you enjoy!
Content Warning: contains a few descriptive paragraphs (signified by the * before it starts and after it ends, if you want to scroll past) of someone crapping their pants.
The cold night air felt great against his masked face as he swung through the city. Patrol was always the most effective way to get his mind off of things, and as he touched down near the bank, he found himself looking about, antsy for a fight.
He shivered; he wasn't quite to the level of having a heating system in his suit, not that he could figure out a way to make it work while still being form-fitting and smooth. For now, all he could do was grip his hand-warmers tighter as he prowled about the street.
"This is where she was," he realized as he took a step onto the paved walkway to the front doors. "What happened here? What did she go through?"
As Spider-Man sat down on a nearby bench, the tree before it shading him further, he noticed two shady-looking men walking on the opposite sidewalk towards the same warehouse that he'd visited twice before.
His eyebrows raised. "What do we have here…?"
Standing back up, he made to follow them. Swinging onto the roof, he eyed them until they were far enough away, and then he jumped from the rooftops until finding the warehouse from earlier in the week.
He lay on his belly as he watched them enter through a side door in an alley. As soon as the door was firmly latched shut, he found an open window nearby and slipped in.
As soon as he touched down next to a rack of brooms and a mop, he cursed under his breath.
"The same broom closet?" He muttered, looking around the cramped space. "How am I gonna get in?"
Spidey looked around desperately for a few extra seconds before taking a breath. Taking the doorknob, he carefully turned it and cracked open the door.
Peeking through the crack, he noticed the empty hallway, only illuminated by barely-flickering ceiling lights. Their sickly-yellow color painted the hall in a nauseating shade, and he had to shut the door to get his own bearings and calm his enhanced senses down.
"On three," he thought. "One… two… three!"
He pushed the door open and stuck himself to the ceiling, crawling along and keeping his eyes on the long, straight hallway.
It was unnerving to see no real end, just a hallway with several doors throughout. As he got closer to the corner at the end, he heard voices nearby.
"Shit," he hissed. He looked down to the nearest door and opened it, slipping in and shutting the door right as he heard fast footsteps approaching it.
He locked it and stepped back, hands raised, ready to leap at the wall.
The doorknob jiggled rapidly, followed by a string of curses.
"It's locked?! C'mon, all the others are broken!" A man exclaimed. He pounded on the door. "Hey, whoever's in there, c'mon man! I gotta go!"
Spidey blinked, looking around at the single-person bathroom he stumbled into. Slowly flicking the light on, he rubbed his eyes as the jiggling got faster.
"C'mon, c'mon! Oh no, oh man," the man was muttering frantically. "Dude! I gotta take a dump!"
Spidey winced in sympathy. Looking around, he saw a tiny rectangular window above the toilet. Just wide enough to give him hope, but still too small for him to fit through.
He frowned, weighing his options for a minute.
And then he heard it.*
"O- oh, oh oh oh, oh no!" The man outside raised his voice over an ominous gurgle, banging on the door. "Dude! I'm seriously shitting my pants out here, please let me in!"
Even from the hallway, his nose was filled with the stench. It took a moment, but when it hit, he was physically recoiling and trying hard as he could not to retch inside the mask.
He looked again to the window and frantically contemplated breaking through it (even if he had to dislocate a shoulder or two to get out), when he heard the guy's distress rise in volume again and his rapid footfalls left the door. Another door slammed shut a second later.
Another voice approached right as he would've ventured outside, this time an exclamation of shock and disgust. "Did you find the- oh! What the fuck, man? What the fuck!"
The man retched, hurrying away from the door. "That is fucking gross! Where'd you go? You gotta clean that up!"
Five tense seconds passed. Spidey gagged, patting the inner pockets of the suit to try and find a travel-sized bottle of apple perfume. When he did find it, he gave his wrist a spritz and quickly tugged the bottom of the mask up, shoving it to his face. He took a deep breath of it, gagged again (this time from the strong scent of apple overwhelming his olfactory senses), then tugged the mask back down and unlocked the door.
He peeked out into the hallway and grimaced when he saw the dark brown stain on the floor, grossly watery and reeking of liquid colon.
"Geez, wonder what he ate," he thought in disgust as he leapt over the puddle and onto the opposite wall.*
He crawled along the ceiling again until he found a dark part of the corner of the hallway, listening intently.
Somewhere down the next hall, he could hear faint voices. Among them was the unmistakable angry raised tones of Shimura Danzou.
"No, they really did it!" He whispered in shock. "They took him?!"
He crawled as fast as he could along the ceiling until he came upon a door where the voices were coming from.
Steeling himself, he listened in as hard as he could.
"...you didn't succeed! You won't succeed, not as long as he's out there!" Danzou was yelling. There came a dull thwack, like someone hitting a table with the palm of their hand, and then, "I can't believe you ever thought this would work!"
"When we agreed to this, I thought I said your little attitude would have to go," another voice retorted irritably. (Spidey vaguely recalled the oily voice of the gray-haired man and scowled.) "Trust us, Shimura. I know everything seems bad right now-"
"Right now I've got a child riding my ass about the whereabouts of his damned sister-in-law, that's what I've got to deal with! And you are not helping!"
The hidden hero bristled at that remark. "Child? I'll show you a child when I burst in and get you out of there."
"We can deal with that as it comes, just let us do our job." The gray-haired man snapped. "Let me do my job. I don't go down to your precinct and tell you how to do yours, now do I?"
"You'd benefit from it," Danzou snipped. "What's this about, dragging me from my bed at such an unholy hour? I should have let my bodyguards deal with you for that."
"Wait… wait, what?"
"It worked, did it not? Nobody will ever know you were here, Shimura Danzou. Nobody will ever know."
"They'd better not. I don't want to have to deal with another public apology on my behalf." A deep sigh. "They're getting bolder, Yamushi. They just won't settle for a measly ten grand anymore."
"It's 'Yakushi', sir," the man replied a little irritably. "Just trust me. Everything is going according to plan, save for that little Spider-man hiccup. We can deal with the Uchiha brat at a later time."
Spider-Man stared at the door blankly.
"You'd better. That damned family's been a thorn in my side for the last time."
Quietly, Spider-Man turned and crawled away.
It was well past two in the morning as he crawled back into his room. Naruto's sleeping bag was empty, and he panicked for a moment - before he heard him clattering around in the kitchen, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Quickly as he could, he changed out of the suit and into some pajama pants. Right when he put on his sleeping shirt, Naruto came back into the room.
The bond visibly startled, eyes widening in surprise as he stepped back into the hallway. His bottle of water was gripped tighter, and had the lid been off he would've splashed it all over himself.
"Dude, wha-" he breathed, clasping a hand over his chest. "Don't do that, man. You scared me!"
"Sorry," he quietly replied, tugging at the bottom hem of the shirt once more. "How long have you been up for?"
"I woke up not long after you left," he explained as he sat on the bed. "What's wrong? Had to take a walk? You could've just asked me to go with you, y'know."
Guilt gnawed at his insides as he sat down beside his friend. His head was bowed, his voice muted as he murmured, "Sorry. Didn't wanna wake you."
Naruto stared at him for several seconds, frowning in concern.
"Sasuke," he began gently. "You okay, man?"
He silently shook his head.
"Do you… wanna talk about it?" The blond pried further, scooting until they were thigh-to-thigh.
Slowly, Sasuke looked up and into his eyes with a grim stare. His lips were pursed as he tried to collect his thoughts.
"That damned family's been a thorn in my side for the last time."
Finally, he replied with, "I think Danzou kidnapped Izumi."
A/N: Please tell me what you thought!