Katya spat dirt out of her mouth as she sat up, a twig tangled in her hair. She tugged it out, shifting off of the stupid rock she'd accidentally landed on. She could have planned that out better-she'd done the same type of tuck and roll a million times, it was one of the first things she remembered learning at the Academy- but that thing had caught her off that both the van and Peter were gone she could take a second to breathe, but not too long- She had to find out where the weird metal bird guy had taken him.

She jogged in the direction she'd seen them fly, weaving between parked cars and trash cans, over fences and through backyards, until she reached an empty suburban intersection with a park across from it, not too far from a nearby lake. She sped up, her heart skipping a beat- what if the bird man intended to drown him?!

After a bit more running, she heard voices up ahead,but didn't stop because she knew those voices, thank god.

"-like a thousand feet up in the air, and then he just dropped me-!" Peter was regaling as she crashed through the bushes towards the empty playground he and Tony were apparently debriefing in. Peter sat on top of the jungle gym, wringing his suit's mask out, and Tony hovered nearby, still in his suit. Wait, wasn't Tony in Mumbai for that wedding? He'd left only this morning…

Katya slowed as she neared the jungle gym and climbed up a few rungs, just to give herself somewhere to sit. She'd just sprinted who knew how many miles, but she shouldn't be this winded. Was she falling out of shape?

….shouldn't she want to, though?

"You're here,too?" Tony's voice came through the mask, that he oddly hadn't deactivated yet. Usually when speaking face to face he at least lowered it. He sounded exasperated.

Katya shrugged. "Yeah, I'm here too."

Peter raised a hand in greeting but was still clearly avidly retelling his encounter. "How'd you find me? Did you put a tracker in my suit or something?"

"I put everything in your suit." Tony- or at least, possibly Tony, Katya was beginning to get the feeling that he was remote-controlling the thing, as it was moving rather stiffly and the mask was still up. "Including this heater."

There was a sudden hiss of steam as his suit dried itself out. Peter groaned graciously. "Whoa- that's better, thanks."

"What were you thinking?"

We weren't, Katya thought, but kept it to herself. Peter had a different answer.

"The guy with the wings is obviously the source of the weapons-" thank god the place was empty,as Peter was full on shouting now, "We gotta take him down!"

"Take him down, now, huh?" Tony's tone had shifted from frustrated to sarcastic in a matter of seconds. "Steady Crockett, we have people who handle this sort of thing."

"The Avengers?" Peter asked, voice low, excited.

"No, no, no- this is a little below their paygrade."

Peter waved him off. "Anyway, Mr. Stark, you didn't have to come all the way out here, Katya and I had it covered-" he glanced at her- "She did this really cool spinny-tackle thing and got one of them, and I totally could have webbed up the other, I just- we, we had that. We were fine."

"Oh, I"m not 'here'" Tony's voice said, and the suit's mask opened to reveal it empty. Yep, remote controlled. From halfway across the world. "Thank god this place has WiFI, or you'd be toast right now. Thank Ganesh while you're at it."

Katya's brows knit together momentarily- who the hell was Ganesh- but the name sounded Hindu so she brushed it off as something impertinent to the moment.

"Look," Tony's voice continued, "Forget the flying vulture guy, please."

"Why?" Katya piped up, pointing to Peter with her hand "Next time we'll just have to formulate an actual plan, and then we-"

"Why?!" Tony's voice all but spluttered. "Because I said so!"

Katya resisted the urge to flinch at the sudden shout, shoving down the steel doors across her eyelids again that kept the weakness at bay. She'd been caught off guard by the fog horn noises back at the party, but she wasn't going to let it distract her this time.

Peter'd flinched, though, and there was a beat before anyone said anything. "Look, just-" Tony's voice was almost apologetic- "Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping the little people. Like that lady who bought you the churro. Can't you just be a …friendly, neighborhood Spiderman?"

"But I'm ready for so much more than that now! And Katya's helping-"

"No you're not!." Tony's voice was rising again.

"That's not what you thought when I took on Captain America-"

"Trust me, kid, if Cap had wanted to lay you out, he would have." Katya could see Peter wring his mask out between his fingers in frustration, but Tony continued. "Listen, kid. If you come across these weapons again, call Happy." he emphasized. An engine revved in the background.

"Are you driving?" Katya asked incredulously- he could at least pretend to take them seriously- but was ignored.

"You know, it's never too early to start thinking about college. I've got some pull at MIT. End Call."

"I don't need to-" Peter spluttered, but the suit informed them that it was no longer connected, before flying away- probably back to storage at Avenger's tower. "That's awesome." He muttered under his breath, but Katya couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or talking about the complexities of remote controlling an Iron Suit across an entire hemisphere.

"What was that all about?" Katya stood from the rung she'd been sitting on and climbed up the rest of the jungle gym to meet Peter at the top, who was wringing his mask between his hands again. "The MIT stuff."

"I don't know," Peter mumbled, "I think he's trying to distract me."

Katya let her feet dangle between them, and kicked at his feet with one of her own. "I think he's trying to protect you."

"You think we should leave this weapon stuff alone, too?!" His voice was stuck somewhere between betrayed and disappointed. Katya laughed.

"Of course not!" She kicked at him again playfully, and he grinned. " We just have to be more careful, is all. Figure out exactly what we're up against. And then-" she punched her hand with her fist."Pow!"

He laughed, which Katya counted as a victory. "Yeah," he mimicked her hand motion, though with a little less enthusiasm. Tony's lecture had clearly taken a toll on him. "Pow."

Katya shifted, standing up on the rung she'd been sitting on. "See, this?" She flung her arms out, gesturing towards the suburbs behind them and the city on the other side "This is what Spiderman's for. Not for some party for some stupid people to think you're cool."

"Liz isn't stupid."

"She is if she doesn't already think you're cool." Katya let her feet slip so she could fall back into sitting position. "You're clearly smart, and thoughtful, and sometimes you're funny-" Peter's face went scarlet, and he was giving her a weird look- weird in that she was having a hard time reading it. She smacked his arm. "Don't give me weird looks. I'm just stating objective facts. You're also terrible at boxing, and I don't know if I"ll ever be able to teach you Krav Maga-"

Peter laughed and smacked her with his mask. "Okay, okay, I get it." He rubbed at the back of his neck, like he usually did when he was…nervous? "Thanks."

Katya waved him off. "Again, I am just being objective. Based off of what traits people tend to value, on average, you're cool. I don't understand the whole social hierarchy thing at school, but-" she gripped the bar she was sitting on and used it to somersault down to the ground, her boots hitting the ground with a faint thud in the playground's sand. "None of it matters in the real world anyway."

For a moment it seemed like Peter was pondering her words, before his pocket began to yodel again.

"You seriously didn't turn that off after the last time-"

Peter held a hand out to her as he picked it up. "Hey, Ned, yeah, something came up- but we're headed back now." There was a pause, and Peter's face steeled. "Oh. Okay then. See you at school tomorrow."

Before Katya could ask what happened he slunk down from his spot atop the jungle gym, his suit feet nearly silent in the sand in comparison to her boots. Not that she'd been trying to be quiet.

"Ned said it's better if we just go home," He informed her, but didn't go into detail. Obviously something happened at the party, but Katya didn't press. She hadn't liked it there very much anyway. But all of Peter's clothes were still on the neighbor's roof.

As they made their way back to the Toomes's house-not that they were going to go inside- it became apparent what had happened where, as there were burn out marks around where Peter'd been snatched and Katya'd rolled off, there were tire tracks through so many lawns, broken glass splattered across the asphalt from the door that had fallen off-

Peter hit her lightly on the shoulder. "Hey, do you see that?" he pointed across the street at a very faint purple glow on the corner of someone's lawn. Katya nodded and crept towards it, squinting. She couldn't tell if it was a gun, or, part of one, or part of a completely different weapon all together, but what mattered was it had the same kind of glowing core that the rest of the weapons in that van did. She picked it up, gingerly at first, and when nothing exploded, brought it into both of her hands. She glanced over at Peter, who looked as excited as she was. "There's a word for this." She was raking her memory but couldn't come up with it, which was frustrating, because it would be perfect.

"For what, the weapon?"

"No, no, for like- when you win. When you-" her eyes scanned their surroundings as if she'd find the answer there, "you know, get all the money?"

Peter laughed openly. "Do you mean 'jackpot'?"

"Yes!" She held the weapon between them excitedly, too pumped to care that he was laughing at her. "Jackpot!"

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