Ever since Gwen died, the DEO just hasn't been the same, everything has changed.
Peter hasn't really shown up to work in a few days and Kara has been training Mon-El as he has decided to become a superhero as well.
As for Winn, he was still helping James out as Guardian, but it's been difficult lately now that he has become the new head of science. So that means he has less energy to help James.
Speaking of which, Winn was asleep at the controls in the van when James comes in.
"Did you get hit?" Winn asks seeing James holding his shoulder.
"You weren't watching?" James questions as he gets in.
"Yeah. Smashy smashy. Shoot shoot." Winn responds, still tired.
"Yeah, well, the last part got complicated." James says and shows his arm to Winn.
"That's a bullet hole. That's a bullet hole in a suit I made." Winn tells James.
"It grazed my arm." James replies.
"Did you get shot?" Winn questions.
"I'm a little shot." James clarifies.
"That is it. That's it. We're telling Kara." Winn states.
"Would you please calm down?" James asks of him.
"No! Okay? I can't...I can't do this anymore. All right, ever since a dimension traveling Goblin showed up and attacked, everything's changed! And if there's a flaw in your suit, that means the suit us faulty. Which means I have to go fix it. And that already on top of running the whole science department at the DEO and making Mon-El his suit." Winn tells him, explaining why he's going crazy.
"Wait, Mon-El?" James asks, completely ignoring the rest.
"Yeah. Didn't you hear? He graduated from superhero kindergarten, so now I have to make him a suit, according to Kara. And that just means more work for me. And since Spider-Man hasn't left his home in days, I can only assume he's either dead or in the process of dying."
"Come on, you know why he's there. He's grieving." James defends on Peter's behalf. "But back to the point, that frat boy wants to be a superhero?" He asks.
"Wait, can we get back to my point?" Winn asks him. "Winn, Winn is tired. Okay? The workload. The lying to Kara. It's gotta stop."
"Winn, you know what she's going to say."
"Maybe she's gonna be totally cool about all this, all right? You guys worked together in the past. She totally respected what you're doing. Maybe she'll be grateful for the help with us being a little shorthanded, you don't know." Winn states.
James thinks about it and knows he'll tell her tomorrow.
-
At Peter's place, he's working on disassembling and reassembling his Iron-Spider suit to memories every bit and piece and where it's supposed to go.
That was once Gwen's job, and he never learned how to in the past since Gwen always said she would always be there for him...that promise doesn't hold much weight anymore.
Even though everyone thinks he's distancing himself from reality, he's doing the exact opposite. Ever since Gwen died, he's finally sees all the damage in the world that he's been ignoring. Lillian Luthor and Cadmus truly believe that aliens are their biggest threat out there. Yet it seems the human race can do a bang up job destroying themselves, according to the news.
"The 15-mile hoke to the outskirts of Gulmira can only be described as a descent into hell, into a modern day Heart of Darkness. Simple farmers and herders from peaceful villages have been driven from their homes, displaced from their lands by warlords emboldened by a new-found power. Villagers have been forced to take shelter in whatever crude dwellings they can find in the ruins of other villages, or here in the remnants of an old Soviet smelting plant." The news that Peter left on says and shows people getting gunned down and killed.
"Recent violence has been attributed to a group of foreign fighters referred to by locals as the Ten Rings." Peter has heard of the Ten Rings ever since they sent a group of terrorists to destroy National City. But once they left, he didn't go after them since Hank told him not to.
"As you can see, these men are heavily armed and in a mission. A mission that can prove fatal to anyone who stands in their way." The news keeps going on and Peter keeps screwing a bolt into his hand repulser as it's the one thing he can get to work functionally.
"With no political will or international pressure, there's very little hope for these refugees. Around me, a woman begging for news on her husband, who was kidnapped by insurgents, either forced to join their militia, or dead." Peter sends a blast from his repulser and hits a vase across the room, shattering it.
"Another child here is asking a simple question, "where are my mother and father?" There is very little hope for these refugees who can only wonder who, if anyone, will help." The news finishes.
These type of people never got their own hero, the people who truly need hope, truly need help. Yet, there are two cities that have their own personal literal Super heroes. Let alone several small time heroes like Guardian and Spider-Man. Well, maybe it's time Spider-Man went from a friendly neighborhood hero, to an super international one.
Once he gets his entire suit working again.
-
Back at the DEO, M'gann just went through a panic attack in her cell and has gone into a coma like state.
"What is wrong with her?" J'onn asks as he brought M'gann to the medical wing where Alex has taken over.
"As far as I can tell, which isn't really much to be honest, nothing is wrong. Her vitals are good. Breathing is normal. Brain activity it's...fine." Alex tells Hank.
"She was screaming like she was being attacked." J'onn explains to her.
"I checked all the tapes. There is no one in there beside her. There's no heat register for an invisible assailant. Do you think she's faking?"
"That was my first thought. But, no. No chance."
"How do you know?"
"I know, I can sense it." Hank explains to her and knows there is something wrong with M'gann.
"I'll run some tests, but it's gonna take a while." Alex informs him.
"I know, Gwen was the fastest doctor we had. I still can't believe what happened to her." J'onn says feeling sad since Gwen was like a daughter to him. He even remembers the day when he first met her, she was so nervous but had a brilliant mind, a hundred ideas every passing second and couldn't keep them to herself.
Later on, they get word that Livewire has been broken out of prison so they now need to find her without the help of Spider-Man.
"Lady and gentlemen, the one, the only, Livewire." Winn says while pulling up her file Gwen created after their second encounter with her, trying to be cheerful. "Who knows what havoc she will wreak when she resurfaces. Maybe she'll turn all her girlfriends evil again. I don't know! We're talking about full on rats in the attic here, people. Except the rats are electrified and the attic is on fire. Behold, ye mighty, and despair."
"Yes, Yes, Yes!" Mon-El says, ready to take on a criminal. "I am so ready to kick some non cardboard crazy. Am I right? Let's do this."
"Hey! This is serious." Kara informs him. "Livewire is despicable. I mean, she never should have been in a human facility. All of the human parts of her are gone. She should have been here, where we could make sure she didn't get out!" She says while accidentally breaking a computer. "What is that, a toy?" She says, trying to play it off.
"No, it's expensive." J'onn informs her.
"Hey, we've got this. You've already fought her twice, what's the big deal?" Mon-El asks.
"The deal is that she brings death and destruction." J'onn responds to his question before Alex calls Hank over about M'gann.
"Besides, the last two times I had Peter watching her every move, and searching for her weaknesses." Kara states.
"Why not give him a call?" Mon-El asks.
"I've tried! I've tried calling, texting, visiting him. And I knew he was there but he wouldn't answer, but I didn't want to push him." Kara tells him when she gets a text from James wanting to talk.
-
Gulmira, the Ten Rings Are shooting missiles, sending men in to gun anyone down that they can and ransacking the village and taking everything.
They start lining up all the men of the village and one of their sons try stopping them from killing his father but all they can do is scream out as he's beaten. But that stops when they hear something whirring in the atmosphere along with some rumbling as see the one and only Spider-Man flying down and making a superhero pose as he lands.
One of the terrorists try shooting at him, but Peter just walks up to him and punches him, sending him into the air.
Peter turns around and starts to blast the rest of them with his repulsers as one tries going at him from behind and Peter uses his metallic limbs and stabs him with them. He then turns to a group who has the innocents of the village as hostages.
They're all shouting at him, that roughly translates to somewhere along the lines of stop firing or they die, from what his suit can see.
Peter then lowers his hands and disables his repulsers.
His suit then targets the hostile from the civilians and Peter now knows its time to try out his newsts addiction to the suit.
"Activate Instant Kill." Peter says and his shoulders raise as small devices shoot out and kill all of the hostiles.
The civilians are shocked to what occurred as the child runs back to his father.
Peter's sensors pick up there's one more man and walks up to the wall and punches his hand through and pulls him through and sees he has no weapons, and is the last one.
Peter just starts taking off and looks to the civilians.
"He's all yours." Peter tells them before taking off, leaving the people to give him the beating he deserves.
-
Back in National City, Livewire has been spotted attacking the NCPD and Kara goes to fight her off with Mon-El.
"Give it up, Leslie. We've done this before, the same thing always happens. I win and you loose." Kara tells Livewire.
"I'm not Leslie. Besides, this guy doesn't look like he's Spider-Man. I heard a rumor that he apparently quit the superhero thing. Sad...I was hoping to make the two of you scream." Livewire says when they hear lightning crackling and then to see a second Livewire, but it's the prison guard.
"Is that Leslie?" Mon-El asks, clueless.
"You protect the cops. I can handle these guys." Kara tells Mon-El.
"What about you?" He asks.
"Don't worry about me. Just help them," Kara says and flies at Leslie and punches her into a fence.
Mon-El uses one of the car doors to shield him and the cops from the electric blasts.
Kara starts trying to fight off the two Livewire's and starts getting wrapped up in electric wiring.
"Let me help you!" Mon-El asks Kara.
"No. Stay with the cops." Kara tells him and starts getting swung around the room. Now she really wishes that Peter was here.
"Screw it." Mon-El says and rushes in to help as the Guardian arrives on his motorcycle and starts helping the cops.
One Livewire goes to shoot Mon-El with his blasts, but he deflected it and it was gonna hit a cop as James runs in and raises his shield as he and the cop are thrown into a car and knocked unconscious.
Kara gets back up and tries to remember what Peter always told her. Find your enemies weaknesses and exploit them anyway you can.
So she looks and finds the sprinkler system above the Livewire's and shoots it with her heat vision to hurt them, but they escaped through a light.
"They got a way." Mon-El points out the obvious.
"I told you to stay with the cops." Kara reminds him before they hear groaning.
"Is he okay?" Mon-El asks and they see Guardian and Kara removes his mask and discovered it's James who was under the mask.
-
They brought James to the DEO where she learned Winn and Alex also knew about James being Guardian.
Kara obviously rejected this whole Guardian crusade and James has made it perfect clear that he isn't going to stop.
Later on, they discovered that Leslie was abducted, she didn't just escape.
"Agent Schott, have you had any luck tracking Livewire or the people who took her?" J'onn asks.
"Not yet. I'm actually having some difficulty delineating the security system Gwen put in place in order to track her." Winn says.
"Stacy was known for her security protocols." J'onn responds in understanding. "Keep working on it. Mon-El, you're on standby. Supergirl, I need to speak with you real fast." He tells Kara and Winn walks off to call James.
He actually lied as Gwen actually told him how to get past her security if he ever needed to, but now he and James can show Kara Guardian is a hero that this city needs.
What he doesn't know, Mon-El overheard him and is ready to follow him.
"Is this about M'gann?" Kara asks Hank.
"No, she's fine now." J'onn assures her.
"Then what did you want to talk to me about?" Kara asks, confused what else it could be.
J'onn doesn't answer and turns on the television that shows the recent news on the terrorists attacks.
"Everyone is in shock to the sudden appearance of their guardian angel who came flying in, and saving their lives in the process of killing the terrorists who were vandalizing their homes." The news says and Kara looks in shock to see that it was Peter who did it all.
"Oh my god." Kara says in seeing this.
"He's grieving. Sees his code of no killing was a mistake, and now he doesn't want to stop until every criminal, warlord or crime lords are all gone." J'onn tells her.
"I can't believe what he's doing." Kara says looking as the footage continues to show Peter using his skills and weaponry on everyone. "What can we do to stop him?"
"Nothing you can do. But I know what I'm going to do." J'onn says. "I need you here for when they find Livewire."
Speaking of which, the mission with Mon-El and James went bad, and now they've both been captured by the scientists experimenting on Leslie.
"Hey, Kara. Remember when I said that I didn't know where Livewire was?" Winn asks from the guardian van. "That may not have been true."
"Are you kidding me?" Kara asks, angry. "Where are you? Are you with James?" She asks as she starts making her way outside.
"I'm at the warehouse district. Guardian and Mon-El are inside. And they're also maybe captured." Winn tells her as she flies off.
-
Peter is back in the air and finds more of the terrorists and their stash of missiles. As he gets ready to target them from the distance, he gets shot from the sky and crashes into the ground.
It barely scratches him, but his suit took most of the damage as he crawls out of the ground ands sees the tank that shot him.
It sends another shot his way, and Peter just uses his reflexes to dodge it at the last second and then raises his arm and releases a tiny missile that Gwen nicknamed the annihilator.
He shoots the annihilator and it hits the tank. Peter then turns to deal with the missiles stash where he is met with the group of terrorists.
He decides to make things easier and flies a little bit off the ground before taking aim at the missiles and then blows them into the air.
-
At the warehouse district, Livewire is tied to a chair where James and Mon-El are handcuffed against wiring.
"You know what I love?" Livewire asks the two men. "Little boys who think they can do a better job than the two who are actual superheroes." She states to them.
"Nice." Mon-El comments to that.
"Can you break out of these cuffs?" James asks him and as he tries to do so, he gets electrocuted.
"Bad, bad, science man." Mon-El says as he cries in pain.
"Only the cuffs. Fun. Patent pending. It's funny 'cause Shark Tank turned them down. Said my valuation was too high." The scientist tells them.
"What do you want with us?" James asks.
"And what's a Shark Tank?" Mon-El asks, since he's not exactly familiar with current television.
"Well, it's clear that my current prototypes aren't strong enough. And I need upgraded models. That's where you two come in." The scientist tells them. "I might need to drain our little battery completely to pull it off." He says, referring to Livewire.
"We will never fight for you." James promises.
"You will. You might definitely die." The scientist tells Leslie and activates the device and starts draining leslie when Supergirl comes flying in from the ceiling and throws him.
She then uses her heat vision to break the handcuffs.
"You two, go get the, I'll save Livewire." Kara tells them and they do that and Kara turns to Leslie while freezing the controls before smashing them.
Leslie is finally free and she sees she's back in control of her powers.
"That was nice of you. Stupid, but nice." Livewire tells Kara as she approaches the hero. "You're not looking so hot, blondie. The Spider did ditch you, huh? Maybe this will warm you up." She says and starts getting ready to strike her.
"You could kill me. For all the things you think I stole from you. But you wouldn't be who you are if not for me. This is who you are now, for better or wires." Kara informs her. "And he tried to take your power from you, not me. We may not be allies, but I will punish him for you. What do you say?" She asks and Livewire responds by sending the charged blast at her copycat.
"We'll discuss this after I deal with Frankenstein." Leslie promises and helps Kara up. She sends a whip of electricity at the scientist as he tries to run and Kara fights off the security guard.
"There's only one Livewire, you piece of crap." Livewire informs him and starts frying him with her pier.
"No, Leslie, don't kill him." Kara says as she runs to the criminal.
"You said we'd punish him." Livewire reminds her.
"Not like this. He will go to jail." Kara promises.
"I'll make you a deal, all American Barbie.. you can haul his ass to prison, but I never see the inside of a cell again."
"I can't promise that."
"You know you can't stop me from leaving." Leslie tells her
"And you can't stop me from chasing after you." Kara replies to that. "And you know how fast I am. But if you spare him, if you do just that, maybe I'll wait to chase you until after he's in jail." She compromises and Leslie decides to leave it at that and starts making her escape.
"Just you and the Spider next time. I like him better than these two." Livewire tells Kara as she vanishes.
-
Speaking of said Spider, even during the night, he isn't showing signs of stopping as he glides over the desert that goes on for some time. Until he gets hit from the sky and Peter quickly catches himself by using the repulsers to stop himself from going anywhere and looks to see J'onn.
"Think it's about time we had a conversation, Spider-Man." J'onn says ready to fight the hero.
"J'onn, go back to National City and leave me be." Peter warns him.
"Sorry, not gonna happen." J'onn says. "Or are you too afraid to fight?"
"Have it your way." Peter replies and sends a powerful blast his way, sending J'onn backwards. Peter then leaps high into the air and punches J'onn's face in.
J'onn grabs Peter and throws him to the ground. But Peter shoots a web in between J'onn's legs and pulls himself free of his grip. He then turns to see where Peter went as he hears screaming and looks to the air and sees Peter as he once again, hits J'onn in the face.
J'onn recovers quickly and flies at Peter and starts dragging him against the ground.
There is a reason to his madness. The problem here is that Peter has all this built up anger, and he's only doing this in order to get rid of all of it.
Peter uses his repulsers and spins around in the air, getting free of J'onn once again before shooting a missile, shooting J'onn into the ground.
Ready to end this, Peter activates every weapon he has on his arsenal and blasts them all into J'onn.
Seeing the massive explosion, Peter starts loosing his anger and looks in shock to what he's done.
"J'onn." Peter whispers, now seeing what he's done and quickly drops to the ground and races to the crater he made.
"J'onn? J'ONN!?!" Peter keeps calling out while removing his mask, praying he didn't just kill the Last Son of Mars.
But once he reaches the crater, all he hears is laughter as J'onn steps out of the crater as he used his powers to make sure the weapons didn't touch him.
"Oh boy...Jesus, kid. When you start a fight, you end the fight." J'onn congratulates him. "I've fought monsters, creatures you wouldn't even imagine, and you gave them a run for their money with how fast you took me down." He informs Peter.
"Oh thank god, I was worried I'd killed you." Peter sighs in relief.
"You might've won the fight, but it's gonna take a lot more than that to kill me." J'onn assures him. "Now that you're calm, what's going on?"
Peter looks to his boss and realizes that the whole fight was a way to get him to calm down after everything, and now even he doesn't know what this was about.
"I keep loosing people, J'onn. No matter how cautious I am, no matter how hard I fight...I loose. Even when I win, I always loose. I loose the closest thing to my heart." Peter tells him while looking down at his repulsers. "I thought Gwen was gonna be the one person that I knew would be safe. There was you, Skirt, me, the entire DEO, nobody could get past all of them. Then this freak with a glider comes flying in, and I loose the most important person in my life!" He states before dropping in the sand.
J'onn walks up to Peter and drops down next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder and transformed back into his Hank form.
"I just really miss her." Peter says as he looks to the sky with more tears flooding his vision.
"Yeah, I miss her too." J'onn admits to him. As much as raising Peter was his mission, Gwen was like a daughter to him as much as the Danvers girls.
"Everywhere I look, I'm reminded of her...I'm reminded that I failed. My parents, my aunt, my uncle...now Gwen." Peter explains. "What am I trying to do?" He asks J'onn, questioning everything now.
"You're trying to make a difference, trying to make the world a better place." J'onn informs him. "That's why you created that mask, why you created Spider-Man long before I found you, remember?" He asks, thinking back when he first found that small, scared kid in the alleyway and how far he's come.
"And what good does Spider-Man do?" Peter questions. "He doesn't change the world, and the world won't change."
"It doesn't matter if the world never changes, Peter, what matters is if we let the world change us, who we are." J'onn explains to him. "All of us have our own reasons for doing what we do. No matter how big or small that reason is or what the deed is, we have a purpose for doing it. You didn't put on that mask on because you wanted to be a hero...you do it because it was your calling. You didn't want the fame, you wanted to help, keep people safe. That's why you wear the mask. To help people, inspire hope, even when they don't want you to."
"If you think it's my calling, then why don't you tell me why I should go back to being Spider-Man instead of letting it go?" Peter asks of J'onn.
"Sorry, but that's your decision and your discovery." J'onn tells Peter before walking away and changing back into his Martian form before flying away.
Peter just watches J'onn leave and he looks at a body of water and stares at his own reflection.
Is Spider-Man worth the heartbreak he constantly brings the man underneath the mask?
Is giving it up worth it?