"It is not a personal attack on your taste." Alex tells Maggie as they walk around the main room of the DEO.
"I wasn't even thinking that until you just suggested it." Maggie responds to her statement.
"It's a fact." Alex says and turns to Winn and Peter. "Guys, back me up."
"I don't think we should get involved." Winn tells them.
"And I just don't wanna." Peter admits as he focuses on the screens.
"Because you're on my side, right?" Maggie asks them.
"Oh, yeah, right." Alex scoffs and Winn is. "What? Wait...I saved your life."
"Yeah, but so has like everyone else." Winn says.
"Don't try to make him feel bad for siding with me." Maggie tells her.
"Peter, what about you?" Alex asks.
"Nope. That's a trap." Peter states, not wanting to get involved. "It's a bad choice from either end."
"What's all this about?" J'onn asks as he joins them.
"We can't agree on one very important wedding detail. Band or DJ." Alex expains to him.
"Well, the human mind reacts to music very much like other stimuli. Tastes, smells. If the song doesn't sound exactly the way you're used to hearing it, you enjoy it less, and see less likely to get jiggy on the dance floor." J'onn tells them. "I say DJ."
"J'onn, it's the 21st century. Nobody, and I mean not a single person on this planet, says jiggy." Peter informs him when Kara comes flying in.
"What was the general alert for?" Kara asks.
"Wait, you get the general alerts? That's just for the analysts and Spider-Man I think." Winn replies.
"No, I had them add Skirt to the district list." Peter tells him.
"Detective Sawyer brought this in this morning." J'onn says and Winn takes over.
"We analysts thought we might be able to see something the cops didn't." Winn explains to them and shows the security footage of someone robbing the banks.
"She hit two banks back to back. The guards are unconscious on the floor." Maggie explains.
"Any leads on how she took them out?" Peter asks.
"We thought it might be gas. But toxicity came back negative. According to report, she walked right in the front door. No weapons of any kind. Everyone just cleared out of her way, let her take whatever she wanted." J'onn explains when a alert goes off.
"We've got a silent alarm tripped at 25 and Cedar." Winn warns them and sees the guards and people are down.
"Looks like that's her." Kara sees.
-
The two heroes find her in the bank vault and she's packing money up in a gym bag.
"What did you do to them up there?" Kara asks her.
"I only wanted to play." She responds and looks to them. "But they didn't want to play with me."
"Yeah, I don't blame them." Peter responds and raises a repulser. "Don't move. You're coming with us."
"Oh, you think you're the cat and I'm the bird." She says and turns back while zipping the bag up. "You've got it backwards. You can join me. Maybe then you'd be happy."
Peter raises a brow, which in turn causes his mask eye to give a smirk look.
"Your priorities are seriously out of whack." Kara states.
"I know, right?" She asks and starts laughing out of nowhere.
"Drop the bag." Peter commands when his senses go off, except as he looks around the room, there's nothing there. The next thing he knows, he's out of the vault and outside on street on a cold, dark night. When he looks around, he hears sirens and looks down to his hand and sees he's only not wearing his suit, but there's blood all over his hands.
In reality, Maggie and the cops arrive and find Spider-Man and Supergirl in the bank vault and evacuates the bank to get them out.
-
"The scans of your vitals are coming up normal." Winn tells the two as they got back to the DEO.
"See, I told you, I'm fine. This is totally unnecessary." Kara tells them.
"None of the human victims remember what happened in there. Do you?" Maggie asks them.
"I don't know. I felt like the walls of the vaults were closing in, like I was suffocating." Kara says.
"Sounds like she made you feel claustrophobic. You used to have episodes like that sometimes when you first come to earth." Alex guesses.
"What about the Great Spider-Man? What she make you see?" Winn asks him.
Peter stares off into space as he remembers what it was he saw and doesn't know what to say. "I was in the vault one minute, the next I knew, I was outside on a dark night, sirens wailing, and I looked down to see...my hands had blood on them."
"Yikes. That's a terrifying image." Winn comments and is sorry for asking.
"I think she's using fears. That's the only way she could get trough my psychic blockade in my mind." Peter guesses, that wasn't a mental attack she used, it was almost like anxiety mixed with a mind attack. "We need to find out who she is and how we track her."
"Well, at the moment, you two are our best clue." J'onn says and starts using his powers on them.
"What are you doing?" Alex asks.
"I thought you couldn't get through their heads." Winn remembers.
"I can't, but I can scan their minds for residual psychic activity." J'onn explains and starts focusing.
"Just reminds me to get you a World's best boss mug." Winn asks of him.
"Well, she's definitely a psychic, but she's not like me. There are traces of a particular type of pain if interference in your mind, the type only used by metahumans." J'onn sees.
"Okay, well, I'll start combing through the metahuman database." Winn says and goes to do just taht.
"In the meantime, I'll monitor potential targets for unusual activity." J'onn says.
"If we locate her, we can take her down." Kara promises.
"It's not safe." Alex tells them.
"She caught us off guard. We didn't expect...whatever it was." Kara says and they walk out as Kara pushes him to the side. "So, Spider-Man is afraid of the dark?"
"No, not exactly. I don't know what it was. It was like I was...reliving a bad memory. My hands were small when they had blood on them. I just don't know what that memory could be." Peter tells her.
-
They get a lead that she's going to hit a transport truck and they beat her to her car,
"Trying to sneak up on a psychic?" She asks them.
"Almost worked." Kara quips.
Peter sends a web at her when she sends a wave of energy, knocking he heroes off balance and sending the webbing into the ceiling.
"That...was a new feeling." Peter says while shaking his head.
She walks towards them when she stops. "Someone else has come to play."
"J'onn." They both say.
"Your friend should be careful." She tells them and starts to mentally fight off J'onn. "Just us three."
Peter sends a blast at her and Kara uses her freeze breath and the collision sends her into her car.
She gets back up and sends another psychic attack at them. "Mind over matter." Kara and Peter tries to fight off whatever she's doing and it's not working. "Fear is a powerful tool."
Kara starts to relive the day Krypton died while Peter looks around and sees he's once again back on that street.
Looking around, Peter looks and sees someone on the ground and he sees himself breathing heavily, he's panicking.
"Peter..." a familiar voice comes in and he doesn't know where it came from or who it is.
"Murderer!" More familiar and some unfamiliar voices cry out.
"A freak!"
"You don't belong here!"
"Useless!"
"Disappointment!"
Peter starts covering his ears a he gasps for air and tears start forming and he hears an adolescent voice whimpering from his mouth. But he also feels something growing inside of him...it's like a wave of hatred and it's growing as the anger rises within him.
"A failure!"
"EVERYONE HATES YOU!!"
"SHUT UP!!!" Peter yells to the voices when something goes flying off him that looked like a blue explosion as he passes out.
-
Peter later wakes up back in the DEO with a huge headache and no recollection on what memory that was.
"I'm sorry I couldn't hold her off." J'onn apologizes to the two. "She's more powerful than any psychic I have ever encountered."
"What happened this time?" Alex asks.
"Same as before." Kara answers and they look to Peter for his experience and he doesn't want to talk about it.
"I got our girl." Winn tells them and they turn to him. "Gayle Marsh, law-abiding Citizen Of Skokie, Illinois, until one day she snapped and went on a bank-robbing spree. Authorities nicknamed per Psi after a string of psychologically enhanced robberies, which ravaged a series of small town banks throughout the Midwest a couple of months ago."
"And how does that help us?" Peter asks.
"Well, now that we know a little bit more, I thought I might start trying to adapt our psychic dampening technology to stop her." Winn explains.
"But we still need to know how she's infiltrating people's minds to target fears, so get started." J'onn tells him.
"I'll go update my suit and my...mind?" Peter guesses and heads off with Kara following.
"Hey, you okay?" She asks as they enter his labs.
"Yeah, of course. Why do you ask?" Peter assures and wonders.
"It's just...you didn't tell us what you saw back there, we heard you screaming and telling people to shut up." Kara explains why she's worried and Peter lets out a slow breath as he recalls what he saw.
"I don't know where I was, but it was the same as before. I was in the street, I heard someone who was hurt, I guess...and then I saw more and more blood on my hands. Like I killed someone." Peter explains while the memories flood back in and he rubs his hand against his head.
"Could it have been Hobgoblin?" Kara asks, remembering he had to kill his friend, Ned.
"No, I was younger then I was when he died. I was...maybe ten, possibly a little older. I was crying...I was alone, and...I heard voices." Peter says as his voice starts cracking as the voices come back.
Kara looks empathetic seeing he's about to break down as his hands are shaking nervously. "What did they say?"
"Murderer being the first thing they said." Peter informs her and Kara is seriously confused about who would call him a murderer. "Some said I was a freak...that I didn't belong here. I'm useless. A disappointment...and everyone hates me." He says as he tries to remain calm when Kara just pulls him into a hug seeing he could use it.
"Okay, lets start to check some off that list." Kara states while Peter returns the hug, needing the support. "You save lives, daily. So you can't be a murderer. Sure, you might have abilities that some would consider freakish, but you own that freakish by again; saving lives. Meaning you're not useless. Nobody here believes you're a disappointment, so I don't know where you got that from. And everyone loves you, as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. So stop beating yourself up and do what you do best." She says when her phone rings and sees its work.
"Go. I'm a big boy, I can keep myself safe. Especially from my own demons." Peter promises.
"I'm sorry that you went through that." Kara apologizes.
"You went through the same." Peter points out as she leaves while laughing.
-
Gayle is now attacking another transport truck and the two heroes make their way there and is causing a wrecking ball to swing out of control.
Winn even got the psionic inhibitor ray to protect Kara and Peter and to take her down.
The two arrive and stop the wrecking ball from hitting a kid and her mother.
"Psi, stand down." Peter tells her and raises the ray he planted inside his repulsers the two heroes block her front and back. Before the ray could power up, Psi sends a psychic attack at Peter and it sends him flying down the street.
Kara flies after him and sees as he hits his head against a house and lands in the alley.
"Spider-Man, you okay?!" She asks him seeing he retracts his mask and he looks terrified.
"It was him...he's who I killed." Peter says as tears now form in his eyes in fear and shock.
"Peter, who?" Kara asks and kneels down next to him.
"Ben! My uncle. How could I forget that?!" Peter tells her as the memory comes flying back in his mind..
When Peter was fifteen years old, when his powers started to manifest, he and Ben had an argument ending with Peter storming off. A while after he left, Ben went looking for him and ended up getting healed at gun point.
Being Ben, he fought against the man but only ended up getting shot in the stomach and the mugger stole what he could before running off, leaving Ben on the sidewalk to bleed out.
That's how Peter found him in the raining dark night as nobody seemed to have and Peter held onto him and screamed for anyone to help.
But no help was coming as Peter just stood there in the pouring rain and cried out in agony until finally the police arrived when somebody heard his screaming.
"If it weren't for me, he'd be alive! I murdered him." Peter tells Kara as tears flood from his eyes.
"Peter! It wasn't your fault. Okay? I know you're not a murderer. Look me in the eyes and say that you're a murderer." Kara dares him and Peter looks up and his eyes are bloodshot red from the crying. "Think of all the people you've saved. You can't save everyone, but you save who you can anyway you possibly can. And right now, there are people who need you. We're here for each other. We're stronger together, remember?"
Peter starts to stop crying and sees what she's saying and remembers exactly that and forms his mask back on. "Let's get this freak." He says and they both take off.
Psi just puts everything in her car and gets ready to leave when Kara crashes into her engine,
"You're not going anywhere." Peter tells her and when Psi looks at him, before she does anything, he blasts her with a taser coil webbing that electrocutes her to the ground. "Brains over mind." He quipped to her.
-
The DEO came by and gave her a psychic dampening device on her head meaning she's not going to make anyone else face their fears.
Later that day, J'onn was at the alien bar and got a mental message from M'gann begging him to come to Mars.
—————
Okay, don't quote me on this, but I've been told by friends/family in the medical profession that there is something that can happen to some people where their brains block off certain memories or even alter them to protect the person.
They don't know what it's called, and that's where internet was of use. Its called "intrusion errors" when information that is related to the theme of a certain memory, but was not actually a part of the original episode, is altered and becomes the truth.
Peter was so lost, alone, scared that his brain protected him by blocking that memory. And once it came back...well, you saw what happened.
I wanted to do something different with this Peter. Make him strong, but not afraid to be weak kind of deal.
And that blue explosion? That'll be explained soon.