Peter kept several caches of supplies – snacks, web fluid, surveillance equipment, five or ten bucks in change – sequestered about New York, none of them being in the shoebox of his former apartment. Good thing, too, otherwise he'd have been a lot more upset when Ditkovich had turned him out on his ear without so much as a by-your-leave. Well, that wasn't true. He had gotten a late notice in the mail. Twice.

It was a simple task to retrieve the backpack from where he'd stuck it to the underside of the Riverside Viaduct and return to Strange. This particular stash contained three trail cams, stripped from their bulky cases and reduced to basically a lens attached to a memory card, four digital cameras (similarly parred down for stealth) with nothing to recommend them except their capacity for Bluetooth, two Spider-Drones left over from Mr. Stark, and a battered mini laptop which he used to monitor the entire setup.

He didn't have enough equipment to cover every angle, so he whittled it down to the most important ones; four gates on the side of the Bazaar closest to Shadow, and three corner overlooks inside the Bazaar directly. Then he programmed the Spider-Drones to orbit the perimeter and monitor any other points of egress. The net wasn't perfect, but Peter was fairly confident he had his bases covered.

He'd decided to stakeout the uppermost level of the Nuru Osmanyie mosque, on the ledge that ringed the bottom of the dome. Plastic sheeting rattled in the breeze as Peter squeezed in amongst the painter's trays, drills and stacks of blue-grey roofing tiles, using them as partial cover just in case any lookie-loos happened to glance up.

The ledge had absorbed the Mediterranean sunlight all afternoon and radiated that stored warmth through his butt and the backs of his thighs as his legs dangled over the edge, laptop perched on his knees. The sun was sinking, painting the city in shades of tangerine and gold. As the temperature dipped, Peter smelled roasting chestnuts.

"Alrighty then. Cameras one through six are transmitting. Camera seven… is not." He tapped the key several times and shrugged. "I think the battery on that one is going. I should just take it out of rotation and stop kidding myself… but – good news – the Spider-Buddies are green to go."

He released the last one from his palm and they watched it soar off, carapace glinting in the last bit of sunlight. The breeze fluttered the hem of Strange's cloak against his arm. Peter canted the laptop up towards him.

"We got eyes on four of the gates, not counting this one, and two cross-streets on the inside. Nobody's coming near this place without trippin' on something."

Strange watched the grid of camera feeds for a moment. All of them showed high, down-angle views of the flow of people coming and going past their viewfinders, a sea of all races, genders and complexions, many of them with their backs to the camera. Peter could see the question in Strange's eyes.

"I, uh, actually took a snapshot of our lady friend that night when she showed up to toss the place. Shenmu and his walking slab of meat, too. The mask is hooked up to a camera in the lenses. I can take pictures by blinking."

Peter opened and closed his eyes several times to display the expressive, optical shuttering of his lenses.

"They're not great, but I can send them to this software that I built," he indicated the laptop proudly, "and it'll run a basic facial-recognition algorithm. It's nothing like what I could do with KAREN or EDITH, but it suits my needs. I've caught five, six baddies in the last couple of months with it."

"I'm sure that's a violation of some privacy law or another," Strange rumbled, amused.

"Nothing I do can possibly be worse than Google. Those guys own your soul."

What he didn't add was that Stark Industries, with its crawlers and algorithms and CCTV access squatting on the globe like a territorial, daddy octopus, made Google look like a sign-up sheet put together by a disgusted school counselor. He wondered how Ms. Potts was handling the company these days and his smile faded slightly. There was a moment of silence as he and Strange looked out across the city.

"Come to think of it," said Peter. "I guess I could've printed out a picture of Shenmu. We could have showed it around. Sorry."

"I don't think it would have helped, to be honest."

The stillness was interrupted by a loud crackle. Peter glanced around, looking for a rooftop AC unit. Two seconds later the speaker crackled again. This time it was accompanied by a human voice. It started out as a low wail, building in volume and momentum, a roller coaster of notes and tonal pitches in a language Peter didn't understand. He didn't have to.

The evening Call to Prayer echoed across the city, amplified by the loud-speakers on top of the Nuru Osmanyie, the Hagia Sophia, and many others. Peter rolled his mask up onto his head and drank in the sound, feeling the reverberation of it in his fingertips. For a moment nothing else mattered. Not Shenmu. Not the hole left by Tony's passing. Nothing but the serenity of being in a foreign land, present for something he'd only seen in movies, watching the sun vanish below the Bosphorus with a final, golden wink.

Standing next to him in the fading glow, Strange closed his eyes.

The chant lasted for six, maybe seven minutes. When the last undulating notes faded, the city felt strangely diminished. Peter could hear the distant growl of vehicles idling in the streets below. A boat horn drifted across the water. All normal sounds. Strange opened his eyes as if emerging from a trance. The breeze changed directions as the thermal deck popped, pressing his cloak against his back.

After a long moment, he sat down next to Peter and crossed his legs. The last few seagulls squawked obnoxiously and fell silent. People laughed and shouted, the sound flattened through distance. Peter tapped a few keys on his laptop. The milky glow of twilight faded, and the autumn sky quickly turned dark.

Peter did all the things he usually did; checked his feeds, tweaked his software, and adjusted the way he was sitting on the regular, so no one part of his body went to sleep. Nothing killed the vibe faster than legs cramps.

When fiddling with his algorithms got old, he took out his phone and booted up Plants vs. Zombies. He'd missed the current tournament, and with it his chances of a fully ranked Spearmint. Story of his life. He collected his daily rewards and played a few levels, keeping one eye on his laptop. The program would chime if it got a hit, even a partial one, but checking in now and then helped dispel the boredom.

Speaking of which, he'd expected Strange to start fidgeting within the hour. He'd had a whole speech lined up for the occasion, about how catching bad guys took field work and dedication and yada yada yada. What he got was Strange floating about six inches off the ground, eyes closed, upturned hands resting on his knees, bobbing like a Mylar balloon on a string.

He waved a hand under Strange's butt, just to verify he was actually levitating – because despite everything, Peter's geek soul still got a little thrill knowing this stuff actually existed. He returned to his phone mildly disappointed he wouldn't get to lecture the wizard about the finer points of a stakeout.

When he ran out of tasks in PvZ, Peter opened his browser and looked for apartments in New York. He wasn't picky. As long as the shower worked, and the toilet didn't back up onto the floor, all he really needed was enough room for a bed and desk. Hookups for a washer and dryer would be nice, but only if the appliances came with. He couldn't afford to shell out extra, not when there were plenty of laundromats across the city, shining like bright, fluorescent oases, which were completely deserted in the middle of the night. Nobody would notice if a friendly spider dropped in to launder his tights.

Bottom line, he had only one criteria: affordable. Which promptly eliminated at least 85% of available listings. Everywhere he looked, the monthly rent made his eyes water. He wondered if he'd have any luck applying for an inclusionary housing lottery.

I guess it doesn't have to be in the actual city. I can cover a lot of ground with my webs, so something in the outer boroughs could work… 'course, then I'm eating it for the "relaxing, laid back" atmosphere. Can't win for losing here. Maybe I can find an abandoned bell-tower to set up in somewhere, get some Nosferatu, Van Helsing vibes going. Bet Jonah would love that.

Peter reached into his backpack and rustled around at the bottom, coming up with a baggie of cashews and a smashed Nature Valley bar. Soft-baked blueberry muffin. Hadn't had one of those in a while. Which meant…

Peter turned the bar over and checked the date. Yup. Expired. Great thing about processed snacks though: unless they got wet or basically melted from the heat, you could eat 'em months past the best by date. Which suited Peter just fine. He tore off the end of the wrapper. The surveillance equipment had basically pulverized it, so Peter dumped the crumbles straight into his mouth. He shook the cashews in Strange's general direction.

"Want some?"

Strange took a handful without looking, popping them into his mouth like a fistful of pills: palm to face, head snapping back like he was doing a shot. It was an ingrained habit, Peter thought. Taste and texture didn't matter. The goal was to take in calories in as efficiently as possible, and then get back to whatever he was doing. Peter left the open baggie on the ground.

The long, low reverberation of a fog horn sounded across the strait. Peter looked over to see a massive cruise ship gliding across the water like a skyscraper turned on its side.

He finished the muffin crumbles and squashed the wrapper into a ball. He set it down on the ground next to the baggie, thinking about the hundreds of people on board that ship, the thousands more in the city around them. He'd seen the pictures from after the Blip; entire city blocks left to rot, suburbs in the south overtaken by Kudzu. Half the population gone in the blink of an eye. The idea of so many people just living out their lives seemed like a fragile luxury – one that could be literally snapped away at any moment's notice. Not for the first time, Peter marveled at how lucky he was to be alive.

Strange took another handful of cashews, a little slower this time.

The breeze kicked up suddenly. The muffin wrapper took off like a tumbleweed, skittering down the ledge in a flash of aluminum before hurling itself into the void. Peter watched it tumble, airborne for only a second. His hand shot out in a gunfighter's quick-draw. A glob of webbing nailed the wrapper to a nearby minaret. Peter crowed triumphantly.

"Ha! Did you that ninja move?" he asked automatically, forgetting that Ned wasn't here munching Cheetos and helping him run down a purse snatcher.

"I saw," said Strange.

He was looking at Peter now, his gaze thoughtful. After a minute he gestured at Peter's arm. "So… those webs," he began. "How often can you produce them, and does it extrude from any other orifices? Do you have to keep up on your fluid intake?"

His face was dead serious, his tone probing, but clinical. Like a doctor ever-so-tactfully asking how his sex life was going. Peter burst out laughing. Strange frowned at him, affronted. Peter laughed even harder, suddenly reminded of the other Peters, his multiverse brothers from another mother. Something in his chest loosened, and it felt good.

"What, like can I fire it out my butt and come rappelling down from the ceiling like a real spider?" Peter cackled. "Naw, man. I don't "make" them. Well, I do make them, but like in the microwave. I don't have extra glands or anything. You know what, why don't I just… show ya…"

He used a finger to probe the hidden slit where his suit met his glove, stripping the glove off in one easy movement and fishing beneath his sleeve for his web-shooter. He unclicked the wristband and swiveled towards Strange.

"Here, gimme your arm. I built them when I first got my powers. Well, not these specifically, but my first pair. I used… what did I use? A turbine from an aquarium pump, couple of doorbells for the pressure switches, and… oh, and a couple of syringes. Had to bum 'em from the librarian. He was always trying to save money by filling up the printer cartridges again, you know? Pretty sure he thought I was looking for something to shoot up with."

As he talked, he snugly ratcheted the band around Strange's wrist.

"You built this?"

"Yep. I came up with the web fluid, too. It's actually really cheap to make, which is a good thing, otherwise I'd be taking the subway a lot more often. It's basically just salicylic acid – sounds scary, but you can get it from pretty much any drug store – some toluene – the main ingredient in most degreasers – carbon tetrachloride, potassium carbonate, and ethyl acetate, which is basically nail polish remover. Or glue. Mr. Stark was really, really impressed. Anyway, there you go. Give it try!"

Strange sank back to solid ground. He looked at the device curiously, rotating his arm to examine the miniature gauntlet. His fingers centered over the palm switch. He looked questioningly at Peter.

"Go ahead," he encouraged.

Strange extended his arm towards the minaret and squeezed.

Nothing happened.

"Harder. You really got to give it some effort."

That was an absolute lie. Those pressure discs were on a hair trigger, sensitive to gradations in psi and wrist movement that told the spinneret how much to dispense and how fast, including nuances for scatter and dispersion. It'd taken him hours of trial and error to get the system just right, delicate enough to go off at a touch, but a deliberate touch, not a detonation of sticky every time he gripped a doorknob.

Strange clenched as hard as he could, to the same effect. With a determined scowl, he clamped his other hand over the fingers of the first, cinching down with the full might of both fists. Web fluid spurted out in a lacy funnel. Strange jumped, obviously not expecting it, as it stuck to the minaret with a wet fwip.

"Yeah, there ya go! Now- roll your wrist over and grab hold."

Strange carefully did just that. It was cute how gentle he was, like it was an actual spider web, or a thread that'd snap if he looked at it too hard.

"It's very delicate."

"Visually, yeah. But it's got a tensile strength 5x greater than steel," said Peter proudly.

Strange pulled until the line drew taut. He struck the line with a fingernail and it made a noise similar to a piano wire being plucked. After a minute he tugged harder, and harder still, until his arm vibrated from the strain.

"It won't come loose," Peter observed. "Even I can't pop 'em off once they're stuck, and believe me, I can pull a helluva lot harder than you. You could do a Tarzan right now and it'd hold – assuming you didn't let go."

He donned his best Grinchy grin.

"Wanna try it out?"

He put a chummy hand on Strange's back and levered him towards the edge. Strange immediately shoved in the opposite direction, which Peter found absolutely hilarious. Not only was he 100% capable of catching the older man if he fell, but more importantly, Strange was wearing a cape that literally, not figuratively, let him hover like Superman. Given this information, Peter found that instinctive flinch so adorably, unbearably human that it made his belly cramp. He instantly felt a little guilty.

"Quit screwing around, Parker."

Well, maybe not that guilty.

"Why, ya scared? Come on. Me Peter, you Stephen. Just hold on tight…"

"I said knock it off!"

"Dude, you know you can fly, right? Did you have a brain fart or something?"

It was obvious Strange had done just that. Peter felt the Cloak look at him like an episode of The Office, complete with subtitles for him to read: "See this dumbass I gotta put up with?"

Peter snickered and gave the older man a consolatory pat, just to be clear he was only joshing. Strange cleared his throat, high cheekbones daubed with an embarrassed flush. He let go of the web and it fluttered down the side of the mosque.

"How strong are you really?"

"Like, my upper limit? I dunno. A lot. I never really paid attention."

"Guess."

Peter pursed his lips. "Well, when it first happened, I uh… I snuck into the school gym after hours. The jocks had all these dumbbells lined up, you know? I could lift a hundred pounds without even trying. Like with one hand. So I loaded up the barbell. All the plates it could take. Must have been three- four hundred pounds…"

He looked out over the city as he talked.

"The, uh… the bar bent in half. And I could still pick it up. I tried to bend it back, but you could totally tell, so I beat feet before somebody caught me standing there with it. I figured out pretty quick that 400 pounds was nothing. I can hold a whole car on the end of one of my webs and that's like, what… 4,000 lbs. on average? It's not even that hard. The problem's usually leverage. If I don't got a place to stand, or my feet are out of position- splat."

Strange moved suddenly, snatching Peter's arm by the wrist and tugging it up to eye-level. Peter watched, bemused, as Strange forced him to splay his fingers and began manipulating each of his digits, checking their range of motion, feeling the muscles flex in his forearm.

"Whatcha doing, man?"

"Tissue density seems higher than normal," Strange muttered, feeling up Peter's arm. "BMI index is about average for your age. No signs of bone callous due to heavy lifting. You're obviously in shape, but there are no physical signs of increased musculature…"

Cool, gentle fingers slotted into the hollow of Peter's wrist, counting the beats of his heart. "BPM is slower than normal, but that's to be expected from an athlete. How do you stick to things? Is that a function of the suit as well?"

Peter held back a laugh. "Actually, no. I've got these, uh… these microscopic little hairs on my hands and feet. They're called setae. Real spiders have them. Geckos, too. I put my hand under a microscope once and you can totally see them. Anyway, I sort of just… extend them, I guess? Or maybe spread them out? And then I stick."

Strange examined Peter's bare hand between his own.

"Your skin isn't tacky," he pointed out.

"Well, I'm not doing it."

"Do it."

Peter shrugged. A few seconds passed.

"Okay. I'm doing it."

Strange's evaluation suddenly came to a halt as his fingers adhered to Peter's skin like they'd been superglued together. His expression tightened with mingled wonder and confusion. He pulled harder, giving their combined hands a little flap. Peter made sure to keep his fingers splayed to demonstrate he wasn't gripping with them.

"I feel nothing," said Strange in a low, curious voice.

"Yeah, they're really thin. Like a few nanometers across. Way too small for you to feel, but trust me. They're there. It's basically exactly like Velcro. When I wanna let go, I just- let go. I can't really explain it to ya."

Strange's hand abruptly slipped free. He rubbed his fingers together and examined them, feeling for micro-abrasions or paper cuts. Peter figured it was over. Before he could pull his hand back, however, Strange seized hold of him again and interlaced their fingers. Peter tilted his head to one side.

"Um… dude? Seriously, you look like you wanna dissect me or something and it's kinda weird. If you're gonna go all Doctor Jekyll on me, at least buy me dinner first."

"I already bought you dinner."

"Technically, you didn't. You got it out of your kitchen. Doesn't count."

"Uh-huh. Squeeze my hand."

The doctor's voice was back, crisp and commanding. Peter obediently clasped until his fingertips tapped the back of Strange's hand. There was a pause. Strange was obviously waiting for something. When that something didn't occur, he looked annoyed that he had to repeat himself. This time with slightly more detailed instructions.

"As hard as you can, please."

Peter sobered up immediately.

"Stephen, you'll get hurt."

Strange said nothing. Peter could tell he didn't really believe it, or if he did, he didn't believe in the extent of it. There was a note of defiance in his eyes, an insufferable "I set my own limits, you don't dictate what I can and cannot handle" sort of arrogance that probably had made more than one person want to slap the beard off his face. He did not let go of Peter's hand. Peter heaved a sigh.

He tightened his fingers.

He did it gently at first, but when Strange looked unimpressed, he ratcheted up the pressure in slow increments, tighter and tighter. A muscle fluttered in Strange's jaw, but he didn't pull back, determined to play chicken with him. Peter squeezed harder, uncomfortable with the situation and utterly confused at what it was meant to accomplish.

He felt Strange's joints start to creak from the pressure, felt the grind of titanium rods beneath the skin, and was horribly aware of just how little effort it would take to crush the older man's hand. It wouldn't take much; just a few more pounds of pressure. If he squeezed as hard as he could, there would nothing for modern medicine to staple back together, only a bag of oozy skin and powdered bone.

Strange flinched, lips parting in an involuntary exhalation of pain.

Peter immediately let go.

Strange babied his hand in his lap, rubbing his fingers, his knuckles, the angry scars standing out against his reddened skin. Peter reached to one side and picked up a paving tile the restoration crew had left behind. He held it up, making sure Strange saw it. He clenched his fist. The chunk of sandstone pulverized into dust.

"When it first happened, I ripped the faucet off the bathroom sink," said Peter quietly. "I didn't hug my Aunt May for months. I was so- so scared I'd hurt her. She knew something was wrong, but I guess she thought I was just being weird, like I was embarrassed or something."

He'd have given anything to hug Aunt May again.

The silence that fell was a heavy one. Not awkward, but heavy, latent with the gravity of what'd happened. Strange furtively shook out his hand.

"…You weren't born like this?"

"No. It just… happened one day. I thought it was the flu at first. Then I thought I was dying, like my appendix had burst or something. May was at work. I really should have called her. I seriously thought she was going come home and find me dead in my room, that's how bad it was. I must've passed out at some point, and when I woke up- everything was different. Colors were too bright. Everything was too loud. I had to wear sunglasses and headphones all the time just so I wouldn't freak out. The bullies at school thought I was going through some kind of tweaker, emo phase."

"Were you bullied frequently?"

"Eh. Just swirlies and getting shoved around in the corridor. It pretty much stopped after I could outrun them by jumping over walls. Other people got it way worse. Craig had two dads, so the guys tied him up in the girl's locker room and threw glitter in his locker. Spider-Man took care of it."

There was a pause before Strange responded.

"What do you mean "pretty much"? This continued after you could easily outpower them?"

His voice had a deadly, strangled edge to it.

"Well, just the one time. I wasn't paying attention and they cornered me. What did you expect me to do? They'd have got suspicious if I'd just suddenly gone all Hulk on them. It was just a little swirly. No big deal."

"No big deal," Strange repeated flatly. "Parker, you deserved better that that. You could have been on the football team – or the wrestling squad. You could have ran track! I was in high school once, too, believe it or not."

"Yeah, when dinosaurs roamed the earth."

The witticism earned him a frosty glare. Peter muffled a snort.

"Seriously, though, you're right: Spider-Man IS better," he continued quietly. "I couldn't do those things before. I had no right to butt in just because I'd suddenly turned into a freak. A lot of people worked hard to get on those teams. I mean, yeah, sure, some of them were assholes, but most of them busted their hump. So I could have been an amazing gymnast, but it would have easy. Too easy. I didn't have to try. I'd have definitely bumped Kelly Adams off the team. She went to the Olympics before she even graduated, you know. Silver medal and everything. I couldn't take that from her. It wouldn't have been right."

Strange opened and closed his mouth several times, struggling for words that wouldn't come. Peter's gaze moved over the city, one arm dangling over an upright knee. The breeze tousled the hair escaping from the cuff of his mask-turned-fashionable-beanie.

"Spider-Man is a hero. He has to be better. Peter Parker… well, he's a loser, and that's okay. I don't do it for selfies or to get on the news. If I did, I'd have serious problem with everybody forget- not knowing who I am."

He flicked Strange a look out of the corner of his eye. Thankfully, the older man didn't seem to have noticed the slip.

"With great power, comes great responsibility," said Peter, repeating the words that'd become engraved on his very soul. "If you have the power to help people, then you should. You know, you're a doctor."

Strange averted his eyes. He looked out over the skyline, lips tingling with cashew salt, and a bone-deep ache in one hand. It'd taken him years to learn that lesson, and at great personal cost. Yeah, he was a doctor alright. A good one. The very best. Problem was it'd made him a shitty human being. And here was this kid with the power to pulverize concrete in his fists and the brains to rival Tony Stark, letting his head be shoved into a toilet because-

Strange's hand strayed to his opposite wrist, clutching through the layers of ribbons and indigo fabric. A hard, round disc pressed into his skin. He could feel it ticking softly, counting out the march of time like a tiny, fragile heartbeat.

He uses magic to walk?

Constantly. He had a choice: to return to his own life, or to serve something greater than himself.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Strange's Adam's apple bobbed sharply as he swallowed back an unexpected surge of emotion. He tried. God only knew, but he did try. He felt the spider's eyes suddenly drilling into the side of his head.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Strange swallowed again. "…Yeah, I'm fine."

Peter's gaze narrowed. He didn't need his tingle to know when a goose had waddled over someone's grave, as Ned's grandma used to say. He wondered why. He hadn't said anything – that he knew of, anyway. Peter was debating on if he should say something else when his laptop chimed and his attention immediately bolted towards it, a shot of adrenaline dumping into his veins. He dragged it over and studied the camera feeds. One of them showed a blinking red icon.

He tabbed it up.

There was very little traffic in the Bazaar now. Peter always thought of it as a bad guy faux pas. Trying to act casual when there was nobody around just screamed NOTICE ME. It was way harder to pick out what someone was doing in a crowd. And right now a slim figure was hurriedly making their way down the avenue, conspicuous in that they were the only one going against the flow of traffic leaving for the night.

Come on, turn around, Peter urged silently.

His software was good, but it wasn't perfect. Partial matches and false positives happened all the time. He needed to see the person's face. He tracked them from one camera feed to another, noting that it wasn't nearly cold enough for such a thick coat, whose primary attraction seemed to be the deep, muffling hood.

The target made the next corner, and Camera 6 caught a full frontal; pale skin and a tiny, upturned noise over a hard, sullen expression, framed by a cloud of floaty red hair.

"Winner winner, chicken dinner," said Peter.

He beamed at Strange, who awkwardly tried to smile back.

"Good- good job, Parker. How, uh, ahem- how well can you keep track of her?"

"Pretty well with the drones, why?"

"I want to follow her. Whatever that box is, whatever the hell it does, I don't want it in Shenmu's hands. We need to know where he is and what's he's doing."

"My thoughts exactly."

Peter's fingers flashed over the keyboard, summoning the Spider-Buddies and slaving them to the software he'd hacked into his phone. It didn't have as much finite control as the laptop, but it was plenty enough to give basic commands: stop, follow, circle, etc. He also made sure both drones had an up-to-date picture of their quarry – Elizabeth, apparently. She totally looked like an Elizabeth. Peter checked the feeds. She was getting close to Shadow's stall.

He bounced to his feet. Strange did the same, fumbling with the web-shooter on his wrist and handing it back. Peter strapped it into place with quick, practiced movements. Strange's hand hovered between them at half-mast, almost as if he'd forgotten what to do with it. As Peter went to adjust his mask and step off the mosque, however, he felt that hand tentatively come to rest on his shoulder. Peter shot him a questioning look. Strange cleared his throat.

"You are not a loser, Parker. Or a freak," he said, enunciating the words very carefully. "Don't ever let me hear you say it again."

Peter had to think for a second before remembering what he was being accused of. He hadn't meant anything by it, certainly nothing derogatory or self-pitying. They were just meaningless buzzwords, no different than menace or vigilante. If thick skin was what it took to shrug off verbal abuse, Peter had grown a dragon's hide, but Strange's off-the-wall comment – and the petrifying intensity of its delivery – arrowed under his breast, in that one place where some snitching wren had whispered there weren't any scales.

"I, uh- I honestly didn't think I was, Stephen, but… thanks."

He meant it, too. From the bottom of his heart. Strange nodded stiffly. The hand on his shoulder squeezed briefly, and then fell away. Peter blew out a breath. He tugged his mask down.

"Anyway, let's go. Autobots, transform and roll out!"

He tumbled backwards off the mosque with a little whoop. Strange gave the void an irritated look. Honestly, it wasn't even that far to the pavement – maybe 130- 140 feet at best, not to mention the numerous ledges, scrolling buttress, and cupolas on the way down. Hell, he was pretty sure the roof of the hospital where he'd worked, snatching a smoke after a 24-hour shift, hiding them behind his back when Christine had poked her head out of the stairwell because he didn't need another well-meaning, but insufferably annoying lecture (you're a surgeon for crying out loud, you know those are bad for you better than anyone) had been much higher.

"Brain fart, my ass," he muttered.

He defiantly stepped off into thin air, cloak rippling softly.