Disclaimer: Everything you recognise here either came from the MCU films or the original Marvel comics, but I hope you enjoy the results anyway
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The Legacies' Triad
Right now, Peter wasn't sure if he should feel like he was dealing with a potential Avengers mission or tackling a particularly high-stakes crime thing, but either way he felt as though he was finally doing something more than just swinging around dealing with random crimes and waiting for Happy's next call.
OK, so it still slightly stung that Happy had just brushed off his latest call as though Peter could have absolutely nothing interesting to tell him that might be of interest to the Avengers, but Peter had to admit that he wasn't entirely sure what else he could have said to Happy at this point. He'd already decided not to tell anybody about the 'White Widow' (for lack of another name for Miss Romanoff's sister until he had something else to call her) in case it got her in trouble with whoever was in charge of the Accords, and without that it would have been a bit difficult to explain how he'd dealt with those weapons so easily, or even produce them as evidence.
Frankly, when he looked back on that particular confrontation, Peter was embarrassed to realise just how badly he'd done during what should have been a relatively simple bank robbery with just a few fancy weapons. He didn't think he would have actually lost that fight even if White Widow hadn't been there, but her comment about minding his surroundings was a good point. He'd been so used to relying on his instincts when he was out in the field that it took that particular comment for him to realise that he didn't always pay attention to what was happening around him.
Just by following that advice, he'd realised after he reached his building that Ned was waiting in his bedroom working on the Lego Death Star; if he'd just gone into the room without looking as he usually did, Ned would have easily learnt his secret. Not wanting to share his secret this quickly, Peter had called the flat phone and asked May if he could speak to Ned, allowing him to sneak into the room, grab a change of clothes, and nip down to change in an alley before he came back into the flat through the front door, explaining that he was running late to justify the call. The following evening had been a relaxing few hours chatting with Ned and May followed by finishing some homework, even as Peter hadn't been able to shake his own sense of inner glee at the thought of his new 'team-up'.
Maybe it was a bit unfair of him to keep his secret from Ned and May, but when he was still getting a good feel for what he was capable of, he didn't want them to worry about him any more than they had to. He appreciated Ned's friendship and May's support, and he definitely regretted that he hadn't been able to catch up with Kate for a while, but after everything that had happened with Ben… May in particular would just worry even if she would accept that she couldn't stop him, so it was just easier to keep them safe by drawing a line between everything. Ned was his school friend, May was his home support, and Kate… he wasn't sure how to describe Kate, but he knew that she was important to him… but none of them could handle what being an Avenger meant. Maybe the White Widow wasn't a full-on Avenger, but she was a close relative of one; that had to count for something, right?
In any case, by the time Peter reached the rooftop where White Widow had told him to meet her, he was fresh and eager to get to work (even if he appreciated once again how little sleep he seemed to need since he was bitten). He had managed to get through school that day easily enough, even if he felt bad telling Ned he might be too busy to catch up for the next few nights, but the sense of having something to do beyond just random patrols for once…
"Man," he looked out at the city with a smile under his mask, "this is gonna be fun."
"This is serious," a voice said from behind him.
"Uh… sure," Peter said, hoping that he had managed to hide most of his surprise as he turned around to look at White Widow. "Sorry, I didn't mean to… I am taking this seriously; that's just how I deal with this kind of thing…"
"Humour," the blonde woman nodded at him in understanding. "I can get that."
"Good," Peter smiled in relief, glad he hadn't alienated a possible ally so quickly. "I just don't want you to think I'm not taking the advanced weapons thing seriously; trust me, I get that anything like that is not good."
"It is worse than you know."
"Oh," Peter said, trying to hide the mix of apprehension and a strange sensation he couldn't quite explain. It wasn't as though he wanted to have to deal with something really dangerous, and he definitely didn't want other people to be at risk, but was it a bad thing to want to show Mr Stark what he could do? "Uh… how bad are we talking about?"
"You know my sister?"
"Uh… we did meet, but it was only briefly; we didn't really have time to chat much…"
"Then you do not know of the Red Room?"
"Red Room?" Peter repeated, hoping he wasn't coming across as an idiot child who'd missed some big briefing everyone on the Avengers was meant to receive.
"I told you there are many other Black Widows aside from my sister and myself," White Widow explained. "Red Room is the organisation that trained us."
"Oh," Peter nodded in new understanding, before he properly registered the grim expression on her face. "I take the Red Room aren't exactly the good guys?"
"Natasha and I were taken from our birth families when we were very young, put through brutal training since we were young, and our final graduation from training involved our teachers literally removing our reproductive organs."
"…Oh," Peter said, feeling the sheer inadequacy of his words even as he reminded himself taking his mask off for someone he'd just met wasn't a good idea. "I… that sounds… I'm sorry…"
"Thank you," White Widow nodded at him in a strangely casual manner before she continued. "In any case, Natasha recently assisted me in finding and eliminating the leader of the Red Room, and I am now tracking down other members of the program."
"So we're basically looking for an evil Ms Romanoff?" Peter didn't want to make light of it, but compared to what he could have been dealing with that was a relatively light threat. Someone with Miss Romanoff's training would be a bit of a challenge, but at least he wasn't up against something like a new Ultron…
Wait a minute…
"This… other Widow… has something to do with those weapons, right?" he looked anxiously at her. "She's selling them?"
"She is buying some of them from the true arms dealer," White Widow clarified. "I have determined that she is in this city, but I have not yet been attempting to trace her location."
"Which is why you wanted to follow the other guys back, right?" Peter said, shaking his head in frustration. "And I ended up screwing that all over for you…"
"You were trying to stop them doing the wrong thing," White Widow shrugged. "It is annoying for my plan, but it was right thing from what you knew."
"Thanks," Peter smiled at her before he assumed a more professional stance. "So how do we do this? Do you have any other leads?"
"I found other lead involving attempted kidnapping, but was forced to interrupt that to stop abduction, so no leads in that area either," the White Widow explained. "I am looking for other leads, but nothing has been found yet."
"Well… at least you stopped the kidnapping, right?" Peter shrugged, lost for anything else to say beyond trying to focus on the positives.
"We still need bigger fish to stop larger plan," White Widow said firmly.
"The weapons didn't give you a clue?"
"I am not technical expert," White Widow shrugged. "I study parts, but no obvious clues come to mind."
"Any chance I could take a look at that?"
"At what?"
"The weapons?" Peter explained. "I mean, I'm not saying I'm Sherlock Holmes, but maybe we could figure something out about where those things were made if we get a better look at how they were put together?"
White Widow looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, but ultimately nodded and gave him the address of a storage facility a short distance away. Peter thought about offering her a lift, but the older woman jumped off the rooftop before he could say anything. Peter was so shocked at that development that it took him a moment to hurry over to the edge of the roof, and by the time he looked down White Widow was already on a motorbike and heading into the streets.
Satisfied that she was safe, Peter took a moment to recall the exact location of the storage facility in relation to his current position and then jumped off the roof, swinging along the streets at a more leisurely rate. He'd spent some time working out his best possible speed with his webbing, and while he was going to aim to reach his destination at basically the same time as White Widow, there was nothing wrong with letting himself unwind.
He still felt a little bad about how he was keeping secrets from his own friends, but the more he learnt about this situation from White Widow, the more he felt as though he was actually dealing with an Avenger-style threat for the first time since Leipzig. Even better, because this time around he was actually working with an Avenger against a threat, rather than helping half the team fight the other half (he still wished he knew how that had all ended, beyond those rumours he'd heard that the 'rogue' Avengers were now on the run).
A part of him reminded himself that he didn't know for a fact that White Widow was Ms Romanoff's sister or that anything she'd told him was the truth, but Peter countered his concerns by pointing out that so far he wasn't being asked to do anything that might be considered 'bad'. If White Widow was affiliated with the thieves then stopping them from trying to kill him was an odd way to go about that, and he definitely wasn't going to let her talk him into doing something more obviously illegal, such as outright breaking into some place to steal things, until he was sure he knew more about the target. For the moment, he wasn't being asked to do anything openly wrong, so he'd go with the situation until something came up.
Satisfied with his decision, Peter landed on the roof of the storage facility in time to see White Widow pulling up further down the street. She left the motorbike behind and walked up to the entrance, Peter jumping down to join her as she opened the door with what were clearly lockpicking tools.
"Don't these places provide you with keys?" he joked, even as he made a note to be cautious; picking a lock in the name of expediency was one thing, but if she had to break into one of these storage lockers…
"For the lockers," White Widow turned to look at him. "I must make my own entrance outside working hours."
"…That was a joke," Peter said, struck by the serious expression on her face. In response, White Widow simply shrugged and walked into the building, leaving Peter to follow her in uncertain silence. He was briefly worried about any cameras in the building, but his associate pulled a small device out of her pocket and aimed it at each camera as she walked past it. The red light on each camera stopped when she pointed it, which suggested to Peter that it was somehow turning the cameras off, but he decided not to question it for the moment. After walking past various other storage lockers, White Widow finally paused in front of one and opened it with a more conventional key (a quick glance was at least enough to confirm that it was weathered enough that it was probably property of this place), revealing a collection of boxes gathered around it.
"Keeping them secret, huh?" Peter glanced at the older woman. "Good job."
"The lockers are private, but the corridors themselves are not," White Widow explained. "The cameras are disabled for now, but we must be quick."
"Gotcha," Peter nodded, walking up to the nearest box and slipping off the lock to open the lid. Taking out the weapon inside, which he swiftly recognised as one of the guns he'd fought the other night, Peter examined it for a moment until he found a few suitably loose sections of metal, placing his fingers against the plates and pulling it off.
"Good skill," White Widow noted with an approving nod as Peter released his 'grip' on the removed plate.
"I had a few problems with it early on, so it made sense to be sure how to trigger it," Peter explained, allowing himself a smile at the memory of how he'd accidentally destroyed his keyboard before he focused his thoughts on the interior mechanisms of the weapons. "OK, this is interesting…"
"What?" Widow asked.
"This," Peter explained, as he carefully reached in and took out the strange crystal object in the heart of the mechanism. "Does this look familiar to you?"
"No."
"Me neither," Peter shook his head. "And I studied everything Mr Stark put together before he invited me to join the team."
"What if Tony Stark did not create this?"
"If someone had created something with the kind of power that could be used for weapons like this, would they really be ripping off ATMs?" Peter pointed out, hoping his train of thought made sense. "The only reason someone wouldn't go public with something like this is if they knew they couldn't sell what they were making legitimately… which means this isn't normal."
"That makes sense," White Widow nodded at him. "What are you thinking?"
"Right now, I have an idea or two, but nothing that really helps us out," Peter said, thoughtfully studying the purple thing that was apparently a power core. "Mr Stark gave me access to a few Avengers case files, so I have a couple of sources I can check to confirm, but right now… well, this makes me think Chitauri."
"Chitauri?" White Widow repeated. "As in the alien army Loki commanded?"
"Mixed in with stuff that's very definitely from here," Peter affirmed, putting that gun down and opening another box, this one displaying the distinctive bullet-hole that had stopped it being used against him. "I mean, this purple thing looks like what I saw in a couple of the files about the power source for their weapons, but the rest of this stuff… all these wires and connections looks more like some guy was trying to use alien batteries for human design."
"That makes sense," White Widow nodded. "If aliens return, they would attempt something bigger and faster; this seems like person trying to make money quick with new design."
"Dangerous enough to be a threat, but not enough resources to make a really big impression…" Peter confirmed, thoughtfully studying the weapons for a moment before he sighed. "Sorry; I'm not seeing anything that might help us work out who built this beyond the access to alien tech. I can see how some of this stuff comes together, but really… I mean, I'm not saying this would be easy, but it's not like we can post a quiz online and work out who'd have the mentality to put this all together."
"They had access to Chitauri technology; that is somewhere to start," White Widow nodded before she looked at him. "We shall leave now; training would be better elsewhere."
"Else- training?" Peter grinned even as he reminded himself to be careful when putting the weapons back. "You want to-?"
"If you are to assist, you need more training than what you have," White Widow said, as though she was discussing something so obvious she was surprised it had to be said. "Rooftop opposite is high enough for us to not to be observed by anything nearby and large enough for us to practice, if you are interested?"
Peter honestly wasn't sure how he stopped himself squealing for joy at the thought of being trained by Black Widow's sister as he helped her seal up the boxes and then made his way as fast as possible down the corridor and back outside. He was so quick that he actually reached the indicated rooftop before White Widow had even left the building, but he took advantage of the time to calm himself and wait for her to catch up.
"So," his apparent new teacher said, looking at him with her arms folded and a critical expression, "what can you do already?"
"Well, like I said, I'm pretty much physically enhanced in all the obvious ways- stronger, faster, more agile- and I can climb walls, and my senses are so sharp I can pretty much always detect any attack coming at me-"
"But you cannot always avoid it?"
"Well… that varies a bit, but most of the time I'm good," Peter said, not sure if he should be feeling defensive on behalf of his powers. "I mean, I've managed to avoid it when people are shooting at me-"
"How did we meet?"
"I'm talking about people shooting regular guns at me; I get that I need to work on it when we're talking about… that stuff," Peter said, trying not to feel overly defensive at that particular observation.
"What about your webbing?"
"What about my webbing?"
"Do you make it or do you make it?"
"Ah… I put the formula together in a lab and created my web-shooters through… well, I made them," Peter said, not sure if he should feel embarrassed about that gap in his powers or proud at how he'd overcome it. He still felt slightly cheated that he got all these spider-based powers and had to go to all the trouble of creating webbing on his own, but it wasn't as though he could control what the spider did to his body after it bit him…
"Impressive," White Widow nodded, actually smiling at him at that explanation before she resumed her intense staring session. "And your hand-to-hand experience?"
"…I've seen a lot of movies?" Peter shrugged out of a lack of anything better to say.
In response, White Widow suddenly lashed out with a powerful punch at his face, prompting Peter to jump back. Reminding himself that this was probably another training moment, Peter adjusted his retaliatory kick so that it would just graze the woman rather than hit her outright, and even then she managed to grab his ankle once it got too close. When she began to throw him, Peter let his body relax- it wouldn't be on the same scale, but he definitely didn't want a repeat of getting slapped back by the big guy back at Leipzig- and managed to adjust himself mid-air so that he caught himself with his hands rather than hitting the ground with his back. He shook his leg just enough to force White Widow to release her grip, then spun around and got back to his feet-
"Good," the woman in white said, relaxing her posture and nodding at him in approval.
"…Didn't we do that last time?" Peter said, lost for a better response.
"That was when you were coming down from the high of a fight and still alert," White Widow explained. "Now you were starting out from a relaxed stance and responding to a threat from someone you do not consider such; context was different."
"That… makes sense," Peter replied, trying to remain cautious even as he found himself understanding her decision. "So… what now?"
"You wish to become better?"
"Yes."
"Then we shall train for an hour each night while we search for our enemies," White Widow said, before she reached into one of the pockets of her vest and tossed him a small black object.
"Is this… a pager?" Peter looked at it in surprise.
"It is simple means of sending you address and letting you reply," the older woman explained (and why did Peter suddenly realise she was older?). "I will send you address after sunset each evening and you will confirm when you can make it; I will also update you if I find new lead."
"And… what if I need to call you?" Peter asked, even as he slipped the pager into one of the small 'pockets' in his suit (how Mr Stark came up with that kind of thing, Peter didn't know, but it was probably something like how the suit could adjust its size to fit him so easily). "As in, what I need to tell you something more than whatever I can send with this-?"
"Send me suitable phone number and I will call you back on that as soon as possible," White Widow said, before she shifted into a combat stance that really made Peter think of Trinity preparing to kick ass (the white leather was more Switch, but it wasn't like she'd had much time to do anything in the first film). "Begin."
This is probably going to be sore… Peter allowed himself to think as he tried to copy her stance. But on the other hand, it's definitely going to be so cool…
Making the decision to try and ignore his 'tingle' (he needed a better name for that) as his new teacher launched her first punch, Peter kept his own responses slower to focus on parrying and trying to actually see what she was doing as opposed to just jumping out of the way the moment he got the tingle.
This might take up some time for his usual patrol, but he was ahead of his schoolwork, he had no plans with Ned, and anything that made him a better hero had to be good, right?
He definitely was not thinking about the fact that his teacher was a fit older woman who looked really good in a tight suit…