Peter moved quickly as he gained ground on Kate. She'd had a solid head start on him from when he first noticed her jumping from rooftop to rooftop, plus he'd taken the time to call M.J. and let her know he had found her and that he was going to be later in getting back then he initially believed. He'd since made up a lot of ground on her though, finally beginning to close the distance between them.
He had no idea what to say once he did catch up to her, or even how she'd take it on her end. Peter just hoped she would be more willing to talk first this time. He just couldn't shake the feeling that she knew more than she was letting on, and if he knew what that was, he might realize they were more on the same side than last night would've had him believe.
Peter wasn't exactly making as much effort to conceal himself from her this time, figuring it was pointless since they'd already been introduced. Instead, he was purely focused on catching up to her and, hopefully, getting some real answers this time. All that to say it came as no surprise to him that, as he started to get closer, Kate turned her head and saw him.
What did surprise him, however, was the fact that as soon as she did, she immediately stopped running. Peter almost sailed past her as a result, having to release his web much earlier than he intended. He landed on the ground, rolling forward once and coming to a stop as he braced his right hand against the roof of the building. He stood up and turned to her, really hoping that she didn't interpret his improvised hard stop as him trying to show off for her.
"I'm guessing you're not surprised to see me again," he said, walking a couple steps towards her but stopping at a sufficient distance.
"Nope, not really," Kate said, removing her hood from her head, "and I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you figured out who I am?"
"Yep," Peter confirmed. "Actually, it ended up being easier than I thought, but it still raises some questions."
"Like what's a spoiled rich girl doing running around on rooftops with a bow and arrow?" Kate questioned.
"I don't like to presume anything," Peter said, putting his hands up in front of him, "but something like that, yeah."
"Are you sure you're willing to listen to me after last night?" Kate questioned. "I did take some shots at you, after all."
"Eh, I've dealt with worse," Peter said, shrugging. "Besides, something tells me that you're not all that bad."
"Is that so?" Kate questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Call it having faith in people," Peter said, "sometimes maybe too much. Of course, you could always prove me wrong if you like."
"No thanks," Kate conceded. "Truth is, I'd rather have you on my side."
"Alright then," Peter said, gesturing his hands out towards her. "You have the floor."
Well, that was easier than she thought it would be. Ever since she left home, Kate had been worried that Spider-Man might be a little sore at her, both for giving him the slip as well as for, you know, attacking him and all that. Instead, here he was, standing right across from her, seemingly willing to forgive all and hear her out.
"Okay then," she said in response to his offer. She really needed to get this right, and she also knew that if she lied to him and he found out about it later, Spider-Man would not likely be as forgiving about it next time. Therefore, honesty seemed like the way to go.
"The truth is, I don't have as much information as I hoped to by now," Kate continued, "but I've been tracking those guys for a couple weeks now."
"Who are they?" Spider-Man asked.
"They work for Alchemax," Kate said, and Spider-Man's head appeared to tilt slightly. "I'm guessing you're familiar with them?"
"A little," Spider-Man replied. "They're a big tech company that has focused a lot on space exploration and monitoring, particularly since the Snap. I've heard shady things about them before, but nothing that's been proven."
"Not yet anyway," Kate said. "I found the three that we saw last night on one of my first times out in the city. They were going to an off the books Alchemax site, just like yesterday."
"What have they been doing exactly?" Spider-Man inquired.
"I'm... I'm not 100% sure yet," Kate admitted, hating the words as they came out of her mouth. She'd already been frustrated by her lack of hard evidence or proof of any technical wrongdoing and admitting this fact to an actual superhero was NOT a good look.
"Okay... what do you know so far?" Spider-Man asked. There wasn't any patronization in his words, which was a relief, even if they still reminded Kate of her lack of success up to this point.
"Not much," Kate answered. "One night after they left, I got back into one of their computers and found some strange code on it. I downloaded a portion of it, but I'm not exactly much of an expert in cyber language, and no decoder program I've found has been able to figure it out either. I was going to interrogate them yesterday in the hopes of getting some answers."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Spider-Man replied. "Then again, from my point of view, it just looked like you were about to shoot some guys with an arrow, so I think we should call it a misunderstanding at best."
"Fair enough," Kate replied. "Look, I found those guys again, and I don't know how long they're going to be there, so... are you in?"
Spider-Man said nothing in response at first. It was impossible to tell what he was really thinking, being unable to see his facial expressions underneath that mask and all. His body language didn't change much either; it was as if he was making a concerted effort to not give away the slightest inkling of his thoughts.
As he hesitated, a thought of her own crept into her mind: what would happen next if he wasn't in?
Peter mulled over Kate's story as he contemplated her offer. She didn't seem to have too much actually on the guys, but then again, many of his own efforts in stopping criminals had started with just a hunch. He thought back to the times he had to tail people on nothing more than a whim in order to learn things and catch on to the plans of criminals or supervillains. For him, all this came down to one question.
Could he really trust her?
"Okay," Peter said, making a choice he really hoped he wouldn't regret.
"Alright then," Kate said, looking slightly relieved that he had agreed. She through on her hood as she added, "We better get going then."
"You know, if you want to save time, I could just swing us to wherever we need to go," Peter offered. "It's just a little faster than jumping from rooftop to rooftop."
"No thanks," Kate replied politely. "I've found that doing this helps get my adrenaline going, so I'm sharper when I get there."
"As you wish," Peter said, gesturing out into the city. "Lead the way."
Kate took off, leaping off the building and onto the next one nearby. Peter followed alongside her, seeing no point in swinging himself since he would have to do so at a much slower pace anyway. Besides, he was one to be a bit stingy when it came to his use of webbing, so it served as a good excuse in his mind to conserve.
Because of Kate's physical limitations compared to Peter's abilities, it took them a little time to get there. Peter contemplated offering help again, but he decided instead to respect her desire to do this on her own. He remembered what it was like trying to prove himself to Tony and the other Avengers, and how he wanted to do so his own, often much to Tony's annoyance. Kate may or may not have that same chip on her shoulder, but there was no harm in letting her do things her own way anyway.
Eventually, they came to a larger building than the one they were at the night before.
"I presume this is another one of those Alchemax facilities you were talking about?" Peter asked as they crouched along the edge of a nearby building.
"Yeah," Kate said. "After half the population vanished, the company bought up a lot of buildings that weren't of much use any more for their competitors that were more heavily affected. Some they flaunt about more publicly, but others they keep to themselves for who knows what."
"Sounds pretty typical to me," Peter said. He'd more than had his share even in the last couple years of bad guys that were somehow the result of corporations in some capacity, whether it was experimentation, secret development of weapons, CEO's being power hungry...
Honestly, all that summed up the Green Goblin ALONE.
"Anyway, what's our plan?" Peter asked.
"Same as last time," Kate said. "These guys seem to like their privacy; they're never around anyone else when I've caught them. The only thing is that this place might have a little higher security though."
"Let me deal with that," Peter said.
Sure enough, with a little craftiness and the aid of his spider-sense, Peter successfully got them around the much more advanced security measures this building had compared to the last one. Kate's assumption had been right though: there was no one else in the building. As they traversed the place, Peter tried to contemplate what they might be getting into based off what he knew. Kate had mentioned acquiring some type of digital code that the men she had been tracking were working with, so perhaps they were on the trail of some cyberterrorists? Maybe they were using all those satellites to spy on earth as well as space, and this was all leading to another HYDRA style takeover attempt?
The possibilities seemed endless at this point.
After a while, they finally came to a large room where they found the three that they had been looking for. Having used the ventilation shaft for the final part of their search, Peter popped the opening off and crawled out first, followed by Kate. There were rafters in the upper areas of the room just like in the last building, so they took advantage, positioning themselves in a spot where they thought they might be able to see what the men were working on.
As they observed, Peter couldn't get over how disturbingly quiet the three were. A few minutes came and went just like that, but none of them said a word to each other, instead carrying out different tasks. It was weird how they never seemed to need to communicate though, just taking care of whatever it was that they were doing without needing to consult the others for any reason.
"You see anything?" Peter whispered.
"Not really," Kate said. "That's the weird thing; they almost seem like drones in how they work. I can't even tell what's going on with the computer they're working on."
Peter glanced at the screen. They had a decent but still not great angle to look at it, but from what he could see, he had absolutely no idea what was going on either. He more or less considered himself a tech expert, but whatever code they were implementing, or possibly creating, wasn't anywhere close to familiar.
All at once, the three started to turn and leave just like they had the other night but stopped just as fast. For a few seconds, none of them even flinched.
"Okay, what's going on now?" Kate asked quietly.
"I'm not sure," Peter answered. He tapped the side of his mask, firing up the system within. He them zoomed in on the side of a machine that one of them appeared to be looking at. There didn't seem to be anything there, no buttons or levers, just a small green. However, upon zooming a little more, Peter saw what appeared to be the faintest glimpse of his and Kate's reflections.
As soon as he made this discovery, they all three turned towards the two of them, and Peter's spider-sense went wild.
"Move!" Peter yelled as one of the men, in a surprising display of speed and strength, leapt up towards them without hardly even squatting first. Peter dived off the rafter, landing on the ground as the man sailed over him, landing on his own two feet. He turned to see that Kate had managed to get off and land safely as well.
The other two came charging at them as well, swinging hard. Peter routinely dodged several blows, at one point firing a web and tying one of them up. Unfortunately, with what looked like some serious effort, the man managed to burst from the webs.
"Okay, that's not good," Peter said as the man charged him once again. He dodged the first few blow attempts, but the man then seemed to anticipate where he was going next, striking a blow to his chest and sending him flying. He hit the wall hard, bracing himself enough to avoid significant pain.
He glanced over towards Kate, to see that she was struggling too, being grabbed by one of them and thrown onto the floor, the woman rolling along. Peter leapt over to her, helping her up.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, could be better though," she replied as she stood to her feet. The men began to surround them. "Any thoughts?"
"Go crazy and don't hold back," Peter replied. "These guys seem to be able to take more than we thought."
"Sounds good to me," Kate replied, drawing an arrow from her quiver. She fired it at the feet of their attackers, creating a small explosion that sent the three off their feet and to the ground.
"Explosive arrow?" Peter said, "that's really cool."
"Thanks," Kate replied. "Now, shall we?"
"Oh yeah," Peter said. He then leapt over to one of them as they were trying to make their way back to their feet. Somersaulting in the air, he landed a hard kick to their chest, pinning them back down on the ground. One of the others came flying at him; using this against his opponent, Peter leaned back into a handstand position, putting his feet against his opponent and sending him in the direction of his momentum, shooting him across the room and hitting the wall hard.
He looked over to check on Kate, who was taking on the third one. She slid underneath one of his punches, springing up and kicking her opponent in the back. It was a hard kick, but the man only stumbled mildly before recovering. Rushing over, Peter wrapped his legs around the man's neck, rolling his body and throwing the man to the ground. Peter looked up to see one of the others charging towards them. Suddenly, an arrow latched itself straight into the man's shoulder area. Two more followed suit; one in the other shoulder and one in the leg. The man bent down on one knee for a minute, seemingly due to his injuries.
Kate came along beside Peter as he rose from his crouched position.
"Look guys, my friend and I could do this all night, but we'd rather not," Peter said. "So why don't you guys just turn yourselves in and make this easier on everyone?"
In response, two of them charged. Peter leapt and dodged out of the way of multiple attacks, occasionally landing some hits of his own that seemed only to knock them back slightly before recovering. Kate didn't seem to be faring much better; the one attacking her had ripped the arrows she had already assaulted him with out, not showing any signs of slowing down all that much.
Suddenly, they stopped fighting and instead turned and ran away. Kate started to follow, but Peter's spider-sense went off.
"Kate, hold on," Peter called out.
"Why? They're getting away!" Kate called out.
His spider-sense having led him in the direction of one of the devices in the room, Peter suddenly realized why.
"Yeah, that's because this whole place is about to go up!"
Kate ran over and, glancing at the device that was now ticking more rapidly, came to understand.
"Okay, I think I'll take that web swinging offer now."
The two of them then ran to the nearest window, jumping through it just in time for the room to explode. Peter grabbed onto Kate from the side, firing a web and swinging off as more explosions sent most of the upper floors up in flames. They eventually landed a couple of streets away from the explosion, turning and looking at the destruction before them.
"You know, I think you were onto something after all," Peter said.
"Do you think those three made it out?" Kate asked.
"Somehow I think they did," Peter replied. "I'm just glad no one else was in the building."
The two of them took a moment catch their respective breaths, watching as fire trucks soon descended onto the scene, the crews within them getting to work.
"Whatever this is, it just might be bigger than I first thought," Kate said. "I mean, those guys might've been as strong as you; maybe even stronger."
"Yeah," Peter said, still contemplating everything they had just witnessed. "I think we need to stay in touch about this."
"Okay," Kate said, "so, is this the part where Spider-Man gives me his number or something?"
"Not exactly," Peter said, pulling out a small device from his waste, where he kept his webbing and other small gadgets. "If you press the center of this, it'll alert the system in my suit. Let me know if you come across anything or need some more help. I'll do some more digging of my own."
"Got it," Kate responded. "Well, see you around, I guess." With that, Kate turned and jumped off the building onto one nearby, heading for wherever home was, leaving Peter by himself. He turned one more time to look at the destruction that had occurred tonight over what he started off thinking might just be some cyberattack. Clearly, this was much more, and he was suddenly worried. He needed to keep an eye on Kate.
The girl was good, but Peter was already starting to wonder if something like this might be too much for her.
Hope you're enjoying!
Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy!
"Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Matthew 5:3-5