"I'm sure he won't figure out who Spider-Man is under the mask." Hope tried to reassure Scott.
"Well with our track record of villains knowing who we are, even before we reveal ourselves, I'm not too sure." Natasha murmured.
Ned and Peter talked as Peter said he had to catch the Vulture guy and he would be leaving school to be an Avenger once he did no doubt, Ned said they had a Spanish quiz, Peter argued he was beyond school when Principal Morita caught him and sent him to his office. He gave Peter detentions for skipping Decathlon, but didn't expel him.
"Busted." Betty sang as Abe, Cindy, Scott and Ned all choked on their laughter. MJ rolled her eyes like she was beyond it, but a hint of a smile was on her face as well.
"Never too important to drop out of school, no Avengers under 18." Steve insisted, Tony nodded.
"Yeah, I'm not letting a kid drop out. When this is all done, I'll be having a word with Peter."
Peter sat bored in detention and ran off, deciding he had more important stuff to do as MJ sat in detention with him, drawing the coach as something to do, as she liked to draw people in crisis.
"You're pretty talented at that." Hope told MJ who thanked her.
"It's something to pass the time, I guess." MJ tried to play it off cool.
Peter reviewed the footage of the buy and other encounters with the Vulture, unable to find anything on him, they did flag the buyer from the earlier one had a criminal record, using facial recognition, they discovered an Aaron Davis, with Peter planning an ambush.
"Aaron Davis? Why does that name sound familiar?" Sam asked.
"I think we looked over the crime in New York, after the Blip? Pretty sure he was some hotshot in crime circles now. This must be when he was still a low level street thug." Bucky said.
"Well at least he has more of a moral code than the others, he didn't want to kill someone with the weapon, or at least not brutally kill them." Scott said, thinking back to the buy and when they had all seen Davis before.
"Still, don't like the idea of Peter been anywhere near him." Tony said.
"Dad." Strange coughed as Tony turned to glare at him, the other Avengers all trying to hide smiles behind their hands.
"I'm not his Dad!" Tony argued.
"Sure you're not, Tones. The second we get out of here, I'm fully expecting when we all find Peter, you'll immediately call him your son, even if he's confused as hell." Rhodey stated.
"Why would he be confused?" Flash asked.
"Well, he's not here. He doesn't know we all know of him. Maybe we will forget all of this when we leave wherever we are. We simply do not know anything of this." Wong informed them.
"I wish I could help, but I mean, I just got here, just a heard a voice telling me to help, and I mean, I'm not even from around here." Eddie croaked out.
"Yeah, sorry, but me and other Spider-Man just showed up here too and found ourselves unable to move at first, like I said. No idea how we are here or what the rules are when we leave."
"I need to remember him, I need too." Tony fervently stated. "I need to help the kid out, it's clear he needs it."
"How is it clear, I mean, these videos are from, what, seven years ago?" Abe asked.
"Because he isn't here now. If he didn't need help, he would be, I'm sure of it." MJ said, agreeing with Tony. Spider-Man, Peter, she reminded herself, wasn't here. From what she could remember of Spider-Man and what she had seen of this, she knew he would be there if he could be. The fact he couldn't must mean he needs help of some kind from them.
Peter confronted Davis, who figured out this was Peter's first time with the interrogation methods he used, but he softened when he heard why Peter did what he did, and agreed to help, providing him the location of where they would be that day, saying that he didn't want those weapons on the streets, he had a nephew he cared for.
"He's not perfect, nobody's perfect, but he is good." Cindy said. "He's trying to be a good man, or at least a better man."
"I mean, I wouldn't call him good, but not a total dick." Eddie argued.
"HE IS A BAD GUY, WE MUST DEVOUR HIS FLESH AND USE HIS BONES AS A TOOTHPICK!" Venom exclaimed.
Scaling a Staten Island ferry, Peter spot the Shocker talking to a man he couldn't see the face of, telling the drone to follow the unknown man, Peter followed the Shocker, seeing him meet a man with a Scorpion tattoo, the Shocker said the weapons were in a white pickup, calling the drone off of the unknown man, he told it to scan for the vehicle, finding it as the criminals reported all of the weapons were there, Peter attacked, webbing several of them as the Shocker reported to Toomes that Spider-Man was there.
"So that's a bad guy meet up if I ever saw one, like a bad guy expo." Scott joked.
"Toomes was there. Damn, if the kid had known from the start, could have gotten him there and then." Happy said.
"We can't dwell on the past, Happy." Steve said kindly. "All we can do is help him in the future."
Peter was suddenly called by Tony Stark, who congratulated him on D.C, before Peter told Karen to hang up on Tony, seeking the Vulture guy out. Seeing the man's face properly, before Peter could make a move, the FBI arrived, to sweep up the criminals, as Peter panicked, the Vulture suddenly showed up, and attacked Peter, the FBI shooting at him and failing as he and Peter fought, the Shocker ran off.
"He hung up on you?!" Rhodey laughed.
"Yeah, I'm still salty over that." Tony pouted.
"I think I know why he did. He had to stop them, you would have tried to stop him." Spider-Man 3 said. "He knows his responsibility, and it involved stopping them."
"I guess you called the FBI?" Bucky asked softly, looking at Tony, who startled to hear him being addressed by Barnes.
"Yeah, Yeah I did." Tony confirmed. "I had listened to Spider-Man, regardless of what Spider-Man himself thought. I valued his insights. Even if I don't recall being that close to him."
Peter managed to web up the Vulture and pull down his Chitauri gun, that set off and started shredding the ferry apart. Peter ran around webbing the structure together and trying to hold it together as the Vulture and Shocker escaped.
"Got to save the innocents. They're the priority." Steve nodded approvingly. "That's the mission."
As Peter struggled, Karen informed him that he was 98% successful as the ship began to fall apart. Before anything else could happen, the ship began to put itself back together, as Iron Man appeared.
"Hooray for me." Tony joked as everyone chuckled. It was good that Tony was here now, clearly the crisis was over, at least for now. Vulture and his friends wouldn't dare attack Iron Man. They'd run and hide.
The people began to cheer Iron Man as Spider-Man begged to help, Iron Man told him to sit it out, he'd already done enough, before flying away as rescue boats arrived to help the people on the ferry.
"That's pretty harsh, Tony." Sam told him.
"I know, but I needed to save the people, I guess I was a bit stressed with everything at the time, things that seem so petty now with what we've lived, what I've been through, what we've all shared and suffered since then." Tony tried to explain. "I was just a dick, plain and simple."
Toomes, Mason and the Shocker met in their warehouse, Toomes asking if Shocker was running when he saw the bag he held, the Shocker said he wasn't waiting for the Avengers to bust them, the FBI were waiting, they were all on a radar now. He said Toomes should too. Toomes said he couldn't and asked Mason if he could get the high altitude seal ready in time, Mason said he could as Toomes asked if Shocker was in.
"No, please, just run and hide, don't do anything else illegal and bad." Cindy pleaded.
"Why is this guy so interested in high altitude?" Steve wondered. He had missed most of the news whilst he was on the run, whilst he knew Spider-Man had stopped this Vulture person, he hadn't really gotten the full details on it whilst running, and after Thanos, it didn't seem at all important to look it up.
"I'm sure it'll show it, Capsicle." Tony told him.
Back at the docks, Iron Man visited Peter who sat their in shock. Iron Man began to berate Peter who tried to turn it on him, saying he tried to warn him about those guys but Iron Man didn't listen. Peter said if Tony cared, he would be there, the suit then opened to reveal Tony, Peter scrambling backwards. Tony said he did, who did Peter think called the FBI. Tony told Peter that he wanted Peter to be better than he was, but he couldn't be, so he needed the Spider-Man suit back, and Peter was grounded. He told Peter that if Peter was nothing without the suit, then he shouldn't have the suit.
"Wow, now that's a badass entrance." Abe whistled.
"Tony." Rhodey said as Tony sucked in a deep breath at seeing this. Obviously he remembered taking the suit off of the kid, but he didn't recall seeing the kids face after, the homemade suit was already there, underneath, wasn't it? Somehow? For some reason?
"Peter." Tony said softly, as a flood of memories came rushing back. A young boy, eager to please. Hundreds of texts to Happy and the many complaints Happy sent him about the kid, him and Peter holding up a Stark Internship letter, the letter itself being upside down, as he stuck bunny fingers up behind Peter's head. Tony could feel a headache coming on. He had to process all of this, and retain it, somehow. After all of this, he needed to remember, he couldn't forget it all, he would not forget it all, ever.
"You remember him?" Happy asked gently.
"Flashes." Tony admitted. "I can remember some stuff, I think the fact it made no sense for Spider-Man to wear his old suit under his new one managed to overwrite whatever spell the wizards did to us, for a moment."
"So what helps us jog our memories of all of this?" Strange asked. He had no clue how this was meant to work, the runes were never used in this way before, as much as he could tell.
"I think logical inconsistencies and traumatic shared events." MJ muttered. "At least, that seems to be the way of it from everyone else. I don't think some of us have had ours yet as we haven't seen any of that which we were involved in yet."
"That's an accurate description of it." Wong confirmed before he whispered to Stephen "I have no idea how this works, do you?"
"Nope, let's go along with the girls theory."
THIS NOTE IS FOR ONLY. Look, this fic isn't making nearly the numbers it has on AO3, it's why my last two fics have been AO3 exclusives. This fic will be made an AO3 exclusive. It's the same name with the fic and the author on Archive of our own so won't be hard to find it there. If you enjoyed it, please do follow it there. If not, I will be writing other fics exclusive for this site, trying to keep them on the ones they're successful on.