Chapter 2 – Matlock Interrupted

In anger, Tony Stark was rarely subtle. Pacing one of the many conference rooms in the Avengers' compound, he listened to Rhodey's debriefing on the mercenary who went by the name Deadpool for as long as he could stand it without interrupting. He almost let him finish two sentences. "Let me get this straight," Tony interjected. "A two-bit merc that is known to be, psychotic, was it? Right, a psychotic mercenary takes an interest in Spider-Man, figures out his secret identity, kidnaps him and leaves a love note in my damn house, using technology that I've never seen before. Is there a reason I'd never heard his name before today? Do we have another Toomes, handing out alien technology to anyone with a little cash to spare? Please enlighten me."

"There are a lot of mentally unstable mercenaries. It's common in the profession, and Deadpool has been around for decades. He's dangerous and unpredictable but he never gets involved with anything significant. He kills for money, not principals. The idea that he would kidnap Spider-Man unless someone paid him a lot of money to do so, doesn't fit with his M.O." Rhodey shrugged. "As for the tech, he's had an unusual subset of technology for almost as long as he's been on the scene. Various governments have tried to bring him in from time to time to have a look at that technology. It never works out very well for them."

"He's money motivated?" Tony tapped the wall and a screen filled with an enlarged copy of Deadpool's note. "That doesn't sound like a ransom. What the Hell does he mean, clean my house? If he's referring to personnel, we'll have to drop the plural from the name Avengers if anyone else leaves."

"The most obvious implication is that he or whoever he's working for thinks something dirty is happening here. Maybe he's referring to Stark Industries? Or maybe he thinks you keep a cluttered lab? The man is psychotic. Asking him to be clear and concise in his demands is a little unrealistic," Rhodey said.

"Unfortunate for us that he can't express himself more clearly since he has a fifteen year old hostage, doing God knows what to him." Tony clenched his fists and resumed pacing. "You say this guy showed up in the mid seventies, right? He doesn't move like an AARP eligible mercenary." Tony played the security footage from Deadpool's jaunt through his kitchen side by side with the more grainy footage from his attack on Peter's school. "Is he enhanced, maybe another failed super soldier?"

"Maybe?" Rhodey shrugged. "We'd know more if anyone had ever been able to capture him. We don't even have a picture without that ridiculous mask on. He has occasionally gone by the name Wade Wilson but it's a dead end, an alias and not one he even bothered to flesh out and fake properly from what we can tell."

"You know what, we're just going to have a face to face with Mr. Wilson. Let's make this idiot nostalgic for the days that he just had to dodge the N.S.A. and S.H.I.E.L.D." Tony cracked his knuckles and started walking to his lab, Rhodey a step behind him.

"What can I do?"

"Make sure our jurisdiction is clear here. Make sure the locals don't have any idea about Peter's secret identity. The kid runs around with the suit in his backpack most of the time. Its tracker says it's in police lockup now. Get that back if you can. Assuming this isn't the psychotic idiot randomly spreading havoc, then he's been hired to do this. Any connections you have that might know who paid the jackass to piss in my Cheerios, hit them up, would you?" Tony asked that last bit with a sarcastic grimace.

"You got it, and Tony," Rhodey said, "the kid's going to be okay. We'll find him."

"We'd better." Tony held up his phone, showing his friend the twenty some odd notifications he had from Peter's aunt. "They've been questioning the woman for three hours as the local police precinct. Get her out of there too if you can."


Before the spider bite, Peter woke up gradually in steady stages. There were days that he was halfway through breakfast before his mind had fully come online. After the bite that changed. His mind no longer worked in slow stages at anything. The difference between asleep and awake was a light switch, crisply abrupt. Somehow he had gone back in time and wakefulness wouldn't quite come though sleep had slipped away. The world smelled wrong and the sounds were strange too. A television was playing, but the sounds of the city were absent.

When the world finally came into focus, Peter had to wonder how he had fallen asleep in some strange apartment with paper peeling off the walls and piles of magazines stacked on the floor like something from an episode of Hoarders. Sitting up was entirely too complicated. His brain and limbs seemed to be communicating on different wavelengths and there were some odd accessories attached to his arms and legs. Spider-Man who climbed sheer walls and swung through Queens like an urban Tarzan, fell off the couch trying to sit up.

If he weren't completely lost and somehow uncoordinated as a newborn, he might have the spare mental power to be embarrassed. As it was, he managed to sit up, resting against the listing old couch. Focusing on the metal cuffs encircling his forearms, Peter tried to find a crease or crevice to pry them open. He couldn't quite get any leverage. The longer he sat and breathed, the more he started to feel like himself.

"Hey kid, good morning. I was starting to worry about you there." An old black woman, tall and wrinkled and so thin that she looked almost brittle, settled on the couch he had just vacated. "My name's Althea, but you can call me Al. What's your name?"

Peter quickly confirmed that he did not have his mask on but since he couldn't remember how he had gotten here, he couldn't be sure he hadn't started with it on. He wasn't about to accidentally give his secret identity away if he could help it. "Maybe you could tell me where I am and how I got here and then you could maybe help me get these really odd accessories off? They don't go with my outfit." Peter clicked the metal bands together for emphasis.

"You get tired of me calling you kid, speak up with a name, all right? This is Deadpool's house. He carried you in here, dropped you on this couch, 'bout like a sack of potatoes, and rigged a leash of some kind to keep you here." Al used her remote to change the channel. "I don't know exactly how those cuffs work, but if you try to escape, you'll likely find out."

"Deadpool? I don't know a Deadpool. Did he say why he captured me?" Peter asked, still working at the metal cuffs. "Did he work for the Vulture, for Mr. Toomes? Why don't I remember being captured?"

"Well, Deadpool said he drugged you with a 'shit ton of ketamine' and while I don't know what the metric conversion of a shit ton is, ketamine can cause short term amnesia at normal doses. He didn't bother to explain why he drugged you or brought you back here." Al turned the television's volume up a couple of notches. "Now hush up for a bit. This is my show. If you're thirsty or hungry, kitchen's that way. Lavatory is over there." Al pointed to a busted door, literally hanging off its hinges.

The thought of water had Peter on his feet and walking, relatively steadily to the bathroom. "Don't be worried about your modesty. Deadpool broke that door ages ago, but I'm blind so it don't much matter." He gave Al another look and she was wearing dark tinted shades, like a blind person might.

"Thanks." Peter pulled the door as closed as it would go and quickly determined that the bathroom wasn't in much better shape than the living room. The vanity mirror was cracked into a spiraling spiderweb of shards, and the toilet tilted to the left enough that Peter was glad he didn't need to test it with his weight to relieve his painful bladder.

His mind was starting to run at pre-ketamine speeds and Peter quickly decided that beyond using the toilet and maybe a little water from the tap, Mr. Deadpool and Ms. Althea could keep their hospitality. After washing his hands, he gulped enough water to relieve his sandpaper mouth. Peter climbed the wall up to the narrow bathroom window, touched the sill, and found out what one hundred thousand volts of electricity felt like when channeled through the human body.

In front of Al, the television sparked dramatically and died. Apparently Wade hadn't bothered to ground his booby trap properly. Al sighed and tried to be thankful that she hadn't been shocked in the process too. She made her way over to the bathroom and the semiconscious teenager. "I guess we know what the cuffs do. You alive kid?"

"Ouch," Peter groaned almost unintelligibly from the floor.

"When you're feeling up to it, come to kitchen. I'll make you some tea."

Feeling up to it took more than a few minutes while Peter's nerves remembered how to work again. He drug himself still shaky and occasionally twitching to the kitchen and sat at an old worn Formica table. A steaming blue cup appeared in front of him and Peter sniffed Al's tea suspiciously. "Are you his accomplice?" Peter asked. "You work with this Deadpool guy?"

Al laughed, a deep bellied chuckle. "No, I'm Deadpool's original captive houseguest. Kid, the tea isn't poisoned. Even if I was working against you, if Deadpool wanted you dead, he wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to trap you. Yeah?"

Peter took a tentative sip of the tea and then a longer one. "It's good. Thank you."

"There are two rules of the house for guests. No escaping. No visitors." Al couldn't see the rebellious look on Peter's face but she sighed anyway, certain that this kid had no idea how serious his situation could be. "Now, that probably sounds silly to you, but you need to understand a couple of things. Deadpool may not be planning to kill you, but he's killed more folks on accident than most third world despots have on purpose. You said that shock earlier could have killed you. Deadpool would probably have been annoyed if that happened, might even have had to change whatever plan he has that you're here for.

"But he'd have composted your body where he puts the Jehovah's Witnesses and he wouldn't have thought of you again."

The memory of the electricity contracting his every muscle was still too fresh for Peter to disregard Al's warning out of hand. "You could help me get out of here. We could escape together," Peter said.

"Eh, I escaped once, never again. You think that electrical shock was rough, Deadpool didn't hurt me, didn't torture me for my escape. He tortured my friend that I tried to run to, tortured him damn near to death. I've got quite enough on my soul without getting any more old friend's bones broken or any kids sent to the compost heap."


May held her styrofoam cup of coffee with both hands and waited for the detective who deposited her in what had to be an interrogation room to come back. The officers had been able to tell her very little, mainly that Peter and Ned had been attacked. While Ned had been drugged and left behind, Peter had been taken.

They had questioned her at the scene and again at the station, making her go through all Peter's activities and friends, looking for a likely connection to explain what had happened. May answered their questions, unable to discuss Spider-Man and every aspect of her nephew's life that most likely had caused this. The only reason she was able to hold it together and keep the lies straight was the certainty that Stark was on the case and most likely knew exactly who the masked freak that attacked the boys had been.

When an Avenger finally showed up, it wasn't Ironman. Colonel James Rhodes in a crisp military uniform came along with a pack of official papers, and he left with the case file on Peter's abduction, all the evidence gathered at the scene and May Parker.

They were barely out of the police station when May started questioning him. "What do you know? Who was that freak in the costume? Why did he come after Peter? Talk to me."

"We need to wait until we're somewhere secure for details, Ms. Parker, but we identified him and we're working on it." Rhodey escorted her to their aircraft.

May took a seat, only realizing she still had her old, cold cup of police station coffee when she needed her hands to operate the seatbelt. Rhodey took it from her with a polite gesture and brought her a fresh cup of coffee that based on smell wasn't the same species of coffee bean as what the police used. As the engines fired up and the gentle push of g-force pushed them back in their seats, May started her questions again. "What can you tell me about my kid, Colonel Rhodes?"

It wasn't the first time Rhodey had had to give scary or incomplete news to emotionally charged family. Some of the enlisted men and women who went overseas weren't a great deal older than this woman's nephew, but Peter wasn't a soldier and May wasn't likely to be philosophical about what was happening.

"We're fairly sure that the person who took Peter was actually trying to get a reaction out of Tony or maybe the Avengers or maybe Stark Enterprises through Tony. Based on the limited communication we've had with the individual, he seems to know about Peter's other activities related to the Avengers and that his primary point of contact has been through Stark." Rhodes sighed, knowing that he was skating the line of how much information a civilian should have. "The individual didn't come in with deadly force. He came in to capture and there is no reason to think Peter has been harmed at this stage. We're still trying to figure out exactly what this guy wants and if he's working for someone else."

"They kidnapped Peter to get Tony Stark's attention. Of course," May said. "I knew this had to be Spider-Man related but it's not really. It's Tony Stark related. If he had left Peter in Queens instead of dragging him into adult battles when he was just fifteen, this would never have happened."

Looking uncomfortable, Rhodey shrugged. "We don't know enough to be sure. I guarantee that Tony is giving this his full attention and focusing all his resources on finding Peter."

"I want to hear it from him," May snapped.

"Of course, you'll have your chance in about twenty minutes."


Moments before the lights shifted red and alarms starting blaring, Tony felt the hard cool muzzle of a gun at the base of his skull. He could see the masked criminal and the portal he had entered through in the reflection of the monitors in from of him. "Boss, we have an intruder," F.R.I.D.A.Y. announced unnecessarily.

"Deadpool is it?" Today asked, forcing his voice to be light, even as his entire body became tense with adrenaline and anger. "I got your note yesterday. It was a little light on details. Why don't you turn the kid loose and we'll discuss whatever it is you want or need from me?"

"The kid is safe where he is. I told you, he could come home once you'd cleaned house. Have you started, asshole? Cause it looks to me like you're wasting time researching me." Deadpool sighed then laughed to himself. "It doesn't look like you want the bunny rabbit back at all. I can keep him indefinitely. I've got a live-in sitter and everything."

"This isn't some kind of joke. You've got my attention. You want my house cleaned? Give me some more information. Is this house the Avengers or Stark Industries or something else? I know your elevator doesn't go straight to the top so this may surprise you to hear, but your vague dramatic requests make no sense. What do you want?" Tony snapped.

"I want justice, vengeance. I want you to fucking stop what you started, asshole. I find it hard to believe that a genius, billionaire visionary like you, DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE'S DONE." Deadpool snarled. He ground the barrel of the gun into Tony's neck. "You know, I can't tell if you're playing stupid or if you really don't understand me?"

"I really don't understand you," Tony hissed. "Whatever I did, that's between you and me. Explain it to me and maybe I can make it right. Did I sell a weapon to your enemy? Did I burn down your condo defending the world from aliens or killer robots? Maybe I slept with your girlfriend? I did a lot of fucking over the years. You tell me what I did and we'll go from there."

"I don't believe you really don't know. Okay, I've got an idea. You want to prove to me that you want to make amends? Get the big guy out," Deadpool ordered. At Tony's blank stare he elaborated, punctuating his words with jabs of his gun. "Save Brucey Bruce, your big green friend, and maybe I'll believe you might want to make shit right. For now, it's probably time I checked on the bunny rabbit. I wonder if he's tried to escape? Hope I didn't leave the current too high." Deadpool tapped his belt and vaulted through a portal that existed for only a moment before closing behind him.

Tony sprang to his feet and paced to where the portal had been. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. did you get the tracker on him?"

"Yes boss, searching for the G.P.S. signal now."

"Also, run a global facial recognition search for Bruce Banner." Not searching too hard for Bruce had been a courtesy. If the man needed space, Tony hadn't wanted to push him, but if he was somehow mixed up in whatever Deadpool had fixated on, it was time to set courtesy aside, make sure Bruce was okay and maybe finally get a clear answer about what was happening that had set the psycho after Tony and his associates.