"The Lizard is back, I take it?" Clint asked grabbing his bow as the entire tower seemed to be filled with blinking red lights.
Steve nodded "Tony where are we headed?" Steve asked.
"JARVIS, current location?" Tony asked already in his suit, visor up. It was Steve, Clint, and himself on this mission, Natasha was busy at Oscorp and Bruce was on call.
"Midford High. The Police are on route to the scene as well." JARVIS informed them. The AI's words seemed to freeze the three of them.
"Midford? Is that?" Clint prayed he was wrong.
Steve cursed he abandoned his Motorcycle. "Tony get us there now!"
Iron Man didn't have to be told twice as he grabbed Steve. "Meet us there Clint. But the Archer was already gone. Tony felt like he was operating on Autopilot. Midtown high, Peter was at Midtown high. Peter was in danger.
They had dreaded this from the moment they had adopted the adorable 4 year old. But they'd been careful, they'd taken every precaution to keep Peter out of the spotlight and away from anyone who'd wanted to hurt him. But of course nothing could last forever and now Peter could be… No Tony was not going to think about it. Peter was smart he'd be fine. He had to be fine.
Peter cursed, he looked back at Gwen only for a moment. "Go. GO!" And then he ran at the lizard. At the last second he slid under him and came at him from behind. The lizard grabbed him off his back and threw him forward Peter felt his backpack yanked from his back and kicked out slamming the lizard into a few lockers. But the lizard grabbed his feet and threw him through a wall.
Spiderman groaned but he didn't have long before the lizard was on him. He crushed one of Peter's arms and the boy barely dodged as sharp claws slashed at his face.
"Nowhere to hide Peter."
And he knew then that Connors knew exactly who he was. His eyes found his backpack and Peter webbed it toward him catching it as the lizard threw him through yet another wall. His back was going to be so bruised, thank god for super healing.
He quickly threw on his mask. Dodging a smoke bomb Connors threw at him as he did so. The man continued to monologue about cures but Peter wasn't listening he grabbed his shoes and threw it at the scientist turned Lizard.
The creature growled and Peter webbed him up jumping on his back and trying to get control over the rampaging beast. "You're not thinking straight doc." He knew this wasn't Connors, the man he met was not the one he was currently fighting, it was the serum, it had to be the serum. "Stop this, this isn't you." The lizard just roared and slashed cutting through the lockers like they were made of butter. Peter jumped onto the room grabbing a hold of the roof and crawling along. The lizard followed Peter kicked him pushing him to the ground and webbed his claw to the lockers.
Unfortunately, that wasn't such a smart move as he wrenched the locker free and used that to swipe at Spiderman.
"Alright so you don't want to talk." He got a roar in response and Peter webbed his mouth shut "There you go." He grinned under his mask but the lizard just clawed the webbing off of himself and swung his tail at the boy. Peter caught it. "Don't.." The lizard whipped his tail sending peter into a wall but he didn't release his grip on the lizard tail. "Make me…" He was smashed into the opposite wall. "Have to… " He grunted in pain as his back met lockers "hurt you." The lizard whipped his tail once more detaching it and sending Peter and the tail through a set of double doors.
Peter threw the still wiggling the tail aside "That's disgusting." The lizard grabbed Peter by his head and smashed him up against a window. He struggled against the grip but couldn't free himself. Suddenly the grip went slack and he dropped to the floor.
"Gwen" The lizard hissed and Peter saw her back away looking frightened. He moved quickly encasing the giant creature in webbing before grabbing Gwen and using the trophy in her hand to break a window. He hugged her briefly glad she was alright but also slightly mad that she had risked her life like that.
He cupped her face "I'm going to throw you out the window now."
"What?" She asked and then screamed as Peter threw her out the broken window and caught her with his webbing. Peter heard the police sirens he grinned and turned to face the lizard.
"Uh-oh, somebody's been a bad lizard." He attacked. They fought slamming through walls. Peter flipped over bookshelves and sent table after table flying at the green monster. The Lizard sent him flying and he crashed into the books. He braced himself for an attack but his spidey sense went quiet. Spiderman looked around but Curt Connors was gone. He cursed running through the school until he found it, a giant hole leading straight into the sewers.
"This is Iron Man, We've got the school surrounded." Peter cursed when he heard his father. He looked down at himself cut and bruised and there was simply no way to explain and Peter couldn't let Connors get away again.
He looked back at the school and made his choice jumping down into the sewers after the monster. His parents were going to freak, but maybe if he stopped the lizard, if he saved them, then maybe they would listen.
Tony cursed.
"What is it?" Clint stood beside him.
"It's gone, there's no movement inside the school, I had Jarvis do a full scan, nothing."
"How can we just keep losing a giant lizard?" Clint asked sounding frustrated.
"Tony!" Steve was out of breath as he ran up beside his husband. Tony turned around taking in the sight of Steve's panicked face and his heart dropped. "Peter isn't here."
"What? Not here?" He let out a sigh of relief, not here was better than hurt or injured or… worse.
Steve did not look at all relieved "I've called him half a dozen times and he's not answering."
Tony's momentary relief vanished. He pulled out his own phone ready to track his wayward son and hoping beyond hope that he'd just decided to ditch school. The man cursed "I didn't put a tracker on his new phone!" After their big argument he'd decided against the tracker.
Clint looked between the two of them. "Hey, don't worry, maybe he just had a free track. He's not here, he's not hurt. Tony just said there's no one in the school. So he's safe. He probably doesn't even know that this has happened."
Steve did not look convinced as he tightened his grip on his phone. "I hope you're right."
"I'm contacting Natasha, I'm telling her she needs to up the urgency on getting that info on Oscorp," Tony told them dialing as he spoke.
Steve stared at the half-demolished school "I just don't get it, why attack a high school?"
Clint wished he had an answer but he kept coming up blank. "I don't know, but we need to find this thing fast."
Peter heard his phone ring for the millionth time. He'd been ignoring all his parent's calls, he couldn't talk to them right now, but this time it wasn't them.
"Gwen, hey."
"Where are you?"
"I'm fine, I'm down in the sewer, I'm tracking it."
"Peter?"
"Hmm."
"You never told me you're parents were superheroes." She hissed through the phone.
"Shit, are they asking for me?"
"Sort of, I just put two and two together." Peter couldn't help but smile, she was so smart. He shook his head, nope he needed to focus.
"I can't worry about that right now. I gotta stop him before anyone get's hurt, we need an antidote. Do you know how to run a serum?"
"Yeah. I do them for Connors all the time."
"Ok great great great. Listen I need you to go to Oscorp I need you to access cross-species file its a blue serum file #12389"
"Ok got it. On my way." she hung up.
Peter thought about sending his parents a text letting them know he was alright but he didn't even know what to say or how to reassure them and he didn't really have time. Peter had found the man's nest or whatever lizards called their homes.
He eased forward on full alert, but his spider sense remained silent and the tension in his shoulders eased. He saw a video camera and clicked paly. Connors started talking but Peter was already distracted as he looked around. There on a laptop was the Ganali device it was running a simulation, he could see what the man wanted to do, he wanted to spread the serum in a cloud over the entire city, maybe even farther than that. He remembered what Connors had said before. You can't outrun a cloud. And there on the map circled savagely with a black marker was Oscorp.
"Oscorp." He whispered "Gwen."
"We've got confirmed sightings of the lizard, It's headed toward Canal street station." A police officer ran up toward Captain Stacey and the three Avengers. Tony was still on the phone talking with Natasha.
"What about Spiderman?" Captain Stacey asked.
"Is this really the time for that?" Steve asked the captain of the police department. Stacey glared at him and Steve bristled he was well aware that there were still a lot of people who didn't trust them but this was certainly not the time for such prejudices.
"He was in the high school." The policeman told Stacey looking nervously at Steve as he did so. Steve tried to calm himself knowing he was mostly agitated because Peter was still missing. They had bruce out looking for him but the Doctor had already been to the boys usual haunts and there was no trace of him.
"I want that Spiderman off the streets," Stacey said looking at Steve and not the policeman he was addressing.
Steve nodded he was not about to start an argument when there were matters of more importance to be taken care of.
Steve, Tony and Clint were with the police when they found the lizard. The police began to shoot, Tony and Clint joined while steve held out his shield advancing toward the creature. It went down and they continued forward.
Tony wasn't all there, he wanted to contain the lizard as quickly as possible so he could concentrate on finding Peter. Had he been paying more attention he might have noticed that the lizard's heart rate was still stable even as he lay looking nearly dead.
The creature jumped up spraying the air with a green contaminant. Tony's suit filtered the air so he was saved but clint and Steve got the brunt of it as well as a dozen other policemen.
Clint and Steve went down choking and Tony was at their side cursing as the Lizard fought his way past them and into the city streets. Ironman knew he should go after them but he couldn't bring himself to leave Steve and Clint.
Tony pulled off the man's cowl, and Steve's face was already half covered in scales. Clint wasn't faring any better as one of his eyes turned yellow.
"JARVIS dial bruce now!"
"Tony! I haven't found Peter yet." Bruce told him before the other man could speak. Tony cringed but he couldn't worry about that right now.
"Bruce I need you down here right now."
"But…" Bruce knew it had to be important if he was asking him t stop looking for Peter. "Is it a code green?"
"No, but it is a genetic mutation. I need you to analyze it and find a cure."
"Genetic mutation. Are you talking about the lizard, did you catch it?"
"No. Bruce it's Steve and Clint. The lizard is carrying some sort of biological agent that mutates whoever comes in contact with it."
Bruce cursed on the other line. Tony could hear the other man taking calming breaths before a voice finally answered: "Ok, I'm on my way."
Tony hated calling off the search for his son but he had to believe that Peter was safe and far from all of this, hopefully, he was already back at the tower.
Peter jumped out of the sewer running along the streets of New York pulling out his cell as he did. He dialed Gwen's number.
"Hi."
"Hey. Hey, where are you?"
"I'm at Oscorp."
"You have to get out of there right now!"
"The antidote is cooking."
"No no no no, Connors is on the way, He's coming to you right now, he needs the displacement device. He's gonna infect the whole city."
"There's eight minutes left."
"You're going to wait there for eight minutes after what I just told you? People are going to die. You leave right now! Listen that is an order ok."
"I'm going to get everybody out."
"Did you hear what I-" She hung up. "Gwen Gwen! You mother hummer are you serious." He stared at his phone for a minute before running already shooting his web at the nearest building.
Gwen set off the alarm in Oscorp signaling for a building-wide evacuation.
Natasha was walking through the building against the crowd. She'd just gotten off the phone with Tony and she had more questions than answers. Why attack the school? There was a factor here that she was missing. People were running past her now panicking trying to get out of the building.
A young blonde girl caught her arm. "You need to get out of the building now."
"I need to get some research first," Natasha told her trying not to appear suspicious. The girl looked to be about Peter's age.
"You can't that Lizard is headed here right now."
"I'll be fine you should evacuate," Natasha told the blond. But the girl refused to let go of her. Natasha thought about knocking the girl unconscious but before she could strike a loud voice echoed through the lab.
"Antidote time remaining 5 minutes."
"Antidote?" Natasha looked at the blonde girl "What does that mean?"