Not a lot to say this time, except enjoy.
Somewhere in Mexico.
Peter and Juri were currently on a train, heading to the next destination for the tournament. The night in the hotel room in Japan left Peter extremely skeptical of what Juri's intentions truly were. He already made the assumption he shouldn't get too attached to her personally, but seeing as she now knew his secret identity, he didn't have much of a choice.
"Maybe if I overloaded her eye…no, I promised myself I wouldn't kill again after…Stryker." Peter thought to himself. He still couldn't get over all the death and destruction he caused in France and New York. The talk he had with Madame Web only made things more vague for him, but his overall takeaway, after seeing another version of himself, the younger version of himself, was he could still be the hero he once was.
"Pete! You even heard what I said?" Peter snapped out his daydreaming and turned his attention to Juri, who was sitting opposite of him.
"Sorry. I just got some old memories that I've been trying to forget."
"About what happened Talon?" Peter was about to ask how she knew, then realized he didn't exactly try to make Spider-Man's return a secret while he was overseas.
"Yeah." Peter simply said. "Juri, I already know that you have some sort of connection with S.I.N, and that your eye isn't exactly normal. So what is it?"
Juri had a faint smirk on her face. "Well, well. Someone's been doing their research." Her face then turned a bit more serious. "I don't know what you read, but I did work with S.I.N for a while." Juri's left eye then started to glow. "Thought I was due some worker's compensation, so I took what they called the Feng Shui Engine. Enhances all my fighting moves and gives me a period of power, although it feels more like euphoria."
"Oh, so you're only slightly crazy." Peter quipped. Juri chuckled a bit at his sarcasm, but let him continue. "And about what happened in the hotel…"
Juri's face went a shade of red remembering what happened last night. She knew it was gonna come up eventually. "I came off too forward?"
"Came off too for-you broke my nose, stalked me, drugged and kidnapped me, found out my secret identity, and then basically tempt me into having sex with you."
"And you're sitting here, chastising me as if you didn't enjoy it as well?"
"That's not the point Juri." Peter said, rubbing his head. "I'm just confused why you wanted to do it with me when you started off knowing me by almost killing me."
"I've almost been killed by people in Shadaloo and S.I.N, lost my left eye, and wanted by multiple government agencies. Think me being very forward is the least of my problems." Juri stated.
"At least I know the why now."
"Besides, I enjoy the current company I'm with." Juri then leaned in closer to Peter's ear. "I hope you feel the same."
"Ok, little too forward." Peter thought.
"Juri, I don't do friends with benefits. Much less "Person who tried killing me with benefits"
Juri rolled her eyes. "Fine, still not gonna stop me from making you less tense near me."
"If you say so." Peter's burner phone was ringing. He checked it and saw it was an unknown number. It was Wrench.
"I'll be back. Gonna see how much longer we got till our stop." Peter said. Juri simply nodded her head as Peter went towards the middle of his and the next train car and accepted Wrench's call.
"What's up Wre-"
"PETER! We have a major problem."
"What happened?!"
"Sombra contacted me. She said that there's two people on your train emitting highly traceable frequencies."
"What's the problem with that?" Peter asked.
"THERE'S PEOPLE AFTER BOTH OF THEM! THEY'RE GONNA ATTACK THE FUCKING TRAIN!"
Peter looked back into his car frantically. He didn't know who the second person could be, but figured Juri's eye was one of the culprits.
"Shit! Can you redirect them somewhere else?"
"It's too late. They're too close to the train to trick them. You gotta get off or somehow get them to back off."
"Crap..." Peter said. He tried thinking of a plan on his feet, but knew a priority was to minimize the amount of deaths that were about to happen. "Keep tracking this phone. I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but we need to meet and figure out shit from there."
"Copy." Wrench said as he hung up. Peter went back into his car and straight back to Juri.
"We have a problem. Some friends of yours are tracking your eye. So this train ride is gonna turn to hell in a second."
"That's impossible." Juri said. "I made sure this eye couldn't be tracked."
"Well congrats, you did a shit job at it. If you DIDN'T destroy my old phone, we wouldn't be in this situation."
"Alright, I'm sorry. What's the plan?"
Peter grabbed his Iron Spider armor bag and got his mask ready. "There's a 2nd person on this train emitting a signal that's having some group chase him. Hopefully whoever's chasing you is joining those guys. I'm going to distract them while you get more in front of the train."
"And what about you staying in the tournament?" Juri asked.
"One of us has to stay in the tournament. If it's you and I survive this, I can do more damage to S.I.N on the outside."
"Just…don't die. I'd feel shitty if the last fun time we had was last night." Juri said.
Peter had to smirk a bit. "Just get to the front." Juri nodded as she put on her leather jacket and ran to the front of the train. Peter followed her to the intersection of two train cars and put his mask on. He then climbed onto the roof of the train, and realizeing on the left side was vast desert and the right was dangerously close to a cliffside.
"Way better plan a few minutes ago." Peter thought. He started running across the train the opposite way of Juri. In the distance, he saw a group of people getting on the back of the train, near the cargo side. They were dressed in black, but the neck and head was surrounded by a metal helmet.
"Probably the second mystery group." Peter said. He felt a strong gust of wind hit his right side. He turned to see a attack helicopter, with S.I.N's logo on it.
"Spider!" The pilot said into the heli's speaker. "Surrender to S.I.N and no further action will be taken!"
"This is just a case of mistaken identity! I think you're looking for a female spider person!" Peter yelled.
"Repeat, Surrender or we will open fire!" Peter responded by webbing both the guns on the helicopter and the window of the pilot's seat. He knew the pilot would be able to get rid of the webbing in a few minutes, so he ran to the back fast. Once he got to the cargo hold, the train started turning. Peter's powers worked effectively on structures that didn't move as much. The train moved too much. He lost his footing and was flung off the side of the train near the cliffside, but was able to shoot a web-line to the cargo hold. It took him a minute, but he was able to climb up to the handrail outside the train. He was greeted by a near blast of energy hitting him as well as one of the guys boarding the train from earlier. He webbed the guy to try and save him, only to realize the guy was a robot, as his face was dangling off his head, revealing the circuitry within.
"Well isn't that freaky like Friday." Peter quipped. He let the robot go and planned to jump into the train when he heard…
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" Several more robots flew out of the train, almost hitting Peter in the process. With half the side of the train car blown out, Peter could see the people inside. First person that caught his eye was a guy who was almost fully cyberized. He figured he had to be the one transmitting the signal that brought about the crowd of robots. The second person was a female with a blue cloak on and some sort of jewel on the neck of the cloak. He could also see what looked like a necklace but wasn't sure. What he was sure of was that same girl saw him, and somehow used her powers to throw Peter into the train car.
"Who are you?" The cloaked woman said. Her eyes were glowing white while her hands were glowing black. Peter figured she was either a mutant, or some type of sorcerer like Doctor Strange.
"I'm the train conductor. That's why I went back here to check for stowaways." Peter quipped. He heard a faint chuckle and saw there were three more people in the car, and the one laughing was green. The cyberized guy stepped in before the cloaked girl did something dangerous.
"Relax Raven. I don't think Slade would've sent someone like…him."
Peter got up from the floor. "I don't know what you mean by that, but just to clear the air, I'm not a villain."
Raven crossed her arms. "Then what are you?"
"Hero. Occasionally called Web-head, Spider freak, bug, insect, piece of shit, but the last one is more rare." Peter said. He then looked around to everyone in the train car. "But you guys looked like you stepped straight out of Ripley's Believe or Not, so what's up with that?"
A guy in a green cape spoke up. "We're the Teen Titans…"
"The bestest heroes around."
"Beast boy…" The green caped guy said. "Anyways, I'm Robin, he's Beast Boy, she's Starfire, she's Raven, and he's Cyborg." Peter was able to almost instantly put each name with a face. Considering how out there each of them were, it wasn't that difficult to do.
"Great…why don't you tell the complete stranger our weaknesses as well?" Raven said. Peter was glad he had a mask on, as the look he made would've only made her even more upset than she already was.
"Alright, I'll admit me hanging off the side of the train was…definitely strange. But I'm not planning to hurt any of you. I'm just trying to figure out why there was robots flying out the side and into a very long fall."
"It's one of our enemies, Slade." Cyborg said.
"A.k.a Deathstroke." Robin added.
"A.k.a Mr. Dark and Edgy." Beast boy said dramatically. Peter sighed as he knew he was the same way but didn't think someone could be this mirror like to him. Raven smirked at his sigh, however.
"If that's how you feel about Beast boy now, then maybe we'll get along."
"Ok sure, but who even is-"
"OPEN FIRE!" Peter turned his attention to the loud noise, which was the attack chopper from before. The miniguns on it were spinning up, and Peter knew if they stood still, they would be killed.
"All of you run! I'll deal with the chopper." Before Peter could hear a single no from any of them, he jumped off the side of the train and webbed onto the helicopter. Despite knowing Spider-Man wasn't in the train anymore, the helicopter still fired onto the train. Raven put up a field to protect everyone as they got onto the next car.
"Ok. Now to deal with this bird." Peter started climbing up his web line to try and get to the pilot's chair, but the constant swaying of the helicopter was making it difficult. After a few minutes, Peter lost his handling with his web and fell on top of the train car Raven was still in. The helicopter started shooting again, but this time it was aimed farther ahead. It was taking aim at the rest of the Titans running away.
"Oh no you don't." Peter pressed a button on his bag and activated his Iron Spider Armor. He went to the car right before the Titans and tried unhooking the cars, but was having trouble lifting the hook out of place. That was until Cyborg came behind him and helped him lift up the hook, separating the cars.
Peter then saw Raven run up behind the both of them.
"Just track my signal. We'll meet back up eventually." Cyborg yelled. Robin nodded his head, and turned to Peter.
"I'm trusting you with their safety. Don't make me regret it."
"Yeah, because that's definitely going to help my thinking process now."
"You were thinking through what you just did?" Peter turned around frantically. There was no way a X-Men could be nearby to talk to him telepathically. That was until he heard the voice more clearly. He turned over to Raven, who was already looking at him first.
"You have telepathy?"
"We're having this conversation, aren't we?"
"Touché" Peter thought. His attention turned back to the helicopter, who was lining up a shot again. Peter was thinking of what to do, when Wrench patched through to his Armor's comm link.
"Still breathing Pete?"
"Yeah, but I got a attack helicopter on me, and right now it looks to turn me into Swiss cheese."
"I can hack the heli, just throw the phone you have right now. I can still track you through the armor."
"Won't that…oh I don't know…make it fly into the train?"
"It's a fifty-fifty" Wrench said. Faced with no other options, Peter pulled out the phone Juri gave him and prepared to chuck it at the heli.
"Here goes everything." As Peter threw his phone, Wrench did his usual hacking finesse and overloaded the engine of the helicopter. The good thing about it was it was flying overhead to the opposite side of the train cars. The bad thing about it was that the pilot was trying to fight for the controls again, meaning it was coming back to hit the train car they were on off the hill.
Peter, Cyborg, and Raven all had the same mindset, which was "Get off the train before we die", which ended with the helicopter hitting the train car and taking it off the side of the cliff. Cyborg and Raven both jumped off and got enough ground to land safely on, but Peter was the last one to jump out, and he barely caught the ledge of the cliff. He pulled himself up onto solid ground and laid down, facing the sun. Wrench contacted him again.
"Peter? Are you still alive?"
"Next time Wrench, I'm having you take the fucking train..." Peter got up and sat on the ground.
"You're alive, ain't ya?"
"Barely. You definitely took down the helicopter…"
Wrench on the other end was ecstatic. "Woohoo! That's what I do Pete."
"And you also took half of the train off the tracks."
Wrench got quiet immediately after that statement. "Uhm, whoops?"
"Yeah, whoops." Peter chuckled. "Luckily no one was killed, but we had to ditch the train."
"We?"
Peter turned his attention to both Raven and Cyborg, who were wiping the sand off of them. "I made some new superpowered friends. You might wanna get a van…or you know, a very sturdy Jeep."
"Heavy person?"
"You could say that…"
"Say no more. I'm on my way. They are fine with me having radio control and sort of have a grey moral compass like you do concerning me?"
"I don't know their taste in music and assuming you don't try shooting them, we should be fine."
"Alright. You might want to start walking towards the nearest city, I'll pick you guys up mid-way."
It was the best news Peter heard all day. "You got it. Spidey out." Peter then hung up on Wrench again. "Always wanted to say that." He turned his attention to the two people in front of him while his armor reverted back into its bag look.
"So, you were able to get some help out here?" Cyborg asked.
"Technically yes, but it's going to take a while. We're gonna meet him halfway to the city."
"You mean the city we were taking the train to in the first place?" Raven asked. "Because now we're vulnerable in the open."
"I'm aware of that...but there's three of us and you guys were only fighting some robots."
"If that's your logic, then you were just fighting an attack helicopter." Cyborg added.
"It was aiming for someone else and I was the distraction." Peter said. He felt like now he was being interrogated just for being on the train. "Look, either way your friends were being targeted, and the person I was with just got me targeted. Way I see it is we could all work together to figure out who's after who and settle it from there."
Cyborg thought it over for a second, but Raven seem less convinced. "Doesn't sound like a bad idea in reality."
"You know what else didn't sound like a bad idea? Recruiting Terra, and that ended with us all nearly dying."
"Raven, she could barely control her power, and she was working for Slade the whole time we knew her. This guy right here doesn't seem like the kind of person to work with Slade."
"I don't know who this Slade guy is, but I'm guessing he's evil, or…you know…psychotic." Peter quipped.
"Whatever...I don't care if the whole team gives him a chance when we meet up again, I'm not trusting him till he proves he's not like her." Raven said as she started walking along the side of the train tracks. Peter and Cyborg walked behind her, far enough to be out of her hearing range.
"So…guess my quips weren't enough to charm her."
"Raven is…complicated to say the least. But don't get me wrong, she cares about everyone on the team. It's just after this one newcomer that came along and joined us…"
"She betrayed you guys and now Raven is suspicious of anyone else who seems friendly towards you guys."
"That's…a pretty accurate assumption. How did-"
"Cyborg, I'm a superhero. I know how these things go. Besides, I had my own betrayal experience with my old best friend. He died before we could even make amends."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Cyborg said. "What's your name anyway?"
"Hero name: Spider-Man. Secret hacker name: Spider. Maybe once I actually get to know all of you guys better, I'll tell you my real name."
"Hey, we all knew each other for years and still call each other by our Hero names. Ain't no rush." Cyborg said. He couldn't see it, but Peter had a slight smile under his mask. He knew he definitely found some good people, WAY better than Juri, who he all but forgot about until realizing that she was still on the train, but seeing as he threw the one way, he had of contacting her at a helicopter, he figured she'd be alright.
Interpol Hideout, Mexico.
"No, you're not taking my Jeep Wrench." Guile said.
"I need to pick up Spider-Man." Wrench said aloud. He got different looks from the room, with Rogue looking at him hopeful that Peter was still alive, and Chun-Li and Cammy looking at him like he was crazy. The fact they knew him for only 2 days, and they never saw him without his mask didn't make it better.
"Ok I'll admit, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but he's somewhere in the desert and I can track him."
"But why do you need my Jeep for it?" Guile asked.
"Gee, I don't know. Maybe it's because he's in the fucking desert and you have a car made for off-road. It's not fucking rocket science."
"Wrench…" Rogue started. "Just calm down a bit. If army man doesn't want to help us, we'll get him ourselves."
"With you on that the whole way through." Wrench said. Both him and Rogue were getting ready to leave when Cammy spoke up.
"Well, what about this whole investigation?"
"S.I.N is planning something shady, fuck the investigation. Besides, I'm a hacker and a demolitionist, not a detective." Wrench said.
"If you guys and this Spider-Man do anything outside of the law, we'll have to arrest you." Guile's said.
"We'll make sure you get your suspects. But we're not gonna be part of them." Rogue added. With that, the two of them left the building. They walked down the street, figuring out what to do.
"Is this how it was with you two when Stryker was still around?" Rogue asked.
"Pretty much. Although there is a definite lack of the puckish rogues crew we had during that time. Either way, we got to get some type of large car to pick Peter up in."
"Why exactly?"
"He quipped his way to two new friends, and one is apparently on the heavy side."
"Great." Rogue said, frustrated. "He's trusting just about anyone now."
"Desperate times...but let's focus on the car for right now." Wrench said. As if a miracle called down upon him, he saw a Van that seemed in relatively good condition.
"Hell yes." Wrench said. He got to the driver side when the van turned on by itself. Rogue and Wrench looked at each other.
"I didn't hack it yet." Wrench stated.
"Nope, but I did." They both turned to the voice and realized the familiar face immediately.
"Sombra?" They said in unison.
"Welcome to Mexico."
Oof, now this chapter was definitely on the more meaty side regarding content. Speaking of which, yes the Teen Titans are now also a part of this universe, along with the possibility of a few Titans villains. Before I get asked, 1) The Titans are the same as they were in their show from early 2000 2) The Titans are based off the tv show. The original one, which actually had character development. Am I digging a hole by including a bunch of people for Peter to interact with? Possibly, but we'll cross that bridge later. Hope you guys enjoyed and until next time.