Gordon's wrath on the crooked police is swift and efficient; all of the dirty cops patrolling Crime Alley are gone by the end of the week and replaced with a special task force handpicked by Gordon himself. There's a night and day difference; Crime Alley becomes safer overnight. Peter still stops the occasional mugging and burglary, but he's no longer stopping four every hour. Just one or two a night. Which is a breath of fresh air. It gives Peter time to visit the bus depot (and grab a free meal or two) and to handle the small stuff.
Such as this evening. The sky is clear for once, the air is relatively warm, and the sun is just beginning to set when a little girl calls up to him from a street below.
"Mr. Spider!" she cries, waving at him as hard as she possibly can.
Peter changes course immediately, dropping down on the sidewalk beside the girl. "Hey, what's up? Is everything okay?"
"I need help! Mr. Fluffles is stuck in the tree!" the little girl cries, pointing up at a nearby tree. Her finger is pointed squarely at the fattest, angriest cat Peter has ever seen in his life. "It's been hours! Can you help him?"
Mr. Fluffles glowers at him menacingly from the highest branch in the tree, tail flicking back and forth in irritation. This cat is huge. Peter's never seen one this big before. Judging by the way its hackles rise when it looks at Peter, it definitely isn't his biggest fan.
"Er-" Peter starts. The little girl looks up at him, earnest and hopeful, and he sighs. "Uh, yeah, of course. Stay here, okay?"
"This is the best thing I've seen all week," Falcon says.
"T'Challa, commune with your cousin," Princess Shuri adds.
Peter approaches the tree, slow and easy, making cooing noises at the cat. The cat is absolutely not impressed and hisses at him. Peter climbs up and gently plucks Mr. Fluffles off the branch. It's all claws and teeth, writhing in Peter's grip. Peter holds it out at arms' length, leaning back to avoid the furious cat's swipes.
"Uh, here's Mr. Fluffles, but he's a little angry so maybe-" Peter starts.
"Fluffle!" the girl cries in relief.
The cat's reaction is immediate. The fury disappears and it begins to purr. It wiggles free of Peter's grip and leaps into the girl's arms, perfectly docile. The little girl hugs her giant evil cat and squeals in joy.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Thank you, Mr. Spider!" the girl says, beaming up at him. Mr. Fluffle eyes him smugly from the girl's arms.
"You're welcome. Please keep him inside," Peter says before yanking himself back into the air with a carefully placed web. He huffs, muttering, "The Avengers never get bullied by cats. Why is my life like this."
For some reason, he can imagine the Avengers laughing at this heartily. He's just glad none of them are around to see it.
Peter runs out of web fluid halfway through his patrol and has to call it an early night. Which is probably for the best; without the clouds hovering over Gotham, the night drops to freezing temperatures that his suit just isn't capable of handling. He dearly misses the heater that Tony insisted on putting inside all of Peter's suits. And the sensory adjustments. Peter's been flirting with the ragged edge of a migraine lately, either through stress, lack of food, or lack of sleep. Whichever it is, he's overdue for one.
But that's a Future Peter problem. Tonight, his problem is that he's using up way too much web fluid. Webs are great, but they have their limits, and he can't use the entirety of his web fluid stock every night. That's just not practical.
Fortunately, he has an idea. And just enough light left to build it.
Some magnets, a few dodgy electronics, and many crackling snaps later, and his vision comes to fruition. He holds a device in his hands no larger than a hockey puck that bears his red spider emblem. It vibrates against his hand and there's a low thrumming coming from it. He tosses it from hand to hand, then slings it out across the floor to the other side of the room. It skids across the floor, the LEDs blinking faster, and then a blue force field shoots out of the center, covering a five foot area. The force field pushes the items inside it up to the roof, as if gently plucking them off of the ground and holding them. After thirty seconds, it collapses.
He grins, picks up the puck and tosses it up in the air. "And Tony said my force field idea wouldn't work. I'm so throwing this at him the next time I see him."
He admires his work for a moment, then sets the puck aside and goes to brush his teeth and get ready for bed. He taps the Stark radio and, after a few bursts of static, it begins to play Sloop John B. Peter heads for the bathroom to brush his teeth. At least toothpaste and toothbrushes are absurdly cheap.
"That's very impressive," Shuri says.
"You built a similar device when you were ten, Shuri," T'Challa says.
"With vibranium, in a high tech lab, running tests from morning to night. He just put one together in the space of three hours using junkyard pieces and solar panels," Shuri points out. "Imagine what he could do with our technology? When this is over, I am stealing him. Stark can borrow him when I allow it."
"I'm sure that will go swimmingly with Mr. Stark," T'Challa says dryly.
Peter brushes his teeth, changes into his pajamas-a set of sweats that are beginning to become frighteningly threadbare-and nestles into his bed. He's asleep in moments.
Peter runs into Duke before class the next day, and jogs up to him. Duke's arm is in a cast and sling, and he's struggling with his locker.
"Here, I've got it," Peter says. Duke startles, but moves aside for him with a sigh and Peter's quick to input his locker code. He, Duke, and Tim just treat each other's locker's as communal property between the three of them. "How are you feeling?"
"Sore," Duke admits, rolling his shoulder. He frowns. "And a little frustrated. This sucks."
"How bad is your arm?" Peter asks, grabbing Duke's books for him and closing his locker. They start to walk down the hall together. The school is quiet and subdued this early in the day, and it's a nice change from the overwhelming noise and sights when the day is in full swing.
"Bad. I'm in a cast for at least two months," Duke admits. "And then there's the physical therapy."
Peter frowns. He's broken his arm before, but it's always healed within hours. Sometimes it takes closer to a day if the bone is really mangled. "That sucks."
"Tell me about it," Duke says. They're standing outside of his class. "Hey, you wanna get some food after class? I've convinced Jason he owes me a pizza. Mostly by annoying him until he gave in."
"Ah, well-" Peter starts. He frowns, rubs the back of his neck, and shrugs. "Can we do a rain check? I've got a lot going on these days."
Duke frowns. "You've been working nonstop for awhile, Peter. You've got to loosen up sometime."
God, this is all way too familiar. "Yeah, I know, I know. Soon. Just, not tonight. Okay?"
Duke sighs. "Yeah. All right. Let's do a rain check. It just can't be this weekend. Tim and I are going to visit my parents."
That works out perfectly, honestly. Peter's excuses to duck out from meetups over the weekend have started to become thin even to his own ears. "That works. Sometime next week, at the latest."
Duke quirks a brow at him. "You promise?"
"I promise," Peter replies. He's a little surprised to find that he means it.
"We're going to hold you to that promise, kid," Sam says quietly.
The antigrav puck works like a charm. He can only use it every other day because of how quickly it loses its charge, but it makes his life so much easier. He can simply pin and stick muggers and gangsters to the wall or the ground without worrying about them wiggling free of the webbing or compensating for their struggling with more web fluid than he's willing to spend.
He's also being watched. His spider sense never goes off, but he does catch sight of someone watching him from afar. Someone dressed as a bat. If the Red Hood hadn't taught him where and how to look for him in the dark, Peter never would have noticed he was being followed. He keeps his distance. He'd rather stay out of Batman's radar entirely if he can help it. There's a rather long and intimidating reputation attached to the man, and even though Peter may have drawn a hard line against him, he has no doubt that he'd come out the loser of a fight if it came to that. Peter's fairly certain he's not crossing any boundaries, but who knows. He did call out the guy the other night. Maybe Batman's just one of those slow anger types that build up their fury like a tidal wave.
Fortunately, Batman never makes a direct appearance. And Peter learns to ditch his bat-shaped shadow when necessary. It almost becomes a game between them, and it reminds Peter of one of his dreams. In his dreams, he's avoiding packs of panthers and warriors; in Gotham, he's avoiding only one man. A man who happens to be as challenging to avoid as a literal army. Peter's been successful so far, but he's starting to wonder how long Batman will keep up the game before turning serious.
For now, he deals with it.
Peter and his shadow move through Crime Alley, and Peter focuses on his patrol.
Peter's weighing his options of swinging by the bus depot for a quick bite to eat when a car speeds past him, swerves towards a building, and doesn't slow down at all. The car, a gray 90s Honda that's more rust than color, slams the hood through the glass doors of Lexcorp Labs. The doors shatter inward, and a shrill alarm sounds off. A man in bright blue scrubs staggers out of the driver's side holding a cooler, and marches into the lab.
Peter tilts his head and swings after him, flinging himself up onto the ceiling and following the man as he storms into the labs and heads straight for a cold storage room in the back. Peter sits back and watches the man open the storage, his cooler, and the nearest cold storage locker. He grabs vials of bright blue liquid, and carefully puts it inside his cooler, handling it as if it were liquid gold.
"So, nurses don't usually break into pharmaceutical companies where I'm from. And they definitely don't do it coming directly from work," Peter says, hanging upside down behind the man.
The man startles, glances over his shoulder at Peter, then turns around and keeps taking boxes and placing them in the cooler. "Yeah. This is definitely a big no-no."
Peter pauses. "Okay, glad we agree? I've gotta be honest, man. Usually I catch people in ski masks armed with guns doing this kind of thing. I think the most dangerous thing you have on yourself is a Spongebob lanyard. This is super weird."
"Yeah, this isn't my idea of a good time either. Stay out of my way. I just finished a sixteen hour shift at work and I'm tired."
"Only if you tell me why you're committing like five felonies right after getting off a sixteen hour shift at a pediatric hospital."
The man glowers at Peter, frustration and rage intermingling. "Because the assholes that run this company just jacked their prices up by five hundred percent and now the kids I take care of will suffer for it. Our hospital is the poor one in Gotham, all right? Their families can't afford those prices. Our whole damn hospital can't afford it! Now those kids are going to get worse or die before they can get the last treatment they need to be cured of the fear toxin they absorbed from the Scarecrow's attack a few weeks ago." He slams the cooler lid shut. "Well, fuck that. I'm not standing by and letting it happen. I don't care if I sit in a jail cell the rest of my life. It'll be worth it."
He pauses, frowning up at Peter. "Unless you or that Batman freak stop me."
Peter shakes his head. "I won't stop you, but only if you have proof."
The man scoffs. "Fine." He pulls out a folded piece of paper from a pocket and offers it to Peter.
Peter flicks his hand and snaps out a piece of web to grab the paper and bring it back to himself. He's feeling a tad paranoid these days, and doesn't want to open himself up to attack. He settles in and scans the paper. The letter is pretty damning. The pharmaceutical company outright admits to price gouging, practically mocks the hospital director for calling it out, and then smugly offer a loan in exchange for the medicine. The man is telling the truth.
Peter pockets the letter. "Take the bigger coolers at the bottom of the storage locker. They'll maintain the temperature for longer."
The man blinks, hesitates, then nods stiffly and picks up the cooler, leaving the building. Peter watches over him until he gets back into his car and backs out of the building. Peter makes sure he's actually heading back to the hospital before swinging up to the rooftops.
He has to make sure the nurse stays free of Batman's notice. Which isn't exactly possible since Batman followed him here to begin with.
This ought to be fun.
He finds Batman sprinting through the shadows of a rooftop, pacing the nurse's car. Peter comes at him from above, flinging a glob of web fluid onto his ankles.
Batman drops, rolls, neatly slices through the webbing with a batarang, and stands ready to fight. The time between falling and jumping back to his feet is near instantaneous, and it's clear that the only reason Peter hasn't been punched in the face yet is because Batman doesn't want to punch him. Not yet, at least. Peter's suddenly glad he's a good guy.
"Leave him alone," Peter says, dropping down on the roof nearby. It's supposed to be an order, but it comes out as a mild plea. "There's more going on here than you realize."
Batman pauses, clearly surprised to see Spider-Man, and annoyed to be caught off guard, however briefly. "You're helping thieves now?"
Good god, that voice. He sounds like he eats gravel for breakfast. It's somehow more intimidating face to face. "In this case, yeah. Promise you'll hear me out before punching me? You're a lot bigger in person and I'm not exactly at my best these days."
Batman regards him silently for a few seconds. Finally, he says, "You have five seconds."
"Cool. Okay-"
"I'll make sure the company is investigated and put in a good word for Mr. Lobatse. This should disappear from his record. And if it doesn't, I have a few contacts in Wayne Tech that would be happy to hire him." Batman pauses, regarding Peter quietly. "Good work, Spider-Man."
Peter gives him a lazy salute before shooting out a web to yank himself back into the sky. He shouts back. "Just looking out for the little guy. Thanks for not punching me!"
Peter isn't sure, but he thinks he can see Batman smirk in response to that.
Crime Alley begins to change. People start to come out of hiding. The streets aren't filled with menacing bruisers; they're filled with regular people. Food carts start to appear, cabbies become marginally less surly, people still hurry along on the sidewalks, but there's less tension in the air. Less fear. A genuine air of community starts to form. Crime Alley earns a new designation: Spider Alley. Graffiti shifts from marking off gang territory to murals of the community coming together. More than a few have at least one web slinging silhouette in the background.
The streets themselves become cleaner. Safer. Brighter, even. Peter dedicates some of his very thin savings and a few patrols towards replacing broken light bulbs inside streetlights along the darker parts of the city. He remembers a cop in Queens casually mentioning that brighter lights have an effect on a precinct's crime rate. Peter isn't sure about the science behind it (he tried to look up the study but it cost far too much money to access) but he's willing to test the theory himself. It's something to keep him busy when he's not cleaning up litter from the streets or chasing down low level thugs and False Facers.
That weekend, when Duke and Tim are busy, he clears out a playground near some of the larger tenements. It's full of trash and tires and dead weeds, but the playground equipment looks safe enough. If in need of some cleaning and maintenance. He starts early, clearing off debris and sectioning off trash and potential recycling.
A small, wiry man in a grease covered mechanic's coverall wanders over to him, cigarette in hand, and watches. After a few minutes, he tilts his head.
"The hell are you doing?" he asks.
"Fixing the playground so the kids stay out of the street while they play. People speed up and down the road without looking. It isn't safe," Peter says, distracted. He tests the see-saw and winces at the screeching sound of metal on metal. "Hey, you got any oil you can spare? I think we can salvage this."
The man watches him flatly for a few seconds, sniffs, then sticks his cigarette in his mouth.
"Wait here," he says.
Peter shrugs, going back to his clean up. His senses never once twinged around the guy, so he isn't worried. He fills two more trash bags and sets them neatly out of the way and starts to work on a pile of wooden debris and rusted car parts.
"Hey! Spidey!" a voice calls out.
Peter looks up from his current project and pauses. The man in coveralls is back, carrying a dented and faded toolbox in one hand and a shop floor broom in the other. And he isn't alone; a dozen people are with him, varying in age, color, and outfits, all of them pulling on gloves and hats.
"I brought you some help," the man says.
"I can see that," Peter says, standing up and stretching. "Awesome. Okay, uh, let's focus on getting this trash taken away first-"
They get to work. By the end of the day, the playground is cleared of trash and debris. By the time dusk starts to fall, it's turned into a block party. A very subdued, very dirty block party, but a party nonetheless. Peter mingles for awhile, but eventually he ducks away to crouch on top of the tenement, content to watch the party quietly disperse as dusk turns to night. The playground is still a bit dingy, but it just needs a new layer of paint; everything else is just fine.
A chill wind hits him as night falls. Peter weighs his options and decides to take an early night himself, swinging back towards the firehouse. His back, shoulders, and arms ache from hours of hard work. He can do an extra long patrol tomorrow night.
He slips inside the fire house, pulling the window shut behind himself as he yanks off his mask and heads for the shower.
He doesn't catch any purse snatchers or mafia men that night, but he feels pretty accomplished anyway. Even the freezing water in his shower can't dampen his mood.
He sleeps deeply and easily that night. Just as he drifts off, he hears someone nearby.
"Excellent work today, Peter," T'Challa says.
The woman in the black catsuit hits three more buildings in Crime Alley. Peter never gets any closer to catching her. Peter spends the better part of his Sunday evening chasing her around and eventually gives up. She's fast, and unbelievably clever. She knows every inch of the district and ducks out of his reach. He knows how Batman must feel now, and he's very annoyed by it.
He's on his way back to the fire station when his night becomes truly weird: clowns, armed with guns, shove people out of a city bus and into a warehouse. They move quickly, shoving and threatening dozens of terrified people inside. One of them slams the door shut behind the last passenger, and Peter hears them lock it firmly from the other side.
Okay, so for a breakdown of the last day: he chased a cat burglar across the city, and didn't get any closer to catching her. He skipped two meals (not his brightest move) to make up for his patrol cut short yesterday. And now there's a gang of murder clowns holding people hostage in the middle of a warehouse in Crime Alley.
He can't just leave. This is out of his league by a significant margin, but he can't ignore this.
So he doesn't. The warehouse is three storeys tall, and all of the windows on the topmost floor are shattered. He swings inside, sticking to the shadows, crawling along the ceiling. He watches, thinks, and looks around to get a wider view of what's happening. There are twelve clowns. Four stand on the second level and have high powered rifles aimed at the cowering crowd. Two patrol the second level's perimeter, also armed. They walk looping patrols, passing one another every two minutes.
The first floor is just as busy. Thirty terrified people sitting on their knees, hands behind their heads. Two clowns aiming rifles at them, standing on either side of what looks like the main clown. Three other guards are spaced out closer to the entrance. No patrols, but there's better light down on the ground floor; a missing colleague is more likely to be noticed.
"It's been so long, ol' Batsy, that I thought I'd make my debut a bit special for you this time!" the main clown says. He's tall, lanky, and moves with an eerie and manic kind of grace. He's holding a phone in his hand, taking a video of the terrified passengers. "Look at all these fine people-"
Peter tunes him out and focuses on the task at hand. Thirty hostages, thirteen clowns. If even one person sees him, the hostages will die.
Then they won't see me, Peter thinks. He looks up and sees a catwalk above the second level. One near silent thwip, and he yanks himself onto that catwalk. He moves along the railing, his movements smooth and silent as he stops above the first clown. This guy is furthest from the others. One of the roving patrols passes him as Peter watches.
Timer start, two minutes. Peter stands, balancing on the round hand railing easily, adjusting his web shooters. He fires twin ropes of webs onto the shoulders of the man below him, braces himself, and then yanks the man up and into the air before wrapping him in a webbed cocoon and attaching it to the catwalk.
The whole process takes seconds, and Peter's quick to drop into crouch and silently jog along the railing, repeating the process with the remaining guards. The second floor is full of webbed clowns within two minutes.
He has three minutes to handle the rest. No pressure.
"You got this," Sam says. He can all but imagine the man kneeling beside him on the railing. "Go for the one on the left. He's not paying attention to his surroundings."
"Move quick, kid," Quill adds. Peter gets the sense that they're crouched on either side of him on the railing. "That creepy clown's speech is winding up for a grand finale."
Right. He can do this. He can't risk yanking the guy up; there's too much light. He leaps at him instead, pouncing him from shadows and pushing him into the darkness while simultaneously webbing him up. The man lets out a terrified mmph! from behind the web fluid serving as a gag across his mouth, but it isn't loud enough for his friends to hear.
Now to handle the rest. Peter hesitates, trying to decide where and how to take on the rest.
"Hey! Boss! Something's wrong-" one of the clowns yell.
Shit. He was too slow. Now they're alert; what the hell does he do now?
"Move silent and quick, like I've taught you," T'Challa says quietly.
And the memories flood into his mind. Stalking through the city and the Wakandan homeland, avoiding or hunting panthers prowling the night. Peter crouches low, as he did in the prairie, and moves silently just out of sight of the armed men. He's relying on muscle memory, letting his limbs and body do the work, and idly wondering how he moves so quickly in the dark. Either way, it's a blessing: he uses the darkness as a shield, moving through it and around it, yanking the clowns into the dark and webbing them to the floor or walls.
Finally, it's just the main clown left. And he's pretty much harmless; no weapons, just a phone. Peter is on him in a heartbeat, and webs him up in seconds, suspending him from the roof to hang upside down, arms and legs secured behind a layer of thick webbing.
"How'd he do for time?" Fury asks.
"He has a minute to spare," Hill says.
Peter feels pretty good about himself, really. He brushes his hands off, then checks his web fluid. He burned up quite a bit of it just now. He might have to ditch patrol altogether for the week if his current batch doesn't cook up properly-
"Well, you're new," a voice says behind him. "I don't suppose old Bats has told you about the Joker yet, has he?"
Peter turns and finds himself face to face with the Joker.
"Batsy's latest protégé, hm? I wondered if you were one of his," the clown says. There's a strange sing-song quality to the man's voice. His sentences start at a manic high and roll into a low, threatening growl. The word his is practically snarled at Peter. "So good to finally meet you. Awfully brave of him to send you in here alone. I thought he had standing orders for all of you to avoid me after last time."
Yeah, Peter's heard enough. A simple touch of the button along his palm sends a glob of web fluid across the smug clown's face. That voice is just creepy. The clown glares at him, furious, and Peter briefly wonders if he hasn't just made a terrible mistake.
"Good work, kid. Dumb as hell, but good work," a heavyset officer says, walking towards him. He's not a looker; between the scowl, the ill fitting clothes, and the mess of black hair peeking out from beneath the man's trilby, he's not winning any beauty contests. "But tell Bats that the next time he sends one of you in here alone to deal with the Joker, he's gonna deal with Bullock. Got that?"
Peter tilts his head. "Is your name actually Bullock?"
Bullock narrows his eyes at Peter. "Get the hell outta here."
Fair enough. It's far past his bedtime and Peter's feeling every bit of it. If he hurries, he can swing home just in time to take advantage of his adrenaline crash. Peter makes a quick escape, launching himself up to and then through one of the top windows.
The Joker's eyes follow his every move, unblinking.