Once upon a time, Peter Parker was a normal person. He walked everywhere on his own two feet. Confrontations were avoided unless the situation was dire. The biological make-up of his body was normal . Just like him.
After being bitten by that radioactive spider, and subsequently becoming Spider-man, Peter made himself a check-list. It was a way to keep himself organized, and the rules he made for himself were not that hard to follow.
The first rule that Peter gave himself was to always do the right thing. If the right thing was not obvious at first glance, then do what feels right. That usually led him in the right direction.
Gotham was a large city with a population of a little under ten million. Despite the dark skies, darker alleys, and lingering sense of dread, it was not that different from New York. The biggest factor at the moment was that Peter was not sure where he should pick up.
The right thing was not obvious, so Peter swung through the city using his gut as his guide. The tall spires of skyscrapers and densely packed roads of traffic gave him a familiar landscape.
If he closed his eyes, held his breath, and ignored the stench of Gotham, he could almost pretend that he was home.
The teen vigilante landed halfway up the side of a tall skyscraper at around midnight. The wind at that height pushed against his body and forced him to cling to the wall with hand and feet, looking down at the city.
His heart swelled with excitement. It felt so good to be swinging again.
Peter breathed slowly for a minute or two, evening himself out on the side of the building. If he was going to make tonight successful, then he needed to make a plan.
That was rule two, by the way: Make a plan if a plan is needed. Without one, you might as well surrender.
According to Karen, only three of Gotham's usual vigilante spread had been spotted so far. That was Batman, Red Robin, and Black Bat. He had first found them on Snap-Map back at the Manor, and about five minutes ago, Karen reported a video of the three jumping onto the Gotham Police Headquarters.
That was across town. If those three were really the only ones out so far, and they were occupied elsewhere, that meant that Gotham had no one patrolling actively. Peter couldn't stop his smile. He wouldn't mind volunteering.
He pushed off of the glass with his booted feet and released with his gloved hands, arching into a backflip and falling head-first toward the city below.
As the ground rushed closer, and wind snipped at his sides, he pulled his limbs close into a dive, causing himself to increase rapidly in speed. Seconds later, he threw an arm out, feeling the length of webs leaving his wrist.
The new, biological webs were stringier and lighter than his artificial ones. They were more flexible, and he could feel the slight pull from under his skin as they shot out. He was still getting used to the feeling, but it was not an unpleasant one. In fact, it felt good .
They attached to the closest building and pulled taut, dragging Peter in a diametric scoop. His feet barely grazed the tops of the cars stuck in the night traffic. On the ascent of his scoop, he released the line of webs and turned into another flip, whooping loudly to himself.
He could go like this for hours, really. He was not sure if he could run out of webs, but he really felt ready to test that. It just felt so good to get out , and to do something familiar enough to his own Universe.
The teen shot another line of webs at a building, and the pattern repeated itself, allowing for him to travel like a bullet across the city. Sure he was having fun, but soon enough he was reminded of exactly why he had come out in the first place.
A loud scream grabbed his attention, quickly followed by a spike in his heart rate. Peter Tingle , he thought inwardly, whipping his head around and changing course with a hastily thrown line of webs that pulled him into a sharp right turn.
He soared between two buildings, silently pulling himself onto a dark brick wall and sitting still. He held his breath, listening. Something sinister pounded in his ears, leaving him on edge enough to literally stand on his toes.
Rule three: follow the sound of danger.
Ten seconds passed, then twenty. At forty, Peter felt himself fight the urge to sigh. Then, at sixty seconds of waiting, Peter heard it again: this time much closer, and much more frantic.
He was moving immediately, pulling himself to the top of the building and sprinting across its flat roof, dodging the roof access door and sliding to a stop on the other end, looking down into the alley below.
A medium-sized woman with pulled back black hair and warm skin was standing on the inside, facing the mouth of the alley with a frightened and angry ferocity on her face. Across from her, a few feet away, was a common mugger. Peter could tell the signs immediately: darkly colored jacket, tattered hat, dirty shoes, and a simple weapon. In this case, the weapon was a long hunting knife about the size of the tall man's forearm.
The woman, while seemingly uninjured, was shaking like a leaf. Peter fell into a low crouch, pulling himself as close to the edge of the roof as possible.
"I already said it once, bitch, I'm not saying it again," The man spat, taking a sharp step towards her and jutting the blade in her direction. "Drop yer fuckin ' cash, and you'll be on your way."
"No, I know your type-" she said in a frazzled and angry voice, a slight tremble in her throat. "You don't care how much I have on me- it's what you plan to do to me after the fact that you want–"
"I know his type too!" Spider-man called out, grabbing both of the people's attention. They both turned their heads to look up at him. At this angle, he was mostly obscured by the deep shadows of the city. "He's the brutal, masochistic, alpha male who reeks from the lack of deodorant, right?" he mused, tilting his head at the man.
The woman, at a loss for words, looked between the two with wide eyes. She glanced away from them both, looking for a good chance or way to leave the situation entirely.
The common mugger noticed her efforts fast though, and jutted toward her once more, stunning her into stillness once more. She was holding back screaming again with a raw throat.
"Hey, no ignoring me!" Spider-man suddenly stood, shooting a line of web down at the man's hand. They clung and stuck to his fingers and knife, startling him into taking a few steps back.
"What the–"
The vigilante yanked the webs, pulling the man's hand and the blade up and away, making him stumble on his feet like a marionette doll. Peter snickered, giving him another tug, which pulled him far enough from the woman for her to make an escape.
She took it without any hesitation or waiting around, and Peter did not blame her. These streets looked scary at night.
Spider-man stepped down off of the building, falling onto the ground in one smooth motion. He shot and detached the webs from himself, connecting them to the brick wall and leaving the man stuck with them by his hand.
"What the hell!-" he struggled against the sticky binds, pulling at them with his non-dominant hand. Unfortunately for him, Peter's biological webs were much stickier than his artificial ones. That fact only caused the mugger's free hand to become tangled up as well.
"Wow, that knife is big. " Spider-man hummed, standing a few feet away from the man. He blinked behind his mask, staring down the mugger with a certain intensity.
The man stared back with hatred. "Who are you?!-" he demanded. "You don't look like one of those damn bats– "
"Because I'm not one of those damn bats ," he mocked, rolling his eyes with a dramatic sigh. He shot out a few more webs, snagging the man's two feet, backpack strap, and mouth and pinning them all to the wall. He startled and let out a muffled shout of defiance.
"I'm Spider-man. " He grinned, and even if the mugger could not see the gesture, he could certainly hear it. Spiderman wore his heart on his sleeve, after all.
Rule four was to always represent the brand.
"I know, I know," he hummed, reaching over and digging through the man's pockets for a wallet. "You don't recognize Spider-man, but you will. Eventually." he shrugged, and sighed in relief when he found it in the man's back pocket. " Thank God- I really didn't wanna turn you around." He chuckled, flipping through it and finding an ID.
"Dakota Rivera? That you?" Peter glanced between the grainy photo on the card and the restrained man, noting the similarities. "That's a cool name, at least. It'd make a good stage name. Have you considered going into show business?" he asked rhetorically, not waiting for some undignified grunt as a response.
"Karen, go ahead and call the cops to this location." He hummed, webbing the wallet and ID to the wall next to the man's head. "Make sure Mr. Rivera gets taken in tonight."
"Of course, Peter."
Satisfied and grinning, Peter shot a line of webs out, casually pulling himself up to the roof. "Bye, Mr. Rivera! Stop mugging women! Consider becoming a stand-up comedian or something!-"
As Peter swung away, he could hear the disgruntled grunting from the struggling man. Smiling behind his mask, he landed on a rooftop not that far away. Something in his chest beat like a drum at the feeling of doing good work again.
"Good job, Peter. The police have been notified of his whereabouts."
"Thanks, Karen." he hummed, glancing around the immediate area for any more obvious signs of trouble. "Any update on the Bats?"
"Not yet."
"Cool. Keep me notified if they start moving."
As much as Peter wanted to trust the city's veteran vigilantes, part of him bristled at even the thought. They were very work-alone people, who did not like accepting outside help. Peter's research had told him that Batman often denied letting outside heroes come in to help, despite working closely with them outside of Gotham. He was a founder of the Justice League, after all.
This was his turf, and his rules prevailed.
If Peter wanted a chance to stick around, and actually make a difference, he would need to start things off small. Building a reputation would not happen overnight, but it did not hurt to start. The more citizens that liked Spider-man, the better his chances were with gaining the favor of the Bats.
Screeching tires from a backroad grabbed Peter's attention, so he turned and ran in that direction, jumping off of the roof and shooting webs. His swings were long and elegant, like a practiced dancer.
He did take ballet, after all. He was allowed to flaunt it a little bit.
Just as Peter was about to cross an empty intersection, his senses flared DANGER , causing him to falter and stick himself to the nearest building. Just as he landed, a bright purple sports car going well above the speed limit coasted past, running the red light.
Street racers, Spider-man mentally assessed, watching as a similarly bright orange car followed suit a second or two later.
He did not mind a good race, so he fell into place, swinging behind them quicker than before. When the buildings got too short to swing, he ran across their sides like they were an open field.
It was easy to envision the expansive lawn of Wayne Manor as he remembered the day that he and Dick had raced from the house to the wall.
Spider-man picked up speed easily, and even if he was not as fast as those speeding cars, the slowly increasing traffic made them slow down. All in all, Peter was close enough to initiate action two minutes later.
He would have wanted to get to them quicker. Every second wasted was a second that a traffic accident could occur, and every second wasted was another life put at risk.
When he was close enough to the two speeding cars, Spider-man took a breath and shot out rapid webs that stuck firmly to the back of the orange car. He ripped himself off of the building, allowing himself to be sling-shotted toward the car, where he landed in a steady crouch on the trunk.
The orange sports car bobbed due to the sudden weight and force, and Peter noticed the driver frantically looking in his rear-mirrors. It was hard to get a good description of the man due to the intense window tint, but he could at least make out the guys' build.
Peter crawled along the top of the car, limbs pressed as flat as possible to avoid the wind force of the still-moving vehicle. When he got to the front a second later, he squinted through the front windshield in disapproval.
"This is no place to be driving like this!-" he shouted over the wind, sticking his knees to the car and leaning over to the driver's door, knocking on the window.
Stupidly, the man rolled it down.
Spider-man's moves were near instantaneous. Webs shot into the car, pressing down on the emergency break and wrapping around the steering wheel, which he pulled on to navigate the vehicle.
The orange sports car skidded to a halt, slightly veered onto a sidewalk, with the purple car continuing into the night.
Spider-man huffed, moving quickly. He jumped up from the car's roof and latched onto a streetlamp, looking back down at the car and hanging upside down, knees hooked over the light. Webs shot out from his wrists, sealing the tires firmly onto the ground.
"Stay!-" he shouted with a demanding point before turning and pulling himself back into chase.
Finding the purple car was easy as he followed the chaos it left in its speedy wake. As he went, he already noticed a few minor accidents. A car had been bumped, and while trying to regain control, veered into a traffic light pole. A pair of smartly dressed pedestrians had fallen on the ground when they jumped out of the car's way.
"Karen- call–"
"I have already notified the Gotham Police Department."
Peter sighed through his nose, relieved in her abilities. Karen was always good about anticipating his needs- it was her purpose. As an AI, she adapted and learned from him, and overtime, she started predicting his questions before he could even ask.
It was convenient, really. Peter could not have asked for a better companion in this line of work.
"Thanks-" he huffed out, tearing through the gradually piling up traffic. He was not quite sure what district of Gotham they were in, but it must have been a higher-class one. The cars got more expensive, and the night pedestrians were dressed nicer here.
He ignored the gaping shock of pedestrians as he swung past, gaining on the purple car quickly. The more people watched, the more that they would realize he was here to help. Let them stare , he mused internally.
Finally, Spider-man latched onto the back of the purple sports car. Similarly to before, he pulled himself onto its trunk, hopping over the spoiler and crawling up the top to get to the windshield, where he knocked unenthusiastically.
"Dude–" he huffed, trying to look as unimpressed as possible. " No one thinks your overpriced car is cool–" he flipped his body to be standing on the hood, glaring down at the shocked man through the windshield.
When the man showed no signs of stopping, or listening, Peter rolled his eyes. He gave the passenger-half of the windshield a sudden kick, the boot heel connecting with the glass and shattering a hold on impact.
The man inside the vehicle startled and turned the wheel, swerving through traffic like a madman. Spider-man acted fast, ducking into the passenger side to regain control.
His webs connected with the wheel, and as he tugged on it to get it to turn, he once more shot webs at the emergency brake, causing the tires to screech.
Once the inside was securely dealt with, Peter climbed back out, legs contorting to fit through the shattered glass without tearing his black underclothes. He kind of felt like the girl out of The Ring movie.
Spider-man launched himself off the hood of the still moving car, flipping through the air. When he was upside down, he reached out and shot webs, which made their target the tires. As they made contact, they tangled up in the mechanics, slowing the car.
The vigilante landed in a low crouch in the middle of the road, one hand on the ground, the other held up behind himself. The purple sports car, properly webbed up inside and out, skidded to a sudden halt inches from his head.
"Impressive." A voice rang out from the sidewalk, causing Peter's head to snap up. A feeling of immense dread washed over him, as danger signs flashed through his mind. His senses went haywire.
The man on the sidewalk was large . He had on biker leathers with specially added pouches and compartments, holding what he could only assume were gadgets and weapons. A crimson red hood had been pulled over his equally red helmet, which had glowing white eyes that were permanently narrowed into a glare.
"Red Hood."
Karen's explanation supplied Spider-man no comfort as he slowly stood up. He had read about this guy. Former villain turned semi-good guy who sometimes worked with the Bats. He had a record of killing without remorse, and doing whatever he wanted to reach his goals.
This guy was deadly , and he did not just need his senses to tell him that.
"So, you planning on cleaning all this up, too?" Red Hood asked with a rough voice, hands relaxed in his own pockets. "Because I don't think the city wants your biohazard webs everywhere."
Spider-man hesitated, heart racing in his chest. Then, he glanced at the streaks of web on the road. He could only imagine that there were still webs back with the orange car, too.
"Yeah, uh. I think they go away on their own, actually?" Spider-man mused, tilting his head toward Red Hood. "When I was messing with them a few days ago, they disintegrated overtime." he grinned behind his mask, trying to hide the intensity in his chest. "Biodegradable." he mused with a wiggle of his fingers.
Red Hood did not look amused, and moved his hands from his pockets to cross his arms. "You got a name?"
"Spider-man."
" Spider-man?" the man echoed, sounding a bit amused. "Real original, don't you think?"
"You're one to speak, Red Hood." Spider-man shot back, hands on his hips. He rolled his eyes behind his lenses, even if he knew that the other vigilante could not see the motion. He hoped his body language would put it across anyways. "I almost thought your favorite color was blue." Spiderman joked.
"Nah," Hood hummed. "That's Nightwing's thing." he cleared his throat at the sound of sirens sparking up nearby. "..get outta here, Bug-Boy. I'll deal with the cops."
Peter paused, glancing between Red Hood and the man in the car, who still seemed to be in some state of shock. "...I thought you worked alone?"
"Just this once, I'll make an exception."
Spider-man bristled, taking a few hesitant steps back. He took these moments to seriously consider the Red Hood's words. He was offering him an out. It did not take much deliberation for the teen vigilante to turn and run, using his webs to pull himself away into the night.
The next situation was merely minutes away, and he fell into his work quickly without a second thought.
"I don't think he's a weapon."
The statement was cold, clear, and offered no room for argument. Red Hood's tone was crisp through the Oracle Comms, letting every single vigilante in on his opinion.
"...explain." Batman's recognizable voice followed after a few moments, the word a quiet demand. For once, Red Hood did not argue.
"He's been out here doing your job for the last two hours." Red Hood huffed, the sounds of his motorcycle faintly buzzing in the background. "While you've been meeting with Gordon, he's been chasing street racers and muggers."
The silence from Batman made Red Hood's blood boil. Of course the man did not even have any good explanation. Red Robin, on the other hand, could be heard snickering quietly.
"Again, I don't think he's a weapon." The lone vigilante hummed, motorcycle skidding to a stop in an alley. He flicked off the headlight and dropped the kickstand, climbing off the black leather seat. "Or if he is, he doesn't know it."
"He needs supervision." Batman's voice huffed into the comms. "He could be a sleeper, and anything could trigger him."
"Then get one of your Baby Bats to puppy-guard him." Red Hood's frustration came through his voice. "He doesn't need protection. I'll keep an eye out, but don't expect me to intervene. The kid's good."
The silence from everyone over the Oracle Comms told Red Hood that the conversation was over, and just to spite them, he deactivated his comm piece in his helmet, relishing in the silence that followed.
Well, not silence . The city noises of Gotham filled the space that the comms had left behind. He treated them as a familiar white noise, though, not flinching at the screeching of tires or distant popping of guns.
This was home, after all.
But not for Peter.
Red Hood pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned the screen on, frowning at the time displayed. It felt too early to call it a night, but the thought of potentially running into his family while out made his frustration worse.
He knew what a child soldier looked like. A weapon of evil would not do the things that Peter did. The teen may be dangerous, but so was Damian. The two had a lot in common. Briefly, Jason considered the possibility of Peter being from the League.
It… was not impossible . He had not heard of any sort of bug-experimentation from his time there, and surely Damian would have mentioned something if he knew, too.
Even worse, they still had not figured out who Tony Stark was. Jason was starting to think that the name was an alias for someone more dangerous. They knew that the man was supposedly an engineer, and Peter's former mentor, but he's not in the country .
But Peter's story not adding up, along with his physical attributes being eerily close to Jason's left little room for the imagination to wander. This was starting to have League of Assassins written all over it.
Jason Todd internally considered the circumstances, brows pinching together in thought. He hated to agree with Bruce, but Peter being some sort of sleeper agent was definitely possible. The League did not have a history of using sleepers, but nothing was stopping them from trying it out now .
The man frowned behind his shiny red helmet, turning his phone off and shoving it back into his pocket. He needed to do some digging, but going to the Batcave to use the computer right now would probably make him see green.
So first, he would blow off some steam. Those traffickers down at the docks surely would not mind the company.
As the moon dipped dangerously close to the horizon line where the sky met the ground, Peter scaled the wall of Wayne Manor. He avoided the property cameras, swinging around them and peeking around the corners of the old building until he had made it to his own window. Sliding it open, he ducked inside, feet landing silently on the wood floor.
The teen stood on one foot, tugging off his boots and huffing. He tossed them under the bed, followed by his mask. His false hearing aid, still wedged comfortably in his ear, was also taken off, and thrown half-hazardly onto the bed.
Pressing the spider emblem over his sternum, he felt the nanotech crawl across his tight black clothes, compressing itself as much as possible into a palm-sized spider-shaped disc, heavy in his hand.
The convenience made him smile. It would be easy to carry around whenever he left the manor during the day incase of an emergency. The Wayne's knew who he was, and what he did… surely they would not mind if he ran off occasionally to help out the city.
For safekeeping, Peter put the disc on his night stand, the cool metal slipping out of his hand. He sighed through his nose, closing his eyes for a few seconds as the adrenaline of the night finally started to die down.
Going over everything in his mind, Peter made a list of everything that had happened. The first mugging, the street race, meeting Red Hood , the second and third muggings, the kidnapping, and the handful of drug deals: all things that he managed on his own, not a single Bat in sight.
Of course, they were out. Karen had told him around two a.m. that the Bats left the Police Station to resume their usual nightly activities. She was able to track their locations using something called Satellite-Framing, which had made Peter falter initially.
She had never used something called Satellite-Framing before, so when he asked her about it, she explained that it was a way to ping off technology on the planet to track people.
He would have accepted the answer under normal circumstances, but this was Batman that they were talking about. Surely he had some sort of protection over his technology, right? His servers definitely were not public, because he would have had access to them already.
But he bit his tongue, deciding not to push further. Tony Stark made Karen to help Peter, and that's what she was doing. Surely she had reasons for potentially lying to him. He hated to think that she would do that, though. It made his heart ache.
That's partially why Peter decided to leave the hearing aid on his bed, entering his bathroom to clean up without her in his ear.
His shower was quick and cold. Peter used it as a chance to wake up more. His eventful night, while tiring, would not stop him from having a productive day. Falling back into the vigilante-civilian back-and-forth routine would be a quick adjustment for him.
Day naps were about to become his new favorite thing.
By the time he stepped out of his bathroom, clean and changed into comfortable loungewear, the sun was peeking through his cracked window, following a soft New Jersey breeze that faintly smelled like the polluted ocean.
Slowly, Peter was becoming accustomed to the smells of Gotham. They were starting to bother him less, and became evidence of his time spent in the city.
The digital clock in his room told him that it was nearly six in the morning. Taking an early nap sounded nice, but if Peter could help it, he wanted to pretend that he did not go out during the night.
Sure, the Waynes knew about his life, but he did not want to start the discussion. They would see social media late in the day and realize that he had picked up vigilante-ism again. If they had questions, he would let them ask first.
So, Peter stretched his arms high over his head, cracked his back, and left the room with soft footsteps on the long rugs in the hallways of the Manor.
The morning was uneventful. He sat in the kitchen with Alfred as the man prepared breakfast, the two talking about this and that. Alfred had asked about his night, and Peter got the sneaking suspicion that Alfred already knew about Peter's escape.
Then again, Peter would not be surprised if Alfred knew everything , like some omnipotent being.
Peter dodged the question by rambling about a fake dream, one filled with Homecoming dances and bird-themed bad guys.
The rest of the house woke up as usual. Tim, while tired, lit up upon seeing Peter in the kitchen. The two sat together while his coffee brewed in the pot, talking about Tim's classes at Gotham Prep. The school did not sound that much different from Midtown, save for it being more than just a Technical school.
The more that Tim described the place, with the help of Duke when he came into the kitchen, the more that Peter envied them. He missed school.
Or maybe he just missed the people at school. Seeing MJ at the library nearly sent Peter into a spiral, and had made him realize just how much he missed everyone back at home.
It also made him remember that those people were likely dead. Dusted, just like he was. Once again, he found himself wondering if anyone else had the same fate as him: thrown into the arms of another universe.
If that was the case, he hoped that his loved ones had all landed somewhere good. Somewhere that was not Gotham, and somewhere without a Thanos.
Bruce came into the kitchen with a quiet greeting to everyone, and despite not being a morning person, his gaze sharpened when he spotted Peter. The two held eye contact for a few seconds longer than usual.
The hair on Peter's neck stood on end, and an uncomfortable buzzing shot up and down his spine. He could not fight the unwavering feeling of distrust that the man radiated, making the teen's shoulders tense and head duck down a bit more.
The man came and left, not taking breakfast or coffee with him. When Peter questioned it, Alfred and Tim explained that he had a busy week ahead of him. There were apparently some big deals being made over the next few days, and the man would be going in early and working later than usual to help his focus.
The rest of the house followed Bruce's lead soon enough, the teens and Damian gathering their items and leaving with Alfred for the day.
Peter found himself alone in the Manor. Dick had gone home to Blüdhaven, and Jason went to his own apartment in Crime Alley at some point, too. With no Karen in his ear, and no person at his side, he took a moment to truly revel in privacy .
Being alone was a rare commodity, and he would not be taking it for granted. The thoughts of an early nap came back to his mind, and he could not help but smile a bit. Sleeping for a bit would not hurt anyone…
That's how Peter found himself in one of the large Ballrooms of Wayne Manor, perched high on the shiny metal chandelier. Using webs to get up had been easy, and the slight sway of the large fixture acted almost like a hammock.
Peter sat in one of the low scooping bars of the chandelier, leaning back against its core and relaxing against the cool metal. There was a distinct lack of dust, and Peter amused himself by wondering how Alfred managed to dust this high up.
His ability to stick to surfaces kept him in position, and just for extra security, he used a minimal amount of webs to wrap around his waist and the chandelier's core, anchoring him in place like a seatbelt.
Falling asleep came just as easy as it would have if he were in bed.