Disclaimer: Everything you recognise here either came from the MCU films or the original Marvel comics, but I hope you enjoy the results anyway

Feedback: Feel free

AN: A key plot element here is inspired by the 2018 Spider-Man video game, but I'm aiming to put my own spin on it.

The Legacies' Triad

Kate hoped that it didn't make her sound like a psychopath, but the last few weeks of training to be a more 'official' vigilante had been the greatest of her life. Since she and Peter had met up while on the streets of New York, they had swiftly fallen into a routine of training and homework at the safehouse for at least an hour every other evening, followed by a couple of hours of patrol in ever-expanding areas around the safehouse. A part of Kate had been insulted at first when the 'training' initially consisted of Peter offering her pointers while he sat at a table and dealt with some homework, but she had reminded herself that Peter needed less training since his enhanced body meant that he was automatically in good physical condition anyway.

(And no, Kate had not been looking at her friend's body in that tight suit; she was allowed to just… notice a good-looking guy without it being a big thing, right?)

She had been a bit put out that they spent more time training than going out at first, but she could appreciate that both of them needed the practice. Kate could shoot arrows at targets better than anyone she knew but she needed to get a better sense of where to hit 'targets' that were living people when she was engaged in an actual fight rather than just shooting from a disance. Whatever Clint Barton did when he was in the field, Kate wasn't sure she was ready to actually go out there and outright kill people, but wounding was acceptable once she was sure the other guy had done something to merit getting hurt and she knew it wouldn't do anything permanent. She had at least found some of what had to be Hawkeye's own 'trick arrows' in the safehouse, which gave her something to practice with and gave her a couple of ideas about how she might make her own. There were a couple she wasn't going to use until she had to use them in the field, as she didn't want to waste something like an explosive arrow in a training session, but it all seemed simple enough to use.

As for Peter, his powers were impressive, but even with Yelena's attempts to train them earlier he still seemed to avoid actually punching or kicking people in fights in case he did more serious damage. Kate might not be able to take him in a fight, but she knew enough hand-to-hand herself that she felt like she could offer a few pointers and help him work out what to do when fighting a moving target. She knew that he was still holding back, and there were a few moments where he seemed to be avoiding her blows faster than a regular human would be able to, but he only took a few lessons to get a good feel for what he could do in a fight. He was still sometimes concerned about his abilities in a fight, but Kate had faith that he would find the balance between stopping the bad guy and doing too much damage. He had even given her a basic version of one of his web-shooters that she could use to tie up criminals after stopping them, even if he'd made it clear that she wasn't to try and use it to swing as she wouldn't have the strength to hold the web-line.

After a couple of weeks focused on training, as the summer holidays finally arrived they were able to step up their efforts a bit more. Kate's mother was relatively indifferent towards Kate's activities so long as she didn't do anything to put herself in the news (under her real name, anyway), and while Peter was still spending time with a few other friends from his school, he always took time to join Kate for patrol and training at least three times a week. Kate took care to stick to long-range when she was out during daylight so that criminals wouldn't get a good look at her, but she enjoyed the challenge of shooting at them from that kind of distance. The experience helped Kate improve her skill with her bow, inflicting minor injuries to potential criminals in the field while still making sure they stayed down, and she had been pleased to see Peter adapt her lessons into his vigilante activities. He was still giving criminals his equivalent of light taps, but at least he knew how hard he could hit people without doing more serious damage.

She took time to drop in on some of her friends from school as well, but she found herself unable to properly talk with any of the old group. It wasn't as though they were suddenly bad people, but it felt so shallow talking with the other girls about school and parties when she spent her nights going out and at least trying to save lives. She was almost tempted to just ditch the mask and commit to her new life full-time, but she knew she couldn't do that. As Peter had pointed out, while they were still minors making their identities public could just make things more difficult with the Accords still in play, and that was before she started thinking about how criminals might respond if they knew who she was. The mask she'd put together still needed some work, as it sometimes hindered her peripheral vision, but it stopped anyone seeing enough of her face when she was in the field to try and go after her mother or their company.

Admittedly, most of the time Kate was surprised to find that there weren't that many references to her own activities in the news. She'd seen quite a few articles about Peter's activities as Spider-Man- she was trying to ignore this Daily Bugle tabloid-esque blog thing that basically seemed to be obsessed with the idea that Peter was some kind of criminal- but it seemed like nobody was interested in the vigilante going around New York with arrows. She could kind of understand that Spider-Man was a more 'flashy' character who made a more dramatic impression, but it wasn't like she was doing nothing with her nights.

"Maybe they just think you're Mr Barton?" Peter suggested when she first brought the matter up as their latest patrol concluded, the two meeting on a building roof that let them keep an eye on Kate's bike below while still enjoying some privacy.

"Really?" Kate looked at him, allowing herself a smile as she indicated the purple suit she'd basically adopted as her vigilante attire (she still wasn't entirely comfortable in the mask, but she got why it was a good idea). "They think this is Hawkeye?"

"W-well, you d-don't exactly give people time to look at you…" Peter said, actually sounding awkward at Kate's teasing gesture before he gave her a more pointed look. "Besides, that might actually be helping you; I can't imagine many people seriously want to lock up one of the original Avengers even with the Accords to think about."

"Yeah, fair point," Kate conceded with a thoughtful nod. "Besides, it's not like I'm doing anything too fancy; anyone could do this-"

"With a lot of training," Peter cut her off. "Seriously, you definitely put in the amount of time needed to be an expert with that bow; whatever anyone says, that's not an easy thing to do."

"Compliment appreciated," Kate grinned at him before she turned to look out at the city with a brief sigh. "It's just… I get that we're helping people, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but… do you ever wish there was a bit more for us to do?"

"More?"

"Something like the winged guy, I mean," Kate explained. "Something that makes you feel like we're out here for a reason, not just tracking down common criminals that anyone could deal with…"

"Well… it helps to know we're doing something nobody else could do, yeah," Peter nodded at Kate, the two staring thoughtfully out at the city. "It's a kind of… paradox of being like this, I guess; you want to feel needed, but it sucks when something happens that puts people in danger…"

Kate would later ponder if it qualified as tempting fate when 'something' happened just over a week after that particular conversation.

As with most days since Kate had made the decision to join Peter on patrol, the day had started off fairly normal. With no school and no immediate social activities to worry about, Kate and Peter still at least tried to hang out with other people during the day so they didn't develop a reputation as lone weirdos. They still mostly ended up going out on patrol after lunch if nothing had come up, although Kate and Peter had each agreed that if one of them was unavailable the other wouldn't go out on their own. Peter might have greater powers and experience, but Kate appreciated his efforts to include her in this even if she still struggled to keep up with him when they went out.

For the most part, the afternoon's patrol had been straightforward enough when they started out. At this time of day there wasn't many serious 'crimes' going on apart from little things like sudden hold-ups, so a bit of their work had just involved helping people deal with smaller-scale problems (Peter recalled one time he'd helped a man get back in his house when the other guy had left his keys behind, once Peter had checked the man's ID card to confirm his address). Kate had mostly used the opportunity to practise her parkour skills, jumping along the rooftops with Peter waiting to catch her if something went wrong (she definitely hadn't thought about missing a jump just so he'd have a reason to catch her).

It was when she was basically mid-jump during one such evening training session that Kate realised there was something on another rooftop just off to her right. Once she had reached the next building along, she turned around and ran to the edge facing the rooftop in question, quickly confirming that there was something up there glowing in a manner that didn't fit in with what should be found on a New York rooftop this far from Avengers Tower.

Even without her training, Kate could tell that the building was just too high and too far for her to jump it on her own, prompting her to pull out one of the other devices she'd found in the safehouse. Apparently known as the 'line climber', it was essentially a motorised zipline that could even allow the user to go up the zipline rather than down, so long as each end was secured and the user wasn't too heavy. She could have waited for Peter to join her, but she wanted to prove that she could do things on her own and didn't want to have to turn to him every time she needed help (it had nothing to do with not being sure how she felt about being that close to him). Selecting a suitable trick arrow, she fired a cable to the other building, took a moment to secure the other end to a suitable pipe on this roof, and then put the climber in position and pressed the button.

The rapid ascent was disconcerting for a moment, but she had been practicing this kind of move with Peter that she had overcome any initial concerns about heights to focus on the final goal. Once she reached the edge of the other roof Kate was able to release one hand from the climber and grab the other roof, hauling herself up and over while still relying on the motion of the climber. Once her feet were on the roof, she reached back to retrieve the climber and the arrow, triggering a control that set the cable to retract back into the arrow before it was returned to her quiver.

"Something up?" a familiar voice said from behind her.

"Maybe," Kate said, quickly spotting the strange glow coming from behind one of those chimney-esque vent things that she was never sure of the purpose of. "I think I saw something up here…"

When she walked around the corner, Kate was both relieved and surprised to see that there was a strange metallic box with a symbol on the top that looked like a 'T' in a kind of circle. She walked cautiously towards it for a moment, but then the box made a beep and a screen raised from the middle, along with a small keyboard.

"What the-?" Peter began as he moved to stand beside her.

"Hey, kids," a voice said, with the low rumble of a vocal distorter. "So you found a recon point."

"Who is this?" Peter asked, stepping forward to stand between Kate and the screen.

"Wrong question," the voice said, a mocking edge to its voice. "The real question is, 'Can you stop the bombs I've planted'?"

"Bombs?" Kate repeated in shock, an anxious glance at Peter providing no comfort when he was clearly just as shock at this twist as she was.

"You want to get involved with a Widow, you should know what that world is like," the voice said, the tone so smug that Kate could almost hear the smirk even as the screen shifted to show a map of the surrounding streets with a few key areas highlighted. "You've got minutes."

As the call terminated, Kate could only desperately scan the map now displayed in front of her, picking out three things that she had to assume were the bombs this guy had just been talking about. If she was reading this right, there was one down at the docks, one in a building site, and a third on another rooftop a short distance from their current position.

"I'll take the roof?" Kate glanced over at Peter.

"I'll get the docks," Peter nodded in response, reaching up to tap the side of his mask. "We rendezvous at the building site?"

With that said, Spider-Man leapt off the rooftop and swung off towards the dock, leaving Kate to note the location of the building site before she moved to the edge to fire another grappling arrow to take her towards the next rooftop. She didn't let herself think about what could happen if she or Peter made a mistake right now; even if this man was just playing a sick joke, they had to treat this as a serious threat until they knew otherwise. This was a lot more serious than just stopping a few muggers; if these bombs went off, someone could be seriously hurt…

After a few moments of frantically running and grappling from one rooftop to the next, Kate was finally standing in front of a small box with a blinking red light on it, attached to something that Kate was fairly sure was C4. With no better ideas for how to deal with it, Kate picked the bomb up, quickly tied it to an arrow with some webbing, and fired the bomb into the air. Hoping that she wasn't about to make a mistake, as the arrow flew upwards, Kate notched another arrow and first it up after the first, the two arrows intersecting and causing a small mid-air explosion. Kate felt the heat of the blast even from the roof, but a glance around seemed to confirm that nothing had been broken by the explosion even if some lights were coming on in surrounding windows.

We'll probably get noise complaints, but nobody's dead; if the Avengers can cope with people complaining about everything in Sokovia, I can handle that…

The sound of another explosion prompted Kate to turn around in a panic, but seeing no sign of anything else being damaged she quickly pulled out her phone to confirm the location of the building site in relation to her current position. Satisfied that she just had to go down at this point in the direction of the previous explosion, Kate fired another grappling arrow in the right direction and leapt down.

Just like last time, it only took her a few moments of jumping and grappling along rooftops to reach her target, arriving there at basically the same time as Peter swung in from the side. As her friend landed on the half-assembled floor, Kate and Peter exchanged anxious glances with each other before they hurried over to where the same strange bomb was sitting on the ground. Like the rooftop, this building site didn't seem to have anyone living nearby, so Kate didn't think it would kill anyone if it went off, but she didn't want to take any chances. After exchanging glances with Peter, Kate stepped back as he grabbed the bomb with a web-line, swung it around himself a couple of times, and then threw it into the air, at which point she fired an arrow and blew it up before it could even start to come down.

"Nice shot," Peter nodded at her.

"Nice swing," Kate smiled back at him before she adopted a more serious expression. "So what was the point of this?"

"…Yeah," Peter nodded, looking around the building site with a careful nod (Kate got the reasons for the full-face mask, but it made it harder to read Peter at moments like this). "I mean, why plant bombs all the way out here in the first place-?"

Kate's eyes widened as she saw a drone advancing through the air behind them, only for Peter to turn around and fire a web-line at the drone himself. She didn't have time to wonder how he'd done that before she saw further drones appearing around the site, a logo on the side that made her think of a skull even in the dim light.

"Something else from our guy?" Kate asked, even as she adjusted her grip on her bow.

"Probably," Peter said, crouching down slightly and indicating his back. "Get on; we have to follow these things."

Kate forced down the brief sense of… something… she felt about this situation even as she climbed onto Peter's back, adjusting her grip on her bow so that she could theoretically fire it while on Peter's back so long as she held it the right way.

Maybe they were being a bit overly paranoid, but if Peter thought these things were dangerous, Kate had enough faith in him to trust his judgement, which meant taking these drones down and maybe working out where they had come from in the first place-

Then Peter started swinging, and for a moment all Kate could think about was the way her body felt pressed against Peter's back, the way his body moved under hers as he launched one web-line and released the previous one, the way everything around her was so fast even as she had complete faith in Peter to keep her safe…

When Peter fired another web-line that was followed by a spark of something breaking, Kate brought her mind back on the matter at hand as she turned her attention to the remaining drones ahead of her. Hoping that she wasn't over-estimating her abilities, she fired an arrow at one of the advancing drones, smiling in relief when she struck her target and sent the drove crashing into a nearby building. It struck the stonework and only left what looked to Kate like a minor burn before she and Peter had swung past the area, but the important thing was that it didn't look like the drone was causing serious collateral damage.

We can do this, Kate thought as she fired another couple of arrows during their flight, while Peter managed to shatter another couple as he knocked them out of the sky with his webbing. We can stop these things… maybe we can even catch this guy…

The sound of a gunshot was just a sudden surprise at first, but when Peter began to fall towards the street Kate tightened her grip around his neck and yelled in shock. She wasn't sure what had just happened, but right now all she could do was keep hold of her friend and believe he wasn't about to let them fall-

There was another rapid jolt, and suddenly Kate felt them swing upwards before Peter released his grip on her. Acting on automatic, Kate had just enough time to register that she was heading for a rooftop and then put herself into a roll before she hit the ground. She glanced up in time to see Peter diving down towards her, landing on the roof just beside her.

"What the Hell?" Kate said, looking indignantly at her friend. "What was with that?"

"Something shot out my web-line."

"Shot your web?" Kate's indignation shifted to apprehension as she took in that news. "How could anyone-?"

"I don't know!" Peter said, anxiously scanning his surroundings. "Something must have-"

"That would be me."

Looking in the direction of the speaker, Peter and Kate winced as they realised there were a small group of armed men standing around them on the rooftop, each of them carrying large weapons and wearing dark grey-and-orange armour. The apparent leader was wearing a sturdier version of the armour worn by the others, including a skull-like mask and a long dark cloak.

"And you are?" Peter asked, even as he and Kate shifted into combat stances.

"Call me Taskmaster," the man said with a satisfied smirk. "And consider this the consequences of associating with ex-operatives of the Red Room."

He turned to look at the rest of the apparent mercenaries with a solemn nod. "Take them."