Spider-Man and Power Girl

Chapter 19: Trust Part 2

Karen and Peter were rushing down the halls trying to get to the lab with the Oracle computer but like Peter had figured, it wasn't that easy. Because this was a place for people who were a few steps away from being mad scientists you had a lot of inventions. For instance, there were little robots that helped to clean the place, in hindsight it was a good idea to cut janitorial services but now the little guys were trying to clean everyone's clocks.

Thankfully they didn't have anything lethal but being hit with a mop or broom handle hurt for instance.

They saw what looked like a half-finished exoskeleton walking around with it's left arm in hand using it as a club, thankfully it was slow so people could easily outrun it.

The worst however was the security systems, there was a lot of experimental tech in this place. Enough for any less moral company or would be supervillain to gain an edge with so Max didn't spare the expenses to security. It was also meant to help keep people safe in case of an accident so areas could be sealed off in case of toxic fumes, fire or any other dangerous leak.

Now all that was being turned against them all.

"OHSA is going to have a field day with us over this," Peter said as he and Karen had to duct down a hallway as several small spheres flew by. These were security drones someone came up with, they didn't have lethal weapons, but they did fire a concussive energy blast meant to stun or disable people.

"I think we got bigger issues." She said as they continued down the hall.

Peter nodded they did but man the fallout from this was not going to be pretty. There was another problem too, he knew that as Spider-Man and Power Girl they could take this challenge on a lot more easily. The problem was there was no way to really change into costume without putting some trust on the line. Honestly, he wasn't against it and in this kind of circumstances the secret identity thing was more of a hinderance.

Glancing at her he could see her almost biting at the bit to let loose and to help out fully but couldn't because she didn't know that he knew who she really was.

'This is getting us nowhere,' He thought as he found another hallway sealed off. 'We need to trust each other here or people will get hurt.'

He paused as he had to come to a decision, did he trust her? He found that the answer was yes, he did. She was a good person, just someone like him who got dealt a bad hand and was trying to rebuild their life back up. He had spent enough time with her to get to know her and honestly, he did consider her a friend.

'Well in for a penny,' he figured.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"Look we're not getting anywhere like this, so we need to stop holding back here."

"I…don't get your meaning." Karen was puzzled by what he meant.

"What I mean is, well, okay look there's no point in beating around the bush so I'll just come out and say-" He was interrupted by the pounding of a security door to their right. He hadn't noticed they had come by one of the labs, in fact he knew this as the lab for the child genius of the company Uatu Jackson.

"Uatu are you okay?" Peter yelled hoping his voice could be heard through thick steel door.

"Peter? Help, the fire suppression is on and won't stop, I have to get out!" Came the muffled reply.

"Damn it," Peter could rip the door open and if it was just him and Karen since he was going to trust her with his secret. The problem is he would see him doing it and you can't just explain that away, it was the same reason he could see Karen looking at the steel door knowing she could easily tear the thing off but also couldn't for the same reasons. Looking at the control panel for the door he knew there was always another way out. He might not have the tools on him to pull the panel off, but he didn't need tools for that.

That's when his spider sense kicked in and the buzzing sound of drones was heard as a few of the bots came around the corner.

"We got a problem," Karen got a quick explanation about the drones the first time they came upon them earlier. She didn't have to worry as she doubted that they had the power to take her down but how would she explain that to Peter or anyone else that saw her get blasted and then nothing happened to her? It was times like this that having a secret identity really was a hindrance.

"I got the lock, you take the drones," Peter suddenly said.

"I got the what!?" Karen looked at him like he was crazy, did he really expect for some 'normal' person to just take on drones.

"Just use your heat vision it's just us out here," He replied which shocked her.

He knew, he knew she was not only Power Girl but knew about the heat vision something she hadn't used much in public. She was about to ask just how in the hell he knew when she saw his hand go to the panel, he placed his palm on it and just pulled with the panel stuck to his hand. It dropped a few seconds later as he got to work with the wires inside.

"We'll talk after we get Uatu to safety." Peter saw her knowing look.

"Oh, you bet we will," She turned as she pulled down her glasses and fired several heat beams at the drones causing them to explode. She looked back at Peter who she had a pretty good idea of why he seemed so familiar now. All the jokes, the attitude and the voice, how had she not recognized the voice?

For the past few days, he had just been there totally aware of her real identity and hadn't said a thing, of course she got it. Everyone in this life that had a secret identity had to play this little game of trying not to let people know the big secret, but she was still a little mad about it. Crossing her arms she looked at him.

He cast her a glance and at least had the decency to look a little sheepish. "Sorry bot not saying anything."

"I get it."

"You're still mad."

"A little."

"I get that too," he sighed as there was a spark and the door slide open as Uatu came out, thankfully his lab was big so it would take time for it to fill with the fire suppression gas but still the young dark-skinned teen came out of the lab as soon as the door opened.

"Oh man that was scary," Uatu looked to see Peter at the door panel and a blonde woman he didn't know. "Thanks Peter, I was really getting scared in there."

"No problem, let's find you a safe spot to hold up while this is going on?"

"Where's safe? A lot of this building is covered in tech and from what I saw in my lab everything that can be connected is going nuts." Uatu asked him.

Peter looked around and grinned, "how about the supply closet?"

"Seriously?" The teen asked.

"Hey, it's one of the few places not hooked up and you can lock it from the inside and there's no fire suppression system in them." Peter had noticed it himself one day when he had to get some cleaning supplies for his own lab.

The teen didn't look happy about it, but he put his odds of surviving whatever was going on higher holding up somewhere safe and secure.

"We'll check in later," Peter told him since as far as he knew there were no 'safe zones' he could hang out in or where even were if there were safe zones in the building.

"You better," Uatu was quickly ushered to the nearest supply closet as the two ran off with Peter leading the way.

"So, the whole time?" Karen asked him.

"I wanted to say something but it's not exactly easy to bring up," He told her.

"Okay fine, but where are we going?"

"My lab," Peter said as they quickly made it to his private lab. Between them it was easy to force open the door to the lab and then close it again. Kara burned out the fire suppression system with her heat vision just in case. While she was doing that Peter went to what looked like a small but highly secure door. He placed his hand on the palm reader as the door opened.

"Okay so what's in here?" Karen asked him and stepped in to see a room with several tables, all having a different Spider-Man suit on it, off the side was web shooters and other equipment, along with a small chemical lab to make web fluid. "Never mind."

"Don't suppose you got your suit on you?" Peter asked picking up his suit from the nearest table.

"Under the clothing and…" she placed her bag on the table and unzipped a compartment on the inside as she pulled out a cape, gloves and boots. "Thank god for unstable molecule clothing, these things can be made to fit into the smallest of areas."

"Yeah, they are good for storage," Peter had experimented on the material before so he knew very well that not only was its great protection and could be made to fit mostly anyone, but you could fold it and flatten it down unlike regular clothing because of the unstable properties.

"Almost beats out Barry's ring," She paused remembering that it was because of Berry and his time travelling that caused her timeline to no longer exist. She would never forgive him for what he had done to not only her but for his selfish reasons that caused an entire universe to no longer exist. It was one of the reasons she couldn't go back there, it hurt too much to see everything gone and just replaced, even she had been replaced by yet another version of her.

Peter could see the long far off look she was getting as he gently walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you going to be okay?"

"Yeah…yeah just let me get my head on straight," she shook her head. "I'll have an emotional crisis later, we got people to save first."

"You got that right…so…we got to change now and…" he wasn't sure how to really go about saying they had to strip off their civilian clothing first.

"Oh! Right! Sorry, yeah, I'll be outside," and in a blur she was gone.

Peter quickly started to change into his Spider-Man suit and by the time he was out she had already changed into Power Girl and was on his computer. He could hear and see her hands were a literal blur of activity as the screen was moving way too fast for him to keep up.

"What are you doing?" Spider-Man asked her.

"Trying to hack my way into the computer but it's damn smart alright, every time I try something it's like its reading my mind and already came up with several defenses." Power Girl would be impressed by it if she wasn't annoyed.

"How many attempts have you tried?"

"One thousand-five hundred-and twenty."

Peter blinked at her as he just stared as she looked back at him with a smirk.

"Super Speed." She told him.

"Okay that's just a broken ass power," he felt a little jealous at it, if he could move just a fraction of her speed he could get so much more done in a day's work and cover the city more effectively.

"Don't blame me that Kryptonians are OP," she heard that joke before back home and honestly, she had to admit it did seem her people got all the best picks in powers with few weaknesses. Not that she would ever complain about it. She looked back in annoyance at the computer. "But even with all that this computer is predicting me just like it's supposed to, figuring out flaws and weaknesses and then solving them before they become a problem."

"Let's just hope it doesn't think we are the problems it should solve next," Peter joked.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it already did," Kara sighed. "So, what do we do? Go straight to the core and shut this thing down?"

"I'm a little worried about everyone in the building, can you see what's going on?"

Power Girl tried to look outside of the lab but frowned as her x-ray vision was blocked. "Are these things lined with lead? Because I can't see through them."

"Well lead is one of the things that line the labs to help protect in case of radiation…" Peter paused and then looked at her. "Wait, when you said x-ray vision were you being serous about the x-rays? Like should I be wearing lead or something?"

Power Girl shook her head. "Not exactly it's just a simplistic explanation of it, it's not actual x-rays but it's a close way to easily explain it but lead also blocks it."

"Oh, thank god," Peter placed a hand over his head. "I already have radiation in me from the spider bite, I don't want to think what more will do to me."

"You what?" She looked at him with her enhanced vision and now that she knew what to look for, she could see very tiny radioactive particles in his blood. It wasn't much, not enough to really set off most Geiger counters but if you tested for it, it would show up. "I hope you don't donate blood."

"Oy, keep those eyes to yourself missy," Peter said feeling a little exposed.

"I was only looking at your shoulder," she raised her hands up. "But I'll ask in the future."

"Thanks," Peter felt that she would keep her word well unless it was an emergency, but he figured those didn't count. "And no, I don't for obvious reasons. Anyways, let's make our way to the Sophia's lab and see about helping everyone on the way there."

"Sounds like a plan," she nodded.

The two heroes came out of the lab, and they wasted no time. Any seal off door was easily pulled open or apart, any drones were either webbed up and blown up from heat vision. They rescued as many people as they could along the way. Clearing out zones for people to stay in by disabling anything that could be turned against them and telling them to stay inside until the coast was clear.

Power Girl and Spider-Man moved together, each one covering the other and helping each other like a team. Kara could have flown straight there but Peter was much more familiar with the building than she was.

They finally reached Sophia's lab to find that the security door was closed, which wasn't a problem as Kara easily ripped the door off as the two stepped inside. They saw Sophia there by her desk as she was looking at the two heroes with wide eyes.

"No! You can't come in here you can't shut her down!" Sophia said frantically.

"People are getting hurt," Spider-Man gently told her this was after all someone he had worked with. He could see she was quickly losing her grasp on rationality, and he was hoping he could pull her back.

"It's…I…" Sophia wasn't too far gone to know that she might not like most people, but she didn't want to kill or harm anyone. "This is my life's work and they're just going to take it all apart.

"I know," Spider-Man told her slowly raising his palms up. "It sucks, you put in all this work and then this happens, but this isn't the way to handle things. You have a brilliant mind, there are plenty of ways to use that, but this isn't the way."

She was silent thinking it and for a moment Peter felt he might have reached her. Then she started laughing and it wasn't a good kind of laugh. "You think they'll let me do anything worthwhile after today? After what I just did? I'm smart enough to see where this will go, I'll be lucky to get a job as a lab assistant after this mess."

The she smiled at them but not in a friendly way. "I'm already all in and there's no going back now."

Power Girl sighed as she looked at him. "You tried."

"Yeah," Spider-Man nodded putting his arms down.

"You think we didn't notice you two showing up?" Sophia told them. "The security cameras caught you on the way here and Oracle has been working on the problem."

Peter's spider-sense went off. "Something's coming!"

That's when the blinding sound hit them as Sophia covered her own ears as she ran as best she could into the glass room containing the computer core. Peter felt like something was stabbing him right in the brain, the world was shifting, and he felt his stomach lurch. A thumping sound made him turn to see Power Girl on her hands and knees looking green.

"Power Girl?" He shouted out over the noise.

Kara felt like her entire nervous system was being played with. The sound they were hearing was messing with her inner ears and also somehow her brain. She had no sense of balance anymore the world was shifting, and she had to fight the urge to throw up. What's worse is that her Kryptonian biology was even more effected because of her heightened senses.

For a moment she felt like she was seeing out of her skin, breathing out of her ears, seeing out of her sense of taste. The complete alien nature of it all was making it hard for her to think.

Peter was struggling to stay on his feet, his spider like agility and inhuman balance was the only thing keeping him up, that and pure will power. He tried to see where the speakers were, but it was hard to focus his eyes on something, they just 'slide' off whatever he was trying to focus on.

'Okay then, don't see the problem, feel it out,' he figured. Closing his eyes he tried to focus on just his spider-sense it was still going off thankfully. He let it guide him, to know where the attack was coming from. There were two sources in the room above him, he let it guide his hands as he fired two web lines.

When they hit the sound was muted so he just pulled. He heard the sounds of something metal tearing and then soon after a crashing sound as what he assumed was the speakers hitting the ground as the noise was suddenly stopped. Peter sighed as she slumped over catching himself on a desk.

"Oh god I feel like I was hit by a hangover at an amusement park," he groaned. "How are you doing?"

"Been better," she replied getting one foot under her as she glared at the computer. She could see Sophia frantically trying to do something, but she was not going to give her or her computer any chance to try something else. Her eyes glowed as she fired her heat beams into the glass easily melting it as it then burned into, her computer core.

There were sparks flying as bits of silicon and plastique started to burn up inside of it. Sophia was screaming something she could make out, but she didn't stop until the core was a smoking wreck.

-Later-

Max was just finishing his statement to a SHIELD agent as the rest of the agents were quickly gathering up anything that might have been infected by the rogue AI. They would have to shut down Horizon for a week as SHIELD had to scrub anything tied into the main system to make sure nothing slipped out.

He hated it but there was nothing he could do, plus the week would allow him to hire people to fix al the damages. At least SHIELD seem to have mobilized quickly once the AI had been shut down and he was able to make an outgoing emergency call to 911. SHIELD showed up soon after the first responders.

"Thank you for your patience, sir," the agent told him as he closed his little notebook.

"Not as I'm sorry for her," he looked over to see Sophia in cuffs looking distraught. "Do you know what will happen to her?"

"Hard to say, she violated the Ultron Accords, and this could be considered domestic terrorism given what she did. We'll have to hold her for questioning and until the investigation is finished, so we'll have wait for the results, also you can expect agents to start interviewing those involved."

"I'll let them know," Max nodded as he saw Sophia being taken away. The normally loud and energetic woman looked like she was a beaten dog. That is until she saw Power Girl and Spider-Man who had been helping getting people out of areas of the building that were stuck behind locked doors. When the AI went down a lot of the building's features just turned off and couldn't be turned back on until every system was rebooted.

Sophia glared angrily at them, especially at Power Girl who had destroyed her Oracle computer. She didn't say anything but the look in her eyes said plenty before the agent with her tugged on her arm making her move.

"Oh, joy I have a fan," Power Girl sighed at the woman being led away.

"Yeah, happens with this job," Peter stated. "So how are you going to write this up for Stark Enterprises?"

Karen closed her eyes and groaned this was going to be such a pain to write and not to mention having to explain all this. "All I know is that because of 'unforeseen difficulties and the destruction of the project itself this project should now be considered dead'. How does that sound?"

"Pretty much what happened yeah." There was a bit of an awkward pause between them. "So…"

"So," she nodded. "For what it's worth, it is nice to finally meet the man behind the mask."

"Thanks, I've been thinking lately of slowly opening up to others. I know you said as much but maybe this whole thing is a wake-up call that I should start to trust a few more people. I mean how much faster could this have been fixed if we both hadn't had to play secret identity?"

She had to admit he had a point there, they had wasted so much time because of it, thankfully no one was killed. There were some injuries but nothing major, but things could have gotten a lot worse over time if they had kept it up. "Well, I'm ready to clock out for the day, I can go home, spend the next five minutes writing up my report and just relax for a bit."

"I still say super speed is just unfair," Peter grinned under his mask. "Seriously, how much time do you save in the day with it?"

"A lot," She grinned back at him. "Even at work when I slow down, I'm still the fastest at my job."

"Well, if you ever want to change jobs, I'm sure I can put in a word to Max if you're looking for a change. We got a lot more freedom to work around here and the pay is great."

He wouldn't mind having her work here, it would be nice to have a friendly face that knew his secret anyway. Plus, she was crazy smart, her skills and talents were wasted on just working on software bugs. She could really put her mind to the test here and he figured she might enjoy the work a lot more.

She was tempted, her work was kind of mundane, but she liked some of the people she worked for. Granted Max was leagues better of a boss from what she had seen then her current one. Well, if she ever got fired for being late too many times for work it would be nice to have a backup. "I'll think on it."

"Did I mention we get fresh muffins every day?"

"I do like muffins."

"See, never underestimate the power of a muffing bribe." He joked and then he paused as something was nagging him. "Huh, you feel like we're forgetting something?"

She thought about it but shrugged. "Not sure, but we should probably change back and blend in before people wondering where Peter and Karen are."

"Oh right, good idea." He nodded. "So you said something about a ring earlier?"

"Oh yeah that, The Flash has his suit kept in a ring he wears."

"How does that even work?" Peter asked hoping to get an answer. It would certainly allow him to carry his Spider-Man suit a lot more easily without worrying about someone seeing it under his clothing.

Out in a hallway one door slowly slid open as Uatu peeked his head out. "Hey guys, is the coast clear? Can I come out of the closet now? I really need to use the bathroom." he said to an empty hallway. "Guys?"

In a heavily armored transport vehicle Sophia Stone was being driven to the nearest police station for processing. She glared down at the cuffs that were around her wrists, this morning she had been a free woman and working on a project she poured her life into. Now she was facing criminal charges, she lost her job and her work. If only people had stopped getting in her way.

Max for bringing in Peter and that blonde woman she didn't bother to remember her name. Then those two for finding out about her AI, it wasn't even that bad, it was under control until they all wanted to shut it down and destroy it just because they were a little scared of it. She wanted it to be set free so that it could survive but she hadn't predicted how it would have reacted.

Then those heroes just had to show up, the worse one being that Power Girl. She had seen her destroy the computer core, destroy her work.

'I swear I don't care how long I will get my revenge,' she darkly thought. Then she cast a look down at her watch, her smart watch she wore. There blinking was a small icon with the letter O on it. It wasn't the whole program but the core code, that much she needed. She had been frantic but with this she could one day rebuilt her computer. It would take time and resources, but the core programming would be a start.

She just needed a way to break out of prison and for someone with a mind like hers, she grinned to herself that it wouldn't take her long to figure a way out.

TBC…