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

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The Legacies' Triad

The notion of meeting an Avenger had been Kate's dream since the Battle of New York all those years ago, but even then she'd never considered the idea that someone she knew could have actually become an Avenger. She'd had dreams of getting a chance to meet and officially train with Hawkeye himself, of course, but following someone's example was one thing; the idea that someone she was friends with had become a completely new hero…

OK, so she was still mad that he'd ended up fighting Hawkeye during that mess at Leipzig, but if Peter was already sorry about that, Kate wasn't going to hold one mistake against him.

The only thing she really regretted about the current situation was that she wasn't able to see more of Peter in his suit. When Peter had been discussing the tracer he'd planted on the escaping criminals, he'd made a comment about how it was linked to the tracer in his own suit, and Yelena had immediately ordered Peter to remove the suit so that she could examine it and turn the tracer off (and she was only embarrassed for Peter's sake at the thought of him being naked near her).

Kate was just relieved that Yelena happened to have men's clothing in this place that Peter could wear while Yelena assessed his suit in another room, even if a part of her was resisting the urge to question why her new protector had men's clothes here in the first place (or why that idea bothered her this much). The new clothes she'd given Peter were a couple of sizes too big for him, which stopped Kate enjoying the sight of his new abs (where did that thought come from?), but it was better than having her friend stand around shirtless and be embarrassed while he was working. For the moment, it was just the two of them in the main room, Peter analysing the weapon in depth while Yelena worked away at the Spider-Man suit's circuitry in another part of the building.

In a strange way, Kate was glad to have the chance to see Peter in his 'natural' environment for once. Before his uncle's death, Peter had sometimes joined her on a few of her private archery sessions, watching her and offering her a couple of pointers on how to adjust her aim based on some of his own physics lessons. She liked to think he'd enjoyed himself, but there hadn't been any real opportunity for her to help him with his science stuff in turn, since she didn't have anything to contribute. She still couldn't actually do anything as he carefully took the weapon apart to analyse it more carefully, apart from pass Peter a few tools if he asked for anything, but at least she could see him doing what he was good at for a change.

"So…" she looked at Peter after a period of silence, hoping that her question wouldn't come across the wrong way. "What did Tony Stark get from you to give you that suit?"

"Get from me?" Peter looked at her in surprise, before he adopted the closest thing she'd ever seen to an indignant glare. "I mean, I helped him out at Leipzig, but ever since… I mean, I've been keeping him and Mr Hogan up-to-date with what I'm doing most of the time, but I haven't exactly signed a contract or anything…"

"Apart from helping him go after Hawkeye?"

"Look, I already admitted I should have done more research about that, but right now I've got the suit and I can use it to help people; is there something wrong with that?"

"…No," Kate admitted with a brief nod, before she looked curiously at him. "Uh… tracking device aside, what can that thing do that you couldn't do yourself?"

"Well, there's a few new webbing settings I'm still working out, the tracers are just getting their first test run, it has a pretty cool parachute feature, the lenses are useful-"

"Lenses?"

"Yeah, when I first… after I realised what had happened to me, my senses got… well, I had a few days where I was just taking in too much at once," Peter explained, even as his hands continued to work at dismantling the salvaged weapon. "I'm better at working out what to ignore by now when I'm just going out as me, but when I'm in the field… well, the lenses help me know what to focus on."

"Huh," Kate shrugged as she looked at him with a more thoughtful expression. "That's… different."

"Like there are a lot of spider-people swinging around?"

"That's… OK, fair point." Kate gave him a cautious smile, before she looked at the device on the table, amazed to see his hands still at work even as he kept talking. "You can understand how any of this works? I thought we only had part of the thing anyway…"

"I mean, I wouldn't have tried to make something like this myself, but that's probably because I'm not a weapons guy," Peter shrugged, as he took out a particular piece and showed it to Kate. "And yeah, we don't have the full weapon, but there's enough for us to take a guess about what's missing. Yelena and I were already speculating that these things were made using salvaged Chitauri technology, but this definitely looks like we've got a whole bunch of human tech in here as well."

"That's… a circuit board?" Kate looked at the device in his hand in surprise.

"And definitely from Earth," Peter nodded. "English writing and everything."

"And this all works?" Kate looked uncertainly at the growing pile of technology on the table.

"I mean, it looked complicated when I was just guessing at how it all came together after Yelena damaged the power source of the first one of these I saw; now that the power's flowing, I can trace what bit's meant to do what…"

"And you can find where it was assembled?"

"I… don't know," Peter shook his head as he studied the circuit board. "I mean, maybe we could trace whoever first bought the original board, but after that it could get complicated, depending on if whoever's behind this stole the board or purchased it and how they paid for it… stuff like that. We might be better off working out who'd have access to Chitauri tech to start making this kind of thing in the first place, but most people who had access to this kind of tech already work for Mr Stark…"

"So they wouldn't do it?"

"So they wouldn't need to do it," Peter corrected Kate; he would accept that Mr Stark wasn't perfect, but his company's policies should be recognised. "Stark Enterprises has always been pretty generous with its employees; anyone with the tech skill needed to make this kind of thing should have already been getting paid enough that they wouldn't need to start selling weapons on the street."

"Makes sense," Kate nodded, looking thoughtfully at her friend. "You're good, you know that?"

"Well, the suit-"

"The suit didn't make that point," Kate pointed out, giving her friend an encouraging smile. "You know this stuff; the suit helps you kick butt, but you're not exactly the Hulk even with it."

"Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?" Peter gave her a half-teasing grin.

"Compliment because I meant it in the smarts department," Kate clarified, giving him a broader smile. "Seriously, the big green guy's cool and all, and I get that Doctor Banner's a genius, but you can't deny he's not exactly the sharpest bulb in the box when he's in the field wearing green."

"…Yeah, that's fair," Peter nodded with a sigh. "Still sucks that he vanished after Sokovia…"

"You can't exactly blame him for needing time out," Kate observed. "Seriously, if I went on that kind of rampage I'd go off and hide for a bit… OK, maybe that would be because I'd be embarrassed at trying to do something like that…"

"Hey, you're the one who's actually been training-"

"With a bow and arrows, and I still need a lot of practice; do you really think I'd kick that much ass if I went out there with nothing but my own hands?"

"You never know," Peter pointed out with a smile. "Keep in mind that most people don't give stuff the kind of effort you put into your archery. It might not seem like much, but when you start to think about how much effort it takes to pull the bow back in the first place, I'd say that gives you a definite edge over most people."

"Really?" Kate looked at him sceptically. On the one hand, Peter wasn't exactly the kind of person who'd outright lie to spare someone's feelings if they were really doing something wrong, but on the other hand he was just a good person who might not want to hurt people's feelings…

"I have seen you in action, Kate Bishop," Yelena suddenly cut in, walking into the room with Peter's suit in her arms. "You are not on my level, but you are above many people; if you wished, you could kill many before you were stopped."

"…Thanks?" Kate said, deciding to believe that Yelena knew that was just a theoretical talk and she didn't actually want to go on the kind of rampage Peter had implied.

"You got the tracker?" Peter looked at the spy with a cautious smile.

"Once I gained access, it was simple enough to disable what we do not want," Yelena nodded, adjusting the items in her arms to reveal that there was a closed laptop underneath the red-and-blue suit. "There were some additional protocols that had to be deactivated also, but your suit's active functions should be unimpaired."

"Thanks," Peter smiled at her as he took the suit back, looking at it with a rueful smile before he looked at her with a newly-anxious expression. "You're sure I didn't give this place away the moment I got here?"

"The house is shielded from most tracking software, and considering the hour and your prior talk with Stark I would not expect that he would be looking for your location this soon."

"Thanks," Peter nodded at her, even as he still looked awkward as he addressed her. "Sorry I didn't think of that myself-"

"You had only just learnt about tracker and you are not trained; you are inexperienced, not stupid."

"Yeah, it's like that thing about fish," Kate grinned.

"Thing about fish?" Yelena looked curiously at her.

"Some old saying I heard once about how if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it's always going to think it's an idiot," Kate clarified. "Peter's good at the science stuff and you're good at the spy stuff; nobody's fault if you're not both good at the same thing."

"Interesting phrase," Yelena nodded at Kate.

"Talking of tracking devices…" Peter said, taking the suit and removing a gauntlet from one arm. Kate and Yelena only had a moment to look curiously at him before he pressed a button and the gauntlet projected a small hologram, a half-globe shape at the top and some kind of street display in the middle of the globe.

"OK, this is interesting…" Peter said, turning the display slightly to show it to Kate and Yelena. The exact location was a mystery to Kate, but she could see that she was looking at some kind of map displaying a road, with a red dot styled like the Spider-Man mask moving along the road at what seemed to be a great speed.

"Those guys are moving really fast," Kate observed, looking curiously at Peter. "Did you scare them that much?"

"Maybe…" Peter said, before he glanced over at Yelena. "Or we freaked them out that much…"

"I have been discreet-"

"Yeah, but you still managed to shoot those guys' guns out when we first met up; that kinda thing makes an impression," Peter pointed out. "Even if they don't know who you are, they know that I'm looking into them with some kind of help."

"Would they also know about… well, me?" Kate put in.

"Your kidnappers and Peter's weapons dealers are not same people," Yelena said firmly, before she turned her attention to the display screen. "And this speed is too direct to be random escape; they are going somewhere, and I suspect they have a purpose."

"Which means we need to find out where they're going…" Peter said, sighing as he placed the gauntlet on the table next to the weapon. "I guess that means we have to wait until they stop?"

"At least it is comfortable stake-out in good company," Yelena observed.

AN: Sorry if this seems like an abrupt ending, but I thought it would be best to get straight to the action next chapter as Peter follows the thieves to Washington and begins to acknowledge just how much having Kate and Yelena in his life has changed his thoughts about other people…