Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it came from the films or the comics, even if I flatter myself that I've put my own spin on things.
Feedback: All constructive comments or appreciative observations are welcome
The First and the Last
Peter wondered what it said about his life that he had lived in America all his life and never thought about coming to Mount Rushmore before Carol suggested it.
OK, so Ben and May weren't rich enough that taking the time off needed to drive out here was something they could just do, but it was still one of the most famous landmarks in the world, and yet this was the first time Peter had been to visit the famous mountain. He and Carol might have 'cheated' a bit by using her powers to fly out here while Peter crouched on her back- so long as she didn't go too fast it was a comfortable ride- but they at least had the advantage that they could just walk into Mount Rushmore once they got there. With extra clothes in Peter's backpack, it was easy enough for them to change in the nearby forest; Peter was glad that Carol had agreed to just let him go behind a tree to get his spider-suit off, but he'd noticed that she just took off her original top and left her dark trousers on while wearing a more normal-looking jacket (and Peter was not going to admit to anyone else that he'd taken a good enough look at Carol's legs to recognise her clothes that quickly).
Once they had finished changing, the two of them had moved on to the actual tourist spots. The whole experience was a simple visit once they had actually arrived, and Peter knew that they wouldn't have time to see everything in one day, but he appreciated the chance to see the scope of the famous monument. He and Carol might not be as fast on foot as Pietro Maximoff had been (he still wondered how the same experiments could have given Miss Maximoff her powers and 'just' made her brother fast), but they could each move a bit faster than the average person if they had to. The sculptor's studio offered an interesting look at just how the heads had been made, and there were some fascinating details about the history of the overall memorial, even if Peter noted how they skimmed over some of the more controversial parts of the mountain's history (he'd taken a quick look online the night before to see if there was anything people really recommended tourists visit).
"Impressive work, when you think about it," Carol said as the two of them looked up at the mountain from the end of the Avenue of Flags. "I think sometimes we become so used to modern technology we forget what people were capable of back in the day."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Peter smiled, as the two Avengers strolled along the path. Peter appreciated that they'd managed to arrive early enough that there weren't that many people there ahead of them, giving them some relative privacy to enjoy the mountain at their own pace. "I mean, the Washington Monument was kind of cool, but this… I mean, the scale of it is something else… do they have anything like this on other planets?"
"Not… exactly," Carol said after a pause for thought, standing at the end of the avenue to look up at the mountain. "There are a few monuments out there, of course, but most of them are more straightforward statues; I can't really think of any place that sets up carvings like this. Besides, most of those statues involve more automated systems being used to make those sculptures compared to what we had when people decided to make this mountain in the first place."
"You can admire the scale of everything when they've got more to do to make it, huh?" Peter smiled at her, before he sighed and looked up at the mountain. "And now there are all these new memorials they're making for everyone who died in the Snap…"
"Memorials are… tricky things," Carol observed. "I like to think of it as a mark of good people that we try to remember the individuals we've lost, rather than focus on scale. When I was with the Kree, they always spoke about the numbers lost to supposed enemy action rather than seriously talk about any of the specific casualties; it was always about 'avenge this insult to the greater glory of the Kree' and never about mourning the dead."
"And they didn't go to this kind of effort for…" Peter trailed off uncertainly as he looked at the mountain before he turned back to Carol. "Can I just say 'really worthwhile people' and-?"
"I get it," Carol nodded at him in understanding before she looked back at the mountain. "And there were… things the Kree did to commemorate particularly significant casualties, but most of those… it was so easy it almost didn't mean anything. I mean, with this place you just know that the presidents did something to deserve people putting in all that effort to make the memorial; with the Kree it's basically just slap on a helmet and scan someone's brain before they die…"
Carol's voice trailed off as she stared at the large mountain and its four giant faces. Curious what had drawn her attention (he was not looking for a reason not to gawk at her; he could appreciate that Carol was beautiful without making it all weird), Peter followed her gaze, and soon saw what had apparently drawn her attention. It was hard to see at this distance if someone wasn't actively looking for it or they had at least some kind of enhanced vision, but there were definitely people climbing up the rightmost side of Mount Rushmore, basically on the far side of Lincoln's head, making their way for the top.
"Uh… I get that this is my first time here, but I'm pretty sure people aren't allowed to actually go up that thing, right?" Peter glanced over at Carol.
"That's what I heard," Carol nodded, before she shot a small smile at Peter. "Shall we suit up and check it out?"
Peter didn't even hesitate to hurry off towards the trees on the left side of the Avenue of Flags, Carol close behind him. He heard a few other tourists call out in surprise, but once they were in the woods Carol grabbed Peter in her arms and the two of them flew off throw the woods, Carol staying low and keeping her glow down to a low level so that she wouldn't attract attention. Once the two of them had reached the rocks of a smaller nearby mountain, Carol put Peter down and waited for him to pull his own suit out of the backpack before tossing the bag to Carol.
As though following a plan they hadn't discussed out loud, Carol moved behind a group of trees as she shrugged off her jacket while Peter went behind another tree to take off his own clothes and pull his suit back on. His long experience of changing in alleyways made it even easier for him to quickly change before he felt he had to 'worry' about Carol, and by the time she called out to him he only had to pull his mask on and he was ready.
"OK," the other Avenger looked at him as she flexed her neck and a helmet appeared over her head. "We get up to the top of the mountain as fast as I can get there, then you dive in and find out what's going on while I stay low and keep an eye on things?"
"Makes sense," Peter nodded, his own mask now on his head. If they were panicking over some standard survey of the mountain, they didn't want to worry anyone by going in and shooting where they didn't have to, but Peter liked to think he'd improved enough that he could hit hard and fast without doing any serious damage if he had made a mistake. "Let's go."
As Peter took Carol's hand, Carol lifted up into the air and flew towards the main mountain, keeping her flight low so that she was just above the trees and only giving off a faint glow. She weaved around the trees so that Peter didn't hit any of them as he dangled below her, but he was fairly sure nobody would see them at this angle and speed unless they really got lucky. Even with Carol moving at well below her top speed, they were within sight of the top of Mount Rushmore in seconds, and from there it was easy to see the figures now squatting behind the upper ridge beyond the presidents' heads.
Glancing up, Peter confirmed that Carol's glow was still faint enough that the people on top of the mountain probably wouldn't have seen her yet, since she'd been staying down low and out of sight. Waving a hand to draw her attention back to him, Peter indicated downwards to a rocky outcrop a reasonable distance from the carvings and the unknown men.
"What are you thinking?" Carol said as they touched down on the rock, keeping her voice low to limit the risk.
"I'm thinking that we don't seem to be dealing with enhanced or they'd be more public about this, but they have to be doing something off if they're up here in the first place," Peter observed, hoping the older hero didn't mind him offering suggestions like this. "I just thought it might be better if I sneak up on them to get a better look while you… hang back and wait to see what I find?"
"Because I'd just go charging in and make things more difficult?"
"I didn't mean-!"
"I get it," Carol smiled reassuringly at him before Peter could finish his apology. "Trust me, I get that I'm not always subtle; I've thought about working on it at times, but the kind of things I face out there… making a big impression is often the best way to stop those problem before it gets worse."
"Right," Peter nodded back at her, glad his new friend hadn't misunderstood his point. "So… you stay low and I'll call you if I need you?"
"Or if I hear people shooting."
"Fair," Peter nodded before he turned and began to crawl up the mountain, only peripherally aware of Carol flying off to circle around the mountain from another direction. He was used to crawling up smoother surfaces than this (he forced down the brief memory of moving around the inside of that alien ship while trying to help Mr Stark rescue Doctor Strange), but he soon found himself enjoying the sense of moving over a more uneven surface as he approached the top of the mountain.
Keeping himself low as he reached the top, Peter saw a group of people wearing mostly casual clothes, even if their distinctive masks made it clear that these were far from a group of casual hikers who had somehow lost their way. He didn't know what that box they were standing over actually was, but while he didn't want to make quick assumptions about people, people wearing black face-masks with what looked like a red handprint on the mask were not likely to be the kind of people he could have a friendly talk with. He didn't know what that device was, but if someone went to the trouble of bringing something that big all the way up to the top of Mount Rushmore, he doubted it was for any kind of good reason.
"Hi there," he said, jumping up to stand in front of the group on the top of the mountain, deciding to fall back on his usual approach of mid-fight banter as he looked at the shocked group. "Did you just get lost from some tour I don't know about-?"
When one of the men drew a gun and started firing at him, Peter only just managed to jump out of the way, taking care to jump backwards so that the device the men had brought up wasn't in the line of fire. Making a couple of backward flips to take himself further away from the men, Peter soon took an opportunity and fired another web-line at the man's gun, yanking it out of his opponent's hands.
"OK," he said, coming to a halt so that he could bend the gun in half as the group of four watched him, "now that we've gotten the introductions out of the way, any chance-"
"You dare to interfere with our mission?" one of the figures glared at him. Peter noted that one man was staying close to that device while the other two, including the current speaker, had their hands inside their jackets, the man he'd just disarmed backing up to stand behind them. "We're trying to make things better!"
"By sticking that thing on top of Mount Rushmore?"
"This mountain represents all the flaws of global division and disunity!" the same figure (Peter guessed he was the leader) said. "Its destruction will remove one of the greatest constant barriers between nations!"
"So… that's a bomb?"
"Of course it is!"
"And you think that blowing this place up will be… How does that work?" Peter looked cautiously at the group, recalling some of the background reading he'd done when choosing the location of this particular day trip. "I mean, I know there's been some debate about the land ownership here-"
"Exactly!" the leader said with a new sense of passion. "People have become obsessed over who owns some relatively random mountain that's only important because of outdated native beliefs and because Americans wanted to commemorate American leaders! Once Mount Rushmore is destroyed the debate becomes irrelevant and people can move on from the matter; symbols such as this will be unimportant-"
"You do realise that blowing up one of the most famous monuments in the world is just going to make everybody mad at you, right?" Peter said, even as his suit's HUD re-assessed the situation; if that device was the bomb they'd apparently brought here to destroy the mountain, he definitely wanted to make sure nothing happened to set it off. "Nobody's going to care about why you did it; you'll just be as bad as those guys who caused 9/11-"
"We're not even killing anyone; nobody comes up here-!"
Deciding that this particular debate wasn't worth continuing, Peter fired two web-lines at the people who had their hands under their jackets, twisting his arms and yanking them hard so that they just crashed into each other. With the immediate potential threats dazed, Peter leapt forward and kicked the man closest to the bomb in the head, the blow light enough that it should just daze the target but would be enough to keep him down for a moment. The man he'd originally disarmed moved forward as though hoping he could take Peter by surprise, but Peter instead grabbed the man's outstretched arm and threw him into one of the other men before the guy could get up.
Taking a look around the mountain top, Peter smiled as he confirmed that all of the group were down for the count, before firing off a few quick strands of webbing to tie their arms to their torsos. Satisfied that he was done, he called out, and Carol arrived a moment later.
"What are we dealing with?" she asked, settling down alongside Peter as she looked around the mountain.
"Some kind of terrorist group wanting to blow up the mountain," Peter explained with a shrug. "I've got them tied down, so… maybe you could take these guys somewhere else while I deal with the bomb?"
"Is that safe?"
"I have an A.I. assistant designed by Mr Stark in this suit; I think I can deal with a bomb made by… some guys who think this is a smart idea," Peter said, as he walked over to look directly at the device, briefly proud of himself that he could think of Mr Stark without focusing on what happened after fighting Thanos. He took a moment to scan the machine and let Karen run a more detailed check, but once he was done he looked over at Carol with a nod. "Yeah, this thing doesn't look like it'll be too hard to disable, and I'm pretty sure these guys didn't even arm it yet, but… well, I'd rather not just leave an active bomb anywhere until I know I've shut it down myself."
"I can agree with that," Carol grinned back at him before waving a hand at the bound men. "So, if you've already tied them up…?"
Anticipating her request, Peter fired off a few more web-lines and had soon attached a few more strands of webbing to their prisoners that Carol could use to carry them away. Taking the cue, Carol picked the men up by the webbing strands and rose upwards, the men dangling below her like some strange set of wind chimes.
"You sure you've got that bomb?" she looked down at him.
"I can do it," Peter nodded at her (he wouldn't take it personally; it was natural for people to be worried about trusting someone to disarm a bomb). "Feel free to get them somewhere secure and I'll deal with things here."
"Be right back," Carol grinned as she turned and flew away, keeping her speed low to ensure that the captives didn't have a chance to get away. Satisfied that the would-be terrorists were in secure hands, Peter turned back to the bomb, waiting for Karen to bring up a suitable scan of the device before he set to work. As he'd hoped, the gang hadn't had time to set the bomb before he interrupted, and the set-up wasn't that complicated. He didn't know if these people were just amateurs or they hadn't been able to find any good equipment; he didn't recognise the symbol or their 'creed', but it wasn't like he'd paid much attention to terrorists…
Should I be scared that they're this bad at what they were trying to do, or relieved that they were bad at it?
Peter could see the merits in both argument- incompetent terrorists could do more damage, but it might also suggest that they could be talked down later- but he decided to focus on dismantling the device in front of him and deal with other details later. He had just removed the core explosive elements from the bomb when he felt something 'spike' in the back of his head, prompting him to grab the device and leap up as bullets sprayed all over the area where he'd just been standing. For a moment Peter panicked as he ascended through the air, lost for what to do when he had nowhere to swing, but the gunfire stopped almost before Peter began to fall back towards the ground.
Turning around in mid-air, Peter moved to take in the source of the attack, and was shocked to see what he could only think of as a robotic rhinoceros standing on the other side of the top of Mount Rushmore. There was a vague resemblance to Colonel Rhodes' War Machine armour as the 'rhino' had a pair of large guns on its back, but the upper body was far wider than a normal human being, and the head was positioned in a manner that made Peter picture a man squatting inside it compared to how Mr Stark and Colonel Rhodes wore their own armour in a more conventional manner.
"Spider-Man?" the robotic rhino said, a tone of bemusement in its voice that at least suggested it wasn't some kind of drone; with Mr Stark dead, Peter felt fairly sure nobody else could create an A.I. capable of showing that level of emotion. "What are you doing here?"
"I think the question is what are you doing here?" Peter countered as he looked at the large rhino-thing, allowing Karen to note potential weak points on his HUD as he spoke.
"What am- I just decided to- I'm here to stop a terrorist attack-!"
"Which I only found out about because I was in the right place at the right time and my own suit is a lot easier to put on at short notice than I'd guess that thing is," Peter countered. He might wish that he could believe the best in people, but he liked to think that he would have always been suspicious of someone who claimed that they had brought something that big along by sheer chance. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"I told you, I found out about an upcoming terrorist attack and I decided to-"
"You 'found out' about a terrorist attack and didn't tell anyone?" Peter glared at the rhino suit. "I get that the world is in a bit of a mess right now, but I'm fairly sure you're meant to report that kind of thing to the authorities-"
"Except when you have the power to do something about it yourself; why shouldn't I-?"
"Because you're not a cop or an Avenger, and if you think you'd be impressing anyone by doing this you're just being stupid," Peter said. He appreciated that might be a hypocritical thing for him to say given how he'd investigated those thefts committed by Liz's dad on his own, but at least he'd tried to alert Mr Stark to what was going on in New York rather than just keep it to himself to show off. "Seriously, how did you-?"
When the guns on the back of the armour moved forward, Peter leapt into action once again. The device still in his hands, Peter took a chance and leapt forwards rather than back or to the sides, webbing the bomb onto the rhino's back before he leapt forward. Positioned so that he was basically between the guns on the suit so that they couldn't target him directly, Peter grabbed both guns with his palms and pulled as hard as he could.
The man in the rhino suit yelled in outrage and set the suit charging along the top of the mountain, but he didn't manage to go far before Peter had pulled both guns off the suit, confirming that this thing was far more fragile than anything Mr Stark had created. The controller's angered yells increased when he realised what had happened before he tried to reach back to grab Peter, but the suit's arms just weren't designed to get at something in the wall-crawler's current position.
Noticing that they were starting to descend down the mountain, Peter leapt forward so that he was in front of the rhino's 'head', grabbed both sides of the helmet, and gave it another hard pull, using his powers to stick his hands to the helmet to give the pull more force. The man tried to both halt his charge and reach up to grab Peter, but the suit just seemed as though it couldn't react fast enough to everything its user wanted it to do. Peter felt the same strange sensation in the back of his head as the rhino-armour began to tip forwards, but then the helmet came away in his hands and he leapt up to avoid the arms that tried to close on him. He managed to land a kick to the armoured man's back as he leapt, which sent the man down to the ground with a forceful impact, even as the armour's arms took the impact to protect the man's now-exposed face.
Back on the ground and on his feet, Peter turned to look at the downed armour, the original device still webbed onto its back. Satisfied that the man was down for the moment, Peter fired a few strands of webbing into the exposed joints at the back of the armour's knees and around the shoulders. From what he recalled of the times he'd spent looking over the plans for some of Mr Stark's earlier armours, 'gumming up the works' like that should stop this man actually moving those limbs until the webbing dissolved, and Peter had faith that Carol would be back to help him take this guy into custody by then. Walking around to the front, Peter took in the face of the man in the rhino-esque suit, and was surprised to find that it was a face he recognised.
"Justin Hammer?" he said incredulously.
"You recognise me?" the man said with a grin despite the dust covering his face after he hit the ground. "HAH! I knew people would-!"
"I was at the Stark Expo when your drones went crazy," Peter cut the man off, remembering to keep the mask on as much as he wanted to glare at this idiot. "One of them nearly shot me before Mr Stark showed up."
"Ah," Hammer said, his enthusiasm dampened by this clarification. "I will stress I did not intend for them to do that-"
"You gave a terrorist access to your company's lab when you knew he had a grudge against Mr Stark and invited him to show off his tech in a public place celebrating the Stark family," Peter cut the older man off with a cold glare. "Did you really think that was going to go well? That a man that determined to kill Mr Stark would just be OK with upstaging him in secret? The guy had already tried to attack a major celebrity in the middle of a public event; he wasn't going to give that up just because you were going to pay him!"
"Everyone wants money-"
"That guy could have sold his own arc reactor to people if he just wanted to be rich; I'm not a business expert and even I could have told you that was a stupid idea!" Peter cut the older man off, before giving him a more fixed glare. "And on that topic, how are you even out of prison? I thought collaborating with a terrorist would merit a bit more time in jail than this."
"I did not collaborate with a terrorist; I was tricked into helping a dangerous man escape and he manipulated me into assisting him-!" Hammer tried to protest.
"You were arrested and the trial was pretty public," Peter cut that off. He hadn't exactly been interested in the news back then, but he had basically gorged himself on anything about the facts of the Stark Expo once it was over, and Justin Hammer's trial had been fairly well-recorded. "Seriously, how did you get out, and who did you hire to make this hunk of junk?"
"Junk?" Hammer spat indignantly at him. "I'll have you know this is all my work-!"
"OK, that explains- oh," Peter cut Hammer off, clenching his fists as he glared at the older man, new ideas filling his mind. "This… this was you, wasn't it?"
"This was- hey, the Flag-Smashers are a legitimate terrorist organisation-"
"Pretty sure that's a contradiction, but I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you're not smart enough to create these guys to make a statement and take that in the spirit it was probably intended," Peter interrupted, lenses in his mask narrowing as he looked at the former industrialist. "But you're the reason they're on this mountain, aren't you? You gave them the idea to attack the mountain… and I'm pretty sure you also gave them the bomb…"
"Just so that I could stop it!" Hammer protested. "I just thought that I could be-"
"The new Tony Stark?" Peter couldn't believe that this man was honestly stupid enough to ever think that anything he was talking about could have worked. "You gave terrorists a bomb that could have genuinely blown up Mount Rushmore and honestly thought you could stage something like this to make yourself the hero?"
"Hey, everyone loved it when Stark got me arrested and I didn't even do anything wrong-"
"Again, you freed a terrorist; that's wrong," Peter said firmly. "And however you managed to persuade anyone to let you out of prison this time around, I'm pretty sure you're going back there after this."
Anything else Hammer might have tried to say in his defence was cut off when Peter fired a quick blast of webbing to cover his mouth, leaving the man to mumble incoherently as Peter jumped up to sit on the back of the suit where the former bomb was still webbed into place. All being well, Carol should be back here soon enough, and then they could take Justin Hammer back to prison and dismantle this stupid suit…