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

Kate appreciated that she needed to work on her skills when it came to doing more than shooting arrows at people, but looking at Peter as he worked away at some new gadget in Yelena's safehouse at the end of a busy school week, she wondered if she would ever be capable of something like that. She still wasn't sure if this new routine of the two of them working together was going to be a long-term thing, and a part of she wasn't even sure if she wanted it to be. If she wanted to establish a credible reputation, she didn't exactly want to only be known as part of a team when even the Avengers had enjoyed their own separate adventures before and after they joined up, but working with Peter was… it just felt good…

"Done," Peter smiled, turning around to pass her a pair of sunglasses with what looked like Bluetooth earpods attached to both sides.

"Uh… you get that I don't listen to music when I'm out on patrol, right?" Kate looked uncertainly at the glasses. "I appreciate the gift, but-"

"These aren't meant for music," Peter smiled at her. "Put the glasses on."

Kate looked uncertainly at the glasses for a moment, but Peter's encouraging smile prompted her to follow his request and put them on. Just as she adjusted the earpods, there was a beeping sound.

"Hello, Kate," Susan's voice said from the earpods in her ears.

"Susan?" Kate said in surprise, reaching up to touch her ear. "How- Peter, did you-?"

"I managed to set up your own link to Susan through the devices," Peter grinned. "I mean, I had to get her help replacing the right chip in those things, but it looks like Ms Romanoff was prepared for quite a few things when she set this place up-"

"Hold on; if I'm accessing Susan through this-?" Kate began.

"I checked; it doesn't do anything for my own ability to use her," Peter nodded reassuringly at her. "Mr Stark set up JARVIS so that he could theoretically control multiple armours at one point; Susan can easily adapt to give us both info at the same time and still have enough processing power for… well, at least one more person."

"Cool," Kate smiled in relief, taking off the glasses to look at them curiously. "So what's with the glasses?"

"It just felt like a suitable bonus," Peter shrugged. "I did think about just making it AirPods, but the glasses help to cover your face and they can offer you a visual feed if you want; obviously you don't need the kind of stuff I'm getting because it might get in the way when you're trying to shoot-"

"Peter," Kate cut him off, walking over to give him a quick hug, "they're great; you don't need to defend yourself for being smart."

"…You're welcome," Peter said, returning the hug and trying not to think about the way Kate's hair smelled to his enhanced senses before he stepped back. "Anyway-"

"Peter, Kate," Susan's voice said over the computer. "There has been a prison break at Ryker's Island."

"Ryker's?" Peter looked at the screen in shock. "Toomes?"

"No," Susan affirmed. "It was one of his former associates; Mac Gargan."

"Gargan?" Kate repeated, looking at Peter inquiringly. "Was he one of Toomes's guys?"

"He was captured during the arms deal on the boat," Susan confirmed.

"Do we have any way of finding him?" Peter asked, glad that he had taken to wearing his suit by default when he was working in the safehouse.

"I can provide a list of the gang's known safehouses from when Toomes was arrested; I can't guarantee that he'll be using any of them-"

"But I can check them out faster than any cop," Peter nodded in understanding, before he glanced over at Kate. "Sorry, but if I don't know where he'll be-"

"I get it; the bike's a bit less discreet," Kate nodded at him before she sat down at the screen. "I guess I'll keep an eye on things here and see if there's some surveillance thing we can tap into or something-"

"Is that possible?"

"Remote access to such systems would be too distinct, but Agent Romanoff's safehouses include a range of options in the event of her needing to be alerted if her location was compromised," Susan put in. "Once Kate and I know what to look for, we have a chance of finding one specific criminal when we are at least sure he's in the city."

"So… not something we can do every time we need to find someone, but when we're after someone who's already in the system it's easier to try and track the guy?" Peter said, before looking over at Kate. "Do you-?"

"Hey, it's still stopping a criminal even if I'm just sitting around and searching for him," Kate said as she sat down in front of the computer. "We'll let you know if we find anything at this end; good luck finding that guy out there."

As Peter started swinging through the streets, Susan had already pulled up a map to identify Gargan's likely safehouses. With her help, Peter had already crossed off a few of the locations listed as they were the ones most likely already known to the police, but a few other places were kept as options as places that Stark had secured with Damage Control to prevent Toomes' tech going public. Peter chose to be grateful that it was easy enough to access that information in the first place- at least it suggested that Mr Stark trusted him with some useful information now- but at the same time it felt like he should have done more. Maybe he should have tried to work out some kind of 'confidential informant' thing like cops were meant to have (beyond when he and the girls had interrogated that guy in the car park) to get a better idea of how things worked, or where Toomes' gang might have been hanging out when they were just being social rather than assume the whole problem was over just because Toomes was in jail now…

Peter was just starting to wonder if he should be concerned about the fact that Toomes himself hadn't broken out with this guy when an alert in his suit's HUD display alerted him to a sighting of Gargan by one of Toomes' smaller safehouses. Adjusting his swinging direction as soon as he received the alert, Peter headed towards the indicated address, keeping close to the buildings so that he could hide in the shadows. Once the target address was just around the next corner, he released the web-line and shifted to crawling along the wall, keeping to the shadows so Gargan or anyone else couldn't see him in action. Just as he'd hoped, Gargan was standing nonchalantly in the street below, carrying a couple of large bags in his hands, but before Peter could move down to grab him, a car pulled up in front of the escaped convict. Under normal circumstances, Peter would have just jumped down to confront the driver and the thief, but the sight of the figure sitting in the driver's seat left him with several unexpected questions.

"Betty?" Peter said, only just remembering to keep his voice low as he stared at his classmate, sitting uncomfortably in the front of the car as Gargan dumped his bags in the boot. He knew that his fellow Decathlon member at least had a provisional driver's license from one of Flash's past attempts to brag about his own achievements, but the idea that she might be part of something like this…

Lost for better options, Peter fired a tracer onto the roof of the car, relieved that he hadn't missed the opportunity before it drove off. He wasn't sure what was going on with Betty and this guy, but given that it was the weekend tomorrow, he guessed that she wasn't planning to be away from the city for too long, which gave him some hope that he'd have time to follow this up.

"Got him," he said, reaching up to call Kate via Susan.

"Good to hear," Kate replied. "So I'm getting a tracer signal here; does that mean-?"

"Things are… looking a bit trickier here than I was expecting; I'm coming by to check it over with you," Peter responded, taking a moment to be sure which way the car was going before he swung off. He wasn't going to follow that car when he didn't know where it was going to stop or what was in those bags (he didn't want to risk that guy pulling out a couple of big guns and starting to shoot at him, particularly not with Betty at risk of getting caught in the crossfire), but he could at least check in with Kate and plan the next move.

Sitting at the computer screen for just a few minutes was enough for Kate to determine that she didn't hate research, but she preferred getting out into the thick of the action. She understood that Peter had only asked her to stay back this time because he was the faster one when she could at least theoretically help him find a new lead from here, but she would have to make it clear that she wasn't going to be left behind on a regular basis. She was training to actively do stuff in the field, not to be Spider-Man's tech support… even if she didn't have a problem helping Peter with something…

"So we're on?" she asked, turning around to look at Peter as he climbed back in through the window, only for her smile to falter as she took in his expression. "What happened?"

"Gargan got picked up from somewhere that wasn't one of our listed sites."

"So we lost him?"

"No, Susan alerted me when cameras saw him and I planted a tracer on the car that took him away before it got too far," Peter clarified. "The problem is that the driver is a girl I know from school."

"Seriously?" Kate looked at him in surprise. "Someone else at your school-"

"Liz didn't have anything to do with her dad's activities, and Betty…" Peter began, only to shake his head in uncertainty. "OK, I'll be honest, I'm not sure what's going on there. I overheard her having this weird phone call with someone a couple of days ago, but… well, I'm not that close to her, so it wasn't easy to find a reason to ask more about it…" Apparently lost for anything better to say, Peter shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, people have all kinds of weird conversations at school, and I'm not even sure this has anything to do with that…"

"But what are the odds that it doesn't?" Kate observed with a pointed stare. "I mean, I don't get why a teenage girl who's good enough to go to your school is working with the kind of guy who'd be reverse-engineering alien tech, but isn't there something people say about coincidence?"

"Yeah…" Peter nodded in acknowledgement, before he indicated the computer. "So shall we see where that tracer's going?"

"On it," Kate said, turning back to the computer and bringing up the program that would indicate where an active tracer could be found. How Peter had linked this computer to Susan was one of the things Kate still didn't totally understand, but so long as everything worked Kate wasn't going to worry about the fine details. "OK, they're still on the move… what do we do?"

"Well, it's only Friday, and Betty… from what I heard, it's been a bit rough at her home lately- I think she mentioned her mother had some kind of medical issues at some past decathlon meeting- so I don't think she's going to be away for more than the weekend," Peter explained. "Assuming she isn't taking Gargan too far away… maybe we can catch up to him tomorrow?"

"Or even talk to her?" Kate pointed out. "I mean, Yelena did teach us those interrogation tricks-"

"Hey, Betty's not-!" Peter began.

"I just meant you're not going to do what you did with me and give yourself away just by talking to her, right?" Kate smiled at him.

"…OK, I stand by the idea that would have worked on anyone who didn't know me as well as you-"

"Compliment accepted, but the point still stands," Kate finished. "We work out where they're going, try to talk to the girl first to find out what she knows, then go after Gargan and whatever he's up to; agreed?"

"Agreed," Peter nodded, looking at the computer screen with a new grimness about his manner. "I mean, if Gargan was in prison until just now, he probably wasn't the one Betty was talking to on the phone, so there's definitely someone else behind this…"

Peter didn't say anything more at the time, but Kate understood the point he was trying to make; if someone had the means to arrange for one of Toomes' old gang to get out of prison, they were probably interested in more than one crook, which meant that they should all be concerned about what they might be about to deal with.