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
AN: Some parts of this chapter are based on the origin story of the criminal depicted from an issue of the original Amazing Spider-Man; without giving too many spoilers, this guy seemed like a good choice to give Peter a challenge without being a serious threat.
The First and the Last
Peter was coming to the conclusion that the problem with taking time out to enjoy a holiday was that when you returned to your regular life, particularly in cases like his, it reinforced just how ridiculous his life had become. The holiday to Edinburgh had been a good vacation, and he appreciated how Carol had been able to assure him that he'd made the right choice to end things with Debra, but once Peter had returned to New York, it was just back to the usual stuff. He could appreciate that there was something to be said for having just regular crime to deal with, particularly when he had to find time for school as well if he was going to get into a good college, but a part of him still wished he could have faced something more engaging than muggings or break-ins.
Right now, his attention was particularly focused on investigating a new spree of robberies committed by a man in some kind of strange white suit. The reports varied on whether the man was ever armed or if he just did some kind of strange bluff, but everyone who'd seen this man in action agreed that he was basically impossible to catch when he had finished his work. Apparently the man had broken into a bank a couple of days ago, and had more recently been sighted fleeing Beemont Manufacturing, an engineering company focused on chemical manufacture. So far there had been no news that this guy had actually hurt anyone, but when he was making this much metaphorical noise Peter guessed that something would change soon. He wasn't sure if he was taking a complete stab in the dark to go swinging around the part of town a short distance from the last couple of reported robberies, but he had no better ideas for finding this guy…
His thoughts were cut off when he saw a figure in a white suit essentially skim down the middle of the street, followed closely by a police car. Quickly adjusting his swinging direction, Peter turned to follow the current chase, and was immediately surprised to see the skimming man make a surprisingly sharp U-turn in the middle of the street. The car tried to turn to follow after him, but the police took it too quickly and the car lost control, crashing into a couple of garbage cans before it could stop.
Peter wasn't sure if that had been part of a deliberate plan or just a lucky break, but either way he wasn't prepared to let this guy keep going in case he did something worse later on. The guy was moving fairly quickly, but as Peter swung down towards the ground, he was quick to confirm that it wasn't so fast that he couldn't keep up with the man in white.
"Real fancy manoeuvre, hotshot!" Peter called out once he had settled into a suitable swinging pace. "I bet you're a whiz at break-dancing, too!"
"Who said-?" the man in white began, before he spun around while moving to take in the speaker. "Spider-Man?"
"Who else?" Peter said, only to be surprised when the man in white sped up his 'skating' and moved on ahead once again. He fired a web-line at the man's back, but much to his surprise, the webbing seemed to slip off the suit as though it was covered in oil or some similar substance, basically falling away from the man's back without making proper contact.
"Bad move, Spider-Man!" the man said, putting on a new burst of speed. "Nothing can stick to my costume, not even your webbing!"
Peter hated to admit it, but the man clearly had a point. He shifted to a web grenade in the hope that enveloping his target completely might be enough to get around whatever was on this guy's suit, but the man just put himself into a spin and sent the webbing flying off him to strike the people around. Peter had to swing upwards to avoid being hit by his own webbing, but the man he was chasing somehow put on another burst of speed and moved further down the street.
Deciding to change tactics, Peter fired another couple of web-lines to either side of the street, setting up a slingshot effect, and threw himself down the road towards the man in white. The guy's suit might be deflecting Peter's attempt to catch him long-range, but if he could just hit this guy directly he might be able to put him down-
Even with Peter's heightened reflexes, he only fully registered what had happened after the fact. His attempted long kick failed to make contact as the man in white performed another surprising U-turn and began to slim along another street, leaving Peter to hit a truck carrying boxes of fruit and vegetables.
"Oh boy…" he said, wincing as he tried to clamber out of the boxes while ignoring the worst of the smells and squelches around him from the crushed food. He wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed at the crash or the fact that he'd been humiliated so easily by something so simple, but right now, he was sure of one thing; he was going to find that sliding man in white, and he was going to make sure the guy didn't get away that time.
A couple of hours later, his suit still slightly sticky from the crushed fruit and his mood still grim from the loss, Peter found himself perched on the edge of a building looking down on the street below. He had spent an hour or so trying to check with a few other known criminal haunts to see if anyone had any information about the man in white, but at first all he'd been able to identify was that the man was calling himself 'Slyde'. It sounded as though the man had so far just focused his efforts on relatively victimless crimes, such as robbing banks of relatively reasonable sums of money that he could carry away himself, which explained why he hadn't made too much of an impression in the news despite the suit.
Things had become interesting when one of the men Peter had questioned had revealed that he'd heard rumours that someone was setting up a plan to ambush Slyde that night during a meeting of some sort. Nobody seemed to know what the meeting was actually about, but at least one man had suggested that the lack of information was because someone didn't want anyone to know what was going on in case someone else wanted to take advantage of it. As much as Slyde had annoyed Peter by making him feel like an idiot, the man didn't deserve to get killed by a gang ambush, which left him to head for the location of that planned ambush and wait for something to happen.
Squatting on the edge of the building, Peter wondered if he should consider getting a different suit for when he had to be more stealthy, but he soon decided it wasn't worth it. Having a black suit for stealth or some similar situation might have its merits, but he might have to go back and forth to change suits depending on what situation he was dealing with, so it was easier to stick with one suit for regular use. He could even see a couple of people taking up positions on lower rooftops, and the fact that they weren't looking up yet suggested that he was doing all right in terms of staying under the radar.
Although I should look into something tougher for the next Thanos-level threat…
Peter wasn't sure what kind of difference he could make the next time something as big as Thanos came to Earth- or even came from Earth; there was at least one more guy who'd tried to give himself Doctor Banner's powers if he remembered the reports correctly- but if Ms Potts let him have access to Stark Enterprise resources, didn't he owe it to him to be prepared for the worst? The remaining Avengers had all just been doing their part to help the world rebuild after what had been lost in the Snap, but the potential for them to come back together was there if they were ever needed…
The sight of a van driving up towards the corner drew Peter's attention out of his thoughts, looking down to see a fancy-looking car park on the corner. After a few minutes of waiting, the doors opened and a couple of men in suits got out, one man in particular being a slightly larger figure. Judging by him being in the back seat, Peter guessed he was the one in charge, and he soon noticed a few other men with guns hiding in a couple of nearby alleyways. He had been cautious about those other men on the rooftops at first, but this was looking dangerous.
He might not be sure what he was dealing with right now, but he didn't need to assess the situation with Karen to know that those men were up to something. He appreciated that he wasn't experienced in some ways, but he couldn't think of any reason for people to be gathering above a particular street like that unless something more nefarious was going on. Moving carefully towards the nearest gathering, he took a moment to confirm that both men were armed before he fired his webbing to pin them to the nearest wall.
Looking down to confirm that Slyde had arrived and was talking with the large man from the car as they exchanged a couple of briefcases, Peter jumped around the surrounding rooftops, moving quickly and quietly as possible as he took out the other men on those rooftops before any of them could react. He had to jump up to deal with the people on the tallest nearby buildings so that he could avoid anyone spotting him, but it only took a few moments for him to deal with everyone on the upper levels. Looking down, he saw Slyde studying something in the briefcase he was holding while the larger man walked back to the car, but then he was struck by a sudden warning in the back of his head and knew that things were about to get ugly.
"Slyde!" he called out, leaping from the roof and firing off a few webs. "Duck!"
Once again displaying his exceptional reflexes, Slyde bent over in time to avoid being shot, but Peter at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he had saved a life. Swinging up towards the men gathered on the rooftop, Peter knocked them down with a swinging kick, returning towards the ground in time to see Slyde knock down most of the men on the ground by speeding past them while curled up into a 'ball' shape.
Noticing the man in the suit get back into his car and trying to make a break for it, Peter hit the ground and fired more webbing at the back of the car, taking care to spread it out so that he wasn't holding on to anything that could easily tear off and let the car escape. He was just wondering what he could do next when Slyde slid up alongside the car and slashed at the tires with sharp blades on the tips of his feet, leaving the car's wheels to strike the ground and send up a series of sparks before Peter smothered them with his impact webbing. The car was left immobilised on the road, an extra shot of webbing sealing the doors so nobody could get out.
"Y'know something, guy?" Slyde said, moving up towards him. "We make an aces team!"
"Not so fast there, Speedy," Peter countered, pointing a warning finger at the man in white. "The last time I checked, you were wanted for a few crimes yourself, and we still have unfinished business-"
"Ease off, web-slinger!" another voice called out from behind. "Slyde is under my protection!"
Turning around, Peter was bemused to see a man standing by another fancy car, a couple of police vehicles pulling up behind him with their lights off. Peter wasn't sure as he didn't read the news as much as he probably should, but he was fairly sure that the new arrival was District Attorney Tower, one of the rare officials who had survived the Snap and remained in his usual position afterwards.
"He's… what?" Spider-Man said, lost for what else to say after this particular revelation.
"Slyde called my office earlier today," the older man explained, walking up to join the young hero and the man in white. "In exchange for leniency on his bank rap and the other charges against him, he agreed to help my commission on organised crime nail Rockwall."
"OK…" Peter nodded in cautious understanding. "So… he found something about this guy?"
"False accounting books proving that Rockwall was using… certain businesses… to launder money for his gangs," Slyde explained, handing a phone over to Tower. "And on that topic, here's the recording I made of that conversation with him."
"Excellent," Tower said, taking the recording and the briefcase in Slyde's hand away from him. "We've been after Rockwall even before the Snap, and after all the power grabs he made during that mess… I really owe you one, Slyde!"
Peter had no idea what it said about public opinion if they could go from condemning Slyde as a thief just a few hours ago and now were basically treating him as though he was a hero for turning on one gangster.
He appreciated that some of the Avengers had started out with a worse background- heck, the Scarlet Witch had been working with Hydra before she realised who the real bad guys were- but this guy… for all Peter knew he was just turning one gangster in to set up some kind of takeover of his own…
"Glad to be of service," Slyde said as he moved to grab the briefcase out of the other man's hands, "but after due consideration, I've decided to keep the money! Bye!"
Not even taking time to comment on how he'd been wondering if something like this would happen, Peter leapt upwards to get a better angle of attack and tried to fire a web-line, but it was no good; Slyde's body was at an angle that stopped him snagging the briefcase from the fleeing thief, and obviously the webbing couldn't stick to Slyde's costume anyway.
"Damn," Peter muttered to himself, looking after the rapidly-vanishing criminal. Swinging after him might be a possibility, but Slyde had too much of a head-start on him, and based on how things had gone the last time Peter chased this guy it wouldn't take much to turn events against him all over again anyway.
He could at least console himself with the knowledge that he hadn't failed to stop a man who seemed to be actively trying to do anything particularly dangerous, but the idea of being beaten by someone whose whole schtick was just being very slippery… and he wasn't even sure how the guy had done that…
He was definitely not sharing this story with the other Avengers at any point; it was just going to be embarrassing, and he definitely didn't want Carol to know he had trouble with someone whose 'power' was something as stupid as being slippery…
I need to stop this, he thought to himself, swinging away through the streets to try and vent his frustration. Seriously, I should have learnt my lesson when Mr Stark nearly ignored me during that mess with Toomes; I don't need someone else's approval…
The problem was that he knew he wanted far more from Carol than her approval; he just wasn't ready to admit just how hopeless it was. She was literally the one who inspired the Avengers as a team in the first place, and she'd been a hero on a galactic scale for years, so why she'd ever think of him as anything more than her Earth contact… or why that was such a big deal to him…
"Nice," Jalome Beacher said, satisfied in the day's work as he took off his white suit while standing in his apartment. It had been a difficult few months since that Rockwall guy bought out Beemont Manufacturing and closed down most of his colleagues' departments. Beacher was just lucky enough that he'd had his latest discovery of a frictionless chemical coating to give him something useful to fall back on, but he hadn't been able to do anything with that before Beemont was subject to a hostile takeover.
With Rockwall basically firing people left and right, Beacher was just grateful he hadn't shared his formula with Rockwall's associates before he left or they would have probably taken the credit and left him with nothing. As it was, he had been able to use a speed skater costume from a local sports store as a costume by covering it in his formula, and then modify some boots so that he could glide over most surfaces. Adapting his gloves so that he could still hold on to things had been trickier, but it had been worth the effort; even if he didn't entirely like having to steal, he only took the money from the bank tills, and that would be covered by insurance easily enough.
The real breakthrough had been when he decided to pay a visit to Beemont to vent his frustrations and seen Rockwall running away with a briefcase. Taking the case for himself on the chance it was important, he'd found two sets of financial books in it, one confirming that Beemont had been suffering financial losses while the other claimed enormous profits, confirming that Rockwall had turned the company into a mob front for laundering money. After calling Rockwall to set up an apparent blackmail exchange, Jalome had called the District Attorney to help them nail Rockwall in exchange for leniency on his own charges, and the rest was easy.
A part of him felt bad about the way he'd treated Spider-Man at the end, given that the wall-crawler had saved his life, but Jalome reasoned it wasn't worth worrying about that issue. He wasn't going to make a regular habit of going out in that suit now that he'd acquired the start-up he needed to set up his own business, and his focus now was to get in touch with some of his old colleagues and get them all away from the corruption that Rockwall had inflicted on Beemont. He'd be happy using his formula for its original purpose, he'd be working with old friends, and Spider-Man could look back on this whole thing and laugh about it later.
The guy saves people from actual killers all the time; it's not a big deal if a simple thief gets away for once…