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Peter knew he was not good at all the detective stuff, but having your guardian’s place of work mentioned during a meeting between criminals and some high officials of Gotham was never a good thing. He had been in this universe and this crazy city for almost a month, and it had been enough to realize how awful things were here. Honestly, the first two or so weeks were enough and during that time he had barely gone out.
Being more of a street type of superhero back home, Peter was familiar with how gangs and mafia worked, how deep they had their fingers in government. Daredevil had taught him some of those things, Mr. Stark had showed him just what corruption could do, Deadpool too had told him some bloody and terrifying stories even though they had met only five times in total, but nothing ever compared for Peter with seeing first hand horrible stuff people did because of some deliberate ploy to establish their territory, their power.
And Gotham was worse. It was worse than Queens. It was worse than Hell’s Kitchen. It was worse than Madripoor. Peter had read files on that city. He had read and thought there could not be a place on Earth that was worse.
There was.
Maybe not on the same Earth, but still.
“Karen, you think Mr. Clark’s somehow connected to all of this?” Peter sat on one of the roofs in the heart of Crime Alley.
It was a ballet school. Or, well, had been.
“I’m not sure, Peter. Jimmy Clark hadn’t been in Gotham once since you’ve been living here,” informed him Karen.
It was another thing. Peter still could not find a thing about Ric’s whereabouts before he had come to Gotham. It was as if he did not exist until November of the previous year. He knew things might be different when you were somewhat a part of the travelling circus, but not finding even the smallest of paper trail was weird at best.
“And all we know right now is that the shipment is going to be delivered from Gotham to Haly’s Circus at large, not just Ric’s guardian. It’s unclear what exactly will be in containers, Peter. It really might be just things any circus might need.”
“Yeah, but getting it from criminals?” Peter looked up at the smoggy sky, there were no visible stars, even moonlight did not shine through heavy pollution filled clouds tonight. “I’m pretty sure they’re getting it from one of the mob families and—” he paused, trying to remember the name of the villain. “—Scarecrow.”
Karen did not answer right away. She also knew something was up. She had known something was up from the moment she had looked Ric’s life up, and Peter since he realized the birth certificate was so messed up it was impossible to read names of Ric’s parents.
“It is possible someone uses Haly’s Circus to throw Batman off course.”
“Huh,” that was actually a good idea.
Batman was Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne had an adopted son — ward? — whose parents had been part of Haly’s Circus.
“It doesn’t look like Batman knows about the shipment, though?”
“He was at the docks three days ago,” reminded him Karen.
Peter thought back to the night, to how he had met little kid, Tim, and then Robin, how they had drunk hot chocolates because it had been cold, and how they had played tag on the rooftops after they had made sure Tim had actually gotten home, how Robin had looked at him and had said ‘B’s gonna be here soon’ and ‘You’re not that bad’. After that, Peter had saluted Robin, shouting ‘Bye, Birdboy!’, and had gone back to Crime Alley.
“Yeah, he—” Peter blinked, seeing bright yellow light in the sky. It looked like a bat signal, — he had thought it had been so cool when he had read about it the first time, he still thought so now — but it was spider shaped. “Huh, think they’re calling for me?”
“I believe so, Peter.”
The spider-tracer Peter had left in one of the empty containers led him to the nearest to Gotham city called Blüdhaven. He had not been expecting anything aside from maybe finding out if Jimmy Clark was involved in shady business or not. He had not been expecting at all to hear about chemicals that had been sold — that could be used to make more web fluid, his emergency supplies were running out, and it was better to take them away from criminals than robbing a school — or about shipment staying in Blüdhaven for extra two days because they wanted to acquire some ‘special product’ that apparently was not really popular in Gotham. Peter was not sure he wanted to know which product they were talking about that was not somehow sought after in the city filled with all types of drugs.
He was crawling up on the top of one of the containers, keeping his body as close to the metal as possible and staying in the shadows. There were some people patrolling the docks, but it was a surprisingly small amount of them, because of that Peter was not so concerned about being detected by someone. Plus, Blüdhaven did not have a superhero or a vigilante of its own, so Peter was not even trespassing.
“K, can you patch me into their comms?” Peter was not sure they even had them, though.
“Sorry, Spider-Man, it appears they don’t use them. There’re also no working CCTVs. I advise you to activate Enhanced Reconnaissance Mode¹.”
Peter nodded. His lenses were now allowing him to see through the walls of containers. They were filled to the brim with boxes. Those boxes had weapons in them. Peter had not known anything about weapons being sold.
There was also one container he was not able to see the inside of. That made him curious. Peter tapped at the Droney², waiting for it to find its way in, looking around with the heat vision, before switching to the feed of his drone.
Wooden boxes with red ‘FRAGILE’ on them. It was the only ship container with goons inside. Peter silently crept closer, looking from time to time at what the spider drone saw in the right corner of his HUD, while trying to find a way inside without alerting anybody.
He was at the back of the container when the door opened, letting some guys out, they had a pack of cigarettes on them. Peter crawled up onto the roof and to the door, he slipped inside, staying on the dark ceiling. Droney flew to him, returning to its place.
There were only three people inside, including him. One was a guard with a gun, another was—
Peter whipped his head to the left, there behind one of the massive boxes was a person in a black kevlar suit with a blue bird on his chest. After a second of him confusedly staring at the bird themed vigilante, Karen showed him a blurred photo of a man in — wow, that was certainly a choice — blue and purple suit with a low, very low neckline that actually sparkled in the lamplight, she highlighted the similarities in their frames. So, this vigilante had to be Nightwing. He was silently opening the box. Peter crawled closer, looking at what was inside from the ceiling of the container. There were metal barrels with liquid inside. Peter could barely smell what had to be toluene. Safety measures here were just terrible.
His Peter Tingle suddenly flared up, making him glance away from the chemical to the goon, pointing a gun on Nightwing. And very flammable liquid. Peter could not stress enough how much of a fire hazard it was.
“Hey,” Peter jumped down from the ceiling of the container, lending in a crouch in front of the guy, “did you sleep during your chemistry classes, dude?” He webbed the barrel of a gun, yanking it to himself before the guy could do anything. “You see, this thing is pure toluene, and it is explosive,” Peter threw the gun aside, shooting another web at the guy’s feet, giving it a solid tag and making him fall. “Like, it is already warm in here. We don’t want to go up in flames just because temperature’s higher than four point four degrees³, right?” Peter webbed the goon’s mouth. “Sorry, did you want to say something?” He also webbed his hands, making sure he stayed on the floor.
Peter jumped forward, leaping over the guy in a side flip, landing face to face with Nightwing, who had his two batons — were they called escrima sticks in Karen’s file on him? — out ready to strike.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Peter raised his hands up, slowly getting up from the crouch by the goon’s head. “I’m not here to, like, fight you! Just those guys were talking about shipping some dangerous chemicals from Scarecrow and some dude working in City Hall. I’m Spider-Man. From—” Queens, “—Gotham. And this deal was on my territory, so, you know, I went to check it out?” It was not the first reason, sure, but pretty close to it ever since Peter had gotten his hands on the exact things that had been bought by Haly’s Circus.
“Your territory? Have you met Batman?” Nightwing did not lower his weapons, and even though he now looked relaxed, his Peter Tingle did not stop buzzing in the back of his mind. Karen showed him scans of the escrima sticks and how similar they were to Ms. Romanoff’s. They were electric. Great.
“I have! Well, I actually met a police officer, but Batman was lurking around, so,” Peter carefully shrugged, making sure all his movements were visible. They did not need any sparks anywhere near most of the stuff in this container.
“Lurking around?..” now Peter could hear incredulity in Nightwing’s voice.
“Well, yeah, the guy loves his shadows. And not that I judge or som—” his Peter Tingle was not screaming because of Nightwing.
It was blaring because of ticking. Because there were no goons coming back. Because the guy Peter had webbed reeked of terror.
“Get out,” something had to have been in his voice, because Nightwing nodded sharply, catching the webbed up goon after Peter had ripped him off the floor and thrown him in his grasp. There was someone else.
Someone whose heartbeat Peter could barely hear over the tick-tick-tick of the bomb.
“K, activate ERM,” he frantically looked around, hoping heat or x-ray vision would be enough. “Shit,” cursed Peter, running towards a small body. The small body was near what was a bomb.
A kid. Barely three or four years old. In dirty clothes, covered in bruises, was lying on the floor with tied up wrists and ankles. Peter did not think. He saw he only had ten seconds.
He was out in five.
Nightwing was right outside, Peter took his elbow, — four — making sure to stick himself to his costume, forced him to run forward — three — and hide behind another metal container, — two — nanobots wrapped around the little girl in his arms, — one — he made sure Nightwing was beside him with the goon on the ground.
Dark of the night was replaced by red, orange and yellow. Polluted air was suddenly filled with the smell of gasoline. Peter used leftover nanobots to make masks for himself, then goon on the ground and after that for Nightwing, who caught his wrist as soon as it made contact with his face.
“Toxic fumes,” loudly said Peter, thankful that Karen had muffled the noise of the explosion, hoping Nightwing heard him.
Nightwing, still holding his hand in a death grip, held out and showed him his black face mask. It looked fancy, even fancier than Gotham’s ones that promised to protect their wearers from Fear Gas, but Peter was not convinced. His nanobots were designed to let him breathe in space when he was in his full Iron Spider suit, they definitely filtered air out better.
“Won’t be enough,” Peter slowly uncurled, letting Nightwing see a little girl with the same red and gold mask — Peter was not an idiot, he was not going to let people know just what exactly Mr. Stark tech could do, and it was easier to explain masks appearing out of thin air than a full-body metal suit in red, blue and gold with a spider on its chest — she had not even twitched.
Karen showed him her scans on the right side of his HUD, she had not been able to assess her condition fully in such a short time, but it was enough for Peter to know, this girl was in dire need of medical attention.
“She needs a doctor.”
Nightwing looked at him closely, searching for something in his eye lenses.
“Ok,” Nightwing hoisted the goon up and tossed him over his shoulder. “I’ll get her to the hospital, and him to the cops I know,” he stood up, “and you, Aragog, are gonna stay close, because I want to know what exactly did you steal.”
Peter felt a little embarrassed about getting caught, not about taking some of the smaller vials from criminals. Though the fact that they blew up, most likely, the only container that had had the chemicals in it and that Nightwing somehow had found out about all this, even though he lived in New York, made him question the whole deal. Was he wrong? Was it not actually connected to Haly’s Circus? Was it just a random deal between Gotham’s and New York’s mafia families?
“Did—” Peter blinked, realizing something, “Aragog? Seriously? Dude, are you insulting me or something? Because I’d rather be Jeff. We even have a matching color scheme! Mostly.”
Sun was rising. Peter looked up at the dark, almost black buildings in soft pink and baby yellow colors. It almost looked like Queens when he had been eight or nine.
Peter wanted to go back home. He wanted to go back to the time his biggest problem had been finding time to patrol, train fight with Daredevil, do homework, go out with Ned and MJ, and be an intern in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Even to the time when Vulture had been trying to kill him.
His mouth tasted like ash. His lungs were full of dust that had been on Titan, making it hard for him to breathe with full chest. Peter was almost used to it by now.
“Robin told me about you,” Nightwing voice made Peter startle, he had not heard him approach at all. Even his heartbeat was steady, but not like Batman’s, more like he really was just calm enough to blend into the surrounding noise. “You called him Robin Hood.”
“Loxley⁴, actually.”
“Uh-huh. No one ever took him for a protégé of the Green Arrow,” there was amusement in Nightwing’s voice, “to his face, at least.”
Peter helplessly shrugged.
“How’s girl?”
“She’ll make it,” Peter sighed in relief. “And now you are telling me what did you take,” it was an order.
“Can you give me back the mask first?” Nightwing did not move, thinking, before giving a small red and gold metal mask back. He had taken those that had been on the criminal and Nightwing right after they had left the docks. “I took some stuff to make this,” Peter showed him the cartridge with web fluid, it was his last one. “I thought taking it away from guys was better than making it out of stuff from school labs. I didn’t… I didn’t expect for them to blow the container with bought chemicals up.”
Nightwing nodded slowly.
“Were you after shipment because of the chemicals?”
“Yes. Didn’t know there’d be guns in other containers or a kid,” Peter hated it with passion when criminals used children.
“I’ve only known about weapons,” finally offered Nightwing. “When Batman chases you from Gotham—” he paused, “—you can come here, Blüdhaven could use a help of the second acrobat.”
Peter huffed out a laugh. It seemed like he again had been stepping on someone’s toes, albeit unknowingly. He was not judging, though, he also had been territorial about Queens, and now he kind of started to feel the same way about Crime Alley. Batman did not come there. And having Robin running after him, jumping from one roof to another, trying to catch up to him, was fun. Peter was almost tempted to let Robin tackle him to the concrete rooftop, just to see who would win.
“He wouldn’t, Robin likes me.”
There was a pause before Nightwing laughed.
“That he does.”