Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time the Avengers begin to notice what's happening is when Steve and Bucky go to the nearby convenience store down the block to pick up about thirteen bags of Halloween candy. Avengers really. REALLY. Like their candy. Peter will eat about four bags on his own. The kid is an unstoppable force of sugar-loving terror. 

"Damn it," Bucky mutters, holding the plastic bag close and peering into it. "We forgot the orange Kit Kats, Steve. The Halloween Kit Kats." Steve sighs, glaring at Bucky with no heat in his expression. 

"Really, Buck? I mean-" He waves his hand. "I like, just started the story. I mean all I've said is 'we walked into the store' and you already interrupted-"

"Okay, okay," Bucky raises his hands, glancing askance at the bags before sighing. Peter looks like the foundations of his world are crumbling down at the news that there are no orange Kit Kats for him to binge on. 

Tony rolls his eyes so hard he's afraid they're gonna get stuck in his head, which would really be fine since that's his expression ninety percent of the time, anyway. He groans loudly and scrubs a hand over his face, pointing a finger in Steve's direction. 

"Seriously, Capsicle, if this story is just gonna be a giant waste of my time, then-"

Steve looks righteously offended. "I haven't even started the story! Anyway," he clears his throat, looking around like he's daring anyone to interrupt him. "Buck and I are just- in the Halloween candy aisle, right? And then we hear this crash come over from the direction of the counter. Buck's like, let's go check it out, Steve-"

"Of fucking 'course he said Steve, you were the only one who was there with him." Clint mutters, picking at his teeth, and Peter snickers around what looks like three Twix bars. His mask is pulled up partially over his face, just enough to reveal his mouth, because even though the kid has made a place here, he's still paranoid enough to want to hold on to his identity. As far as Steve and the others are concerned, Peter is eighteen, and that's how Peter wants it to be. Only Tony and Bruce know that Peter is actually only 15, only barely passing off as being older than he actually is, thanks to being almost too smart for his age and the way he adjusts his voice around the other Avengers- although Tony gets this feeling that Natasha is probably ... Suspicious.  

Steve doesn't look mad. Steve looks disappointed. When Steve is disappointed, it makes everyone listen to him. Tony kind of hates that power, the "look at me I'm so good that I make people listen when I look like a kicked puppy" power. Of all the people to have it, Peter happens to, which is just brutal. The kid could puppy-eye his way out of a paper bag, it's infuriating. 

"-And we head over, and there's just this ... This girl." Now Steve just looks confused, like even he isn't sure of what he witnessed. His expression looks a little blank, and he exchanges looks with Bucky before clearing his throat. "She looks like..." He frowns, looking around the circle at Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Tony, and finally Peter. "Who's that girl from the book with the three bears?"

"Goldilocks!" Peter chirps, reaching for another Twix bar. Tony smacks at his hand. 

"I'm not going to carry you home if you lapse into a sugar coma, Underoos. You know who will kick my ass." He mutters, and the others look at him weird because they have no idea how terrifying Peter's aunt is. Peter looks wounded, but he pulls his hand back and actually listens to Tony.

That is, until a Twix bar is stealthily webbed from the bag and into Peter's hand with a tiny thwip! Peter grins at him, shoulders lifting into a delicate shrug as he munches through the caramel and chocolate coated biscuit. Tony sighs. Teenagers.

"Yeah, Goldilocks." Steve says, absently picking at the brown leather jacket he's wearing. "And she's just... standing there, staring at the- you know, the candy section underneath the cashier's counter? And she goes, Mommy, I want peanut butter M&Ms." 

"A wise choice," Peter nods. 

"And the mom, she's tired, she's holding like four bags and she's already checked out. So she goes, No, Jenna, no peanut butter M&Ms. And the girl- Jenna -she just stands there, like..." Steve shifts, looking a little uncomfortable, and Tony pays a little more attention, because sometimes Steve's instincts are actually pretty spot on (even though he never says that to Steve, for obvious reasons). "It was weird. She just stood there and stared at her mom with these, like... Demon eyes." 

"You were scared of a tiny girl?" Clint asks dubiously, only for Natasha to stare at him until he amends himself. "I mean, young girls can be frightening. I would know."

"It wasn't like that." Bucky mutters, stilted, and Tony flicks his eyes towards the man, then down at his arm, which is wrapped around one bag of candy. "She was just... starin' at her mom. Like she wanted to kill her." 

"She asked again," Steve says, mouth twisting into a tight, perturbed frown as he glances around the circle. Even Peter's stopped crunching through Twix bars, his eyes fixated on Steve like this is a Halloween story circle and Steve's about to yell "BOO!" "And her mom said no again, and so Jenna..." He clears his throat. "She picks up this ... This bottle of champagne and just smashes it against her mom's hands."

"What?" Peter blinks, and Tony shifts, moving in slightly. 

"What?" He echoes. "That's it? That's the story? Kids can be freaky." He shrugs, glancing at Peter so briefly that the others don't really notice. "Maybe she's just..." 

"Might be psychopathy," Bruce murmurs. "But I'm... I mean, I'm not diagnosing. I'll have to look into it." 

"That's not all," Steve cuts in, shaking his head. "Bucky and I dove in, obviously, and I picked the girl up to keep her from beating her mom with this half-broken champagne bottle, and she was strong as hell. Like... Mutant strong." He rubs his forearm thoughtfully. 

"Show them." Bucky urges, and Steve sighs before rolling his sleeve up. 

"Jesus," Tony breathes, and Peter just gawks at the awful bite mark. Bruce immediately stands to get disinfectant and a bandage, probably, while Tony examines the gauges made by this little girl's teeth. Holy shit. "Wait, you're saying a little girl did this?" He demands, rubbing his forehead as he frowns at the bite. "Well, what happened? Where is she now? Didn't you bring her? We could have taken a look at her in the lab!" 

"No, she passed out after biting me," Steve responds, dropping his arms. "And when she woke up, she had no idea what was going on. The mom was bleeding pretty badly, so they both went with the EMTs who arrived a few minutes later. We figured it was probably a medical thing, so they took the girl."

"That's bullshit," Tony huffs, annoyed, and makes eye contact with Bruce as the other sits down and starts to fix up Steve's wound. "That girl would be way better off in the medbay, she might not have... Recovered from whatever caused her to go all weird like that. If that isn't her normal behavior, which I'm guessing it isn't, then whatever made her like that probably left her system." He gets to his feet, getting a bit riled up by now- but he can't help it. Inquisitive minds and all that.

"It could be a virus," Bruce says, cinching the bandage tight around Steve's forearm before moving back and resting his hands against his thighs. "But a virus wouldn't get into the system and leave that quickly, usually." 

"A parasite?" Peter offers, and Tony nods, because as usual, when he sees Peter's childlike joy as he stuffs his face full of candy, he forgets that the kid is as smart as he is. "It gets into the system, does its thing, and then ... Dies, or crawls out." He frowns. "Although I can't really see a parasite having that sort of intent, or being sentient enough to understand that it wants to hurt just one person like that." 

"Is the mother safe?" Natasha asks from where she's perched, relaxed enough that no one would think she's up and ready to go at a moment's notice. Steve nods, then hesitates.

"I'm not sure," he admits. "I gave the EMT my number because I was a little suspicious about the girl, and I'm not sure if she's going to ... You know, do it again." He rubs the back of his head and reclines against the back of the couch with a sigh. "I told the EMT to call me if anything weird happened. But at the time, no one really believed that the girl had gone crazy, other than me, Buck, the mom, and the cashier. Well- I mean, that is a lot of people who saw what happened, but it's still beyond the realm of normal."

"She didn't remember, anyhow." Bucky sniffs, fishing around the candy bag absently before pulling out what looks like a fun size packet of peanut M&Ms. "She was lookin' all confused, asked where she was and cried when she saw her mom bleeding." 

Clint sighs. "Poor kid's gonna be fucking traumatized," he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. "Someone's probably gonna tell her she did that, if not her mom. Lying to kids never works out well," he makes a face at the floor like he's remembering why, exactly, he knows that. 

"I guess we'll find out, maybe." Steve starts to say, but he's cut off by his phone ringing. He gets to his feet, muttering something like excuse me before wandering off toward the hallway. Tony can't imagine actually excusing himself before he takes a call, that would just be... Weird. Peter's relentlessly opening up what must be his sixteenth candy bar of the night, and Tony snatches the bag away from him, narrowing his eyes at the way Peter's face falls, even though he's wearing a mask. 

"Stop it, Underoos." He's careful not to actually say 'kid' around the other Avengers, just to be on the safe side, because although the nickname he's given Peter does call into question his age, it could be dismissed as Peter just being younger than all the other Avengers in general instead of highlighting just how young. As far as they're concerned, he's just an incredibly short 18 year old. "You're gonna be bouncing off the walls all day if you don't stop eating this." 

"But-" Peter starts, then sighs and looks down at his feet, rolling his mask back down over his face. "Okay, fine," he says, obviously trying not to sulk, and Tony definitely doesn't smile. His mouth doesn't even slightly twitch at the corners, nope. Seriously, caring this hard about the kid is doing something to him, because there are plenty of kids out there with shitty eating habits; hell, he's probably the best (and worst) person to be talking about this, what with his godawful eating habits... and drinking habits... and sleeping habits. But he just can't help himself, because if there's any sign that Peter exhibits that takes after Tony at all, Tony won't hesitate to squash it. 

No kid, least of all Peter, should ever end up like him. 

He's about to say something to Peter about how unhealthy all this candy is (only to probably get effectively called out by Bruce on his bullshit) but he can't really, because Steve comes back into the room.

The mood and temperature shift. Steve looks... Different. There's a pinch in his shoulders, and his mouth opens and closes a few times as if he's lost. Bucky stands, moving into Steve's space to offer some sort of comfort, and Tony's words just die in his throat.

"The girl, Jenna." Steve says, and the words sound raw, too painful to get out. Steve looks stricken, and Tony knows what he's about to say before he even says it.

"She's dead." 

--

Now it's serious. 

Bucky and Steve go to the funeral, a child's funeral, Jesus. Tony knows Steve's all but wracked with guilt, his shoulders slumped so far down that the gravity around him specifically seemed fucked. He'd been all but useless the entire day, only responding when Bucky got him to get ready for the funeral.

Sometimes it's better to say nothing than say something wrong, so Tony doesn't bring up science and medicine and potential labwork that they could perform to figure out what happened and instead mulls privately on the circumstances of what went wrong. Peter and Bruce seem to be in the same vein, although, Tony thinks they probably have more empathy towards what happened. After all, New York is Peter's backyard, what with the swinging and the citizen-saving and the smaller crimes the kid stops every day, so when something goes wrong in his streets, he takes it personally. 

"That was ... Horrible," Steve says later that evening when they've all somehow gravitated back to the living room again. Peter's not there, having taken to the streets to do his nightly patrols. "I just... Should've stuck around," he continues miserably, and Bucky moves closer. Tony wants to say something like how could you have known what to do, Cap, she was probably going to die whether or not you were there, but he knows a thing or two about misplaced guilt. Mostly when he looks at the fifteen year old kid usually perched on a surface near him. 

"Steve," Bucky says, and that's all he says, but it seems to affect Steve. Good lord with these two, Tony almost can't stand it. 

"You couldn't have known," Clint says gruffly, his voice coarse as he picks at his shirt. "But now I'm mad," he adds, agitated and tight as he smacks his foot out against the edge of the coffee table. "Who fucks around with kids like that? That kid is dead." Steve flinches, and Tony looks away, deep in thought. "Or if it's not a person, is it just... An illness?" 

"I think," Tony starts, but before he can grace them with his thoughts, FRIDAY's voice echoes calmly over the floor. 

"Spider-Man is here, boss." 

That's all the warning Tony gets before Peter bursts into the rooms, arms akimbo. Tony reads the panic in the kid's entire posture, and he doesn't need to turn around to see everyone get to their feet in alarm- Even Nat. Peter is drenched, his suit dripping water in puddles at his feet, and his teeth are chattering as he moves in close to Tony. Tony automatically returns the gesture, taking a few steps forward and opening his mouth to ask Peter what happened, what has him this spooked, and holy shit, the kid is bleeding and scratched up, cuts nicked into his suit. Blood mixes with the rainwater and trickles to the floor. 

"Mr. Stark," he blurts out, his voice thin and hopeless like it's been stretched out, like the kid's been screaming all day. Tony hears Bruce mutter something behind him, something like Jesus Christ. "Kids. All over the city. They're becoming feral... and they're dying." 

Tony blinks at the sight of the panicked teenager, already heading to the bathroom to snatch up a towel from the rack (it's a good fucking thing that at least Steve and Bucky care about things like keeping towels in the bathroom, because Tony tends to generally forget normal shit like that). He ignores the vague, smug voice in the back of his head saying something about how he's all soft for the soggy teenager who just pinwheeled into the room and tosses the towel over Peter's head.

"Dry off. Calm down. Then repeat," he commands, examining Peter's cuts and exchanging a meaningful look with Bruce. Steve and Bucky look concerned, Steve's eyebrows drawn tight together in that way they do when he's internally rebooting. Nat's hovering by her chaise, her lips pursed, and Clint's hand is tight around the can he was drinking from.

The thing is, no matter what a bunch of surly bastards they come off as, they get shit done. They especially get shit done when childrens' lives are at stake. And to Tony and Bruce, it resonates privately more, since they're both aware of the fact that Peter is literally one of those children. The others are invested deeply, since, well, who the fuck hurts kids and enjoys it, but everything starts to feel personal when Tony's got one to look after himself. He'd even go as far as to say Peter's their collective spider-kid, even though most of the Avengers don't realize to what extent Peter is a kid. Most of them call him 'kid' affectionately, but then again, even a twenty-year-old is a kid to the rest of the Avengers.

Ugh, he's so whipped.

"You good, Underoos?" he keeps his voice low, lifting the towel up and off of Peter's head and nudging him with one shoulder. The kid's rolled his mask up to his nose and he's breathing hard and shaky and kind of hyperventilate-y, like he's been fighting all night. Though, judging by those cuts... That might not be a far off assumption.

"They just attacked me," he mumbles, looking numb even with his mask half-on, and Tony nudges him to sit down, even hands him a Twix bar to get some sugar into the kid. Peter just stares at it like he doesn't even know what it is, which is really worrying. The kid can barely get through a couple hours without demolishing something sweet.

"Tell us what happened, Spider-Man," Steve says gently, his tone belying just the slightest thread of concern, in that voice that makes people cave like they're made of melted sugar. Sure enough, Peter jerks like he's been prodded, mouth moving for a second before he shakily starts talking. His hand opens and closes around the Twix bar, super strength nearly flattening the chocolate into something unrecognizable. 

"I saw that- that a school bus got stuck in a ditch in a bad area," he starts. "All these kids were going back fr- from a field trip. It was..." His hands are shaking. Tony can't stop looking at them, and in the back of his head there's a small voice saying Peter gets very cold very easily, something about spiders and how they don't thermoregulate? and he's about to get up and get Peter something warm, but Nat beats him to it.

She, seemingly out of nowhere, pushes a mug of hot water into Peter's hands and says nothing, but Peter melts gratefully and takes a sip. 

"I was gonna just pick the bus up," Peter says idly, fingers brushing at the back of his neck, like he's not even aware that he's a skinny kid who looks like he can't even pick up a toaster, let alone up to 25 tons of cement. "But then... There were these kids that came out of nowhere. They looked at me like..." Peter shakes his head, his voice breaking slightly as he looks around at them. "I know. Like the demon eyes. I- I understand now." 

"It's okay to be scared, kid. They were unnerving." Bucky's voice is gruff, but there's something there Tony hadn't recognized earlier. Concern? Yeah. Seems like concern. It's the Peter Effect.

"Were the kids... Part of the homeless community?" Steve prods gently, and Bruce gets to work on the cuts sliced all over Peter's suit and dabs disinfectant on them. Peter nods uncertainly, stiffening slightly before straightening like he's plucking up the courage to keep telling the story. 

"They attacked us," he says, defeated. "I didn't know what to do. There was a bus... a b-bus full of kids. Teachers, too. I. I webbed the doors shut, but the kids were strong." A strange expression comes over his face. 

"What is it, Underoos?" Tony lets just a little too much concern to become apparent, judging by the way Steve glances, surprised, at him. He really does hate coming off too much as a helicopter parent type, but he's cursing himself for not having checked in on Peter earlier. Stubborn kid probably begged Karen not to call him. 

"It's just..." Peter hunches over the mug, fingers tapping restlessly at the ceramic. "I somehow... knew. I knew that... I couldn't let them bite me. I think it was my Spidey sense." A shiver of adrenaline runs the course of the kid's body, the cup shaking in his hands. "I think... It was warning me not to get bitten. But they scratched me up."

"What the fuck?" Clint exhales, leaning forward with his hands pressed against his knees and nails digging into his kneecaps. "Are you saying this is like- the fucking zombie apocalypse, with kids? Then why wouldn't scratching work?" 

"Because," Bruce says softly, and like Tony, he seems like he's not surprised that Peter's Spidey-sense is, as an extension of Peter, pretty brilliant in and of itself. "That's the exchange of bodily fluids." 

Everyone's eyes flick to Steve, who raises his hands in surrender. 

"No adults," Natasha says. "This is only happening to children. He's safe." 

Peter's knee jerks like a reflex. "I don't know if it'll affect adults... I think if he hasn't been affected yet, then he'll be fine. But just as quickly as those kids st-st-" he hiccups, and Tony shifts closer, almost until their legs are touching. Peter leans in toward him, hovering like he's wondering if it'll damage his coolness factor to be reliant on anyone but himself. "They just stopped. They passed out... And then they..." He looks miserable, even through the mask. "They were disoriented, and then they were d-d-" he chokes. "And then... I got the b-bus..." 

"It's not your fault, Spider-Man," Steve sounds resolute, and Bucky just raises his eyebrows at him in a very pot calling the kettle black, huh, Steve? sort of way. They're all hypocrites, anyway, and it's not like Bucky thinks Peter's responsible. 

"There were three of them," Peter's shoulders curl tightly inward, and then he's crying and Tony's freaking out internally, because he's not good at handling tears. Bruce doesn't look great, himself; he's silent, like he doesn't trust himself to talk, and Tony would wager that he's starting to get more than a little pissed off. "I talked to them b-because I didn't want them to be alone. It's not fair," he sobs, full of heart and something so, so genuine, and, well, shit. The kid pulls at his mask as tears track their way down his cheeks, and Tony's not sure, but he figures spandex doesn't feel so great when it's wet and sticking to your face.

"Fuck's sake," Clint flings the can at the far wall and it crunches against the surface, causing Peter to flinch ever-so-slightly. The kid reaches under his mask to wipe his tears, putting on a front so pathetic in its endeavor to be strong that Tony's almost a little insulted. But mostly, his chest hurts, so much that it's starting to freak him out.

"I need a second," he hears himself saying, and he's only slightly aware of the Avengers filing out before he tugs at Peter's mask. The kid lets him tug it off, and underneath it, the fifteen year old just looks like a drowned cat. Tony picks the towel up again and runs it through Peter's hair, rolling his eyes a bit at the sight of it sticking up every which way like a pineapple. "Pete, this kinda shit happens all the time in our world," he starts, and Peter doesn't say anything. "It never gets easy. It's always hard. But you know, you're just a kid yourself. You can't carry everything on your own," he says, and yeah, fuck, he sounds like an serious hypocrite. "We're gonna figure out who's behind this, Pete, I promise. You... You can help. That's what you can do. You can help us figure out what's going on." 

It takes a moment before Peter's nodding, his head bobbing like it's attached by puppet strings. 

"But." Tony pulls the towel away, tossing it over the couch. "I don't want you getting too close to it, because although this seems to have escaped your notice, kid, you're... Well. A kid." he points out, and Peter gives him a rueful look, his eyes rimmed with red, his cheeks streaked with tears, his nose pink and splotchy. Tony's chest is doing that thing again. Peter is so young. "If you end up bitten, I have no idea what'll happen to you. So I want you to take the sidelines for this one."

"But-" Peter starts, already protesting, and Tony just stares at him until the kid slumps in defeat. "I have to go out there and keep the kids from hurting people," he whispers, shoulders locked in as he averts his gaze from Tony's and looks, instead, at the floor. "Normal people can't... Fend those kids off, they're strong. It's my city too," Peter says resolutely, his throat dry as he clutches his mask, smooths it over his fingertips. "And I have an obligation to help."

There's words on the tip of Tony's tongue, words like the city is not only your responsibility and every death isn't on your hands and we're gonna figure out what's going on, kid, but you're only fifteen and you scare the shit out of me-

Peter's phone buzzes, smothering whatever Tony's about to say. Judging by the sheepish expression on his face, it's his aunt. 

"I should go," he whispers, a pervasive shiver rippling throughout his weed-like form. Tony's not about to keep Peter from getting home, especially with May waiting for him, and tips his head agreeably. Peter gets to his feet, pulling his mask back down before trailing his thumb over his cheeks. "I'll try to, um, be careful. And you should too, Mr. Stark."

Tony chuckles, but nods. "To be honest, Peter, you're like the only kid I would voluntary hang around." He assures, and Peter looks up at him, rubbing the back of his neck in an almost painfully childlike way. "I'll let the rest of the team know, though. You let us know if you notice anything," he says, patting Peter's shoulder.

"Okay," Peter nods, before glancing out the all-encompassing glass windows at the dark city before backing away toward the elevator. "S'ya later, Mr. Stark." He says, sounding all too desolate, too desolate for a fucking fifteen year old who's years beyond his age. 

Tony watches him go, promptly aware of Steve standing in the doorway a few moments after Peter's departure. "What's up, Cap?" he says, sounding way more cheerful than he feels as he picks up the towel. 

"Spider-Man seemed pretty shaken." Steve notes, moving into the room with his arms folded over his chest. "Is he gonna be okay?" 

"He'll be okay," Tony says immediately, knee-jerk reflex when he's too worried to believe anything else, and makes his way up to one of the conference rooms with Steve in relatively close pursuit. "Grab the team- there's something I want everyone to see." he adds absently; Steve raises an eyebrow but nods, heading out of the room.

"FRI, can you contact Karen and pull up the video from Spider-Man's suit-cam from about... Let's see... thirty minutes ago? And while you're at it, remove any instances of Peter's name being mentioned in the video?" Tony asks lowly, in case anyone is in earshot, and FRIDAY complies with a mild, "yes, boss," casting the video onto the projector screen in the lab. Tony takes a seat at the round conference table, only turning slightly as the team filters in and takes seats as well.

"How is he?" Bucky asks immediately, making no attempt to hide his moderate concern as he glances warily at the screen.

"Shaken up," Tony admits and rubs his eyes. "He's... Different, you know? He cares a lot.... a lot. Each death weighs on Spider-Man way more than..." He doesn't want to say us, but it's implied, and he can feel the physical guilt of the room like gravity. "It's not ... He's really affected by all of this." His pride kicks in, because he doesn't want to say anything, but he wants to say something, even though his stupid one-track brain wants to believe that Peter doesn't need the other Avengers as much as...

"We'll watch out for him." Natasha says grimly, with an even, self-assured expression. It's reliable enough that Tony knows he doesn't have to elaborate, thankfully.

"What's all this, then?" Clint cuts in, jerking his head toward the projector screen, his legs propped up onto the table next to a thermos of coffee. "Are we watching one of your shitty home movies, Stark?" he jokes, breaking some of the tension, and Tony rolls his eyes.

"You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you, Barton?" he fires back, but his tone goes a little somber at the end. "It's ... Spider-Man's suit-cam," he elaborates, tapping at the table as the others look around at first each other and then Tony. "And before you get on my ass about privacy, the kid knows he's being monitored." It's a white lie, really. And what kind of surrogate guardian would he be if he didn't blatantly invade Peter's suit-cam once in a while? "I've rewound it to the incident. FRIDAY, play."

"Hey, Karen, what's going on down there?" That's Peter. 

"It looks like that bus is caught in the ditch," Karen responds, and Tony notices Steve's eyebrows arch up in his periphery.

"Karen is an AI built into Spider-Man's suit," Tony explains, and Clint mutters something like why can't I have an AI in my suit?  "She basically helps him... With everything, really." 

"Okay, let's go," Peter whispers, more to himself then Karen, and the camera view shifts abruptly from the air to ground-level. "Hey everyone!" he chirps, and is it just Tony or does he sound especially childlike? He can tell by Natasha's eyes narrowing suspiciously that Peter is projecting too much as a kid, which Peter himself seems to realize, because as a few schoolchildren point at him in excitement, the kid's voice lowers. Or maybe that's just to show off.

"Oh my god," the teacher says faintly, standing beside the open doors of the bus. "It's Spider-Man." 

He can't see it from Peter's point of view, but he can feel the kid puff up. It's... Endearing. 

"That's me!" the kid says cheerfully, sauntering forward. "Too bad I can't bust any bad guys for this, huh Karen?" Peter laughs, clear and cheerful, and Tony's chest tightens again. Sometimes it's really, really overwhelming how wholesome the kid is. Clint groans at the terrible pun, and Karen herself sounds incredibly unamused.

"That was really bad."

Peter's hand flies toward the camera as he grabs his chest. "Karen, you wound me." He makes his way over to the back of the bus, bracing himself and tucking his hands underneath the bus to try to lift it out of the ditch. "Everyone, just hang tight! I'll have you out of this ditch as quickly as possible!" 

Even through the camera, they all seem to feel the shift when Peter straightens, all of a sudden. "Karen," the kid says. "Something's wrong. I feel- Something's wrong," the kid whispers, releasing the bus and moving around the bus. He spreads his arms slightly over the side of the bus, as if he's trying to keep the bus safe from whatever's coming. "I..." Peter trails off, facing out toward the dark alley, his entire body tense. "Karen-?"

"Watch out, Peter." Karen says warily, and then... the kids emerge from the liquid shadows like a horror movie.

"Holy shit." Bucky curses, and Tony feels the others shift, sitting up straighter, leaning in at the sight of the kids. They're staring at Peter with their heads tipped slightly, emphasizing the dark-eyed gazes as they stare Peter down. They look... 

"Demonic," Peter whispers, then turns slightly to flail his hand toward the teachers and students. "Get back into the bus. Get into the bus, now!" he insists urgently, still partially turned toward the eerily still children. There's shuffling from beside Peter, and then the kid turns slightly to spray webs over the door, sealing it shut. "Just stay there. Don't come out!" he instructs, and then the first kid throws herself at him. There's a scream from the bus. 

She's tiny, can't be more than half of Peter's size, but she's terrifyingly fast, her fingers raking at Peter's suit. Tony doesn't realize it at first, but he looks down at his own fist after a few moments and his nails are gouging crescents into his palms. The girl can't be more than five or six, and she's screeching at Peter uncontrollably, wild-eyed and restless. She claws at him relentlessly, her expression so ruthless that it sends chills down Tony's spine. She looks like she could, without a moment of hesitation, kill Peter. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Peter chants like a mantra, dodging the girl and webbing her to the side of the bus. Before he can do anything, Karen's alarmed voice rings out.

"Look out! There are two more!" 

Peter swivels just in time, catching one of the kids around the waist and kind of rerouting him so he stumbles away with a loud, deranged snarl. This one's only a year or so older than the girl, by the looks of it, with dark, matted hair, and he's gnashing his teeth as he tries to rip into Peter's arm. He's also clawing at the young hero, trying to split his suit open and bite the kid. 

"Christ," Steve whispers. A glance around tells Tony that the others' faces reflect his horrified sentiment, although Bruce manages to look both astonished and contemplative at the same time. 

"They're trying really hard to bite him," Bruce murmurs, and Tony nods. The kid seems to figure that out as well as he bodily tugs the third boy off of his body and shoves him back slightly- but not enough to hurt him. 

"Karen," he gasps, "I don't want to hurt them, what do I do? I- I feel like I can't let them bite me, because. I don't know, what do I do?" 

"If you don't subdue them somehow, you're going to get hurt."

"No shit, lady." Clint mutters.

"Thanks Karen," Peter sighs, swinging around and webbing the two boys together. All of a sudden, there's a massive ripping sound behind Peter, and the kid stumbles around; the horrified sound Peter makes seems to resonate through every Avenger at the table.

"Did she just tear through my webs?!" Peter shrieks as the girl dives for him, and the kid seems to undergo a moment of intense, brief conflict before he grabs the girl's elbow and yanks her to the side, away from him. "How did she tear through-"

"The other two boys are also breaking free," Karen says urgently. "I'm going to call Tony Stark."

That seems to jerk Peter into action. "No! No, don't, Karen," the kid blurts out breathlessly. "I've got it under control." 

"You don't have it under control." 

"Stupid." Tony mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. Bucky just shakes his head at the kid's ... stubbornness? Pride? Tony's not even really sure what it is that's keeping the kid from calling him, other than the desire to show that he can really deal with the shit that happens in his neighborhood.

"Yeah, no, I got it, I got it," Peter chants, camera moving back and forth as the kid tries to keep his eyes on the three tiny terrors coming at him in all directions. The camera moves toward the bus as the kid glances up, meeting the tiny, horrified faces pressed up against the windows. He seems to come to some sort of decision, the same decision that any of the rest of them would've made, and takes a deep breath. "Karen, I. I'm going to lead them away from the bus. I'm going to get these guys away from the- the bus, so they don't- Wait..."

There's no warning, or moment of clarity- one second the kids are staring at Peter like they're about to eat him, devour him whole... And then they're slumping like they're puppets without the strings, tumbling down to the stage. Peter darts forward, just in time to catch the kids in a pile before he adjusts them slightly in his arms. 

"What in the-" Peter starts, then stiffens as one of the girls opens her eyes, followed by the boys. Peter gently lays the kids on the ground, and Tony has this terrible, terrible feeling. Mostly because he already knows what's coming, but he's terrified to see it, terrified for Peter. He can feel the ball of tension that is Bruce beside him, his muscles tense as he stares intently at the video. Steve's expression falls. 

"Spider-Man?" the little girl breathes, propping herself slightly up on her forearms as she blinks at him. The black has leeched away from her eyes, and she just looks a little confused- if not exhausted -as she takes in her surroundings. 

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," Peter says breathlessly, and the two boys also sit up. They're... They're practically infants to the Avengers, that's how young they are. Peter rests one hand against the side of one of the boys' heads, supporting him as the kid turns over slightly and frowns at his friends. "Hey, guys, good morning," he jokes, a little uncertain as the camera swings back and forth between each kid. "Uh, so... Um." He looks back at the bus, clearly at a loss. "So uhm, do you guys have parents?" 

"I haven't seen mommy in a long time," one of the boys, the youngest of all of them- at what looks like a heartbreaking four years of age -says. Steve inhales sharply along with Peter. 

"Do you have a daddy?" Peter asks gently, compassion warm in his voice as he focuses on the boy. 

"We don't have a daddy," the older boy interjects, frowning. "Where are we? Why- I mean- How come you're here, Spider-Man?"

"I, um." Peter hesitates, takes one more look at the bus before ruffling the youngest boy's hair. "Don't worry about it!" he says cheerfully. "I'm going to take you guys back home! You guys just sit tight for a moment, okay?" The poor kid sounds stumped as he gets up and heads over to the bus, tearing through the webbing and opening the doors. "Are you all okay? Sorry about that," he apologizes as he looks around the bus, and one of the teachers turns away from one of the windows.

"Spider-Man," she sounds terrified. "Something's happening with those kids."

Peter seems to freeze for a second before he's back outside, making a beeline for the kids. All three kids are spasming, jerking against the ground like they're seizing, and Peter kneels beside them, hands hovering like he's not sure where to put them. The girl's hand flails out towards Peter, smacking against Peter's chest, and the kid catches her little hand and holds on. Tony's so invested in what's happening that he almost misses what Peter's mumbling under his breath.

"Karen, what do I do, what do I do, I think they're-" His voice breaks. "Karen, I'm scared, Karen, I'm scared, I'm scared-" Tony jerks when he hears Clint's coffee cup being reduced to a ball of cardboard in his fist. Bruce is gone, his chair swiveling in his wake.

"It looks like seizures," Karen informs him. "Do you want me to call someone?" 

The kids have stopped moving, and Peter's regarding them quietly. Tony doesn't need to see the kid's face to know that Peter knows what's happening.

"No, Karen," he whispers, his voice breaking, and he supports the three small forms in his arms again, sitting them up against the brick wall. "Hey guys," he says softly, very softly, and Tony doesn't know if he can watch this. He doesn't know if he's going to be able to watch Peter, only fifteen years old himself, do this. This shouldn't be his responsibility, he's fucking pissed. Someone- whoever fucking did this- made this Peter's responsibility.

There's only three of them left- Nat, Tony, and Bucky. 

Peter reaches two fingers out, checking one boy's pulse. "Oh," he whispers, heartrendingly soft. "Oh, I- I, um." 

"Spider-Man?" the little girl's voice breaks. She breathes out shakily, and that's. That's a fucking death rattle. Tony can't hear properly over the sound of blood pumping almost violently in his ears.

"I'm here," Peter whispers, moving so his back is to the bus. "Hey, do you guys wanna see something cool?" Tony's known the kid well enough to know Peter's barely keeping his shit together, but he manages to push through somehow, taking deep breaths. The kid rolls his mask up, and the video goes out of view, leaving only audio behind. 

"Whoa," one of the boys gasps. "Are... Are you Spider-Man?" 

"Yeah," Peter whispers. "Guess what? Even the Avengers don't know who I am. That makes you guys super cool." 

"Super duper cool?" the girl echoes, and Tony can practically hear the last scrape of life leaving her lungs.

"Super duper cool," Peter echoes wetly, and Tony knows it's over. It doesn't feel right to listen to Peter cry, the invasion of privacy all too salient, and so he asks FRIDAY to stop it with a voice that doesn't feel like his own. He looks down to see that his knuckles are white around the pen he was tapping against the countertop. 

The screen goes blank.

"Shit," Bucky mutters, smacking his arm down onto the table with a mighty clunk before he shoves the chair back into the wall and leaves the room. Natasha stares at the screen, and then her eyes dart to Tony. Of all of them, Natasha's good at hiding her emotions, but... There's something in her eyes that belies something else, underlying emotion that she hasn't shown in a while. 

"We're gonna get them, Tony." She says, getting to her feet. "They're gonna pay for this." 

Tony just nods tightly, because he doesn't trust himself to say anything else. His head is just swirling with leftover anger, horror at the fact that Peter even has to worry about this. Peter shouldn't have to do this, he shouldn't have to talk through a child's last moments with them- let alone three.

This has to stop now. 

"Dammit. God fucking dammit," he mutters, shoving his cup down the table and dropping his head down against the table. His StarkPad glows soft and bright in front of his folded arms, telling him absolutely nothing useful about freak... whatevers that only infect children. Why only children? Why not adults? Steve's perfectly fine despite being bitten (or at least he seems fine). Tony and Bruce have it narrowed down to the developing neurons of a child's brain, leaving them more susceptible to nerve damage that would cause them to go feral, which is a start. But-

"I just don't understand," Bruce mutters, scrubbing a hand over his four-day stubble as he stares intently at his laptop. "Actually, that's a lie. I kind of think I have something. My thing is this." He lays his hands out, palms down, and stares intently at Tony through tired eyes. There are dark bruises iron-pressed to his skin from lack of sleep.

Bruces, Tony's brain supplies, because he's tired as shit. He wisely doesn't say anything. Only Peter would appreciate that one.

"It's like a neural time bomb." Bruce says, turning his laptop around. Tony's gaze flicks over Bruce's messy notes, the several web pages he has pulled up about parasites and neural degeneration. "It kind of, you know, screws up a kid's neurons, making the kid feral... And then it basically... Explodes. And then... There's rapid neurodegeneration, and the kid... Well." Bruce closes his eyes, lips pressed together like he's trying to hold back a bout of rage. 

"Yeah." Tony bites at his thumbnail for a second, scraping his hand over his stubble before leaning back. "... Peter's not doing well," he admits carefully, and the green seems to edge back away from Bruce's features as he ducks his head in defeat.

"The team doesn't know he's ... Just a kid." he stares at his laptop, circling something with his stylus. "They think he can hold his own out there, that he'll be fine if something happens, because he's an adult. Doesn't matter if he gets bitten, as long as he's careful.. But that's not true. He could get hurt, Tony." 

"You think I don't know that?" Tony bites his words out, sharp and sarcastic, but tries to reign himself in and stares at his StarkPad until the words blur. "I keep telling him to stop, to hang the suit up so that he doesn't... But he's a stubborn fucking kid and he won't stop, not when he knows he can help." 

Spider-Man's name has been trending over the last few days, especially with the kid swinging around the streets to help with cases of feral children. It's mass tragedy like nobody's ever seen, and it's spreading horrifying roots into the most vulnerable and unprotected community of children- the homeless. As of now, it's difficult to tell if it's spread past the homeless community. Peter's doing his best to contain it, probably under the impression that if kids don't bite other kids, they can't pass on the neurasite (the word Bruce has coined, clearly a combined effort of both neural and parasite- he thinks it's the greatest thing ever). 

A fair effort, but Tony's a hop, skip, and a jump away from a fucking aneurysm with the reckless way Peter is carrying on. 

"You guys find anything?" Steve makes his way into the lab with Bucky on his heels, steps light like he's trying not to startle them. It's a bit offensive, really. It's not like Tony's some basement-dwelling nerd that flinches at loud noises or ... Okay, yeah, he really needs a shower and he's sweating caffeine and he hasn't slept in 38...39 hours? Fuck's sake. "Jesus, why are you two working in the dark?"

"Yeah, we did find something, actually." Bruce says mildly, and when Steve flicks the light on, he visibly recoils. Tony knows, because he recoils too. Ugh. "Uh," Bruce flinches, actually shielding his eyes as he looks at his laptop. "We've figured out that it's some sort of a neural parasite- a neurasite -that has an expiration date." His lips purse together. "An expiration date for itself and the victim. When it dies, the victim does too, after a brief refractory period in which the victim appears ... normal." 

"It's a good thing Spider-Man will be okay," Bucky says, slouched back against the wall. His eyes lock onto Tony's with a level of sagacity that Tony very devoutly plays innocent in the face of. He blinks back guilelessly, like he has no idea Peter is, as of now, an extremely susceptible child. 

"Yeah, it is." He says instead, even though it's killing him. Bruce doesn't look up, but his shoulders tighten as he determinedly flicks through some slides with renewed forcefulness. "He's been spending a lot of time around the kids." And fortunately, his suit has reinforced spandex. Keeping Peter's identity from the team has been ... Difficult to say the least, especially with Peter often and unwittingly acting his age. Tony's pretty sure the kid's random bouts of brilliance are the only thing helping him come off as a college freshman instead of the child he is. 

Steve gets a little close to the two of them and wrinkles his nose. "The two of you stink," he says apologetically, folding his arms so he looks especially maternal. "It's time to take a break. And a bath."

"I agree, Boss." FRIDAY chimes in, even though Tony's pretty sure he didn't ask her opinion. "You haven't slept for 40 hours, now. I would suggest a bath and good night's rest for optimal performance." 

"Jesus, Tony!" Steve puffs up like a mother hen, and Tony would laugh if he wasn't too exhausted to move even one single muscle. Steve reigns himself in, seeming to realize that he's communicating with two adults, and shakes his head. "Why don't the two of you get some rest? Then call a meeting, tell us what you found." 

"I don't need sleep, I have four PhDs." Bruce mumbles, looking like he's about to fall face-first on his keyboard.

"Seven," Bucky corrects, because he remembers weird things like that. Tony rolls his eyes, stretching so hard his muscles creak because he's fucking old and it really is like that sometimes. 

"C'mon, big guy." He mutters, knocking his hand against Bruce's shoulders as he walks past. "FRI, what time is it?" 

"12:35, Boss. Would you like to hear the alerts from earlier that you missed?"

"What?" Tony blinks rapidly, his tone shifting so suddenly that the other three turn to look at him with varying degrees of concern. "What do you mean, alerts? Why didn't you- alert me!?" 

"Because you told me to dismiss them due to being on the verge of discovering something," FRI says with her usually polite twang, although Tony thinks he might have gotten snippier with the AI in the depths of sleep deprivation than she's admitting. 

Tony opens and closes his mouth, because he doesn't even remember doing that. "Well, what are they?!" 

"You have several calls from Spider-Man's relative." FRIDAY says tastefully, and not for the first time, Tony is thankful he programmed the AI to omit Peter and May's names (along with her relationship to him) from being mentioned. His heart pounds violently against the walls of his chest, and he briefly closes his eyes for a moment to gather himself. 

"Summarize, FRI." he bites out, gripping the counter to ground himself so he doesn't go flying into the depths of uncertain terror. Fuck's sake, Peter, you idiot. I'm going to kill you myself. 

"Spider-Man has been patrolling very late and hasn't come home," FRIDAY responds offhandedly, and her calm voice offsets Tony's rising panic. "Shall I put you through to her?" 

"I thought he was in college?" Bucky mutters from behind Tony, and Tony grits his teeth together.

"He commutes so he can patrol. And no, FRI, I'll send a text...." Tony hesitates. "Put me through to Karen."  

He can feel Steve, Bucky, and Bruce assemble slightly behind him, tense, because it doesn't take a genius to know that Spider-Man's been the closest to the kids. Those are his streets, anyway.

"Putting Karen through, Boss." 

Tony's preparing for the worst, so he's almost staggeringly relieved when Karen's patched through. He closes his eyes for a moment, gathering himself as she greets him. "Hello, Mr. Stark." 

"Karen, what's he doing?" Tony demands sharply, making it very clear to Peter that he's pissed at the kid for not being home like a normal (safe) teenager should be. Jesus, this kid. 

"Mr. Stark." 

Tony's heart tightens once more as he leans in slightly, even though it doesn't matter how close he is. He's itching to get in suit and get to Peter. He's fucking terrified of the way the kid's voice sounds, low and dull, like he's in a state of shock. 

"Where are you, Underoos?" he says, no longer using his indoor voice. "I'm going to come and get you. You're out way too late, and... She's worried about you. And she's scary as hell, so seriously, don't make me do this-"

"I'm at ..." Peter sounds sluggish, holy shit. Tony's adrenaline spikes, wiping out any exhaustion as he tries not to look back at the members of his team gathered behind him. 

"Mr. Stark, he is in a state of shock." Karen says, her voice pitched in a way that causes everyone in the room to freeze. 

Breathe, Tony, you have to breathe. You have to fucking take deep breaths in and out. "Where are you? I'm coming to get you," Tony says, and he's pretty sure he sounds hysterical since he's rapidly losing years of his life. "Karen, I'm ordering you to tell me where he is." 

"The corner of Horatio and Washington Street, Mr. Stark." 

"Fucking finally," he growls, suiting up and turning around. He's about to tell them to wait, but their expressions quell his words in his throat. For just a moment, he yearns for those moments of solitude, where he could be reckless and overly involved without having to worry about anybody else, but it vanishes when Bucky says,

"It's not fair for Spider-Man to be alone. He needs to know he's not alone... And the more of us there are, the better." 

Well, fuck.

--

In the face of that unwavering logic, the three of them head to the corner where Peter is in shock, holy shit, the kid is in shock. Tony's the first one on-site, and he looks around wildly for Peter as he steps out into the alleyway. The kid's not in the alley, so Tony moves inward, away from the streets, and follows the path down as he looks around from Peter.

His mask moves back away from his face when the alley opens out into what looks like a deserted parking lot, halfway closed off by ratty chain-link fences. Broken down cars pepper the lot in random places, rusty and unmarked, but that's not really what catches Tony's attention as he finally locates Peter.

"Holy fucking shit." Bucky walks past him, arm gleaming in the dim, crackling light of a single streetlamp. There's something in his voice Tony's never heard before, but he recognizes it. It'd be in his voice too if he could fucking speak, if he could summon any words at all. 

So many bodies.

There must be at least fifteen children spread out over the lot, various ages and genders and ethnicities. In the middle of them is Peter, mask rolled up halfway as he looks around at the devastation. He's not moving properly, and Tony's itching to run screaming up to him so he can get him the fuck away from these dead children but he can't even move because every time his feet unstick themselves he looks down to see another child. 

"Boss, Karen's reported that Peter's shock symptoms have intensified." 

Tony's going to have a fucking heart attack. 

He never thought he'd ever have to say this, but he's so goddamn relieved when Bucky moves past him, sidestepping the bodies (children's fucking bodies) to get to Peter. 

"C'mon, Spider-Man." He says gruffly, and if it weren't for the whitened knuckles of his non-metal hand, Tony almost wouldn't have been able to tell that he was affected. Peter just stares aimlessly in Bucky's direction as Bucky bodily hoists the kid to his feet.

"Tony." Steve's voice cuts through. He sounds wrecked, but he gestures in Peter's direction. "We have to do something." 

Tony bites back a wheeze and nods, because he's got to call someone to do something, and if he doesn't figure out what's going on soon, then Peter is going to be one of those lifeless bodies curled up on the ground. Before he can even think or take any sort of action, flashlights light up the junkyard and a handful of people, some in hazmats, stream in. Peter flinches as the light sweeps over his feet and turns slightly into Bucky, who wraps his metal arm protectively around the kid. 

"Start over there," one voice says, and Tony finally gains his bearings and steps forward to talk to one of the men standing beside the fence. He's in a full suit, and something about the casual way he watches the several other people spread out through the junkyard rings quiet alarm bells in the back of Tony's head.

"Who the hell are you?" he asks belligerently, moving to stand closer to Peter, and Steve shoots him a frown.

"We're wondering where you're taking the ... children," Steve amends quickly, dulling the edge of Tony's words with a polite, tight smile. Tony knows Steve well enough to know the slight twist at the corners of his mouth means he's pissed. 

"CDC," the man leaning against the chain link fence looks like a stereotypical Bond villain, a cigarette tucked between his brilliant teeth as he stares Steve down. "We have to quarantine the bodies." The alarm bells ring with slightly more fervor as Tony watches the hazmat-clad CDC squad lift the bodies- children's bodies -onto stretchers and cover them with white sheets. 

"Bodies?" 

Ah, shit.

Peter moves away from Bucky, clearly exerting slightly more force than he needs to because it causes Bucky to stumble back with a startled expression. Peter pads up to the man, whose fancy-looking badge says Bradley Johnson (a douchebag name, if you ask Tony), and stares him dead in the eyes. "Grace. Ashwini. Teddy. Jin. Carly." His finger moves over each body, stabbing almost accusingly in the direction of each child. His voice rises in pitch as he stares Brad down. "Jesse. Carlo. Maria. Jeremy. Monica. Terry. Sunny. Petra. Shu. Laurie. I have a really good memory, Mr. Johnson. Want me to write their names down?" Peter spits with a sharpness in his voice that Tony's never heard before. They're all watching Peter now, even the men in hazmats. Brad's grey-eyed, filmy gaze doesn't drift from the teenager in his face. "They're not just bodies. Homeless children aren't your scapegoats." Peter's almost shouting now, his voice cracking slightly as his hands ball into fists. "Don't insult them. They each have a name. Remember them." 

There's a moment of tense, weighted silence. 

"... Sure, Spider-Man." Brad says, and there's just the slightest hint of mockery in his voice that causes both Steve and Bucky to draw sharp breaths in tandem. In that moment, Tony wishes more than anything that he had a time machine, that he could rewind it and take one for the team, punch Brad fucking Johnson in his stupid fucking face to keep him from mocking Peter.

Peter's chest heaves. "Do you know what it's like to hold dying kids in your arms, Mr. Johnson?" His voice is so different, so shockingly unlike Peter. That charming, innocent cheer is gone, it's melted away like baby fat and all that's left behind are the sharp angles of a boy thrust into superhero-vigilantism too early. 

"Hey." Bucky cuts in, dexterously moving in between Peter and Brad. There's a darkness in Bucky's expression as he keeps his eyes locked fiercely on Brad's expressionless grey ones. "We don't like it when kids die, Bradley. We especially don't like when kids die in our backyard. And we really, really don't like it," he moves in slightly. "When those kids are treated like nameless, anonymous entities. I suggest you listen to Spider-Man." 

There's a nonverbal standoff. Steve's looking at Brad like he's a particularly disgusting cockroach, and Tony knows his emotions are written on his face as clear as day. He's not one for hiding how he feels about anyone, ever. 

"If you want to experiment in your fancy labs, you do so." Brad says, sleaze sliding off his words like bacon fat. "But the bodies are coming with us, because we actually want to find out what's behind the mass deaths. We've quarantined all the ... children for further studying." 

"For how long? When did you start quarantining them?" Steve asks sharply, his eyebrows drawn together and expression pinched with disapproval. "What about Jenna?" 

"Jennaaa..." Brad echoes, looking like he couldn't care less. "We've taken a lot of children in, Cap. You'll have to be more specific than that." 

Steve closes his eyes in a remarkable show of patience. "Golden hair, wearing a pink dress." he says, his voice barely keeping it together. Politeness is just an afterthought, now.

"Ah, yeah. Goldilocks, she was one of the first ones. Yeah, we took her from the hospital." Brad lights his cigarette, his lip curling derisively. "Cute kid." 

Peter shudders from where his arm is pressed against Tony.

"Jesus, you asshole," Tony snarls, a quiet, suffocating rage swelling up in his words. "She's dead. Have some fucking decency." 

"Whatever. As much as I'd like to stand here and flirt, gentlemen, we have a job to do. It'd be in your best interests to let us do that job." Brad puffs out a curl of smoke in Peter's direction, and Tony swings his hand through the smoke to keep it from getting near the kid. As it dissipates, Brad smirks, his mouth unfurling into a slow and greasy smile as he looks right at Peter. "Nice of you to stay with them in their last moments, Spider-Man. I'm sure it was a real honor for them to see their hero, and all." 

Oh fuck no. 

Tony has to bodily haul Peter away, because sometimes the kid's strength gets the better of him and he accidentally flings a ball into the ceiling or tosses Nat down onto the mat a bit too hard (when he actually manages to pin her, that is). Right now, Peter's shoulders are rising and falling like he could put Brad through the damn fence. The kid's on the verge of the breaking point, with death after death dogging him through the streets. He needs to back away from this one, now.

"Take him back to the tower." He snaps at Steve, who rests a hand on Peter's shoulder and nods. Peter must concede that he needs to step away from the situation, because he doesn't put up a fight. As they walk away, Tony doesn't hesitate to get up into Brad's space. The smell of smoke stinks around the two of them, leaving Tony feeling itchy and claustrophobic. "Listen, asshole. You'd better bet I'm gonna fucking watch your every move. I don't care if you're CDC or the goddamn president, this is our city and these are our kids. You'd better do the best damn job you possibly can." 

Brad drops his cigarette and grinds his shoe into it, leaving it crushed and tiny on the damp asphalt. "I don't take orders, Stark. And for your information, we know what we're doing better than a couple of rich assholes with too much money locked up in a tower all day." 

Tony thanks all that is good and holy that Bruce isn't here. 

They stand toe to toe for a moment before Tony finally moves away.

"Keep an eye out for Spider-Man." Brad calls out behind him. "Kid seems like a loose cannon, if you ask me." 

Tony turns on his heel and stalks forward, so quickly that Brad backpedals reflexively into the chain link fence with a loud clatter.

"Then it's a good thing I didn't fucking ask you," he spits out. Brad's mouth opens and closes wordlessly, his expression slack as Tony's mask moves over his face. "Since you're so good at your job, why don't you stay in your lane and figure out what's going on here instead of worrying about Spider-Man." 

He's mad the whole way back, and even then he's not even sure he can look Peter in the eye. The kid's on the couch, staring blankly at his phone, and Bucky is kind of hovering around him like he's not entirely sure where to start.

"I'm so angry," Peter says finally, his voice slightly muffled as he abruptly looks up from his phone and right at Tony. "I've never felt like that before. I felt like I could... Really hurt him," he says, sounding weird and still unlike himself and Jesus, Tony hates everything about this. "Mr. Stark, I'm scared." 

Karen, what do I do, Karen, I'm scared, I'm scared.

"I know," Tony says instead. "Because this shit is scary, Underoos."

"It's okay to be scared of things that are scary," Steve says, and sure it's a little goofy, but it makes sense to fear something like mass child death. Tony nods slightly, glancing back over his shoulder to see Nat and Clint in the doorway. He'll have to fill them in, but he gets this feeling that they might have either picked up on it already or figured out what was going on from Steve and Bucky. "We'll find out what's happening, son." 

"Fuck Brad Johnson," Bucky mutters, and Peter makes a sound that's almost a laugh but not quite. It feels a little too sharp, too maladroit, unlike Peter's usual, happy vocalizations. Tony hates this fucking atmosphere, it's tight and wrong, too raw, and it feels like a room full of adults instead of five adults and a teenage boy. 

"Don't let it get to you." Tony kneels slightly, resting a hand on Peter's shoulder. "The Brads of the world just want to see the world burn, buddy." Peter turns slightly to look at Tony's hand, and for one split second, an odd, unfamiliar chill curls up along Tony's spine when the whites of the kid's mask meet his eyes. There's something off about it all, something that triggers Tony's level-one alarms, but a moment later, Peter melts slightly and nods. 

"She's really worried. I have to go home," he whispers kind of vaguely since they're still in earshot of Steve and Bucky, his shoulder easing out from underneath Tony's hand. The kid unfolds stiffly to his feet, looking around at each member of the team before he faces Tony again. "I don't like this," he says, now louder, and there's a ... A fucking weird tension. Tony knows they can all feel it; everyone's tense like they're waiting on a premeditated attack to hit. "Please... we have to figure out what's happening," the kid pleads of all of them. "I don't know how much more of it I can take." 

"We'll work on it, buddy." Tony promises, because Peter looks so alone and small in the middle of the room like that. Too much like a child. "Go home and get some rest." 

Peter nods, walking out past Natasha and Clint and making the briefest of eye contact with her. It's not until he's left the building that Nat makes her way over.

"There's something off about him." she says with no inflection but the slightest uptick of her voice. That's the extent of Nat's concern... and it's quite a bit more than she usually exhibits. "He's good at noticing when he's being followed, and I usually lose him. If you don't want me to tail him then that's fine, but you should keep an eye on him and make sure he's not going to do something drastic." 

"He's an adult, he can handle himself." Tony feels obligated to say, the lie heavy on his tongue, but he promised Peter he'd do his best to convince the team of his adulthood. "I'll make sure to watch out for him, though. Thanks, Nat." She doesn't look like she quite believes him, but she does nod primly before heading for the kitchen... Which means she doesn't quite know, yet. She's just suspicious, which, when it comes to Nat, is quite dangerous.

"This is ..." Steve seems at a loss for words. "Did either of you think it was weird, how quickly the CDC swooped in? We barely even heard what happened from Spider-Man before they came in. I feel like the CDC is more public about what they do when things like this happen, but I had no idea they even took Jenna. I think I'm going to talk to Jenna's mother, ask her when they came by." 

Bucky frowns in response, his hand resting against Steve's forearm. "The guy seemed pretty confident about what he was doing, but..." His eyebrows furrow. "Usually people are more surprised to see that many kids like that. These guys didn't even flinch, there was ... Nothing. No sign that they were affected by what they were seeing. Unless that's just a qualification of working for the CDC, then... I have a weird feeling about all of this. Especially with how little they cared about who the kids were. They didn't even ask Spider-Man what happened." 

"They could be working... For someone more malicious." Clint verbalizes what they're all thinking. "But ... I know this is going to sound dark, but... What would anyone want with dead children? I mean..." He winces. "Bear with me. They're... I mean, they can't do anything." 

An unsettled silence falls over the room. 

"I know one thing," Tony says quietly, thinking about the way Brad was looking at his kid. At Spider-Man. With that look on his face, like he wanted to dissect the kid, goad him to the breaking point. "They want something with Spider-Man. And I'm going to fucking figure out what it is." 

The morning starts rough with the weight of the city heavy on his shoulders. Tony feels it everywhere he goes, now-  when he and Steve are just walking one block away to get coffee, or when he's driving down any street, or even when it rains and he and Happy are caught without an umbrella under the overhang of the retailers along the sidewalks. He doesn't have children (no matter what anyone says, dammit), but the loss still sinks in heavy, especially when he looks around and notices the distinct lack of little rain boots splashing in puddles, hot on their parents' heels. 

By now, there's an incident almost every day, even more than that, actually, and with the magnitude of death, they haven't been able to keep it from SHIELD. Fury was... Displeased to say the least, and now he's even more on their ass about whatever is going on. The team's been spending a lot of time out and about these days, watching out for feral kids, because while the mysterious, possibly magical virus has slowed down slightly since the quarantine of homeless children, it's still a high-alert threat. It's been difficult to get in and out of the city, which really makes Tony feel like the weathered-down and wary hero of a zombie apocalypse video game. 

"I hate rain," Happy mutters from beside him, and Tony runs his hand through his wet hair and shakes out the water. 

"That's because you have no sense of appreciation for the smaller things in life," he responds wryly, just to give Happy shit, and sure enough, his bodyguard just shakes his head and glares with no real heat. He angles himself away from the street and pulls the hood of his Stark Industries sweatshirt past his wet hair, because although he's usually thankful when the streets are quieter, knowing the reason behind it gives him no joy. 

Unfortunately, despite his meddling with his kind of lame disguise, it doesn't prevent him from getting grabbed by the elbow from behind. Happy moves fast, hand resting against the holster against his hip, but Tony snaps his hand back to stop his friend as he comes face to face with a young mother. She's got her toddler in her arms and pressed close to her body, her cheek pressed against his smaller one, and the fierce determination on her face actually carries enough power to force Tony back a step or two.

"You-" she starts, moving wet bangs away from her face. "You're him. Tony Stark," she says, and Tony isn't sure whether to defend himself as just a really coincidental doppelganger or let her keep talking. "Iron Man. Please," she melts Tony's resolve and takes a deep breath, her expression cracking slightly as spiderweb-thin lines of pain slip through. "You have to do something." She holds his sleeve tighter, shaking his arm slightly, and Tony can feel his heart climbing frantically up into his throat. Half of him wants to run, half of him wants to slide that slick charm on so he has something to say. He manages to move toward the latter, somehow. 

"I will. I'm trying." he says, tripping over his words just slightly and looking around to see if anyone is noticing their side conversation. He goes for a reassuring hand pat to give her some semblance of comfort, but she doesn't move.

"Try harder." she insists, an edge of frantic helplessness sharpening her words. "You... You're the only one who can. You and the Avengers. Spider-Man's only one hero, so please..." She moves in, tugging at him to pull him closer. "You need to do something. My daughter." Her lower lip trembles, tears rolling down her cheeks and mingling with the rain. Her son's dark curls are soaked through, because they have no umbrella. "She's... She was one of them. They took my daughter away," she sobs, "Because she did this." She moves her other hand from where it's tucked behind her other child, and Tony just then notices the bandages wrapped around her fingers. "She took a hammer and- And broke my fingers. My baby girl, my b-" A hysterical sob knifes its way from her entire form. "Carolina would never do that. She would n-"

"Who took your daughter away?" Tony asks grimly, because he has a good idea, but he's still got to confirm. 

"He was blonde... With grey eyes." She hesitates, moving her injured hand back behind the toddler. It must be uncomfortable, because a grimace of pain twists her lips down. She looks like she hasn't smiled in years. Tony knows the feeling. 

"Brad," Tony bites out under his breath before resting a hand on the agitated mother's shoulder. "Go home. It's ... Not safe outside right now. We're going to get to the bottom of this, I promise. I promise." 

She pulls back with a nod, lifting her head for a moment and meeting his eyes with her own velvet-dark gaze. "We're counting on you. We need ... We need you." She says, her voice surprisingly raw, before she steps away, vanishes back into the muddled mess of umbrellas and raincoats. Tony feels like he's been fucking sucker-punched.

"Come on," he mutters to Happy, who looks like he doesn't know what to say. "We need to regroup. I have a feeling that sleazy asshole Brad Johnson is wrapped up in this more than he's letting on." 

"Spider-Man needs to start coming to these meetings." Steve starts off said meeting by saying, and there are a few nods around the table. Tony rubs his hand over his jaw, his palm tingling at the rough scrape, and angles slightly so he's looking at Cap; his brain goes into overtime when he realizes Spider-Man is in the Tower... Only, as Peter, and in his lab. "He's spending so much time in the city, around all of those kids... He could use a reprieve. It's good to put some distance once in a while." 

"Tell him that," Tony says tiredly. "You know, that k-" he catches himself. "Spider-Man, he's born and bred. He feels like everything that happens here is his responsibility, that... You know, it's his world." 

"Still," Nat leans back, twirling a pencil over the table as she surveys the team with cautious, appraising eyes. "I have a feeling he's been affected more than he knows it. He's still young, compared to all of us, and..." 

"I mean, even for us, all that death..." Clint trails off, his leg bouncing just enough that his knee barely touches the underside of the table. "And we're grown ass adults." 

"Sam's coming," Bucky says quietly, almost imperceptibly. "I gave him a call... We could use the extra help." 

"Wilson?" Tony confirms, and Bucky nods. 

"I'm thinking that there's an element to this that's ... Beyond scientific," Bruce admits to the team, looking like he hasn't slept for a solid year. His hair sticks up in messy, staticky clumps, grey creeping up along the curve of his ear and disappearing into his curls, and there's a deep red indent where his glasses pressed a groove into the bridge of his nose. "Maybe ... Magical, you know? It's not my expertise, but, uh... I can't think of any science that would back up the way only children... Well, anyone under 18... is being targeted. There might be a way for science to differentiate with that level of precision, but ... I think there might be something more." 

"Sorcery?" Bucky asks flatly, and Steve glances askance at Tony; both of their minds go to the same place. 

"I'll give him a call," Tony says, trailing his thumb over the deep bruises under his own eyes and semi-dreading the conversation he has to have with Strange about children dying. No doubt Strange has already begun to notice what's going on (how could he not), but whether he's doing something about it or not is something else entirely. "And what about Brad Johnson?" 

"I asked Sam about him. Turns out he's heard of him, but... Not as a director or anything, but I guess... Before he joined the CDC, I guess? Turns out he's always been a total asshole." Bucky continues coldly, with an expression that plainly says what he thinks about Johnson. "But you know, Sam was pretty surprised to know that he joined the CDC. Apparently he didn't ever show interest in it. Sam recognized him from a bar they'd both frequented a while back, and the guy was a total deadbeat." 

"Interesting." Tony muses. "Nat, do you think you could check in on his credentials more? See when he joined, the circumstances of his promotion? It's weird that he would be in this high of a position that quickly, based on what Sam's saying." 

"I talked to Jenna's mom," Steve supplies, a hitch to his voice. "She says the same thing- they rolled in as soon as Jenna... passed. The janitor there said- this is crude, I'm sorry -the b-" he takes a deep breath, his hands curling into fists. "The body hadn't even cooled before the CDC came and took her." 

Tony shakes his head. "There's something seriously off about that guy. The sooner we break him down, the sooner we'll get to the root of this." 

"Mr. Stark." A quiet voice from the doorway alerts him, and he looks up to see Peter standing there, looking oddly tiny out of suit. His hair sticks up like Bruce's in tufts, like he's been repeatedly and agitatedly running his hands through it, and he's still wearing a lab coat. The Avengers look at each other in surprise, each of them only having met Peter a handful of times, and then at Tony, like they're wondering why Peter's gatecrashing their important meeting, but Tony's more interested in the fact that Peter looks horrible. The kid shouldn't be suffering as much as the rest of them are, but he looks like he's a second away from passing right out on Tony's carpet.

"What's up, Parker?" he calls to encourage Peter to talk, wondering if the kid could hear the conversation as he was approaching the door anyway. Damn enhanced senses and all. 

Peter looks a bit embarrassed, which is par for the course for the kid, but there’s something else about his behavior sits wrong with Tony. He seems all too tense, and in the pockets of the lab coat, Tony can see his hands clenching up and loosening rapidly. "My food is gone," he finally says through gritted teeth. "I brought a sandwich, and, um, I can't find it. So-" 

Tony hastily cuts in. "Yeah, no, it's fine if you use anything you want in the kitchen, kid." Peter, and by extension Spider-Man, has always been weird about using Tony's facilities. He asks every time, only usually taking when he's offered anything. It's like he thinks Tony will be mad at him if he uses the kitchen, a thought process which Tony's still trying to break him out of. But usually, the kid's all awkward laughter and shy smiles, not stiffer than a plank as he stares at Tony from across the room. 

Peter nods, the movement stilted, and starts to turn away, when Clint claps his hand against his forehead.

"Fuck, dude, I'm so sorry. That's all my fault, I was starving and just grabbed the first thing I saw from the fridge. My bad." he holds his hands up, and Peter just stares at him. Tony waits for Peter's little chuckle, his shoulder shrugging dismissively as he forgets the whole thing, but Peter's fingers wrap tight around the doorframe as he continues to glare at a now discomfited Clint. 

"It had my name on it. On the baggie. Did you see it?" Peter asks quietly, the crackle of something cold under his tone, freezing water under a layer of ice. Natasha sits up next to Clint, dropping the pen, and she's not the only one who notices the underlying anger in Peter's words. Tony's eyes flicker sideways just in time to see Peter's fingers twitch against the doorframe. "I mean, it was mine. I made it. You don't just take things that aren't yours like that." There's a threat there, and it freaks the hell out of Tony. 

"Hey, I'm really sorry." Clint's eyes narrow slightly, but not out of anger, just semi-curious bemusement. Peter's encounters with Clint have been, for the most part, harmless. The kid usually gels well with Clint's brand of gruff, sarcastic quip-laden humor, often laughing at the archer's jokes, and he's certainly not the type to get this mad over two fucking slices of bread. No, this is something else... It's everything else. 

"Sure." Tony's afraid Peter's going to crunch the metal doorjamb right under his super-strong grip or launch an onslaught against Clint with his tiny, powerful fists, but the kid's lip just curls almost derisively before he spins around, disappears down the hallway; he leaves the Avengers sitting in shock at the table at his abrupt shift in behavior. 

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Bucky murmurs, frowning at the empty doorway, and Steve just looks bewildered. Tony can feel the weight of Bruce's gaze on him, but he's already halfway across the meeting room to run after Peter anyway. Kid's fast and young, so he's already almost to the elevator by the time Tony catches up to him.

"Pete, Jesus. Hold on. I'm not a marathoner." He says. "FRIDAY, hold the elevator." 

Peter's lower lip trembles as he stares at the elevator, and then he spins around to face Tony. "I don't know what's wrong. I'm so angry- All the time. Mr. Stark, I don't know why." He whispers, pointing down the hallway at the meeting room. "I could have said something really mean to Clint. And I like Clint!" His expression is despairing. "Just... Ever since Brad-" he spits the name out like venom, "I just-" 

"I know," Tony soothes, feeling helpless and hating it. This fucking case is jacking everything up, messing with Peter so bad. It's gotta be the trauma of all this death, of spending so much time patrolling... It has to be. Peter's so young, susceptible- and how shitty is it that this kid's ended up with PTSD from holding children as they die? "Hey buddy, I don't want you to take this badly, but... Maybe you should pause Spider-Man, just focus on... On, you know..." 

Peter looks tortured by the very thought, and Tony melts like butter under a hot knife. "Mr. Stark, I want to. I want to," he says earnestly, his voice cracking noticeably. Tony remembers the woman he'd seen earlier, and her toddler with those dark curls. "But my people are out there... My neighbors and classmates, kids I babysat, whose dogs I've walked, I-! I don't know if I can walk away from this...!" His voice curves in a trembling whisper, his eyes wide and rimmed with unshed tears. He looks away, lifting the sleeve of the too-big lab coat as a makeshift handkerchief before he lowers his arm and breathes out. God, he's dwarfed in that lab coat. When he meets Tony's eyes again, he's a little more composed. "I'm going to go eat something now, Mr. Stark," he says, the tremble in his voice barely noticeable and his voice dipping into something colder, scarier, as he gets into the elevator. He looks so different standing there in the elevator like that, his expression as blank as it had been that day behind the whites of his mask. "And then I should get back to work." 

Tony watches as the door closes, as he loses sight of Peter, and then returns to the meeting room. As soon as he clicks the door open, Steve speaks up. 

"Is he okay?" 

"I think he will be," Tony lies, because he's not sure of that at all. "Y'know... He's been losing people he cares about. It's a really scary time for him." 

Clint seems to have forgotten Peter's anger toward him, or at least he seems to be pushing it aside in his concern. "How old is Peter again?" 

"Fifteen," Tony mumbles reflexively, faithfully avoiding looking at either Nat or Bucky. The two of them have been really up his ass lately with asking about Spider-Man, and he's worried they're both catching on to Peter's big secret. 

"So young," Steve shakes his head sorrowfully, and Tony swallows back a lump in his throat when Bruce drops his gaze to his notes. "That has to be horrible. I was told that schools will be temporarily closing, too, in the event that affected children come to school and..." 

"Dammit. Goddammit." Tony mutters, resisting the overwhelming urge to throw his coffee mug right into the wall. The one he's using is just a painful reminder of how inadequate he's being, since it's a mug Peter had gifted him that says I must be made of germanium, nickel, uranium, and sulfur because I'm a GeNiUS. 

He doesn't really feel like a genius, now, but at least he has somewhere to start.

Talking to Strange that evening is, surprisingly, not entirely a waste of time.

Okay, unsurprisingly. The guy is... Something, that's for sure, but he's also brilliant, and he's also a sorcerer, so this is right up his alley.

"I've already been investigating the children if that's what you're calling about," Strange says briskly by way of greeting, and Tony rolls his eyes.

"Hi, how are you, Tony? Oh, I'm good, how are you? Good, good. Yeah, it's been a long time since we've talked-" Tony says, sarcastically. 

"I know you don't care about menial pleasantries that will waste our time, Stark." He doesn't sound bored, at least- more restless, if Tony's really nitpicking. "If this is about the children, I've been taking a look into it. I didn't have anything conclusive, but I would have called if I did. I do have theories." 

"Bruce says that the children are too precisely targeted to be scientific." 

"And he's right," Strange drawls, fiddling with something that keeps clanking around. It's driving Tony a little crazy. "I suspect that there might be some sort of dark magic involved, some spellwork that purposefully takes into consideration the number of years for which a person has been alive.... and this only affects those up to a certain number of years. That isn't to say that there isn't science involved as well, but I myself suspect someone some sort of nefarious magic at play." 

"Great. Science and magic. A double whammy," Tony says sourly. 

"Sound alive, Stark." There's a slight edge of humor in Strange's voice, but it's bleak and vanishes in his next, semi-concerned words. "You seem exhausted; I'm sure your resident doctor would tell you to get some rest as well, if he wasn't so woefully inept at it himself. I'll let you know if I come up with anything else, but I have to go now." 

"Thanks," Tony responds waspishly, annoyed at being told to get sleep, but he knows where it's coming from and yeah, he knows Strange is right about it, so he can't hold onto his annoyance for too long. "Seeya, Dumbledore." 

He hangs up before Strange can get appropriately angry about the shitty nickname, then heads to his workspace to fix himself yet another coffee. Honestly, he blames his poor, sleep-deprived reflexes for Nat being able to sneak up on him as quietly as she does. 

"Spider-Man." She says by way of greeting, and Tony's glad he doesn't have his coffee in hand yet because he jumps about a foot. 

"Jesus, Nat," he wraps his fingers around the warm handle and gives her a squinty-eyed glare, lifting the mug to his lips and sipping at the scalding black. "You could just walk in like a normal person, completely on your feet instead of on your tiptoes or heels or whatever it is you do. And by the way, I'm Tony, not Spider-Man." 

"Did you check in on him again?" she persists, ignoring Tony's rambling. Rude. "I told you- something's been off about him, I could feel it the other day. When he looked at me." 

Tony gulps down the coffee and nods. "Yeah, I've been checking in on him. Like I said, he's really hurt by all of this. Out of suit, he's... Uh. For lack of better word, a pretty average guy, save for being ridiculously smart and all." Actually, there's nothing average about Peter, but Tony's bad at explaining shit like this. Cut him some slack, he's tired as hell. "Okay, not average, but... More like... I don't know, you know how Cap is like, the epitome of farmboy Americana?" At her clipped but curious nod, he goes on. "Just like that, Spider-Man is the epitome of New York...ness. He takes the subway, he eats at all the local holes in the walls, he attends..." He coughs. "The local college." 

"He loves his home." It's not a question, and it very accurately sums up Tony's long-winded speech. The short and sweet nature of Natasha's words leaves an acute ache in Tony's chest. 

"Yeah," he says quietly, glancing down at the remaining little puddle of darkness in the bottom of his mug. "He loves his home, and he's watching it fall apart, he's watching it... Die. You know, children are our future." he says humorlessly, thinking about Peter, only ever Peter. "To him, it's like watching a friend die, watching... Family die." 

She nods, because she understands. Tony's not sure he's going to be able to handle her intuition, so he's thankful when his phone rings and gives him an excuse to wander away from her searching stare and head back to his workspace to take it. 

"Hello?" 

"Tony," comes May Parker's breathless voice, curved around a hitching sob, and he knows, he just knows this is about Peter. God, Peter. Tony wraps his hand around the nearest tangible object, the door handle, and he squeezes, just to ground himself. That's what they taught him, you know, look for things to ground yourself, keep you in the present. "Please, Peter, he just, I know he didn't mean to. I think it's that thing- That- whatever is going a- It's that thing that's going around." 

"Are you hurt?" Tony rasps, already halfway in suit as he flies past the kitchen. It's just his luck that Steve and Bucky are having one of their late night rendezvous, and they both snap to grim alertness when they notice his expression. "May?" he prods when she doesn't answer, and her response comes through tears. 

"Yes," she swallows, composing herself because she's brilliant, she's Peter's aunt, so of course she's brilliant. "I am, but I'll be fine. I know my nephew, I know he didn't mean to. I don't need to tell you that he's a good kid, I don't know why I'm trying to convince you, I'm sorry, I'm babbling, I just- But this thing, this... whatever, I think it's affecting him differently beca-" 

Tony pulls away from the phone, spinning wildly toward Bucky and Steve.

"Go get your shit. Get Nat and Clint, too, tell them it's serious. Tell Bruce, code red, we're leaving the tower and it has to do with Spider-Man." Tony snaps at them, partially because he needs them to be ready, just in case, just in case they have to subdue Spider-Man... And he's afraid, more and more so with every passing second, that that's going to be inevitable. They can't let Peter go after other children, he's too strong, and he would never forgive Tony if he let the hero hurt anyone, even on accident. Also, Tony needs them to leave, to keep Peter's identity safe from their super-hearing.  Fortunately, they grasp the seriousness of the situation, and go, leaving Tony alone with Peter's terrified aunt. "Keep going, May. Keep talking to me." 

"I think it's affecting him differently because of his genes," she whispers. "I think it's affecting him much slower than the other children, so he's aware of it. He knows... That he's succumbing to it." Her voice breaks again, and that acute pain intensifies until Tony swears his skin is burning. God, Peter's anger, it hadn't been because of the trauma- although that certainly may have contributed. Tony's so stupid. "He even told me, he said he's scared of i- He's scared of it. He's in suit, Tony, and I think maybe he might be trying to run, to try to get away ..." 

Tony closes his eyes because he needs to focus on her voice instead of his heart pounding against the wall of his chest, in his ears like the little fucker it is. "Of course. Of course, he would try to run away, to keep everyone safe, but that's. I need-" he turns around blindly, relieved to see the team coming together, assembling in the living room. "I'll activate his suit-cam. Stay down, May," he insists, her name slipping out unconsciously, and he'll beat himself up for that later. Later. When they find Peter. Scared, alone Peter. "I'll keep you updated." 

"I'll be waiting," she says with shaky resolve, and as soon as Tony hangs up, he says, "FRI, call Karen." He gestures for them to follow as he heads out, hovering just above the ground in his haste to start looking, start anywhere, do anything instead of just hovering and waiting. To the team, he says, "Spider-Man is currently a threat," and if his voice fucking cracks then that's his own problem. They look stricken, but Nat's gaze feels the heaviest. "And we need to find him as soon as possible. He frequents rooftops, and he'll probably be hidden. He's scared and possibly being controlled and he can bench press 25 goddamn tons, so don't let your guard down." Tony lets his mask hide his expression as he continues. "And don't hurt him." 

"I'm more worried he'll hurt us," Clint says, whistling low under his breath. "25 tons, Jesus. He looks like a twig." 

"If we..." Bucky hesitates, looking none too happy with his own following words, "... can't subdue him without hurting him?" Steve moves close to him, his expression set with anxious determination, and Tony closes his eyes for just a second before he pulls himself together.

"Try to do the least amount of damage... Please." he says uncharacteristically, and, judging by Bucky's expression, unnecessarily. He tries to sound level, but it comes out a plea and they all know it. He doesn't even know how to explain that Peter is just a child, terrified and hidden somewhere, trying to fight this alone. And Tony's not about to fucking let that happen. If Peter's going to turn, if he's going to go down with this shitty spell or virus or whatever this us, it's going to happen while he's surrounded with people who care about him. He's not going to do this alone.

Bucky nods, and Nat takes a step in, toward Tony.

"We'll find him." she assures, serious as a heart attack, and Tony breathes because he has work to do, opening his eyes again and taking control of the situation as best he can.

"Yeah, we will," he says coarsely, and when he can't seem to get through to Karen (no fucking worry or anything, Jesus, Peter), FRI manages to localize a general area of where Peter might be holed up. "Okay, it looks like he might be in the northeast section of the city. Again- subdue, talk to him, and do your damnedest not to hurt him." He instructs, sounding so raw he makes himself flinch. At their affirming nods, he takes off.

Because he's going to get Peter before that damn virus-spell does, and that's a goddamn promise. 

Spending time with someone as intuitive as Bucky makes things difficult, especially since Bucky seems to be incredibly omniscient and always seems to be two.. Or seven... Or twenty steps ahead of Steve. Watching movies with Bucky or any kind of television show that has a twist is meaningless, because Bucky sees it coming from a lightyear away and is never surprised. The only other person Steve knows who's just as bad as Bucky is Nat, whose eerie intuition leaves Steve wondering if she can't just actually read his mind.

But Steve's forte is that he can read people, and where he lacks the same assassin-level intuition Bucky and Nat do, he can read his friend better than he lets on. It's kind of a superpower, in its own right- to him, at least. And Bucky's silence right now is incredibly telling. 

"Hey," he says, lightly resting his open palm against Bucky's upper arm. The other's been lost deep in his thoughts, locked away in whatever bleak dreamland his subconscious has built just for him, and Steve wants him back. "Fifteen cents for your thoughts." 

"Fifteen whole cents? How generous." Bucky half-smiles, his mouth tugging up at the corner like he's reluctantly curious, and that is as much of a win as Steve's going to get. Honestly, it's the most Bucky would give anyone... Although Steve has seen his cold exterior splinter, revealing a slightly more gruff, even ... affectionate personality around Peter. 

"Inflation," Steve shrugs, and Bucky expels a little sigh as he glances around the darkened roof. He makes his way over to the edge, offering Steve his hand and gesturing to the opposite rooftop. They leap together, Steve stumbling just slightly on a slippery patch of the roof before he straightens against Bucky. It had rained earlier, and the black rooftop is slick-wet and annoying. "We'll find Spider-Man, you know." 

"That's what I'm worried about." Bucky rumbles, glancing at Steve with a pinch of concern in his bright, ever-focused eyes. Although his gaze is on Steve, his body is angled away from him, ready and tense in the case of a sudden attack. "You know, I'm scared that he'll... That he'll hurt someone, with whatever is going on with him." 

"Yeah, but it's not him that's actually.." Steve frowns. "I mean, you know it's not him, he's obviously under- under some kind of influence-" 

"That's the problem," Bucky insists, and comprehension dawns on Steve. He closes his eyes, swallowing back a wave of despair, and looks around so he doesn't have to put all that pain into words just yet. "He won't be himself, but he'll be aware of it. He'll... hate himself. I don't want... He doesn't deserve to go through that. To be used like that." Bucky looks away, the words surprisingly raw, and Steve's heart comes loose and falls right into his stomach. "He may not be as young as ... Jenna, but he's still young." 

"He's not jaded, yet." Steve agrees, and Bucky angles to look him dead in the eyes. 

"He's full of life. And something like this could ruin that. Something like this could... Could fill him with regret and shame. What if he's never the same again? What if he's so traumatized that..." Bucky trails off, and Steve trails his hands up his forearms, squeezing Bucky's upper arms with renewed intensity. 

"Buck. Listen." Steve's breaths are a little shaky, but he kind of knows where he's going with this and he's got to keep it together because he's one of the leaders, he has to keep his head above the water or he's going to drown in his own fear. "If that ... Whatever- spell, virus thing -has Spider-Man, then the only thing we can do is move forward. For now, we just have one goal- get him home safe, so we can figure out our next move. We can't give up this early, we can't ... assume that he's gone forever. You know, part of the reason Spider-Man is the way he is is because everyone around him wants him to be the best he possibly can. Somehow- miraculously- we've done good by him. Tony's done so good by him. Just because this happens, it doesn't mean we're going to lose Spider-Man. We're going to make sure he doesn't lose to this- this spell. As long as we know he's capable, he's going to be fine." His voice nearly splinters from the force of his words, but he believes it. He's got to, otherwise he won't be able to convince anyone else. 

Bucky stays silent for a moment, but he nods, and Steve releases him. Metal fingers knock against his affectionately, and Steve has just a second to smile before two tiny feet slam into his chest and send him stumbling back so hard he almost falls onto his ass. 

"Ste-" Bucky starts, but he's quickly preoccupied with Spider-Man's rapid fists, moving so quickly that Steve can barely track them with his eyes fast enough. The kid's flexible, dipping and weaving around Bucky like he's doing some sort of incredibly dangerous dance in his attempts to hurt him.  

"I'm sorry," Spider-Man sounds wretched as he gets his hands around Bucky's throat. Bucky grips Spider-Man’s arm and rips him off, hurtling him a few feet away, and Spider-Man flips back and lands right onto the pads of his toes lithely like a red and blue acrobat. 

"Come on, Spider-Man," Steve holds up his shield, jaw setting in determination as he moves in slightly, and Spider-Man's pose shifts into something defensive, scared. He curls in on himself, fingers shaking horribly as he throws himself in Bucky's direction again. "Come on. You can fight it, just a little longer." Flicking the comms on, he blurts out, "We found him. We found Spider-Man, he's uh- It's a rooftop above Gold and Platt." 

A jumble of voices patch through, but Steve has no idea what they say because Spider-Man webs his comm clean off and pitches it over the edge of the roof, which, y'know, rude, but he'll let it slide this time. He barely manages to get his hand up in time, to stop Spider-Man's fist a millimeter away from his jaw, and Bucky runs toward them as Spider-Man pulls free and scurries back a few feet. His eyes flicker rapidly between the two of them, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he sucks in heavy breaths, and he seems tortured.

"Please, I can't, I don't want to hurt you." His words come out a whine, and the expression that spreads over Bucky's face is too dark to be a smile, too tight-lipped to be humorous. Steve's heart skips significantly more than one beat as he looks between the two supers, because he has no idea how they're going to get an aggravated, crazy-strong Spider-Man back to the Avengers Tower, like... at all. 

"Take your best shot kid," Bucky says, and Spider-Man lunges for him. 

Tony touches down in the middle of chaos. Bucky and Steve are launching what looks out a full avoidance attack, similar to what he'd seen back when he was playing Peter's suit-cam video when he'd been fending off the children. Every time Peter jumps one of them, they try desperately hard not to attack back, instead moving him out of the way or pushing him back. But they're slowing down, because Peter's jacked up on who fucking knows what, and his attacks are relentless. 

Nat and Clint are already on the ground, so they're there just a beat before him, and Nat surveys what's going on before moving in like lightning and trying to catch a slippery, writhing Peter. Peter thrashes and tears Nat's arms off of himself, twisting his body around like a contortionist's as he lands a powerful kick against Clint's chest and sends him flying back. Unlike Steve and Bucky, Clint's only human, and some part of Peter is still aware of that, because a web splats against Clint's chest and yanks him back just before he hits the brick wall on the other side of the roof. 

Everyone freezes.

"Jesus," Steve whispers, and Tony raises an arm toward his kid. 

"Spidey," he whispers, gesturing a little. "Come on, buddy, c'mere. We can help you," he coaxes, trying to be as reassuring as possible. Peter just stares at him, mask-eyes twitching violently, his entire, limber body shaking head to toe. He abruptly yanks his web back, taking lunging steps for Tony before closing the gap, throwing himself right at him. The team tenses, moving, in, but- 

"Stay back." Tony says, not looking at anyone but Peter, always Peter. "Don't- Let me handle this." 

"Just get away from me," Peter snarls, animalistic and guttural, his fist lashing out and slamming into the wall just millimeters away from Tony's head. Tony swallows when he hears a crack, because that could've been his head if Peter hadn't still been in there somewhere. "Get away, get away from me. I can't-" he pulls back, pressing his hands against his mask and looking tortured. "You're expecting t- too much of me, I- I can't fight this, I'm so-" he voice rises into a growl, and god, he looks so cornered, like a wild animal. 

"Spi-" Steve starts, but Peter wheels around to face Steve with an almost deranged expression and shuts him up. Even though his face isn't visible, it's still unnerving- scary, even. 

"Don't." Peter's voice is raw, like it's been dragged over a bed of nails. "I've- I hurt... May, I hurt... I threw her, when she tried to hug me." his voice sounds so heavy, so hurt, and all Tony wants to do is take the suit off and roll Peter into a blanket, just so he doesn't have to deal with any of this. "I threw her into the wall and there was a crack, there was a c-" he wails all of a sudden, yanking at his mask, and he's about a second and a half from a meltdown, Tony can feel it. "Oh, god, I hurt May, I- I'm a monster," his voice splinters right down the middle like a fault line. 

"Sp- Buddy, come on," Tony pleads. "May's not upset, she just wants you home." he holds his hands up in surrender, trying to prove he's not a threat, but Peter pinwheels away from them and pins himself to the wall, breathing so hard Tony's afraid his lung is going to collapse. 

"I'm a monster." Peter says sorrowfully, his voice heavy, and Tony's eyes flick to the side just in time to see Bucky's metal fingers in a white-knuckle clench. "A monster, I'm not strong enough, I'm just... A monster, that's all I am, that-"

And then he stops. Straightens. He's blank faced, his arms hanging loosely by his side.

"Spider-Man." Steve whispers, exchanging a freaked out look with Clint, and Natasha is just as still as Peter, watching him, monitoring his every move.

"A monster with a mission," Peter says dully, and it doesn't make any fucking sense. Tony just stares at him in confusion, panic rising and falling in waves, and he doesn't even have time to say anything before Peter punches him right in the fucking stomach. 

The breath is crushed right out of him, and through blurry vision, he sees Peter recoil. In a fucking twist, he's actually relieved, because he's seen Peter punch enemies and he knows Peter's still pulling his punches. He's still in there. 

"Pe-" he starts, but Peter's already moving away, webs criss-crossing in every direction as he pins Nat and Clint. Tony tries to recover as he watches the two of them struggle to pull the sticky substance off, and Jesus Christ his kid is so fucking strong, he's not slowing down. 

Is it a weird time to be prideful? Probably. 

"Oh goddammit, I didn't have enough time to recoup," Bucky mutters, metal arm swinging hard toward Peter. Anyone else, Tony would have just about swallowed his tongue in fear, but as it is, Peter just catches it and yanks Bucky past himself, sending him flying in the opposite direction. Steve doesn't give him a second to breathe, using Peter's significant lack of fine-tuned technique against him and actually gaining the upper hand in the fight. They're on the edge of the roof now, and Bucky's back on his feet as he goes in to grab Peter. They've just got to subdue him, just for a second, because-

"Tony!" Nat tosses something at him that he snags out of the air without really looking. It's heavy and smooth in his palm, with a needle... Oh. "When I told Bruce that there was a problem with Spider-Man, he gave me a tranquilizer. It'll give us fifteen minutes." 

Of course, Tony thinks. Bless Bruce. He knows Peter's identity, so he probably prepared some sort of drug in advance just in case Peter went feral; he knows normal drugs won't do shit to Peter, won't keep him down long enough, so- 

"He just needs to stop moving for a goddamn second," Bucky grits his teeth, trying once more to grab him, but this time Peter's flailing fist catches him hard enough to send him teetering over the edge of the rooftop. 

"Bucky!" 

Tony lunges for the ex-assassin, but he doesn't need to worry, because two enormous wings rise up over the rooftop. And honestly? He's never been so fucking glad to see them, even though Sam's never gonna hear those words come out of his mouth.

"God," Steve groans, back on guard as he shoots Bucky a barely concealed look of terror. Bucky shoves at Sam as he sets him down, but almost affectionately. He looks disgruntled but relieved as he moves away from Sam, who just rolls his eyes aggressively before glaring at them all in turn. 

"You'd better be glad I saved your heavy ass. I should have dropped you, ungrateful SOB." 

"How did you even find us?" Tony inches toward Peter, shooting a confused look at Sam (although, in all fairness, he's pretty grateful to see him). 

"Well, I went to the Tower first, obviously," Sam gives Spider-Man a weirded out look, mostly because the kid is snarling at him. That'd give anyone pause. "But then the big guy said you were all out looking for Spider-Man 'cause he was rogue or some shit, I don't even know. Thanks for telling me, by the way. We used your AI to track your location, and I came as soon as I could. What, did that asshole not let you all know I was coming? Because I told h-" 

"I did warn them! And what happened was pretty sudden," Bucky defends immediately, glaring at Sam as he finally manages to pin one of Peter's arms down. The kid thrashes wildly, but Steve's got his other arm, and although he tries to run, he's also been fighting the lot of them enough to be dragging his heels a little- just enough for Steve and Bucky to pin him. 

"You're also pretty forgettable," Tony mutters, ignoring Sam's offended glare as he pops the cap off the syringe. The way Peter goes wild at the sight of it makes Tony's chest ache something fierce, but despite how much all of this shit sucks, this is what they have to do to keep Peter safe. "It's gonna be okay, buddy," he soothes as Peter freaks the hell out, and some part of him still believes Peter's holding back, or at least some part of him is holding back, because he feels like if Peter had really wanted to get away from this, he actually might have been able to. 

"What the hell is going on?" Sam demands, averting his attention from Tony to focus on a violently flailing Peter, his eyebrows lifting suspiciously. "I thought whatever was going on was- I don't know-" He clears his throat. "It attacks kids? And he's Spider-Man, so, you know, what gives?"

Steve absently rubs his arm where he was bitten, giving Bucky a look full of dread and discomfort. "Maybe it's not restricted to kids." 

Bucky holds on to Peter's arm tighter, staring right at Tony, and Tony just ignores him as he finally manages to tug the mask up and insert the needle. Peter immediately goes lax, a boneless weight against Bucky, and the ex-assassin hands him over to Tony.

"We have fifteen minutes." Tony says, closing his eyes and swallowing the lump in his throat as he lets Peter's head rest against his chest plate. "Let's get him to the quarantine zone." 

"Did the tranquilizer work?" Bruce bursts into the quarantine zone shortly after their arrival, glasses askew, his hair spiked up like he's been agitatedly running his fingers through it every few seconds. Tony knows the feeling; he's somberly seated in front of the quarantine cell, one knee tucked against his chest as he watches Spider-Man crawl over the glass excruciatingly slowly. The eyes that Tony designed himself are fixated on him, and the prolonged eye contact sends chills down Tony's spine. He looks away, nodding at Bruce's question, and Bruce looks around at the grim Avengers sprawled in various positions around the cell. 

"Spider-Man?" Bruce ventures to ask, and Peter's eyes immediately snap to Bruce, who steps back. "Okay, awareness of the situation, responds to his name..." he mutters, moving a little closer. Peter watches, so still that it barely looks like he's breathing, as Bruce gets closer, closer, and all of a sudden, his hand flies out and smacks the glass so loudly that Bruce flinches. Peter cocks his head, watching Bruce for almost a full minute before he begins to smack at the glass again, loud and rhythmic, like he's trying to break through and go straight for Bruce's throat. His arms are akimbo, pads of his feet tightly pressed against the glass as he snarls. 

"Spider-Man, do you know how this happened?" Bruce asks, over the thuds against the glass, but Peter ignores him and instead throws himself at the glass violently, now pounding at it with both fists relentlessly. He's vocalizing even more now, wild grunting sounds from low in his throat, and Tony clutches his leg so tightly his knuckles go white. 

He's never felt so fucking helpless. 

"Boss," FRIDAY pipes up and interrupts his train of thought, sounding unusually sullen and perhaps a bit contemptuous. "A Brad Johnson is at the tower to see you. I have informed him that you are busy, but he's insisting that you speak to him." 

Fury spikes in Tony's blood, whip-sharp and raw, and a quick glance around reveals that the others feel exactly the same way. Bucky looks like he wouldn't mind taking the elevator down, picking up Brad Johnson, and throwing him off the highest point of the Avengers tower.

"There's just no fucking way he could've known what was happening that quickly," Clint growls, getting to his feet with his hand wrapped tight around his bow. "I mean- It's been what? Less than an hour since the moment he went 'feral?' Seriously, what's this guy's game? How could he possibly know?" 

"He may have some sort of mechanism or... Spell, or something, that indicates when instances of feral behavior occurs." Natasha murmurs, her lower lip curling vindictively. "We've parsed out that magic might be involved, so it's not too crazy to think that he might have something that clues him in when someone goes feral." 

"Either way, we're not handing Spider-Man over." Sam gestures wildly at the hero, who's violently slamming into the glass with the reckless abandon of someone who has no control over himself at all. "I mean, we could barely take him down, and we're... us. There's no way that asshole will be able to handle him." 

"And also because he doesn't deserve that." Bucky mutters, seated on the floor as he watches Spider-Man intently. Tony glances askance at him, and he continues. "Because we're not assholes, and we wouldn't give up one of our own to Brad fucking Johnson." 

"I agree." Steve says quietly. "We need to figure out what's going on ourselves before we involve the 'CDC'" he lifts his hands in airquotes, and Tony swallows, closing his eyes and taking a couple deep breaths as he looks heavenward. 

"FRI, tell him I'll be there in ten minutes." He instructs. 

"Will do, Boss." 

"There's something I just don't understand," Steve says, his brow furrowed in concern as he watches Peter's head turn slowly toward him. He moves back slightly at the eeriness, at the way Peter alternates between quiet staring and violent outbursts. "How could Brad know about Spider-Man if he's not even a child? I mean, spell or not, it should be more... I don't know, precise. Why specifically go after Spider-Man? The spell is only supposed to affect children, so..."

Bruce turns around to look at Tony, pulling his glasses off his head and fiddling with them like he does when he's nervous. "Tony-" he says, but it sounds more like a plead. Tony knows what he has to do, but the thought of giving Peter's identity up when he's barely in his own right mind feels like a sucker punch. 

"About that," Tony croaks, and every eye in the room is on him. Sweat beads around his hairline, his heart beating frantically as he turns to look at Steve, and sort of right through him. His bones feel like they're shifting under his skin, expanding and pushing against their boundaries. "He's not really a man." 

The Avengers just blink back at him.

"He's more of a kid," Tony continues, his voice cracking like it's sugar lace. "A fifteen year old kid." 

He's prepared for it, but it still takes him semi by surprise when Steve gets up in his space, looking like he wants to throttle him. Bruce moves to Tony's side instantly, and Bucky just as quickly backs Steve. Unlike Steve however, Bucky doesn't look as surprised, just this side of pissed, instead. Tony recoils at the clear divisiveness, but he's still hoping, mostly for Peter's sake, that he can talk Steve down from killing him. 

"Why? Why, Tony?! Why wouldn't you tell us this? Don't you think it would be good information to know?" Steve steps back, his hands twitching at his side as he turns back around to look at Spider-Man. The tension in the room is palpable; Natasha looks like she's waiting, almost, and Clint and Sam seem to still be processing through the realization that Spider-Man is more or less a munchkin. "That's a child! Who knows what's gonna happen to him? You do know that all the children have been dying, don't you? We've been letting a literal child run around New York, treating him like-"

"I know." Tony's voice scrapes raw in his throat. "You don't understand, Steve, he- He begged me to keep it a secret. For him, it's .... He didn't want anyone to know. I just found out when I was working on his suit's dimensions, and then Bruce... When he was injured. But he begged us not to tell, because he didn't want anyone knowing he's young. He wanted to be treated like an adult." 

"He's going to die as a child!" Steve's voice pitches into something slightly anguished, and the words pack a punch, so physically painful that Tony reels back. 

"He's not going to die." He bites right back resolutely, lifting his hands just slightly in surrender. Steve steps back, but just the tiniest bit, so Tony pushes on. "He's not going to die, Steve. I promise. We're going to fix this before anything happens to him. But for his sake, please... please understand why I kept his identity a secret." 

Steve mulls it over for a moment, his shoulders still rising and falling slightly, before he concedes with a sharp nod. He doesn't look happy about it, but he also doesn't look like he wants to punch Tony in the face, so that's nice. "Fine. But from now on- From now on, no more secrets. No more secrets, Tony." 

"In that case." Tony's voice goes a little weak as Steve's eyebrows shoot up incredulously. "You know Peter Parker?" 

The moment of silence that weighs down over the room sticks to every surface like Peter's fingertips. 

"No fucking way!" Clint blurts out, looking absolutely taken back as he waves his bow wildly around in no specific direction. Even Nat's eyebrows nearly lift to her hairline. "That's why he was acting so weird the other day?! Because he's -- Because Spider-Man and him are- Fuck, I should've known." 

"Wait, wait, Peter Parker? Isn't he the intern?" Sam sits up a little, hugging one knee to his chest and frowning, looking around for affirmation. When he gets it in the form of a nod from Clint, he shakes his head. "That scrawny little thing is Spider-Man?" 

"25 tons," Tony reminds him on reflex, because at this point, he can't help himself. He's almost getting annoyed on Peter's behalf that he keeps getting underestimated. "Peter can lift 25 tons at his strongest. And he's really... fucking strong." Tony's voice wavers as he watches Peter crawl toward him again. Helplessly, he rests a hand against the glass. "Strongest kid I've ever known. He's going to come out of this kicking and screaming." 

Surprisingly, it's Bucky who speaks up after a second. "So what do we do now?" His voice brooks no room for any further argument, and Tony appreciates the directed call for action. 

"We get rid of Brad Johnson," Steve says tersely, just as grim as Bucky. "And then we tail him back to wherever he took all those other kids." It's a plan on the fly, but Tony nods, moving back away from the glass where Peter's crawled suspiciously close to him. 

"The sooner we figure out where Brad's keeping all the infected kids, the closer we are to reversing the effects on Peter." He says, and pulls his coat on. "You two," he gestures at Sam and Bruce. "Keep an eye on him. Have FRI alert me if there are any changes in his state. Because of the mutant speed, I think he's recently begun the feral phase, which means it should be just a little while before he goes back to normal..." He clears his throat. "Anyway, you two, come with me." he gestures to Steve and Bucky. "I'm going to need support from people who've already dealt with him before." Finally, he turns to Nat and Clint. "You two, get the bikes ready. I need you to tail Brad back to wherever he's going. Be ready to leave on my command." The two of them nod in tandem, sharp and ever-ready, and Tony's never going to be able to admit how fucking grateful he is. 

"Boss, Brad Johnson is... Demanding that you hand over Spider-Man." He can feel FRIDAY censoring Brad, and he smirks humorlessly to himself.

"Tell him to shut the fuck up, because I'm coming down. And you can say exactly that, FRI." 

--

Brad's sweating bullets, and he's puce with rage when they finally make eye contact. Tony smiles charmingly as he makes his way across the floor, and Brad looks like if he takes another heaving breath, his shirt is going to pop at the seams. 

"Hand over Spider-Man." Brad spits, readjusting his tie and only making it more crooked. "This is a governmental issue, and I'll come back with a damn warrant if I have to, Stark." 

Tony arches his eyebrows. "You know, Brad, you're faster than I gave you credit for," he says nonchalantly, circling the red-faced man with slow, deliberate steps. "Don't you think it's odd? That Spider-Man would be affected? I mean, he doesn't really fit the demographic, does he?" 

Brad flinches, but just slightly, and it's hard to tell if he's really surprised or not. "It doesn't matter." he puffs, straightening up and looking away from Tony. It's kind of hard to do that when both Steve and Bucky are staring at him like if looks could kill, they would have fried him into a microscopic smear. "What matters is that he's displaying the same feral behavior, which means he's ours." 

"Yours?" Steve scoffs. "You and what army? Our group of mutants and extremely skilled fighters could barely take Spider-Man down, what makes you think you have the power to even pick him up?" 

"Did you know he can bench press a truck?" Bucky adds helpfully, his smirk wolfish, and Brad's expression goes slack.

"W- Well we have tranquilizers engineered by the g-greatest m-"

"We have the greatest minds in this tower," Tony dismisses. "Well... Save for a few places." One of those being Wakanda. "And Bruce Banner could only keep him subdued for fifteen minutes. You wanna go up against him? Oh, but I forgot, good luck even getting the tranq in him. He's stronger than usual and angry, and you know he's already mad at you..."

Brad's mouth works violently, a muscle jumping in his jaw. 

"And wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to you while he was in transit with you?" Steve chimes in, just a hint of mockery to his tone as he crosses his arms over his chest. "I mean, you must know he's out of control right now. He could, like..." Steve's eyes widen innocently. "Like, really hurt you." 

"We'd hate for that to happen." Bucky sounds like he would happily set Spider-Man on Brad Johnson right the fuck now if he could. 

The sarcasm hasn't gone unnoticed to Brad, who's just about blistering with rage at this point. He has no rebuttal though, because underneath that seedy exterior, there actually seems to be a working brain that knows they have a point. 

"We'll be back," he pretty much spits at them. "We'll be back at stage three. No doubt we'll be able to move him then." 

"You do that." Tony growls right back. "But you're going to have to go through all of us to lay a single disgusting finger on Spider-Man. I can promise that much, Johnson." 

"I told you to keep an eye on him." A twisted little smile curls the corners of Brad's lips into an ugly expression. "So I assume we can attribute this ... tragedy to the Avengers' lack of initiative. Shame, with all those bright minds, you would think you all would have figured out what was happening by now." 

"You're right... If only we had some magic on our side." Tony muses, and Brad just about blanches. "That'd do the trick, wouldn't it?" He claps a hand on Brad's shoulder, turning to glance at Steve. "Hey, maybe I should follow up that lead with Strange. He's a sorcerer, he usually knows what's up."

Watching the color leave Brad's face is immensely gratifying.

"Anyway, bye-bye." Tony waves his hand. "Shoo. We have a hero to look out for." 

"He won't be a hero much longer." Brad sneers, turning tail and running away like the coward he is. Tony's fingers are shaking just slightly, because God, he wants to literally pick Brad Johnson up and drop him, watch him splat satisfyingly on the sidewalk. But he can't, not when Peter is upstairs and desperately needs help. 

"Clint and I are on Brad's tail, Tony. Good luck with Peter." 

"Thanks, Nat." Tony closes his eyes for a second, then takes a deep breath. "FRI?"

"Peter is calming down, but slowly. Dr. Banner thinks he might be beginning stage two." FRI's voice reverberates along the hallway just as Brad's car vanishes into the distance. Cold relief douses Tony, frigid like freezing water as the three of them make their way for the elevator.

Everything else takes a backseat in his mind. Now, the only thing he can think about is being there for his kid when he wakes up again. 

"I hate the way this place smells," Clint says.

The remark comes after a moment of comfortable silence of them perfunctorily rooting around the lobby of the facility Brad had unwittingly led them to.

Oddly, the security guards standing at high alert surrounding the front entrance appear to not be government-assigned at all, which makes Natasha almost completely certain that the CDC both has no involvement in this nor knows that this place even exists. There’s sort of a weird vibe, a nagging feeling she‘s getting from the security guards (they just look too... young), but the facility itself looks more like a repurposed warehouse than an actual facility where real, scientific work is taking place. Frankly, it looks run-down and slightly dilapidated, and the guards stationed blankly around the building don't exactly look like trained professionals.

Getting in is a cinch, especially now that Clint is here. Distractions work much better with two, after all, and despite the lack of modernity, there are fingerprint and retinal scanners posted near the doors. Natasha's starting to get fairly annoyed with dragging the unconscious guards up to the machines for fingerprints and retinal scans, but hey, it's better than not knowing how to get into the facility at all. She figures that maybe this place used to be some kind of medical facility or laboratory at some point, but was likely abandoned for a better one and repurposed for ... Well, nefarious reasons. Once they've propped the guards back up into a lazy standing position and each snatched a lanyard just in case, they quickly get to scouting the area with all the added effectiveness of duality.

It feels nice, having a partner. 

"Me too," she offers after a moment, crinkling her nose minutely as she notes the antiseptic undertone of the air. "It smells like they spend a lot of time cleaning up their messes." There's a beep and click from the door opposite to the one they just came through, clearly a side entrance of sorts, and Natasha and Clint quickly slink into a darkened corner, behind the couches in the small, sparsely-decorated lobby.

"No, no. no!" There’s a loud groan, and Natasha and Clint peer around the couch to watch one of the lackeys who’d been with Brad at one of the death sites stumble around the lobby, nearly crashing right into an end table and knocking over a horrendous vase that consequently thumps onto the carpet unceremoniously. He smacks soundly at the side of his own head, flanked on both sides by two stone-faced personnel. Natasha's not sure whether they're offering protection or a thinly-veiled threat. "You promised!"

He waits a moment, breaths bursting out fitfully as he grips the table. "We tried to get the kid! They've got that shithole locked up tighter than Fort Knox! What am I supposed to do?"

Peter, Natasha mouths to Clint, alarm lancing viciously through her blood. He nods, pursing his lips grimly as he looks back out at the confusing scene in front of them. If Brad is talking to the security, neither of them offer a response; they don't even acknowledge him, actually, and just stare forward aimlessly. The guy carries on regardless, stumbling a couple steps sideways and gripping his hair.

"I'm just a human!" Brad squawks, wringing his hands in distress. "I'm not going up against- against the fucking Avengers! Stark already has it out for me, the bastard. They've got him in the medbay. He must be in stage 3 already-" He pauses, mouth moving wordlessly for a moment before he sputters. "I- I know we've- I know we have to get him when he's unconscious, Stark said he's- he's pretty strong when he's awa- Well, look, maybe we can send the kid to- y'know- do his thing-" he mutters something unintelligible, something about getting a pod ready. "I want to talk payment too, you know. I mean, what if the Avengers kill m-" He doesn't finish his sentence before the person on the other end seems to hang up, and Brad growls out a string of profanity before shoving the phone angrily into his pocket and storming to the elevator.

They've gotta move, even though she's got about a hundred questions. She gestures to Clint, lifting up three fingers and counting down one by one, until the elevator dings closed. Together, they quietly sprint toward the door labeled, very plainly, stairs in white font. The door is unreasonably loud as it clicks closed behind them, but the stairwell itself is muggy and quiet, and their steps are barely heard as they make their way downstairs.

"Alright, I'll be the first to say it," Clint says quietly, so his voice doesn't echo. "What the everliving fuck was that." 

"He must be talking to whoever is behind the sorcery..." Natasha muses, her shoulders slumping slightly in relief when she sees that the door out of the stairwell and into the basement is protected by the standard key card lock. She pulls out the lanyard she'd nicked from the first guard, swiping the card neatly through the lock, and it clicks satisfyingly as they quietly make their way in. 

"Oh, that's just great." Clint gripes.

Wherever they've come out is some sort of storage room, she realizes quickly; there are shelves upon shelves of equipment, but normal equipment; there are enormous gallon bottles of bleach, different sorts of cleaning sprays, over a hundred paper towel rolls... The standard cleaning equipment, but large scale. Nothing here to raise red flags... yet.

Clint gives the room a cursory sweep while Natasha uses the key card on the storage door out into the actual basement. This time, when she pulls the door inward, she catches the full glimpse of someone's back as he turns around. 

She looks at his face, and her breath catches.

It's nothing. There's no expression on his quite average face, no look of surprise, no angry exclamation. He immediately lunges for her as soon as he's able to understand the situation, and she lightly sidesteps his outstretched arms. He surprises her, though; he anticipates her movement, adjusting his trajectory midair to slam his open-handed palm against her shoulder. She stumbles in surprise, and he follows up with a swift punch that actually might've landed if she hadn't quickly weaved around him.

It's odd; the strength is brute and clumsy, almost... Childlike, despite the force behind the blows. She wonders if the guards outside might've been harder to take down had they not used sleeping darts to deal with them quickly. 

Moving quickly after her mental assessment, she grips his forearm and yanks him hard, planting herself down as she hauls him over her shoulder and throws him into the ground. He blinks, looking confused and a little shaken, and something in his expression clears slightly. There's still murky blankness, but Natasha takes a risk and bounds forward to punch him hard against the side of the head.

Just like that, the murky confusion clears out, and the guy groans a little as he lurches violently to the side. His lanyard sports a card key saying Lance Brown, level 3 Security Clearance, and Natasha's just about to snag it before he speaks groggily. 

"Where... Am I?" he rumbles, looking around the faintly illuminated basement. Natasha opens her mouth to speak, but Clint's voice from around the corner and further into the basement interrupts her. He must have gone ahead, content with leaving her to deal with the guard, and his voice echoes out from the main chamber of the basement moments later.

"Take two. What the everliving fuck!" He sounds genuinely perturbed, and Natasha heads over to him, shooting a-

"You were brainwashed. Sit tight- I'm Black Widow, that's Hawkeye, and we're going to help,"

-at the slightly hyperventilating security guard. He looks like he's going to puke as he stares back at her, but he manages to sit up and nod a little bit as he scrubs the back of his head sluggishly. "I ... I'm just doing part-time work here, I don't...."

That gives Natasha pause. She opens her mouth, closes it, then blurts out a, "How old are you?"

"I'm S... Seventeen," Lance responds, cowed. Apparently, Clint had wondered what was taking Natasha so long and had wandered back just in time to catch the tail-end of this, and his head snaps toward the kid in shock. Natasha just stares at Lance, unsure exactly what to say given the circumstances. She'd just got into a fight with... Well, albeit, a beefy kid for all intents and purposes. Suddenly, she has this sinking feeling that perhaps everyone working here might be under eighteen, and she's thankful they just knocked the others out rather than actually getting involved in combat.

"Do you remember who hired you?" She asks him quietly, noticing the pitiable kid is still entirely out of it. She wonders how long he's been under the effects of brainwashing, if he even has memory of the last month.

"Er... No, I..." The kid is starting to freak out a little bit, his breaths coming out short and sharp as he looks around the facility. "I don't even know how I got here today. No.... Wait, I do, I remember coming in this morning, and... Some guy told me I was just supposed to, uh, keep watch in the basement, in case anyone came in... I don't remember anything after that, I don't..." He looks down at his knuckles, clearly horrified. "Did... Did I get in a fight? I've never even... I've never even thrown a punch!"

Natasha's filled with a sudden, potent rage.

"You got a way to get back home, kid, or do you want us to drop you off?" She asks, directing him to the stairs. He's still a little stunned, but he makes his way toward the emergency exit with only one more wide-eyed glance toward them. He shakes his head slightly, the smallest tremor still noticeable in his hands.

"It's okay, I ... I can get home. My, my grandma is at home. She ... She doesn't know I've been going to work, she said it was too dangerous... I've been sneaking out...." He sort of mutters, still looking befuddled.

"How did you avoid getting bitten?" Clint frowns, surveying the sheepish-looking boy with no small amount of consternation.

"I ...." The kid pauses. "I don't know. I don't even remember actually doing any work, I just... I remember coming in the morning, and leaving in the evening..."

Fuck.

Natasha's not entirely sure about leaving him alone, but she's also hyperaware of Peter laid up back at the tower with rapidly dwindling time. As much as it bothers her to let him go, she follows him until he's outside, gives him her number and some cash, and asks her to send him a text when he gets home.  Then she heads back to Clint. Clint just shakes his head, looking completely disturbed, moving on ahead of her to slip into the next room.

"You'd better see this," is all he mutters.

Keeping an eye out for cameras, Natasha sidles along the corner soundlessly and slips into the room Clint had been in earlier. Her jaw immediately goes slack, eyes noticeably at the sight in front of her.

Hundreds of softly illuminated, glowing pods light up the room. They're not big enough for adults; in fact, they're just the right size for the body of a child... And a whole lot of them, at that, all arranged across the floor like futuristic cots. In the back of her head, she's already put these pieces together, she already knows that this whole cover-up certainly wasn't just to horde dead children, as gruesome as that is. There's no real reason to do that. But keeping them in stasis, presenting them as dead when in actuality they're comatose... It's evil. And Natasha has seen evil. She knows its face well, but still... The thought of parents at home, believing their children are dead, wishing, wondering, hoping for answers in a sea of uncertainty...

The rage from before amps up into an almost incandescent fury.

She takes out her phone, carefully recording the pods and making sure to capture the children laying within. They look almost at peace, slack-faced and undisturbed in the cocoons, hooked up to monitors and tubes that seem to weave all over the floor and toward a large, central system in the middle of the room. There must be hundreds of children, all quiet, all waiting for something... or someone, perhaps. She's lost Clint to the other side of the basement, where she imagines he must be silently freaking out just as much as she is.

Like he's tuned into her, he calls for her: "Nat, check this out."

Tucking her phone away, she follows his voice, weaving through the labyrinth delicately, on ballet-practiced toes that easily sidestep tubes and wires that zigzag across the floor. He's in the center of the room, beside the machine that seems to be providing both nutrients and air to the unconscious children, examining a pod that is significantly larger than the others and stands upright instead of laying horizontally.

"Spider-Man," she murmurs, and Clint nods warily beside her. He looks spooked, uncomfortable in his own skin, and she remembers facets of him like this, from their checkered histories. His expression when he's like this never fails to discomfit Natasha as well, and she moves to examine the pod to break both of them out of their own heads. It's built sturdier than the others, for obvious reasons; its emptiness lays clear two sets of solid cuffs and some sort of band that looks to be about neck-height, likely meant to restrain the head. A maze of tubes traverses out from behind the central unit, establishing connections to seemingly every other pod.

"He's just a kid," Clint says heavily, reaching into the pod to pick up one of the heavy cuffs. "And this bastard was gonna chuck him in here, let everyone think he was dead, for god knows how long." Nat grimaces at the restraints, as usual not needing to say anything to express her agreement. It's written all over her face, exactly what she thinks of this less-than-cozy setup for their friend.

Their fifteen-year-old friend.

"Shit, Tony," she remarks all of a sudden, pulling out her phone. Tony will be relieved to know, at least, that whatever the plan is for Peter, it requires his ... well, aliveness. She dials his number, waiting impatiently as the phone rings once, twice, thrice, and there's this feeling in her gut that something must be wrong for Tony to take this long to answer.

Sure enough, when he answers, he sounds more or less like he's been gutted. Natasha closes her eyes at the silence in the background, the queasiness in her stomach resolving itself into a stone pit in her stomach. Peter must be unconscious... And Tony must think he's dead.

"It's too late." Pause, and maybe the longest pause she's ever experienced when on the phone with Tony, who admittedly usually seems to enjoy the sound of his own voice a decent amount. "P..." he chokes, and the grief-wizened sound actually punches the breath out of Nat. For a moment, she's actually rendered speechless herself. "He's gone."

"Yeah, I would wait on that judgment, Tony," she says a little breathlessly, when her lungs decide to take in air again. Clint arches his eyebrows at her, mouth twisted into a grim line as he looks around the vast containment unit. She hears a clunk on the other side, some shuffling, and then Tony, miraculously, sharp and more alive than he'd been just seconds before, like the notion of Peter's survival injected adrenaline into him.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I'm saying we found the kids. They're all alive." She gives him a beat to process, figuring he needs it, but they're on borrowed time and still have no clue what they're going to do next. "But listen, I can't give you a lot of time. They're being kept in these... Pods, it looks like they might be asleep, or dormant. Some sort of central unit is pumping nutrients into them to keep them alive, so if we weren't already thinking child soldiers," she pointedly taps two nails against the pod. "We should be now."

Skittering on the other side, Tony barking "Shit!" A mild scuffle, and then he's back. And when he's back, the Tony they're all familiar with, the serial worrier who fusses like it's his day job, is gone. The voice on the end is pure Businessman Tony.

"Okay," he says briskly. "Tell me more. What can we do right now?"

"Honestly? I don't know. The way these kids are being tube-fed, I'm worried that taking them off would be like taking them off life support. I also think that they're using some of these kids to guard the building... A kid we found earlier had security clearance, but he seemed... brainwashed. He may have already gotten bitten and just been brainwashed into keeping silent about it." She looks back at the containment pod meant for Peter. "There's a bigger pod here, I think it was meant for Peter. It's connected to all of the other pods."

"Right, you weren't here," Tony mutters, almost absently. "Peter's been intercepting some sort of spell that's giving him messages about leading an army. We figure the spell jacks up the adrenaline, and after that burst runs out, the kids go unconscious. Their heartbeat slows down so much that it just seems like they're dead. Perfect mixture of science and magic."

"Then the CDC- or whoever," Natasha amends, because there's nothing vaguely CDC about any of this anymore, "-they swoop in, bring the kids back here, keep them all contained. I think kids because, well, they're easier to control, or maybe because..." It's a grim thought. One of them has to say it, and Tony does so.

"Because it's hard to hit a kid," he says, heavily. "Kid comes at you, your first instinct isn't really to fight back. Parents fighting their own children... It's hard. Then again, I don't really know what this... sorcerer, I guess, means to do with this child army. Doesn't hurt to have a bunch of jacked-up kids running around, wreaking havoc, I guess... But it wouldn't be my first choice, if I was evil."

"They could be hostages," Natasha says after a beat, because again, someone has to, even if it kind of makes her want to perish inside. "Most of these parents have seen what their kids can do, probably want them returned unharmed in exchange for something?"

"No, because then why would Peter need to lead them?" She doesn't take Tony's frustration to heart, knowing that it's not particularly aimed at her.

"More importantly... Does Peter also need to be hooked up to life support?" Natasha asks, kind of dreading the response. She loathes this pod room with every thinly-stretched fiber of her being, but if Peter needs to be here to save his life, then it's really a no-brainer, what they have to do. But Tony's vehement grunt of denial on the other end brings her relief.

"Doubt it," he says. "There's a reason Brad and his cronies are carting the kids off as soon as they hit the ground. I suspect that the kids wake up shortly after they fall unconscious, but whoever is behind this needs them complacent, quiet, and locked up. The pods must be keeping them asleep, for now, until...." He falls silent for a moment on the other end, and Nat can almost see him think. "Well. Fuck."

"What?" Nat asks, curious, already wondering if she should just open the pods and let the kids run loose. The thought of havoc brings her joy.

"Peter's the beacon," Tony says, after a beat of hesitation, and ... it all clicks into place, unfortunately. Well... almost all of it clicks into place. "The spell isn't strong enough to keep these kids jacked up, but if Peter is a beacon, his super-genes can be used to increase the signal. Keeps the spell going longer, and now you've got a bunch of battery charged kids, all listening to a message that's being broadcast through Peter. The brainwashing must be for people like the security guards, or any kids they let out of the pods to do their dirty work. That must be why they're able to keep them obedient when they're not in the pods. But I still don't know what they need Peter for, other than wanting a bunch of mini aggressors."

"Can't we just assume it's not good," Natasha drawls, dry but urgent. They've been here longer than she would like, and she's starting to itch. "Because now, I don't know what we should do with these pods."

Tony sounds reluctant on the other end, but Nat knows what he's going to say before he even says it. "Leave them,  and the kids playing guard, for now. They can't do anything without Peter, and we need to form a larger plan before we just start removing one kid at a time from these pods. It'll take ages, it might trip a security system, and then they'll know we're onto them. I already... Kind of gave away to Brad that I knew about the magic." She feels his grimace across the line. "I just wanted to stick it to the bastard."

"Understood," she says, also reluctantly. It feels wrong, but... They'll be back. They'll have a plan, and they'll come back, once they know more about this... child army business. Clint meanders his way back over as well, just as she's wrapping up the call, an expectant look on his newly ashen face. "Tell you more when we get back."

Clint doesn't look like he wants to leave; she doesn't offer him a choice, for both of their sakes.

The first thing Tony does when he gets off the phone with Nat is give himself exactly one second- just one second -to absolutely fucking lose it.

His hands are shaking so badly that he misses the 'end call' button four or five times and drops his phone. The expressive 'thunk' it makes when it hits the floor draws a concerned Steve in from next door. He's holding coffee that's probably fresh from the machine next door, and Tony swipes it out of his hand and guzzles the scalding liquid down with the surety of a newly repurposed man. He slides the empty cup back into Steve's frozen hand, schools his expression back into The Composed Businessman, and looks Steve in the eye.

"Get everyone in the meeting room, and if you see Bruce, tell him to stay with Peter. Where's May?" Somewhere during his earlier disassociation, May had vanished.

"Uh, she said she needed something from the kitchen, I think..." Steve looks down into his coffee cup, his form pointedly turned away from the unconscious boy in the bed. "Wait, what's going on? Did you figure something out?"

Tony grunts vague affirmation as he strides past him, not really meaning to annoy Steve but desperately needing to be wherever May is at the moment. The elevator doesn't go fast enough, not nearly, and he's all but vibrating with nervous energy as he makes his way to the kitchen. Except, he never really gets there, because his shoe hits her body in the entrance to the kitchen where she's curled up in near-fetal position halfway between the linoleum and the carpet.

She makes a dreadful, wrecked sound as Tony kneels beside her, something like wind throwing nails around a dryer, and he does his best to maneuver her into some sort of sitting position even though she's just dead weight at this point.

"May, Peter is alive," he says to her, and damn it all if his voice doesn't shake just ever so slightly. It's the caffeine, nothing to do with Peter or his deadness or lack of deadness. May had held it together only long enough to prop Tony up in a chair on autopilot, and then she'd come downstairs and just collapsed on the floor like the grief in her limbs had grown too heavy, and Tony feels that, he feels that down to his soul. But he can't let her believe Peter is gone for a moment longer. Not her. The rest of them can wait just a couple minutes longer.

She stirs at that, dead weight of her arms shifting back to life as she ever so slightly tilts her head toward his. May doesn't look like she's been crying- well, not any more than she had earlier when she'd first pinwheeled furiously into the medbay -and instead just stares at him from underneath disheveled hair. 

"Are you lying to me," she says after a moment of their prolonged eye contact, and her mouth is the only thing that moves at all. Not even an eyelash bats. Tony's faced the enemies of Earth one after another and he's never been more terrified than he is at this moment, even though he's telling the truth.

"No, I swear," he swallows, presses a palm to the implant over his heart to either show her he's telling the truth or to physically keep it from leaping out of his chest and rolling away. "Peter's alive, May. It's gonna be okay."

She looks away from him, slowly, gaze slowly dragging across white tiles. There's a tense silence for two seconds, then her hand shoots out from nowhere to grip the edge of the countertop and scares the shit out of Tony as he scrambles to his feet.  He's about to help her to hers, but there's really no point, because not only is she already on her feet but she's also pulling her hair back into a neat ponytail and securing it with a hair tie. New tears track their way down her cheeks, but she makes no move to wipe them away as she smooths down her shirt.

"Okay." She says simply, leaving him in the kitchen as she makes her way back to the elevator. "What's next, then?"

And when had they started acting so alike, anyway?

Tony does want to be at Peter's side when he awakens again, but he needs to catch the team up and figures Bruce and May will have to do for now; and anyway, he really doesn't want to stress Peter out after the rollercoaster the kid has been through.

"What's going on, Tony?" Steve ambushes him with the question the second he walks in, and Tony takes in their slumped, dejected forms at the table with that same face, the same all-business face that he needs to hold onto lest it cracks and reveals that he's just a human-shaped pile of dust barely keeping it together.

"Nat and Clint just called from wherever they trailed Brad to. It's a facility where they're keeping the kids." He pauses. "Alive."

This snaps them all to attention, real quick. Steve and Sam mull this information over with some mixture of surprise and relief on their faces, while Bucky just narrows his gaze ever so slightly at Tony.

"Peter?" he asks, a little gruffly, and Tony tilts his head into a nod. The three of them look even more relieved at this, and Sam even breaks into a grin that's albeit small but there.

Bucky looks a bit haggard, Tony realizes as he really looks at him. They all look like they've aged forty years in just the past day; Tony's certain Peter was responsible for at least twenty of those years. The hair dye Tony is going to need after this is coming straight out of Peter's paycheck, which is a joke that he can make because Peter's alive and not dead, not dead, not dead.

"Peter's okay," he confirms. "Or he will be." He doesn't keep them in suspense much longer, quickly catching them up to speed with Nat and Clint's findings and their theories. Nat and Clint arrive back with perfect timing as he's finishing up, much with the expressions of two people who did not at all agree with the decision to leave the scene of the crime.

"I have a thought," Steve says, now speaking to all of them. "Isn't it true that children's brains are still developing, or at least that they're more susceptible to certain kinds of thoughts when they're younger?"

"Neuroplasticity." Bruce says, from the doorway, and Tony turns to see him looking tired but somewhat more at peace, and with much less green at the edges than he had earlier. "Peter is awake, by the way. But Tony, he's ... He's still not well," he hesitates. "You'll understand when you see."

Tony nods, leaving Bruce to be caught up by the others as he makes his way back to the medbay. Sure enough, Peter's awake, staring up at the ceiling with one of his hands firmly ensconced between both of May's. The kid barely turns his head when Tony enters the room, only mumbles something like, "where are the wires?" under his breath. Tony's stomach twists as he remembers the description Natasha had given him of the pod and the wires snaking out along the floor; it's as if Peter's already miles away, locked up in that horrific child-dungeon with his free will already being stripped away to nothing- or at least, that's what he's seeing.

"They're not here, Pete," he says firmly, making his way over. God, it's good to even see Peter blink again, even if there's no flutter of recognition anywhere in the murky depths that look back at Tony. "You're in the tower. Do you remember what happened?"

"The wires. Where are the wires?" Peter repeats almost feverishly, gaze flitting back and forth between Tony and May like he's not sure who they are, where he is, or even what year it might be. "It should have started already. We're late." His fingers flex, and May utters a curse as she yanks her hands away from Peter's like they were burned- though, Tony realizes with dread, that might not actually be far from the truth. Peter's emitting this sickly, turf-green glow as he looks down at his hands, still flexing them almost instinctively. Like he's just testing what they can do after having been pronounced dead not a couple hours ago.  By now, any other kid would have already been tucked away into a pod in that horrific facility.

"His skin is hot," May says, words tight behind her teeth like she wants nothing more than to wrap herself around Peter despite his newfound radioactivity.

"It's time," Peter announces, the words as declarative as a death sentence, and he throws the covers back and slides off the bed with some sort of terrible decisiveness. Tony immediately reaches out a hand to gently coax Peter back into the bed, but Peter's hand moves faster than Tony is able to counter and suddenly the kid's burning fingers are seared around Tony's wrist.

Tony grits his teeth, a grunt of distress pressing into his throat. His wrist feels like been plunged into boiling water, so hot it's cold, skin about to flay away under Peter's fingers. It feels like if Peter presses any harder, only bones are going to be left. He just got the kid back, and he's about to lose him again, fuck, fuck.

"I'm sorry, but it's time." Peter looks him dead-on, a bright green flare in his eyes that's almost hypnotic to look at. Damn if the kid actually doesn't seem sorry too, all defensive with that slightly hunched posture. He lets Tony go, unharmed, and picks up his suit from where it was placed on one of the counters.

"Peter, put it down," Bruce says, and Tony's not sure how he missed the other's entrance. Actually, maybe he does know, because he's just been standing in stunned silence with his eyes on his utterly unblemished wrist. "Don't make me sedate you." The needle Bruce is holding looks like it was meant for a horse, probably, or maybe just one radioactive, brainwashed Spider-kid.

"I could hurt you," Peter says evenly, too matter-of-fact to be him, really. "I could make you let me leave." It's like Peter isn't even the one speaking, like someone else is speaking through him, wearing his face and using his voice but that isn't him. Not even close.

"That's how that kid was, too," Nat says sharply from behind him. "No weird glow, but all brainwashed. You may be talking to whoever is behind this, but you're definitely not talking to Peter."

"The kids are all mine," Peter continues in this creepy, almost pseudo-fond voice, hand stroking over his suit. "All of my friends would die for me. I'm going to take them far away, and I'm going to make them just like me. Me and Spider-Man, but with magic. We're going to be the strongest."

"Who are you?" Tony asks curtly, and Peter startles like he hadn't realized he was the one speaking.

"I'm," and the inflection sounds... Young. Surprisingly young, or maybe that's just because it's coming from Peter? "I'm Nova."

They have a name. Ladies and gentlemen, they finally have a name. Probably a made up name, but. "Thanks, but that doesn't tell me shit," Tony admits bluntly, still moving closer one cautious step at a time.

A petulant glare- but from Peter, still, even if the voice behind it isn't. "I don't like cursing. If you curse around my kids, I'll have to do something really horrible to you."

Well, what in the goddamn fuck.

Tony is about to have his second revelation, he can feel it. He can feel this big old headache coming on, massive, absolutely one second away from causing him to have a goddamn aneurysm. He doesn't have to even ask to make all of the puzzle pieces fall into place. The reason kids were being targeted, the reason the magic was powerful yet immature, the reason Stephen hadn't been able to find anyone yet- and now, the way Nova is speaking. Childish.

"Nova, how old are you?" May asks, and her voice falls like a gavel as she stares at Peter with the same dread Tony feels knotting up his insides.

Peter's face scrunches up even more, belligerent, frustrated, wary. He chances a look at all of them, as if weighing his options.

"Thirteen," he admits.

The only thing that breaks the deafening silence then is a single, emphatic "Fuck" from Sam that resounds with Tony on a spiritual level. Nova’s glare flicks from Tony to Sam, his stance tightening judgmentally.

"What thirteen-year-old doesn't like cursing?" is all Tony can think to ask, because he is currently so baffled he's not even sure what else to ask. He just blankly eyes Nova... Peter, looking into those murky, off-kilter eyes intently.  "Isn't that kind of ... Isn't it cool? I dunno." He really does not know. He doesn't even know where to go from here. He absolutely doesn't feel right attacking a child, that's for sure- either Peter or Nova.

"It's crass," Nova’s voice responds, like he's annoyed he even has to say it. Like Tony's way of thinking is beneath him and every other child. Tony suddenly feels acutely as though he's talking to a mini-Cap. "It's crass and unnecessary. Is your vocabulary so limited that you can't express yourself without profanity?"

Oh, great. They're dealing with that kind of child genius.

"Please," May moves closer. "Just... What is it you want with Spider-Man? Why are you trying to take him away from his family and friends?" She's taken on a completely different tone, something gentle and kind, something completely new. Listening to her, even Tony feels like he could tell her anything at all. The sharp edges of Peter's posture soften marginally as the sorcerer inside gauges her for a moment, before scoffing.

"Adults are utterly incompetent," Nova declares. " All they do is let you down. All they do is leave or look down on you. They never take you seriously, they never take us seriously. Magical beings... They're just scared of us. Spider-Man helped me. He saved me, he knows me. He treated me way better. He's going to be my best friend, when we all become magical." Peter's face scrunches up into something resentful. "Spider-Man and my magic together. We're going to take all of you down, because we can, and- and this is going to be ours. All of this." Peter's arms spread mechanically, as though being moved by puppet strings. It's not natural enough, too stilted and ... It's wrong. It's uncanny-valley wrong, because Nova still isn't doing it well- or at least, not convincingly enough. With slight horror, Tony wonders what amount of magic the kid is currently exerting to be able to control all those kids guarding the facility, Peter, and who knows how many else. As of now, it seems like Nova isn't able to control adults, but Tony isn't sure if there's a magical reason for that or if Nova's lack of mental confidence is having a physical effect.

"How do you know that's what Peter wants?" Steve asks in that bullying-campaign voice of his. Firm, admonishing; Peter always told Tony that he felt like a puppy that had peed inside when Steve used that voice. "He may have saved you, but that doesn't mean he wants to help you take us down. He cares for us."

"That doesn't stop you from underestimating him," Nova accuses dryly, swiveling Peter around. It's making Tony a bit ill to watch Peter move around like that, like an animated mannequin, first torso then legs instead of one clean movement. Peter’s left leg hobbles slightly. "Adults only ever use us. They don’t care about us. We don’t NEED adults, we-” It’s so juvenile it chunks out Tony’s heart like an apple corer.

“Every teen thinks that,” Sam says, measured and gentle. “Until they gotta do things on their own. Until you lose almost everyone, and then you wish you had someone around to keep you in check.”

Nova doesn’t falter but for a moment. “I’ll take care of him. We’ll take care of each other. I'm the one who saved all those homeless kids! They had nobody, no- no adults took care of any of them, but I would. I wouldn't leave them."

“Oh yeah?” Sam’s tone sharpens, quick on the fly, startling Nova enough that Peter’s body jerks backward defensively. “You’ve taken hundreds of kids from the city without asking. How will you feed them? Clothe them, shelter them? Where do you plan on housing them? Are you going to attack the city? The Avengers?”

“I have a plan!” Nova shrills, curling Peter’s small fists into tight bands. “I’ll come back, we’ll- we’ll be better than the Avengers, me and all my friends and no bad adults to hold us down. They’ll be happy with me. They’ll follow me anywhere! Peter would do anything I say!” For emphasis, he yanks Peter’s right arm up, snatching up a scalpel from the table behind him and holding it to his own throat. Oh god. “See? I could make him do anything! See?!”

Tony tenses. He’s not the only one.

“Hey, hey,” Sam cajoles, back to gentle. “Why don’t you put that down?” He’s still inching ever so closer, tiny steps that make it look like he’s shuffling, almost. Steve and Bucky are on Nova’s other side, and Bruce is still holding the enormous needle but now with less certainty. “Nova, you must have a lot of power,” he changes tracks. Still low, still persuasive, while keeping his hands up. “If you’re controlling not only Peter, but all those other kids...?”

Peter’s teeth grind together. Nova’s voice stutters out, tentative and nerve-wracked. He doesn’t put the scalpel down, but he’s still talking. Talking’s good. “I-It is hard. But I’m plugged in. I don’t even have to move. All my energy, i- hey,” he snarls all of a sudden, grip tightening on the scalpel. “Don’t get me to monologue. I- I’m gonna get out of here, there’s nothing any of you can say, or do, or- I was never supposed to come here. Peter was supposed to- they were supposed to take him back. It’s his role. I need him.”

“Bet you do,” Tony pipes up. “Gotta have him to send out your message, give the others powers. But how do you think Peter’s gonna feel when you eventually let him out of this?” He nears ever so closer to Nova, with careful, tentative steps. “Think he’ll thank you for taking him away from the people he loves? From his friends, from school?”

Nova hesitates, small hand gripping the front of Peter’s crumpled shirt. Small knuckles go white against the scalpel. “He’d do it for us. He’d do it for all the kids.” He says firmly, and damn if the kid doesn’t have an ounce of reason going on.

“You don’t know Peter like we do,” Steve says wryly from the doorway. “He’d do anything to help you, but as a general rule, most people don’t like their free will stripped away. He’s more likely to be sympathetic to your needs if you just ask him… without possessing him, that is.”

For a moment, the kid thinks. But to no avail, for a moment later, Nova’s voice steels up, and Peter grips the scalpel. “It’s too late,” he says flatly. “I need Peter to make sure all the kids come with me. They’re all gonna have powers. We’ll all be super, together. I won’t need any more parents telling me what to do.”

“You and your army?” Sam steps forward, grimacing when the scalpel draws a thin line of blood. He lifts his hands in surrender. “What do you even have in mind for Peter and thousands of super powered, scared children?”

Nova’s powerful, for sure. But he’s immature, Tony realizes. He’s an immature, scared kid. Someone older has gotta be helping him.  

“I- I-“ Nova’s plain, small voice stutters ever so slightly. The scalpel lowers a little bit. Bingo. “We’re gonna go somewhere far away… it’ll just be me and them. I’ll let them out eventually, a-as soon as I know they won’t leave me…”

"There's someone else, isn't there?" Nat asks, low, gentle, her hands also raised placatingly in front of her. Clearly, she's on the same wavelength as Tony. "Someone helping you... Someone who gave you this idea."

The horror in Nova's voice is crystal-clear on Peter's face. "How... No! I- I came up with the idea myself, I-" Nova swallows, scalpel shaking violently in Peter's hands, and goddammit, it's gonna nick something major if they don't take it back pronto.

Tony doesn't believe for one second that Nova's fully behind this; someone older manipulated this strong-as-hell kid, manipulated Nova's desire to have a community that didn't judge him for his powers, and Tony has this sinking feeling that whoever it is isn't exactly on the same Kumbaya-on-the-mountains-with-pals wavelength as Nova.

With this many charged up kids, powered by Peter's mutant genes and possibly his blood, the child-army angle makes all too much sense. All this person would have to do is wait for the kids- and Nova -to grow into their powers in isolation, and with the tried-and-true recipe of Stockholm Syndrome, restricted freedom, and vulnerability, there's no telling what they could do. Even if a few of them rebel, they'll have more than enough potential soldiers that they won't have to worry excessively about shaking stragglers off.

"H-Hey! Hey, what are you doing?!" Nova's voice suddenly pitches into something unexpectedly panicked. "Stop, stop it, I need you!" Tony watches, horrified, as the scalpel begins to near Peter's throat again, wobbling dramatically the whole way; this time, however, it doesn't appear to be Nova's doing, because the young sorcerer is still hollering with increasing panic for Peter to stop trying to die, apparently. There's dawning clarity in Peter's intense, focused expression, a glitter that hadn't been there before.

Oh no. Oh hell no. Tony just lost Peter once; he's not about to let this godforsaken kid kill himself to prevent his fate. They'll find a different way- they have to. He steps forward, about to yell or grab for the scalpel or just straight up deck Peter if he has to, but he's stopped by Nova's frustrated cry. Peter's foot stomps down against the ground, the purest indication of a temper tantrum in progress, and if Tony hadn't been absolutely horrified he might have actually laughed at how juvenile it is.

"Okay- Okay, okay!" Nova's voice cracks, wobbling fiercely as he fights an apparently losing battle for control of Peter's body. "But I'll be back, I'll- I'll get stronger, and I'll be back, and then I will be able to control you," he hisses out between Peter's teeth, and there's a nasty crack when the almost sickly glow around Peter's hands splits and splinters apart, dissipating into green flecks around the boy. Peter slumps back like a marionette, lifting his head to peer out at Tony from under sweat-damp, messy curls.

"Did I worry you, Mr. Stark?" The kid has the nerve to ask with a fucking smile, blood trickling down out of the corner of his mouth, before the last string snaps and he goes down.

--

This time, Bruce says with a tired smile, Peter's just down for the count on exhaustion. May occupies herself with dabbing the blood around Peter's mouth, and Tony's not sure if she even knows she's been crying almost non-stop, the kind of quiet tears that just stream uninhibited down her face as she stares at Peter almost blankly. He figures there might be some shock there from the whiplash of Peter being alive, unconscious, alive again, dead, brainwashed, almost dead, and now alive again, so he doesn't bother saying anything and neither do the others.

"I want him to stop this," she says eventually, pitched low and wounded. "I want him to stop being this, being Spider-Man. I c- My heart, it can't t- it can't take much more," she hiccups, placing a hand over her chest. Tony understands this, perhaps more than anything else he's ever understood in his life. "I think, if this kind of thing happens again, I could... I might just die, from the stress."

He sits down next to her, suddenly exhausted. "I know," he intones, thinking he can maybe feel age wash over him. Being a parent- hell, being a guardian -has its moments, and then it has its moments. He almost wonders if May has it worse off as Peter's guardian, because maybe she asks herself every day if Peter's parents would've done the job better whenever Peter ends up on a hospital bed; or maybe that's just what Tony does.  Every day, he wonders if Peter is going to go to sleep in a normal bed or take his last breath on a goddamn gurney.

"Oh, look at him," May says, then, lifting a hand and cupping the side of Peter's pale face. "Look at him sleeping, like... Like a normal kid." She leans in to give him a kiss on the forehead. "Like the scariest thing in his life is asking someone to go to prom with him."

Tony snorts. "I think Peter thinks fighting off aliens is easier than asking someone to prom, May," he says wryly, and she sobs out kind of a laugh as well before lightly patting Tony's hand.

"Go," she says, peering at him insistently. "Peter's never going to be totally fine until you find out what those bastards want from him." She hesitates. "That kid, Tony... Do you really think he could be behind all of this?" She chews the inside of her cheek dubiously,  thumbing Peter's curls back. "Just thirteen... I almost can't help but feel sorry for him."

"Yeah," Tony stands up, wincing when he hears his joints pop off like low-grade explosives. Fuck, he's getting old. "Me too. I can't help but feel like someone else might be influencing the kid... Like a mentor gone wrong, or something. Someone who has far worse ulterior motives than just having friends, like Nova. Kid's naïve. He must trust whoever it is a lot, to be going along with a plan this malicious."

"You can help him, right?" May asks anxiously. "Sorry, I know it's selfish to ask, but..."

"It's not," Tony assures her, and he means it. Maybe it's Peter's influence... Or maybe he's getting soft in his old age, but he can't think of a worse punishment than a lecture and a timeout for the bite-sized sorcerer. "I'd never hold a kid to a standard like that. Little dude probably has no idea what he's even getting himself into."

May nods, offering Tony a tiny, wan smile as she returns her attentions to Peter. "You know, Tony, not everyone has a mentor who looks out for their best interests," she says, so tenderly that Tony almost doesn't know what to do with the words other than stand there and blink at her stupidly. "Peter is lucky to have you."

"He's on a hospital bed, May," Tony feels inclined to tell her once his throat feels less like it's full of concrete. "Injured, beat to hell, and only after saving himself. He's a hell of a kid, but that's all him." He shakes his head. "I just give him fancy things and scold him when he seems like he's doing something stupid. I haven't even done anything substantial to figure out who the hell is actually behind this."

May shakes her head, lacing her fingers in between Peter's. "You will," she says warmly, and Tony thinks about how this woman lost nearly everyone important to her, pulled it all together, and then raised one of the most genuine heroes Tony's ever had the pleasure of personally knowing. In this moment, he's cowed by her- afraid, frankly, of the kind of power she holds. "Now get out there, genius," she quips, cutting her gaze from Tony to the mug sitting on the nearby counter. "Go and figure out how to save all of the kids." She raises an eyebrow. "Including yours."

Tony doesn't need to be told twice, but he mostly turns abruptly and leaves because he thinks he might just start bawling like a baby if he stays in that room with those words. Hell, he imagines even Howard Stark might've shed a few tears if he'd ever been looked at like that before.

By the time he's made his way back to the conference room to meet the others, the beginnings of a list have started to formulate; he's going to need Strange's help, and there's a good chance he's going to need to use Peter eventually, once the kid is up to it -but it's the best thing he can feasibly think of, right now. Morale is up, now that the team knows that the kids are all alive and that Peter is going to be okay, but Damocles' sword hangs just above them in the form of the threat Nova had issued before disappearing.  Tony has no doubt the munchkin will be back, more out of control and powerful than before, to try to inhabit Peter again.

"Okay," he says briskly, pacing back and forth in the front of the room. "We have three tasks. The first is to contain Nova and have Strange help us control his magic so that he doesn't take control of Peter again. The second is to open the pods and free all of the other kids. And the third is to catch the person who's actually behind this before they can use Peter as a beacon to create a child army. Ideas?"

"Can we call them the Pied Piper?" Clint suggests, and Tony just arches an eyebrow at him.  Bucky makes a sound of disgust from the other end of the table. "What? I think it's a great name! And it's gender neutral, too!"

Tony expels a beleaguered sigh and rubs the bridge of his nose.  "Fine. Do we have any ideas on how to subdue the Pied Piper?"

"Clint and I can open the pods, since we've already been there once," Natasha says carefully. "But I think it should be done last, because otherwise, Nova can just cast the spell again. Also, you forgot about Brad. He's not being brainwashed at all, he's in this of his own volition. He was talking on the phone to Nova, or to-" she sighs at Clint's hopeful expression, "-the  Piper." Her expression makes it clear what she thinks of the name, but she continues on regardless. "I think it was the Piper, actually, because Brad mentioned sending the kid to get Peter... Which preceded everything that happened. It also means that Nova doesn't directly influence all the kids... Only the ones that Brad isn't as easily able to retrieve."

She seems to lapse in thought for a moment, but then adds, "I don't think Nova is keeping tabs on each individual person that he's brainwashed. When we put several guards to sleep and broke one out of the brainwashing, Nova didn't immediately take control again. That must mean that he doesn't have very fine control over each of his victims, due to his immaturity with his magic. Even earlier, with Peter, the brainwashing and control seemed clumsy and unnatural. Maybe if we can talk to Brad- and the Piper -we can get information out of them." She finishes darkly.

"Can I let you and Clint take point on that?" Tony asks the two of them, and he gets twin nods in tandem. "Great. You two- and Sam -see what you can get out of Brad and any other lackeys that might be at that facility. While you're there, see if you can't figure out a way to shut down the machinery so that even if they do get Peter, they'll face a technical setback. Maybe you can even get the number that Brad was using to talk to the Piper." He turns to Steve and Bucky, tapping a finger against his chin in thought. "What about you two, ideas?"

Steve leans forward slightly. "We need a way to lure Nova back, but in order to do so, we need more information. We still don't know what kind of sorcerer Nova is, or if the extent of his powers is mind control. He must have a truly massive amount of power."

"Yeah, but you heard what he said," Tony frowns, staring down at the table as though he'll find the answers he needs written into the surface. "He doesn't need to actually move around. He's doing all of this plugged in somewhere, possibly not at the original facility. Otherwise, Brad wouldn't be talking to them on the phone." He thinks for a moment, tries to place the nagging feeling he has. "Actually, something Nova said earlier is bothering me. He said Peter had saved him. He must have met Spider-Man before. FRI?"

"Yes, Boss," FRI responds, and even she sounds a little more chipper.

"Can you search for an incident where there were mysterious circumstances surrounding a young boy, age range from about eleven to thirteen years old... where Spider-Man was the responding hero at the scene?" Tony thinks for a moment. "For the mysterious circumstances, use keywords like brainwashing, memory loss, fuzzy, vague, fugues, confusion."

"One moment." FRI goes silent for a moment, then comes back. "There are three incidents that I found that could possibly be what you're looking for, Boss. Would you like a summary?" At Tony's confirmation, she continues. "The first incident surrounded a young boy named Rahul whom Spider-Man found in a gas station. There were mysterious circumstances about why he ended up there..."

"No, it's not that one." Tony shakes his head. "We investigated that one a few years ago. The car he'd been in with his parents got wrapped around a streetlight, the parents had memory loss because of traumatic brain injuries, not because of anything mysterious. They just thought it was mysterious because Rahul had survived and wandered away."

Friday hums. "The second one was an eleven-year-old boy named Nico, Spider-Man rescued him from a burning skyscraper..."

"No, no," Tony shakes his head, frustrated. "That one was mysterious because of the circumstances of the explosion, and the memory loss was because of a severe case of smoke inhalation."

"Okay," FRI goes silent for a moment. "The last one is a twelve-year-old boy named Avon," she says, after the brief pause. "He and his parents moved from Wales to a house in Queens not too long ago. Apparently, Spider-Man found Avon wandering around the streets at night and took him back home, but..."

Tony startles, memory flooding back in a rush. "I remember that one. Peter told me about that one. He said that the parents were acting weird, that they didn't even seem to recognize their own son. Peter thought they'd had dementia, or early onset Alzheimer's."

Steve raises an eyebrow, lips pursed. "They were being brainwashed," he says grimly, "and Avon probably didn't even know that he was doing it."

"Poor kid," Sam sighs. "That much power, and no idea how to use it properly."

"What happened to Avon?" Tony demands, turning his attention back to FRI.

FRI's tone remains steady. "Neighbors reported an altercation at the house on the night of June thirteenth. An hour later, both of Avon's parents walked into oncoming traffic and died immediately."

Tony closes his eyes, slamming his hand down onto the table with a hard thud. Bucky lowers his head into his hands.

"I can't imagine," Steve says, voice filled with grief. Preteens fight with their parents, Tony thinks. All it takes is the hasty, terrible, "I wish you were dead," paired with all of Avon's uncontained, immense power and... Suddenly, the comments about adults leaving makes much more sense. Tony wonders if Avon even knows what he'd done, or if he's desperately doing what he's doing to avoid having to face it. He can't blame the kid. Tony's a full-ass grown adult and all he can imagine is having a fight like that with Peter and then immediately losing him. He'd go crazy with grief, that much he knows.

"Wait a second." Bucky lifts his head from his hands. "Nova- Avon, he couldn't brainwash the adults. He hasn't been able to, all evidence suggests it. He's only been brainwashing kids. Otherwise, why wouldn't he just brainwash us to fight each other and then get Spider-Man?" 

"It's psychological," Sam says after a beat, and they all turn to him. "Subconsciously, Avon must know what happened... Or at least, he's traumatized by what he's done, and his powers are responding to his trauma. He's so scared of that kind of thing happening again, he's probably unable to bring himself to brainwash an adult again... Or he doesn't think he can, which is why he's restricting himself to kids. This means he is affected by what happened to his parents." 

"Spider-Man was the responding hero at the scene again," FRI says. "Avon was rehomed shortly after, with his older brother Caden. Caden was 25 at the time and estranged from the rest of the family, but he worked in a genetics and neurobiology laboratory as an assistant to one of the head scientists, a Dr. Bennani."

At this, the pieces start to fall into place.

"Tony, Caden is probably the one who's influencing Avon now," Nat says, ramrod straight in her seat. "Think about it. Caden already was estranged from his brother and parents. Avon probably felt betrayed that his parents abandoned him, or didn't respond well to his magic, and Caden could have easily convinced him that he was the only adult that would stick around and never leave. It would have been so easy to take control of Avon and his powers, especially since Avon wasn't able to brainwash adults anymore and wasn't a threat to Caden. That, paired with his job..."

"It's an anagram," Clint says abruptly, the final nail in the coffin. "Avon. Nova."

"FRI, what do we know about Caden?" Tony asks, leaning back against the table and crossing his arms.

"Though Caden has no criminal record," FRI says cautiously, "it is possible he may be hiding evidence of his activities. I will need a moment to check security cameras and internet history." She goes quiet, and Tony honestly can't be assed to comment on the illegality of whatever it is they're doing. Not when his kid's life is on the line, after all.

FRI returns after a moment. "Caden himself is not recognized as a concern," she says finally. "However, he has been seen frequenting the same establishments as several men who are on FBI watchlists for domestic terrorism."

"Oh, brilliant," Clint mutters, dropping his head with a hearty thunk against the table. "That's just great. Now we know where all of that army talk came from... How much do you want to bet that Avon's just parroting whatever his crazy brother is putting in his head?" He grits his teeth. "Who knows what the hell this asshole is planning with a bunch of supercharged kids?"

"We can't stick around to find out," Tony shoots back, firmly. "Steve, Bucky... You two find Caden, and see if you can find Avon, too. Check his last known address- they probably aren't there, because Avon probably needs some kind of energy source to amplify his magic. Even still, there may be some clues to where they may have gone. FRI, give them everything they need to find Caden."

"You got it, Boss. I'll check for his last seen locations via security cameras as well," FRI chirps back.

"What about us?" Natasha asks, standing up from the table. "Since we know who the Piper is, do you still want us to go back to the facility?"

Tony nods. "Yeah, you should go back to keep an eye on those kids and take a closer look at the machinery, since you're both somewhat familiar with it. Subdue Brad, if you can, and let us know if Caden or Avon do happen to show up there. They might be doing all of this remotely, but who knows? Maybe Caden will want to take a look at his potential army." It's said with no small amount of loathing. Avon is a kid, but Caden... Caden is a whole other story, and Tony can't wait to serve karma up on a platter to that bastard. "Besides, they're eventually going to need Avon and Peter in the same place to carry out their final plan of power distribution."

"What about you, then?" Steve arches an eyebrow at Tony as he also gets to his feet. "What's your next move?"

Tony sighs, knowing very well that there's only one person he's going to have to talk to in order to get more information about brainwashing magic.

"I'm going to go see a sorcerer."