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He was running—not as fast as he could, but just fast enough to lose the tail. He’d been spotted because he’d been sloppy. That’s the deal with your work clothes—what you wear impacts your attitude, and his comfortable clothes made him a bit too comfortable and not on high enough alert.
He was too used to being relaxed as Peter Parker when wearing these clothes. Vice versa, there was no way he could be quite this chill and casual when in his Spider-Man suit—of course, Spider-Man was a whole other level of chill and casual.
But yeah, he was running, not quite as fast as he could, because he wasn’t Spider-Man and if this dude caught him running way too fast for a civilian, he’d be outed in a snap. Normally, this wouldn’t be such a big deal—that goon didn’t know his name, and there’s no way he’d remember his face from so much as a glimpse like that—but that was a Fisk warehouse. There could have been cameras that he hadn’t noticed, passer-bys could have been recording a video and caught his face. There were a number of options, and he wasn’t going to take the chance.
If random people found out his identity, fine, cool, whatever. But if word got out, if it spread on the internet, and Fisk found out? Aunt May and Mary Jane would be dead or worse before Fisk communicated with him, blackmailed him, and/or threatened him. He’d have to willingly surrender himself to Wilson Fisk if that happened. He’d be as good as dead but probably worse, and he’d be extremely lucky if May or MJ survived that ordeal.
So no, he wasn’t risking it.
He’d run at normal speeds to ditch this tail. Plus, it wasn’t like this guy was actually going to catch him—come on, he was Spider-Man, even if he was undercover.
He needed to call Yuri to tell her what he had overheard about the property on Demarest Avenue, but again, there’s where the separation of identities came in because he couldn’t be caught talking to Yuri as Spider-Man while he was in Peter Parker getup—there was no way anybody would know what was going on, that anybody could possibly draw from that conversation his connection to the masked superhero. But!
He couldn’t be too careful. It wasn’t time-sensitive information, so it could wait until he was dressed appropriately.
It was difficult to regulate his speed at a pace typical of a normal person. He couldn’t actually remember how fast a normal person could run. He’d been able to far surpass everyone he had ever raced for well over eight years now, and the need to slow down simply hadn’t ever made itself known—except now.
He hoped no one would notice this peculiar difficulty—by God, he was way overthinking this whole thing—but no matter, he spotted Yuri conveniently nearby, and figuring he’d lost the tail a mile ago, he slowed to say hi.
He only remembered that Peter Parker didn’t know Chief Watanabe the second he said, “Yuri!”
She seemed to be in the middle of a conversation already, and the officer to whom she was talking decided to sprout an annoyed look at his interruption.
“Excuse me?” She replied, half annoyed herself but managing to keep her expression and tone neutral—Peter knew her well enough to decipher her real emotions.
“Uh—“ he stammered, quickly formulating a cover story ”—Spider-Man has information for you…”
The best way to tell her was to just tell her, no beating around the bush with backstories or lying about who he was.
“Spider-Man?” She pulled her phone from her pocket, “He usually just calls.”
She looked back into his eyes, and he could see the questions she wasn’t asking, so to save time, he went ahead and answered them as briefly as he could, “He’s, uh, undercover right now, and—“ and he was going to quip about his phone also being undercover, but before he could even think of a good joke, his spidey-sense warned him of danger immediately behind him.
He instinctively ducked down and to the left, towards the wall—the chief and her officer were heading into the pizza shop for lunch, but he caught them on the sidewalk at the entrance—right before a bang was heard and a bullet whizzed past his head. Yuri and Officer Warren ducked a second after him—reacting as he should have, and he hoped they didn’t notice his premature reaction—God, Peter was way overthinking it—drawing their guns, instantly on the alert.
Turns out he didn’t lose the goon like he thought he had, and turning to get a grip on his surroundings revealed that the goon had multiplied. There were four now charging them, scooting behind bins and cars when they saw the weapons and officers behind him.
This wasn’t good.
“Show yourselves and put your weapons on the ground!” Yuri called as she prodded Peter behind a car for safety, the other officer following suit.
This was so not good, and Peter really needed to be Spider-Man right now, but there wasn’t really any possible way out of this situation. He supposed he could attempt to run away—and of course he’d succeed, duh, he’s Spider-Man—but he’d literally just told Yuri that Spider-Man had a message for her that he couldn’t deliver himself. It wouldn’t make any sense if Spider-Man suddenly showed up and could very well deliver it himself.
He couldn’t exactly fight back either, because normal people die when they get hit with bullets—well, not always, but anyway—and normal people do not have web-shooters and mad skills to take these guys out.
The only thing he could do was cower behind a car—oh man, the owner is going to be very upset if this turns into an all-out firefight. Hope he was insured.
“We don’t want to hurt you, just give us the boy!”
Because of his enhanced senses, he knew that the speaker of that disembodied voice was right behind that yellow Volkswagen, and it’d be super easy to toss the manhole cover at him, but manhole covers were extremely heavy to normal people—God, he couldn’t do anything! He was so useless!
Well, he could give himself up…
“Fat chance! Come and get him!”
That decided that.
Yuri could hold her own, wasn’t Chief for no reason, but Pete still worried. There were four goons, and only three of them—well, since he was useless, only two of them. Getting out of this unscathed would be a miracle.
Somehow, Spider-Man needed to show up. But how?
The firefight started—one goon stood up to take a shot, missed, and hit the car Peter was crouched behind, but Yuri shot back quickly, too, hitting that guy in his shoulder, and he fell back with a scream and a thud. See, she can hold her own just fine.
She crouched back down and looked him in the eyes—he tried to look scared, like this situation could result in his death. It wasn’t that hard—“Kid, I don’t know who you are or who you are to Spider-Man, but these guys want you and are willing to kill to get you. What kind of info do you have?”
More bullets pelted the car, and Officer Warren fired back.
“Info about a new base Fisk is setting up. He’s planning to—“
More bullets, and Yuri swiftly jumped up to fire back.
“Changed my mind, tell me later. This needs to end first.”
The only way these guys were going to give up was if they were dead or if Pete was.
Wait, if Pete was!
That was it! He could pretend to get shot and play dead so that these guys will go running back to Fisk. It’d be okay if they got away. Peter knew who and where they were, so Spider-man can go get them later.
“Yuri,” he turned to her, “I have a plan, but you’re not going to like it.”
She crouched back down, “You sound like Spider-Man right now, what’cha got?”
Did she mean his voice—crap, he’d called her “Yuri” instead of “Captain Watanabe”—or because Spider-Man says that exact phrase to her a lot?
“They want me dead, and aren’t going to stop until I am, so how about—“
“No!” She cut him off, “Absolutely not. God, kid, that’s a stupid plan. How well do you know Spider-Man, cause I gotta tell ya, he’s the only other person I know who’s that stupid.”
Wow, okay, thanks? Um, rude, for one thing. Two, dang, he didn’t realize she’d paid so much attention to Spider-Man. She was making connections very quickly and in ways that he really didn’t like.
“Uh, he’s uh, a good friend.” More bullets. “I was going to say—“ come up with something, Peter, come up with something! Anything, a distraction, a dancing bear—a distraction!
“—I’ll slip behind them—I’m good at sneaking—I’ll slip behind them and distract them, while you guys can take them out?”
Hey, that’s not entirely a bad plan either. Yuri was as much against killing criminals in these kinds of situations as he was, so they’d go to jail and everything would be fine—except for the part where they’ve seen his face and they work for Fisk and that means Willy’s seen his face and he’ll be a target forever—yep, he’s going to have to fake getting shot. Great.
She looked like she was going to adamantly protest that plan, too, so he took off before she could.
“Okay, great, wait for my signal!”
He was just between this car and the next car to hide behind when she surprised him with, “Peter, wait!”
Captain Watanabe being against his plan wasn’t surprising—in fact, it’d be surprising if she wasn’t against it—but her knowing his name was.
Why did she know his name? How did she know his name?
He hadn’t told her his name, had he?
That distracted him long enough for one of those pesky goons to aim at him and fire, and yeah, he could dodge it easy peasy, but he had so many sets of eyes on him that that would fore sure give away his identity.
He’d have to just get shot.
Good God, this day was not going well. He hated getting shot.
Yeah, he always healed just fine, but it still hurt like a mother and the blood would get all over his clothes, and oh yeah, he was Peter Parker right now, so he’d have to go to the hospital and give them his information. Aunt May would come, Mj would come. It’d be a whole ordeal.
Great, just great. He should have lost these goons, changed into Spider-Man, and then confronted Yuri. This fight would have been over by now if he had—or better yet, it never would have happened!
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, anticipating the pain, and froze on the spot when the bullet passed through him.
And then another.
And another.
And finally a fourth one.
That was not the way this plan was supposed to go. Like, at all.
He crumpled to the ground, hands not sure which hole to attempt to staunch, and was distantly aware of Yuri and Officer Warren taking out the remaining three guys after they easily revealed themselves. He normally would be able to hear their hearts beating since they were all in such close proximity, but he couldn’t hear anything over his own.
The bullets all passed through his midsection, half of them catching a rib on their way through because he could feel the disjointed scrape. He could feel the way his blood vessels burst and he could feel the blood leaking out.
It was an odd feeling—bleeding. He was very, very used to it, but these holes were much larger than normal and also much cleaner. Straight through-and-through, uncomplicated, but the blood just had so much area to drain from.
Yuri collapsed to her knees with a new cloth in hand and began pressing on his chest, going for the ribs first, and that’s when the pain made itself known.
His ribs scraped his insides, scraped organs that they weren’t supposed to scrape, and he screamed, breath hitching as Yuri continued applying pressure.
His diaphragm must’ve been hit too, cause drawing in air was very difficult all of a sudden, and his vision swam, brain overloaded with sensory information, too much wrong going on in his body—and then there were hands all over him, moving his arms and legs, gripping him—and then he was lifted, stood upright on his feet, and he came back to himself in time to help.
His spine was uninjured—thank GOD, because he could not deal with another spinal injury, not again—and his legs were strong, the pain actually subsiding somewhat, meaning his healing was already working.
“—just a block away, and we can get him there faster than an ambulance!”
So they were going to drag him to the hospital? But he was already healing, he didn’t need—oh yeah, they didn’t know he was Spider-Man. He didn’t usually get hurt when he wasn’t Spider-Man, so this was a new experience for him.
One arm was around Yuri’s shoulders and the other around Officer Warren’s and they started moving, shifting his body again, and moving the very painful holes in his chest. His vision went white, his arms went numb, and his diaphragm stuttered.
The scream was weak, but his legs collapsed, resting all his weight on the others’ shoulders as he got his bearings back, and when he did, Yuri was muttering repeatedly, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, stay with us, we’re almost there.”
They were still moving, dragging his limp legs behind him, probably leaving a blood trail. There were more officers on the scene now, their lights flashing all over the buildings. He tried to fight the pain, fight the cold and the numbness that were taking over, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. His head rolled on his shoulders, turning toward Yuri.
He needed her to know—to not let the nurses remove his mask. He needed to tell her not to reveal his identity. His head didn’t want to support itself and his tongue was heavy, so he licked his lips, trying to find the words and realizing there was blood on his mouth, in his mouth, leaking from the side of his mouth—how badly was he injured again?
Yuri didn’t let him speak though, “No, no, no, I’ve got you, you need to hold on, okay? We’re almost there, just hold on for us!”
Instead of white, his vision went black, and then he couldn’t feel his body, couldn’t feel the pain, and his last thought was about how this was the slowest dip into unconsciousness he’d ever experienced.