Chapter Text
Brooklyn, New York City, USA
Sun, 13 May 2018 22:05:36 GMT-04:00
3 weeks after Spider-Man: Homecoming. . .
Unknown street in Brooklyn
The sun had just set, yet he’d promised Aunt May to be home before then. Not only was there school tomorrow, but May had promised to make a late supper for him when he got home. Which, to Peter, sounded more like a threat, but it was the thought that counted. Things were still a little awkward between him and his aunt after the whole “busted secret identity” fiasco, but she had taken it surprisingly well, all things considered.
Today had been an exciting day for his hero persona. With May’s new limitations on his Spider-Maning, he’d decided to go out extra early to circumvent them. So, from 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm, he’d been swinging around Queens, and after a wild bicycle thief chase, he’d made his way to Brooklyn. It was as fun as it was exhausting. When he’d remembered to check the time, the sun had set and it was already 9:00 pm. Aunt May was going to ladle him to death.
Panicked and lost in an unfamiliar borough, he’d frantically swung in the direction he thought Queens may be.
Usually, Peter would have Karen act as the Google Maps directions lady whenever he got lost. However, he’d foolishly lent Karen to an eager Ned who desperately wanted to analyze her code, leaving him Karenless. Oh, and also without a phone, since he’d broken his the other day when it fell out of his pocket mid-swing, plummeting to Its death. New York would remember the day Spider-Man grieved several pieces of shattered plastic and fiberglass.
Which is how Peter found himself in his current situation.
Sighing, he slowly lowered himself to a relatively uncrowded neighborhood as his supply of web fluid finally ran out. It’d already been half an hour of confused web-slinging. He knew it was a lost cause when he smelled the fishy scent of the ocean. He’d either found himself near the upper or lower New York Bay. Peter gulped. It was dark, and he’d spotted a bunch of thuggish guys acting suspiciously shady a couple of alleyways ago. During his time as Spider-Man, he thought he’d gotten pretty good at distinguishing the more dangerous neighborhoods from the generally harmless ones.
He didn’t have money for a cab, and he didn’t bring a pair of non-spidery clothes, so he’d be stuck in costume, which wasn’t ideal for keeping a low profile. This wasn’t Parker luck, this was just plain old Peter stupidity.
Sighing heavier this time, he decided to wander around to find directions to the nearest train station. Then, he realized he wouldn’t have money for the train and almost broke down crying right there. Tonight was going to be a long night.
He was walking at a brisk pace down the sidewalk when he felt it. A familiar yet foreign tingle at the back of his head. His awareness sharpened and everything abruptly came into focus. His heart began to beat faster in preparation. Usually, his spider-sense felt like a shrill alarm clock in the back of his head. However, now it felt more like a loud and constant buzzing.
Peter turned his head to the darkened road.
An inconspicuous white box truck was driving closer. Instinctively, he ducked into an alley to avoid detection. His heart was pounding from Adrenalin.
“I wonder what the chances that that was just a regular moving truck are?” He asked hopefully. As if in response, the buzzing became more persistent. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, super secret evil moving truck at my 12 o’clock, now stop buzzing, it’s starting to give me a headache.”
He hesitated for several moments. On one hand, That truck was clearly a threat that couldn’t just be left alone. On the other, he was out of web fluid and exhausted from Spider-Manning all day. What would Mr. Stark do? Probably call upon the powers of a legion of automated ironmen to deal with the situation, and if that wasn’t enough, he’d probably explode it.
…Peter thought it would be best to follow the Peter way, because Tony Stark was not a man easily mimicked.
He climbed up a 2-story concrete building and started pursuing the white truck on foot. It took barely 10 minutes for them to arrive at their destination. Which just so happened to be a shipping dock. Could they be any more stereotypical?
“Mmm, I knew something smelled fishy around here.” He whispered under his breath.
This seemed like exactly the kind of situation Mr. Stark would shake his head in disapproval at. However, if he tried to tell the ‘proper authorities’ , what would he say? ‘A truck drove by and I had a tingle, bring backup.’ Something tells Peter that they wouldn’t like that.
What if what was in that truck turned out to be important? And he managed to bring it back to Mr. Stark? Would the man be proud? At the thought, his heart fluttered. He’d definitely see how competent Peter was and take him under his wing as an actual intern this time- and say how smart Peter was and that he was very proud of him, and how relieved he was that Spider-Man was there to save the day!
He was broken out of his daydreaming by the screeching of brakes. That was his cue to approach.
Peter climbed down his perch and began sneaking through the maze of shipping containers. He followed the sound of their voices until all that’s left between him and the baddies probably armed with assault rifles is the corner of a shipping container. He peered around it to observe. The truck’s back door slid up, and a gaggle of military-dressed men hopped out. Now that they were out of the truck, he could hear more clearly the conversation the evil henchmen were having.
It was in Russian. Peter doesn’t understand Russian, but he doesn’t mind too much, too busy feeling like James Bond.
He counted six, and he assumed there would be 2 more in the front seats.
From this distance, his eyes could just barely make out a logo on their dark-colored vests. It was some kind of octopus, he guessed. It looked oddly familiar.
A couple of men got to work opening the shipping container while the others stood guard, guns strapped over their chests. He wallcrawled up the container soundlessly and crouched down, waiting. Peter was of the opinion that being shot at by semiautomatics wasn’t very conducive to life. So, he lay in wait, hoping that they would leave after putting the mysterious cargo in Its place.
A group of soldiers hauled out a large metallic cube roughly the size of a small nightstand. Despite being three, they seemed to have difficulty carrying the thing. Then, from the truck, stepped out a hulking man that looked like the byproduct of a threesome between the Winter Soldier, Captain America, and the Hulk. Easily standing taller than the star-spangled man with a plan himself, the behemoth grabbed the cube like it was a laundry basket and brought it into the shipping container.
Oh, I don’t really want to fight that.
It’s a good thing all I’ll have to do is wait until they leave, huh?
So he waited, and waited, and waited. Those bad guys weren’t moving. They were standing guard around the container. Peter decided 15 minutes later that he was tired of waiting for them to spawn more allies and so he made a split-second decision. Mind you, a stupid one, but one nonetheless.
He wouldn’t be able to pick them off one by one like they were in a horror flic since he doesn’t have his webs. However, he could see one medium-sized truck and one ginormous man that would make great projectiles.
Before he could think more about it, he jumped silently down to the ground with no one the wiser. Peter made a mad dash to the side of the white truck when he thought no one was paying attention and rolled under it in one clean motion.
Shouts of confusion came from the soldiers as they heard his body rolling on the ground. Yet, they weren’t shooting, which was a victory in Peter’s books.
He felt around the underbelly of the truck for anything that he could get a solid grip on. Finally, his hand latched onto cylindrical piping and he yanked it out. A pair of feet were approaching his general position, the yelling of the other soldiers now intensifying. Peter flung the pipe with all the force he could manage with his limited range of motion. His aim was true and it caught the man in the ankles. The soldier, caught off guard and unbalanced, fell to his knees and hit his head on the truck’s fender. He then crumbled to the ground like a giant sack of potatoes.
A plan, more like a vague idea, began to form in Peter’s mind. He grabbed at the thick rubber wiring that had been annoyingly tickling his nose and yanked it out. The evil henchmen began yelling and shooting at him from the direction he’d thrown the pipe. The bullets were thankfully coming up short, but this really wasn’t good for his heart. Rolling away from the bullet shower and out from under the truck, he looked up and saw the barrel of an assault rifle. Instinctively, his head tilted to the right. A single bullet whizzed passed his ear. One of his hands caught the barrel of the gun, pulled it out of the man’s hands, and slammed the butt into his chin, knocking him out.
Hissing in pain, Peter dropped the gun to the ground.
Hot. The barrel was fricking hot. Hollywood lied to him. He had a headache from all the buzzing in his noggin.
That was 2 taken care of. Around 6 more remaining.
Clutching the rubber cable, his hand lashed out at the sight of another soldier coming from behind the van. The cable disoriented the man and Its weight had him falling on his ass. The last thing that man saw before losing consciousness was a teenage-sized bright red boot hovering centimeters over his face.
3 down. 5 remaining.
He walked up to the passenger side. Before Peter could open it, the mercenary did, only to have his head turned into a door sandwich by your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He slumped over and fell out of the vehicle. Peter hopped in, smiled, and waved at the driver who looked bewildered. The teen leaned over and pulled on the handle of the driver’s door.
Promptly, Spider-Man pushed the evil goon out of the truck.
5 down, 3 remaining.
Now, one thing to know about Peter Parker is that he can not drive. This fact has been demonstrated on several occasions. Usually, this is to his detriment. He figured it would be more of an advantage, in this case.
Getting into the driver’s seat, Peter fiddled with the truck’s controls while being bent in half, trying to avoid the gunfire coming from the window. It shattered and glass shards rained onto his back.
Cursing, he managed to make the truck move. In reverse. Don’t ask him how. He wouldn’t be able to tell you.
Peter peaked into the rearview mirror to see if he could spot any of the remaining baddies in his line of destruction. Seeing one, he hit the foot on the gas peddle and plowed into the man. Going forward this time, he felt the telltale rattling that came with hitting a human or another similarly sized thing.
Whoops, he hadn’t meant to hit that one.
1 left.
He kicked open the bullet-littered door and stepped out of the vehicle. Just in time, as the truck raised off the ground and was chucked in his direction.
Ducking, he just barely misseed the flying hunk of metal. Now with the obstacle out of the way, the Captain soldier hulk threesome baby stepped menacingly forward.
“What the heck, man!? That thing weighs like 30,000 lbs, you could have killed me!”
The man’s muscles seemed to bulge in response as he let out an angry-sounding breath.
Peter looked at the juiced-up man, then the shipping container, then the man, and back to the container. Then he bolted to the big metal box and frantically tried breaking the locks. His spider-sense warned him to duck seconds before a meaty fist struck where his head once was, busting open the container doors in the process.
“God, you almost turned my head into spider juice. Not cool, so not cool!” Captain Steroids growled at him and took another potshot at Peter, who barely avoided the second time. This endgame boss was surprisingly fast for a man his size. The two enhanced entered heated combat. Mostly, this entailed Peter barely avoiding being turned into spider goo whilst that beast of a man just kept going.
Peter didn’t manage to stick the landing after evading a wide right hook. Off-balanced, he couldn’t protect himself from the following assault to his ribs. The teen was sent flying backwards, crashing into the mysterious metal cube. Peter soon became intimately aware of what a stubbed toe might feel like all over his body.
The breath knocked out of him, he tried to orient himself. Near him, Peter could hear the distinctive hissing of a hydraulic door unlocking. Looking over, he saw the cube had unwound itself to reveal a small glowing object. Peter reached out his hand towards it. It seemed to be some kind of necklace with a green glowing gem in the center of a witchcrafty steampunk third eye. Getting a finger through the chain, he coaxed it towards himself.
“Let’s bring you back to Papa Stark.” Peter wheezed out.
“Ya ub'yu tebya, otrod'ye.” Growled Peter’s soon-to-be murderer.
Groaning, the teen got up on his elbows, clutching the bizarre medallion in one hand. “I don’t speak terrorist.”
Fear coiled in the pit of his stomach. He was thinking about how much he’d really like to be yelled at by Aunt May at that moment. Mr. Stark may have had a point, but Peter really thought he’d gotten stronger after that whole Vulture debacle. Maybe, if it had been a different day, under different circumstances…
Staring up into certain death, he didn’t notice when the pendent began glowing stronger.
The sheer volume of the buzzing in his head made all other senses go numb.
“Ostavaysya mertvym, zhuk!” Pulling back his arm, the beige Hulk prepared to release a lethal blow. The last words he’d ever hear, and he didn’t even know what the hell was being said. This sucks.
Centimeters before the man’s fist made contact with the center of Peter’s face, a bright green light engulfed his vision, and everything went quiet.
_________________________________________________________________________
North Atlantic ocean
Sat, 1 January 1950 00:00:00 GMT-03:00
Approximately 1,000Km westbound from Boston shores
Aboard the commercial fishing vessel, Sea Shell
Bobby was on the deck, in the middle of a storm in nothing but a raincoat. He was armed with a miniature repair kit and a flashlight, swaying to the whims of the sea. He was not having a good night. There was something wrong with the antenna, and The Captain had ordered him awake to go fix it.
Bobby knew he shouldn’t have agreed to go on this round trip.
However, with a family to feed and not a lot of money to do it, he’d resigned himself to having to do this fishing expedition with his crew. His wife and son were devastated when he told them he’d miss New Year's with them.
…Again
He grabbed onto the ladder leading to the roof of the cabin and prepared to climb when suddenly, above the deck, an iridescent green ball of light formed.
Shocked, the fisherman dropped from the ladder and fell on his rear. He gaped at what had to be an act of god. Perhaps this was gods way of guiding them through the storm to safety.
At the center of the mass of light, Bobby could almost make out the figure of a man. The light quickly faded, yet the man remained and promptly fell several meters onto the deck. Bobby flinched as if broken out of a trance.
Fighting against the winds and tides, he crawled toward the unconscious figure. From what he could see in the dark, the man was wearing some kind of red skin-tight fabric and an odd-looking mask. With shaky hands, he gently took off the figure’s mask to reveal the face of a boy
An inhumanly strong hand wrapped around his wrist, where he still had a grip on the kid’s mask. His awed blue eyes met the other’s terrified dark brown ones and he inhaled sharply-
“God?”
.
.
.
to be continued