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Peter sat in his goggles and bandana on the roof top ledge, thinking in silence. He looked across the dark city he now called home and thought about his plans for the night. He was testing his webshooters for the first time, well the first time properly swinging around the city. He had done strength tests and the like before so he wasn’t jumping off roofs with entirely untested technology. He knew they would work anyways, he had only improved on the design of the webshooters and the makeup of the web fluid since he was 14 and doing everything for the first time. And now he was doing everything for the first time again, but this time in Gotham. By himself. It was fine, he was fine. A bit lonely, sure, but fine.
He knew they were other vigilantes swinging around Gotham, you couldn’t live there and not know, but he felt weird about approaching them because 1) He wasn’t a Gotham vigilante, he wasn’t an anywhere vigilante on this Earth, not yet at least; 2) Batman didn’t really like metas (which was what he was apparently) in Gotham all that much- at least from what Peter had heard; and 3) what would he even say to them? “Hi, I’m Peter, I’m a vigilante from a different Earth but the multiverse would have imploded if I stayed there so I’m here now” is not exactly a good opener. So he didn’t. He kept to himself, scouted out a nice abandoned building with a top floor only he could access, and spent most of his time at the library doing research (or just having fun) or breaking into Gotham Academy to use their chem lab. He came across Tim Drake and Jason Todd also breaking into the school one time, he had no idea why but recognized them from his research into the Waynes, but there was a mutual understanding of “I won’t snitch if you don’t” between them.
Which is how he recognized Jason Todd’s footsteps as he approached him from behind. Peter turned around on his ledge and was greeted with Red Hood, one of the Gotham vigilantes. Peter had his suspicions about the Bats connection to the Wayne family, so honestly this revelation wasn’t that surprising to him.
“Hey kid, mind getting off the ledge for me? You’re making me kinda nervous.”
Nervous? Why would Red Hood be nerv- ohhhhh.
“Oh! You think I’m jumping! I’m not, I promise. Well, I mean I guess I technically am planning to jump off the roof, but I’m not killing myself. I swear.”
Red Hood looked skeptical- which was fair- and asked him to get down off the ledge anyways. Peter complied, because he didn’t want to freak the guy out too much. The two sat down next to each other, leaning against the wall Peter was just sitting on.
“So, jumping off a 15 story building and surviving? What was the plan with that?” Red Hood asked.
“I was never gonna hit the ground, I was gonna swing.”
“Swing?”
“Yeah, with a device I made myself. Like yours and the Bats grappling hooks, but better because I made it.” Peter smiled mischievously at Red Hood, not that he could see it under the bandana wrapped around his lower face.
Red Hood pulled up his glove-clad hand and rubbed his fingers across his brow. “Ok so, you were going to jump off the roof and ‘swing away’ on a homemade device? I’m sure you’re smart, kid, but that doesn’t sound very safe.” He said.
“It generally wouldn’t be, but I know what I’m doing, Hood.”
“Right. Do you have anyone to call who can take you home? Preferably on the ground.”
“See, the answer to that question is only going to make it look like I was trying to kill myself more.” Peter responded, he felt only a little bit bad for Red Hood. He interrupted Peter’s experiment, after all. He tried not to think about everyone back on his Earth, dead and alive, that he would have loved to call at that moment. Ned would have thought this entire situation was crazy. An entirely different Earth, in a different universe, with new cities and heroes and rogues. It was crazy, even for Peter.
A heavy sigh and then, “so there’s no one to call then? Family? Friends? Hell, even your coworkers or boss?”
Dead, don’t know I exist (and on a different Earth) and also dead.
“Mmmmm, again, answering that would just make this look worse for me.”
“At least let me take you home then, where do you live?”
Peter’s lip made a line and he just looked at Red Hood through his goggles before slowly shaking his head. Technically he wasn’t homeless homeless, but he still wasn’t revealing his hideout to one of Gotham’s vigilantes.
“You’re homeless? Great, that's just… jesus kid. You sure you weren’t up here to go down? Shit, sorry- you’re just a bit strange.”
“Ha! Yeah, I’m very aware of how strange I am. Listen, I promise you, with 100% honesty that I did not come up to the roof of this building with the intention of killing myself. I can pinky promise you if that helps?”
Red Hood stood up, holding out his hand to help Peter up. Peter ignored it and just sprang up with his usual spidery grace.
“Heh, yeah no pinky promise necessary. By the way, what's with the goggles and bandana?”
“Oh those are so no one sees my face. And also the bugs.”
“The bugs?”
“The bugs” Peter says, running towards the ledge of the building, reaching it and springing off just as Red Hood yells “Shit!”
He barely has time to process before he sees a white rope of some kind shoot out and attach to another building and then the kid swing up on the other end of it. He watches as he hits the top of his arc, lets go and does a flip, and then shoots another rope from his wrist (?) and keep swinging, doing unnecessary tricks and flips as he gets further and further away before disappearing around the corner of a building. Completely fine and, as the kid said, swinging and not once hitting the ground.
Fucking Gotham, man.