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Spiderman crouched on a rooftop in the centre of Queens, grinding his teeth.
The Avengers were here, making enough noise that even without his enhanced senses, he was certain he would be able to hear them. While the Avengers themselves weren’t necessarily a problem - he had teamed up with them a few times, and been pleasantly surprised to find that they weren’t as obnoxious as their tower suggested - they weren’t particularly safe to have around. Wherever they fought, mass destruction always seemed to follow, along with mass numbers of civilian casualties. While Peter might have been willing to let that slide when there were literal aliens invading Earth, he wasn’t going to do that now.
Queens was his.
Whatever threat the Avengers might be here to deal with, Peter was confident he could take it by himself, or at the very least, lure it (and by extension them), to a different part of New York. Somewhere far away from the people he protected every single night. Queens was his territory, and the Avengers needed to understand that.
Mind made up, Peter took a moment to listen intently, pinpointing the location of the telltale rumble from Iron Man's suit, before jumping off the edge of the building and swinging towards it.
“Spiderman!” Iron Man’s voice boomed out of some hidden speaker in his suit, so loudly that Peter almost missed his next swing.
He took a moment to land on the building beside Iron Man, and ignored the several other Avengers surrounding them as he replied, “Iron Man."
“Come on, I said you can call me Tony,” He responded, still sounding inanely cheerful.
“Fine, Tony,” Peter continued, “What are you doing here?”
At this point, Captain America finally spoke up. “That’s classified, kid.”
Peter took a second to enjoy the slight annoyance in the Captain’s tone, perhaps from being so soundly ignored when Peter first arrived, then let anger crackle into his own voice. “Don’t call me that." Seriously, why did he still sound like a teenager? His voice had broken years ago, but apparently he was destined to sound squeaky forever. Perhaps he should install a voice modifier into his suit… “And I don’t care if it’s classified. You’re in Queens - my territory - and that makes it my business to know what you’re doing here.”
“I’m sorry,” Tony said, not sounding remotely sorry at all, “Is there a sign saying: 'Queens belongs to Spiderman' anywhere around here? No? Then why don’t you leave us to it.” He folded his metal-clad arms over his chest.
Spiderman bristled, muscles tensing under his suit. Queens did belong to him, and the longer the Avengers were here, the more likely it was that some buildings or people could get hurt. “Queens is mine,” He said coolly, “So either you tell me what’s going on, and we can work together to deal with it, or else…” The threat was left unspoken. Spiderman didn’t need to say anything else. Practically every Vigilante in America knew that Spiderman wasn’t someone you wanted to cross. He forgot that the Avengers didn’t.
“Or else what?” Tony said, derisively, “You’ll take all of us in a fight at once?” He glanced behind him, as if to make a point.
Peter surveyed the threats currently standing on the rooftop. Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Peter fancied his chances. “If I have to, I will. Queens is mine, which means it's my job to protect the people living here. When the Avengers start fighting something, there tends to be a lot of casualties. I won’t have that. Not now, not ever.”
Black Widow and Hawkeye exchanged an unreadable glance, before Black Widow stepped forwards, “We have reason to believe there’s a Hydra base operating two blocks down from here. We’re here to take care of it.”
“Why would you-”
Ignoring Tony’s indignant spluttering, Black Widow continued, “You’re welcome to come along. We could use some extra muscle, plus you clearly know the area well.”
If Peter hadn’t been wearing a mask, he would have rolled his eyes at her. Instead, he responded, drily, “Thank you kindly for the permission, Black Widow.”
“Call me Nat.”
“No, don’t call her Nat,” Tony burst in, before turning to said assassin, “Why are you telling him any of this? It’s confidential information!”
Nat shrugged, “He wasn’t going to budge, and fighting a potential ally seems like a huge waste of time when we’re supposed to be taking down a dangerous, corrupt operation.”
Peter found his respect for Black Widow rising just a little. He would never have been able to face down Iron Man’s blasters like that before he was bitten. It was also a little insulting that they were acting like allowing him to come along was some kind of courtesy, but he supposed some help taking down a Hydra base (apparently in the centre of Queens), could be nice. “I’d be delighted to come with you,” He said, eager to stamp out the infestation in the centre of his territory, “But can you try to keep civilian casualties to the minimum?” He looked pointedly at Iron Man as he said that.
The man noticed. “What are you looking at me for?”
Hawkeye actually did roll his eyes, and give him a condescending pat on the shoulder, “You’re the only one with lasers attached to your suit, man.”
Tony huffed, but didn't argue.
“Right,” Spiderman turned to Nat, “What’s the plan?”
They made it through the first layer of security pretty easily. Two guards positioned outside a metal door carrying guns wasn’t exactly the most difficult challenge to overcome. Nat knocked both guards out in under five seconds, then Iron Man melted through the metal door with the lasers indeed built into his suit. He ignored the chuckling from Hawkeye as he did so.
An alarm began to blare the moment they slipped through the door, and all attempts at subtlety were soon abandoned. The four Avengers and Spiderman systematically worked their way through wave after wave of guards that came at them, all carrying glowing blue weapons that delivered extreme pain on contact, (something Captain America learned the hard way). Peter was pleased to see Captain America pulling his punches, and Iron Man aiming for legs instead of chests, even if he himself was hitting guards a little harder than usual. Not enough to kill them, but enough that they wouldn’t be getting up again for a good long while. Hydra always made Peter burn with anger, particularly now that they had managed to infiltrate his part of the city.
It took almost half an hour, but eventually the last groaning guard was webbed against a wall, and they finally made it to the centre of the underground complex. Peter immediately wished they hadn’t.
Children, all of varying ages but none older than about fourteen, were caged up like animals, shackles around their wrists and ankles, with an unmistakable scent of blood and urine in the air. Some were huddled, trembling, in the corner of their cell, watching them enter the large room with distrust in their eyes. Others - the older ones - were pressed up against the bars at the front, watching them more closely, but still with suspicion in their gazes. There was only one adult already in the room when the Avengers arrived, and he was now standing with his hands up, shuffling steadily backwards towards the opposite wall.
Peter’s eyes were drawn to the item in his hand. A syringe. Then he spotted the youngest child in the room, probably about five, strapped to a metal table with tear tracks on his face. The syringe was still full of a suspicious green liquid, so Peter could only assume the child hadn’t been injected yet. But the others surrounding them…
He looked closer, past the dirt and chains, and spotted muscles that shouldn’t have existed on their emaciated frames. His gut churned as he began to put it together. Perhaps a variation on the super soldier serum given to Captain America? He suspected the man himself had figured out the same thing, because he had his fists clenched, trembling, as he remained nearest the door they entered through. Tony, Nat and Hawkeye were prowling slowly forwards, Nat with a gun trained on the near-frantic scientist, the others with their weapons deliberately lowered.
Don’t want to traumatize the children any more than they already were, right?
All of a sudden, their advance stopped. All three of them turned their heads to stare at Peter, who frowned at their unwavering focus. It took him several moments to realise he was growling under his breath, almost trembling in his fury at what had been done to these children.
Human experimentation always rubbed him the wrong way.
And the missing children… There had been disappearances going on for months now, disappearances that he had never been able to trace, no matter how many sleepless nights he dedicated to the search. Instead, it had been the Avengers who figured it out. Hot shame mingled with the anger clawing at Peter’s insides. He was supposed to protect Queens, and he had failed. Failed so spectacularly that there had been young children chained up in cages right below his feet.
He didn’t recognise his own voice as he spoke to the Avengers in the centre of the room. “Help me get the children out of here.”
“What about the-”
Peter snapped his wrist, and the scientist slammed into the wall he had been so desperately trying to reach, sticky webs binding him from neck to toe. His eyes widened in fear, and Peter knew he was suddenly remembering every story he had ever heard about Spiderman. The stories spoken more quietly so that the children didn’t hear them. Stories about what Spiderman did to the true scum of the earth; the pedophiles and the traffickers; the ones who didn’t deserve to keep living, no matter how much Spiderman tried to keep casualties to a minimum.
Spiderman’s blood hummed with a need for violence and revenge, but he made himself help the Avengers get the children out of the cages, and towards the exit. Bending the metal bars helped relieve some of his anger, but that only meant that by the time he was finished, and had seen up close the abrasions left by the chains and the haunted look in the childrens’ eyes, anger had faded into cold, clinical focus. There was only one thing left to be done.
He waited for the Avengers to shepherd the kids out of the room entirely, then turned towards the man still webbed to the wall.
Tony’s head peeked back through the door. “Spiderman, do you want to wait for Nat to deal with the scumbag over there?”
“No. He’s mine.”
Tony must have recognised something in Peter’s tone, because he didn’t argue. Instead he said, “We’ll be back in half an hour, in case you need help getting something out of him.”
Peter didn’t argue, just waited for the door to close behind him. Then he headed for the white-faced scientist.
“I think it's time you and I have a little chat."
“You find out any- Fucking hell!” Tony’s exclamation echoed hauntingly in the cavernous room, and was answered with silence, broken only by the drip of the scientist’s blood on the stone floor.
Nat entered a moment later, and stopped dead just as Tony had. She however remained silent, gaze focused on the two figures at the far end of the room. It was difficult to tell what exactly was happening from so far away, with Spiderman’s back blocking her view of the scientist, but the way Spiderman was standing, and the scent of blood - so much stronger than before - left little doubt in her mind what was going on. Even as she watched, Spiderman’s foot flashed forwards again, and the crack that followed was loud as a gunshot. As Spiderman stepped to the side, tilting his head in a way that was distinctly not human, she spotted the odd angle of the scientist’s left knee, matching both elbows and each one of his fingers. She also noted the blood dribbling from his open, gasping mouth, and her gaze tracked downwards to the crimson puddle on the floor, several white teeth glittering tauntingly from the within the pool of red.
“Spiderman,” Nat said, carefully, as one would speak to a wild animal. His shoulders tensed, but otherwise he didn’t react. “Have you got anything out of him?”
“I’ve got the name of his boss and confirmation that this was the only base housing child experimentation,” Spiderman responded, voice chillingly even, while the scientist garbled something from his position on the wall. It could have been a plea or a threat; it was impossible to tell. “That’s all he has to tell us.”
“Are you certain he wasn’t lying to you?”
Spiderman fixed his wide, white stare on Iron Man, who shrunk backwards a little. “Yes.”
“Great, so if we’re done here…”
“Just a moment.” He turned back towards the trembling man, and seemed to make up his mind. Spiderman punched him once - just once. They all heard the crunch of bone as the man’s skull caved in. “Now we’re done.”
“I thought Spiderman didn’t kill?”
Peter considered Nat’s question for a few moments, kicking his legs idly, ignoring the fifty foot drop below them both. “Usually, he doesn’t. There are a few exceptions. Some people aren’t worth the oxygen they use up.”
“And why do you get to decide who’s worth it and who's not?”
“Because I’m the one out here every single night, keeping the city safe.” There was no anger in Peter’s tone, only a calmness that came from stating simple facts. “Queens is mine. I decide who gets to live in it.
"Speaking of,” He turned to look at Nat, “I don’t want the Avengers anywhere near Queens again unless it’s a global-scale emergency.”
Nat’s expression twisted slightly, as if she was debating whether or not it was worth it to argue with him. In the end, she simply nodded, then asked, “What if it’s a big threat? Not global scale, but big enough that you can’t handle it on your own?”
Even through the mask, Nat could tell Spiderman was grinning. “Don’t you worry about little ol’ me. I have friends that can help me out if I need it."
“What friends?”
“People call us Team Red.” Peter smiled again, and got to his feet. “See you round, Nat.” Then he leapt off the edge of the roof.