Chapter Text
Peter had been crouched above the alley for almost ten minutes now, boots braced against brick, back pressed so far into the shadow of the awning that he could have been part of the building. The convenience store next to him was the same one him and Ned had used to visit, back before all that mess with the Bugle.
There were three guys inside. They all wore cheap masks, the kind you'd find on a spinner rack the week before Halloween, already gone soft and cracked at the eye holes somehow. One Iron Man, one Hulk, one, and Peter had to bite down on a smile at it even now, a Spider-Man mask that had definitely seen it’s better days.
He went in through a window near the back, one of those old aluminum frames that never sat flush no matter how many times it was attempted to be fixed. It gave with a soft shriek that got swallowed by the buzz of the coolers. Peter crawled the wall above the shelves and behind the three of them, quiet and watching. Waiting was the boring part of this job that nobody ever put in the movies.
The one in the Spider-Man mask kept glancing at the front door. "We need to hurry," he said, low.
"It's fine," Hulk mask said back, his voice shot through the air, loud and nasally, the words tripping over each other. "Ain't nobody coming into a closed store, man, relax."
Up front Iron Man was elbow deep in the register, yanking out bills in fistfuls that didn't really require yanking, the drawer was already half empty. When Spider-Man mask said something else, and it was quieter this time, Iron Man's head snapped up like he'd been slapped.
"You callin' me slow?" anger suffused his voice and his voice cracked on the last word. The gun in his hand swung toward Spider-Man mask guy, just for a second, but it was long enough for Peter to realize.
After his mutation, Peter had been struggling with his senses, E.V helping him increase the limitations on his suites mask, dimming the eyes and sounds. It was a quiet night and a relatively simple situation so Peter had E.V disable his dimmed senses.
With him so entrenched in listening to his senses his instincts also increased. This meant that when Peter entered the room his brain automatically dismissed the stimuli he was not currently focused on. The problem with his stronger sense is when he doesn’t tap into his instincts, sounds, sights, and smells, overwhelm him.
Iron Man masks actions hinted to Peter that he might not be sober. Peter inhaled the air, floor cleaner the predominant scent, and focused on the underlying smells. A sickly sweet scent weaved in the mixture of smells around Peter. He recognized it from other encounters with violent individuals. It was a new drug that has been trickling into New York making people paranoid, impulsive, and predominantly, vividly insanely angry. Damn it.
It targeted their amygdala somehow, aiding in the release of adrenaline, Peter had seen a scrawny person brush off being tazed by the police on it, someone who would have fallen flat on their face otherwise.
That was the second Peter decided he was done watching.
He rapped his knuckles against the wall, not the one closest to him, the other one, so all three heads turned toward empty space before they found him crouched above them like some kind of overgrown gargoyle.
"Well," Peter said, "I don't work here. But I definitely am in the store past closing."
Three guns came up at once.
He was already moving. A web caught Spider-Man mask around the wrist and yanked him sideways off his feet, his gun skating off across the linoleum and under a display of gum. Peter wished being bitten by the spider hadn’t made him dislike peppermint, but alas, it had. Iron Man screamed something wordless and pulled the trigger, and Peter felt the bullet leave the barrel before he saw the muzzle flash, felt it in his teeth almost, and he was already not there anymore, moving before it left the barrel.
Hulk mask fired too, wild, so far off that Peter didn't even bother dodging, his spidey sense barely rung. He just let the shot go wide into a shelf of chips and answered it with an exploding web that caught the guy mid stumble and slapped him half onto the counter, half onto Spider-Man mask, who was still trying to get his feet under him.
Spider-Man mask gave Hulk a look of pure disgust through the eye holes and started dragging himself away with his free hand, the other one stuck fast to the counter.
Stuck to the counter with nothing left to do but watch, the man in the Spider-Man mask found that watching was somehow worse than being shot at. Spiderman, in his blood red and blue suit, moved too fast. Spiderman didn't move like he was scared of the bullets. Spiderman's joints folding at angles that made his eyes hurt trying to follow, head tilting a fraction too far whenever he looked between one target and the next. For one bad second, he understood exactly why the more criminally entrenched guys on the street went quiet whenever Spiderman swung overhead.
Iron Man's eyes behind his mask had gone somewhere far away, pupils blown down to pinpricks even in the dim light of the store, and Hulk's weren't much better, darting everywhere and nowhere. Peter yanked Hulk's gun out of his trapped hand with a web line, popped the magazine, and kicked it under a shelf of paper towels before the guy even registered it was gone.
Iron Man fired again, screaming something Peter didn't catch over the ringing, and from the counter Spider-Man mask was yelling too, at his own guy. "Drop it, man, drop the gun, it's over, just give it up-"
Peter's knee throbbed where he'd landed wrong vaulting off the shelf, and some low, annoying part of his brain was already doing math on how many webs he'd burned through, four, maybe five, and he'd just refilled the cartridges this Tuesday, which meant another late night hunched over his desk mixing chemicals that smelled foul to his enhanced senses. He was trying to get the guy's finger off the trigger before somebody actually got hurt, and if he was being honest, trying not to laugh, because the Hulk mask sliding sideways into a shelf of Doritos was, objectively, a little funny.
Iron Man rounded on him instead, whipping his whole head around to scream, and in the same motion his gun hand swung and fired at Peter without him even looking. Peter webbed that hand to the counter too, right next to Spider-Man mask's, and Iron Man kept pulling the trigger anyway, the gun aimed at the wall behind the counter now, click click click, hot casings spitting into his own sleeve and burning him, one bouncing off and nearly landing on Hulks shoe, until the gun ran dry and just kept clicking on nothing.
Peter stood there a second too long, honestly a little stunned, before he rushed forward and webbed the guy the rest of the way to the floor.
By the time the cops and the ambulance showed up he was three blocks over, sitting on a fire escape catching his breath. He didn't stick around to hear it, but he found out later anyway. Iron Man had to be restrained on the way to the hospital, overdosed bad enough that the adrenaline in his system was preventing other bodily functions. One of the medics had said, off the record, that he'd seen three others just like it this week. Hulk had gone paranoid out of his skull apparently. Iron Man had gone feral. Same drug, evidently, and it was already everywhere.
He swung home slower than usual, joints aching in a way they he noticed only did after he'd been dodging bullets instead of moving out of the way of punches. It must be due to the explosive, instinctual movements. Moving too fast before your mind catches up apparently strains your muscles a lot, Peter groaned.
And once he was climbing through his window he flopped onto the couch and said, to the empty apartment, "Hey, can you get Frank on the line."
His ai E.V answered him and a second later the call was ringing through his speakers on low volume.
Frank picked up on the last ring, he usually does, like answering any faster would mean he actually liked talking to Peter or something else crazy.
Franks voice spoke into the room, "You're calling late."
"Yeah, well. Had a thing." Peter dragged a hand down his face, mask still shoved up over his forehead, apartment quiet except for the hum of the fridge and all his electronic equipment. His apartment was cheap and small and mostly empty, and some nights that didn't bother him at all, and some nights it did, and tonight was leaning toward the second kind.
"Store robbery and the guys were high out of their minds. One of them's probably not walking out of the hospital under his own power for a while. They wore funky halloween masks of the avengers so fought myself today, it was pretty funny.”
"That drug's been going around," Frank said, no surprise in it at all, ignoring peters comment about the masks. "I've seen it too. Guys who take it don't come down from it until days later. I've had to put a couple down myself, when they got too dangerous to bring in."
Peter didn't say anything to that for a second. He never quite knew what to do with the flat, matter of fact way Frank said things like that, like killing was normal, and Peter was the weird one.
Peter was thankful Frank started using rubber bullets around him, it kept the casualties to a zero when he works with The Punisher. While he was thankful, he was also pissed about it. Frank didn’t care about the casualties, he cared about shooting Peter by accident again.
Obviously Pete’s not going to get shot by Frank again, even if he aimed straight for his chest. And Frank knows Peter can dodge, he has just never asked how well he can.
For that matter, does Frank even know he got in front of that bullet on purpose? He can dodge them from way closer up, often even, and Frank had shot that from so far away that Peter had an eternity to move, his spidey sense screaming at him from the moment Frank’s sight was aimed through the window.
"It's coming in through Hell's Kitchen," Peter said instead. "Getting laced into whatever's already on the street. It's gonna keep spreading if somebody doesn't do something."
"So do something."
Peter rolled his eyes, that's what he’s doing. Except he's going to pester Frank into helping him too, despite Frank's clear dismissal.
"Nah, you owe me for Staten Island still. Plus, y'know. Everything."
"Oh lay off it, no I don't, quit making that up, I had it handled."
"Peter." Franks voice sounded annoyed.
"There's a transfer tomorrow night. My AI's had eyes on the whole supply chain for weeks, and I finally nailed down when it's happening from an online chat room." He rattled off the rest, the location, and a rough headcount based on the last few times they'd seen a move like this go down. Small operations, usually. A handful of guys, on paper it was easy enough, especially if Frank jumped in. It was in his jurisdiction anyway, that's part of why Peter called him.
Frank was quiet on the other end for a second. "Alright," he said. "I'm in."
Neither of them had any idea yet just how wrong that headcount was going to turn out to be.