Chapter Text
The eerie wailing of sirens echoed across the city, discordant with the shrieking laughter coming from behind him and below him under a bright crescent moon. Spider-Man clenched his teeth and stood, looking down at the figure who had spoken. A clown with a rifle, surrounded by bound-up hostages, dark figures all swallowed up in the shadow of night. Nope, nope, nope.
“This -- all this -- was you ?”
The clown erupted into snorting laughter, “why, of course! Who else could have accomplished such excellent work?” and he grabbed the face of one of his hostages, angling it into the radius of a streetlamp, washing slack features in a glow of white. He squished their cheeks so their lips pursed out, pantomiming with them like a puppetmaster, “if I do say so myself !”
Chortling, he slapped the face away, quickly glancing at Spider-Man and away again, as if he were of little concern. He sloppily gesticulated with a rifle in his hand, indicating the busted-open entrance to the subway. “Attention-grabbing, wouldn’t you say? Quite the show-stopper!” And he giggled loudly, before training the rifle right on Spider-Man. “But as they say, the show must go on without further ado!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
“Yikes!” Spider-Man leapt, easily dodging the shots, glinting glass and concrete chunks raining through the air around him.. He tumbled off the precipice of the building, stone gargoyles sneering down at him, before slinging his web-shooters and flying in a wide arc towards the clown, tumbling and diving in midair to avoid the gunfire chasing him, punctuating the darkness with sparks of light. With unexpected precision, or maybe just a lucky shot, a bullet seared through his taut webline, which frayed for a second, strand by strand, before snapping loose entirely.
Spider-Man attempted to compensate with another web, shooting once, twice -- shooting nowhere, for lack of aim. His arm wouldn’t listen to him. So he fell, landing hard on his back, the wind knocked out of him. His vision began to swim and blacken, fuzzy spots rising around the edges. Distantly, he could hear a woman’s voice calling his name.
Peter curled in on himself, feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his life, like his bruises had bruises, murmuring, “Five more minutes, Aunt May, please ?” God, his head was killing him. Why were people laughing at him?
“Peter, on your left!”
“Karen?” he slurred, “whassup?”
And then it clicked; this headache was his spidey sense roaring and rattling in his head. Of course. Never less than that low-key steady pinch in his temple since he jumped out the window of his school bus a million years ago. That tingle and buzz that raised the hair on his skin had never quite died down, never let him fully relax. On pure instinct, he threw himself to the right, rolling before springing to his feet and clumsily diving for cover behind a parked car, which immediately became riddled with gunfire and began wailing an alarm, lights flashing red and white, stark and blinding on the dark asphalt, searing into his vision.
“Peter, stay alert. You are still in danger,” Karen urged as glass car windows shattered, thick shards tinkling upon the road like chimes, barely discernible over the loud and close car alarm yelping overwhelming patterns. He noticed the gentle rain of fine glass dust, which glinted and glimmered around him, but only in the light of street lamps and flashing brake lights. His eyes tracked a large, square speck of light which floated in a wobbling sideways path.
“Peter!” Karen insisted.
He took some gasping breaths, blinking rapidly to clear the floaters which had flooded his vision. “I’m good, I’m good.” It crossed his mind that if he died here, no one would ever know. He was alone in a strange world. “Super good! What’s -- What’s going on? Did you say danger?”
“You’ve taken ballistics damage to your left arm, and there’s damage to your suit which compromises --”
“What ??” his ears must have been ringing.
Karen repeated, louder, “Ballistics damage to you left arm and --”
“I’ve been shot ?” he yelped, “but I’m super strong!”
“Yes, and you --”
The car alarm squealed then cut off sharply. Shortly after, the deafening din of raining bullets died down to muffled silence. The peace was short-lived, shattered by an exuberant sing-song voice, “come out, come out, wherever you are, baby birdie! Come out, come out, from behind that parked car!”
His words echoed and bounced off the buildings around them into the quiet night. Oh, yeah. Peter sat up a little, “Crap, that guy.”
“Don’t you want to surprise Daddy when he gets home?”
Peter wrinkled his nose and griped quietly to himself, “I just took on a freaking super-powered magic space alien, and now this ?” A little voice in his head that sounded maybe like Mr. Stark (maybe like Uncle Ben) chided him about how life isn’t fair and yeah, that’s what heroes are for. “Spider-Man, focus,” he told himself, preempting Karen, and shoving away those thoughts for a not-stupid time to be thinking of all that .
“I’m good,” he squeaked, patting his shot arm and finding the hole that pierced his t-shirt, through his suit, into his body, all slick with blood. The bullet clattered to the ground noiselessly, sinew and skin stitching itself back together. “See? M’healing already . Awesome. I’m great. I’m fine .”
“Focus,” was the only thing Karen responded.
Spider-Man narrowed his eyes and weighed his options. He’d get shot again if he left the safety of the car, or at least, if he did it too slowly. He could shove the car at the clown, maybe? He felt weak and slow, like he was dragging his limbs through mud. No, he could do it, piece of cake, but only if he got that creep away from the hostages.
Well, banter had never failed him. So he swallowed his hysteria and called out, voice pitched to a high, strained octave, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pennywise, but I’m not a baby or a bird!” He leaped again, and flipped, landing crouched atop the car, “I’m Spider-Man!”
He winced at his delivery, maybe a little too much emphasis on the “Man” part. A beat of time passed, and he muttered to himself, “Come on. ”
“Ooh, is that so?” the clown scratch his head, then shrugged, “Nice costume, pest.”
Spider-Man looked down at his “S” shirt and khakis. The crocs must have fallen off long ago. He scowled and clenched his fists. “Come on! ”
Finally, mechanical spider legs sprouted from the back of his suit, tearing off his shirt, rearing up around him, poised to attack.
“Ugh, I do so hate creepy-crawlies,” whined the clown, who raised his rifle in a flash. “Better call an exterminator!”
“Oh geez,” Spider-Man leapt again, raining webs down onto him. The clown jumped and dodged while shooting haphazardly in his general direction, all the while laughing maniacally. “Buh-bye, Spider-Brat!”
Spider-Man landed behind him on all fours, mechanical legs spread out around him, before surging forward and tackling him to the ground in a pin. The man’s finger’s twitched on the rifle, and Spider-Man punched him in the wrist, causing his hand to spasm and release it, clattering onto the road. A spider leg kicked it out of reach.
“Tell me how to save them!”
He could hear his heart beating loud in his chest, his breathing impossibly noisy in this impossibly hushed city. The silence was worse than the omnipresent laughter.
The clown began snickering, but his face remained still. Only now did Spider-Man realized the clown was wearing a mask, obvious now that it was turned up towards the streetlamps. He yanked it off and tossed it aside, yelling, “tell me!”
He registered the pale face looking up at him for a mere second, his vision blurring, before shaking him sharply, gripping around his shoulders like a vice, furious, “Tell me how to save them! Tell me right now! Come on! What did you do? ”
The man’s fingers twitched.
“Uh-oh,” crackled a voice off to the side of them, “you g-got me.” High-pitched chuckles erupted from the discarded, now-fractured mask, interspersed with growing static. “Tell --” KSH “-- tell the Bat --” KRSSHH “-- come back home pretty plea--”
“How can I save them?” shouted Peter, grabbing for the mask, looking for the communication components, but only managing to widen the fracture. From the audio line, he could only hear static crackling over cruel laughter.
“Karen, can you --”
The speaker let out a loud electric whine which rapidly escalated to a piercing screech, before the damage from the fracture caused it to short-circuit and die.
“-- track it?” he finished lamely. The mask burst into flames, and he started, dropping it.
Spider-Man rounded back to the man, spider legs rearing up over him. “Tell me now!”
The man was silent.
The mask was silent.
The girl and her mom were silent.
“Tell me,” he begged, voice catching in his throat, “You’ve got to tell me.”
Everyone was silent now, save him.
The man’s twitching fingers drummed on the asphalt.
Peter said, “ please, say something. People are dying,” and did not think about the smiling bodies by the entrance to the subway that he’d hastily shoved aside.
He caught the man’s eyes for the space of a heartbeat, noting their blue color, before English characters suddenly flooded his vision, Karen relaying a message letter-by-letter near the corner of his periphery. Words scrolled out, projected in a line.
Peter started, “Karen, what -- oh.” He’d put two and two together: the man was tapping out morse code.
B-E-L-T-S
C-U-R-E
T-H-R-O-W
Peter was scrambling to his feet by the first word. The hostages all had utility belts, pockets. Inside of them were dozens of small devices shaped like pellets. Karen scanned and analyzed them, urgently declaring, “They release an aerosol upon concussive impact.”
Peter grabbed a handful, wasting no time on a response. He threw down a pellet and immediately ran.
Heart thrumming in his chest, Peter swung back up to the building where he had left the girl and her mom. They were still, wide smiles holding their faces in joyless rigor. He threw another pellet, and stumbled, vision blurring dark in spots. As the pellet struck the ground, it flashed bright like a firecracker and shot out a fine, cloudy mist that ballooned into a localized fog in the blink of an eye.
Peter urged his vision to sharpen, and the black spots lost their opacity. Please, please, please...
The mother shuddered, releasing a soft breath.