Chapter Text
Spiderman sat atop a building in Queens. It was well into the night, and he was already done with patrol. He was only out here still for one reason, and one reason only. He was waiting for a certain mercenary dressed in red and black to cross his view.
It only took another couple minutes until he saw the one he was looking for. Deadpool jumped from building to building a street away, pointedly making his way towards Brooklyn. And he wasn't the only one. He was followed by someone else. Another man dressed in red. It seemed Peter was simply joining the party at this point. And if they were going to Brooklyn, then a fourth person should join it as well.
Peter stood up and stretched himself, ready to follow the other two figures in red. From a reasonable distance, of course. He attached a web to the nearest apartment complex and pulled forward, dropping from the building. He let himself almost drop to the ground before shooting out another web. And he repeated this process until the figures before him stopped, already well into Brooklyn.
Peter followed them to one of the poorer parts of the borough. As Deadpool went into a warehouse from the side, and Daredevil followed in from the other, Peter stopped on top of the building across, waiting. In a matter of minutes another figure emerged from a street over, cautiously looking around. Prior to this, Spiderman stopped swinging behind a billboard, so he avoided the mercenary's gaze. But the aforementioned didn't look around for long. After a quick check of the surroundings he entered as well. That was the sign that Peter should also go in.
The building was big and open, almost empty, mind a couple of boxes and the giant pillars holding up the roof. It smelled of blood and old corpses that had only been cleaned out a couple days ago, but had certainly been dead for longer than that. Two weeks, to be precise. And it lacked all colours, mind the blood stains. Overall it was the exact place Deadpool would come to.
Now that Spiderman arrived, all four of them were inside, everyone standing in the shadows at the four sides of the building, waiting for someone to move. Unsurprisingly it was Deadpool who did so first. He stepped out from behind the pillar and clapped his hands together, making the whole building echo with the sound.
“See? I told y'all no one would be here,” he announced cheerfully.
Peter moved from the shadows, and so did Ronin across from him.
“Well I doubt anyone wants to come here after the massacre that went down,” the archer said.
“You mean the massacre that you two committed?” Peter gave pointed looks to both of them from under the mask. They just had to sense it, even if they couldn't see it.
“Yes, of course. What other massacre would we be talking about?”
“Why did you drag all of us here, Wade?” Daredevil walked out from behind some boxes, cutting the conversation short.
“Damn. Straight to the point I see.” Wade held up his hands in surrender. “I need y'all's help.”
“And what happened with the ‘we don't all show together in public’ thing?”
“Well, you see ,” the grin could be heard in his voice, “I can't exactly deal with this alone. Nor could any of us. This has to be a team effort.”
“How big of a team effort?” Ronin asked for clarification.
“All four of us big,” Deadpool answered seriously, which was unusual for him. “Everyone here familiar with the Novak crime family?”
“The ones with five different accents that in no way could be an actual family?”
“Yep, those guys. They have a meeting with the Tracksuits on Saturday. If I'm right they have around twenty hostages that will be moved to the mafia's custody. Adding to the hostages, we have the Novaks and at least twenty of their men, while the Tracksuits are coming with the big gang. Around forty of them. That's almost seventy bad guys and twenty innocents. I cannot take on that many people while making sure the civilians stay safe. And none of us – even in pairs of two – could handle it either. All of us are needed.”
Peter went grim. He didn't like the Tracksuit Mafia, nor the Novaks. And of course he didn't. He didn't like any mafia or crime family, but these guys were the worst. He had intervened in the Novaks’ kidnappings so many times he practically lost count. The problem was that they also ran an actual enterprise (a real estate company) that put them on the good side of the law and no one – not even the police – suspected that they would be behind a fourth of the missing person cases in New York. And he knew how many times the two mercenaries had crashed in on the human trafficking cases of the Tracksuits. So of course these two would start working together sooner or later. It wasn't even surprising that this would be the case where they had to break their ‘not being seen together’ rule. And fuck it. It's worth it. Those guys deserved the worst and they will give it to them.
“And did you come up with a plan, or is that yet to be decided?” Daredevil continued his questions.
“I actually do have one. I prepared it just for you.” He pointed at the other dramatically. “It is overly simple though. The meeting will go down at ten pm, in an old warehouse in the Bronx. My plan is that me and Clinton here go in and do what we do best, while Spidey gets the hostages out and you – horny guy – will cover for him.” He pointed at each of them as he sketched out the plan. “Because I assume they won't be happy if all the hostages escape. And once the civilians are free and safe, then you two come and help us out. See? Easy.”
“Gotta admit you did think this through for once.”
“Then y'all in?”
“Of course.” Peter nodded swiftly.
“Yeah, just gimme the location of the warehouse.” Clint extended his hand towards Wade, who wrote it on a piece of paper he scrambled out of his pocket. “C'mon Matty, you can't pass up such an opportunity to beat up some bad guys.” Ronin then turned to Daredevil.
“No, yeah I'm coming. Just thinking.” He shook his head. “Anything else important?”
“Nope. That's all I've got. Quite a lot compared to the usual I would say,” Wade said proudly.
“Then we'll meet tomorrow. Spidey, Deadpool.” Matt bid them goodbye, and left the same way he came in.
“Wow. Won't even wait for me,” Clint said offended. “I might’ve forgotten to take the trash out. Or I don't know why he's so grumpy. Well, see you two.” He ran after the other.
“I do got some things to take care of still.” Wade turned to Peter. “But I'll be back home soon.”
“Sure,” Peter nodded and started to leave. “Just don't die!” He called over his shoulder on his way out.
He attached himself to the nearest building, and started his way back to Queens and their apartment.
When earlier this night he found the scrambled up note from Wade in his spider-suit that read ‘follow me when seen surprisingly' (because he couldn't just tell them to come somewhere, he had to send a cryptic message) this wasn't what he expected. For Wade to actually have a plan and seriously talk about something. Of course this shouldn't have been that big of a deal. Despite Wade's usual demeanor of not giving a shit about anything, doing reckless things and quite easily murdering a concerning amount of people, he was still a normal person. And Peter could guess that these hostages were mostly children. At least the people he saved from being kidnapped by the Novaks were usually children. And Wade did care about kids. Or at least he refused to hurt them. And, as any sane person should be, he too was disgusted by guys like the Tracksuits and the Novaks.
The important thing was: They actually had a plan for once.
~~<>~~<>~~<>~~<>~~<>~~
The next night Peter swung to the warehouse Wade told him about and dropped down next to Clint, who was perched up on a building, keeping an eye on the back alleys.
“Spiderman.”
“Ronin. How we doing?” He crouched beside him.
“See the four vans?” The mercenary motioned towards black cars parked along the back alley. “Arrived together, about ten people in each. Based on the stupid matching outfits it's the Tracksuits, so we have about forty of them. The Novaks and the hostages aren't here yet.”
Peter nodded and turned to scan the area. Small, tight street, not a lot of windows looked down to it from nearby buildings, and the last time those cameras worked was before they knew that aliens existed. Great place for shady business. The only thing that had a view on them was a camera from a street over, but that couldn't see down into the street, only the vigilantes on the rooftops.
“You got those cameras covered?” Peter asked Clint, nodding towards the next street.
“Yeah, got your gizmo. The second we enter they turn off.”
Peter then scanned the other rooftops for Wade and Matt. He spotted the dark red spots a couple buildings away, checking the side entrance of the warehouse. He waved towards Wade, signing a quick ‘You two ready?’ and getting a nod in return.
Clint patted him on the arm and jerked his head to the side towards a black car plus two more vans that came into the street. That must be our guys. The car stopped and five figures stepped out of it dressed in bold and flashy colours. Another reason why Peter was surprised nobody managed to catch onto the fact that the Novaks were behind all those kidnappings. They weren't exactly discreet people. Though they weren't the ones doing the dirty work most of the time. After them some other guys got out of one of the vans (Peter counted twenty-seven) and walked to the last car. Opening up the back of it a couple of them stepped in and started ushering out tied up people.
Clint got up from beside him, getting his arrows ready, and Wade also rose from the other building, pulling out his katanas. Once all the guys went into the warehouse they both jumped down to the street and sneaked up to the doors. Meanwhile Matt jumped over to the top of the building and Peter webbed himself next to him.
There was a skylight in the middle of the roof, from where the vigilantes could see inside and check exactly what they were up against.
Big, spacious warehouse, kinda like the one where they had their meeting except this one had a second story going around the sides. The Tracksuits stood in several lines, with one guy – probably the leader – standing in the front. The Novaks’ guys stood in a semi circle around the hostages with the five main guys in front. The semi circle had to be taken out first, so Peter and Matt could get to the hostages, that much was obvious. Some crates and the columns holding up the gallery proved great hiding places. So good that Wade was already standing behind one.
He waved his hand at the back door – presumably at Clint and probably signing something Peter couldn't catch from this angle – to which a handful of arrows landed in the necks of the Novaks’ guys who stood at the back. They fell to the ground and everyone in the room (except the hostages, obviously) grabbed a weapon, which ranged from high quality shotguns to literal sticks. Wade came out from behind the column with his own guns and Clint came into view with several arrows drawn and shot. Matt hit his baton on the glass, breaking it so he and Peter could enter the scene as well.
Currently the bad guys were still outnumbering them by a lot, so they could still focus on keeping a tight circle around the hostages, while the others dealt with the intruders. Clint and Wade focused on taking out the Tracksuits first, because they had the lower grade weapons, while Peter webbed up as many people from the circle as possible, trying to get to the civilians. And Matt – lacking any and all self-preservation skills – took on all five of the Novaks. Or at least tried to.
Peter managed to sloppily web up half the circle and take away most of the guns the still standing had, and was able to dodge most of the bullets that were shot at him. Maybe a couple of them hit, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. And as long as the bullets were in him and not in the innocents, then it was completely fine. He turned to glance at the mercenaries who already worked their way through most of the Tracksuits. Clint went to help take out the Novaks themselves, who were pretty beaten up by now. They shouted at their men in five different languages (again, probably not an actual family) to come over there and help them or they will… do something. Peter was, in fact, not an expert in German. At least he was ninety percent sure one of these guys spoke in German.
“Hey! Daredevil! Could you help me with the hostages?” He shouted, while kicking the last of the circle in the gut and webbing them to the ground. Then he kicked him in the head, just for good measure.
“Not really, no!” Daredevil shouted back.
Great. Fine. He can do this alone. “Hey there,” he started slowly, “I'm Spiderman. Everything's gonna be okay. We'll get you out of here,” he said to the group of kids.
He stood up and scanned which exit would be less dangerous to try to get to. In front of the back exit Wade was violently murdering the remaining of the Tracksuits and near the other exit Clint and Matt fought with the Novaks and their men. So neither of them were good options. Maybe he could get them up to the second floor, away from the bloodshed, then get them out of here after.
“Okay.” He turned back to the kids. “We're going up there, okay?” He pointed up to the gallery. “Up there I'll cut up the ropes on your hands, but first we gotta get to safety.”
Some of the older kids mumbled some ‘okays’, while the younger ones could barely stop crying. And like, Peter didn't blame them for it. This had to be fucking scary. “Okay, see the stairs there? Start that way. I'll make sure all the guys stay down.” He ushered all of them towards the stairs, following behind and checking every couple of seconds that the bad guys are still busy with the others.
He heard some shouting from behind and some of the still alive guys grabbed guns off from the ground and started to shoot at Peter and the kids.
“Behind the crate! Quickly!” He swatted the kids.
“No no no! Idiote ! We need them alive! Alive!” One of the Novaks shouted at the men while trying not to get sliced by Clint's sword. “Shoot the spider!”
They will, actually, not shoot the spider if Peter had a say in it. And since he was said spider, he thought that he did. So he shot some webs at the guys’ guns, then at them. Sadly these guys weren't as horrible at fighting as the Tracksuits and managed to dodge said webs. As the men inched closer Peter really started to feel the bullets in him, and frankly, he was offended that they decided to make themselves known right now. Who did the bullets think they were?
“C'mon guys, is this really necessary?” He leaned against a crate to catch his breath. “Like can't we just sit down and chat or some shit? Like wouldn't that be better than kidnapping kids?”
The men did not stop.
“Okay. Not in the mood for a chat. I see.” He webbed one of the Tracksuits batons over to himself.
“Ha! What will that do against guns?” One of them said in a heavy accent. German? No. Some Eastern European. “Stupid spider.” He shot at Peter again. Who barely managed to dodge with his senses going all over the place from the wounds. Peter shot back at him with his webs. Only problem was that he was out of webs. Well one of his webshooters was out of webs. The other was completely broken. Thanks random henchman #8.
Peter looked around the room. Wade just finished off the last Tracksuit and wiped his katana on his suit. Peter whistled to get his attention, and nodded his head at the men actively shooting at him. He glanced back at kids behind the crates he stood beside. Most of them were curled up in balls hand over their head, only some of them staring right at him.
“Hey guys! I'm also here!” Wade shouted and drew the attention of the men to him. For long enough at least for Peter to usher the kids to the stair again.
“Go up and stay behind crates. Try not to look down here. It's not pretty,” he instructed them.
Not even a minute later he heard a scream coming from up there. He was stupid. He didn't check if anyone was up there. He ran up the stairs after the children. Sure enough, two guys stood there, one of them grabbing a kid by her arms. Great. Peter could easily kick the one closer to him in the head, but the other one wasn't as easy. He had a kid with him. Holding her in front of him as fucking shield. This was a grown man for fuck's sake.
“What are you gonna do now, bro? I know who you are. I know you don't kill.” The man smiled, pleased with himself.
God, Peter wanted to punch him so hard. He bent down to see what kind of weapons the other guy had. If his webs were out he needed something else. The guy had a shotgun. Well. It's big enough to hit with. He pulled it from the ground and held the butt of it towards the guy. But he couldn't do much, could he? If he went closer the guy would just go backwards. If he hit the kid would be used as a shield. Great. Of course the little girl didn't even reach up to the man's chest. So theoretically…
Man, these bullet wounds were hurting a lot.
He glanced down at the others. Nearly done, but still occupied. So it was just him, this guy and a loaded gun. Clearly there was an easy solution to this…
He really hoped the guy that shot him was dead by now. His wounds hurt as fuck.
He hated choices like this. Never knowing if it's the right one or not.
He turned the gun.
“Oh! Am I supposed to be scared, bro?” The man mocked him.
Peter blew out a breath. All the other kids hid behind the crates by now. “Kid…” he started. “Close your eyes and duck.” He said quickly and the second the girl did so (well as much as she could) he aimed at the man's chest.
And pulled the trigger.
This definitely won't be causing any emotional trauma.
The man sucked in a sharp breath and let go of the little girl. Peter ran to her and scooped her up, to get away from the man before he started bleeding out. Peter put down the girl right next to the other kids and also sat down behind the crates. He deserved a little break. He did just shoot someone, when his whole thing was not killing. Well, you gotta try new things sometimes.
“All of ya alright?” he mumbled to the kids.
“Physically, yes,” one of the oldest girls said. “Mentally, no.”
“Yeah. Assumed that.”
“And are you okay, Spiderman?” A little boy asked.
“I've got super healing. I'll be fine in a day,” Peter lied. He will not be fine in a day. Maybe in a week.
He heard a whistle echo through the building.
“Spidey!” Wade's voice rang. “We're done down here. You done up there?”
“Yeah!” he shouted back. “C'mon kids. We're getting y'all home.” He stood up slowly.
Peter went down with all the children and was met with a sight that was horrible for him, even. So the kids must be gathering mountains of trauma. All the Tracksuits lay dead somewhere in gruesome ways. All of the Novaks’ men the same way. And even one of the Novaks lay dead with an arrow sticking out of his lungs. Clint went around gathering all his arrows from the dead bodies, while Matt dragged away the bodies that were in front of the entrance. Wade just happily skipped over to Peter and the kids. Covered in blood.
After a lot of back and forth with the kids they managed to find out where each of them live and where they need to go back to. There were siblings there, kids from the same apartment building, or block. Actually most of them were kids from the Bronx. Only two of them were from Queens. The two oldest ones. They insisted that they can get home alone, no need for any heroes to accompany them. After some convincing they settled down on Deadpool going with them. He lived in Queens as well, so he was going that way anyway.
Matt just peaced the fuck out after attesting that everyone that had to be alive was alive and everyone that was dead deserved to be.
So it was Peter and Clint left with the other eighteen kids. They managed to arrange them into two groups based on which side of the Bronx they lived on. Spiderman would bring one of the groups to the block where most of them lived, while the Ronin would bring the other group, who also all lived in the same neighborhood. The Novaks really liked those two neighborhoods it seemed.
Another hour, eight kids and one very tired spider later Peter dropped into his and Wade's apartment. He didn't even bother to change. He just pulled off his mask and plopped onto the couch. Then he let out a groan because he landed on his side that had several bullets in it.
Wade wandered into the living room with a first aid kit already ready. He had guessed Peter would be sporting some kind of wound by the end of the night.
“How bad is it, Petey?” he asked as he crouched beside him, who now lay on his back.
“Two or three bullets. Not that bad,” he groaned.
“Yeah, that's not that bad for me. That's quite bad for you. ”
“To each– ahh,” Peter winced when Wade started to clean the wound. “To each their own.”
“Yeah yeah, sure. This was a hell of a night. It was worse than I thought it would be.”
“Do you think we tipped off anyone that we know each other by working together?” Peter asked. “Or make them think we're planning something?”
“C'mon Peter. No one's gonna think we're planning genocide, because we worked together once.”
~~<>~~<>~~<>~~<>~~<>~~
“I assume you're all familiar with the vigilantes of New York,” Nick Fury said, as pictures of the aforementioned people showed on the screen.”
It was Sunday morning and all the Avengers (minus Thor, for obvious reasons) sat around a table at SHIELD's headquarters. None of them were happy about being woken up at six a.m. and dragged in here for an ‘emergency’ meeting.
“Since when do we count mercenaries as vigilantes?” Tony asked, resting his head in his hands. He was the most offended about being woken up, so he decided to amp up his comments about the mission.
“Since I don't have time to say vigilantes and mercenaries in every damn sentence,” Fury replied. “These pictures were taken on surveillance cameras the last two days.” Pictures of the vigilantes came onto the screen. “This, obviously isn't something that happened in the past, that's why–”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Bruce spoke up. “But what is the weird thing about this?”
“They don't work together,” Natasha said matter-of-factly. “They each have a borough they primarily operate from – the mercenaries are a bit more flexible – and work alone ninety percent of the time. Even when something requires help, they only pair up. And the vigilantes and mercenaries rarely mix together at all. In these pictures all four of them are together. That's not something that ever happened prior. The biggest team up they had was when Spiderman, Daredevil and Ronin fought with Fisk and his men.”
“Yes. What she said.” Fury turned their attention back to him. “SHIELD needs you to keep an eye on them. They ran an–”
“Why us? Don't you have a gazillion agents to do that?” Tony commented again.
“We've sent dozens of agents after them, but they managed to lose each and every one of them.”
“You can't even follow some street vigilantes?” The billionaire laughed. “Sorry, sorry. Continue.”
“Thank you for letting me do my job.” Fury sent death stares at him. “As I said, they ran an operation last night. And they didn't just accidentally show up at the same place, like when three of them were together. This was planned the prior day.” The screen switched to a video of a warehouse. It was a street camera's blurry video, but it was clearly visible that the four vigilantes all entered the same building in the duration of a couple of minutes. “Didn't come out for a bit, then slowly all of them left. Next day.” The video switched to the front of another warehouse. On top of a building behind that, figures were present. “Ronin arrived first, then Spiderman next to him. In two minutes Daredevil and Deadpool showed up as well. Then…” Fury zoomed in on the figures. Deadpool could be seen entering, Ronin jumped down from the roof in the background and a couple minutes later Daredevil and Spiderman entered from the roof. “As you can see, they all went in.” Fur clicked to fast forward a bit, but the video jumped and the next recording was more than an hour later. “Then the camera cuts off. They used some kind of a device to corrupt all camera recordings for an hour and a half. Once it turned back on no one was in the warehouse. Except a pile of dead bodies.” The screen switched to a picture of bodies on top of bodies inside the building. “So you can see we have obvious reasons to think they did this. And that it was planned.”
“And what is it exactly that you want us to do?” Steve questioned.
“Find out their identities, bring them in, attest if they're a threat and if they are, neutralize them.” Fury looked over them. “For good.”