Patrol

Chapter 14

Each of the brothers had an area of about 20 blocks tonight. They navigated to an area in downtown, where criminals were more likely to be active. Xavier was going to the north and Peter to the west. That way, they could be there in case the other needs help. Xavier chose the codename of Weaver because of the spider that had bitten him. He figured it was a good way to differentiate between him and Peter too. 

Anyway, Xavier took the area where one of the new group's territories met up with Tombstone's gang. This area was known for frequent gang fights between the two groups. The upstart gang was known as the Fire starters, and as their name suggests, they like to cause fires and over all just chaos.

"What a stupid name." Xavier muttered, crouched over an alleyway. Here, he had found his first group of gangsters, and there were only four of them. The first few blocks were completely silent, having no movement whatsoever. But in the third block, he found a group of the Fire starters. 

They were huddled together outside a general store, three on watch and the other breaking open the door. Or trying to as he hadn't made any progress since Xavier had arrived. There was one that stayed near the guy at the door and the other two stood guard at the alleyway entrances. 

"Come on man, we don't have all night! Get the damn door open already!" The gangster near the door yelled at the one trying to open it.

He yelled back. "Mabey if you'd help me it'd go faster!" That made him turn around to help speed up getting the door open. That left the other two off at the ends of the alleyway up for grabs. 

"Now is my chance."

With no one looking, Xavier shot a web down the one to his right and yanked him up before anyone could see. "W-Wo-" Before he could yell out he received a quick hit to his throat, silencing him. From there, Xavier swung him into the wall below him and secured him in place with a web. 

Lastly he covered his mouth with the third web shot, shutting him up. With him silent and confined, Xavier crawled down in front of his face. At this point the gangster was terrified. He had been picked up from the floor to the roof, hit in the throat, slammed against the wall, webbed to said wall, and permanently silenced, so he couldn't even call for help. 

In front of him was an almost completely black figure. In fact he wouldn't have even seen him if it wasn't for the white eyes. The figure slowly raised a hand to his face, making the criminal flinch, expecting another hit. 

"Shh." Xavier said. 'Hehe that was fun, now to the main course.' Before the criminal could see anything else, the figure moved on to the next. Xavier made quick work of the other guard, securing him to the wall in a similar way. Now, only the one's at the door were left. 

'Hmm. Can't distract one with them being so determined to get that stupid door open...' Xavier thought to himself, before a smirk grew on his face. 'Might as well have some fun.' He dropped to the floor behind them.

"Hey guys, you know there's a front door right?" He asked. Hearing an unfamiliar voice, the two criminals wiped around to face him. 

"Who are you?!" Door guy questioned. Looking around, he didn't see the other guys he brought with him either. 

"Doesn't matter." Xavier said back, webbing guy who was working on the door against it, trapping him. That left only one left. Before he could react, he shot a web behind him. Yanking himself towards him, Xavier gave him a 'light' chop on the neck, the gangster collapsing to the ground with a faint groan. 

Turning to door guy, Xavier talked to him a bit, asking which group he was with. Turns out he was right in his guess that they were Fire starters. Apparently, they were running 'Protection' fees and this store hadn't paid up.

"Little messy… nothing a bit of practice will fix." Xavier talked to himself as he strung up the criminals together. While doing so, he checked the mission he had been given. 

[Daily Mission: Defeat at least 10 criminals before sunrise.]

[Reward: First time privilege: Ability Improvement.]

[Progress: 4/10]

Checking his HUD, he still had about 15 or more blocks to cover. "...Mabey I set too big of an area for the first night." 

After an hour of work, he had covered most of the blocks he had assigned himself with and only found five more criminals. He had to find at least one more or he would have to search past his area. He had almost finished searching the last block when he came across a warehouse that was crawling with guys. 

"Seems like a good spot." Looking it over, Xavier wasn't sure he could fight them all tonight, so he decided to look around and pick up the last of his quarry along the way. In the area, there had to be at least forty of them, and it seemed to be a base of sorts. At least that's because they were not emptying out the place. 

Xavier summoned his shroud and web-zipped over to one of the light posts inside the area. 'Might as well take one of them out now before snooping.' Looking around, there were three levels to the place. The ground, the second floor and the roof. On the roof, Xavier could see a sniper of sorts. 'Easy pickings.'

After the sniper was taken care of, he looked around for a way inside but every entrance was covered. Every vent he found had someone nearby. What he did find was a window on the lower floor where he could listen to a few of the gangsters talking. 

"How much have we collected this week?" A bigger guy asked the man in front of him. 

"Every store but one has turned in their quota, the last claiming that they are going bankrupt. So, about $5,000." The lanky man told him. 

"Hmm." The brute leaned back in the chair he was sitting in. "Give them another chance to pay what they owe… Then burn the place down to get the insurance money."

"Yes sir. Tombstone will be happy to know you are handling this area within expectations." The lanky one nodded, before walking out.

Xavier, having watched the whole thing, decided this was a good thread to follow. He followed the lanky guy to his car, where he soon went to another warehouse that was within Tombstone's territory. "Seems like there's a theme going on here." At that moment, a call popped up on his HUD from Peter. 

Answering, he heard a tired Peter call out to him. "Xavier, we've gotta get home soon or May could catch us." hearing this, Xavier checked the time to find that it was already 2 in the morning. "Crap! Head home and we'll brief each other tomorrow."

Now knowing that he was short on time, Xavier got out of the mini base as fast as he could while being stealthy and rushed home. On the way there, he couldn't get over just how surreal it felt to be swinging through New York as Spider-Man. He had dreamt of this as a kid when he lived at his grandpa's dojo, it was like an escape from the harsh reality that he lived in. 

Though not everything was the same. The most obvious thing being his and Peter's strength. In the comics they were incredibly powerful. Over the past month, Xavier had felt small improvements in his strength, but it wasn't anything to be proud of. He could only guess that more strength would come with time. 

Xavier got home around the same time as Peter. He knew because when he arrived, he could see Peter crawling in through the window of his room. Waving to him, Xavier did the same. He didn't know how tired he was until he sat down at his desk, the fatigue coming on quickly. 

Though, it wasn't a lot as he only did a lot of swinging that night. 'Guess even with the transformation, there's some adjustment needed.' He thought, tapping the spider symbol in a specific pattern, making it fold back into the necklace. As soon as the suit was off, the system jumped at the chance to fulfill the quest.

[Daily Mission: Defeat at least 10 criminals before sunrise.]

[Reward: First time privilege: Ability Improvement.]

[Progress: 10/10]

[Congratulations!]

As soon as he saw the notification, a wave of new information flooded his already fatigued mind. It reminded him of when we would remember pieces from his information of Marvel, only a hundred times the speed and volume than had grown used to. The extra stress on his mind overloaded him and he ended up passing out. A few minutes later, Aunt May came in to check on him only to find him at his desk. 

"Oh, what am I going to do with these boys?" She picked him up and laid him down on his bed, pulling the blanket over him. "I swear, there's always one of these boys that passes out somewhere." Aunt May had been having nightmares because of the incident with Ben and was having trouble sleeping. She muttered under her breath before closing the door behind her. 

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Hey! Chapter's been revised a bit. I'll put the update in the next chapter as well but I've just had a family emergency, so I won't be able to do as I wished today. You'll still get the daily updates but I had wanted to start making more chapters and get the story moving a bit better.