CH24: JUMANJI!

"Sorry I'm late, anything happen while I wasn't here?"

Marvel wordlessly handed me a notepad and her camera, still looking at the workshop across the street through the binoculars I'd bought with some dealer's money. I checked over the pictures and matched them to the notes she took.

It was mostly a parade of civilian cars that went in and got fixed. The exception was the ocassional unmarked white van that went in and left around half an hour later, sometimes a bit more and sometimes less.

"Good work," I said. "Thoughts?"

"I'd say they're using the vans to move merchandise, but I'm not sure," Marvel looked at me. "Couldn't you find out what they sell here?"

I felt a bit of heat creep in my cheeks. "Interrogation is hard when you don't have a local reputation. Sorry."

"No problem," Marvel went back to looking at the workshop. "How do you usually interrogate people?"

"Half the time I don't have to, thanks to informants and such," I shrugged. "When I do, I just take them to the top of a building and dangle them, but that felt rude to do in your territory."

She whipped her head around and stared at me. "YOU WHAT?!"

"SHH!"

We dove behind the cornice, and I focused my senses. The street was mostly empty, with just some drunk puking in the alley under us. Nobody seemed to notice, so we went back to spying over the cornice.

"You can't throw people off of a roof!" Marvel hissed, not taking her eyes away from the workship. "We're supposed to be heroes!"

"I don't th-" I stopped myself. "I don't let them hit the ground! I just scare them!"

"That was very specifically worded," Marvel pointed out. "How many people have you thrown off of roofs?"

I didn't really keep track, but I tried to remember.

"Around five... ish?"

"Five-ish." Marvel didn't seem amused.

"Around that, yeah."

"You can't do that!"

"It's not that bad," I complained. "I just do that to people my informants don't know, and that's mostly homicidal maniacs and pedophiles. Or both, come to think of it."

Marvel turned to try and see if I was joking. I really wasn't. "Dude, what's wrong with your city?"

I shrugged. "It's the New York lifestyle. If you don't like it, you can go back to Philly where you came from."

"We're in Jersey."

"Fuggedaboutit!"

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth quirked up. She forced a stern expression. "Well, we're in my city. No tossing people off of roofs while you're here, understood?"

"Fine," I relented. "I'll just web them up and hang them upside-down, hope the blood rushing to their heads makes 'em honest."

"Sounds good." We kept working in silence, her taking notes and me taking notes, when she spoke up again. "Do you have any good stories?"

"Cape stories, you mean?"

She shrugged. "I've only been doing this for a while, and you already know the one cool thing I've done."

"You could still tell me, if you like," she shook her head. "No? Right then, anything you wanna hear?"

"Hm," she bit her lip, before she smiled. "Weirdest arrest you've made?"

"I don't know about weirdest, because I regularly fight a guy made of electricity, but the 95-year-old flasher lady has been pretty hard to forget."

She laughed. "No way."

"Yeah," I smirked. "She was shockingly perky, too!"

"Ew!" she stretched her arm and swatted my shoulder. "Don't be gross."

I chuckled.

A few hours later, we were eating some gyros that Marvel had gone to buy when the workshop closed down.

"Should we leave?" she asked, mouth full.

[Okay, you locked up everything?]

The guy he asked hadn't. The back door was unlocked.

[Yeah, of course]

[Good, then come on, we gotta get the loose parts to Tinkerer]

"Nope," I finished my food, pulled down my mask, hung the binoculars and camera from my utility belt, and gestured for Marvel to follow as I dropped down into an alley as silently as I could. "It seems we get to do some light-hearted Breaking and Entering."

"This really isn't what I thought would happen when I became a Cape," she muttered, but still followed.

"Actually, could you shrink down?" She raised an eyebrow. "It's just that you're costume is bright freaking red and yellow in parts, and we're supposed to be sneaking around. It'd be easier if I carried you in my utility belt or something."

"Yeah, that's fair." She shrunk and climbed onto my shoulder. "I'm not going in your belt, though."

"Fine, go in the hood then," I was already running across the street. It was the middle of the night and in a place where the streetlights were poorly mantained, so I was just a black blur before I was out of sight, crouching in the back of the workshop.

I tried the door, but it was locked.

'Ah, he didn't forget. It was already locked.' I pulled a pair of lockpicks out of my utility belt and went to work. I chuckled, "Thank god for Black Widow's School of Hard Knocks, huh?"

"You studied under Black Widow?" Marvel sounded outraged. Her voice was oddly unchanged despite her size difference, I'd have to ask Peter or Reed about that. "Lucky. I'd give my right arm to train with Captain Marvel."

"Natasha isn't exactly to me what Danvers is to you. She's like a protective older sister that threatens to use nerve gas on me if I'm not careful." The door popped open. "Now, we have to be quiet, okay?"

She nodded, and I slunk in. The back door was connected to the break room, which in turn was connected to the workshop and to a bathroom.

I headed for the workshop and started looking around. I sniffed the air and smirked. There were still a few cars here, but only one had been there for so long that I could smell dust on it. I looked at the little button-remote-thingie that mechanics use to drop a car, and pressed the green 'lift' button.

The floor split open soundlessly, and I smirked as some stairs were revealed.

"How'd you know that was there?" Marvel whispered.

"Super senses." I started walking down to the secret room. "The best superpower, as any student of the Daredevil School of Hard Knocks will tell you."

"You trained with Daredevil too?!" she almost forgot to whisper. "Dude! What do I have to do to train with Avengers?"

"I dunno about you, but I got tossed a few thousand miles into the air and crashed through Matt's roof and his table."

"Oh." She thought it over. "How much did it hurt?"

"A lot." I left the stairs and walked from the wall to the roof, where I started crawling. I used my Spider Cling to keep Marvel attatched to my shoulder while I crawled. "Now, seriously, shush."

"... and you bring me this junk?" an old man shouted, and I raised an eyebrow when I laid eyes on him. Old, short, bald, wrinkly and one huge nose. Looked like the comic version of the Tinkerer to me. "This is bupkis! I can't use this!"

I pulled the camera and took pictures of the guy, surrounded by weapons, waving alien tech around over his head.

"Do you know what this is?" He asked, and I started recording. "This is an energy convertor. It turns something like kinetic energy into electric energy!"

"Isn't that good?" One of the mechanics asked, he looked like a young adult.

"It needs 20,000 kilograms of force to produce two watts!" spittle flew from the Tinkerer's mouth. "If I'm supposed to build weapons for your everyday crooks like you two shiny little morons, I'm going to need better!"

"Think that's good enough?" I whispered at Marvel.

"Hold on, maybe he'll shoot one and we can get him for murder," she joked.

"Take, for example, this," he grabbed a raygun looking thing from a nearby table, and aimed it at the mechanic that'd spoken.

"Crap!" Marvel hissed. "Spider-"

"I know."

The Tinkerer continued, oblivious to us. "Now this is good. This can reduce someone to a pair of smoking boots.

"Allow me to-"

Before he could finish, a web line was attatched to the gun and pulling it out of his grip and into my hand, where I crashed it one-handed.

I finshed recording, hung the camera from my belt, and slowly sank down into the ground upside-down and hanging from a web line. Marvel left my hood and stretched to full size as she embiggened her legs to avoid splatting against the ground. By the time she was regular-sized, my head was level with hers, and we were giving twin glares at the Tinkerer.

"Hello there," I said, in a dangerous tone. "We'd like to talk to you about crime, and the consequences of it."

Here's the thing about the room we were in:

For one thing, it was huge. The length of a basketball court cubed. It was also completely gray, from the roof to the floor to the walls. The only things that weren't were the four metal tables covered in scrap and weapons that the Tinkerer had been working on. My senses hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, so I hadn't felt the need to look, though some background part of my brain found the amount of empty space odd, but I just figured it was to make space for future weapons.

So, when a big gray arm that had previously very much not been there as far as my senses could be suddenly appeared and smached me off of my web line and into a wall, I didn't think much besides 'WHAT'S THE POINT OF HAVING SUPER SENSES IF EVERYONE SUBVERTS THEM?!'.

I must have hit my head harder that I thought, because when I looked at who hit me, I heard the theme from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, "Awaken", blaring at full force in my brain.

With a slight glimmer, a giant in grey armor revealed himself, and my jaw dropped.

In the comics, the Rhino had been a guy in a silly little suit with his face out. In the Amazing Spider-Man sequel, he'd been a guy in a mecha.

Here, he was a mix of both. His head was completely covered by a helmet with a horn in the middle, which split open in half and folded back. With the suit on, he was tall enough that if you'd stacked two of me on top of each other, we'd only come up to his chin. His body was covered in what looked like a grey bodysuit covered in armor and bits of metal, with hydraulics, maybe? His knuckles were covered by a strap of metal, which briefly sparked with electricity.

Basically, he looked like twelve feet of whoop-ass.

"Oh, fuck me," I whispered.

"Da," the russian spoke, with a cartoonishly thick accent. "If you insist."

I shook my head and looked down. The camera hadn't broken, but the binoculars had.

I looked at Marvel, who was also staring at the Rhino.

"Marvel!" she snapped out of it and turned to look at me. "I'll keep the big guy busy, you arrest the old man!"

She nodded, "Right!"

She started running off, but Rhino stepped over.

"And you think I'll let you?" The big guy smirked.

"You're not going to have an option when I break my foot off in your ass," I replied, getting up and tossing the camera to Marvel, who caught it.

"I never understood that expression," The Rhino said. "It sounds worse for you, honestly."

I nodded, that much I agreed with.

Then I shot two web lines at the chest of his suit, slingshot myself at him, and punched him in his still uncovered face. He stumbled back, and I punched him again, and again, and again.

His face was one big bruise before the helmet folded back onto it, and he went to grab me. I jumped away, and took note of everything around me.

The two mechanics had run off a while ago. Marvel was also leaving, one arm stretched and wrapped around the Tinkerer.

"Suit tells me you hurt me," Rhino's voice blared across the room. "Sad for you, suit cancels out pain. I feel nothing."

"I mean, you're still concussed if I get my hands on you," I pointed out. "No pain doesn't mean no damage."

"True. But for that, you have to catch me." the suit glimmered, and suddenly he was invisible. This would have been fine, but I also couldn't hear, smell or feel him in any way. That's the problem with the Tinkerer, really. His presence means all the nearby villains take around twelve levels in badass.

I jumped onto the roof, just in time to see the ground where I just was burst and shatter.

"Hm," I stood upside-down, and crossed my arms. "You can't touch me, and I can't find you. This is sure to be a very annoying-"

Something grabbed me by the throat, and slammed me through the roof, and up to the workshop. I found myself floating, hanging by the grip on my neck.

With a glimmer, the Rhino appeared, floating slightly off of the ground until the jets on his back and feet slowly turned off, and he landed.

"That's such bullshit," I croacked, forcing myself to get up and rubbing my sore throat. "You can fucking fly? Since fucking when do fucking rhinos fucking fly?!"

"It's only flying for short time, if it makes you feel better," the syntetized voice said again. "Tinkerer happened to find blueprints for old Iron Man suit."

Rhino lifted me up over his head and threw me to the ground.

I caught myself with my hands and flipped onto my feet to find the guy already vanished. I could tell with my senses that Marvel was already going around looking for some cops, so I just had to keep Rhino busy long enough for the cavalry to arrive.

Before I could get knocked on my ass again, I ran out of the workshop. I jumped onto the outside wall of the building, and looked around, senses full out and aware.

[Nothing]

Hm, shit. But what if...

I jumped away just before the wall exploded.

'Yeah, that works,' I smirked. Maybe I couldn't actually feel him coming, but I'd watched enough shows, and I could imagine how a big guy like him moved.

I landed on the street, and thought. Next move would be to chase me down, so he'd have to jump down to the street and smash a fist down on me. I jumped out of the way, and I barely felt something brush by my foot before the street exploded from impact. I flipped back, as I figured he'd swipe for me as he took his hand out the wall. Now, next move if I was writing this scene?

I leaned back, Matrix-style, and hoped that he'd swiped where I just was otherwise I'd look really goofy.

"Hm," he glimmered into sight, on the other side of the street. Dammit. "You don't actually know where I am. You just guess."

"I did some pretty good guesses, in my defence." My face felt hot. So embarrassing when you did goofy stuff in front of a villain.

"True enough. But you haven't seen every trick I have." His suit started to glimmer again.

"Oh no you don't!" With a flick of my wrist, several Web Bombs flew through the air and detonated around him, leaving him invisible but covered in webs. He struggled around, but they held true. "You haven't seen all my tricks either!"

I ran up to him, flipped over, and stood on his back while he continued to struggle. I felt around, grabbed the horn (the one on his head), and started smashing my fist into his helmet. I used my Spider Cling and pulled back to try and open his helmet.

The invisibility flickered with shiny effects as the helmet slowly loosened.. With a roar, I pulled the helmet completely off and the armor gave one last flash of light before the invisibility turned off.

I dropped the helmet. Rhino didn't look impressed.

"Brute force isn't very impressive trick," he noted.

"If it works, it works."

"True."

And suddenly-

[Ozone and bright and pain pain pain PAIN]

-Rhino's entire body lit up with electricity, sending me flying against a building as the webs burnt off.

For a terrifying second, I couldn't even breathe. All my muscles weren't moving, my chest fell tight, my jaw went up and down but I couldn't make a sound and my throat had locked up I was panicking I wanted to scream I couldn't move help help help help please help me. My body relaxed slightly, and I coughed as I struggled to get up. My arms shook, and I fell on my face. I barely heard Rhino say something, but I couldn't focus because all I felt was the blood rushing on my ears. I wanted to throw up, I wanted to run and hide.

I shook my head, and forced my arms to push myself up.

Lightning scared me, for a lot of reasons, both rational and irrational. For rational, I knew that getting electrocuted meant that your muscles were too busy locking up for you to scream, I knew that since it boiled the water in your body enough electricity meant that you basically ended up microwaved after enough energy ran through you. As for irrational, lightning was bright, loud, and fucking scary.

But that didn't matter.

I had to stand up, so I stood up.

'Remember: don't get scared,' I grit my teeth. 'Get angry!'

I shook my head, and glared at Rhino. Belatedly, I realized I was slightly smoking and smelled faintly of bacon. There's a reason human meat is sometimes refered to as 'long pork'.

"Electricity is your weakness, then?" Rhino seemed a bit amused, but I took comfort on the big ugly bruises on both sides of his face. "Lucky me. Most of my weapons are electrical."

I didn't answer. I just ran forward, going low as if about to jump.

Rhino got ready, but as I jumped, I stuck a web behind him and between his legs, then used it to pull myself behind him. As I slid on the ground, I pulled my escrima sticks out, and waited until he finished turning around before I threw one at his face, hitting him between the eyes. He stumbled back, and the stick bounced back to my hand. Then, while he recovered his balance, I stuck one of the sticks on an important-looking tube on his legs and used it as leverage to remove it, making a brown liquid that smelt similar to gasoline poured out.

I held both weapons in reverse grips and used them to smash every bit of machinery, running around him and between his legs, leaving dents everywhere I reached. Rhino grunted with annoyance, but he was starting to look nervous. He stumbled away from the pool of rocket fuel or whatever the brown liquid was, but he was still pouring it everywhere.

"Let's see how you react to fire," he snarled, and the jet boots turned on. One of his feet raised up, but the other sparked, igniting the pool of fuel under him. The fire expanded by the trail to the original pool of fuel, which was a lot bigger.

I jumped away onto a wall, and let the thing explode. It was loud and I felt it shake me to my core, but I held firmly to the wall with one hand, using the other to sheathe my escrima sticks.

I looked at Rhino. He was sweating and checking over his suit to make sure nothing was broken, but other than the bruises I made at the start of the fight and the new one on his nose, he looked dandy.

'Actually, he's sweating a lot.' I narrowed my eye and watched closer. 'I can even smell it over the burning fuel...'

A wide grin appeared on my face.

Son of a bitch, he didn't have a way to cool down.

A wheezy little laughter escaped me. My chest still hurt from the electric shock, but the schemes forming in my head were cheering me up.

"Rhino," I said. "I am going to fuck. You. Up."

"Big words for little insect."

"Arachnid."

He rolled his eyes, which meant he got surpsied by the webs that slammed into his face.

I stuck one to his chest, and started running, dragging him behind me.

'Alright, I think I have a plan,' I thought, putting a sudden stop to my run and turning the forward motion into a spin to send the armored brute flying. 'Step one: locate inflamable liquids or gases. Step two: set him on fire. Step three: profit.'

Rhino bounced twice off of the street, covering his head with his arms. He got up once he was done bouncing, glaring at me.

I raised my mask up to my nose, stuck a thumb in each ear and waggled the fingers, and blew a loud, long raspberry.

He growled and rushed me, and I started swinging around.

'Now, can a bitch get a bar around here?'

Keeping an enemy interested and chasing you was a difficult and subtle science. You have to balance annoyance against personal safety, and divide it by the square root of four.

Or, in simple terms, you have to stay close enough that the villain thinks they can get you, but far enough they actually can't. Thus, the villain follows, and you take them to somewhere you'll have an advantage.

To me, that was a night club on the Jersey Shore.

While the Rhino was three blocks away (far enough that I had time, but close enough that he could see me) I went into the club. The music was loud, and there was some orange douchebag with black hair gelled into a mohawk lifting his t-shirt to show his abs to some girl near the bar.

I slammed a hand into the bar, cracking it, and shouted over the music. "I DON'T HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN, BUT I NEED EVERY BOTTLE OF VODKA YOU HAVE TO BEAT A VILLAIN!"

To his credit, the bartender didn't even question it. He just nodded, pulled a big box filled with twelve bottles of some sort of Russian vodka, and handed it to me with a grave nod.

"Yo, what's up with that?" the orange douche complained, turning around to look at me while still lifting his shirt. "Some clown comes in and you just give him our booze for free?"

"I'm a hero, fuck head. I have to stop a guy involved in a gun smuggling operation." I said, grabbing the box.

He put a hand on it, and tried to stop me. "Yeah? Well I wanna see some fuckin I.D."

I stared at him. He smirked back.

I slammed his head into the bar, cracking his nose, grabbed the box, and left with a nod to the bartender, who mouthed 'thank you'.

Fucking Jersey Shore, I swear to God.

I came out to find Rhino three steps away from the door.

I jumped up on him, off of there and onto a building's wall, and started tossing bottles at him.

"Gah!" He covered his exposed head from the shards of glass. "This isn't very heroic of you!"

"I'm not exactly a very heroic hero," I admitted, throwing the last few bottles and pulling a zippo lighter from my pocket. "Don't worry, I'll make sure you don't end up disfigured."

I lit the Rhino on fire.

He didn't scream. He was actually very dignified about it, he just stared me down while his armor burned.

"The Tinkerer is a scrawny old bastard," he said. "But he is no fool."

"So you actually have something against overheating?"

"Da," he smirked. "I didn't want to use it against little fire in winter cold."

His armor glimmered again, and the fire soon dissappeared, replaced with crackling yellow energy.

I remembered what the Tinkerer said in his workshop. "Energy convertor?"

His smirk turned into a toothy smile. "Heat to kinetic."

"Shit."

I jumped off of the wall and swung away. Looking over my shoulder, I could see Rhino stomping down the street at full speed, covered in a yellow aura. He was moving three times faster than before; he jumped and would have caught me had I not changed directions at the last second.

He landed, and kept chasing me.

'Right, new plan.' I thought. 'Wait for him to run out of energy, and... uh...'

I looked around for something useful. A convenient building about to be demolished, a construction site, an explosives factory.

Nothing. Just the stupid bea-

...

"Okay, that might-"

[DANGER!]

Rhino slammed into me, and I heard something go "CRACK!" in my chest. He held me in a bear hug as we quickly sailed through the air, and ended with him slamming me on the ground.

I coughed. I had almost definitely broken a rib. It hurt to breathe, so when he got off of me I flipped him off instead of using my considerable vocabulary to expressed the depth of my hatred for him at that moment.

"Very charming," he informed me, before raising a foot and slamming it down on my stomach. I wheezed, and had to swallow to avoid throwing up inside my mask. Choking in your own vomit is a pretty Rock n' Roll way to go, but I wasn't Jimi Hendrix. "You are resourceful enemy, Spider. But I am mightier."

I coughed, and slowly lifted the bottom of my mask to show my mouth.

I mouthed four words at him.

"What was that?"

I mouthed the same four words again.

"I can't hear you."

I gestured for him to get closer, and he did as such. Probably felt confident on account of how I could barely breathe, which was reasonable.

I sucked in a breath through grit teeth, and spoke in a harsh pant. "Maybe. But she's Marvelous."

Rhino blinked. As I figured, the suit didn't just make him loose his sense of pain, it also meant he didn't feel Ms. Marvel's two stretched arms wrapping around him before embiggening and lifting him up way over her head.

"Oh, blyat," I heard him mutter, before she sent him flying.

I chuckled a little. I always liked Russian swear words. I was also possibly a bit delirious from pain.

"Spider! Oh my god, are you okay?" Marvel rushed over and knelt by my side, looking me over. "I saw him lifting you up, and I rushed over just in time to see-"

"I know," I wheezed. "Super senses. Always on."

"Oh, right." I tried to get up, but she gently pushed me back down. "Don't worry, I got this. You just take a breather."

"I'd like to, but I think he broke my ribs." I chuckled a little, then winced with pain. "Ow. Anyway, have plan. Get me off street."

"Plan? Right, plan. I'll pick you up." She was babbling nervously, but she still got it done. She picked me up, and let me Yoda-ride on her back. "What's your plan?"

"Heavy. Throw him in the ocean. Pull him out when he's knocked out." Marvel made to complain, and I covered her mouth before she could. "Only plan I have left. Too tough, too shocky, gets stronger if he burns."

"... Fine." She looked over at Rhino, who was calmly walking over. "How do we toss him in?"

"Go near beach. Maybe docks. Separate, distraction and thrower."

"Which is which?"

"Still working on that," I admitted

"Well, you better hurry, then." Marvel literally stretched her legs, and took to the rooftops. I shot a few webs at Rhino, to keep him engaged. Marvel caught the hint and shouted back, "Hey! Come get us, you big grey ugly... jerk!"

"Hurtful," Rhino said. He sounded like he meant it, too.

We rushed over to some docks, with a big head start on Rhino. We had maybe five minutes unless he used what I figured he had left of kinetic energy.

I dropped down from Marvel's back, and rested my back against a container.

"Okay, plan figured out." I said. "I'm distraction; you're thrower. I get him to you, you dunk him in water."

"I'm not letting you put yourself in danger in that state," she said.

"So I'll just throw the five thousand power-armored asshole with broken ribs?" I asked.

"... Dammit," she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, realeased it, and opened them. "How do you want me?"

Before my brain could filter them, the words escaped my mouth. "In the politically incorrect Ms. Marvel outfit. The one with the boots."

She stared at me, cheeks darkening. I blushed too.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Brain isn't working and you're pretty. Go behind this container, a bit to the right from my perspective. You'll know when to toss Rhino."

"Right," she squeaked. "I'll do that."

'Well, look at the bright side, Jackass,' I told myself. 'At least if Rhino kills you you don't have to continue the rest of your team-up with that between you and Kamala.'

I snorted with amusement, and stumbled away from the container. I stood, legs set in a wide stance, and arms pushed forward. I forced a deep breath, held it for four seconds, and released it.

Rhino smashed into the docks, and his eyes immidiately found me.

"Spider," he greeted. "Your resilience is a credit to you. Where is your friend?"

"Helping with the trap we're setting up. Don't be surprised if a comet falls on you."

"Funny," he said. He actually did seem amused. "I'll show you respect for your determination, and use the last of my kinetic energy against you. You've given me the most entretaining fight I've had since I put on this suit. No one else broke through the invisibility."

He was inexperienced with everything that wasn't punching. I shuddered to think what might happen if he practiced with the thing.

I slid my right foot back, and focused. "Bring it, Rhino."

"Will do, Spider."

He got in a runner's stance, and yellow energy started crackling around his frame.

My senses focused on him to the point that I took back the tunnel vision Murdock worked so hard to get rid of.

He smashed the ground as he charged forward, and I waited.

'I am the stone that the builder refused.'

He charged forward, and when I felt his fist approaching, I took it with both hands and used it as leverage to move his entire body. I transformed all the energy of his approach into a spin, and I barely got a glimpse of his expression as he moved through the air.

His wide eyes and slack jaw would make me chuckle for months whenever I remembered it.

My chest ached with pain, but I ignored it. The yellow energy that surrounded Rhino's suit disappeared uselessly into the air, as his own strenght sent him smashing into and through the container.

I fell to the ground, wheezing and crying in pain, but victorious.

'Chop, chop, chop. A judo flip.'

I almost laughed.

I lifted my chin, and smiled as I saw Marvel tossing Rhino into the water. 'Atta girl.'

I forced myself to stand again, and shuffled over to where Marvel was holding Rhino in the water, ready to pull him out when he stopped struggling.

"You judo flipped him. With broken ribs." She sounded like she couldn't believe it. I couldn't either, and it was my plan.

"Yeah," I sat down, and groaned in pain. "You mind if I rest a while? Maybe take over asking questions?"

"No problem."

I closed my eyes, but still found the energy to add, "Wake me up when you're done."

"Will do."

I woke up to Marvel's gentle shaking of my shoudler that made pain spring up in my chest. "Gah!"

"Sorry!" Marvel pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "I'm done talking with Aleksei, and I know what we should do."

"Who?" I looked behind her, and found Rhino sitting obediently there. "Your name's Aleksei, man?"

"Da."

"And you're not running away?"

"You won fair and square. Very clever about it."

"Huh. Thanks." I blinked lazily at Marvel. "What's your plan again?"

"We go to the police."

"Fuck the police."

She blinked and leaned away, seemingly taken back. "Whoa, why?"

"No, sorry, that's just instinctive at this point. You think we can trust the cops here?"

"I'm pretty sure that we can. I already called ahead -I mean, I let them know that we might gather more evidence first, in case you said no- and they said they'd arrange somewhere public we could meet in case of corruption in the Force."

I was still half-asleep, and that still rang all the alarm bells in my head. "No. No way."

"I know, but we have to try. You almost got pancaked because we were doing this alone, and I'm starting to think this might be Avengers-level."

"It doesn't matter what level it is if we get shot in the middle of it," I pointed out.

"Look, trust me." She said, locking her eyes with mine. "This will be fine."

I closed my eye and thought it over. "Fine. But you're carrying me and Aleksei."

"I can walk on my own."

"You're kind of a prisioner, dude."

"Ah, right."

Marvel was kind enough to actually carry us, even when I insisted I was kidding, and soon we were near some train tracks, where there were already a few cops waiting for us.

"Ms. Marvel!" One greeted her, with a smile on his face. "And... Spider-Man? I thought you were New York."

"I am. Some punk bitch is trying to move in, so I decided to turn it around on him." I was forcing myself to stand, but I wasn't very action-capable at the moment. I could smack around three or four vanilla humans, but there were seven officers. If they attacked, I'd need Marvel and maybe Rhino's help.

"Anyway," Marvel smiled. "You guys look through the camera?"

I was very glad I'd never touched that thing with my bare hands.

"We did. Lots of incriminating stuff. You two did a good job." Marvel beamed. "And this is the guy that was there at the workshop?"

"Da. I am the Rhino."

"Good."

[Holsters unlocking and six weapons slowly getting pulled]

"Then there's-"

I stuck a web near the nearest officer's arm, and pulled him to me. I held him by the wrist over his head, making the pistol in his grip plain to see.

"So," I looked at Marvel, who was gaping at me. "Trustworthy cops?"

She turned around looking furious, but the other cop was already pulling the trigger.

"NO!" I threw the cop I was holding into another and made to run, but collapsed in pain.

My sight got blurry and dark around the edges. The thought that I might have gotten Kamala killed made me grit my teeth. I tried to push myself up, but the pain was too much. I gasped and fell again. Gunshots rang out, but I felt no new pain. Suddenly, I was picked up with shocking gentleness, and I looked up to find Aleksei carrying me with one arm and Marvel with the other.

I almost passed out a few times, but he ran us out of there, and soon we were crouching in some dirty alley.

"Fuck me and everything else," I cursed. I turned to look at Aleksei, and nodded respectfully at him. "Thanks for your help, man."

"No problem." He spat at the ground disdainfully. "Filthy politsiya should be ashamed. Gangsters should do crime. Politsiya should catch gangsters."

"Couldn't agree more." I walked over and, with grit teeth and breaths sucked inbetween them, I picked up Marvel. "I'll take her somewhere safe. You should still get arrested."

"How?"

"I dunno, just..." I sighed. "Go to New York. Get Captain Stacy, tell him I sent you and explain the situation as best as you can. He should arrest you."

"He's good politsiya?"

"Yeah. Honest to a fault. It's amazing he made Captain in New York without being corrupt, hoenstly."

Rhino nodded. "Then I'll go. Will you two be fine?"

"Yeah, pretty sure we will."

He nodded, and calmly walked out of the alley and down the street. Who the fuck was going to stop him? He was a behemoth in power armor.

And honestly, that's what I loved most about being a hero in the Marvel Multiverse. Sure, the jails might as well have revolving doors at the front, but most villains had something of a code of honor. You treat them right, they treat you right back. And guys like Rhino, or Shocker? They don't mind walking themselves to jail if asshole cops shoot you when you're handing them in, because even if they're on the wrong side of the law, they still understand how the law should be.

appI shook Marvel gently, and she stirred awake. She'd gotten shot twice in the left shoulder, but I didn't think that the cops had hit any arteries. I'd covered the wound with webs, but it wasn't ideal. In summation: she needed medical attention soon-ish.

"Spider?" she said. "What-"

"Cops were dirty. Sorry."

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Dammit."

"Yeah, listen, I need you awake." She kept her eyes closed, and I gently shook her again. She opened them halfway. "I have no idea how to get anywhere. Do you want to go to a hospital?"

"N-no," she shook her head. "Can't let people know my identity."

"That's fine. Your house? Do you have a first aid kit?"

"No," she blinked lazily. "Circle Q has one. Bruno keeps it stocked. He worries."

"Friends do that. Okay, you can relax a bit." I lifted her up and made some web lines to keep her tied to me. "I'll get you some help, okay?"

"Okay," she closed her eyes, and rested her head against my shoudler as I swung, trying to ignore the huge amounts of pain it caused. "You have a great butt."

"It's good to know I'm not the only one that makes an ass of themselves when they're hurt," I drily noted.

Bruno was cleaning up inside the Circle Q before leaving in the quiet of the night. I imagine he got a big scare when he saw me, Marvel's arm over my shoulder and with me holding her weight, knocking on his door.

"Open the fuck up already!" I shouted. He rushed over to open the door, and I shoved past him, dragging Marvel to the bathroom. "Get the kit, now!"

He went, no questions asked, and I sat down Marvel on the toilet.

Bruno came back in just in time to see me ripping Marvel's costume open. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"She can be modest and bleed out, or she can be embarrassed and alive. Now leave the kit open over there and fuck off, I need to focus and you breathing over my neck isn't going to help."

"I can help!" he said.

"Do you have experience removing bullets?"

"N-no?"

"I do. Now fuck off. Maybe get her some comfort food or something for when she needs it."

He ran, and I focused on the task at hand.

I was a bit rougher on Bruno that I should have been. To his credit, the bathroom was extremely clean, and the kit was very well stocked. I took off the gloves and webshooters of my costume, washed my hands thoroughly and put on some disposable medical gloves. I grabbed a pincer, and started the painful process of removing the two bullets from Marvel's shoulder.

I dropped them in the sink, and started disinfecting the wound.

"D'you have to rip my costume?" she asked. I looked up and found that Marvel was asleep, but she didn't look great. She was a bit pale, and her eyes were moving a bit lazily. She must have lost a bit too much blood.

"Sorry," I said, finishing disinfecting with a few hisses from her. I started threading a needle after replacing my gloves. "I'll just stitch this up, do something for my ribs, and get you some clothes if you don't have any here."

"I don't."

"You should. For future reference."

"Some heroes have secret caves," she scoffed. "I have the Circle Q."

"If it makes you feel better, the Spider Cave is the basement of my parents' house." I started stitching up her wound. "Hold still."

"You live with your parents?" Marvel asked.

"I'm sixteen," I pointed out. "Seventeen in April, not that it matters."

"You're telling me I'm the same age as Spider-Man?" she actually smiled at that. "That's cool."

I finished stitching the first hole, and went for the second. "If you say so."

I worked in silence for a while, before she spoke again. "Why are you a hero?"

"Why are you a hero?" I said.

"I asked first."

I rolled my eye. "It just seemed right, I guess. I got powers, so I might as well use 'em for good, right? With power there must also come responsibility, that's a speech my dad likes to make."

"My dad says something similar whenever we see something bad on T.V.," she whispered. "It's this ayah from the Quran. Whenever we see a villain attack or a bombing or something. He says 'Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind — and whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.' I always liked that, it made me feel better when I was a kid."

"Hm," I smiled. "I like your motivation, Ms. Marvel."

"And I yours, Spider-Man." She returned the smile.

I finished stitching her up, and I quickly bandaged her up. "Do you have a healing factor or something?"

"A pretty weak one, yeah. It's mostly just a fast metabolism."

"Let's meet again in five days so I can check on it. Until then, be careful and don't move your arm too much, got it?"

"Yeah." She seemed exhausted. "Be honest. Did I mess up?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes. Now we have to get back up, wipe the mud off, and start again. Negative's going down."

Marvel smiled. "Hell yeah he is."

"Oh, now I think I might be a bad influence on my friend."

"I know you are."

I laughed, and winced in pain. "Fuck, that smarts."

"Oh, shoot, your ribs! I completely forgot!" She got off the toilet and traded places with me. "How do you fix ribs?"

"You don't move around like an idiot, for starters," I groaned. I took off the top of my costume and dropped it on the floor. My chest had some pretty ugly bruises where Aleksei hit me. The guy was probably going to be another frenemy, but this one he was going to pay for next time we fought. "Your friend's getting food for you. Just eat and get me some food and ice too, they'll help more than anything."

She nodded and made to rush away, before I spoke up.

"Your costume's still torn at the chest, by the way."

She looked down at her very visible bra, blushed, and held it together with her uninjured arm before running off again.

Bruno would probably never forgive me.

I popped some pain medication from the first aid kit -probably enough to kill normal people, but barely enough to relieve me- and leaned back, taking deep breaths to avoid pneumonia. Broken ribs typically took six weeks to heal. It'd probably be less for me if I was just careful.

Marvel rushed back in with half a gyro hanging from her mouth, a full one in one hand, and a few small bags of ice piled up on the other. I stuck the full gyro in my own mouth, and asked her to hand me the gloves and webshooters, which I used to stick the bags of ice to my ribs and chest.

We ate in silence, a strange companionship born of fighting the same fight and keeping each other safe.

"I'm sorry," she said. "About the cops."

"It's fine." I said, finishing my gyro. "I mean, it's trouble, but that's just part of the job, right? We're not really set that far back."

Negative might know I was in town now, but that was going to happen soon enough anyways.

"I'll do better," she insisted. "I'm still getting the hang of this. But I'm going to do better."

"That's all anyone can ask."

There was silence for a while longer, before she cleared her throat. "By the way, about this place..."

"You're Kamala." I said. Better to rip the band-aid. "Same hair, build, and face. Same friend. Same hangout place."

She sighed. "Dammit."

I looked at her. Kamala Khan made a big deal about her secret identity. She only revealed it on purpose in the comics when she felt hopeless or completely shaken, as far as I could remember.

I too sighed, and removed my mask. "Fuck it. Fair's fair."

She gaped at me. "Y-you're the new guy!"

"Don't shout it," I chastised. "I'm already pretty bad at keeping it a secret without your contribution to the cause."

"Sorry," she said, closing the door, and sitting down in front of it. "It's... Jake, right? What happened to your eye? That wasn't there before."

I sighed. "Ninjas. I caught a shuriken to the face, and a magician friend got me an illusion ring. I look normal, but I'm still missing an eye, so I have to rely on Super Senses to make up for the lack of depth perception."

"Couldn't your friend just grow your eye back?"

"Apparently, to do that sort of stuff with magic, you need a few demons around." I guess that made sense. I knew that Strange's hands were still fucked up, and Doom would have probably fixed his face if it didn't require help from the same beings that took his mother from him. "I like my soul where it is, even if I'm not using it for anything, so a missing eye it is."

"Oh," Marvel made a face. "Sorry."

"Don't mention it," I shrugged. "I'm thinking of getting a robot eye or something when I find the chance, but it barely makes a difference to me, so..."

"You're weirdly chill about this."

I snorted, and let silence fall. We rested in a companiable silence until she decided to leave for her home, and I did the same shortly afterwards.

I fell asleep in my apartment with pain all over my body, and I realized for the first time how I'd come to depend on hearing the Parker's sleepy breathing to lull myself to sleep.