With Great Power || Matt & Peter
Matt had been perched on the edge of a building, ears tuned into the sounds of the city, on alert for something out of the ordinary. That’s when the van drove in, the sounds of the hysterical girl it was carrying letting him know something was amiss. Rooftop to rooftop, he approached.
Noting the appearance of someone who could only be the infamous Spider-Man, as the media dubbed him, he paused, hovering above the alley. The newest vigilante around town obviously hadn’t picked up on the unofficial hero rules. You stay in your zone. Matt never went down to Harlem to intrude in Luke’s zone, but here was the Spider coming to the Kitchen.
Regardless, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to introduce himself. He didn’t truly like working with others, but he could admit it’d could be helpful, as proven by his short stint with the Defenders. And the man was winded, breath coming out just a touch faster. He’d probably chased the girl in the van all the way from his home turf. Matt could respect the dedication, even if it made him uneasy to have a stranger in his neighborhood.
Matt was almost amused, listening to the panicked cursing of the would be sex traffickers, until his hearing tuned into Spider-Man’s heartbeat, fast and light and young. He was young, so very young. It sounded like he’d barely made it through puberty, if he had at all. And his voice was higher pitched than a grown man’s would ever be.
Tilting his head at the strange thwip noise he heard, he presumed that must be the web that the media spoke so much about. He hovered, uncertain, suddenly far more invested in the boy’s safety now that he knew it was a boy under whatever colorful mask he was wearing. And he was right to be. The next flurry of activity he picked up proved that the boy couldn’t fight worth a damn, not really.
Descending a fire escape, Matt dropped down just in time to catch another brutal swing of that tire iron with his baton. That would have been at the boy’s head. He’d didn’t speak at first, efficiently matched the man with the tire iron blow for blow, head half tilted back towards the truck where two others were piling out of it, warning, “Watch it!”
Hearing the thunk of tire iron hitting something solid, Peter turned and his eyes followed the baton up the arm holding it, to the man’s masked face. “Woah! You’re Daredevil! Hi!” he exclaimed, his voice almost a squeak in his excitement. That let him know where he was, at least. He’d made it all the way to Hell’s Kitchen. That wasn’t good, he’d never been to this part of town before, and he wasn’t sure how he’d make it back home.
The warning, however, pulled him back into the moment, and the fight that was happening. “Right!” He turned to look at the men rushing at him, shooting out strings of webs from each hand to attach to their chests, yanking them forward so they toppled over onto each other. “Ha!”
Hoping forward, he focused on restraining the men, using his webbing to stick the first man’s hands to the ground, when the other man lashed out, catching his ankle with a steel-toed boot. Pain shot through his leg and he hopped away, tripping over his own feet to fall heavily to the ground in a pile with the men.
Scrambling away, he frantically shot short spurts of web at the men, his aim more than a little off as he tried to stop them from coming at him. “Just stay down!” he shouted at them, finding his back pressed against a dumpster as he shot a bit of web at a guy’s face.
