Public Illness

Much as his protégé begged for them, there weren't many opportunities for a team up between a local crime fighter and a higher level, more experienced… whatever Tony was these days. Hell if he knew anymore. Not the point, anyway.

The point was that he was a part of the big guns and the spiderling was a small can of civilian-strength mace at best. He had potential, sure, but he wasn't there yet.

Even so, when that kind of opportunity arose, despite all downplaying made in the kid's presence for his ego's sake, he made sure not to pass it up. Without exception, it was well below his pay grade and far from the realm of what the Avengers were trained and prepared for, but there was something… intoxicating, maybe, about seeing the kid back-flippingly enthused over having a "mission" together. That wasn't an exaggeration. The kid actually backflipped. Several times. And FRIDAY had the footage to prove it.

Most domestic terrorists were a little low key for Tony, and these ones were no exception. He'd scoffed when FRIDAY concluded they weren't even armed with guns.

On his own, he could handle this in a minute flat from bursting through the door to securing the fallen enemies, but Peter rarely saw so much excitement in his patrols. It wasn't one of the typical heavily debated questions that came up mid-Avengers mission. There was nothing critical to keep him from deciding he should hold back on his end to draw out the confrontation for the kid's sake.

Anything for the kid's sake never seemed to be hard.

It was going a little slowly compared to a solo assignment, but overall, the kid was doing well, and Tony was, dare he say… proud?

Until one of the terrorists lost all interest in Tony mid-spar and turned his gaze to Peter with the gleam of a hurriedly laid out plan in his eye.

The kid never stood a chance.

Already distracted by another target, with one swift hit, Peter dropped to the ground, the skintight suit doing little to dampen the sharp slap of skin against pavement.

Above almost all else, Tony prided himself on his ability to rely on logic over emotions, but his next target was a no-brainer, a swift shot for the offending enemy before he had a chance to wreak further havoc on—don't tell Nat—his favorite teammate. The remaining terrorist did nothing to disguise his current target once he was already down and weakened. His blood ran cold.

"Don't you fucking touch him!" Tony caught himself yelling without thinking, voice pitching up as he lifted a repulsor from "incapacitate without long-term harm" height to "annihilate" range, roughly speaking. FRIDAY morphed it into an exact art by wordlessly pulling up a visual overlay of weak points.

Statistics told him it had been one lucky shot, but statistics didn't apply to Peter, a consistent outlier with borderline future vision that should have warned him way before he ever took the hit.

Something was wrong. He wasn't taking an eye off the kid until he was certain about whatever it was, but the combatant wasn't making it easy. Dodging hits and returning accurate shots of his own wasn't quite so simple when he was trying his hardest to maintain a line of sight on his real priority.

His concern only grew when instead of springing back up like the freaky resilient spider-child he was, Peter doubled over midway through his shaky attempt at standing, spraying the ground with vomit. Shock took over years of training and Tony froze where he stood for just one moment.

The remaining enemy did not.

He leapt for Tony with no hesitation, presumably having seen the wisdom in incapacitating the one opponent who still had the ability to strike back.

He landed on Tony's back and clung around his neck, but he was no match for the armor. Tony jerked a shoulder backward hard enough to throw the man against the furthest wall with a dull thud.

Expecting a quick and easy fight from the start meant he'd skipped his usual command for FRIDAY to do a full scan for additional heat signatures. He didn't have time to regret the decision—or rather, the faulty assumption—before another one was on top of him, though less literally this time.

He dodged a laughably small knife—it was like the guys didn't even try to prepare—and latched onto the person's forearm instead, giving it a hard tug and immediately releasing it to send this one flying across the room into a dogpile with his friend.

He could tell already that hit would be the one to turn the tables, so he had time to spare a glance away from his thoroughly dizzied opponents, but only long enough to see Peter still struggling fruitlessly to return to the dwindling fighting, caught between pitching forward to retch again and stumbling toward the violence. There was no doubt Tony would be the one to finish it off.

And finish it, he did. A few well-aimed shots were all that were needed. The instant he confirmed the terrorists were all well on their way toward unconsciousness, he dropped all pretenses and made a sprint for Peter, who was thoroughly preoccupied with another struggle against his breakfast.

FRIDAY read off a string of vitals and a diagnosis seemingly of her own accord, and Tony could believe she was just that intuitive had he not been her programmer. Instead, he had to assume Karen had been the one to initiate the School Nurse Protocol unasked, which admittedly made much more sense.

The whole day was a shitshow, but on the plus side, the AIs were ninety-five percent sure this was nothing more than a case of the stomach flu and one stubborn teen.

"You're okay," Tony assured while clapping a hesitant hand on Peter's shoulder, more for his own benefit than he let on. "You're alright, just a little sick. Deep breaths, buddy. Relax… Okay, you good?"

The distracted thumbs up was a far cry from Peter's usual chattiness, but Tony knew when to settle for less. Eager to move on from pesky outwardly visible emotions, he changed the subject with little fanfare.

"Well, kid, I don't know about you, but that wasn't the team up I was expecting. Rain check?"