Chapter 14: Destroying Memories

The suit was laid down in front of him, on a tarp he had grabbed from one of the many stores in the Bowery. From the outside, it looked like a perfectly ordinary superhero costume but, when he brushed his fingers against it, he could feel cold metal and tiny mechanisms under its surface. This suit was so much more than what it looked like from the outside.

Despite the technology inside of it, the Iron Spider had died when he left his universe and it hadn't come back to life ever since. It was supposed to be self sufficient, running on Stark Industries' best energy gathering and redistributing system, yet it was now completely off, with no sign of ever powering back up. 

He wondered if it was the trip between worlds that had damaged it or maybe simply the differences between their two universes. Although most universal rules of physics seemed to be shared between the two Earths he had lived on, he couldn't assume that everything was identical. Vibranium, the element discovered by Tony all those years ago, had only impacted the twenty first century. Any other recent scientific breakthroughs could have been something unique to his world, as he had no way of knowing if it existed there or not.

For that, he would either need to work his way up to an important lab position, or manage to get in the good graces of someone important enough to know about any of this.

He sighed, resting his palm against the suit. Peter Parker was a nobody, especially in this universe. And although there were heroes in this world and what appeared to be hero organizations, Spider-Man was not active nor well known here.

It didn't help that he had landed in perhaps the most violent city of North America, where it seemed the average response to any form of meta activity was to take out a gun and shoot at it.

He was only a pizza boy, as far as the world cared, and pizza boys didn't get access to information like this.

Technically, if he studied physics for a few more years and managed to get a secure lab and all the equipment he needed, he could perhaps try to figure out one or two of those major differences between the rules of the two universes. It would require a lot of time though, and a significant amount of money.

He didn't have either.

His heart twinged at the reminder of what could have been. MIT with MJ and Ned, May waiting for him back in New York, a bright and happy future.

He screwed it all up. For himself. For May.

Hopefully his friends got a second chance at life, with Stran-… Stephen's last spell. They could get their happy ending. And he hadn't given up either. He would never allow himself to give up.

Peter's hands were shaking. His stomach felt heavy, upset. He knew he was trying to distract himself from the task he had to finish but-…

It was so hard.

He had so many memories connected to this suit. Most of them were painful yes, but this was his last connection to his home. Well, that and his web shooters, of course.

It hurt to have to take it apart and he had expected it to, that was why he had delayed it so much, even after getting the necessary tools. He couldn't wait any longer though, he had no more excuses. Earlier that day, he had found a cheap sewing machine and, although he hadn't made the trip to find the kind of fabric needed for a super suit, he managed to kit the machine out with enough modifications for him to create pretty much anything he wanted.

With the welding gear and precision computer tools, that was all he needed to scrap the Iron Spider. The one and only thing he was missing was the willpower to do it.

He took another calming breath. He needed to stop thinking and start acting.

The Iron Spider wasn't an easy suit to take apart, even if he had worked on it for several years now, and knew its blueprints by heart. It was a marvel of technology, originally designed by a man much older and experienced than himself. He understood most of the way it worked but still felt very inadequate as he started gathering his equipment.

The least complicated aspect of the suit was its internal skeleton, the same since the original one, made of an alliage of different metals. This frame was stronger along the arms and legs, although it still covered the rest of his body, different joints clicking into place with hundreds and hundreds of small plates, thousands of fibers strung together along those, keeping it all together.

That, he knew, was the easiest thing to dismantle in the suit. That was why he had, very carefully, turned it inside-out, making it so that the parts closest to his skin were now exposed. The frame laid there, under a few layers of armor, cables, nanopods and computer parts.

A lot less layers than on the other side, which held even more plating, parts, and the lines for his secondary web shooters, included into the suit itself.

Slowly, Peter stated working on the exterior, peeling off a first layer of armor on the suit's thigh. Everything below the knee had been destroyed during the fight against Firefly. A big issue with having such a technologically advanced suit was that a lot of its parts were susceptible to very high temperatures.

Most of the back and the shoulders had also been burned to the point where he had to cut away the edges around the damage. Metal had melted together, ruining all nano material and computer information there. Peter's heart sunk as he realized what it meant.

The most important data in the suit was stored around his head, which made the loss that much more disheartening. Both his shoulders had been ripped away, data blown into the wind. Whatever program had been loaded there he would have to rewrite. The nanobots and every other complex sensors and computing systems would be useless until this was fixed. And he didn't even know what had been lost yet, just that he probably had weeks-or months of work ahead of him.

He felt extremely tired. To program that was not only a step above his own skill, since Ned, MJ and Tony's notes and AIs had helped him significantly the first time around, but something he needed a functioning computer for. His own computer. Not one from the public library.

Another shopping trip, then. At least once he had the budget. He was probably going to replace a lot of whatever he got in the future with computer parts from the Iron Spider anyways so it shouldn't be that much…

Expenses kept adding up. Even with a job, not having a sponsor behind him was a serious hindrance to his ability to get back to the field.

Peter shook his head. Focus, Parker. He grabbed a few tweezers, pinchers, a scalpel and a dozen or so pins, along with his bran new second hand leather scissors.

Without his enhanced strength, he wouldn't have been able to use such simple tools to pull the armored layer of the suit off of the main body, and it remained a hard task anyways: even this relatively simple layer had several microscopic hatches meant to help the nanobots in the suit move around its surface, and he had to make sure not to rip any cables out as he separated the different layers.

The sun was still high in the sky when he finished gathering that first exterior, warming up his skin through the roof windows. He had still a lot of work to do. He couldn't rest yet.

The second layer was thinner than the first, although both were only a fraction of an inch -or a few millimeters-. This one required him to take out his anti static wrist strap to make sure he wouldn't damage the most sensitive computer parts. He hooked it up to one of the many metal tools spread out on the tarp around him. This would redirect the electricity in his body away from what he wanted to keep intact.

Although he was only working on a small portion of the suit, it took him more than an hour to finish taking apart this layer and separating everything into the different plastic boxes he had purchased earlier.

The components there were still relatively simple. Several sensors with basic processing power to send information to the "brain" of the suit, some pumps and cables, slithering between the armor plates, sending energy and information to his boots, and dozens more exit routes for the nanobots.

He sorted through each one carefully, sometimes having to use a magnifying glass -how archaic- to make sure he wasn't breaking anything.

It was more stressful than he had expected. His whole attention had to be locked on the task at hand as even the simplest twitch could severely damage the fragile inside of the suit. Yet another issue with technologically advanced armors: they required either a lot of time or a lot of money to take apart.

Peter stood up, the inner layer of the suit exposed in front of him, the last one before he got to the frame. He felt too anxious to work more on it, yet he couldn't leave it exposed for too long. The nanopods were there, he could see them faintly, little white bumps against the dark cables and plates. Those were powerful but also terribly fragile.

He groaned, crouching back down. He hated having to work like this, with so little material. Sure, it was more challenging, but everything just took so long!

At this rate, he'd need a whole week to take the suit apart. And that was if he worked on it every day, morning and afternoon, which realistically wouldn't be the case.

Maybe he could spread it out? He was already thinking of using the Iron Spider to make several suits, splitting its parts in between them. But the arms, the chest, the mask and the legs didn't have the same kind of elements in it, so the result could be unbalanced…

But, really, maybe it was alright. If he was taking apart the Iron Spider, the resulting suits would be less balanced than it no matter what, as they would have less components. Maybe he should use it as an opportunity to think about more specialized suits, like he had been before.

Most of the hydraulic jump enhancers in the boots had been lost to the fire, but he still had a couple around the thighs and arms. They weren't meant to make him jump further but, instead, allowed him to leap quicker and with less damage to whatever he was using to propel himself. It had been a life saver for his reputation, back in Queens, although he sometimes got carried away and accidentally chipped a statue or stone wall.

He could use this for his main suit, limiting damage to buildings and vehicles was something he had to do everyday. This meant that thighs and arms were the first things he had to work on, then, to try to salvage as much of the enhancers as he could.

He could also use the plating and sensors to include simple environmental detection. Maybe heat tracking? He wouldn't be able to include every Iron Spider feature in his next suit, that was for sure, so he would have to select everything very carefully.

As he thought, he moved back to the suit, picking up his work. The last layer was the most complicated and he had to store every parts carefully into little nests of cloth and cotton tucked inside plastic boxes. The sun fell as he finished moving up the thigh and uncovering the frame of the suit. It was only slightly thicker than the other layers, but the materials it was made off was stronger, if less flexible.

His shift was starting soon, however, and he had to carefully cover the exposed layers and store the extracted components in his locker. The Iron Spider couldn't go back under his mattress in this state, so he had to put it there as well, folding it awkwardly and trying not to damage anything as he did so.

The locker was starting to get a bit full, even with the little knobs he had nailed at the top to hang tools from, and the wire he was running in front of them to hang his clothes off of. He didn't want to think about having to buy, clean and customize yet another broken down piece of furniture though, so he chose to ignore it for now.

A blast of cold air hit him as he jumped up on the roof, making him shiver under his hoodie. Despite the sun, Gotham remained a coastal town and winter was harsh. It was now late December, only a few days before Christmas and although snow wasn't falling yet, the wind was enough to make him wish he had invested in a coat.

Too bad his Spider powers didn't include resisting to the elements, that would have been very useful right about now.

The night settled in as he ran above the roofs, leaping across dark alleyways and crouching occasionally to sneak past suspicious groups cluttered on the rooftops.

Oddly, even though darkness had barely fallen, the streets were already starting to stir, and with greater energy than usual. More thugs crowded the rooftops than usual and he could see armed men patrolling several staircases. Something was happening.

The shift wouldn't have been noticeable for anyone who didn't walk those neighborhoods regularly but for Peter, who had spent the past week in a state of extreme alertness, it was obvious. Criminals weren't usually this bold so early into the evening.

He was even more careful than usual making his way over to the pizzeria. Even there, things looked unusual. He could identify at least five gang members roaming around the street, something he had never witnessed this close to Old Gotham.

Most of them were wearing flowers on their jackets, all were carrying weapons. They didn't pay him any attention as he made his way past them, hands in his pockets. They laughed together, seemingly in good spirits.

Tonight's shift was going to be an interesting one. He was going to have to be careful, of course, but it looked like something had shifted in the Gotham underground, he needed to figure out what it was.

And then what? he scolded himself mentally. His suit wasn't ready yet, there was nothing he could do to intervene, and he didn't have any contact to relay informa-

Gordon.

His eyes widened. He did have someone to give information to, someone important as well. The commissioner worked with the Batman, he remembered reading about that. If he did hear anything interesting, it might make its way back to an active vigilante.

His mind made up, Peter decided to pay close attention to the underworld that night and the following ones. He wasn't completely useless, even without a mask.

It made him feel a bit better about himself.

Notes:

I am currently covering for someone's work at a barn….. which is cutting into my free time :( good side is I'm learning how to do barn stuff

Kind of a filler chapter but I'm gonna try to write another one tonight with more PLOT.