Chapter 23: Guilt by association

Snow was still falling by the time Jason found him but he could barely feel the cold. All he could think about was what he had just witnessed. Veins bulging, muscles expanding…

It was almost a puzzle except, for once, it was one he had trouble solving. He was missing pieces, so many in fact that he had no clue where to even begin putting it together. What had happened could have been some form of extreme mutation, the result of chemical exposure or injection, a drug or the effect of some mutant-meta power.

As he stayed there, frozen and staring at a corpse, he heard his friend walk up behind him, felt a hand rest above his jacket -or rather what was left of it.

"Come on, we've got to leave." Jason tugged his shoulder, not managing to make him move an inch. "What the-" the biker cursed, trying to pull him once more.

Peter could smell the unnatural scents mixing in with those of early death. Chemicals, yes… but was it an accident or something more deliberate? He shook his head, lost in thought.

"Dude, you really do not want to be here when the lures run out." Jason tried again, now shaking his shoulders to snap him out of his daze. "We need to fuck off right now."

"I-" Peter bit down on his lip, shook his head. "Okay. Okay."

"Thank fucking God." His friend half cursed half sighed in relief. "Hop in, they're gonna be here soon."

"What about-" He looked at the body, slumped in a puddle of stinking chemicals and bodily fluids. Death was never nice on the senses of the living or the dignity of the deceased.

"Nothing we can do."

Jason pushed him again and, this time, he had enough common sense to pretend to stumble slightly. "We need to go now."

As if to make his point, a low rumble reached them from the street, getting louder as it sped towards them. Peter had heard it before, during a night of ashes and flames. He gulped.

"Bats?" He jumped on the back of the bike, clenching his fists. His powerlessness was making him angry.

"You fucking bet, kiddo." Jason grunted. The older teen slid on his helmet, stopping any other attempts at conversation. One heartbeat later, they were on their way, the roar of their bike mixing in with the sound of the vigilante group approaching them.

Do they think we have something to do with this? He wondered, casting one last look at the prone body of the stranger in the center of the ruined construction zone. If they got hold of his DNA during the encounter with Firefly, would they be able to find more traces of it here?

He felt like he had forgotten about something and, as the icy winds of winter hit his bare face he suddenly remembered what.

"I left my helmet behind!" He yelped, causing Jason to flinch slightly.

"What?" His friend replied over the roar of the engine and the whistling wind. Of course, he was only human and his senses were nowhere as sharp as Peter's.

Nothing you can do about it, Parker, he tried to calm himself. With a bit of luck, maybe it got crushed under the ruins. Like all those poor civilians he did not manage to save.

He took a deep breath of frozen air. He had had long talks with his friends and older vigilantes in the past about guilt and what he should and should not feel after failing to save someone but it had never really stuck to him. It was even more disheartening to go through it now, when he felt like Spider-Man was at his most useless.

Behind them, the roaring of an engine made for speed and power rolled closer and closer. The bike might be a marvel of engineering but it seemed to lag a bit compared to whatever the Bats were using to chase them down.

Do they really think we caused this?

Abruptly, Jason turned the bike, skidding on ice and swerving so low both of them almost touched the ground. Miraculously, the powerful motorcycle held on and kept balance.

They headed into a tiny alleyway, their shoulders brushing past protruding planters and Christmas ornaments in the confines of the cramped street. They swerved a few more times, each time burrowing deeper into the small alleys that made up the vessels around and inside of Gotham's heart. Peter could feel his anxiety rising, as well as a tingling feeling at the back of his neck.

Without thinking, he slammed a fist into Jason's shoulder to get his attention. The older teen cried out but seemed to listen as closely as he could when he yelled at him to turn away from the street they were about to enter, a dim alley, as silent as a graveyard.

Miraculously, the young man heard him despite his helmet and nodded. The sudden turn slammed both them and the bike into the wall of a nearby building but Jason did not waste a second speeding away. As if to confirm what he had just felt, Peter heard a second engine join the chase, then a third.

He turned back on his seat to squint at the darkness and cursed mentally. Two bikes were riding just behind them, both of them with a costumed vigilante behind the wheel. They were getting worryingly close, only a few car lengths away.

He was in such a rush he had trouble identifying the body armors they were wearing but, although he could not put a name to them, it was obvious they were part of the greater alliance of heroes in Gotham. Not the people he wanted to go against at all.

"We were helping!" He shouted. "We want to help!"

In reply, one of the figures tugged a strange machine out of the side of their vehicle. It was only when the wires it shot hit him and he was struck with a bolt of electricity that he realized what it was. The reach on this taser was simply insane. And for it to be so reliable when they were engaged in a motorcycle chase made it even more impressive.

Pain made his teeth clench so hard he heard one of them crack. Shakily, he tore the wires out of his clothes and skin and, his mind clouded by the burn quickly forming and, just as quickly, healing on his chest, he tugged at it with all his strength.

The machine went flying from the vigilante's hand and he grabbed onto it by reflex, slightly surprised at the outcome of his rash decision making. He was so taken aback that he almost fell out of his precarious seat when Jason decided to take them up a flight of stairs, no doubt ruining a few steps in the process. The shaking made his burning skin ache as it rubbed against what was left of his poor jacket. He grimaced, glancing back to see they were being followed as closely as before. The taser burned his hand, uncontrollable and, likely, made to only work for its owner. He threw it away, smashing it against a nearby house.

I am not getting into a fight with the local vigilantes, he promised himself. This was definitely not a good situation to be in if he ever wanted to cooperate with the Bats but he could at least avoid sending one of them to the hospital if he could. That would make the likelihood of them not arresting him on sight slightly better. Not that it looked very good for him on that regards, with them already chasing after him.

Jason, apparently, was not in agreement on that point as, after reaching a larger road and being welcomed by the foreboding form of a large, almost tank-like vehicle, he cursed and slipped one of his many firearms out of the body of his bike. Although it looked like a handgun, its barrel was longer and thicker than anything Peter had seen before and, when it shot a few rounds, the sound was loud enough to have belonged to a shotgun.

"Holy shit," he gasped, ears ringing. "Don't shoot them!"

"My bike, my rules!" Jason shouted back, emptying his magazine on the armored vehicle as it followed them onto the road.

Despite all of the older boy's mastery of the road and knowledge of the city, it seemed to become harder and harder to stay ahead of the beast that was chasing them. As if to make matters worse, more vigilantes joined the hunt, pressing them further and further ahead. Peter could already see what would happen to them once caught. They would be blamed for what had happened, even though they had been helping. Just like what had happened to him in his original universe. Just like that…

No. No, it couldn't end that way. He couldn't be labeled as a criminal for something he had not committed, not again, not now. He was only starting to figure things out!

Perhaps he couldn't fight them but he could slow them down. It would require revealing what he truly was but-

Well he had already been failing at hiding most of his powers while in Gotham, worse he had showcased them in front of a crowd of hundreds only a few days earlier.

He took a deep breath. He did not need to fight the Bats to slow them down, he just had to be fast about it, not leave them a chance to capture him. He could not underestimate them.

Not wanting to give himself time to question his decision, Peter brought his legs up and crouched on the seat behind Jason. "I'll catch up!" He yelled over the wind, not knowing if he would be heard. "Please don't shoot me!"

He already knew his jump would hit the bike pretty hard but he still felt a sliver of guilt as his friend almost lost control of the vehicle from the amount of force he put behind it. His concerns were quickly forgotten as he arched through the air, twisting backwards to face the Gotham vigilantes, feet up in the air and head pointed to the ground, now so far away that, were he not a super, a meta, he would have died on impact.

As it was, he finished his backflip and slammed down onto the black vehicle with all of the strength of an unleashed meta. The alloy of the armored hood crunched like thin aluminium under his feet as he bore down on it. It did not stop, still speeding after Jason. His bare face burned as he knew it was being recorded for the vigilantes to study later. There was nothing he could do about it. He had to help his friend escape.

They would not be blamed for something they did not do.

With a roar, he stuck his hands to the metal and tugged. The armor flew away from the outside of the vehicle just as sparks of electricity were starting to gather at its edges. The hair on his arm stood as he was hit by a small wave of current, travelling through the damaged vehicle. He gritted his teeth, vapor and smoke burning his lungs as he kept wailing on the engine.

"We were trying to help!" He snarled, anger rising. "Don't you have better things to do?"

He ended his sentence by hoisting himself up on his hands, ignoring the weaker shots of electricity and the speed of the tank-car, still rushing through the streets. He bent backward, hands holding onto the burning hot core of the machine, and his left foot slammed into the glass of the windscreen. To his surprise, it did not break immediately and instead cracked, a spider web of damage spreading across its length.

"What the fuck?" He heard someone yell from his side and, suddenly, he remembered the bikes.

Three other vigilantes were speeding alongside the main vehicle, on motorcycles that looked so technologically advanced they reminded me of some Stark Tech in his home world. The figures on them were slim but muscular, clad in varying outfits. Two of them had a female silhouette, one dressed in full black and the other in purple. The other one reminded him of the pictures he had seen of Robin online, only with more red and black.

And… all three were pointing something -a gun?- at him. The back of his neck itched and his mind screamed at him to JUMP!

His instincts had saved him many times before. He put both feet down on the windscreen, snarling with rage at being suspected of something he would never even consider doing, and he pushed back as hard as he could.

He felt the reinforced glass give out under the pressure but, even as it groaned and splintered, he was already off, faster than even the bikes. He slammed his hands on the rugged stones of the old street they had ended up into and used the ground as a springboard to jump again, his arms doing all of the work for him. Behind him, three different weapons went off, electricity crackling so strongly that he could smell it in the winter air.

"Catch me if you can!" He called out to the vigilantes behind him. "See you never again!"

A heartbeat after that, his feet hit the ground. He started running, as fast as he could, leaving the Bats in the dust.

Or so he thought.

Although the bikes struggled to keep up, he could hear the damaged car somehow still following him, engine roaring louder than a train now that they were both being pushed to their limits. He felt a bit amazed to find such advanced technology in this world, without any Tony Stark to push it forwards.

If they don't have Tony or Wakanda, they probably have some other genius or advanced civilization hiding somewhere, he mused, quickly looking back to see the tank-car still following after him.

"Time to do some parkour." He muttered. His thick leather boots would not do for this kind of sticking. With a heavy heart, he tore them off, ending up running into the snow on socked feet.

He tossed the ruined shoes away and crouched down, hearing his pursuers getting closer and closer behind him.

"Seeya, Bats." He called one last time, before springing up. He jumped high enough to land on one of the many ancient apartment buildings of old Gotham. Straightening up, he cast a look down just in time to see the roof of the black vehicle opening up suddenly and-

Something zipped past him, slamming into the chimney he was standing next to. His Spider Sense tingled, hard.

Peter did not question his powers, he knew better than that for now. He took off before the Bat was done grappling his way up to where he had escaped but, even as he jumped from roof to roof, he could hear the whirling and whizzing of several grappling hooks being shot out of different guns. At least four people were after him, the same ones that followed him on the street, maybe? He did not have time to turn around to find out.

The cold made his toes hurt as he skidded into ice and stuck his way up walls that were too slick for any regular human to climb. He could hear the hooks getting closer and closer but still, he went on.

Just as he was about to use the last of his energy for a burst of speed he did not know if he could manage, he heard a click, coming from a roof to his left.

Heat.

Extreme heat blasted behind him, yet his Spider Sense did not act up. He turned around to see a small round object hit the top of the building he had been on a second earlier, releasing a burst of flames into the night. Behind the fire, he could make out four figures, three thinner and smaller and one who was…

He was tall, even more than what he had expected from his research. His muscular form was framed by a long, black cape floating in the wind. His eyes glowed in the dark, no doubt a feature of the otherwise fully black cowl he was wearing. His very aura was so intimidating Peter could not help but take a step back.

"Here!" A familiar voice shouted on his left. "Come here!"

He followed it to its source even as another grenade went off. There, somehow standing next to the bike he had grown to associate with him, was his friend of less than one week. They barely knew each other yet here Jason was, waving at him and tearing off part of another explosive to hurl it at the vigilantes.

"Come here kid!"

Peter shot a last glance at the bats, who were now regrouping on other buildings to avoid the many explosions. Miraculously, the roofs were left intact by the blasts but still, it was clear those weapons could kill.

He took a deep breath, then jumped. He landed in a crouch next to his neighbor, who looked less than surprised by his display of power. Figures. He hadn't been very good at hiding his skills anyway, not in Gotham, where he constantly needed to use them.

"How are you getting the bike down?" He asked Jason, settling in behind him.

"Like this," His friend frowned, his face a mask of grim seriousness. He looked about to murder someone, hopefully not him.

To his horror, the older teen pushed the motorcycle forwards, speeding off the edge of the roof and straight towards the pavement below. Peter braced for impact, grimacing.

He did feel the landing but, instead of shattering bones and breaking the bike, they simply bounced slightly on their seats, teeth rattling and were soon off again. Neither of them was wearing a helmet, yet they had never gone this fast before. If anything, the bike now seemed able to rival even the strange black car that had pursued him. It felt hot under his skin, as if the effort was putting such a strain on its engine it was about to explode.

"How?" He gasped but, at the speed they were driving, the question was left unanswered, swallowed by the noise around them. He peered back, unable to see anything but the shapes of constantly shifting streets and buildings as they burrowed deeper into Gotham's heart.

"It's alright." Jason was muttering under his breath. "We'll make it out. It's alright." He said over and over, like a prayer, deaf to anything else that was happening around him. Peter clenched his fists tightly, heart pounding. He had almost been caught, for something he had not done.

"Spider-Man killed Mysterio" a voice mocked him, deep inside his mind. "He is a murderer, a criminal."

Except now, they saw his face. They saw his powers. Worse, they might even be able to scrape some of his DNA and, once they did, they would realize he was not a meta human but something different, something that did not belong to this world. What would they do then?

He shook his head, trying to cast away doubts and questions he could not find the answer for yet. They had to escape, reflecting on their situation would come later.

If only they hadn't gone after his friend too, he would never have gone for their car, or engaged them at all. But he could not let someone be blamed for something they did not commit. He understood that feeling more than anyone after all. What did it matter that Jason had once been a mercenary, what did it matter that he carried firearms? He had tried to save people, the same as him.

No matter what his past held, Jason Todd did not deserve to be treated like a criminal for wanting to rescue civilians.

No one did.

And with that belief burning in his heart, Peter held on, hoping against reason they would make it out safely.

Notes:

Spiderman max speed is 250 mph, normal max speed for batmobile is around 230 mph but it can go up to 300+ with some boosters because Batman does not fear hospital bills.

More Bats soon UwU

Finally getting some time to write by using my phone during breaks. It's slow going but I'll try to post more soon!