A Slice Of Life, Death And Everything In-Between

Mortals' Chiefest Enemy

"Ow, you sir, you pack quite a punch there. It's a good thing that I do too--"

"Hey!" Peter shouts, finally swinging down from the ceiling. With a muffle grunt, the spiderling slams into a criminal on the outer edge of the ring, coming to a crouched stop right next to a stunned Tony. "Get the hell away from him!"

"What the--?" Tony starts, before he's cut off by gunshots. With a curse, the billionaire starts to blast around them, both him and Peter now back-to-back. He yells over his shoulder. "Kid, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"I thought something happened to your suit?" Peter shouts back instead of answering, barely managing to dodge a bullet as it shoots past his head, hitting the far wall with a sharp ping .

"There's nothing wrong with my suit, just --" Tony turns around, managing to shoot down the criminal who shot at Peter, pausing for just a second to look over the boy just as Peter fires his own web, sticking two criminals together before attaching them to a wall, right next to the others. "What are you doing here?"

"Wanted to help." Peter says, flipping over the gun of a man as he swings it toward the spiderling's head, apparently out of bullets. He clambers up the wall, slipping down on the other side of a metal pipe, firing his webs over top."Queens was fine, so--"

"I wasn't worried about Queens, you bambino idiota !" Tony's voice, despite the angry words, is clogged in fear and worry and Peter feels a hot flash of guit shoot down his spine. He swallows. "I was worried about you ."

"You don't have to worry about me, Tony." Peter says, before yelping in pain as a stray bullet grazes his arm, zipping past him and leaving a small trail of fire-hot burning in its wake. "I'm fine!"

"Not very convincing there, bubba."

Tony shoots down what seems to be the last man, both him and Peter coming to a stop near the middle of the warehouse, the bodies around them. Peter tries not to stare at the ones still smoldering near his feet, instead turning toward Tony. The billionaire takes a second to pause, seeming to survey the area around them, before sighing.

Without hesitation, Tony unclasps the Iron Man helmet, his eyes alight in worry and he's reaching out for Peter before the boy can speak.

"Let me see your arm, kiddo."

"I told you I'm fine." Peter says, allowing his mentor to squint down at the graze wound, his brows furrowed. "You never told me what happened to your suit?"

Tony rolls his eyes, seemingly satisfied that Peter's arm isn't going to fall off and reaches out for the boy's shoulder instead, wrapping an arm around him. "That was part of a new genius plan Cap came up with. Me, as bait, with the rest of the team showing up to save my sorry ass after the bad guys got lured out."

"Oh," Peter blinks, reaching up with his free hand to pull his own mask off, leaning into the gentle brush of Tony's palm against his cheek. "That's kind of a stupid plan."

"Yeah, well, it was supposed to go a little better than this --"

Tony gets cut off, however, by the rest of the Avengers, in various stages of disarray, finally bursting out of the doors to their left, Steve in the front. Holding up his shield, the Captain's teeth are bared in snarl, a deep cut across his cheek dripping blood down his chin. He pauses, however, eyes wide, when he catches sight of Peter.

"Thanks for finally showing up, Rogers." Tony scoffs, a hand on his hip. "Took you all long enough."

"Yeah, sorry about that, Tony." Natasha says, blowing a strand of hair away from her face. One of her eyes is already bruising, darkening to a deep purple-blue. "We had to deal with a lot more company upstairs than we planned for, took a little longer to take care of. You guys okay?"