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Tony would like to say that dealing with an enormous horde of aliens coming down from the sky was a rare occurrence, but it was turning into more of a regular week annoyance.
Which, honestly, getting used to absolute disasters like this made him even more annoyed than the actual events- next time this happened, he swore he was going to send out an empty suit or two to handle it with the team.
He bets he can even send out remote-operated suits for Rhodey and Pete too, which would take a huge load off his mind, given the amount that he worries after them and tries to watch for them during battles.
Rhodey was an army guy, grew up alongside Tony, so he knows firsthand how absolutely badass and capable his best friend is; but Peter is this fresh-faced high school kid Tony recruited in a bad moment and now doesn’t know how to set him loose- Pepper and Happy almost seemed to think he was attached to the little twerp.
Tony wouldn’t go that far, but now? Mid-battle, blasting as many aliens as he could the moment they exited the sky beam of the week – fucking doomsday sky beams, man – he was doing his best to mitigate the damage the ground crew was dealing with, but he hadn’t heard anything from Peter for a few minutes.
He could hear Steve calling out orders, keeping Tony, Rhodey and Thor in the air to block aliens while Wanda and Vision blocked the overflow, the Hulk chased down any big monsters that made it through those defenses before they could get into the city, Clint sniped runaway monsters and called out shots from his rooftop vantage points, while Sam and Natasha covered crowd control.
Peter was supposed to be doing crowd control too, but Tony hadn’t heard his name in a while- theoretically a good sign, but Tony’s let his guard down far too many times to be fooled by a suspiciously timed peaceful moment.
He does his best to keep breathing steadily, to focus on shooting down aliens to protect the city, but – as always – he can feel his individual worries starting to consume him.
He takes control of the comms – he and Steve are co-leaders, even if he lets Steve be in charge most of the time – and orders the rest of the sky crew up with him and Thor. Together, he and Rhodey fire missiles into the fucking sky beam while Thor crashes lightning into it and Wanda and Vision use their reality bending abilities to close it for good.
God, Tony hates that this is his reality.
Things were so much simpler when his biggest worry was his sort of father-figure Obadiah sending him to get tortured while staging a company takeover.
He jets back to the ground before the others, heading straight to Clint to ask where Peter went – Steve may be the strategist who calls the shots, but Hawkeye is their eyes in the sky – and the archer just laughs and points at a steaming trail of alien wreckage weaving through the nearby streets.
Tony takes off, flying through mysteriously-pinned down aliens, their bodies bubbling and liquidizing, some even burning through the concrete.
It looks…disgusting, and Tony only takes one whiff of it before FRIDAY steps in and turns on his air filter.
Peter is nowhere to be seen, and Tony touches down to look at one of the aliens. What’s left of its body is pinned high up on a building with something that’s just a little off from the Spider-Kid’s usual formula, it’s thicker and more viscous, gummy in texture, dripping down the side of the building like wet cement.
FRIDAY analyzes it, and she quickly informs Tony that the alien has been hit by a deconstructing toxin, some kind of venom that breaks down their bodies and liquidizes them. The web-like goop gluing it to the building is similar in structure to Peter’s formula, she tells him, but it’s just a little off- organic, not lab-made.
No one on their team has a device anywhere near this, and Tony hopes to God that Peter didn’t get hit by one of these things- whatever did this was not human and had some kind of crazy tech, he’s sure of it.
He lifts off again and continues down the street, following the trail of wreckage, until he finds Peter surrounded by a pile of aliens in a similar state of disrepair. The kid’s back is turned, but Tony can see him kicking at something on the ground, looking agitated.
Tony wants to step out of his suit – he knows Peter will appreciate it – but there’s no way he’s walking through whatever this alien soup is in his nice shoes, so he carefully approaches the kid.
“Hey, Pete, you doing alright?” he calls out, doing his best to step around the liquid monsters beneath his feet.
Peter stiffens and freezes, but doesn’t turn to face Tony- an immediate red flag. Tony makes his way in front of Peter and, after examining the kid’s face to make sure he looks alright and hearing FRIDAY’s confirmation that all his vitals are normal, he finally glances down.
To see the foot of his multi-million-dollar spider suit stuck in a pile of the web-like glue so many other aliens have been stuck in.
Tony takes his faceplate off to raise his eyebrows incredulously – he finds it has more impact that way – and Peter whips his mask off. Rather than the stress or panic that he expected to see from being trapped in one of the alien’s traps, the kid is bright red and looking away from him.
“Jeez, kid, are you alright?” Tony mutters, sticking his head out to try and inspect whatever the kid is stuck in- and, yup, that’s the great smell of melting alien’s all around him. He glances back up at Peter- this explanation better be worth it for this. “Well?”
For his part, Peter looks a little like he’s about to combust. Tony’s about to take pity on him and use a laser to try and cut him out when he opens his mouth to spit out a massive glob of…goopy glue. It lands on the ground and Tony watches, dumbstruck, as it starts to sizzle a little through the concrete before stopping.
“Okay, what the hell was that?” Tony yelps, reengaging his rockets as soon as he processes what happened. He goes closer to Peter, trying to look into the poor teen’s mouth to make sure he’s okay. “FRIDAY, did that stuff get inside him? Is he burning from the inside out, is that why he’s not talking?”
FRIDAY’s serene voice calms him, but doesn’t lessen any of his confusion. “Negative, Mr. Stark, nothing appears to be wrong with Peter.”
Tony shakes his head for a moment, blinks furiously, then zeroes back in on the kid. “What’s the deal?”
Between his fidgeting and almost impressive efforts to avoid eye contact, Peter is clearly miserable. “You can’t tell anyone else on the team about this, Mr. Stark, okay?”
Tony raises his eyebrow again – it’s truly such a useful tool in his arsenal of mock parental disapproval – and sighs loudly, turning off his side of the comms. “Not going to do that, kid.”
“Okay,” Peter sighs, then looks back up at Tony. He spits out another mouthful of the glue and venom combo before speaking. “I think the aliens triggered some kind of spider-predator reflex, and my mouth started making – secreting, probably, I’ll bet Bruce could help us figure it out – and I just started drooling all this acid stuff! It hasn’t been sticking to my skin or hurting me at all, but so much of it is coming out that I had to spit it out, and it hit the aliens, and I think it hurt them! I wanted to get away so I could stop, but they kept following me, Mr. Stark, and now they’re all dead.”
The kid looks genuinely crestfallen at injuring the hive-minded alien invasion forces that had been trying to murder New Yorkers left and right, and Tony tentatively reaches out with his iron gauntlet to gently pat him on the shoulder.
Peter tries to lift his leg experimentally, but his foot doesn’t even budge and he groans. “Then, Mr. Stark, I accidentally stepped in a big pile of spit while I was waiting them out and my skin doesn’t stick to it, but the suit does! And now I’m trapped…”
Tony blinks twice, slowly, overwhelmed by this undeniably weird explanation. Peter seems to wilt under his gaze, and starts fidgeting all over again. He spits out another glob of acidic webs, somewhat forlornly, and it’s truly pitiful.
“…Mr. Stark?” Peter asks quietly.
Bringing himself back into problem-solving mode and out of stressed mentor of a teenage superhero mode, Tony turns his comm back on.
“Steve, how’s the Hulk? …Back to Bruce, that’s great. …Yeah, I could use his help with something- I’ll swing by and pick him up. …No, no, I can meet him at the tower. …Sounds great, see you in fifteen.”
He switches it off and turns back to the distressed Spider-Kid. “Alright, we’re going to have Bruce take a look at this. He’s got like, a dozen doctorates or something? It’s some stupid number. One of them has got to be in spider biology. I’m going to cut you out of here and then we’ll meet him at the tower, and I promise I’ll never mention…whatever this is to Clint. Sound good?”
Peter nods quickly, happily, and gestures impatiently to his foot. “Thanks, Mr. Stark, that sounds awesome! And do you have any food in the tower- I’m craving something high in protein. Or maybe cereal!”
Tony sighs and gets to work extracting Peter from the puddle of webbing he’s trapped himself in.
He may hate dealing with aliens, but he’ll help out his little Spider-Kid any day.