Work Text:
Listen, Peter had always been a conspiracy theorist at heart.
Of course, he knew people thought he was crazy or ‘batshit insane’ as an old lady called him once. But Peter never really cared about those people.
Naturally, he got into conspiracy theories through the marvel that is Buzzfeed Unsolved and had followed them for many years. He loved the jokes and banter but mostly loved the explorations they made.
(He was so obsessed that Mr Stark had offered to buy him Buzzfeed for his birthday… Peter regretfully turned this down because it was waaaaay too much responsibility and just general too much even for him)
It was 1am and Peter had lost in combat against the Duolingo owl who was trying to teach him Spanish – and failing. The little green bastard tormented his suffering with ominous thinly veiled threats. Loki once tried to learn Swedish (he likes the fish?) and ended up vehemently cursing out the ‘devilish fiend’ in a language Peter thought sounded similar to Ancient Greek.
After giving up Peter fell into the conspiracy theorist haven that is reddit.
He trawled through r/conspiracytheories until he found something that interested him greatly.
An anonymous user speaking about the events of mid-August 2009 in Manhattan.
This person had dubbed it The Great Lapse.
On August the 16th there was a reported no-go zone on the whole of Manhattan, trapping the people inside. The suddenly on the 19th the no-go was lifted.
The news reported on this out of nowhere event for all of two days before seemingly forgetting about it.
This was especially weird since there was tonnes of property damage and missing statues (some found far away and in different positions to how they were sculpted?) so something big definitely happened.
Now, you’d think that this obviously affected loads of people and yes… it did. Which is why this was such an interesting story because no-one filed any complaints or gossiped about what happened or anything.
It was like it never even happened.
Another creepy thing about this case was that Peter did not remember it either. He lived in Queens, it was barely a five-minute sling to Manhattan, and he regularly patrolled there. If something big had happened in the past, he was sure he would have seen or heard something about it.
Somehow the anonymous user remembered when no one else did… and now Peter was on the case too. And this mystery would be pried from his cold dead hand before he forgot (again?).
The first idea Peter had was to look at CCTV from those days. Mr Stark had been teaching him how to code and hack so he felt pretty confident in his skills. Apparently, he was a natural and the skills were pretty handy for making AI and little robots (such as a functioning robotic bee named Jasper).
Turns out someone really didn’t want anyone to see what happened those day before the firewalls and blocks of the videos were far beyond anything Peter had ever encountered.
They were constantly changing. Like a twisted labyrinth that knew exactly how to slip through your grasp.
There was no way Peter was going to hack through that tangle.
The next thing he did was ask Mr Stark about it. After checking the date of the event, he cross-referenced it with Mr Stark’s calendar, and he was there on the 16th. In fact, Stark Industries was one of the buildings with the highest amounts of damage done. But they too did not search for the cause of all this damage.
Peter started, “Mr Stark,”
“What’s up, underoos?” He called out from under his newest project in the back of the lab.
“Um, weird question…”
“We’ve been to space, spider-boy, I think we’re a little past weird,” He joked.
“Do you remember what you were doing between August 16th and 19th in 2009? I think something big happened”
…
Mr Stark looked up abruptly, dropping his spanner and turning away from his project.
“Kid… what are you looking into?”
“Just a conspiracy theory, Mr Stark, you know I love them, I’m sorry if I offended you or something!”
“No kid, it’s just,” he looked Peter right in the eyes, “drop it okay? That’s not something you should look into. I know you’re interested in that sort of thing but please stop looking.”
Peter left soon after that. It really freaked him out.
What could scare Mr Stark so badly? He looked so concerned for Peter when he mentioned that date. Why can’t people know what happened? Why keep it secret?
But most importantly right now.
Was he in danger if he kept on looking?
Peter really didn’t think he could stop now, even though Mr Stark sounded so frazzled. It was always nagging at him. It sometimes kept him up nowadays; he needed answers and if Mr Stark wouldn’t tell him, he’d find them himself.
He tried a few other ideas. Safe to say they failed after someone started swearing at him in an ancient tongue not unlike Loki with a Duolingo owl.
His last idea was satellite imagery. Not the free stuff like Google Earth, no, the government surveillance satellites that were protected.
The big thing about government surveillance satellites is that they are saved to a private server and then saved to a physical copy (mostly USBs). This meant that Peter could in theory get his hands on an unaltered imagery of the event.
If he bounced his hack off of a mix of official Stark Industries satellites but also Hammer Industries ones too, then his signal could be scrambled enough to look like an authorised transmission. And with his state-of-the-art untraceable Stark laptop there was no way a hack could be traced back to him (hopefully).
He did this and somehow it worked.
All he needed was a small point of access and he was in… no secret was safe from him.
The images were easy enough to find; they were right in a server code tagged ‘MANHATTAN, AUGUST 2009’. This might just be Peter’s treasure trove filled with answers.
And a treasure trove it was…
There was so much that Peter couldn’t get through much at all before he realised, he needed to get out of their systems as soon as possible. Stark tech was brilliant – but not failproof and he really didn’t want to see what the government did to mutant hackers if caught.
He saved as much as he could (bits and pieces were better than nothing) and left their systems quickly.
The adrenaline pulsing through Peter’s veins made him hyper aware of just how bad that could have been, and he was now suddenly thankful to the control over his super-strength because the hold on his laptop would have been… bad if he squeezed any harder.
He heard Aunt May walk past his room to bed and this reminded him to look check the time.
01:06
Shit.
That escapade lasted far longer than Peter thought. He had been so engrossed in the puzzle in the twisting lines of code and then searching for the information he desperately needed to satiate his curiosity that he’d totally lost track of the time.
For tonight, he reluctantly closed his laptop. He would sleep on his findings for now and see the depth of what he had found tomorrow.
.
.
.
When Peter woke up, he had one thought:
Aliens.
To his defence that dream was very real and it’s not like people didn’t believe in aliens anymore especially after the Chitauri Invasion of New York… right? People are idiots sometimes.
(But huh, poor New York, getting attacked so much)
Anyways, it was a new day, and that means Peter can finally read through what he had found last night.
He had an hour before he had to leave for school and there was no way in Hel he could wait until later.
So, he opened his laptop, went to the saved files, and opened them…
This was where it got interesting (life-changing, earth-shaking, world-shattering).
There were three files, not just the satellite imagery like Peter had originally thought:
- The actual satellite imagery comparing before and after
- Uncorrupted CCTV footage
- Profiles of ‘people of interest’
That last one was especially interesting to Peter, but he decided to leave the best(?) till last and read the others first.
The satellite imagery was insane.
Peter could see exactly why this had been hidden.
It looked scarily similar to after-images of the Chitauri invasion… a battle where people died.
There wasn’t much detail, given the distance they were taken from, but Peter could see whole chunks taken out of buildings, crumbling statues away from their perches, and fires creating black smoke which obscured a few frames.
It looked like a small war had happened and honestly Peter was starting to wonder just how this had been hidden from the world.
Peter moved on to the CCTV footage, having skimmed through the satellite imagery he found himself becoming increasingly curious to find out even more.
The CCTV footage gave Peter an insight to the details of what happened.
There were only bits and pieces. The odd frame from a camera before it randomly shorted out. A few seconds on and off before an object smashed the screen. And so on.
But the information was painfully clear.
There was a war.
And kids made up a whole side of it.
From what Peter made out they seemed to be armed with bows and swords, reminiscent of ancient Greek and Roman gladii, and kitted out with armour that seemed a few millennia too old which would give Mr Stark a panic attack from lack of tech.
Every time the enemy they were fighting about to show up, for some reason or another, the camera shorted out/turned off/was broken etc.
Whatever they fought was a force of nature which was not supposed to be seen and Peter respected that. No way was he looking into that, even he knew when to look the other way.
Another thing he notices was how battered the kids were.
Some couldn’t have been older than twelve and Peter now empathised with every adult who had found out the age he’d started Spider-manning because, god, they were just kids.
They looked fine, if a bit battered, which shouldn’t have been shocking… given that they were at war, but it just looked so wrong.
Every frame Peter saw showed them looking more and more down-trodden, Peter really hoped he wouldn’t see a dead kid, he had no idea if his hero complex could live with that. Thankfully though, there were no bodies when he reached the end, just more questions on what the Hel happened and how did he not know about it?
Thinking logically, it must be magic. Peter knew that there were no recently filled potholes the size of craters in Manhattan, and he definitely knew that the statues were firmly unmoved from their iconic positions. No way, that was fixed without magic. And no way, no-one would remember.
The third file was profiles… or profile actually. Turns out he’d only been able to download one before he scrambled. Odd. But the whole situation was odd so Peter hoped this last piece of evidence would tell him something more.
Name:
Percy Jackson
Titles:
Head Counselor for Cabin 3, Saviour of Olympus, Conqueror of the Labyrinth
Main characteristics:
Dark brown hair, Spotify green eyes, approx. 6’1, pen(?), usually seen wearing orange t-shirt and beaded necklace
Incident:
Spotted in Manhattan during the events occurring 08/16/2009 – 08/19/2009, noted as a leader to others during events, noted for destruction of public and private property (methodology: unknown)
Other notes:
- Aged 12, nationwide manhunt initiated after his stepfather (see disappearance here) accused him of kidnapping his mother
- Seen all over the country, including a diner in Denver, the St Louis Arch (at the time of his appearance a bomb went off), a random beach
- Seen fighting off the man who had apparently kidnapped him, (description: biker, lots of leather, bad vibes – no facial description despite multiple witnesses
- Seen in National Air and Space Museum before major fossil exhibit vanished
- Often seen with blonde-haired black female, black male (short) and large Caucasian male
- For other notable appearances click here)
To say Peter was shocked was an understatement.
This guy was nuts.
Kidnapped and fought his kidnapper when aged twelve. This was getting even weirder than he thought. And he shared more DNA with spiders than apes!
But at least he knew now… this was definitely not just one isolated event. This was a whole interconnected conspiracy, and now he had a huge lead.
He had a name,
Percy Jackson