Tony's POV

Fury seemed to be more worried about some mission Natasha and Clint were needed for when we had gotten back, so I went to talk to Bruce about what I had found. I walked into the lab, immediately getting back into the small invention I was tinkering with on my workbench. I told Bruce what happened while I worked

"What do you mean he wasn't on a radio frequency?" Bruce asked, working on fixing a piece of Dum-e's code.

"I don’t know, but the device that he’s using isnt going through any satellites, it must all be controlled remotely."

"But you said he has some person in his ear helping him, it's impossible unless he's transmitting," Bruce pointed out

"Exactly," I didn't understand it either, a silence fell over the room for a moment.

Bruce suddenly looked up, "could you send me the readings you took?"

"I guess, I've already looked them all over though," I pulled up the screen and sent the information on the electronic pulses spidermans comms sent out, I sent them over to Bruce.

"What exactly did 'Karen' say?" Bruce asked.

"Steve heard her repeatedly telling Spiderman to call someone, some 'guy in the chair'."

"Anything else," Bruce was now converting the information to into a more visual model..

"Yeah, she said-," suddenly it hit me, of course, why hadn't I thought of it before? Probably because I'm the only one who has ever done it, no one should know how to make an A.I.

At that moment, Bruce finished what he was doing. Two spheres of code were floating side by side one was Friday, and the other was the frozen moment of code from Spiderman's device, sure enough, the energy readings were almost exactly the same.

"He's using an A.I? But how, where could he have gotten it?" I thought aloud. I pushed off of the desk letting my rolly spinny chair glide over to Bruce's.

"I don't know yet, but it shouldn't take too long to figure out," Bruce's fingers were already flying across the board, "it doesn't seem to be a copy of Friday, it's too unique. This was made on its own. Who in the world was smart enough to make this!?"

"More like who in the world had a computer with enough processing power to make this?"

"That's it! Genius," Bruce exclaimed, "very few places in New York would have a computer system large enough to handle this kind of program."

A quick search gave us all the info we needed. Ok maybe a little too much info as the number of places with capable systems was more than we had expected. There were about 30 locations on the list, most being research facilities or tech industries. There were a few that caught my eye though, specifically the one called "Midtown Tech Highschool".

"What's up with the schools on here?" I asked Bruce who opened up the information on the few High Schools on the list.

Bruce hummed as he quickly skimmed the sites, "looks like they are just elite tech schools that need to be able to handle the large internet usage. Why is there something different about them?"

"No, I just visited the one the other day is all," I told him.

Bruce moved on, "of these 32 places, 10 of them are in or around Queens. Assuming Spiderman actually lives around where he patrols, he most likely used one of these systems."

"Cool, at least now we don't have to go through getting yelled at for having no new progress by the angry eyepatch," I stated, Bruce scoffed. Satisfied, I sent my chair flying back to my seat, twirling the whole way. 

Peter's POV

I sat on Ned's bean bag chair, a bag of ice on my ribs and another lying on my head, "what am I going to dooooo," I moaned.

Ned sat on his bed while Mj walked back into the room after coming back from the bathroom.

Mj sat next to bed, "ok, start over now, what happened?" She asked.

I told them what had happened, how Captain America and Iron Man had shown up and how they had found out about Karen.

"Dude it's ok, they were confused, I doubt they even put two and two together. Besides, even if they did, what's it matter, they can't really do much about it." Ned comforted.

"Maybe, I don't really know what they can do with knowledge of her, but I doubt the Tony Stark and Bruce Banner haven't figured it out."

The ice pack on my head slipped and fell onto my chest. And my bruised ribs. I will not even try to say that the sound I let out was "manly".

"Damn, they got you good," Mj scoffed

"He, this was all just Cap's shield."

"Did you get to hold Captain America's shield!?" Ned fanboyed.

A mad smile cracked my face despite the pain, "yeaaa," I giggled stupidly.

"No wayyyy!"

"Guys!"

"Right,” Ned sobered remembering the current situation, “well you can stay here tonight if you want, dude."

"I've got to get back home," I told him sadly.

Mj shrugged, "How about we come with you?"

Ms. Virli won't be there and they were both looking at me very avidly, I finally relented, "ok, but I have to make a few stops on the way."

"Fine by us," Ned replied. Mj nodded.

"Then let's go."

"Oh, and here you go dude," Ned tossed something at me, the tracker.

I stuffed it in my bag on the way out the door.

We stopped at the store on the way to the orphanage. I got milk, bread, cheese, and a bunch of ramen packages since I didn't have too much money. Mj and Ned volunteered to chip in, but I told them that it was fine.

I felt bad that all the kids wouldn't eat a full meal, but I didn't need my friends to help with my responsibilities. That being said, I really did need to find a way to keep getting food, Ms. Virli has been getting stingier and stingier with money. maybe I could get a job. I'm just worried that between school and spiderman I won't have enough time.

Opening the door to the orphanage, 3 kids shot out. Mj had two clinging to her legs like monkeys and Ned already had Theo on his shoulders. I swear these kids love my friends more than they love me, I joked to myself.

We walked inside, Ms. Virli was probably already at the bars and wouldn't be back until late so we didn't have to worry about being discrete.

Jack and Mya were sitting on the couch. They were talking animatedly about who their superheroes were and why. Mj playfully heaved the two girls on her legs, Emily and Fin, over to the couch and then allowed them to tackle her onto the couch. 

The general mood in the house was pleasant as I started the ramen which felt nice. Normally the mood was heavy and somber. Mj and Ned played with the little kids while Daisy and Mya helped me make the Ramen.

As the pots of water boiled, I leaned against the kitchen island. A newspaper sat on it. I, out of curiosity, picked it up.

flipping through it I eventually landed on the section I wanted, it read "for hire".

A variety of jobs, odd or official, decorated the page. I was looking for something with flexible hours, something that I could fit in when I had the time.

Lawn mower, car washer, sales clerk, photographer, pet groo- wait.

My eyes landed back on photographer and, one word standing out, "Spiderman".

The ad was for pictures of spiderman, 25$ each. It was like a miracle. This is perfect, I could just take time delayed photos when I'm on patrol and then turn them in the next day. Two birds, one stone. I tore the ad out and stuffed it in my pocket. The water was plenty ready for the noodles now. 

Cooking went well, at least, no one got hurt or had a near death experience. Everyone came down and we all sat on the floor in the living room. Everything was as perfect as things could get.

Steve's POV 

Fury called the meeting about an hour after Tony and I returned from our fight. We still had no progress on spiderman, so I wasn't looking forward to it.

Thankfully, Bruce and Tony saved us all the embarrassment of going to Fury with nothing. once the meeting had started, they explained how they had concluded that he was using an A.I and that therefore he had to be a student or worker at a list of 10 research facilities and schools. It was impressive really. 

Fury sat back in his chair, "finally, some good news. Now, is there any way to see which system it was built on."

"No, programs like A.I's need recalibrations pretty often, if we could monitor all the systems, a systems processor going crazy could be from I someone working on an A.I, but it could also be a school wide test log on, or a workers survey, or the testing of a few highly complex robots. There are just too many variables." Bruce explained.

"Okay, then what can we do with this information?" Fury demanded.

"Got it," Nat quickly stated.

"Got what?" I asked.

She turned her computer around, "a list of every worker and student from these 10 places. Current list is almost 12,500 people, but…," she clicked a few buttons, "limit the search to only males under 30... and you've got yourself a list of only about 5,000 which admittedly doesn't seem that good, but it's an improvement from the 2 million Queens residents we started with." even Tony looked impressed. 

"Only the smartest of the smartest could have made this A.I. I have an internship competition lined up for the Highschools and Universities, one even happens to be on the list. I could extend it to the facilities? Make it more about patents for them, maybe?"

Fury just nodded, "send all of this info to Shield headquarters, I have a team there that will be able to get any information you may have missed."

With that they wrapped up the meeting, agreeing to send all the information over to the given email address.

Peter's POV

I figured that there was no reason waiting to make money off these pictures. After Mj and Ned went home, I told everyone I was going to do some homework and not to bother me.

quickly, I changed and hopped out my window. 

choosing a tall, multi story building close by, I set my phone up on a rock and put a 30 second timer on the camera. Thanks to my spidey senses I was able to correctly time my swing on the first try. I got a few more pictures on that building, eventually getting a relatively clear shot of myself mid swing, almost about to let go of my web. 

I took a few more in other locations. the resulting photos were pretty good for my first time posing. The thing was most people weren't able to get good pictures of spider-man because A) I swung away too fast and B) on the chance that they did very a picture, they didn't have a good angle.

There were pictures of me, of course, but they were normally of me walking someone out of a burning building or of that sort. Heroic, but apparently not what the ad wanted. They wanted action shots. 

My photos weren't the best quality, the phone itself is old as can be, but compared to most action shots of me, they weren't too bad. I decided I'd go to the outlet tomorrow to turn them in and get the money.

I finished up patrol at around 1AM and finally got to sleep around 2. Overall, the day hadn't been too bad.

so its been a while.... sorry 😂. tell me how you guys like this chapter, because in the time that I have not been updating, I've been doing a LOT more writing (on an original story idea mostly, and on other non fanfic prompts to improve my writing, hence no actual updates lol) and have been trying to better refine my style and get better at things like editing. compared to where I was when I started this story I think I've come pretty far, but tell me what you guys think.

not too much action or interesting stuff going on here, but there will be a couple revelations in the next chapter or two.

Quote (oh god there are so many to choose from):

*playing DnD*

DM: so you are walking down this street and you see there is a old woman being robbed do you want to-

Me, A human Rouge: Imma rob the robber

*so many notable quotes this is just one*

-also a notable mention-

"*cocks gun furiously* YOU WILL FIND INNER PEACE"

/\(*°~°)/\
(Spider is sick and tired of 2020)