❝You're Tony Stark, y'know? Girls tripped over themselves to be with you before you became Iron Man. Now, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not exactly popular, or hot. Girls never looked my way unless it was to copy geometry homework off me. She...
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Mercy and Spider-Man had a system.
On most nights, they would meet at their usual rendezvous point, survey the surrounding area, maybe stop a few crimes. Then a lunch break, more crime stopping until it got late and both realised they had lives to go back to. Tonight however, this system took a nose dive as something out of the ordinary happened. Spider-Man didn't show up. In any other case, Nora has the patience of a saint when it came to tardiness, but tonight she was antsy. Spider-Man was never late.
She didn't have a watch, or any way to check the time, but when enough time had passed, it was clear that something was wrong. Worry began to wash over her as she kicked at the ground. What had happened to him, was he alright? Maybe he couldn't make it tonight, that was the hopeful option, the hopeless option was that he was injured or dead in an undisclosed location. Nora didn't like thinking about that option. So instead, she thought about the whole thing in general. Partnering up with the masked hero for little over two months seemed like such a temporary thing at the start. Nora expected him to get bored of her, or big headed from all the attention he had collected over the near six months he had put on the mask. She thought he was a fraud, someone she would get annoyed with but that wasn't the case. She found she could trust him, to a fair amount, obviously she didn't trust him enough to tell him who she was, or anything about her family. What she did trust him with was her life, and the biggest mystery that had been plaguing her long before Mercy was ever a thought in her mind.
Something began to vibrate on her person. Her mind went to the beacon in her pocket. Finally, after weeks of it staying stagnant, she could put it to use. Spidey had upgraded the beacon to actually warn them if the other needed help. First, it was just a light, now it was a vibration to be discreet. Nora had to laugh, boys and their toys. She pulled it out, the red flashing rapidly. "Come on, Spidey, where are you?" she said to herself, worry striking her like a hot poker at her chest. The beacon lit up with a schematic of a street, the little red light blinking in the spot where Spider-Man currently was. It wasn't too far from where she was, she could make it there in less than five minutes. What was wrong with him, if he was so close, why hasn't he shown up?
She watched the light carefully, it stayed deadly still. Her need to get to him increased.
Nora didn't want to go out into the streets, not wanting to attract attention. She wished she had something like Spidey's web shooters, so she would be able to keep up with him(and having to wrap her legs him like a koala did wonders for her self esteem). If Rafe was still up when she got up home, she'd need to ask about getting something like a grapple hook.
As the red dot stayed still for another few moments, Nora threw caution to the wind and took off into a sprint to get to her hopefully alive partner.
Climbing up the ladder to the roof his beacon claimed to be, Nora spotted a flash of red and blue in the corner, splayed across the stones. He was clutching his arm, which blood staining his fingertips and seeping through his fingerless gloves. It was as if someone punched her in the gut at his pained gasps, like someone was clawing at her heart as she hopped over the ladder and onto the roof, running over to him. "Oh, Spidey," she breathed. "What happened to you?"
