Spider-Man/Peter Parker One-Shots

(HC) Thief of the Thieves

This is the first one I've been proud of in forever (and it's 13 pages long!). Because there's so many timeskips in here I marked them with a ~

Why people even bothered trying to get away with petty crimes confused him. They knew Spider-man was always watching, they knew that all the commotion they'd cause would gain his attention, yet they insisted on raiding small shops for meager profits.

Peter shook his head as he finished tying up the robbers. He grabbed the bag containing the money they'd stolen and headed back into the shop where the owner graciously took the bag.

"Thank you so much Spider-man," she cried, hugging him. He patted her back.

"It was no problem, Miss."

"But where's the other bag?" She pulled away. He blinked.

"Other bag?"

"My employee told me they put the money in two separate bags. Have you happened to see it anywhere?"

He shook his head. "No." He did a 360, checking through the mess he and the criminals had made, but no bag like the one he'd given the owner laid in the wreckage.

The owner sighed. "It's fine, I'm sure we'll find it later. Thank you again!" She walked off, leaving Peter to wonder where it went. Now that he thought about it, both robbers had had a bag but only one was there by the time he tied them up. Unfortunately, Aunt May was going to worry about him if he took much longer to get home, so he had to dash and put his worry at the back of his mind for now.

~

As the week progressed the same thing kept happening. Part of the items stolen weren't recovered, having seemingly disappeared somehow. Even when he made sure to keep track of the bags, one always vanished.

Another robbery at a clothing store went as well as every other time. Peter arrived at the scene, engaged the robbers in a fight, and shot a web at the blue duffel bag they shoved various articles of clothing inside to keep it trapped to the floor. With the guarantee it wasn't going anywhere he subdued the criminals so the police could take them away.

However, when he returned to the duffel bag, the webbing was cut enough so the zipper could be unzipped and clothes removed. He stood staring at it in disbelief until the employee working approached him. She saw the opened duffel bag and carefully took the clothes out to check. Peter would've assumed she cut the web and was taking note of what clothes they attempted to steal, but after she took inventory she turned on him.

"Where pineapple shirt?" she demanded in her broken english.

"What?" he asked.

"They try to take pineapple shirt, I watch them. Where is it?"

"It's not in there?" He bent down to look inside the blue bag, and sure enough it was empty. He looked up at the lady regretfully. "I have no idea. I webbed it to the ground so nothing could get taken but..." He gestured to the cut web. "Someone must've taken some items."

"That bullcrap! You took it!" She jammed her finger in his face and he took a step back, shocked.

"No I didn't, I swear! I have nothing sharp on me, I couldn't cut it. See?" He patted himself down and turned his palms to the sky to show he had nothing.

"You're lying," the employee huffed.

"I can assure you I have no idea where it went. This has been happening a lot lately, actually." She squinted at him suspiciously. "I can help you look for it," he offered.

"No. You steal more clothes. Goodbye." She didn't turn her back to him to walk away, instead walking backwards slowly to make sure he left. He sighed and shot a web at a building to get him off the ground, and once he got into the swing of things, he thought back to the missing pineapple shirt. There's no way it could've been an accident, a misplacement of the items; someone had deliberately cut the web to get into the duffel bag to steal the shirt. Had this same person been at the other crime scenes, stealing a little bit of what the robbers had stolen?