Acceptance

Chapter 12: Public Eye

A/N I liiiiiive! Sorry for the atrociously long wait. I really don't have much of an excuse, but I'll give my crappy one anyway. At first it was just lack of inspiration and my own ineptitude at writing different POV chapters. Then world affairs went down the drain and threw what little schedule I had out of wack. Bad excuse, I know, but please bare with me.

Iron Man POV

Tony had no idea how things had fallen apart so fast. Peter was... Okay.

It turned out that the concussion that had caused him to lose consciousness was the least of his worries; He was covered with enough third and second degree burns to kill him three times over on top of the half-healed electrical burns that Electro had given him.

To add another dozen nails done in the coffin, the kid had bruises everywhere, Nearly every inch of skin, most of his bones, and even his lungs. Near definitely fatal.

And as if that wasn't enough, his leg has gotten concrete powder, wood shavings, and a heathy helping of rust in it before he was pulled from the wreckage. That meant that despite Bruce and Stark medical technology's best efforts, it gad gotten infected. With all the other trauma Pete's immune system is wasn't fighting to the best of its ability either. He would have gone septic without outside interference.

If Peter was a normal person, he would have been dead well before they got to the tower. As it was he was going to be out for at at least a week.

Peter's aunt May had been given a cover story made up by Clint of all people, so she had been in an out. She was surprisingly okay with her nephew being in a coma, especially do to the fact that according to the cover story, it had been Tony's fault that he had been anywhere near the Hulked building. Something about testing a doohickey. She had simply said that she was sure Tony had done all he could to help, the tone had sent shivers up the spines of everyone else in the room.

Two days later the Avengers noticed the trend: The crime rate was skyrocketing . Tony himself hadn't noticed it, but when Steve had told him to turn on a news channel, any news channel at all, Tony had looked. Over a fifty percent increase in two days was astonishing. Even more surprising was that every single station attributed this increase to Spider-Man's "disappearance". Even the Bugle, although for drastically reasons.

"How the hell does one kid have this much of an effect? He's only out for a few hours each night, but this happens when he's gone," Tony openly ranted to Cap.

"I know right? I mean I knew Spidey was pretty cool, but this is nuts!" Oh, Clint was there too.

"As impressed as I am about Spider-Man's performance, isn't there something else that we should be focusing on?" Steve interjected.

Tony had to think for a minute, but got it eventually. "We need to fix the crime rate? Isn't that a little under pay grade Capsicle?" We were the Avengers, specialized in stopping bad guys from ending the world, not stopping muggings.

The Star Spangled Soldier glared. "What do you think will happen if we leave it? That it will go away on its own? Tony, if we don't do something every thug in the street is going to get more and more bold until they do something that is in our pay grade.

Iron Man help up his hands in a submissive gesture. "Alright, alright, sheesh. I'll go see if our resident super-spies are up for it." They'd be able to nip this in the bud in no time.

Several Hours Later

Tony was beginning to notice something, and that something annoyed him greatly. The Avengers were, on average, the second most liked superheros at most. They were the most popular, but people were more friendly towards a different hero. It was like comparing the head jock to that one guy with all the friends.

His point was proven when a would-be mugger fell to a weak repulser blast. Even with the distinctive sound that his tech made, the victim's first reaction was, "Thank you spider—" Quickly followed by,"Iron Man? What are you— I'm a big fan!"

Tony grimaced behind his faceplate. Don't get him wrong, being adored was great, but something told him that Peter would have been more appreciated. He picked up the slightly scorched handbag and held it out to the woman. "I believe this is yours madam."

The woman who was quickly revealing that she was a fangirl let out an Unidentifiable sound and grabbed the item and mumbled something about keeping the bag forever.

Iron Man saw her on our way before radioing the others. "That's my area clear. How are the six of us less liked then the Webhead?"

It was the only spy that came who answered, Nat was doing... something. You never knew with her. "Just wrapping up here too. You know he actually comes out and talks to people right? All you really do is go to the Stark Expo. Cap, what do you do in your spare time?"

"I" Bang! Bang! "Try to" CLANG! "Blend in as much as I can. Clint's right. We have a public image, not so much public interaction. I'm done here too, meet up back at the tower."

"We are going to have to work on that." Tony muttered, unsurprisingly to the agreement of the other two.

A/N Sorry this is so short after such a long wait, but like I said in the top nite I suck At writing side POV chapters. This wait also made me forget what I had planned for thus so I had to adapt. How you enjoyed it anyway. Hopefully I'll get another update relatively soon, this time with Spidey action. See you then!