I'm a terrible terrible person, I need to get this story done already so I don't feel guilty when I don't update.

I'm getting the next chapter up as soon as possible so help me god because this 'chapter' is more a 'chaplet' to make sure that everyone knows I'm not dead.

(Y'know, again.)

Since it's been so long since I've updated, here's a brief summary of what's happened:

This one of those stories where Peter Parker is Tony Stark's kid. Peter ended up kidnapped by AIM in the last chapter, courtesy of the new villain Goblin, whom he stupidly followed straight into an AIM base. There was other stuff too, but hopefully this is enough to jog your memory enough to be able to enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 9: Let's Go and See

Peter gritted his teeth and yanked the chair out from the concrete with a grunt. The bolts connecting the chair to the ground popped out and clattered onto the ground. Giving a nervous glance to the security cam, Peter struggled out of the ropes tying his hands together. He quickly untied his feet and jumped up. He took another glance towards the security camera.

The sound of feet stomping steadily grew louder as what was likely an AIM agent neared Peter's cell. The AIM agent ran into Peter's field of view, wearing what looked like beekeeper clothing coloured a muted yellow and wielding some weird pseudo-gun.

The AIM agent stopped in front of Peter, and, laughably slow, started to aim the gun at Peter.

Peter punched him on the head, his arm snaking through the metal bars of the cell. The agent staggered, but didn't fall. His hands scrambled to properly aim the gun at Peter, but he was nudged onto the floor before he could get a good shot. His head hit the concrete ground with a hard crunch.

"Is he dead?" Peter muttered to himself quietly.

(Did I kill him?)

Shaking his head firmly, he gritted his teeth and crouched down to search for a key from the body.

(He didn't have time.)

(He didn't have the time to think about it.)

Once grabbing the set of keys, Peter quickly opened the cell door, luckily enough finding the right key on the second try. Sidestepping the agent sprawled on the floor, Peter ran to the left down the hallway. He hadn't a clue where to go, but he did know that he had to keep on moving if he didn't want to get captured.

He caught sight of someone in one of the other cells as he ran past it. His eyes widened when he jogged backwards to look inside.

"Harry Osborn?!" Peter said incredulously, staring into the cell.

Hearing his name, Harry looked up, cautious and slightly confused. The remnants of his panic and fright could still be easily seen in his expression. Peter's normally clean and well-dressed classmate was now quite ill-kept, with dark bags under his eyes.

"You're, the Chem guy, Peter Parker?!" Harry leaped up from the crooked bed- a bed Peter hadn't gotten in his cell, really, these AIM guys could've at least afforded him that- and ran to the bars. "What are you doing here? Why are you- wait, are you..."

Harry took a wary step away from Peter. "Are you working with them?"

Peter rolled his eyes automatically. "Yeah, no. How I got stuck here, well, wrong place wrong time. Then I escaped. Something you really should've tried."

He was being a little harsh. It wasn't as if Harry had superpowers like he did.

(But forgive him for being a little bit stressed.)

Peter bit his lip.

Now, he was in a bit of a dilemma. His ideal escape scenario had been 'run, run, blow up stuff if necessary'. He couldn't exactly blow up stuff if necessary when he knew Harry was in here- and who knows if anyone else had been kidnapped?

And plus, he had already been seen by Harry. Peter had a key, he couldn't exactly leave Harry in his cell without a good reason.

That wasn't the sort of person he was, after all.

"I tried to escape, but I couldn't find even a tiny little crack to pry open," Harry muttered, glancing at the ground with a dark expression. He took a step back forwards and gripped the bars of the cell. "They're gonna kill me, I know it. My dad's never gonna pay up the ransom. Please, you have to let me out of here."

"I..."

(Goddammit. He didn't have the time for this.)

"... Fine. Step back for a sec." Peter fished the keyring out from his pocket and stuck it into the keyhole.

It stopped halfway through. Obviously, it was the wrong key.

Gritting his teeth, Peter shoved the key through the keyhole and turned it. The keyhole gave a sickening crunch, but the door opened.

"Did you just brute force the gate?!" Harry demanded, his eyes wide. "Those are metal bars, how did you-"

"Don't sweat the details," Peter hissed, grabbing Harry's arm and dragging him out of the cell. "We need to hurry, they're probably gonna sound an alarm or something any-"

A blaring alarm sounded.

"... time now," Peter finished under his breath. Glancing at Harry, he tugged on his arm again, motioning for him to follow.

"Looks like whoever was on security camera duty finally woke up from his nap, or whatever he was doing," Peter said grimly. "C'mon, we're getting out of here."

Peter poked his head around a corner.

A nondescript hallway. Four AIM agents standing in front of a large, obvious, set of double doors. Smaller single doors, decorating the concrete walls at regular intervals.

The alarm blared on from hidden speakers somewhere in the ceiling.

Peter whipped his head back from the corner. He pointed a finger at Harry.

"You, stay here," Peter said, not bothering to whisper. The alarm was too loud for that anyways. "Scream or something if someone attacks you."

Harry mumbled something.

"What was that?" Peter asked, leaning in.

"I said, what are you planning to do?" Harry repeated irritably.

"Watch and learn," Peter said simply, a cocky grin on his face. He paused, tapping a finger on his cheek. "Actually, no, don't watch me, watch for other AIM agents. Got it?"

"Yeah, sure, but-"

"- Just stay back, okay?" Peter cut Harry off. He jumped out into the hallway taking off running. He got about quarter of the way through before the AIM agents noticed him.

(Jesus Christ, these guys were terrible guards.)

They shouted something to each other, although Peter couldn't make out the words from the distance and over the alarm. Still, he didn't need to know what they were saying to each other to know that the fact that they were aiming their guns at him was probably a bad sign.

Bright blue energy beams shot out of their guns, one after another.

Peter wasn't sure what they were, but he sure as hell knew that he didn't want to be hit by them. He slid down, the four beams somehow managing to pass over his head harmlessly.

The AIM agents didn't shoot more energy beams at him right away- probably, there was a charging time on their weapons, like with the robots from before. There were four of them, so they could've shot at him one after another, but nope, they decided to shoot in near unison.

"Really, these people need a lesson in proper teamwork," Peter mumbled, quickly scrambling back up and starting to run again.

(Not that he was one to talk, really.)

He was nearing the agents with every second. Hopefully he would reach them before their weapons recharged.

Not bothering to slow down, Peter punched the first agent in the face. Hearing an ominous vibrating sound, Peter ducked down, holding the agent in front of him. Two buzzing noises sounded in quick succession. The AIM agent Peter had been hiding behind turned to dust.

Peter spared a quick moment to stare at the pile of dust in horror before he got moving. He didn't want the remaining three AIM agents to still be up and about when their weapons recharged.

(No, wait, there was only two shots fired just then-)

Another vibrating sound hit Peter's ears. Peter leaped to the side, but he was a little too slow. The beam just barely grazed Peter's right side. It seemed like a small wound, but it hurt terribly.

He still wasn't fully recovered from the fight with the robots either. This was starting to look bad.

Gritting his teeth in a futile attempt to ignore the pain, Peter tripped the closest AIM agent and pushed him into the other two. Two of them landed on the ground, but the third remained standing. After throwing his not-yet-recharged gun on the ground, the AIM agent pulled out some sort of baton.

"What's that, a stun baton?" Peter called out, a nervous smile plastered onto his face. He cast a eye towards the other two AIM agents and held back a groan as they stood up. Seeing the other AIM agent holding a baton towards Peter, they got out their batons as well.

On the bright side, the incinerator gun was gone.

On the other side-

A bolt of blue electricity shot along the length of one of the batons.

Peter gulped.

- these things looked just as dangerous.

Peter backed up into the wall, limping slightly. He eyed the ever-nearing electric batons and took a deep breath.

(Right, so this wasn't looking good.)

"Hey!"

Peter almost turned to look at the source of the voice, but reconsidered at the last moment. Using the time given to him by the brief distraction, Peter sped forwards and kicked at the agents' feet with his foot on his good side, tripping them over. Before they could recover, Peter pushed their heads together, knocking them out.

The batons clattered to the floor, still active, judging by the slight vibrating noise they made. Peter reflexively ducked down to avoid the final AIM agent's swipe of his baton. He grabbed at a baton and slammed it into the AIM agent's knee. The agent shuddered as electricity coursed through his body. He dropped to the ground.

With the immediate danger gone, Peter stared at the four (dead?) bodies on the ground in mute silence.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Harry was walking towards him cautiously, having long since left the corner.

"I thought you were gonna-" Peter winced and grabbed at his wound as he stood up. It wasn't bleeding too much, luckily, but it burned. "-stay in the corner."

"You're just my classmate, why should I listen to you?" Harry shot back. He raised a thin eyebrow. "And also, how the hell did you take down four adults armed with... whatever those things were?"

"Well, partly because they were stupid. Four on one, and they didn't even try to use any sort of teamwork," Peter replied with a shrug. "And partly because I, er... took martial arts lessons as a kid."

"Martial arts lessons," Harry repeated flatly.

"Yeah, what, do rich kids not do that?" Peter said defensively. He flipped around to look up at the double set of metal doors smack dab in the middle of the hallway. There were no handles, but a glowing keypad was right next to the rightmost door. "Anyways, there's no time to talk. More AIM agents might be coming right now. Let's just hope these suspiciously big and obvious doors lead to the outside, or at the very least somewhere important."

"You're bleeding," Harry pointed out awkwardly. "I mean, you might drop dead or something, that wouldn't be good for me or you."

"Trust me, I'll be fine," Peter said dismissively. He eyed the keypad. "I'll have to brute force the door. Harry, you keep an eye out for any more agents. I would say that you should take one of their weapons, but given that their weapons can freaking incinerate people, we probably shouldn't risk misusing them."

Harry reluctantly. nodded in agreement , scratching a cheek nervously. "Ye-yeah. Fine."

Trusting that Harry could at the very least watch out for anyone coming their way, Peter turned back to the keypad. It was a simple digital numerical keypad, with the numbers zero to nine arranged as you would see them on a cellphone. Above the number pad, there was a small space where presumably the numbers would appear once Peter pressed the buttons. There were no hints as to how long the passcode was, but judging from the size of the screen it was at most eight digits long.

Luckily for Peter, he had no intention of finding the correct passcode.

The keypad was embedded straight into the wall. There was no way to pry it up. Peter was going to have to get creative.

Peter glanced at the baton still in his hand with a grin and shoved it into the keypad. He quickly let go of the handle and jumped back. Sparks of electricity burst out of the keypad for a few seconds before dying down. A plume of smoke billowed out of the broken keypad.

The double metal doors gave a sickening lurch before sliding open. The room inside was dark and impossible to see inside.

"Well, the doors are open." Peter grinned at Harry. "Let's see what's inside."

Sorry I don't have the time to do individual review replies right now, but for now, I just want to thank everyone for helping to clear up something I've literally been wondering about since I was a little kid.

I now finally know that American schools are basically the same as Canadian schools, the TV shows and movies just have no idea what an American school nowadays is like.

The next chapter, which hopefully will be long enough to be correctly called a 'chapter', will of course be about what everyone else is doing while Peter and Harry are doing their thing.

As always, I'd appreciate it if you point out any typos/errors, as I don't have a beta.