#FIVE HUNDRED CRYSTALS IF YOU COMPLETE SIX THOUSAND AND FOUR HUNDRED SHOW MISSIONS

[catcatb0y]

They changed the Show Missions to eighty percent coins (pretty much useless) and the Premium Pass to Wish Pieces?? What the hell??

Like, it's not just the layout, these rewards are worse, right?

They're also spaced out so much worse please tell me this isn't the new norm.

[tisfan]

Title: From Russia with Purrs Square: A3 - FREE SQUARE Warning: no animals were actually harmed in the writing of this fic Rating: Gen Pairing: Peter Parker & Ned Leeds / background Bucky/Tony Summary: Spider-Man doesn’t always get called in to help with the Avengers stuff, but when Peter is given a special, urgent mission from the Winter Soldier, he needs to call in backup Link: A03 Word Count: 2505 For @tonystarkbingo

The spidey-sense was a bitch, really. Bad enough all his senses were cranked up to eleven and a half, but then he was on edge constantly for the first year, or more. Spidey-sense wasn’t common sense. It wasn’t directional. About half the time it wasn’t even useful. Had him ducking spitballs by diving to the floor like there was an lone shooter on school grounds.

Not that Peter didn’t already have a rep for being a bit of a spaz, and at a school for top academics, that was saying a lot. There were many ways to bully people, and shoving them into lockers was only for the most uncreative.

Which did mean, after the first year or so, he got sort of… used to it. The spidey-sense tingling didn’t have him bolting upright out of bed at three in the morning to cling to the ceiling like a terrified bat.

Usually he woke up long enough to blink at his clock, pause a moment to see if whatever it was actually planned to break through his window, and then went back to sleep.

Not this time.

His skin rippled and electric jolts went up and down his spine. Spidey-sense was like licking a nine-volt. Not painful, but impossible to endure for long, and freaky-weird on top of that.

Rap-rap-rap.

Peter rubbed at his eyes. “I swear,” he muttered, pushing himself up from his bed, “if I’m getting danger signals because there’s a pigeon at my window, I’m going to hurt someone.”

(more below the cut)

He reached under his bed and grabbed one of his spare web-slingers. Not one of the fancy things that Mr. Stark had set up for him with five hundred and seventy-six possible combinations, but the regular old one. Because he was tired and he was pretty sure it was a pigeon, but he wasn’t sure, so--

Rap-rap-rap.

Peter was just peeking through the blinds when a hand shoved his window up. A metal hand, with black and gold fingers. A moment later, the blinds shifted aside and there was a man in his bedroom.

A familiar man.

“Hey, aren’t--”

“Hush, kid,” the guy said in a deep, smoky sort of voice. The kind that spies used in meetings with their contacts.

“Aren’t you the Winter Soldier?” Peter hissed, excitable. Better to keep his voice down, though. Aunt May would completely freak out if there was a superhero in his room. Especially one that had been wanted for war crimes.

“Look, kid,” the Winter Soldier said. “Stark told me you could be trusted.”

“Mr. Stark said--” Peter squeaked. “Yeah, I mean, yeah, he… we do missions. Sometimes. Together. We’re a team. Partners. Like that.” He crossed his fingers. “You can trust me, yes sir.”

“Great,” the Winter Soldier said. “I need you to watch this cat for me.”

“What?”

The Winter Soldier reached outside onto the fire escape and brought in a cat carrier. It wasn’t an ordinary, plastic PetsWorld thing, either, but a fancy, modular box. Shiny and sleek and bearing the Stark Industries logo. “This is Alpine,” the Winter Soldier said. “Don’t let anything happen to this cat. I’ll be back in about a week.”

Peter looked into the carrier and saw a pair of blue eyes looking back at him.

“Okay--?”

The Winter Soldier was gone.

At least the multilayered cat carrier had come with supplies.

And the highest high-tech litter box Peter had ever seen, which was not saying a lot, because Peter had never lived in a rental that allowed pets, much less ever had one. Aside from a goldfish he’d won at the fair one time, but that had died within a week, and really, the less said about that, the better.

“You--” He told the cat, pointing at it, “--had better not die in a week.”

The cat came forward to sniff at his finger, and then brushed her head under his hand.

The Stark-Box came with a very fine layer of particles -- like crystals, really, in red and gold, because sure, why not, let the cat poop on the Iron Man colors. That was probably a bet that Mr. Stark had lost, or something. Or a joke that he didn’t want to know about -- and did a quick removal of feces or urine, put it in a little air-tight bag like they were on the International Space Station, as well as performed basic medical analysis on the output and sent a text to Peter’s phone, telling him that Alpine was in perfect health.

“What are you, some kind of spy cat?” He couldn’t imagine Mr. Stark going this far out of his way for a housepet.

There were also several tins of food, packets of a semi-soft food, and some hard kibble. There were feeding instructions and an admonishment to water the cat (that also went directly to his phone and he wondered if there was some sort of bluetooth connection and onboard computer in the Stark Carrier.

There were enrichment activities -- including a miniature of Cap’s shield that zoomed around the room under its own power and Alpine chased it a few times before batting it into Peter’s laundry basket where it stayed, buzzing fitfully, until Peter put it away.

A cat brush that Alpine turned her nose up at, and proceeded to attack his hand when he tried to use it. “Well, I went a week last year without brushing my hair-- don’t look at me like that, it was finals -- and it didn’t hurt me, so you’ll probably be okay.”

Alpine turned around and curled into a ball on Peter’s bed and went to sleep.

Which was great until Peter considered the fact that it was now four in the morning, he’d spent the last two hours poking and playing with the Winter Soldier’s cat, and he still had school in the morning.

And the cat… was laying in his bed. In the center of his bed. Where he wanted to sleep.

He poked her a few times. “Get up, that’s my sleeping spot.”

She ignored him.

Peter sighed, considered moving her. She opened one blue eye and gave him a Look.

Psychic cat, maybe?

“Ug, whatever.” He slung a web hammock and climbed in. He’d slept in worse places.

“You look like crap,” Ned said, sliding into the desk next to Peter. “Busy night crime fighting, rescuing stolen bikes? Giving directions? Oh, oh, I know, stopped a mugging?”

“Cat.”

“What?”

“I have a cat,” Peter explained, through a yawn. “The Winter Soldier showed up and left me a cat. A special cat.”

“Like, a lion? Or a radioactive housecat? Do you think if it bit me, I might get powers?”

Peter almost laughed.

Almost.

“I don’t think so?” Peter opened his textbook and turned to the page the teacher required. “I don’t know, he didn’t say much, just that it was important, and--”

“Mr. Parker, is there something you’d like to share with the class, or can I get on with our history lesson?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter said. “Go on, it’s fascinating.”

“Sarcasm, dude,” Ned hissed at him.

He waited until the teacher turned away again. “So, come over and help me out?”

“With a cat?”

“Dude, you have pets, I need advice! Help!”

“I have sea monkeys that I ordered from a comic book,” Ned said, with vast patience. “That’s not exactly the same as keeping a mutant cat under control.”

“She’s not a mutant,” Peter said, “at least I don’t think so. I don’t know, maybe she’s housing nano-tech or something. Just come over and help me out, okay?”

“Mutant nanotech cat,” Ned said. “And yet, somehow, this seems like work.”

“You’re the one who wanted to be a hero, pal,” Peter told him.

“Guy in the chair, Peter,” Ned corrected. “Q to your Bond.”

“Why is your room covered in webs?”

“She keeps knocking stuff off the shelves.”

“Really? Like that’s an actual thing, I thought it was just a meme,” Ned said.

“Sure, sit something there-- just on the edge of the desk.”

Ned pulled out his cellphone and put it on the side of Peter’s desk.

“Now come over here, so you don’t scare her,” Peter told him.

And sure enough a few seconds later, Alpine hopped up onto the desk. Sat next to the phone.

And knocked it on the floor.

Alpine was strong, Peter discovered. After pushing over Ned’s phone, a pile of algebra books, the casing for Peter’s old computer, a few dumbell weights that he’d used back before the spider bite and rarely even thought about now…

“This cat can push fifty pounds,” Ned said in awe. “Maybe it’s got the super soldier serum in it!”

Peter scoffed. “I can pick up an eighty-thousand pound cargo truck.” For a few seconds, at any rate, and really, it was more like he caught it. And it had kinda knocked him on his ass. A bit. But Ned didn’t need to know that.

“Well, not everyone can be Spider-Man,” Ned said, philosophically.

“Peter, you need to be -- are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Aunt May, “ Peter said, grabbing a bag of granola from the drawer and emptying into his mouth, chewing like a chipmunk. The worst thing about the whole Spider-Man gig was how he was always freaking hungry, no matter how much he ate. And he knew they couldn’t afford it. MJ had gone on a tear a few months ago about a diet that the goal was SNATT -- slightly nauseated all the time -- to obtain the perfect beach body.

One time his stomach had growled in biology so loudly that the whole class turned to stare, and Peter had said he was doing the kimkins diet. Almost everyone had stopped worrying about it, then, except for MJ, who started bringing him articles about eating disorders.

“--you need to be more careful about leaving your window open. There was a cat in your room.”

Slightly nauseated all the time.

The granola turned into a rock in his stomach. “So--” casually, casually “--where’s the cat now?” And how the heck hadn’t she noticed the cat box and food and litter if Aunt May was in his room?

“Her owner came and got her,” May said, blithely unaware that she was single handedly destroying Peter’s entire existence. “Nice man. Michael-- what did he say his last name was? I don’t remember. He said he saw her in your window, and came over to get her. I said we didn’t have a cat here, he must be mistaken, but when I opened the door to your room, she ran right to him. Says she’s his companion animal -- suffers from a rare blood disorder and she can smell it when he needs to medicate. That’s so smart, you know, having an animal that can do that.”

Morbius.

His aunt was less than six feet away from someone who drank human blood? Peter just about swooned.

“Peter, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I mean, you know, cat. In my room. I should go check and make sure she didn’t leave any presents.”

Aunt May made a fair enough sort of shrug and Peter bolted, leaving the rest of his snack on the kitchen counter. Threw on the spider-suit, stashed the Stark KatCaddy in his closet, and was out the window in a moment.

“Now, aside from a castle, if I was a nasty old vampire with a cat that I wanted for some reason, where would I go?”

Alchemex.

Alpine was, of all crazy things, asleep in Peter’s lap. He’d webbed her twice trying to get her back from Morbius, she’d spent half the day with a crazy vampire, and then she’d taken a trip across the city via the spider-street.

That she was curled up in his lap, absently kneading his thigh and purring little cute snores while she slept was…

“This cat is something else,” Peter said. He scratched between her ears and she opened up one eye to peer at him, then mewed softly and went back to sleep.

“So, like a mutant cat?”

“Well, no,” Peter said. “I’m not sure. Morbius thought she might have been injected with the super soldier serum. He was planning to drain all her blood and analyze it, with the idea of making a cure for himself.”

“A vampire who wants a cure,” Ned said. “Why is he a bad guy again? I mean, if I was a vampire who could go out in the day time, I’d go to high school every day and be cool and broody. Like Twilight.”

“Ned, you do go to high school every day,” Peter pointed out.

“Oh, right, yeah…”

Spidey sense didn’t wake him up.

The knocking on his window did, though.

Peter groaned. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you just come by during normal daytime hours?” He shoved the window up to let the Winter Soldier in.

“You look tired, kid,” the Winter Soldier said.

“Yeah, well, your super cat’s like super useless,” Peter said. “Three villains, two nights of knocking all my stuff on the floor, one day of puking on my bed, and a partridge in a pear tree. Does she have any abilities, because you should totally train her up some.”

“Villains?”

“Dude, your cat got catnapped -- and not like in the cute, sleeping in my lap way -- four times. Twice by Morbius, who either wants to drink her blood or test it or something.”

The Winter Soldier’s eyebrows went up and his face took on murderous intent.

“Look, I got her back, everything’s cool, you do not have to get Cap to drop another 18-wheeler on me,” Peter said. “Everything’s perfectly fine right now, we’re all fine here, how are you?”

“I’m still stuck on villains,” the Winter Soldier admitted. “What’d you do, take out an ad in th’ papers that you were cat sitting?”

“I don’t know how Morbius knew,” Peter admitted, “but once the Sinister Six saw that Spider-Man was rescuing a cat, they decided the cat had to be important for some reason, I guess.”

“Well, shit, kid,” the Winter Soldier said. “I didn’t think that would happen. I just-- Tony… last minute--”

“You had a mission?”

“I had a vacation,” the Winter Soldier said. “Vacation. I love the sound of that word. Va-caaaay-shun.” The Winter Soldier rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck and --was that a hickey?

“I thought you had healing factor,” Peter said, “so-- who-- I mean, how har-- you know what, don’t answer that. You had a good vacation, that’s all I need to know, it is not my business if Mr. Stark was gnawing on your neck like a starving vampire, we have enough vampires around here, that’s all perfectly normal and fine.”

The Winter Soldier laughed. “Somethin’ like that, kid,” he said. “Sorry about the trouble, though. She wouldn’t have liked a kennel and I jus’ didn’t have anywhere else to take her, to someone I trusted.”

“You know what, Mr. Winter Soldier, sir, any time,” Peter said.