When Spidey Met Oracle

The Question was suddenly glad she was wearing her stupid pseudoderm false-face during this second encounter, because she decided pretty quickly that Spider-Man had gotten a bum rap.

"The power of Christ compels you to pass out!" she heard him shout after he'd knocked an Inner Demon to the floor. Yeah, the jokes were a little obnoxious, but Montoya had been partnered with Harvey Bullock for years. She had a tolerance for obnoxious few could imagine. Hell, against the Bullock Standard, the wall-crawler was downright charming.

The way Huntress told it, the Spider-guy was supposed to be a sloppy fighter or something, but that wasn't what Renee was witnessing. He was tearing through the opposition with grace and poise and remarkable restraint. She certainly didn't remember him seeming so polished back at the mattress store, but it's not like she'd had any hand-to-hand training beyond her police academy courses back then. Hell, The Question was starting to worry that she was the real liability between them, considering the number of hits he ended up taking while taking down some punk she didn't know was about to hit her. It was then she decided that maybe, just maybe, she didn't need to wish so damn hard that it was Spider-Woman bailing her out. Spider-Man wasn't nearly as nice to look at, but he was certainly a good guy to have watching your back.

"Sorry," she said after he took a kick to the face from an Inner Demon while punching an Intergang goon that almost got the drop on her.

"Nobody dies," he murmured before webbing the guy to a crate. That pronouncement seemed a little dramatic, but Montoya let it slide.

It was after he executed a perfect mantis throw on one of the armed Intergang mooks when The Question realized that despite everything she'd ever heard, the web-head had received some serious martial arts instruction...

Spider-Man knew kung fu!

*

Splendid Web Rush was a modified version of Exquisite Speed Release, a Tiger-style takedown that involved a series of feigned strikes that masked intended grabs. The major difference with Spider-Man's variation was that he used web-lines to increase his reach and his tactile spider-powers to anchor his stance.

When Shang-Chi initially taught it to Spidey in the first weeks of his wushu tutelage, it quickly became the web-slinger's favorite move. "Be careful not to become dependent upon any one method," the Master of Kung Fu had warned his student after the wall-crawler used it one time too many during one of their sparring sessions. "Your style cannot center on one technique alone."

"But I like the attacks that don't involve punching and kicking," Spidey explained, blocking a blow. "Frankly, I'm still afraid I'm going to kill somebody with this stuff."

"Focused discipline is the only path of the enlightened warrior," Shang replied, deflecting a cobra strike from his pupil. "You'll never find The Way of the Spider if you seek it through fear," and just to underline his point, Spidey's sensei dodged his new go-to maneuver with a flourish, socking the wall-crawler in the gut with Lightning Monkey Kick and knocking him right on his ass. "Your kung fu needs to be a versatile, living thing that flows and ebbs with the tide of whatever conflict you face," Shang-Chi instructed, helping Spider-Man up. "Your opponent is not a dragon you slay with an enchanted sword or one magic move. Your battle is a duet the two of you sing in concert. Whether you are the one who belts out the final note is determined by which of you understands the music, not who knows the best lyrics."

"Whatever you say, man," Spidey groaned. He was about to make a joke about how he had always been a button-masher the few times he played Street Fighter as a kid, but he'd promised Shang that he was going to take his apprenticeship to the Master of Kung Fu seriously.

Spider-Man didn't always understand Shang-Chi's flowery metaphors but he eventually got the message. By the time his lessons were done, Splendid Web Rush was just what his teacher would probably call "one more instrument in the empty orchestra" or something. It wasn't a move Spider-Man worked toward anymore; it was one that just poured out of him if the time was right, and now it usually surprised him when it did, like bumping into an old friend from middle school.

He wasn't exactly shocked that day on the docks with the lady without a face, however. Back when he played favorites, he'd suspected Splendid Web Rush would be pretty effective against Mister Negative's funky Chinamen from funky Chinatown.

And no, Peter wasn't racist. That was a hilarious 70's soul reference. Google it.

His training with Shang-Chi was all a part of his new approach to superheroics. Peter Parker was determined to be a better Spider-Man and his dedication was paying off. This little scuffle with Mr. Negative's goons and the newbies with the high-tech guns was wrapped up within ten minutes of him swinging into the fray. Once he and The Question were done, Spidey did a quick check to make sure they were all down and dealt with before making his exit.

"You don't want to stick around?" she asked, looking over one of their fallen foes. "Help me search for clues?"

"I'm, um, not the best at the Sherlock-like stuff," Spider-Man murmured, "and I'm kind of late for work..."

"I get it," she muttered. "You're still mad I didn't recognize you in that suit?"

"No, no, that happens all the time," he told her. Spidey got confused for Anti-Venom a lot in that costume. Of course, nowadays, that wasn't such a bad thing. The local media outlets had painted ol' Eddie Brock as the hero of Spider-Island since the strange, curative properties of his nega-symbiote had eradicated the virus... with the help of a couple hundred-thousand octobots and a little direction on Spider-Man's part...

"So the blank-face thing's still wigging you out, right?" The Question asked then.

"I kinda need to hurl," he admitted, "but if you come up with anything you might need my help with, drop me a line."

"That's okay," she replied. "You're not exactly my type, either." He couldn't see it, but Spider-Man sensed a severe eye roll from her tone alone.

"I mean it," he told her, firing a web to a nearby crane. "Just stop by the Baxter Building or Avengers Mansion. Tell 'em Marc Webb sent you. That's the password."

"Whatever."

"It's different now," he assured her. "If you need Spider-Man, he's there... and nobody dies."

Nice little speech, Pete, he thought as he swung off. Just make sure you follow through.

In the last several months, he had been doing everything in his considerable power to up his game, but he didn't always live up to this new goal. There had been one moment during the Serpent's War that was shaping up to be his second greatest shame after everything with Uncle Ben.

The whole world was going to hell. Thor had just taken a terrible beating fighting Nul, Breaker of Worlds, and after he saw the God of Thunder just barely beat the trans-monsterfied Hulk, Spider-Man asked Captain America if he could leave the frontline to track down his aunt. When Rogers said it was fine, Spidey assumed it was because Cap knew, just like he did, that in the face of everything they were up against, there wasn't much a guy with sticky fingers could do worth a damn.

It was a selfish thing to do, but Peter just wanted to see his aunt right then to make sure she was okay. He didn't have a plan beyond that. He just needed to see May Parker alive.

Since this latest nightmare had started, Spider-Man hadn't heard from her. And the whole time he'd been out there, doing what he could to stem the tide of chaos, he'd been worried. He'd been thinking about May while he was beating Vermin and his army of rats back into the sewers, and the whole time, he knew the guy wasn't in league with the Serpent. Vermin was just as scared as everyone else, lashing out. And Spidey couldn't forget that May was out there through all of that madness. Not even as he battled Angrir, Breaker of Souls -- the monster Ben Grimm had become when he touched the hammer that fell on Yancy Street.

The Serpent's forces were tearing New York City apart and she was in the middle of it. After seeing what happened to the God of Thunder, Spider-Man just had to find her... Over the years, Peter had sacrificed so much to keep her safe. He didn't regret any of it. She was still with him and that meant everything as far as he was concerned. The city could burn if it meant Aunt May was safe...

Spider-Man liked to think that he had a lot of great virtues, but he knew that was this lie he told himself, because at the end of the day, he just wanted to look out for the people he loved. He wasn't like the real heroes. The other Avengers had family and friends they were worried about, too, but they were still fighting the fight, but Peter didn't start out doing what he did to save everybody. He became a crime fighter to do everything he could to make sure he didn't lose anyone else the way he lost Uncle Ben -- least of all Aunt May. In the beginning, he fought criminals because he learned that any one of them could go on to hurt someone he cared about. Eventually, Peter came to realize that everyone gunned down by some random thug was somebody's uncle... somebody's father... and he tried to remember that every time he went out in his spider-themed footy-pajamas, but sometimes his own concerns still won out.

Like he said, it was selfish. He knew that, but it was the only way Peter could live with failing his uncle. Keeping the love of Ben's life alive...

Of course when, despite all the odds, he actually did find the woman who raised him at one of the safety zones set up by the National Guard, May being May was sure to put him in his place. He'd shown up as Spidey, shouting her name with a hoarse throat and this weak excuse that he'd come to find her on Peter's behalf. The first thing she asked was if her nephew was okay, and it wasn't until he swore Peter was fine that she reminded Spider-Man that it was his job to keep everyone safe. That there wasn't any one person he should worry about. Not with all his power. Not with all his responsibility.

For years, Peter had convinced himself that he couldn't tell his aunt he was Spider-Man because she wasn't strong enough to handle the truth, but he knew now how untrue that was. She had known once, and she had flourished in the role of being the web-slinger's mother. After Doctor Strange made her and everyone else forget his identity, he kept her in the dark because it'd be too hard for him. Because then she'd know that he had shameful moments like this. He didn't want it to be that hard for her to be proud of him.

So Spider-Man, worn out as he was, made it back to the battle with the Serpent in time to receive enchanted weaponry Tony Stark had designed for the Avengers with Odin's blessing. He still remembered the surge of power he'd felt with those uru gauntlets on his wrists.

While Thor made war with the Serpent, armed with the Odinsword, the web-head was there when Captain America hefted Mjolnir itself... When Steve Rogers reminded them all he was a soldier willing to lay down his life... a leader without doubt what was the right thing to do... a man clearly worthy of the power of Thor...

Right then and there, Spider-Man saw what he needed to aspire to... He understood what kind of man he wanted to be, remembering all over again how to make May proud and to honor his uncle's memory.

When he was a kid, Ben used to tell Peter bedtime stories about Captain America's World War II exploits. God, he wished the old man could have been there to see his hero save the day...

It wasn't just that last battle that drove Peter now. It was everything Spider-Man had been through all these months. Spencer Smythe, the Spider-Slayer, had waged a campaign to destroy everything J. Jonah Jameson loved... Jonah's family... his friends at the Bugle... It was moments like that which reminded Peter that despite their differences, everybody Jonah cared about were the same people he did. And despite everything Spider-Man had been willing to give up to win the day, including his spider-sense, he'd failed to save Jonah's wife, Marla. The First Lady of New York had died ten feet from him.

Peter wouldn't have the amazing job he had now if Marla hadn't made the effort to treat him like family.

After they laid her to rest, he swore, he'd never watch another person die. He'd find a way. Then the Human Torch was killed anyway. Spidey hadn't been there when it happened, but it still felt like a failure. Peter took Johnny Storm's spot with the Fantastic Four to honor his friend's last wishes. Shortly after that, the whole city was infected with a disease derived from Peter's mutated DNA and he'd just barely found a way to stop it. Then Norman Osborn broke out of prison.

Before any of that, though, Oracle told him he was capable of more than all that he'd done and he wasn't living up to his potential. Now she was gone, too. He had to do better. If not for Ben or Barbara or Marla and all the rest, then for everybody out there he hadn't let down yet.

Even with all that in mind, though, until he perfected time travel, Spider-Man couldn't be in two places at once, could he? He couldn't spend the day busting heads with The Question. He had a job now. One that provided him with the resources to build better crime-fighting tech.

As he made his way to work at the lab, however, it occurred to Peter that, considering all of the high tech assets he now had at his disposal between joining up with the FF and his new place of employment, finding a way to be in two places at once might actually be worth looking into. He knew at least three people who'd had some success with trans-temporal mechanics.

There were many things wrong with his life... As he got older, he suspected that there always would be. But for the time being, there was one thing he could thoroughly enjoy:

Peter Parker loved his job.

*

Barbara Gordon hated her job.

She imagined that for Bruce, part of the appeal of going public about financially backing Batman was giving up the arduous task of covering his paper trail. It wasn't exactly cheap to set up shell companies and dummy corporations so that nobody knew you were buying materials to fabricate a new Batmobile.

It was little wonder that Tony Stark had gone with the flimsy cover that Iron Man was just his hired bodyguard when he first started out as the Armored Avenger. It was completely baffling that he had managed to pull off that lie for so many years, but then again, Stark had always been the better business man.

With this new, cost-cutting sense of transparency at play within Batman Incorporated, it seemed like a logical step to put Barbara on the payroll. Especially since her primary responsibility in her first few months with Batman, Inc. was designing Internet 3.0. It was supposed to be a major crossover project with revenue-sourcing marketability applicable to Wayne Enterprises proper. That said, until all the investors were signed and the deals finalized, if anybody asked Babs about her official responsibilities within WayneTech, Barbara was just one of a few dozen systems administrators. Bruce certainly had a wealth of qualified programmers working for him, but he didn't trust any of them to do any of the initial work on the 3.0 platform any more than she did. Babs wasn't sure what her co-workers did with their days while she was weaving a whole new worldwide web. Probably a mix of busy work, Netflix Instant and online gaming on one of the most sophisticated servers on the planet.

She didn't know and she didn't really care.

For Bruce, Internet 3.0 was just a risky business venture. For Barbara, it was the project of a lifetime.

As Batgirl she had beaten some of the most violent criminal psychopaths in America. As Oracle she had neutralized some of the greatest threats to the world at large from a keyboard with the help of the people she trusted most. There was no denying that she had done some amazing things in her life, but this would probably be her legacy, and it was exciting to think that the biggest thing she'd ever do -- this one grand, world-changing endeavor -- was something she could be credited for as Barbara Gordon. That little Babs, the Commissioner's daughter, could be remembered for something other than being that poor girl who got shot through the spine.

All things considered, it should have been her dream job. And it was... for the most part.

It's sometimes hard to remember that achieving your dreams takes a lot of work. It also takes a lot of luck, too -- and while Barbara had a hard time considering herself all that lucky, she realized she was just kidding herself -- but it takes even more hard work on top of that good fortune.

It wasn't the late nights of coding that got to her. She lived for that stuff. It was the paperwork and... and subordination that her new position required that was making her life hell.

Really, it was Lucius Fox.

Fox had been effectively running Wayne Enterprises for years. He'd started out as the driving force behind Bruce's charitable work with the Wayne Foundation and transitioned over to the Research and Development branch of WayneTech sometime around the time Barbara first became Batgirl. It was in R&D where Fox had truly thrived. The vast majority of tech upgrades Batman had made to his considerable arsenal had roots in some WayneTech project Lucius had spearheaded in some capacity.

So, as you could imagine, Lucius Fox was Bruce Wayne's go-to guy. Barbara was fine with that. He was a good man who did excellent work. Hell, the equipment he had facilitated was probably responsible for her surviving her few years in a cape and cowl. But what she hadn't realized when she'd been filling out her W-2's was that all of this meant that Fox was going to be her boss. That was still taking some getting used to. Barbara had enjoyed unbounded autonomy during all her years running the Birds of Prey. When she thought about it, Babs realized she hadn't had a boss since her days with Task Force X under Amanda Waller. Batman didn't count. Oracle had always considered the Dark Knight more of a client than a manager. Lucius, though, was always checking up on her, charting her progress, monitoring her efficiency and making sure she was... was... filling out paperwork.

Barbara Gordon had a perfect, eidetic memory. Writing things down just for the sake of writing them down was a waste of her time.

Waller certainly never sweat the documentation. All Amanda cared about was that the mission succeeded, which usually meant the Suicide Squad had shutdown some insidious metahuman activity on foreign soil. Hell, with Waller, the less of a paper trail that existed, the better. "I'm sorry, Senator, but those records were destroyed in the explosion," was one of The Wall's favorite excuses during all of those Senate hearings Amanda got dragged to back in the day.

Fox, on the other hand, was meticulous.

Barbara's nightmare started with emails. Initially, she had been programming Internet 3.0 in the blissful peace and quiet of Kord Tower. She noticed all those emails from Fox that started popping up, but she'd ignored them the same way she ignored pleads for financial favors from Nigerian princes and suggestions for Pym particle based penile enhancements. Besides, Bruce had been cc'ed on all of those nonsense emails from his hatchet man, so she figured he would set the guy straight eventually.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

"Miss Gordon, there's a Mr. Fox here to see you," Aleksandr Creote, the ex-Spetsnaz operative she'd more or less hired on as her executive assistant, informed her via intercom two weeks after that first electronic-missive. She was in the middle of testing the haptics for the VR interface when he called her. "You've got to be shitting me," she muttered.