st_x5_494 | Follow the Tracks

Follow the Tracks - Peter

It was 4:30 A.M. in the morning and Alec was already up and dressed. He glanced out of his room to the horizon that wasn't quite yet hinting at the sunrise, but it would be soon. He walked into the other room where Peter slept and crossed his arms over his chest while he watched the teenage boy sleep - it must be nice to sleep so easily sometimes.

He shifted, moving about the room silently as he gathered the needed material and then he suddenly through a set of clothing at Peter's face. "Rise and shine, sunshine. We need to get moving."

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That doesn't stop Peter from casting the light up towards the sky. Nothing except some cirrus clouds and the moon.

"Is there any way to know when we're getting close?" Peter whispers as he continues forward. The last thing he wanted was to wander right into the creature's nest or something.

"Sound, usually. Or the trail stops and we're about to be ambushed."

Alec closed his eyes on concentrated. He reached out as best he could with his hearing. There was a faint sound.

"It's up ahead somewhere. Sounds like it's still walking."

"Should we --"

Peter's attention turns away from the space in front of him as he turns to face Alec in an instant.

"Should we ambush it? I mean, we don't even know what it is yet."

When Peter turned around, Alec's eyes remained looking passed him down the trail. "We can flank it, sure. As long as you promise to turn back around and keep your head forward. I don't want to be picking up parts of your body around the forest." And Liz and Stark would never let him hear the end of it.

"You know, I have fought things before." Peter's on the defensive and he doesn't know why he is. Maybe it's because he feels like Alec's treating him like a kid. Or like someone who doesn't know how to fight. Sure he doesn't know anything about tracking and he's just getting his head around group tactics after mostly fighting alone for most of his tenure as Spider-Man, but...

...he could handle it!

Alec's eyes moved to Peter because Peter was being Peter again. Alec wasn't exactly sure where that came from. "Okay?" He stared at Peter. "...So?"

Peter lets out a sigh. "I'm going first," he announces. He flicks out the light and immediately jumps up and crawls up one tree, then leaps to another, and then another. It's not so dark that he can't easily see the form of the tree in front of him, but he can't rely on his sight to easily see anything that might be meandering below.

Thankfully, after about a dozen trees, he can hear it; he stops where he's perched in one of the branches and strains his eyes to make out what's down below. All he can really see is that it's big and walking on fours (or maybe more -- it's hard to tell, but it's definitely not bipedal).

He wishes there was some way he could communicate this to Alec without giving himself away.

With Peter's back to Alec, Alec rolled his eyes. The kid still felt like he always needed to prove something.

Alec purposefully went slower than Peter, but tried to look like he wasn't doing it on purpose in case Peter was carefully watching

He stopped when he was a few feet away and could make the outline too. From where Alec was, the creature looked like it had natural armour. This was probably going to be a pain in the ass.

He picked up a rock and tossed it which caused the animal to stop what it was doing, look up, and then slowly go yo investigate to the right.

Peter glances in the direction of where the stone was cast from, but it's so hard to see without the light on. The second he turns the light on, though, the creature knows they're both there.

Big shapes Peter doesn't have any problem making out, even though they're mostly just that -- shapes. The details aren't so easily made out. He's pretty sure he can disable this thing if they work fast enough.

Peter shoots a line of web-slinger spray at the creature, then taps the end to one of his tree's thicker branches. He can only barely make out the sound of cracking wood over the occasional shriek from the creature -- and Peter quickly moves onto another tree and repeats the process.

He's going to have to move fast if he doesn't this thing shredding the forest.

Alec understood what Peter was trying to do after a moment. It was a smart plan and while Alec didn't have webbing to help, he could at least keep the thing distracted. He sprinted for the animal and ran over top its back, landing in the front of it. "Wow, you're ugly." It tried to snap at Alec. His arms jutted out as he held open the jaw, one hand on the top of the creature's jaw and the other one the bottom.

When Alec joins the fray, Peter moves more quickly, motivated by a desire to keep his roommate safe from the creature's clutches. Sure, Alec is more than capable of taking care of himself -- and of healing up fast enough if he takes a hit -- but that doesn't mean that Peter wants him to have to.

He sends another shot at it, then a second, and then a third. The creature's ear-piercing shrieks grow louder, and Peter can't help but hope that it's not waking up anyone back at the inn.

The creature is very nearly stuck in place; only when the creature strains is it able to pull more than a foot or two away.

"Can you tell what it is?" he shouts down over the creature.

"A very ugly rhino" or so it seemed anyways. "Looks like something Manticore would cook up."

The creature was able break free from Alec's grip and snapped at him. "little help with his mouth?"

Peter wait until a half-minute before it looks like its mouth is just about to snap closed and shoots out some web-fluid, binding the creature's maw shut.

When the creature flails, Peter tries once more for good measure.

"That okay?"

Alec took a step back and watched the creature strain against the webbing - webbing that would disappear in a few hours and then what?

"Yeah, that's good." Except now, what the hell were they supposed to do with this? He wondered if this would be worse for Peter if they had to kill it since it was 'helpless'. "Any suggestions now?"

"Um."

Peter drops down to the ground, landing soundly on his own two feet. He turns on the flashlight, casts it over the creature. It huffs through its large nostrils, fist-size eye trained on the both of them.

Peter looks over at Alec.

He clearly didn't think this through all the way.

He exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. "You think we move it far enough away, it might not come back?" The fact he didn't just take his knife and kill it probably said something about how Peter was rubbing off on Alec.

Peter looks from the creature back over to Alec. "You think?" he asks uncertainly. Now he's not really sure. "I mean, if we knock it out and drag it an hour or two away..."

Alec shrugged. Maybe? "If not, I guess we could always re-catch it and see if it could swim." From the looks of it, it probably couldn't.

Peter presses his lips together. "You think you could knock it out, then?"

He look a look at the big armoured beast. Could he? Well, he could try. He held out his hand to Peter while is eyes scanned for some sort of weakness on the creature. "Flashlight?"

Peter tosses him the flashlight.

The flashlight was at least a little heavy. Alec hoped that it would provide enough extra 'oomph'. He climbed up onto the creature - much to its displeasure. "Yeah, yeah. Calm down." Thankfully the cat DNA in him meant that balancing was a little easier.

He positioned himself at the base of where he thought the skull was as it was hard to tell the actual location. When he thought he found the weakest point, he brought the flashlight down. The animal let out a unhappy screech, but didn't quite lose consciousness so Alec brought the flashlight down again and this time there was a huff before the creature wobbled a little and then sunk to the ground.

Peter approaches the creature slowly. He doubts that Alec's blow killed it, but he just wants to make sure it's okay.

True enough, he can see its chest slowly rising and falling and for some strange reason, it reminds him a little of that scene in Jurassic Park with Ellie and the sick stegosaurus.

Peter presses his palm against his hard skin. This thing had to be really tough. "Guess we should probably start moving this guy, huh?"

Alec hopped off and surveyed the animal. "You want to pull or push?" He figured it was going to be arduous either way.

"I should probably pull," he says. "With the web-fluid stuff and all."

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