Chapter 24: And That's How You Sweep Harlem
In which Spider-Man cleans house, makes officers speechless, and exits like a ninja with a grudge.
Let it be known: Jessica Jones hated warzones.
She hated the smell of blood and melted steel. She hated the sound of cracking stone and screaming people. And she really hated that feeling of helplessness when her strength wasn't enough.
But she moved anyway.
While Peter swung through bullets and fireballs playing ninja with a super-powered albino Terminator, Jessica—hoodie torn and stained with soot—was busy doing the one thing Spider-Man couldn't:
Saving everyone else.
The police station looked like someone had dropped a bomb and then reversed a garbage truck through it for good measure. The air was thick with smoke, sirens in the distance cried for attention, and the whole street shimmered with chaos.
She spotted him first—a young cop slumped against a wall, looking like he'd been on the losing side of a wrestling match with a shotgun.
Jessica dropped beside him, her movements swift and controlled. "Hey. Don't you dare pass out on me."
The officer's lips moved, blood-stained and barely audible. "J-Jewel?"
Jessica made a face. "Yeah, yeah. Don't get all sentimental. I'm just here so you don't bleed out and embarrass yourself."
She ripped her jacket, pressing it against the wound with practiced pressure. Her hands were steady, her voice firm. Not heroic, exactly. More like an annoyed nurse who didn't clock out on time.
"Stay with me," she muttered, eyes scanning the rubble for help. "I do not feel like carrying your sorry butt ten blocks uphill."
The officer wheezed out a laugh—or a death rattle. Either way, she kept talking to him, grounding him in sarcasm until help arrived.
Then—crack.
The sound of shifting stone caught her ear.
Jessica looked toward the collapsed edge of the building. A faint cry echoed under the rubble.
Without hesitation, she sprinted toward it.
Her fingers dug into concrete like it was cardboard, and with a grunt, she heaved. The slab screamed in protest as it shifted, revealing a battered policewoman, half-buried beneath debris, her leg pinned at an awful angle.
"Hey," Jessica said, voice softer now. "You breathing?"
The woman coughed, nodding through the dust. "Yeah… hurts like hell."
Jessica didn't flinch. "Good. That means you're alive."
She tossed the concrete aside with a crunch and scooped the officer up like she weighed nothing more than a bag of groceries.
"I've got you," she muttered, carrying her back through the fire-lit darkness. "Don't puke on my shirt. I just stole it from Target."
By the time Jessica returned to the makeshift safe zone behind the building, she'd carried three officers, pulled two more out from under burning wreckage, and resuscitated one who'd flatlined in her arms.
But there were others.
Some she found too late.
Men and women who had drawn their guns and stood their ground against monsters—and lost.
Jessica stood over one of them now, her fists clenched, her jaw tight.
She wanted to scream. Or punch a wall. Or both.
But Peter was still fighting, and people still needed saving. So she moved on. Quietly. Furiously. Determinedly.
When it was finally over—when Tombstone had been broken, the gang webbed up like angry party balloons, Jessica leaned against the side of a ruined cruiser, catching her breath.
A group of wounded cops sat nearby, wide-eyed and breathing thanks to her.
One older officer looked at her like she had just punched the moon out of orbit.
"You… you saved a lot of people tonight."
Jessica grunted. "Yeah, well… don't get used to it."
Another officer—face dirty, eyes grateful—nodded slowly. "You were amazing."
Jessica scratched the back of her neck, uncomfortable. Compliments weren't her thing. Sarcasm? Yes. Praise? Ugh.
"Thanks," she muttered. "Try not to get shot next time."
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It was late. Like, post-midnight-and-I-haven't-had-a-snack-in-hours late.
The kind of late where even the rats in the alleyways were clocking out for the night.
But Spider-Man?
Oh no. He was just getting started.
With Tombstone out cold—paralyzed, humiliated, and thoroughly unconscious—Peter finally exhaled. The tension in his shoulders melted like snow on hot asphalt, and for a glorious five seconds, he let himself think Okay. That's done.
Then he looked around.
And grinned.
Because holy web-fluid, Tombstone's crew hadn't just come packing—they'd brought everything short of a missile silo and a kitchen sink.
"Okay," Peter muttered to himself, crouching beside the still-smoking railgun. "You guys seriously brought this to break one guy out of jail? Who were you expecting? Thor?"
The railgun, still warm to the touch, looked like something out of a sci-fi film. Sleek. Black. The energy coils thrummed faintly, like a sleeping beast. Peter whistled low and gave a nod of approval.
"Alright, baby," he said, "you're coming with me."
With a flick of his fingers, he summoned the storage seal Naruto had helped him design. A glowing blue spiral appeared on his wrist, and with a soft hum, the railgun vanished into thin air.
"Magic pockets," Peter said, smirking. "Never going back to backpacks again."
Next came the heat gloves—still slightly warm, but thankfully no longer glowing like mini-suns. Peter peeled them off Tombstone's limp hands like he was unwrapping a particularly deadly Christmas present.
"These things could melt through a bank vault. Yeah, definitely not letting these end up on eBay."
Storage seal: activated.
Gone.
And then—oh boy—the real fun began.
Peter strolled through the wreckage like a kid on a scavenger hunt, except instead of plastic eggs, he was picking up futuristic assault rifles, tactical armor, encrypted comms, and what appeared to be a grenade launcher disguised as a briefcase.
"Who funded you guys?" he asked a half-conscious goon, who groaned something unintelligible in response.
"Let me guess—Kingpin's secret piggy bank?"
Another flick. Another storage seal.
Peter got so into it, he started narrating like a travel host.
"Here we have the rare Mark-3 exosuit core—lightweight, stylish, and slightly scorched from being electrocuted by yours truly. And here—oh wow—look at these boot jets. Shame they didn't help when you faceplanted into a dumpster."
By the time he reached the SUVs, he was humming to himself.
These weren't just getaway cars. These were borderline tanks on wheels. Armored chassis, custom engines, and—of course—tinted windows, because nothing screams "I'm a villain" like illegal window tint.
He cracked the security in under a minute, which was frankly insulting to the criminals' IT department.
"Seriously," he muttered, typing away. "Password was 1234Tombstone. What is this, middle school?"
With a satisfied smile, he watched each vehicle vanish into a glowing spiral, tucked away for safe keeping—or future tinkering. Peter hadn't decided yet.
When the dust finally settled, the battlefield looked like a magic trick gone wrong.
Where once stood a full-fledged gang with an armory fit for a small country, now there was only:
A heap of groaning bodies webbed together like a failed trust fall exercise.
A crater where the SUVs used to be.
And Peter.
Standing proudly.
"Alright," he said, hands on hips. "Mission complete. Inventory secured. Chaos neutralized."
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The silence that followed was… awkward.
Peter stood in the center of a battlefield he had just personally dismantled, surrounded by webbed-up thugs, melted pavement, and one very unconscious (and soon-to-be-bedridden) Tombstone. Smoke curled around the ruined cop cars, broken windows wept glass tears, and the stink of ozone, scorched metal, and regret lingered like a bad cologne.
Then: shuffle shuffle… crunch.
Out of the cracked station doors, what remained of the NYPD crept forward like a herd of cats approaching a vacuum cleaner.
Their eyes scanned the scene—one of the worst attacks in recent police memory—and then they saw him.
Spider-Man.
Standing calmly in the middle of it like he had just finished tying his shoes.
"…It's over?" one of the younger officers asked, his voice squeaky with disbelief.
Peter turned, arms crossed, lenses narrowing. "Yeah."
Just yeah. No heroic pose, no epic one-liner. Just the verbal equivalent of a mic drop.
Another cop let out a low whistle. "Jesus. You got all of them?"
Peter gave a modest shrug, like he'd just organized a bake sale instead of defeating a mutant crime lord and disarming a small paramilitary gang.
"Most of them," he said. "A few ran."
The few who ran would probably wake up in cold sweats for the rest of their lives, haunted by the memory of a sarcastic ninja in red and black who robbed them after beating them up.
The officer in charge—a greying, tired-looking man with the kind of wrinkles that said I've seen some stuff, kid—stepped forward. "And Tombstone?"
Peter's head tilted slightly toward the body on the pavement, his tone as flat as a Brooklyn bagel before boiling.
"Alive. But he won't be waking up for a long time."
There was a pause.
The kind of pause that usually happens when someone walks into a room and finds their dog playing poker with their accountant.
No one asked what Peter had done to him.
Probably because they didn't want to know.
Especially after noticing that Tombstone's limbs were bent at angles that did not appear to be factory settings.
"…Right," the officer muttered. "We'll take it from here."
Peter gave a silent nod. No speech. No grandstanding.
He didn't need it.
Because tonight, everything had changed.
The criminals hadn't just been defeated—they'd been humiliated.
Stripped. Webbed. Robbed.
Their fleet? Gone.
Weapons? Gone.
Heat gloves and sci-fi railguns? Sealed into Peter's arm like collectibles in a Spider-Cave.
The NYPD would clean up the rest. But there wouldn't be much left to do, other than collect statements and try not to sound too impressed in the reports.
With one last look—at Tombstone, at the gang he'd disassembled, and at the silent, stunned officers—Peter turned.
He shot a web into the night sky, vaulted off the nearest streetlamp, and vanished into the shadows like a whisper.
No medals. No applause. No thank-you speech.
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The Harlem air was thick with smoke, sirens, and awkward emotions. It was the kind of atmosphere that made you wish you had a therapist on speed dial and a gallon of ice cream waiting at home.
As the last of the police officers were either stretchered away or buried in paperwork, Jessica Jones stood on a rooftop, arms crossed, looking every bit the grumpy superheroine she tried so hard not to be.
That's when she saw him.
Spider-Man.
He looked like a wet paper towel someone had wrung out. His shoulders slumped, his suit torn in at least three places, and even though his mask was still on, the exhaustion practically oozed off him.
Jessica sighed.
Here it comes.
Without a word, Peter walked up and—like a sleep-deprived golden retriever—wrapped her in a sudden, tight hug.
Jessica blinked. "Uh… you good there, Spidey?"
The hug lingered. He didn't speak right away, just stood there like he was trying to soak up her grounded, no-nonsense energy. Then, softly, he pulled back just enough and kissed her cheek through his mask.
"Thank you."
Jessica rolled her eyes. "You're such a dork."
But her voice was softer now, her tone lacking the usual bite. Because even she could tell—tonight had rattled him.
Peter didn't answer. He gave her a tired little smile. The kind that didn't quite reach the eyes, but meant something anyway. Then he turned his gaze back to the wreckage—the rubble, the bloodstains, the webbed-up heap of unconscious criminals.
He was still in that moment. Still stuck between what he did and what he couldn't do.
Jessica knew that feeling too well.
She gave him a long look, then exhaled. "Go think about your existential crisis or whatever," she said, as casually as someone commenting on the weather. "I'm heading home."
Peter nodded. One last grateful glance.
And then—thwip!—he was gone, disappearing into the night like a dramatic ninja bat on caffeine withdrawal.
Jessica rubbed her temples.
"What a damn night," she muttered.
And with that, she walked off, hands in her pockets, stepping over rubble and burnt sneakers, humming a tune that might've been sarcastic in spirit.
Some nights, you saved the world.
Other nights, you just stopped it from falling apart a little more.
Tonight was both.