Parker Luck
Sometimes Peter did stupid things.
Like the time him accidentally set Aunt May’s kitchen on fire. Or like the time in his early days of Spider-Man he accidentally told someone his civilian identity.
But this was probably the most stupidest thing he’d ever done.
It had all started earlier in the day.
———
Peter sat on the best swivel chair in the workshop spinning himself around slowly. He was extremely bored. He was in Mr Stark’s workshop waiting for Tony to come back from wherever he had gone off to. Peter had been tinkering with his suit, adding a few updates here and there but he’d done everything he had wanted to do, and he was now very bored.
Peter got up from the chair, picking up his tools and wandered over to his tool station to put them back. Mr Stark had made him his own station ever since Peter kept accidentally on purpose stealing Tony’s tools whenever he was in the Avengers Compound’s, which was more often than not nowadays. Ever since he had officially become Tony’s intern, he often found himself in the Compound and obviously as Spider-Man he trained a lot here and spent quite a bit of time getting to know the other hero’s that he occasionally worked with. It was nice.
“Jarvis how long until Mr Stark gets back?” Peter asked leaning against the countertop by his toolbox.
“I am unsure Mr Peter; the meeting is still in process.” Jarvis’ response made Peter sigh.
It wasn’t all cupcakes and rainbows being at the Compound. Because the Avengers and other heroes knew his secret identity, that also meant they knew his age which led to more problems than necessary in Peter’s opinion. Being only 17 this clashed with some of the other hero’s morals and opinions on him. Like Captain America.
Steve was kind and treated Peter respectfully like he was a hero, but sometimes small things cropped up. He would try and stop Peter going on certain missions or keep him out of meetings about the big baddies because he was young. And that annoyed him slightly because Peter had been doing this for 3 years now and he had been fine, sure sometimes he got hurt but he healed quickly thanks to his healing factor. And what annoyed him the most is that a lot of the time he was clearing up the Avengers mess because they would fight the bad guys win and leave. Peter understood they did help but not always the most that they could. They didn’t help with the damage clear up, or with the people who got hurt, or with those who were left homeless and at risk to potential crime. He did!
But Peter got where Steve and some of the other hero’s were coming from because at the end of the day, he was still technically a kid, it still annoyed him though.
Closing his eyes lost in thought, Peter tilted his head to the side, rubbing his neck with his hand. He was practically counting down the months till he turned 18, he hoped then he would be allowed into the meetings. To be taken slightly more seriously. Or maybe his Parker luck would come back and bite him in the butt and he be officially cut off from the Avengers, his life had been going suspiciously well at the moment.
Anyway, it wasn’t like he never found out what happened in the meetings because Tony couldn’t keep a secret for the life of him, meaning he often told Peter what was happening and that was no secret to the rest of the Avengers. So, Peter didn’t quite understand why he still wasn’t allowed into the meetings, but it was whatever. Peter didn’t care. Not at all.
The door to the workshop banged open and Tony Stark quickly strolled in. His suit was slightly creased, and his hair was messy like he had been running his hands through it a lot. The jacket he had been wearing before he had left Peter was now being carried in his hand.
Peter stood up straight from where he had been leaning on the countertop.
“Did you finish making the changes to your suit kid?” Tony questioned Peter walking straight past him towards the Iron Man suit.
“Yes, yes I did.” Peter answered quickly nodding. Tony had been a role model for Peter for a while, even after working with him for 2 years Peter was still in awe of him.
Tony spun around to smirk at Peter. “Great. Suit up we are going on a mission; I’ll explain on the way.”
———
The mission turned out to be infiltrating the trade of alien weapons.
Ever since the attack on New York led by Loki, all the alien technology left behind had been used to make new weapons and technology for trade by merchants, but these weapons that have been developed had caused a lot of problems around the world.
Tony told Peter that these merchants were dealing the typical weapons, but these people had made some alterations to the weapons that had made them go from serious to deadly, which is why Tony and Peter where stepping in to get ahold of these weapons before they fell into the hands of the wrong people.
The mission had gone well. Peter and Tony had managed to stop the trade quite easily. The men who were transporting the weapons weren’t the smartest, they were more of the shoot now think later type of people, which was not the best considering the weapons, they were exporting were very explosive. The men basically led themselves to their own downfall.
After Tony had tied up and knocked out all of the men and dumped them in the corner of the room did he turn to talk to Peter. “Right Pete we just need to go around and make sure these are all the weapons.” He gestured to the room and started looking over some of the boxes he was near.
Peter nodded and walked over to the other side of the room. He had noticed when fighting the merchants that they had been overly protective about certain part of the room that was covered in an old dirty sheet. He pulled down the sheet to reveal a door.
“Why would you try and hide something with a dirty sheet.” Peter muttered to himself, shaking his head.
Peter tried to open the door, only to realise it was locked. He looked back over to the group of unconscious men. Yeah, no he wasn’t searching through them for a key.
Peter looked around, to try and find another way in. He spotted a row of small windows near the ceiling and saw one of them was partially open. Peter climbed up the wall reaching the window and pushed it till it was as open as it could be, which was still rather small. Thanks to Peter’s spider-like characteristics, he managed to crawl through the small space into the room next door.
It was dark but Peter could make out a big object that was in the centre of the room. He slowly walked towards in cautiously. Once his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, he could see what looked like a portal, one he might find in his video games.
He reached his hand out to touch the portal and it felt almost alive. He ran his hand across the details of the portal like object it felt soothing.
“Pete where are you kid?” Tony’s voice rang out through his earpiece making Peter jump. His hand slipped and got caught on one of the sharp edges, ripping his suit slightly and drawing blood.
“Ouch.” Peter winced shaking his hand to get rid of the pain before replying to Tony. “I’m in the room that the door in the corner leads to, the doors locked so I climbed through the window.” Peter trailed off.
Moments later the locked door was blown off as Tony walked through. Peter whipped around to look at Tony who was now getting out of the Iron Man suit to look at the object Peter had found.
“Why didn’t you just break the door down?” Tony asked.
Peter stood there for a moment dumbfounded searching for a reason, “I didn’t think of that in the moment.” He replied quietly.
Chuckling to himself Tony turned back to his suit. “Jarvis shine a light.”
The light filled the room, illuminating the object in the room. It definitely looked like a portal in Peters opinion.
Tony walked up to the portal looking object and inspected it. “Technically we are not meant to be touching the machines, but rules are meant to be broken ay kid.” Tony turned to smirk at Peter before going back to examining the portal thingy.
Peter walked over to stand next to him. “What exactly is it, Mr Stark?” Peter asked tilting his head to the side.
“Not sure.” Tony stepped back to take in the pure size of the object and started walking around it. “Pete could you go to the top and look for a power source.” Tony muttered walking back over to the Iron Man suit.
Peter carefully climbed up the side of the portal making sure to not get caught on anymore sharp edges. His hand didn’t hurt anymore he just didn’t want to rip his suit more than he already had as this material used to make this object was rather sharp. He reached the top of the portal peering down over the edge to have a look down at Tony.
“You see anything Kid?” Tony called up to him from where he had returned back to the side of the portal with what looked like some of his tools from his workshop. Peter rolled his eyes and got back to searching the top of the Portal. It looked the same as the sides of it. Jagged edges of stone, in a deep black that had undertones of purple. There were small inscriptions all over the stone that looked like some alien language. Peter crawled along further scanning the top looking for any unusual shapes, which was quite difficult considering that all the edges where unusual shapes. He noticed out of the corner of his eye a raised bit of rock that looked like it could be lifted up.
“Hey Mr Stark, I think I found something.” Peter commented leaning forward and carefully pulling the raised bit of rock off to reveal what looked like where the power source should be.
“What is it kid?” Tony voice travelled up to him from the ground, it sounded like he was lost in thought.
“I’m not sure, I think it’s where the power source is meant to be,” Peter carefully placed his hand inside to feel around for anything that may be in there. “But it doesn’t look like there is an actual power source, it’s got a couple wires but other than that it’s empty.”
He pulled his hand back out of the box and turned around to peer back over the edge to look at Tony. He watched Tony pace around the room for a moment, picking things up and putting them back down again, clearly looking for something.
“Mr Stark?” Peter asked cautiously still watching him.
“Give me a second kid, I’m trying to find the power source, how big would you say it needs to be?”
Peter looked back over to the empty power box to assess the size. “I would say about the size of a small water bottle, are you sure we should be doing this Mr Stark?” Peter said slowly weighing up the pros and cons to what might happen if they turn this machine on in his head.
“It’ll be fine don’t panic.. ah ha.” Tony exclaimed standing up from where he had been crouched, reaching behind a big box in one of the corners of the room. He pulled out a rectangular object that had the same rocky material of the portal but encased a glass cylinder that looked like it contained glowing purple slime. The object illuminated Tony’s face with a bright purple light. He held it up to show Peter smiling. “Found it.”
He chucked it into the air, up to Peter who shot one of his webs out quickly at it so it wouldn’t fall back down to the ground. It landed in his hand and Peter noticed how light it felt. He knew he was rather strong, thanks to his ability’s, but this felt considerably light. Carefully throwing the object up and down, Peter considered putting it into the machine. What was the worse that happened? He got transported into a new universe. Unlikely. Plus, he trusted Mr Stark, nothing bad would happen Peter was sure of it.
Before he could put it in, he noticed how some of the blood from his hand had got onto it. Sighing Peter tried wiping it off only for it to just smudge more. Peter gave up and just shoved the purple glowing liquid rock thingy into the empty power socket without a second thought. Immediately purple light started to travel from the source along the top and down the sides of the machine before reaching the bottom. Peter placed the rock slate that had covered the power source back on and jumped back down, landing with a light thud next to Tony.
They both watched as the machine came to life glowing brightly, a purple hue covering the room. It kept glowing getting brighter and brighter enough to make Peter raise his hand and cover his eyes slightly. And then…
It stopped.
The light cut out and all that was left was the light shining from the Iron Man suit.
“Well that was underwhelming.” Tony commented resting his hand on his hip in a way that reminded Peter of Aunt May when she was dealing with a difficult person. Peter chuckled under his breath, momentarily wondering what she was doing right now. He couldn’t wait to get back to her.
All it took was one moment of distraction before it all went wrong.
He felt the faint prickle of his spider sense telling him of danger before it happened, but he didn’t have enough time to react.
The portal exploded to life. The blinding purple light covering the whole room. Peter shielded his eyes with his arms turning away from the portal. From the glimpse he got the centre of the portal that had been open was replaced with swirly purple and grey light that almost looked like wind.
Peter watched as a crate next to him flew by into the portal. He felt his feet start to skid towards the portal and quickly shot out some webs at the wall behind him. Looking to the side he watched as the Iron Man suit came around and covered Tony up, the thrusters of the suit aimed away from the portal in a struggle to keep him from falling in.
Holding onto the webs for dear life, Peter tried to climb up the webs to get to the wall so he could stick there but that was proven very difficult as he was practically being thrashed around from the gust of the portal trying to draw him in. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on for. This was not good.
“Mr Stark!” Peter shouted over to where Tony was still fighting his own battles against the pull of the portal, as he tried to direct the Iron Man suit over to where Peter was.
“Hang on kid I’m almost there.” Peter could hear Tony shout back at him through the comm over the loud noises the portal were causing. Peter should have known his Parker luck would run out soon.
The webs snapped in two and Peter flew backwards, hurtling towards the portal. He shot some webs out trying to stop the inevitable. He watched in almost slow motion as Tony tried to fly after him but it was too late.
Peter had fallen into the portal.
Why did he have to put the power source in?
Yeah, this was definitely the stupidest thing he’d ever done.