A Second Meeting
Peter had been an intern for a month now and was having the time of his life. Of course, no one except Ned and MJ believed he had an internship at SI, not that he could blame them. They had a policy against hiring anyone under college age, but Peter was a special case. With the help of Mr Stark’s technology, it had only taken him four days to create a new Spidersuit. He had successfully programmed his AI, Karen, into it, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff. He had made different versions of his web formula, even one that he could set on fire. So far his spinnerets, as he had found they were called, had not grown in fully yet although they were definitely more pronounced than they were almost a year ago. He had also built a heater into his suit, having found that he couldn’t thermoregulate properly in the winter.
After he had finished his suit, Mr Stark let him work on other stuff. He had built some things for the Avengers, and he had even helped build legs for Mr Rhodes. Peter also spent a lot of time on the R&D floor, with the college interns. They had all begged to know how he had been hired at only 15, and as Mr Stark’s personal intern at that, and he had half told them the truth, saying he had hacked the Stark Phone and Mr Stark liked his work.
Peter loved the R&D floor. Working in the lab with Mr Stark was great, but Peter thrived on social interaction, and only talking to Mr Stark all the time was not enough for him. Besides, sometimes the interns let him help out on their projects. Just last week, he had helped out on a serum that would dissolve plastic in the ocean without harming any marine life. It wasn’t ready yet but Peter knew it would be successful. Peter also saw Miss Potts occasionally. She sometimes came down to the lab to drag Tony to meetings, and she always said hello to Peter and smiled at him. Peter liked her, and Mr Stark always seemed happier after he’d seen her. Very rarely, Peter was on the Avengers personal floor. Mr Stark had given him a room and if May was working late, Peter would stay at the tower overnight. Peter liked his room at the tower, it was bigger than his one at home which meant he had more space to create obstacle courses on the ceiling. Once he had done that, Peter realised he had basically the entire floor to create an obstacle course. Mr Rhodes didn’t stay at the tower, and Vision was hardly ever there. Peter had a lot of fun that day, truly exploring the limits of his abilities. Mr Stark had suggested that he use the training room to practise his fighting. He planned to do that tomorrow.
The second Peter woke up he felt uneasy. Something was wrong, his spider sense was tingling. It annoyed Peter that he could never tell exactly what was wrong. One time it had gone off when he was about to step into a puddle and it had startled him so badly he walked directly into a wall, and then backwards into the puddle anyway. It wasn’t perfect. So, Peter could spill milk from his cereal down his shirt or the entire building could blow up, there was really no way of knowing. He ran his hand through his hair as he walked into the kitchen and immediately found the source of his spider sense going off.
Natasha Romanoff.
The Black Widow was sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee. Peter didn’t even have time to react before there was a gun pointed straight at his face. He had to resist the urge to jump onto the ceiling.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting breakfast?”
Peter immediately wanted to facepalm. What a stupid thing to say. Clearly, Black Widow thought so too, if the raised eyebrow was anything to go by.
“Here in the tower. Who are you?”
“Oh. I stay overnight sometimes. And I’m Peter Parker, Miss Romanoff Widow, ma’am.”
A calculating look entered her eyes. And she still hadn’t lowered the gun. So, naturally, Peter kept talking.
“I’m Mr Stark’s intern. If we’re here too late or my aunt is working late he lets me stay over, he doesn’t want me to travel alone that late at night.”
She finally lowered the gun but continued to stare at him. Peter’s eyes flicked over to the cereal cupboard, which he gestured to.
“Can…can I get some cereal now?”
“Sure.”
Peter kept his ears trained on the woman, like Daredevil had taught him, whilst he got himself some cereal. Mr Stark had stocked Lucky Charms just for him. He could hear her subtly shifting, but didn’t sense any danger so he kept his back to her for the time being. The less of a threat she thought he was, the better. He sat midway down the table, thinking it was the safest spot. Natasha was sat at one end, and Peter thought that if he sat right at the other end it would give her the satisfaction of having scared him, but equally sitting next to her was a stupid idea. So, midway was close enough to hold a polite conversation but not so far away that he appeared scared. He still idolised her, but he still hadn’t completely gotten over the hurt he had felt when she dismissed him in Berlin.
“So, what do you do for Tony?”
Peter swallowed his cereal before he answered.
“I help him make changes to the Iron Man suits, and sometimes he asks for my help on some of the Avengers tech. I helped build Mr Rhodes some legs, they still need a few adjustments but he likes them better than the ones the government gave him. Mostly, I hang around the R&D floor for the time being. Mr Stark says I need to experience all parts of the internship experience if I want to be a well-rounded employee one day. I think Miss Potts told him to say that last bit, though.”
Miss Potts had not done anything of the sort. In fact, 90% of what Peter said was a lie. But he knew he couldn’t mention anything about Spiderman, not when talking to a super spy. But, Mr Stark had told him to go and make friends with the other interns, so it wasn’t a total lie. Deadpool and the other vigilantes had been teaching him how to lie. It was slow progress, but Peter was improving. Peter got up to put his bowl in the sink before turning back to Natasha.
“It was nice to meet you, Miss Romanoff, but I have to go get ready for work now.”
“Are you Spiderman?”
Peter panicked, time to play dumb.
“Who’s Spiderman?”
Okay, not that dumb. So, Peter did the only thing he could think to do. He jumped straight out of the open kitchen window. He crawled up the side of the tower and down the other side to his room. He pressed the little panel that opened the window and tumbled in, hyperventilating. He had just told the most notorious super spy in the world that he was Spiderman, and not only that but he had told her his full name as well. What if she went after his Aunt May, or Ned and MJ? Oh god, what if she handed him over to the government? Enhanced people were supposed to sign the Accords. She had let the others go to prison, what if she did the same to him? Peter knew Mr Stark could protect him from a lot, but keeping him out of prison seemed like too big a favour to ask of Mr Stark.
“FRIDAY? FRIDAY, where’s Mr Stark?”
“Boss is currently upstate at a meeting, he likely will not be back until tomorrow. He has instructed me to tell you that you may either work in his lab, got to R&D, or use the training facilities. If you decide to train he reminds you that you need to take notes on the effectiveness of the suit so he can make improvements.”
“Okay, thanks FRI.”
Peter sighed. He didn’t want to disturb Mr Stark. It was a fight to get him to go to meetings anyway, Peter didn’t want to drag him away from one he was actually attending. He would just have to deal with this himself. Psyching himself up, he activated the new Spidersuit and jumped, clinging to the ceiling. He opened the vent and crawled inside. If he wanted to avoid Natasha, he would simply have to not be where she was, and the vents seemed the safest bet. As he made his way to the training room, Peter wondered how Hawkeye ever moved around in the vents, Peter himself could only just fit through them, and Hawkeye was a lot bulkier than him.
As he hovered over the vent into the training room, Peter expanded his senses to make sure Black Widow wasn’t in there. Feeling it was safe, Peter cracked the vent open and crawled onto the ceiling. A few days ago, he and Mr Stark had created a sort of obstacle run attached to the ceiling, allowing Peter to test his new web formulas. Also in the room were the weights Captain America used, an archery station, a boxing ring, standard gym equipment, and various weapons stacked along one wall. Peter was excited to try the weights; he had pretty much matched Captain America’s strength in Berlin, and the weights were made of a specific alloy just for supersoldier strength. Peter had already calculated what the maximum amount he could lift should be, based on his own mass and the comparative strength of the spiders used to make the hybrid that bit him. It would be pretty cool if he was technically stronger than Captain America himself.
Peter flung himself through the obstacle course with abandon, using it as a fun warm up before he started properly training. He tried incorporating some of the moves he had stolen from Black Widow but they were a lot harder to execute when going directly against gravity, although he did manage to land a few of the simpler ones. He dropped from the ceiling, sticking the landing before rolling forwards and jumping for the weights. Peter trained in a bit of an unorthodox manner; he was of the opinion that there should be no walking whilst training, so transitioning from one section to another was always done with some kind of battle manoeuvre, or just swinging from the place to place.
Glancing at the weights, Peter saw they were labelled the same as regular weights, just with much larger numbers. Peter had never measured exactly how much the things he had picked up weighed, but he had lifted a car before, which gave him a rough starting point.
Half an hour later and Peter was frustrated. Even the heaviest weights barely strained him. And, as they were all dumbbells, he couldn’t even hold multiple at once. Resolving to ask Mr Stark for some heavier weights, Peter moved to the archery range in a series of flips. He had tried a bow before and found himself to be hopeless, so Peter used the archery range to practise his knife throwing. He had been able to stand still a throw a knife straight into a bullseye for months now, so Domino insisted he start practising whilst moving. Peter started off slowly, just walking back and forth in front of the targets, hitting the bullseye every time. He gradually quickened his pace until eventually he was all out sprinting and still managing to hit dead centre every time. Huffing as he went to collect his knives, Peter wondered how he could liven up his knife practice. He would have to talk to Mr Stark but perhaps he could have targets stationed around the room so he could practise whilst swinging. That was the only thing he hadn’t tried yet as the archery corner was in an awkward position and he couldn’t swing at it without hitting a wall; he had tried. Several times.
Peter swung over to the boxing ring and stood straight in the very centre.
“FRIDAY? Are there any training dummies anywhere? Or training robots, I guess.”
“In the cupboard behind you, there is a selection of training robots programmed to various levels of difficulty.”
Peter spun round and made his way to the cupboard. Whenever he had practised his fighting skills previously, he had never had any kind of opponent, he just practised against empty air and hoped that it was enough. It worked well enough when he was protecting the streets of Queens, but he had noticed a few mistakes in his form and execution when fighting the Avengers. Peter selected a robot labelled ‘Medium Threat Level’, which he figured was a good starting point, not only to test his skills but to see how exactly the robots were categorised. He stood the robot opposite him in the ring and waited. Nothing happened.
“FRIDAY, how do the robots work?”
“You must say ‘activate’ followed by the number on the robot’s arm. To deactivate is the same.”
“Thanks, FRI. Activate…442.”
Immediately, the robot whirred to life and sprung for Peter, who quickly moved out the way. Peter analysed the robot, looking for weaknesses. The robot was well made, and it had a good fighting stance, but it was still a robot. It would only be programmed to do a certain amount of things, so Peter was sure he could outsmart it eventually, but he wanted to get a good fight in first or there was no point to the exercise. He sprung into action, ducking and parrying the strikes from the robot. Peter knew he needed to practise his offensive moves rather than his defensive, so he struck back at the robot, quickly getting in behind its defence and striking it in the midsection with a well placed kick. Peter had been working on combining the techniques of Daredevil and Deadpool, as well as what he had picked up from watching Black Widow. It worked well for him; he had the flexibility to pull off most of the moves as well as the reflexes to avoid his opponents while he was doing it. It also made him unpredictable to fight, which was excellent according to Daredevil. He ducked again before throwing a few quick jabs at the robots face, wincing at the fist-shaped dents he left in the metal. Perhaps he should make some stronger robots; it would be no good for his training if he accidentally destroyed the robots just by punching them.
Stepping back from the robot, Peter was confident he had its fighting pattern down, but there was one thing he wanted to try before he deactivated it. Laying his hand flat on his chest, he pushed down. When building his new suit, Peter wanted to keep the Black Widow hourglass, it was part of the suit even if no one had noticed it yet, but he had added some modifications to it now that he had access to better tech. Taking inspiration from the widow bites, Peter had adapted his suit so that when he pressed the hourglass, it would electrify his webs. That was his hope anyway, he hadn’t actually tested it yet. He carefully aimed at the robot.
“YES!”
It worked! Unfortunately, he had completely fried the robot’s circuits and it was now lightly smoking on the floor. He circled the robot, crouching down to get a better look. The electricity hadn’t actually damaged the outer metal of the robot at all, nor had anything caught fire. But the robot was definitely dead, so to speak. This meant that if he ever had to actually fight a robot, or someone who fought with tech, Peter could take them out. He had actually had the idea when fighting the Falcon; who was far easier to fight on the ground than in the air.
“Impressive.”
Peter spun around, instinctively shooting a web whilst springing onto the ceiling. Looking down, Peter saw Natasha, free of webs, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be, that was a very quick reaction. Your form could use some work though. Meet me here tomorrow at 2.”
With that, she turned around and strode from the room. Peter sat cross legged, on the ceiling, confused. His form didn’t need any work, Deadpool and Daredevil both agreed it was near perfect and that only the fact that he was still growing was effecting it at a minute level. Was she offering to train him, then? And using the line about using form as a cover? Why would she do that? He didn’t think she cared enough about him to do that. Perhaps she thought him to be a liability? That must be it, Peter decided. She had been unimpressed with him in Berlin; it had been his fault Captain America had gotten away anyway, so she must think he needed extra work. It hurt him a little, that Natasha didn’t think he had what it took to help people. He had idolised her since he was 11, and as much as he didn’t want it to, her opinion did matter to him.
He would just have to wait and see.