Training Day
Miguel woke up more tired than he was when he went to sleep.
Why was he so tired? He wished he had an actual answer to that question.
Granted, he never really slept that much, but Peter B. Parker insisted he get a good amount of sleep so he would be at his best for training.
After Miguel roped himself into training the younger recruits, the group proceeded to walk around headquarters and ended their time together with a stop at the cafeteria. Before Miguel could make his escape back to his office, Peter made him set a reminder on his watch—though Peter called it a goober or a gizmo most of the time—so he didn’t have an excuse to back out on the plan.
It was now early in the morning of the next day, and he chugged a cup of coffee to stave off the lingering tiredness of sleep. As he made his way from his quarters and over to his working area, Miguel started to think about how he was going to go about the training.
He knew they already had good fighting skills from the team's results in catching anomalies, and he was familiar with Miles' unique abilities and how he used them due to the whole thing with him chasing Miles across Neuva York with thousands of spider variants behind him.
If he was honest with himself, Miguel felt guilty about that situation. He literally ordered every spider variant in headquarters to catch the kid without even thinking about any other options. He had definitely noticed the change in how Miles acted around him—quick glances in his direction, avoiding direct eye contact, and just being noticeably more alert anytime he entered the same room as him.
Maybe he could use this training as a way of getting the kid to relax a bit around him and get used to his presence.
It wasn’t just Miles who acted differently around him; everyone was tense around Miguel. Part of him knew it was because he was basically everyone's boss, but did that really mean they couldn’t relax around him? Was he really that scary?
The answer was probably yes; his red eyes and fangs that showed anytime he talked probably weren’t seen as comforting.
Hobie once made a comment about Miguel having something called a "resting bitch face"? Which he had gathered just meant he looked like he was always angry and ready to fight someone. He was always ready to fight someone if they were a threat, but he would never just start fighting someone out of nowhere.
Getting his thoughts back on the task of outlining a training plan for today, Miguel started making a checklist of activities that he deemed okay for the day. He tried to make the activities have the least amount of potential chaos as possible because the group was like a magnet for trouble.
He finally reached the entrance to his office just as he had completed making a short outline for the training when he looked up and was greeted with the sight of Jessica Drew leaning against the wall while scrolling through something that was projected from her goober.
As he walked closer, Jessica looked up with a smile on her face.
"Little birdy told me that you're training a few spiders today." She kept smiling as she straightened her posture and walked closer to Miguel. "Look at you! Getting in some bonding time with the kids!"
"Did Peter B. tell you that?" he responded, purposely ignoring her teasing about bonding with the teenage brats. It was just training, and then his day would go back to normal with minimal interactions with the chaotic spiders.
"Lyla, actually, she wanted to make sure you couldn’t find a way to back out of it." Jessica joked. It wasn't like he often tried to get out of plans. If he didn’t make any plans, there was nothing to back out of, simple as that.
Miguel let out a sigh. "Of course she did." He continued into the office, Jessica walking by his side and eventually hopping up to take a seat on the edge of the control board, earning an annoying look from Miguel.
"I’m proud of you for finally getting out there instead of keeping yourself cooped up in this dark room all the time." Her smile was genuine while she said it, and it made his chest feel warm and light. Jessica always had that effect around Miguel; it was easier for him to relax around her when she wasn’t openly afraid of him. She and Peter were the two people around whom he felt somewhat at ease; if they were afraid of him, they never showed it. Always treating him like a close friend, not like he was their boss.
"I’m not going to go easy on the training courses. Even if they're young, they’ve had their fair share of fights, and I doubt the brats are going to hold back on their skills." He said, his eyes skimming over the open screens showing the activity around the arachno-humanoid polymultiverse, he wouldn’t call it the "spider-verse" like Miles had called it, even if they both sounded equally stupid.
"Remember, Miguel, it's training; you're not fighting villains; you're training them to be better. They can’t get better if they are in the hospital." Jessica remarked with a knowing look in her eyes. "Plus, I don’t think you want them to go back to their home universes black and blue."
Miguel rolled his eyes and gave her a small smile, but the calm moment was quickly interrupted by a kazoo cover of the Spider-Man theme blaring loudly from his goober.
Speaking of training, that was the alert for him to go to the training gym and meet up with the others.
Jessica hopped off of the control panel and gave a quick "good luck" before she swung out of the room. Leaving Miguel by himself to start to walk over to the gym located in headquarters.
Hopefully, this won’t take too long.
When Miguel entered the large space of headquarters that was specially designed for training Spider variants of all kinds, he was greeted by the sight of Miles, Gwen, Pavitr, Peni, and Noir cheering as Hobie showed off his web-slinging skills using the pillars as landing pads to do flips off of.
He loudly cleared his throat to gain the attention of the teens, and when they were aware of his presence, they all visibly straightened in posture, all except Hobie Brown, who just landed next to Pativr and exchanged a quick shoulder bump with him.
"I apologize for keeping you all waiting," Miguel stated, keeping his voice somewhere between monotone and professional while he walked towards the group. "I see that you have already started some warm-ups."
His attempt at sarcasm fell flat and was greeted with blank stares from the group until Noir clapped his hands together before announcing, "We are ready to start training when you are, Mr. O’Hara."
He gave a quick nod in the black-and-white Spider-Man's direction as he pulled up the checklist of exercises he had prepared.
"We will start with some agility training, practicing traversing different terrains, and we will cover what to do when there isn’t anything to use for web slinging." Miguel recited his plans for the session before looking up at the group. They were all maskless, including himself, and stood in different poses while they looked in his direction, nobody actually meeting his red-eyed gaze.
"Will we be doing any sparring today? Me and Hobie had a little bet going on, and I want to prove him wrong," Pavitr said, his voice carrying its usually excited and carefree tone as he raised his hand like he was answering a math question.
Miguel let slip a tired sigh, holding his hand up to stop the idea from progressing further.
"This time is to be used to improve your skills as heroes. Not as much free time to place bets on who beats who in a fight." After he shut down the idea, Pavtir deflated his excitement and muttered a small "okay".
He didn’t enjoy crushing the kids' excitement, but it was necessary to improve their skills. And he had worked hard to make an efficient schedule, and he intended to stick to it.
"Alright, let's start with terrain training, Lyla. Run terrain training course 2AB," Miguel declared, raising his voice when he called on his AI Lyla’s assistance. The mentioned AI glitched into existence right above his shoulder, standing with her arms crossed and adorning her pink heart glasses.
"One level-one terrain training course is coming right up!" Lyla announced as she spread her arms before glitching away.
"Level one, really?" Gwen Stacy questioned, turning towards Miguel with one eyebrow raised. "We aren’t rookies; all of us have had our fair share of fighting baddies."
"I am fully aware of all of your abilities, and with that information, I have decided that level one is a proper starting point." He remarked, giving the blond Spider-Woman a hard look that left no room for questioning his decisions.
Before any of the others could argue with him as well, the flat, pristine floor of the training gym shifted and shook as the programming for the course kicked in.
The ground under the feet of the spider variants started to rise in a cylindrical shape, leaving them on a platform overlooking the rest of the room. Morales and Pativr both looked at Miguel with confused expressions, and he just nodded in the direction of the open space in front of them. The smooth floor shifted and changed into different sections that resembled all sorts of landscapes. There was a rocky-looking area with ravines forming before their eyes; another section had tall trees rising from the floor and thick vines hanging from their branches; and one resembled an icy landscape with snow coating large slabs of ice.
The trainees watched as the room that was once a blank white void was now full of all kinds of materials and structures. As the room stopped its transformation, they looked over to Miguel for some kind of answer.
Noticing the confused and curious looks in the trainees eyes, he stepped closer to the edge of the circular platform, raising a hand as if he were revealing something behind a curtain.
"Your training today will include learning to adapt to new environments. As you all can see, this course includes many types of terrain and weather conditions, not all of which are easy to navigate or fight in." Miguel explained he was lifting his arm so his goober could be seen by everyone, and he brought up a map of the new training area.
"You'll be divided into two teams; each team will have a pole with a colored piece of fabric that your team will protect while the other tries to obtain it." As he explained the exercise, his goober showed images reflecting his words. "You will all draw a position, either defense, offense, or stealth. Your defensive player will stay by your pole; stealth players will be attempting to infiltrate and capture the other team's pole; while the offensive team member will try and stop them from entering your team's terrain."
Miguel tapped on six different points, three on each half of the map. As he tapped, the projection red dots appeared, and they were shown in real time by the areas lighting up in red light around the map.
"These are where you will be starting the exercise. Before you draw your positions, do you have any questions?" He asked, looking up at the group and waiting for a response.
Peni Parker raised her hand, practically bouncing out of where she was sitting on the shoulder of Sp//dr. "Mr. O’Hara! Is this a training version of Capture the Flag?" She asked with an excited grin on her face.
"No." He rejected it, putting his hands on his hips and closing out the map projection in the process. "This is a training exercise specialized for spider people to increase their teamwork and agility. It is not a game."
"Sounds like capture the flag to me." Hobie Brown remarked, a smile pulling at the punk spider's lips, when he was met with a glare from Miguel.
"It is not—"
"I call Miles!" Pavitr proclaimed, throwing an arm around Morales and shaking him slightly.
"There will be no calling team members." Miguel groaned. These kids can’t take anything seriously, he thought as he massaged the bridge of his nose.
"The goal is to capture the opposing team's flag, right?" Noir questioned, holding the palm of his hand upward.
Miguel groaned again, the sound trailing off into a small growl of irritation.
"Let's just start the exercise." He changed the topic, not feeling like he wanted to debate with a bunch of kids about the name of the training exercise.
He pressed a button on his goober that sent out a randomized message, including a position and a team color, to the goobers of the six spiders.
"Check your goobers; the message I sent will include your position and whether you are part of the red team or the blue team." He told them as they all checked through their messages. Once they saw their positions, they divided into teams.
The red team included Hobie as the offense, Pavitr as the defense, and Morales as the stealth position.
The blue team had Noir on offense, Peni on defense, and Gwen Stacy as their team's stealth player.
Both teams exchanged playful trash talk, and they boasted about how great the positions they got were. Hobie bragged about Miles' cloaking ability, which caused Noir to point out Gwen's agility and speed.
_____________
The training exercise was started after all the players got into their places and selected a location for their flags to be—Miguel was never going to admit that this was a glorified version of capture the flag. He stayed on top of the elevated platform, and he had pulled up the feeds of cameras that were scattered around the playing field.
The first couple of minutes were spent in silence, with both teams trying to keep the element of surprise.
He watched as Hobie Brown swung and jumped around the rocky part of the field, having to stick to walking after a while when he was left with nothing to swing on.
Noir was patrolling the treetops, darting through the branches and occasionally getting tangled up in the strong vines.
Both Gwen and Morales took similar approaches to their stealth positions. As he had expected, Morales relied heavily on his cloaking ability to avoid being detected by the other team. Gwen also performed as Miguel had predicted, using her graceful movements to land quietly and move out of sight of Hobie when he moved in her direction.
There was no fighting yet; however, he knew that they couldn’t avoid it forever. Once Morale or Gwen got noticed by the other team, he expected that there would be a fight.
According to his trackers that were planted in the goobers, Miles Morales was getting closer to the flag of the blue team.
The blue team chose to plant their flag in the dense forest, with Peni Parker stating how it would be best for her and Sp//dr to have a more open area to fight in.
Turning his attention to the cameras surrounding the blue team's flag, he watched and waited for any sign of the invisible teenager. Soon enough, he was able to catch a small twig on the tree and snap it in half out of nowhere.
He was getting closer.
Miles was almost positive that his team was going to win.
If he was being completely honest, he was terrified of what Miguel was going to do for the training. This whole thing stemmed from him talking to Peter B. Peter about how he wanted to get in more training at headquarters during his time off. One thing led to another, and the night before, when he was set to train with Miguel O'Hara, he was freaking out.
Miles had expected Miguel to have a bone-crushing training course that left him and his friends bruised and broken afterwards. Instead, the intimidating man was having them play a glorified version of a children's game.
Which he wasn’t mad about. He had been wanting to show off his improvement in his cloaking abilities to his friends, and this was the perfect way to do it.
Right now, he had successfully evaded Noir and had made it into what he assumed to be somewhere in the middle of the rainforest section. The idea he had was to distract Peni, then swing in and out of there and run back to his team's half of the map.
Easy, right?
Right?
His plan hit a snag when the vines that hung from every tree branch made it extremely difficult to swing around, and even when he had enough room to swing, his webs would randomly stick onto a loose vine and send him plummeting to the ground.
No worries, he would just stick to the tree trunks; literally, he jumped from trunk to trunk, occasionally swinging off a tree branch to get some more momentum.
After a while of searching the blue team's territory, Miles was able to catch a glimpse of the red panels of the Sp//dr mech.
Miles jumped from trunk to trunk, trying his best to keep his landing quiet like he had seen Gwen do when they went on missions together. He crouched on a branch that was set above where Peni was guarding the flag, adjusting his foot placement when a small twig jabbed into the bottom of his foot.
Okay, now it's time for a distraction.
He doubted throwing a rock or a stick in the opposite direction would trick Peni long enough; she may be younger than the rest of the group, but she was insanely smart. Too smart to fall for a generic distraction.
It's a good thing he wasn’t generic.
Jumping around the trees that surrounded the mech, purposefully landing loudly, and using small shocks of electricity to send leaves and sticks down to the forest floor.
Just as he thought, the Sp//dr mech looked around and circled the flag with its arms spread out and ready for an attack.
"Miles! I know you’re there." Peni sang from her place inside Sp//dr.
"Hmm…" She hummed slightly, likely thinking about how Miles would attack.
He continued his misdirection of jumping and darting around, avoiding using his webs to give away the position of his body.
Just a bit longer...
Getting a bit confident in his plan, Miles focused on getting closer to the flag, slowly stopping the purposeful noises. Climbing up into the treetops of the forest, preparing himself to swing down and grab the flag from where it was planted in the artificially created forest floor.
"There you are!" Peni exclaimed, and her mech launched itself directly to where he was perched in the treetops, its metal claws grabbing him and pinning his arms uncomfortably to his sides.
"What— How?!" Miles stuttered as he struggled against the restraining claws, trying to get one of his hands free to use his electricity powers on the suit.
"Your invisibility doesn’t hide your body's temperature; Sp//dr just needed to do a simple thermal scan for any abnormalities," Peni explained, the chest of Sp//dr lifting up to reveal her smirking face.
Damn, he hadn’t thought about that.
Thinking quickly, Miles tugged slightly on his right arm, so it was loose enough that if he tugged again, it would come free. He made an exaggeratedly defeated expression, and his mask reflected it as he let out a sigh.
"Man, I hadn’t thought that far ahead." He grumbled, slumping over in the mech's grip, "But it looks like you didn’t think far either." He quipped, and at the same time he did the final tug on his arm, releasing it from the restraining grip, and shot a web ball at Peni’s face, effectively blinding the girl.
Sp//dr’s chest shut back up in reaction, and the mech’s grip loosened noticeably, giving him the perfect opportunity to kick free. He landed on the ground in a crouch and used his hand for stability so he wouldn’t faceplant.
Not waiting a moment longer, Miles leaped in between the legs of Sp//dr and grabbed the team's flag while he slid on his side. The Sp//dr mech halted the stumbling around; Peni must have gotten the webs off of her face and turned sharply, honing in on Miles' location.
He slung a web into the treetops, pulling on it to pick himself up off the ground and launch him into the familiar rhythm of thwip and release.
But before the epic chase between him and Peni could fully start, the lighting of the training room changed from white to blue, and the change was accompanied by the voice of Miguel O’Hara echoing in the large room.
"The red team's flag has been brought to the blue team's territory, meaning the blue team has won the exercise."
What?!