Chapter 1
Peter Parker was having a good day.
No- he was having a great day.
He’d gotten a perfect score in his biochemistry class, absolutely destroying the curve and earning him a barrage of curses and insults from Flash. That had been overshadowed by the fact that, in congratulations for completing such a challenging exam, Ned’s Lola had brought him and Peter palabok, Peter’s favorite of Lola’s homemade dishes. Mr. Stark had loaded more money into Peter’s lunch account, so he and Ned had stocked up on chocolate milk and sweets from the cafeteria to accompany their lunch (which they ate on the roof because Flash still wouldn’t leave them alone). MJ, who wasn’t a fan of the dish, opted for a plain chicken sandwich and joined them while they goofed off on the roof.
Lastly, Peter had been called down to the office to leave school early, which could only mean one thing: A mission. Or someone died. But Peter preferred to look forward to the former. He bade MJ and Ned goodbye as he left English with his backpack slung over his back. Though Peter knew it was still there, he instinctively reached his left hand to the watch on his right and traced his fingers against it. The watch looked like a simple enough smartwatch to anyone else looking, but Peter and Ned knew of the nanotech Spidey suit embedded inside.
Peter shot a quick wave to the secretaries in the office- he really loved those ladies, and with the amount they gossiped he was shocked that they didn’t know he was Spider-Man- and pushed the glass doors of the school open. It was sunny out. Not too hot, not too cold. A smile instinctively grew on Peter’s face. Yea, today was definitely going to be the best day he’d had in a while. Not that any had been particularly bad for the past year. Ever since he’d joined the Avengers, his life was going swimmingly.
Peter quickly saw a black car out front with the window rolled down. “Hey, Happy!: Peter greeted as he reached for the handle to the front seat of the car.
“How you doing, kid?” Happy asked as Peter sunk into the luxurious seat and shut the door beside him. As Happy began to drive, he left the windows down because of the nice weather, which was rare for Tony Stark’s head of security to do. Peter attributed it to his senses and left one of his hands dangling out of the window as Happy navigated the streets of NYC.
“Good! I had a biochemistry exam today and I did really good, which was kinda surprising cuz this stuff was so hard and me and Ned honestly built a giant Lego AT-T his Lola bought for him instead of studying most of the time, and she made us the BEST lunch-” Peter rambled. Happy chuckled and shook his head.
“That question is just a greeting, kid. You don’t have to actually answer.”
However, Happy’s complaint had gone unnoticed and he got to listen to Peter ramble about his entire day and why it was so great. He then proceeded to answer a flurry of questions about why he was getting pulled from school early, what villain they were going for, had Mr. Stark made anything cool in the six hours that Peter hadn’t seen him, and so on, so forth. As annoying as the kid was, Happy did have an incredible soft spot for him. If he didn’t he wouldn’t be the one picking him up from school so often to bring him to the Compound. Speaking of, Tony did come up with a neat addition to Peter’s suit that was currently waiting for him. Tony had tried to explain it to Happy but the tech talk had gone straight over his head like always, so Happy was going to leave the explanation to Tony.
They had finally gotten out of the city and were on the highway to the Compound upstate. It was about an hour's drive with traffic, but the Quinjet could do it in less than ten minutes even if it weren’t in a hurry. Happy had started to play some music and slowly turned it louder and louder to drown out the sound of Peter’s voice.
As Happy fiddled with the radio, Peter looked out of the window of the car. He was excited to see the Avengers again- it had been a week or two since they’d had a solid mission and more than a month since they’d all been together. Happy said everyone was there now (except for Thor, which was characteristic for an intergalactic space god). Peter felt serene but tired. He’d stayed at the Compound the previous night and worked with Tony on updates to everyone’s suits all night before Pepper realized how late it was and forced Peter to go to bed. He closed his eyes and smiled. He attributed his good mood to the good day, and he felt so content that he felt as though he could fall asleep in the front seat of the car…
Suddenly, Peter’s senses hit him like a brick wall.
The back of his neck started to tingle and he felt the hair on his neck, arms, and legs rise up in warning. Alarm bells began to blare in Peter’s head and he leaned forward, brows furrowed. His immediate thought was that someone was driving dangerously around them, but Peter looked around and they’d made it to the one-lane highway with few other cars passing by them. “Happy?” Peter warned, and he want to say more, but his tongue felt thick and fuzzy in his mouth. Happy didn’t answer, and Peter faintly heard the sound of the car’s autopilot and lane correction screaming at Happy to pay more attention. Strangely, the sounds felt as though they were coming to Peter from underwater which was odd because Peter’s senses were always dialed to 11…
Peter turned to look at Happy when he saw it.
The green gas that permeated the interior of the car was the source of Peter’s issues. Even worse, Happy’s head was slumped to the side, his body only supported by the seatbelt. His hands had fallen off of the wheel, and his mouth was lolling open. Peter tried to listen for his heartbeat but he couldn’t hear anything-
He tried to fight off the gas and went to wave some of it out of the open windows to dissipate it but he found that he could barely move his arms and his legs, and his head began to feel heavier and heavier. In a last-ditch effort, Peter went to click the panic button on his watch.
His finger got closer and closer, and suddenly, Peter was upside down. In slow-motion, Peter watched the road spin underneath him through the windshield, then the sky, then the ground, then the sky. His stomach churned as his body was tossed about, and his limp, heavy body pressed against the seatbelt as they rolled. Mr. Stark is going to be so mad at us.
And then, everything went black.
Tony Stark was having a bad day.
No- he was having an awful day.
He’d started by sleeping through an important meeting with one of the executives of Oscorp– he’d awoken to a message from Pepper so scalding hot that he could feel the hairs in his ears burn from the flames in her voice. After he’d gotten out of bed and tried his best to make amends with Pepper Potts who was now ghosting him. Not only did he sleep through the meeting but he barely got any sleep as it was, and the new update to Peter’s suit that he’d promised the kid was nowhere near ready yet. The Avengers were due to the Compound today, and Tony had yet to put a mission detail together for the night for the group of criminals known as “The Owls” who were reported to be due to moving on Wall Street tonight. Clint’s bow had been damaged on their last mission, and Tony didn’t have a chance to fix it yet.
And his favorite comfort restaurant, Sky’s Shawarma’s, shut down for a week due to interior remodeling.
So, yea, Tony was having a bad day, to say the least.
He glanced at the clock– it was 1:15. Happy was probably just getting to Midtown to pick up Peter from school, which gave Tony about an hour until they returned. An hour to finish the update for the kid’s suit. The worst part was that if Tony didn’t have it finished, Peter wouldn’t care. His painfully sweet voice would just say, “That’s okay, Mr. Stark! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” proceeded by a full minute of rambling as Peter tried to backtrack to tell Tony how much he appreciated his technology.
Tony frowned and glanced at his workbench before moving a few empty bags of chips aside. There was just some small piece missing from the update that would give Peter the ability to channel electricity through his webs, something the kid could sorely use. They’d been working on it together for a while, and Tony had been hoping he’d crack it today.
He glanced back at the clock. 1:45 PM.
Damn, time really flew, huh?
He went back to fiddle with the electronics when the voice of FRIDAY broke his concentration. “Sir, Lovebug’s car has gone offline. Shall I send the coordinates to your suit?”
Tony frowned. His cars didn’t go offline, especially a car with both Happy and Peter in it. He looked up from the bench and furrowed his brows.
“Where at? Can you connect me to Peter’s comms?”
“Approximately 19 miles from the Compound, sir. Stark’s prodigy’s comms are offline, as well as Lovebug’s. Shall I alert the Avengers?”
A chill ran through Tony’s spine. His cars never went offline, but for both comms to be down as well? Without an alert from either of the two? Something wasn’t right here. “Hold on to that for just a sec, Fri. Can you pull up any surveillance video from nearby the site where they went offline?”
“I’m afraid any surveillance in the area has been down since Tuesday for seasonal maintenance to nearby power grids.”
Tony’s hand slammed on the table. He was sure that Peter and Happy were fine, but he was too tired and irritated from this exhausting day that now it was downright pissing him off. “No, Fri. The team will be here tonight. I’ll figure this one out on my own.”
Tony quickly paced to the door of his lab and exited without even bothering to shut the lights off behind him. He marched down the empty hallway which would be bustling with life once the Avengers arrived, straight towards the window at the end of the hall built for exactly what Tony was about to do. As he walked, he reached up to his wrist device and red and gold nanotechnology quickly crawled and spread over his entire body. The window at the end of the hall lowered to the floor and before twenty seconds had passed, Tony’s blasters fired up and he flew into the air to find Peter and Happy. “Fri, can you ping me those coordinates?”
“Of course, sir.”
A thin, red line that was nearly invisible appeared in Tony’s mask and he began to follow it to where the car had gone offline. He didn’t see much activity out here, which seemed to be a good sign. He continued to soar over the trees and looked at the city in the distance. The sun was high in the sky and the weather was incredible- for a split second, Tony wished he hadn’t spent his entire day locked up in his windowless lab.
There– he saw it. Saw something, at least. A thin line of smoke rose from the highway ahead, and Tony’s stomach churned. What had happened to those two? If something bad had happened, Tony would lose it. First of all, it would be his fault. He had told Happy he’d pick the kid up, but needed that last two hours to work on the update, so Happy had (unhappily) volunteered to drive to Midtown High to get Peter. Second of all, this would really just be the icing on the cake for Tony’s horrible day, wouldn’t it?
“Fri, check the scanners for any first-responder activity in this area.”
“There have been exactly two emergency calls to the New York City Police Department from this area regarding an overturned car with one occupant. Shall I connect you to NYPD, sir?”
“No.”
His stomach twisted as he approached the scene. He quickly recognized his own car and wanted to vomit when he saw it overturned on the side of the road, nearly crushed as it skidded to a stop against one of the trees. The metal was mangled and there were flames licking the side of it- the fire department had a few fire distinguishers trying to quell the flames. He quickly glanced at the ambulances and police cars and panic rose in his chest when he saw Happy lying on a stretcher and being lifted into the back of an ambulance.
Tony settled himself onto the ground rather fast, earning him the attention of most of the first responders on the scene. “Iron man, sir,” one of the policemen said with deep reverence and approached him.
“Is the driver alive? Where is the kid? He should’ve been in the front seat.”
The policeman furrowed his brows. “The driver is in rough shape, we’re not even sure if he’ll make it to the hospital. As for a kid… there was no other passenger, sir. Why, do you know who this was?”
Without a word, Tony’s face paled, and Iron Man shot into the sky.