Chapter 2
It felt strange to be able to look at the news without wanting to throw a remote at Jameson’s face as he rattled off reasons why Spider-Man sucked at his job. While he still had little things to complain about with the superhero’s performance, they were rather minor. Small enough that they didn’t weigh him down with guilt. He knew why the reporter was running out of talking points: there was no extraneous damage these days. Barely any crimes that went unseen, either. He only wished he knew how.
Peter always had a bit of a hard time fighting crime without having something to be criticized for. Usually, he either had to choose to fight quickly and risk damaging the environment or take a bit more time on each case and risk not getting to the next crime scene fast enough. But in the past few weeks, he had been noticing that these problems were simply solving themselves.
Well, no, not exactly solving themselves. They were definitely being solved by something. Something that could stop a runaway van full of cons in the middle of a police chase, and something that could cuff them with their own seat belts before the cops even got out of their cars. Something that could clean up a fight scene in the blink of an eye, leaving no trace of carnage behind. Something that could move and warp the asphalt to shield unsuspecting bystanders from stray bullets or explosions.
When he was describing the phenomenon, the first thing that came to mind was the Scarlet Witch. He remembered the way that she fought from videos on the news, along with his own experience fighting on the same battlefield as her when she sided with Captain America earlier that year. She could manipulate her surroundings in a way he would describe as psychokinesis, which could certainly explain the weird phenomena.
He knew it wasn’t her, specifically, because everything she manipulated was enveloped in a reddish glow, and eyewitness reports of the incidents disproved that. But perhaps this person has a similar ability that’s just slightly more discreet.
So he has a hypothesis on how it’s accomplishing its outstanding feats, but now he needs an explanation for the strange noise that seems to announce its arrival and departure from a scene. From what he gathered through rumors and witnesses, the same ringing sound he’d heard when helping out at the bank a few weeks earlier was a trend. A ringing noise would slowly get louder, an unexplainable phenomenon happened, and the ringing would slowly dissipate. He was stumped on what could explain it, so the thought process brought him here.
He crouched on the ledge of an apartment building roof, looking down over the city. The only real difference from his usual nightly patrols was that, right then, he wasn’t Spider-Man. Tonight, he was Peter Parker. As he waited for his police scanner to go off, he absentmindedly thought of possibly wearing more ‘Parker’-esque clothes over his Spidey suit around winter– it was certainly convenient to be able to wear a winter coat and heavy-duty pants while out at night for once.
The police scanner in his pocket vibrated and jolted him out of his indulgent thought process. He took a quick glance at where the new crime scene was before dashing across the rooftops to make it to the scene in time. He wanted to catch this ‘Something’ in action, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to catch it if he was busy playing the hero. It made him nervous, leaving the crime fighting to someone he wasn’t even sure would show up, but considering Something’s track record, he decided it wouldn’t be necessary to worry.
The harsh wind whipped his messy curls and hood around as he sprinted toward the ever-growing sound of panic, only easing up once he was on top of the building being robbed. Just as he slowed down, he began to hear the ringing that seemed to always announce Something’s arrival. Shit– he might be too late to catch it in the act.
He leapt off the side of the building and climbed down the rickety fire escape to the ground, rushing to peek around the corner of the alleyway and catch sight of the robbers ransacking the jewelry store. The ringing continued to get louder, and once again, he was at a loss for where it was coming from. Suddenly, a small flash of blue light flared from the floor of the shop, and the robbers’ feet sunk into the wood paneling, rendering them unable to run.
The floor…?
The realization hit him and he whirled around to face the manhole cover in the back of the alley. The sewers. That’s why he couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from– the sewers were working as an echo chamber. He dug his mask out of his jacket pocket and threw it on before ducking into the sewers.
The second his feet hit the walkway on the side of the tunnel, he burst into a sprint in the direction of the ringing. Once he was in the sewers, he realized it wasn’t just a random kind of ringing, like hitting a bell— no— it had the cadence of someone running. They were footsteps: heavy, metal footsteps that were loud enough to be heard clearly even up on the surface. Something’s running sounded as if Ironman was a good bit heavier and wasn’t worried about damaging the jets on the bottoms of his feet.
He was about to turn the corner to follow Something down a new tunnel, when the footsteps stopped for just a moment. He took it as a cue to speed up as he spun around the corner, only to be met with a giant wall in his way. He silently cursed himself— of course, matter manipulation. That’s a pain in the ass to deal with.
Just as he began to look around for ways to get past the new barrier, the phone in his pocket vibrated. He pulled it out with a sigh and saw that May had texted him. She rambled about how she would sue Stark if he kept making him work so late at night for the internship, and despite his frustrations with not catching Something, he smiled to himself. Well, at least he had a lead. And, something that he’d forgotten for a moment, was that he had Stark. If anyone could catch Something, it would be him.
Deciding to pack it in for the night before May got any angrier, he yanked off his mask and shoved it in his jacket pocket, sauntering back to the manhole he came in through.
______________
There was one problem. Very large problem. Yes, the internship itself and the opportunities that came with it were really a dream come true, but the requirements for the program were an incredible headache. He had to go to school? God, he hadn’t been getting any form of “education” since he was eleven, even if you counted Teacher’s rather… unconventional… methods of tutoring. If you were only counting the time he’d been in an actual classroom, he’d gone almost 10 years without anything; he hadn’t been to school since his mother passed.
He scratched his forehead and sighed, staring into the swaths of students heading into the school as he approached it. God, forget school, he hadn’t evenbeen around people his age since he left Roseboom. This was going to be a nightmare.
He didn’t know much about teenagers, but he knew one thing that applied to basically everyone. If someone sees the “arm issue,” it’s not going to end in a way that he’d like. From what he’d seen in movies and the occasional teenager at the register of a grocery store, young people are even more judgemental than adults, which is really saying something. Luckily for him, though, they tended to be a little less than observational if someone was staying consistently under the radar. He was counting on that.
He looked down at his outfit to check that he’d nailed the “background character” look. Jeans, sneakers, and a thick black sweatshirt to hide any hint that his makeshift right arm was, well, makeshift. Of course, if you looked at him closely, you would notice that his right hand never left his pocket, but if he was just a background character, no one should give him the time of day.
Just as he hoped, he melted into the crowd without so much as a second glance from the people around him. Everyone was so busy jabbering with their frighteningly large friend groups that he went by completely undetected. Now if that was the case the whole time, he’d be in the clear.
But of course, with his luck, it definitely wasn’t.
He was in the clear until third period: Algebra II. Of course, in order to have any form of knowledge in engineering, he would have to know everything in the class. It was really pointless to pay attention to the teacher’s ramblings about simple concepts like logistic graphs. Yes, he kept up the appearance of being an attentive student, but he was really on his computer dissecting the schematics of the newest model in spinal braces for paraplegics. With the technology of connecting to damaged nerve endings improving, the prospects for an almost seamless prosthetic were on the rise. He would have been vibrating in his seat in excitement if it weren’t for the eyes boring a pair of holes into the back of his head.
He didn’t dare turn around to face the student gaping at him, as he didn’t particularly want to interact with him, but he wracked his brain for a reason why he would be staring. Did he realize that his arm was fake? Was it abnormal to be researching the latest feats of engineering in math class?
“Once you’ve solved it, check with someone around you,” the teacher ordered, gesturing to the frustratingly simple function on the board. Great. Now he was forced to talk to the guy behind him, wasn’t he? Hesitantly, he turned around to face the offender, a stocky Hawaiian kid who looked like he was trying to read his mind.
“You’re a mad nerd, aren’t ya?”
Ed responded by leveling the most unaware expression he could manage at him, hoping to convince him that he really wasn’t. Nerds stood out more. That wouldn’t be very good.
“What are you on about?”
The guy only chuckled as if he was making a truly ridiculous joke. “You’re researching biomedical engineering in class— you’re not fooling anyone.” Ed leveled him with a deadpan glare and slowly closed his laptop. This only encouraged the guy to laugh more. “Don’t worry, man, I just wanna propose something to you. You should join the Academic Team!”
The guy leveled a finger in his face and Ed entirely regretted turning around in the first place. This was an awful idea. If he said yes, he’d have to be around people long enough for them to definitely notice a few things wrong with him. If he said no, he’d probably make enemies. Fuck, how could he go about this… Oh, wait—
“Sorry, I’ve got a job, I don’t think I’d have the time.” Perfect, Ed. Not rude, not agreeing, not saying anything strange. This guy probably wouldn’t even remember talking to him.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s not much time at all,” the guy continued to Ed’s immense displeasure. “A lot of us have jobs. I work at a bodega, MJ’s an artist on commission— hell, Peter’s got an internship at Stark Industries and he can still do it!”
Ed couldn’t keep his eyes from widening. His mind immediately raced with assumptions on what this “Peter” was like, what he researched, and how he would most likely be the only person in that school that Ed would ever seek out. He hadn’t imagined finding someone like thatthere— a mutual, a peer— and especially not on the first day. Considering the depressingly few times he’d ever been lucky, he was not about to let a possibly great opportunity fall through his fingers.
He hummed in consideration even though he’d already immediately made up his mind about this. “Well,” he said with a hesitance that would hopefully make it seem like he wasn’t lying about his previous excuse, “if it’s really not much time, I could try it out.” The guy almost leaped out of his chair to shake his hand, like if he didn’t, Ed would realize that it was a stupid decision and back out. That… wasn’t making Ed very confident but his urge to meet someone like him was too overwhelming to back out now.
“Awesome!” The guy’s face split into a grin, apparently not noticing the people staring at him from his shouting. “We meet on Wednesdays right after school.” Ed couldn’t help but smirk at the guy’s contagious excitement. He at the very least didn’t seem like the teenagers he’d seen in movies, so he supposed that maybe this was good? Maybe this meant he could meet some people his age and actually act like… however normal teenagers acted.
“Can’t wait,” he said, almost surprised by how genuine his response was.
Their conversation was swiftly ended by the math teacher rounding up their attention again to go over the problem, but he and the guy— who he found out was called “Ned” (this has to be some kind of joke)— talked in the halls between Algebra II and their next class.
“I know you’d be a good fit for the club, ‘cause the trademark of a good nerd is having a specialty,” Ned explained, chopping the air with his hands with such vigor that Ed wondered if he had a grudge against it.
“Anyone can tell you’re crazy into engineering, but everyone’s got a thing like that too. Liz is our lit whiz, which we can thank the lord for because who else could we find that would like reading the Scarlet Letter? MJ’s got art history, though she tends to know a lot more about famous artists’ scandals than their techniques. While Peter and I sort of double-team technology, he’s really a huge biology nerd.” He interrupted his own spiel with wheezing laughter. “Oh, you should’ve seen him last year on that field trip— some scientists were doing an exhibition on their studies of spiders and he went crazy. He was like a talking encyclopedia if it only had esoteric facts about spiders and if it didn’t know how to stop talking.”
Ed snickered and nodded along as if he knew these people and would actually remember their names for more than 3 minutes. It felt really weird. He hadn’t held a conversation this long with someone other than his brother or his 50-year-old coworker from the shoe store in a long time. It was a welcome change, but definitely one that he would have to get used to.
When they parted their ways for their next classes, Ed suddenly realized that he’d gotten carried away: they’d both been talking rather loudly, and now people were noticing him. Some eyes were trailing him up and down, almost as if they knew exactly how little he belonged there. He swallowed down his nerves and ducked into the herd of teenagers, hoping for once in his life that he was short enough to be lost in the crowd (of course he was).
He learned his lesson and made sure not to get distracted from Operation: Don’t Be Noticed by some oddly friendly teenager for the rest of the day, even after school got out. He only really raised his head to stare up at the monstrosity leering over him and casting a shadow over half of Manhattan:
Stark Tower.