Transfiguration
In retrospect, it was not the smartest idea Peter-One has ever had.
He had been diligently training under Strange since Peter-Two had his health scare. He was not a naturally gifted sorcerer -in fact, he had no magical blood in his ancestry whatsoever, or so Strange claimed- but his intelligence, dedication and hard work made him adept at picking up the basics.
Peter-Three liked watching the teenager learn new tricks. There was no magic in his world that he knew of, so anything Peter-One could do was absolutely mind-blowing and fascinating to him. Plus, it was a bonus to see the boy grow in confidence and smile some more. Peter-One had been through an exceptional amount of grief in a very short time, so anything that brought him out of his melancholy was a good thing.
Peter-Two -perhaps due to his age or due to his more cautious nature- was decidedly less enthused about the whole magic business. “Are you sure you should be messing with this stuff?” he wondered, his brows furrowed over his big gray eyes.
Peter-One shrugged sheepishly from where he laid sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by hand-written notes and magic tomes borrowed from Strange’s sanctuary. “If I’m going to be fighting crime on my own most of the time, knowing some spells should help, right?” He didn’t sound super sure, but he also sounded determined and excited, as every Peter Parker did when learning something new.
Peter-Two and Peter-Three’s eyes met from over the boy’s head and across the dorm room. The taller Peter gave his elder a very slight ‘beats me’ shrug.
Peter-Three was sprawled out on the teenager’s bed in full potato mode, wearing sweatpants and his own oversized NYU hoodie. He was munching away happily on a bag of chips he got from the vending machine out in the hall.
Peter-Two, ever vigilant in an unfamiliar place, sat politely at the teenager’s desk instead. He was dressed in what his bothers jokingly called ‘his youth pastor outfit’, which just consisted of a nondescript t-shirt, his favorite jumper jacket and comfortable jeans.
At a glance, both of them looked incredibly normal, but there was a peek of red spandex under both of their shirt collars and the ends of their sleeves. They were always prepared, even when relaxing with their little brother from another universe.
“Eh, let me just try it once before we head out,” Peter-One said, nose buried in a tome that looked like it weighed more than his chemistry textbook.
“Sure, go for it,” Peter-Three said distractedly as he threw a chip in the air and caught it with his mouth.
“What are you trying to do this time?” Peter-Two asked, leaning over the edge of the chair to read what looked like gibberish on Peter-One’s notes on the ground.
“Transfiguration,” Peter-One replied absently, tracing the text with a finger.
This time, both his brothers sat up straight. “ What ?” they demanded as one.
Peter-One flushed and pushed himself into a sitting position, cradling the ancient book in his lap. “ Oh . No, nothing major, promise,” he tried to reassure them. “Strange was showing me simple transfigurations, like you can cast a spell to change your face. It’s just an illusion, that’s all.”
“Ohhh, like a hologram,” Peter-Two said, nodding in understanding. Peter-One’s world was so overwhelming, sometimes the only way the other two Peters could understand was to draw parallels to things they were familiar with -namely, sci-fi and fantasy media.
Peter-Three rolled on his stomach so he could sprawl his elbows over the edge of the mattress and continue to eat his chips that way. He had a better view of what Peter-One was doing from this position. “If you pull this off, could you go into battle looking like…” he considered, chewing, “Brad Pitt?”
“But why ?” Peter-Two frowned at him from across the room as Peter-One broke out into surprised laughter.
“You’ve never had that dream? C’mon, everyone wants to look like Brad Pitt,” Peter-Three snorted as if they were simply discussing something obvious.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get that good,” Peter-One sniggered. “I’m just gonna start by changing my eye color or my hairdo or something.” He set the tome down, sat up straight on the floor and straightened his shoulders. He held up his hands. “Here goes.”
The resulting shock wave and eye-searing blast of light made both older Peters instinctively leap away. Peter-Three’s forgotten chips went flying and he ended up plastered against the ceiling like a human pancake. Peter-Two’s chair flipped over as he scrambled upward and curled himself into the furthest corner of the room, clinging to the walls with his feet and fingertips. Notes and books went flying in all directions, slamming against the walls and the ceiling with loud, resonating thumps .
“What… What happened?” Peter-Two demanded when the dust settled.
Peter-Three dropped to the ground with silent grace, stunned. “Kid?” He spun around, shocked. Peter-One seemed to have just vanished . There was a neat heap of a MIT hoodie and skinny jeans on the floor and the teenager’s books, notes and binders were in disarray across the room, radiating out from the blast radius. “ Peter?” Peter-Three’s voice began to raise in a panic. Did the kid just… poof himself out of existence?
Unless…
Peter-Two dropped silently to Peter-Three’s side and stared, in that cat-like way of his, at the heap of clothing. “Is that hoodie… moving?”
Peter-Three stared at him as horror and realization dawned on his face, then turned back at the jiggling heap of clothes with a cringe. There were so many things that little heap could be and he couldn’t think of a single option that he liked. “ I don’t want to touch it, you touch it.”
Peter-Two rolled his eyes and indulged him, kneeling carefully to reach out and pull the hoodie off whatever was moving on the floor. His blue eyes grew impossibly wider. “ Peter ?”
A small, curly-haired baby with round cheeks and milky brown eyes stared up at him with equal amounts of confusion and alarm. He was gnawing on something that looked like his own sock.
“Is he…” Peter-Three seemed torn between being horrified and laughing, and it made his face comically pinched. “Is he a baby ?”
A multitude of emotions passed through Peter-Two’s face -horror, shock, disbelief and then, finally, a growing sense of wonder. He tilted his head and studied the chubby baby with both curiosity and concern. “It’s definitely him, I… think.” He reached out to pull the sock out of the baby’s mouth, because that was gross.
The baby stared at him in betrayal as the garment was pulled away. His lower lip wobbled and, almost immediately, a high-pitched wail began to fill the air.
Peter-Two flinched instinctively at the loud sound.
Peter-Three grabbed the damp sock from his elder’s hands and hurriedly stuffed it back in the baby’s mouth. “A-Ahhhh nonono, shhhh, we didn’t mean it !”
Peter-Two’s hand slapped over his mouth to silence him and they both froze, spider-senses tingling, as loud knocking shook the door.
“Peter? Peter, it’s Jason, what’s going on?” An unfamiliar male voice -still young, but not as young as Peter-One- called out for him. “I heard some weird noises, you okay? You better not be throwing stuff in there, you know that’s school property.”
Peter-Three’s wide eyes met Peter-Two’s. “ Who the hell is Jason?” he mouthed silently.
“ RA of the floor ,” Peter-Two hissed back, because he actually paid attention to the details of Peter-One’s college situation. (In his defense, he had to, because everyone at the university thought he was Peter-One’s legal guardian whereas Peter-Three was under zero pressure to do so as the younger Peter’s ‘older brother’.)
“ Okay, new plan. You, him, window, GO .” Peter-Three whispered urgently, grabbing the naked baby and shoving him at Peter-Two’s chest. Peter-Two fumbled and almost dropped the child in shock, while Peter-One simply made a grunt around his mouthful of sock.
If they had never met before, Peter-Two would have a lot more questions. However, they’ve been through hell and back by now, and the older Spiderman knew that Peter-Three always had a plan. Sometimes it was an extremely convoluted, absolutely ridiculous plan, but it usually worked because all three of them were adept at thinking on their feet. They had to put aside their trust issues real quick before the battle at the Statue of Liberty, after all.
With speed that was too fast for a regular human eye to follow, the older Peter used a shot of webbing to pull discarded hoodie off the floor, cradled both it and the baby to his chest and dove out of the window.