Bugsssss
"Hope, Cassie, there's somebody I want you to meet," Scott said in his usual excited-dad-voice. He was buzzing with anticipation. Reconnecting with Cassie had been a great time, even if he had been devastated at missing 5 years of his daughter's life, but there was a second teenager that had wormed his way into his bug-based family. Pointing to the ceiling where Peter was doing homework, he gestured in a grandiose manner to the boy. "This is Peter Parker! The one and only Spider-Man!"
Peter looked down (up?) with a soft 'hm' when he heard his announcement. He found it fairly normal to see Scott, and he was excited to see Cassie, but it was the third person he was most excited to meet. With an excited gasp, he dropped to the floor below, landing in a cool pose. 'That was pretty rad, I'm gonna have to do that more often,' he thought to himself.
Cassie gasped in an over-dramatic way at the arrival of her third-favorite hero. She had developed a bit of a bias for bug-based superheroes. "Spider-Man! Omigod, omigod, oh my gooooood!"
Peter chuckled and blushed at the excitement from the girl. "Yeah, that'd be me. And you must be Cassie Lang! It's nice to meet you."
Another gasp, and practical stars in her eyes, "Spider-Man knows who I am!"
"Yeah, Scott really wanted me to meet you." He then looked past Cass and at Hope Van Dyne herself. He had seen her in action during the battle with Thanos- a day he often dwells on- and it was amazing to see Scott's shrinking tech paired with flight and energy-based projectiles. "And you're the Wasp!"
Hope just smiled coyly and waved in response. "Yeah, and that'd be me," she said, mimicking his earlier statement.
"I'm a huge fan! Can I look at your suit, I'd love to look at the schematics and engineering of it," he said with a scientific glaze coming over his eyes.
"Aww, Spider-Man's a dork!"
"First of all, ouch," he said, feigning indignancy "second of all, she's the freakin' Wasp! This is an awesome opportunity!"
"Why's no one ever this excited to meet me," Scott asked Hope while giving her a side hug.
"It's cause you're a loser," she respondes matter-of-factly. She tunred and gave Scott a sly smile.
"Oh, ha ha." Sarcastic laughing had become an artform for Scott.
"Uhh, Ms. Van Dyne?" She turned to see the small frame of Peter Parker extending a handshake towards her. "Big fan."
"I remember you from the battle. You did a really good job out there, kid." Peter lit up at this, while Cass was still fangirling about Spider-Man, chanting something along the lines of 'Spider-Man knows my dad'. "For the record, I'd love to talk science some time. Your webshooters are really fascina-"
She was cut off by a very loud, very sharp siren from the PA system at the new work-in-progress base.
[CODE RED: THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK BY 2 ASSAILANTS]
"What?!" The floor they were on shook under their feet as an explosion rang out. "FRIDAY, who's attacking?!"
[TWO ASSAILANTS: MAC GARGAN & ADRIAN TOOMES]
"Shit… I know these guys. Two rogues of mine. Gargan probably got some serious upgrades." He wrapped an arm around Cassie and pulled his mask out of his pocket. "I'll get her to a saferoom, you two try to get some intel on Gargan and Toomes."
Scott and Hope nodded their confirmation of the plan and got to suiting up. Peter picked Cassie up and started swinging to the safe room, pulling out all of his traversal stops. He opened up the door to the hidden panic room and put Cassie down inside. "This room has defense systems, okay? If anyone comes in, say the code word 'Mr. Anderson' to activate it." At least Tony's old pop culture helped take the edge off. Peter suited into his full costume and headed out. He would've used the Iron Spider, but it was undergoing maintenance after his assbeating from Thanos' army.
Meanwhile, Scott and Hope were shrunken in the vents, surveying the two criminals. One had a wingsuit akin to Sam Wilson's, but with extra green. The other had a weird armored suit with a giant Scorpion Tail that had a modified Chitauri blaster on the end.
"Alright Gargan, we get Spider-Man, and get out, right?"
"Yeah yeah, ya old crone, I know the plan." The Scorpion man… thing slinked away to the commons area and started lashing at things with his tail. Toomes' wings reformed into a more slender form to let him navigate the hallways more easily.
"Alright Hope, I've got a plan. I've learned from Hank to always keep things in these pockets. We use the size discs to make a distraction, lure the wingy dude in and fuck up his wing pack."
"That…" she paused, not actually seeing many horrible flaws in the plan, "is actually pretty good."
The two started down the ventilation shaft towards the training room. Scott pulled out a quarter and dropped it through the grates while Toomes entered the room while Hope shot a growth disk at the falling coin. It grew to twice the size of an avergae quarter and landed with a thud and a loud ring. They soon heard the sound of the birdman's wings flying towards the room of the coin, and slipped throught the ventilation shaft to spring him when the opportunity arised. Scott flew around to face the man. Growing to full size, the birdperson recoiled in shock.
"You… you're that thief! The Ant-Boy."
"Dude, it's Ant-MAN, why does nobody know who I am?!"
"It won't really matter when I kill you and take that tech for myself."
Scott did his best attempt at an intimidating laugh. "Buddy, you're not even gonna get the chance."
Before Toomes knew what happened, one of his wings had… vanished? No, it had just shrunken down. He lashed out with his other wing before it could be shrunken as well, whacking Scott and cutting Hope's thigh. Toomes stood over Scott and turned the wings into a more stab-equipped configuration.
(Meanwhile in the panic room) "FRIDAY, can the defense systems in the house be activated from the panic room?"
[YES, MS. LANG]
"Great! Then focus 'Mr. Anderson' on that bird guy, and fire at his wing."
As he was getting ready to plunge it right into his chest, a lazer fried his wing, and all it's accompanying circuitry.
"The hell was that?!"
Before he got his answer, Scott had shrunken down and slogged him across the helmet. The green lights went dim as the glass broke.
"No broken jaw… I think I did pretty good!"
Hope and Scott high fived at their abject victory.
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Peter had just reached the commons, where most of the newly ordered furniture had been trashed. "Hey," he called down from the ceiling, striking his (now signature) pose, "that stuff cost a lot, buddy."
"Spider-Man! You're gonna pay for what happened at the ferry."
"What, you mean me humiliating you," he asked as he flipped over Gargan's mechanical tail, proceeding to run along it to land a sold punch to his helmet. "You're suit sucks by the way. Ugliest shade of green ever."
"It'd look a lot better with a splash of red on it. Your blood'll have to do."
Peter was launched back by an impact blast from the chitauri blaster that had been fused into the stinger of the tail. It was pretty neat, or it would be if it hadn't shot him. "Okay, that was actually kinda cool. This would be way better if you actually had a personality though."
Hope and Scott ran in to see Peter engaged in combat with the madman. "Spidey!"
"Hey, guys!" Peter did another flip over Scorpion's head and punched his visor into his face, shattering it into his eyes. "How good is your timing with those disks?"
"Impeccable," was the response from Hope. "Why," asked a typically confused and enthuisatic Scott. Confusiastic. Yeah, that works.
"I have a plan." He set his webshooters to web bullet mode, and prepared to shoot at the disoriented Gargan. "Be ready."
He shot the web out at a high speed, hoping that Hope was right in her claims. With the precision and reflexes of, if Peter was allowed to brag, Spider-Man himself, she shot the web perfectly, expanding it to web the blinded Gargan to the wall. He then reconfigured the shooters to the taser web variant, electrocuting him to the point of unconsciousness. They all collectively took a breath of relief at their victory.
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As the authorities rounded up the attackers, Peter took the opportunity to talk to Toomes. Landing on a perch next to the two-time supervillain, he approached low-key.
"Adrian," he greeted, "what're you doing back in the game?"
"Trying to get my payback." Toomes' voice had no malice and no venom in them. He was talking like they were old buddies. "You're gonna pay sooner or later for taking my family away."
'So that's what this is about?' Peter felt remorse for the man, but he was still a career criminal and possible murderer. The disappearance of the original Shocker hadn't been lost to Peter. "I'm sorry about your family, Toomes, but you pushed them away. The stuff you did… they deserved a second chance without your criminal record hanging over their heads," he said as he flipped off the perch and onto the ground next to him. "Who knows, maybe if you're a good boy, you can get out on probation in a couple years."
The police transported Toomes and the (now muffled and restrained) Gargan. Peter watched as his first archenemy was driven away to his possibly permanent home. He took a moment to reflect on his failures- one of his favorite pastimes. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find the Wasp was the owner.
"How are you doing, Peter?"
"Oh y'know, just dealing," he bit back any tears that might have built up. "A lot's happened."
Hope gently hugged him, which was joined by Cassie and Scott. "Look at us," Scott cheered, his enthusiasm matched by Cassie's, "a whole family of bugs!"
Peter couldn't help but laugh. "Well, Spiders aren't technically-"
"Yeah yeah, I know kid." Scott had sorta taken on the surrogate dad role as he was the only one who had any sort of experience aside from Pepper with children. Which made Cassie his surrogate sister, and the freakin' Wasp one of his, now that he thinks about it, many many surrogate moms. He's got a lot of those. Still not enough though.
"Now, how about we just use the semi-functioning TV, order some pizza and turn our brains off for a while, yeah?" Cassie made a pretty appealing proposition. Peter accepted gladly. "You guys can talk science later."
"Deal. I need a pick-me-up right now."
"Come on kiddo, let's get you some pizza. And some sleep, you look like crap."
"You're one to talk, Scott." The Ant-person was shocked. Insulted by his own Spider-child. The four were surprisingly chipper given the damage.
None of the others were quite as happy when they saw their now ruined quarters.