The Beginning
When the first video surfaces, it has thirty views, is only about eight seconds long, and causes Peter to lose his shit for a solid ten minutes. A ten minutes that includes a mix of calling and texting ned while pacing back and forth on his ceiling. Luckily, Ned managed to talk some sense into him, and even patiently explained that a blurry video of him jumping the school’s fence couldn’t do much, if any, damage at all. Ned even went and explained that no one would even be able to tell it was him, let alone where it was in New York since it was a crappy phone video (being the sweet guy he is, there were a few jokes on how ‘it’s filmed veridically so it’s not like anyone will take it seriously’ thrown in there just to cheer Peter up), plus, he pointed out, the thirty views were probably just the poster themselves rewatching the video.
Eventually, it took a bit more pacing, but eventually, Peter calmed down, and went back about his life. School, crime-fighting, meeting a billionaire on the weekends, you know, normal teenage things. Within two weeks, Peter totally forgot about the video.
So of course, that’s when the gym incident happens.
Which later, when Peter realizes the full situation and how this was truly the start of it all, he’ll whine about how it totally wasn’t fair because peer pressure and the fact that he was running on very little sleep.
The story is that during a long gym period, a group of boys next to Peters little group(read: Peter, ned and MJ , who was sitting two rows up but somehow still obviously involved and group with the two nerd.) were betting that no one in their whole school could do a standing back flip, which is a pretty fair bet all things considered. After all, they’re a maths and science school, they weren’t really known for their sports teams.
As the period went on a few boys in the group tried to do one, and as more failed, more money was adding to the pile for who ever could do it. As the class dragged on, the boys started to spread out amongst the bleacher seats, asking more students, most of which blew them off, but a few did attempt, which got a good laugh and two different nurse trips.
With only five minutes left in the day, one of the boys approached and asked Peter, Ned and MJ if any of them were capable. Ned was quick to happily volunteer the information that Peter could.
Peter, who was already turning red, was elbowing ned and insisting that he couldn’t and he just did it on a trampoline once thats all, really. Ned who was elbowing Peter back, much harder, was telling all who could hear that Peter was just being modest. When Peter went to make his final plea, MJ decided to speak up and confidently state that he could.
Now, it’s important to note, that at Midtown, Mj usually seemed to know all rumors about everyone, and more importantly, which was true and which were not. She barely ever shares her information, but when she does, she’s never wrong.
And of course Peter isn’t going to ruin his friends reputation. So he gets up and trudged down the stairs, not noticing Flash and a few others of their peers had taken their phones out- in disbelief that Peter could do it of course and in hopes of catching him fall flat on his face- but more so as soon as he hurt himself they could post it and share it and even possibly gain internet fame.
Standing on the last step of the bleaches, Peter sighed, pulled his backpack off, and turned to face everyone, then promptly, and very quickly, did a smooth back flip, with a soft landing and even managing to just look annoyed at the situation. The gymnasium went silent, and much too embarrassed Peter grabbed his bag just as the bell rang and hauled ass right on out of there.
Ironically enough, it’s Ned who sends Peter the videos that surfaced later that evening. Peter had just been doing homework when his phone dinged,(okay it played a bit of the Star Wars theme but is that a truly important detail to this story?) and when he checked it, he found nothing but a link to flash’s instagram, of all places.
With curiosity, and dread, growing, Peter clicked it and waited for the full thing to load, and when it did, he was surprised (which he really shouldn’t have been, but trig analysis can really numb the brain) to find it was a video of himself, flash snickering over what must have been him trying to get out of doing the flip. Video Peter stands, and flash makes a shushing noise before breaking into another round of snickering. With now fast growing dread, Peter watches himself stand on the bottom step and turns, hears flash announce, “oh I hope he breaks something,” and then watches the flip. The video ends with one of flash’s friends muttering, “dude..”
In contrast, Peter’s life ends when he checks the views and likes. 306 views, 127 likes, and 16 comments.
When Peter was half way through reading one comment thread about whether it was him or not, he got another text, and then three more, from ned. All were links.
Correction, all were different links to different videos of him doing a backflip. As Peter Parker, not Spiderman.
In total, 15 videos made it online in some way, and half of those had a very clear shot that was so obviously him. And, just to rub salt in the wound, two of the videos just flat out had his name on them.