Due to positive feedback, I decided to continue this. I hate to brag... okay that is an utter lie since I do want to brag: I saw a preview screening of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse! For the previewing screening as we got a pack of a couple of trading cards for the movie (in my little envelope I got Green Goblin, Tombstone and SP/dr, I have the big SP/dr figure and the Peni that came with it goes along great with my 3.75 Marvel toy collection which mainly consists of the movie figures). I loved it as it was fun (the scenes where Miles first discovered his powers reminded me of when I saw the first Amazing Spider-Man in the cinema and how much fun it was to see Peter first discover his powers in that movie) and I got teary eyed during bits. I will not spoil anything but I will say the Stan lee cameo... Sniff...
Since I want to make some sort of tribute to him, this chapter is dedicated to Stephen Hillenburg the creator of Spongebob Squarepants. 1961-2018. Stephen, rest in peace.
Marinette and Peter played for the rest of the afternoon; they were laughing and talking about recent villains they had to fight. Peter was telling her about having to stop the Bodega Bandit for the 8th time in the last two months, he encounter and had a decent fight against the Avengers bad guy Taskmaster and the last one he fought was Swarm an actual Nazi made of bees.
Every now and then she was getting messages and calls from her classmates and she kept deleting them, annoying her when she had to pause the game to do so. Soon Marinette saw Peter to the door when he, Tony and Peter's Aunt May had to go to the hotel.
He told her she would see her the next day and Marinette stole a kiss from him after they had left the door. She then waved to them while going back to her room, for the first time in a while she was feeling good after the end of a day.
She soon went to bed and said goodnight to Tikki.
After getting a good night's sleep (funny how rare they can be sometimes for her), she got up and got dressed. She decided she would check her emails first, not that she would have that many. Still there could be some for her that might be worth checking out.
Though she guessed at the most she would have...
"5...5...527?" Marinette pretty much screamed looking at her email box in deep shock; Tikki was jsut as shocked as she was. Could this be spam or were her fellow classmates be this persistent in trying to email her instead of messaging her?
No, of course not. Even if all her classmates tried to call her and were persistent, they would have given up long before they reached half of this. That was taking into account if they tried email instead of messaging her.
She quickly scrolled through one and caught one coming from... the official email of J. Jonah Jameson? The owner and founder of Daily Bugle Communications who recently started his own radio blog and was a harsh critic of vigilantes like Spider-Man. She opened it up and was astonished:
You have my sympathy of now being tied to that masked menace as his tailor. Just like a menace like Spider-Man to take advantage of a young fashion student to get a suit made for him. Since I highly doubt he compensated you, I have arranged for a check of 500 American dollars to be delivered to you. Don't think of returning it, I also encased a free signed copy of my book Spider-Man: Threat or Menace that has been translated into French for you.
She was amazed but a bit insulted; she made the decision to make that outfit for Peter as a present for him. So he could look better while doing his thing. "Hang on, how would Jameson know I made the Spider-Man suit?" Marinette questioned and paused when she scrolled down at a particular email address:
It was the one for Roderick Kingsley: he was basically the Gabriel Agreste of New York. He was a wealthy fashion designer and owner of a huge fashion company, his designs got the most glowing reviews from Audrey Bourgeois. She enthusiastically read it:
Must, say, for a young fashion student to be chosen to design the suit for New York's own crimefighter. I will be sure to offer you an internship when you're older.
She was ready to freak out with glee at this email, but still that leads the question of how this information got out. She then began glancing through the other messages until one of them had a link to the NYCWallCrawler social media page.
She then clicked on it and had it translated to French, her eyes widened when she read the post that had been made last afternoon. "Look on the bright side Marinette, at least now you will get more noticed..." Tikki told her trying to get Marinette out of her shock.
Then came the sound of her dad shouting from downstairs "Marinette, Peter is here to walk you to school." There was a twitching from her left eyes as Tikki got into her bag and Marinette then stormed down wanting to give Peter a piece of her mind.
Peter was singing Smash Mouth's All Star to himself but gulped when he saw the look on her face. "You know, don't you?" Peter muttered with a fearful look and then gave a sigh after Marinette silently nodded. Peter sighed and told Marinette "I know it was stupid and I should have asked you before, but I was a bit upset hearing about how that liar affected you and got the whole class around your finger. I thought that people should know about something that you have done and I didn't totally think it through... I'm sorry..."
Marinette looked at the remorseful Peter and sighed, it was stupid but he had the best intentions. It was not as bad as what her classmates had done. "Curse you for being so hard to stay mad at..." Marinette muttered enveloping him into a hug to which he happily returned.
She said goodbye to her parents who were happy to see Marinette with a smile in the morning again and waved back. They then began walking to school together.
"Peter, I thought of this but with you here then who is protecting New York?" Marinette decided to ask, she had to get Chloe to cover for her as Queen Bee when she and her parents left to New York for their vacation. When she returned Cat Noir had told her that she owed him for making him having to put up with Queen Bee for her little vacation.
"Well I gave a post saying I would be away for a while and I got Iron Fist to cover for me." Peter explained to her, Peter did manage to make friends of the superheroes found in New York. Especially when he got allied with the Avengers, Marinette remembered Peter talking about his excitement when he first met Bruce Banner the Hulk, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers better known as Captain America who were his 3 favorite Avengers.
She laughed when he admitted he had not told Tony about him and Cap being tied for second place behind the Hulk.
They soon reached the school gates and shared one last kiss before Peter was about to leave. She noticed walking towards them were Mylene, Juleka, Alix and Rose. She remembered that no one except for her parents knew about her long distance relationship with Peter. She didn't even tell Alya about Peter who didn't seem to notice that she stopped chasing after Adrien and was just treating him like a close friend.
She had felt guilty about keeping it from them.
"It's the boy I saw Marinette kissing outside her parents' bakery." Alix muttered to them and they then spoke silently to teach other. Marinette didn't look to happy with it looking like they were talking about her behind her back and Peter was the same.
Rose spoke up saying "listen Marinette, we know you like Adrien and we support you in that but jsut because you're jealous of Lila doesn't mean that you should try and make Adrien jealous..."
Marinette looked aghast and Peter had his mouth wide open, Marinette snapped at this shouting "how dare you! I am not jealous of a serial liar who you all somehow believe! Just so you know I met Peter when I went to New York and we have been going out in secret! If you want to decide to ignore me and listen to Lila's lies then I don't care anymore, but don't make any assumptions about Peter or so help me!"
Marinette paused her face showing she was just as shocked as the four girls in front of her. "Wow Marinette, I am realizing how much fire you have inside of you." Peter told her cheerfully making her blush red. She just gave one last goodbye as she went to go inside. Peter waved as he went out of the gate.
Alya and Nino were watching the confrontation with wide eyes, "First she overreacts with her jealousy and now she says she had a secret boyfriend? Something is weird with Marinette and I have to find out what..." Alya muttered. There were other students nearby including Max and Adrien.
"Well I find it surprising that she managed to meet Peter Parker." Max stated walking near them; the then began asking Max if he heard of him. "Of course I have, he is Tony Stark's intern and protégée, he is apparently a protegy who despite living in an apartment, goes to a fancy science school and managed to build stuff like computers out of parts he got while dumpster diving.." Max explained reading an article online with Tony talking about the promising interns be brought into his company.
There was a tinge of jealous to Max's voice, Tony Stark led the superstar scientist lifestyle that Max hoped to achieve. Apparently this kid from New York had been found by Tony Stark before he even heard of Max, and he was the one being taken under his wing.
"I definitely had to dig into this..." Alya muttered as they finally went inside. However Nathanael and Marc began going around the other students showing something on their phone, they being the first students to find out about the post Spider-Man made about Marinette the previous afternoon.