Chapter 14 — Alien Egg Hunt

Peter hadn't questioned Cuddles desire to serve as his clothing at all times. He knew the symbiont could fold himself down so small that other clothing wouldn't be bulky, but by being clothing, Cuddles was also being armor, an extra layer of protection against the world. It was a matter of pride to him and having to fold down tight and let the spider-suit and Karen take over, made him truculent.

"Good afternoon, Peter. Would you like to work through a tutorial before we go on patrol?" Karen asked.

"Not really, thanks, we're on a schedule today. We have a train to catch." Peter let loose, webbing his way toward the train station, the best place to hitch a ride for a sticky guy like him. You might get lucky bumming a ride on a truck and shave some time off your trip, but the trains had regular schedules and destinations; they were far more reliable.

"Peter, you aren't wearing the gloves of your suit. No specialized web shooters will be available without your gloves."

"Ah, well, we're testing out Cuddles' web fluid and his ability to shoot it today. He matches the suit's pattern perfectly well and his fluid is as good as the manufactured stuff, better even since we don't need to change cartridges. He's doing pretty well, yeah?" Peter smiled, enjoying the chance to stretch himself out properly.

"Without your specialized web shooters, you have drastically decreased your arsenal if there is an emergency."

It almost sounded like Cuddles wasn't the only one feeling truculent about sharing suit dutievs? Karen was an AI and the protocols that Mr. Stark had programmed her with were technically complex enough for her to at least feign appropriate emotions. Whether she was feeling them was debatable. "We shouldn't need taser webs or web grenades. We're going to Manhattan to swing around a little. If we find ourselves in a bind and in need of options, I brought the gloves along. Cuddles is holding onto them."

"The symbiont dissolved your last suit. Can it safely hold onto your gloves?" Karen asked.

It was official, Karen didn't like Cuddles. Of course he did dissolve the first suit which was sort of her body. "He hasn't dissolved them yet. Karen, he didn't know you were aware when he dissolved your original suit. Cuddles is very sorry about that." Peter ignored the annoyed wave from the symbiont about not being sorry at all. The worst part of Karen for Cuddles was that he couldn't interface with technology the way he could biological beings. Between temporarily taking his clothing duties over and being immune to his empathy, Cuddles was convinced that Karen was secretly evil or dangerous or both. Peter knew the only thing that was stopping the symbiont from dissolving her again was his firm position on the matter.

"Manhattan seems quite far from our normal patrolling route. Are we on a mission?" Karen asked.

"Sort of. We're on a scavenger hunt. I'm supposed to be looking at the architecture of City College," Peter lied smoothly. "It's for school." He winced at Cuddles disapproval. When he taught the symbiont the rules of being human, he had been firm about honesty and it was one of the pillars the little guy had built his personality on. He did not like deception, even little white lies bothered him.

Technically they had been hunting the dormant symbiont for going on two weeks now, but Cuddles didn't grumble about the lie of omission in not telling Karen that part. It probably helped that it was Karen they weren't telling. They had tried search patterns near all the known attack sites from the Siren's rampage. They had even mapped and searched areas where she was only sighted. Their side activity hadn't caught Karen's attention at all since the Siren hadn't much left the boundaries of Queens.

MJ had figured out a secondary pattern to the Siren's attacks. She had stalked a very specific type on her murderous rampage, killing pimps and drug dealers, the worst of the worst. It didn't justify what she had done, but it almost made Peter sadder for the woman who was still in a hospital being fed through a tube. She had made the most of her situation and steered the monster as best she could.

The field trip to Manhattan was a long shot. There was a single Siren sighting at City College, and it was their last lead.

"An architectural scavenger hunt? They have several excellent examples of Perpendicular Gothic style at City College. There are more than one thousand individual grotesque statues and gargoyles on campus. What are we looking for specifically?" Karen asked.

"I'll know it when I see it." Peter found the train to take him to Manhattan and laid flat to wait until they were underway.

"It will be an hour long train ride. Would you like to work on one of the suit tutorials?"

Peter sighed and shrugged. "Sure. It will kill some time."

Karen spent most of their hour long ride quizzing him about web shooter options and various and sundry modes. Sometimes it seemed like it would be a shorter list to learn what the suit wasn't capable of, but Peter didn't complain. He wasn't looking for a shortcut to mastering this technology. After a particularly complicated discussion of amphibious mode, Peter surrendered. "Karen, I think for the rest of the trip, we'd just like to ride." Cuddles had never seen a sunset like this, the towering buildings approaching with the red light fast fading behind them. It was like seeing it for the first time as Cuddles emotions swelled at the beauty. A flood of possessiveness hit him and Peter nodded understanding. It was a piece of their territory, less their home than Queens but still under their protection.

Once in Manhattan, Peter should have been basically lost and ready to follow any directions Karen could give him, but he wasn't lost. Cuddles hadn't been wrong. He could sense the inactive symbiont if they got close enough. Peter took off, swinging between the much taller buildings in this part of the city until he was so close that his body was thrumming with the other symbiont's presence.

"This is Wingate Hall. Would you like to hear about the architectural significance of this building?" Karen asked.

"I'm afraid I might have lied about the scavenger hunt a bit Karen." Peter climbed to the top of the building and reached down into a decorative gargoyle's mouth. He pulled out the gently pulsing blue egg that had been missing for so long. "She hid you well, little guy. Just keep sleeping. We're going to get you somewhere safe."

"Peter, that is the missing third symbiont. In accordance with my current monitoring protocol, I must contact Mr. Stark immediately with this information."

"It's okay, Karen. I know. Tell him that no people should be within, oh, eight feet of the little guy or we risk waking him. There's no way I could get him safely upstate without help. Unlike the Siren, I don't fly." Peter settled into a sheltered spot on the building and nodded. "We'll wait here for help." Letting Cuddles guide him, Peter curled protectively around the egg.

When Tony set his phone to do not disturb, it wasn't an absolute thing. Ironman couldn't afford to turn off his phone. He and Bruce had been crunching numbers for scenarios of opening and closing the wormhole on Benham Street, when F.R.I.D.A.Y. overrode his do not disturb command, chiming for his attention. Those polite bells might as well have been klaxons and flashing red lights. "Boss, your attention is needed immediately, Cuddles monitoring protocol, code blue."

"Code blue?" Bruce asked.

"The third symbiont is blue according to all reports." Tony slammed his laptop shut. "Code Blue means Peter is in physical contact with the third symbiont. Patch me through to the spider-suit, F.R.I.D.A.Y."

Karen's voice came through next. "Mr. Stark, Peter located the dormant blue symbiont. He is showing no overt signs of distress and remains responsive. He has requested assistance evacuating the dormant organism. He is concerned that no humans come within eight feet of the symbiont at the risk of activating it. We are currently located at the top west corner of Wingate Hall on City College campus in north Manhattan."

"Manhattan? That's a little ways from your usual patrols. Karen, I want to talk to Peter." Tony waited for the sound of Peter's breathing to know he was live. "Kid, you want to explain how you ended up in Manhattan with a dormant symbiont that you were told to stay clear of?"

"I never agreed to not look for him. Maybe I agreed to ten layers of monitoring, but I didn't agree to take orders. Not an Avenger." Peter sighed. "If you want to read me the riot act, that's fine, but we need help getting this little guy somewhere safe, safe for him and the humans that might end up like Lily Frazier if they wake him up. So, please come get him."

"Not an Avenger?" Tony said under his breath. "I'm sending a drone to your location. Put the dormant symbiont in it. Then get ready because I'll be arriving a little after the drone and we're going to have a long talk about risking your life needlessly. End call."

Tony dispatched a medium sized drone, punching the keys on the small aircraft far harder than necessary. He turned to Bruce, unable to shake the anger he was struggling with and he needed to calm down before climbing in a suit and going to see Peter.

Bruce shrugged. "I do recall that that Peter said his symbiont made him safe around the inactive symbiont and that he might be able to hunt it better than any of our tech had managed. It's not completely surprising that he would go and get the symbiont before we ended up with another Siren monster eating people. He technically did a good thing here."

"Good? That kid is going to get himself killed. Somehow he managed a working bond with an alien symbiont that turned the only other human ever exposed into a cannibalistic monster—a miracle in and of itself. Instead of counting his lucky stars and staying as far away from the blue symbiont as he could, he threw himself at it like a self-sacrificing soldier on a live grenade." Tony threw his hands up. "I'm done with this kid. Done."

"Sit down for a second, Tony. You're shaking." Bruce gently pushed his friend into a seat and shoved a cup of coffee into his hand. "Drink that. It's got sugar. It will help."

Tony sipped the beverage. "I'm not in shock."

"Maybe not, but you're upset enough to be shaking." The way Bruce saw it, people like them didn't often have real families. Their lives were too dangerous and unsettled, but if they were lucky they adopted each other, finding friends that became brothers or protégés that almost became sons. "You're not done with the kid. Superhero protégés don't exactly grow on trees. Peter was a little reckless and you just need to catch your breath before you go talk to him." Bruce squeezed Tony's shoulder.

"What kind of coffee is this?" Tony asked, but he sipped more. "He's not my protégé. He isn't even really an intern."

"Whatever you say, Tony." Bruce gestured to one of the small aircraft that could fly itself. "If you're really done with him, I could go talk to him for you."

Tony finished his coffee in a final long drag. "Don't be an ass. He's my sort-of-intern. I'll be administering the talking to."

Peter stowed the small blue symbiont in the drone Tony sent, confidant that even if he was angry at him, Mr. Stark would treat the symbiont with the care and concern the situation deserved. He didn't have to wait long after the drone's exit for Ironman's arrival. He had been so intimidated less than a year ago when Tony flew in after the ferry fiasco, but today was different. This wasn't a fiasco, and Peter was ready for anything Mr. Stark had to say on the matter.

Without preamble, Tony stepped from his armor. Whatever he saw in Peter's face, his frown just deepened. "I asked you to leave Benham Street and the symbionts to the Avengers. Would you please explain why you're here in the middle of something I asked you to stay clear of, again?"

"There is a symbiont bonded to me, mind and body. There is no way for me to stay clear of them. That little blue symbiont is a baby, just like Cuddles and I refuse to see it destroyed like the Siren was, not to even mention the human beings that were at risk from it." Peter shrugged. "I knew it couldn't damage my bond. Cuddles was certain. Just because you refuse to accept any information the symbiont offers, doesn't mean it isn't true. This was the right thing to do. I'd do it again."

Tony took a deep breath and plastered a painful smile on his face. "You just said that your symbiont is a baby and I can't count how many times you've said that you don't understand a fraction of what it really is or what it will ultimately be capable of. So you're asking me, a scientist, to have faith in something that I can't verify without putting your body, and your very mind at risk. Forgive me for having some misgivings or asking you to show a little restraint."

"I understand your point of view, but can you see mine? Was I wrong? I found the symbiont. It is headed somewhere secure." Peter crossed his arms over his chest. "If I'd done what you asked, who knows when a human being would have strayed close enough to wake it. I guess we would start to get some data then, since we're being scientific about this. It's not a large population and you can't really derive statistics with three data points, but we'd sort of know whether you're more likely to get a Cuddles or a Siren from a symbiont bonding with a human being."

Tony sighed and sat on the building edge next to Peter. "No one is saying that what you did here wasn't helpful or heroic. You very well may have saved lives and that is always commendable. Once you knew where the symbiont was, you could have called that information in to me and I'd have handled it. You took the last step to fish it out of its hiding place and hold it in your hands." Tony shook his head, determined to not lose his temper and to talk things through logically. "So, when you signed that contract with May about how you were going to patrol and the guidelines you were going to follow, did it mean anything? Maybe you were just appeasing her, lying to make your life easier? I thought we had an understanding and that you were going to let the adults in your life protect you just a very little bit."

For the first time, Peter looked less sure of himself. "I, we, just needed to make sure it was okay. You don't know what it's like." Peter raked his hands through his hair, groping for an explanation that Mr. Stark would really understand. "Cuddles knew it was safe and he needed to check on that symbiont. It isn't like trusting another person or having faith in another person. It's trusting myself because that symbiont is as much a part of me as my hand or my brain or my heart. I trust you Mr. Stark as much as anyone in the world, but you don't trust me at all."

"You really think I give multimillion dollar, crime fighting suits with an instant kill setting to people I don't trust? It's fair to say I'm more skeptical of your roommate, but I'm trying here," Tony said. "Bruce called you my protégé, but I don't much feel like your mentor on days like today. I feel like the man who is going to have to tell your Aunt May how you got killed or maimed or driven insane by a random alien parasite. I'll admit that there were failures on both sides when things went sideways with Toomes. I've tried to be a better mentor. Do you want help and guidance or do you want me to leave you to it?"

Peter's shoulders slumped and he folded his arms so that he was basically hugging himself, the posture and pose making him seem smaller, like he was folding in on himself. "It wasn't ever your job to be my mentor or my benefactor or anything really, but you've done right by me, especially with the whole Cuddles thing. But sir, when someone's life is at stake, particularly family—say what you want, that little blue egg might as well have been Aunt May as far as Cuddles is concerned—I won't be shut down or locked out. This wasn't about disrespecting you or the things you've done for me. I'd like to find a way to compromise and work together in those moments when I'm not willing to take leave-it-alone for an answer."

Compromise wasn't a concept Tony had often had to embrace in his life. Born into the type of intelligence and financial privilege that guaranteed he would never have to defer to anyone or anything, he had learned to be decisive, in his own way dictatorial. Dictatorial didn't work well with teenage superheroes, even before they bonded with reckless alien symbionts. "All right, you speak up when it's time to compromise and I'll try, but you have to actually speak up. Don't try to say you argued for the chance to continue searching for the symbiont. You lied to me, said you agreed to leave it alone and did what you wanted."

"You're not wrong." Peter winced, then laughed. "Ever had a symbiont tell you, I told you so? For the record, Cuddles never approved of doing this under the radar. I insisted it was simpler to ask forgiveness after everything had worked out. You know?"

"Is it really simpler?" Tony asked. "Really? Apparently, sometimes the goo-monster is right. Okay then, next week instead of three nights patrolling, you're going to come upstate for superhero detention with me and Bruce. We've been working on a long project that we'll be finishing soon. You can bring us coffee and carry our spreadsheets around instead of getting into trouble."

Peter's eyes got big and he nodded tentatively. Dr. Banner was working on the Benham Street anomaly pretty much exclusively. Mr. Stark wasn't punishing him for his disobedience, not really. He was compromising already without even being asked, letting Peter have a view of the anomaly that had changed his life less than a year ago. "May might not consider that sufficient punishment for what I did here."

"This happened in tights. Your aunt and I came to the decision a while back that I'd handle the superhero issues that came up and she'd handle the regular teenage drama. We thought it would be less confusing. I'll let you explain to May how you got spider-detention," Tony said. "Now, how exactly do you plan to get home before curfew from here anyway?"

"Crap." Peter jumped up and pulled his mask back on. "I'm going to miss my train if I don't hurry."

"You ride the train in that get up?" Tony asked.

"Sort of." Peter swung away, not lingering to discuss the logistics of him using his sticky limbs to cling to a moving train. Mr. Stark probably wouldn't approve and he didn't have time to hash out a compromise if he was going to avoid a curfew violation on top of everything.

There wasn't any warning.

Peter went to sleep after a long day of school followed by an afternoon in detention upstate, doing menial tasks, but also getting to watch two of the world's most brilliant men manipulate a real, functional wormhole; he woke up in another world. A hundred thousand voices united as one were inside his mind, pinning him in place. He could still feel Cuddles, also immobile and confused.

The other voices, the other minds, rustled through his brain, gently reviewing him, his memories and emotions, everything that made him Peter and Spider-Man and Cuddles too. He tried to resist the invasion, but his mind was too small and weak, an insignificant drop in an immense ocean. When there was nothing left to learn, no other gray matter to parse, the massive mind withdrew, all except a single matched pair of entities.

Peter and Cuddles were free and in a moment, they were one, like they hadn't been since Xavier first taught them to come apart. As one they could fight best, and they dropped into an aggressive crouch, claws and fangs growing on their mental projection until they appeared like nothing close to human.

The other pair didn't bother to arm themselves, an alien, humanoid if not human, stood back and watched them, a symbiont draped in liquid cords around its body.

"Hello, young one. What a marvelous accident you are."