Chapter 3: Excelsior! Part 3

September 7th 20XX, 30 minutes after the exam

Narrator's POV

"Hey, you sure he's gonna be ok?"

"Eh, probably. That Clayton kid's and his were probably the worst injuries we got this year, aside from the people who got scratched by that one girl's squirrels." Night Nurse said.

It has been about 30 minutes after the conclusion of the M.A practical entrance exam, Pietro and Laura were currently standing in the M.A infirmary where their friends Clayton and Peter were being treated for their injuries.

"Hey, your name's Laura, right?" Pietro asked the green-eyed girl sitting next to him. She hadn't said a word since they reached the infirmary to look over their new friends.

"Yes." She said in a stoic tone. Pietro wasn't one to pry into People's motives for doing things, but he was sure she barely knew any of them.

He checked his phone for the time, he was supposed to meet up with wands after the exam to go home but told her he was something to do.

"Why are you watching over them with me? Not that I don't appreciate it but I don't think you know any of us, right?" He asked.

"You were all valuable help during the exam, I felt it as it would be appropriate to make you sure you were relatively unharmed." She said, her tone not changing.

'Uh-huh, cool.' He thought to himself. it was starting to get awkward since she hasn't tried to make any conversation the entire time.

Wishing to fill the silence, he tried to talk to night nurse about the condition of his friends.

"Hey, night nurse? when should they be waking up, if you don't mind me asking?"

She checked her watch and tapped her pen on her chin, thinking about an answer.

"About-" She was cut off by Peter shooting up in his bed and Clayton slowly coming back into consciousness.

"Woah! Where am I?! Where's the rob-" Peter was then stopped mid-sentence by Night Nurse tapping him in the head with a pen.

"Dude, be quiet! My head is killing me." Clayton yelled as he shoved his head into the pillow on his bed.

"Relax, kid. You're at the M.A infirmary healing all the injuries you got on the exam. Did you know how reckless that was, by the way? If it wasn't for that minor healing factor of yours, you would've been out for 2 days at least." She said while writing on her clipboard.

"Oh, man. What injuries do they have?" Pietro asked.

"That Parker kid had a dislocated shoulder, a couple tears in his muscles, friction burns on his feet, and rope burns on his palms. Cole had fractures in his arms, internal bleeding, and tears in his muscles."

"What?!" Clayton yelled, looking strained.

"Oh, and a lot of ringing in his ears, it should go away in a couple minutes or so. Anyways, you guys are free to go, please don't get yourselves back here." Night nurse said as she started to walk out of the room.

"Oh, alright! thanks!" Peter said as she left the room, only getting a nod in response.

He started to get up, wincing at the soreness in his limbs before he noticed Pietro and Laura sitting near his bed.

"Glad to see you guys are ok! C'mon, the buses are leaving in like 15 minutes, let's walk there together!" He said as he walked over to help Clayton up from his bed.

As the group walked through the hallway on their way to the buses that would take them home, Peter's phone buzzed with a message.

Kamala: Hey Pete! We were gonna wait for you to at the buses but I'm gonna go hang out with some people I met at the exam! Flash and Liz are gonna go watch a movie after this. Hope you don't mind!

Peter wrote out a response through his bandaged hands and sighed, he was hoping to be able to hang out with his friends after the exam and relax.

Laura, who was walking with the group for reasons that only she knew, noticed his change in demeanor and decided to ask about it.

"Parker." She said, making Peter jump a bit.

"Oh! Wolverrete, what's up? thanks for popping my arm back into place at the exam, by the way! I really appreciate it." He said, chuckling awkwardly.

Peter never really thought of himself as bad at talking to people, even when they didn't want to talk to him. But he didn't even know how to talk to Laura, there was something about her cold and calculated demeanor that threw him off.

"Is there something troubling you? Your facial expression appears to have changed once you looked at your phone." She asked, tilting her head.

"Uh, I guess? I came here with a group of my friends and they all are leaving to do other stuff. I was hoping I could hang out with them after the exam, you know?"

"Are you not 'hanging out' with us right now?" She said, her expression not changing.

"Yeah, she could have said it with more emotion, but she's right," Clayton said as he and Pietro walked on the other side of Peter.

"Huh, guess you're right," Peter said as a small smile crept its way onto his face.

'Who would've thought I'd make friends in here so quickly? I fighting a giant robot has a way to bring people together' He thought to himself as the group walked towards the entrance of the exam building.

On the way, Peter couldn't help but see all the other buildings that the campus had, from what he had heard the fake cities were used for training exercises. He saw the main school, the dormitories, and about 5 different gyms.

All in all. this place was incredibly well funded, half of the water fountains at his middle school didn't even work now that he thought of it.

After walking, making conversation, and getting to know each other better, they reached the campus' main gate to start boarding the buses to go home.

After saying their goodbyes, and being convinced by Pietro to make a group chat for them, they all got parted ways when they got back to the city,

Peter got home at around 7 PM, he entered his apartment only to be met by a silent house. He sighed knowing that May was probably still running errands so he went to his room and laid down.

*BUZZ*

His phone buzzed with a notification, he half expected it to be from May or Tony congratulating him on the exam, but he saw that it was from a group chat.

Pietro added Peter, Clayton, and Laura to

'M.A Buddies'

Pietro: sup!

Clayton: did you really call this 'M.A Buddies'? that sounds lame

Peter: Yeah, it's super lame tbh

Pietro: what r u guys talking about? It's super cool

Laura: It is very stupid.

Peter: see? even wolverette agrees!

Laura: Do not call me that.

Peter: Sorry, already changed your name on my phone to it.

Clayton: Anyways, why did Pietro make a group chat

Pietro: cause we r pals! we should hang out later tbh

Clayton: I'm gonna be busy working on some support gear, I've been working on this project for a couple days.

Peter: Dude! you make your own support gear? We should probably work on some together sometime!

Clayton: I didn't register it early enough to use it in the exam. Were those things on your wrists something you made?

Peter: Yeah, they're my web-shooters. I ran out of web fluid while I was trying to hold that robot back so I gotta make more.

Pietro: lol nerds

Laura: Cole, is your quirk some sort of vibration generation?

Clayton: It's called 'Sonics' I create high-frequency sound blasts and vibrations.

Peter: Dude, that's sick! Flashy quirks are so awesome, all I can do is stick to walls and sense danger.

Peter: Anyway, I gotta go, im exhausted right now so im planning on sleeping to let my healing factor kick in. See ya!

Laura: I must go as well, I need to train more before I get my exam results.

Pietro: Same, gotta go make sure my sis isn't left not annoyed too long lol, ttyl!

And with that, peter turned his phone off as he smiled to himself, feeling content with having friends he could talk to. Talking to them did wonders for cheering himself up.

He thought about how'd he do in the exam, he had a feeling he passed but the anxiety of failing was still there. But he knew he couldn't afford to fail, he worked hard to get where he was, and nothing could take him from there.

With a newfound feeling of determination, he closed his eyes and let sleep overtake him.

September 8th 20XX, the day after the exam.

*He takes the heat to next degree, He's more than a hero believe what you see, He's Iron Ma-*

Peter awoke to his phone ringing, seeing that the time displayed on his phone was 6:30 AM, his finger hovered over the ignore button before realizing what song the phone was playing.

Frantically, he pressed the answer button and waited to hear the voice on the other end as if his life depended on it.

He had known tony for nearly a year, so you'd think hed be more used to having him call sometimes to check in on the boy, but Peter found it hard to not fanboy when he thought about iron-man calling his phone.

Shaking off the tiredness in his voice, he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Hey, tony! What's up? did you see me at the exam? I bet I looked awesome."

"Hey, kid. Yeah, you were great out there, a bit reckless but that's just who you are, huh? Anyway, I was calling to say that... I'm proud of you, you know? I knew you had great potential to be a hero from day 1 but it's still incredible to see you in action."The man on the other line said sincerely while chuckling.

Anthony Edward Stark was known for many things, his intelligence, his company, his kinda douchy yet lovable attitude, but one of them wasn't his ability to say he was proud of someone while being fully sincere.

Peter Froze for a second, he knew that Tony had a soft spot for him but this? He hadn't even heard him talk to Riri like this. And she was like a mini version of him that was way more snarky!

"I- You- what? Are you serious? I just- wow! I can't believe it, I don't think you know how much that means to me, man. I mean, what can I say? I'd make a joke but it'd ruin the moment!." Peter said as he laughed, he could feel his eyes starting to water with happiness.

"Don't sweat it, kid, just keep being spectacular out there and you'll be fine. I also called cause there should be something at your door right now, I'll leave ya to check it out."

Before he could respond, Tony hung up, leaving Peter alone in silence and confusion.

Standing up, the boy walked over to his front door, May was still asleep so he did his best to not wake her up if he didn't have to.

Opening the door with a small click, he looked down to see a small package at his feet, it was completely blank and only had a card with a small spider symbol In the top with the initials 'T.S', he could only guess it was something from Tony.

Picking it up, it felt lightweight, as if there wasn't anything there but when he shook it, he heard something rattling around inside.

Walking over to his bedroom and using a decent amount of spider strength, the brunette ripped apart the package, making a small metal disc fall from the torn cardboard.

It was silver and shone in the early morning light, he was sure it wasn't harmful, then again it was from Tony so he couldn't be sure. Peter was snapped out of his thoughts by the small device emitting a whirring sound and then creating a screen in the middle of his room that portrayed Tony Stark himself wearing a suit.

He was standing in front of a wall with the logo of M.A painted on it with white paint, he looked a bit tired and burnt out as well.

"Hey, kid! It's me, your favorite playboy billionaire philanthropist! You may be wondering what im doing here, well to answer that, I'll be teaching the support course at M.A, cool, right?" The man said with a smirk and a light chuckle.

Peter realized right then that he forgot to take the support course exam, before he could freak out about not having a back plan in the case he failed the practical exam, Tony spoke up.

"M.A is sending out these holo discs, (made by stark industries, by the way) to give our young aspiring heroes their exam results. Normally I'd be doing the support course students and cap would do the hero course, but I wanted to do your message personally and as soon as possible"

Peter thought for a moment, he was sure it normally took about a week to get results back, and did Tony just said cap? as in Captain America? that was a question for later. From what Peter could gather, tony made sure he was the first student to get his test results back, which was insane to think about.

The screen zoomed out and showed clips of Peter fighting the robots and finally doing his best to hold the zero pointer back.

"We graded this exam on 'combat points' and as you can see, you did quite well in this regard, eating a total of 56 points, well enough to pass. but..." He paused and the screen showed a clip of the aftermath of the zero pointer, a destroyed road, and damaged buildings. "There was a lot of unnecessary property damage so that bumps you down to 51 points, which is still good."

The screen showed a number 51 with the words 'combat' above it in red.

Peter could understand that, one of his major weaknesses was causing more property damage than needed.

"But, combat points weren't the only thing we counted, you know?" The man said with a smirk as the word 'Rescue' appeared in green next to his combat points.

"The point of being a hero is helping people, so what kinda school would we be if we didn't take that into account?" The screen switched to clips of Peter helping people take robots down and pulling them out of danger, ending in Peter holding the zero pointer back from crushing the crowd.

"Rescue points! cool, right? And you, Parker, did a lot of rescuing during the exam." The number 63 appeared under the rescue point counter. Peter felt his eyes start to water and his throat close up.

A ranking of the top 10 exam takers appeared on the screen suddenly.

1. Peter Parker: 114 points

2. Robbie Reyes: 96 points

3. Laura Kinney: 85 points

4. Wanda Maximoff: 83 points

5. Luke Cage: 77 points

6. Pietro Maximoff: 74 points

7. Clayton Cole: 72 points

8. Kamala Khan: 68 points

9. Katherine bishop: 63 points

10. Daniel Rand: 59 points

Peter felt tears run down his face as he fell back onto his bed in disbelief, his eyes focused on Tony who looked at him with a look of pride in his eyes and a smug smile on his face.

He extended a hand towards him and said "Welcome, kid! To your hero academy." And with that, the video turned to a black background with the word 'Congrats!' and confetti falling on the screen.

Peter closed his eyes and sobbed, a dumb smile stuck to his face. He thought back to Ben, and he imagined how proud he'd be if he was there with him.

Peter hadn't noticed May standing in the doorway of his room with tears in her eyes, she had seen the whole thing. she ran towards Peter and wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug that he could feel, spider strength and all.

They sat there, laughing and crying, rewatching the video at least 13 more times.

Peter wanted to tell his friends, but he decided to wait until they got their results to tell them, so he sat at the kitchen table waiting for May's very own wheat cakes, something he hadn't had in months.

Placing a hand on his shoulder, May looked at him with pride and asked "How are you doing, peter?" with a caring tone.

"I- I'm just happy, you know? I could have never thought that I'd be where I am now." Peter replied with a soft smile

"I'm proud of you, you know? I bet he is too."

"Yeah, I hope he is," Peter said as he wondered how Ben would feel about him going to M.A, he'd probably freak out.

Peter thought back to the past few months, all the scars, all the injuries, and tears he shed. And you know what?

He'd do it again if it meant he would still be here when he woke up tomorrow.

He'd do it 100 times over.

(Hey! its me again! i wanted to quickly apologize for taking a bit to transfer this chapter from wattpad onto here, I hope you guys didn't mind that! Anyways, this is the end of the entrance exam arc! which was chapters 0,1,2 and 3. next chapter will be the first day at M.A! it'll probably have the students moving in and getting to know each other, then it'll go to the first actual school day, which will be a test of sorts so everyone knows what each other is capable of. I hope you guys are looking forward to it! i already got an idea for the arc after that so I'm excited to get to it! See ya!)