"You're smart, you're thoughtful, and you're *sometimes* funny-"
Peter didn't know why, but he couldn't get her words out of his head. She'd said it so casually, almost as if she was reading a grocery list, but he didn't understand the fluttering in his stomach every time he thought back to them. HIs brain felt as tangled as these stupid wires that were securing the glowing core into place.
He'd managed to remove a few of the key pieces in that day's shop class- one of the few he didn't share with Katya- with help from tweezers and a hammer before he heard Ned's voice come up from behind him.
"Thanks for bailing on me."
Peter shoved a screwdriver under one of the metal plates the wires were connected to and wedged it off. "Yeah, well, something came up."
Ned looked down at what Peter was working on. "Whoa, what is that?"
In front of them lay the piece of the weapon he and Katya had found, splayed half-open with what parts he could get through, but the stupid core was a lot more secure than he was expecting it to be. He tried again with the screwdriver.
"I don't know, some guy tried to vaporize me with it."
Ned gasped. "Awesome!" Peter sent him A Look and Ned amended himself. "I mean, not awesome. Totally uncool that guy, so scary."
Peter managed to get another part of the plate pried away. "I think it's some sort of power source."
"Yeah, but it's connected to all these microprocessors," Ned pointed to a piece of the weapon, where three wires were fed into. "That's an inductive charging plate. It's what I use to charge my toothbrush."
Peter tried to wiggle the core out of its place, but it was still steadfast. This might be work for a hammer. "Whoever's making these weapons is obviously combining alien tech with ours."
"That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said. I just want to thank you for letting me be a part of your journey into this amazing-"
Yeah, screw it. It was hammer time.
Peter grabbed one off the nearest shelf and, judging the angle as best he could, thwacked it, sending the core shooting across the room and crashing into an empty workbench. A couple of somethings shattered. He froze.
"Keep your fingers clear of the blades!" The shop teacher warned, scribbling something else into his crossword puzzle. He didn't even look up.
Peter scrambled to grab it before any of the other students saw- though thankfully none of them seemed to care- and brought it back to his station. "We gotta figure out what this thing is and who makes it."
"We can bring it to the lab after class and run some tests," Ned suggested, which Peter silently confirmed with their special handshake. When he'd struck it with the hammer the rest of the weapon's body, the human tech, had cracked, but the glowing purple core had miraculously remained intact. What the hell was this made of?
—- —-
Thankfully shop class was the last one of the day, so as soon as it let out Peter beelined to Katya's locker to fill her in.
"And then I smacked it with a hammer and it came right out!" He told her excitedly, "Ned and I were going to go to the lab now to run some tests, try to figure out what it is."
Katya nodded along and closed her locker. "But you know we've got training today." She pursed her lips, almost as if she was chastising him. Peter's shoulder's fell.
"But we're so close to-"
Her facade broke into a smile and she smacked his arm. "I"m kidding, I know, this is more important," she laughed. "Let's go."
Peter laughed, relieved, along with her, and they fell into step on the way to the lab. He'd almost believed her for a second.
Ned met up with them at the end of the hallway and they waited a bit for the school to empty out as the hallways began to drain.
"First, I say we put the glowy thingy in the mass spectrometer-" Ned told them as they walked down the hall. In the distance, Peter heard band practice start up, which was perfect- anyone left on campus was already at their afterschool activities, leaving the hallway virtually empty.
"First, we need to come up with a better name than glowy-thingy." Peter corrected. Katya snickered.
"Lite Brite," she suggested, the smirk on her face betraying that she was only half-serious. After the old toy? Peter'd found one of them in a flea market once, but all it was was a circuit board and some lightbulbs- he didn't know how parents used to think that was okay for children to play with, but he'd ended up grabbing it and using it at Robotics Club.
The three of them turned the corner, where two men had just descended up the stairs. The two men from the bridge.
Katya seemed to notice too, as she glanced at him, cursing under her breath, and immediately darted into the side hallway. Peter followed, ushering Ned to do the same. "Come on come on come on come on-" he whispered loudly.
Ned hesitated awkwardly in the hallway for a moment before following them.
"This school's creeping me out." Peter could hear one of them saying down the hall, "It's got this funny smell, do you know what I mean?"
Peter peeked around the corner, holding Ned back. "Those are the guys who tried to kill us."
"What are they doing here?" Katya craned her neck around Ned to try to see, but it seemed to be a rhetorical question.
"What!?" Ned was incredulous, but at least he kept his voice low. "You gotta get out of here."
"No, no-" he met eyes with Katya, who nodded. "I gotta follow them. Maybe they can lead me to the guy who dropped me in the lake."
"Someone dropped you in a lake?"
"Yeah, it was not good." He could hear Katya snort, suggesting Not Good was an understatement.
Katya ditched her bag on the ground, moving around Ned so she could peek around the corner as well. They watched the two men take another flight of stairs down to the shop classroom.
"You stay here." Peter told Ned. "We'll be right back."
Silently, Peter and Katya made their way to the shop class, darting between the hallway's poles and into the crevices between classroom doors and the wall, on opposite sides of the hallway. Peter could hear the men in the shop classroom muttering to each other.
They began to creep down the stairs to the shop class, where the two men were waving some sort of what Peter could only guess was a reader over the area where the core had shot when he'd hammered it. He glanced over to Katya on the steps beside him, who was quietly pulling herself over the railing of the staircase before disappearing into the maze of support beams.
I'm just stating objective facts- No, Peter willed his brain to shut up, now was not the time.
He noiselessly ditched his backpack underneath the nearest desk and crept forward, darting under the nearest workbench and adhering himself to the underside of it.
"It's saying there was an energy pulse right here." One of the men, the one with the reader, told the other.
"Well whatever was here, now it's gone," said the other. The first man pocketed the reader.
"So are we."
It felt like ages for the men to walk back out of the classroom, as they were still scanning the area with their eyes before ascending back up the stairs. Taking aim, Peter managed to shoot one of his trackers- in the form of a tiny spider drone, something else he'd found Mr. Stark had put in his suit- onto one of the men's shoes as they left the classroom. Peter counted to ten as their footsteps faded away before he allowed himself a deep breath, and unstuck himself from the bottom of the workbench. He glanced around for Katya, who unfurled herself from her spot in the support beams, managing to drop down without a sound despite her boots.
"I got 'em" He beamed. She grinned back.
"I saw." They high fived then low fived- something Peter had shown her after their last training session- before ascending the stairs themselves.
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