Katya met Peter outside of his apartment just before dawn, as the bus was leaving early, and they'd made up her alibi together- or more, she informed him of the alibi she was making up for herself as she went along.
"I"ll say I"m going to visit my Aunt Elsa, she's in town for cherry blossom season, since Japan gifted DC all of those cherry blossoms ages ago, and we'll get to wherever the bus is going to park and split from there."
"Okay, and where will you go?"
Katya shrugged, "I don't know. I"ll just hang around. You're only there for a night, right?"
"Yeah, but we're not going to let you sleep on the streets, Katya."
She scrunched her nose at him, deciding not to quip back that she'd slept in much worse. "I won't be 'on the streets', I'll find something. Besides, we'll probably be busy anyway."
Peter nodded, face suddenly serious. "Right, the mission."
"Oh, and I got us these-" Katya dug into the pocket of her bomber jacket for a moment before pulling out two translucent ear pieces- one for each of them. "Comms."
"Whoa!" Peter grabbed one of them from her hand, inspecting it. "Did you make these?"
Katya snorted. Just because she lived with Tony Stark didn't mean she knew what even half the things in his lab did. "Hell no, I stole them. Tony has like a million, scattered all around the house. I did make sure they were disconnected first, though, so he can't tap in- if Ned brought his laptop we can connect them to your suit."
Peter was giving her a weird look again, almost like that night on the jungle gym but with his mouth slightly agape this time, so she swatted him again. "You're going to catch flies."
"What?"
"You know, in your mouth. If you leave it open." She knew that was a Russian saying, did it not translate to english? "Maybe I translated it wrong."
Peter chuckled. "No, it makes sense, just…never heard that one before."
As they rounded the corner of the block to where the school buses were, it was clear onboarding was already on the way. Each student was decked out in a bright yellow blazer, part of the yellow and blue Midtown Tech color scheme. They looked like walking bananas.
Flash spotted them first. "Hey, no way Penis Parker, you can't just desert us and be expected to be welcomed back with open arms- "
"Great to have you back, Peter!" Mr. Harrington said, his eyes glued to a clipboard. "Flash, you're back to first alternate."
Flash scowled at the pair of them and tore off his yellow blazer, throwing- or more, shoving- it in Peter's direction, who caught it easily.
Mr. Harrington turned to Katya, then glanced back down at the clipboard. "And what was your name again?"
Katya opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by another student- Michelle, she thought her name was, though she'd never actually spoken to her. "Excuse me, can we get going? I want to get some light protesting done in front of one of the embassies before dinner."
"And protesting is patriotic!" Mr. Harrington encouraged. "All right, let's get on the bus-" He waved the kids along as they started filing in. Katya slipped in line with the rest of them, though there were some mutterings, and at first she was worried that she'd stick out without a blazer of her own, but since Flash had had to give his up at least she wasn't the only one. Avoiding as much eye contact as she could, she beelined it to the back to sit behind Ned, in the very last row of occupiable seats. It was almost too easy.
She watched Peter get the brunt of it when he stepped on,right after Liz, who was speaking with him in hushed tones. Katya couldn't hear what they were saying, but saw the older girl glance in her direction once before sighing, which soon turned into a shrug and a nod. Peter grinned and thanked her, the tips of his ears pink. He took a seat towards the front.
As the bus pulled away from the school, Katya mildly noted that she'd never been on one before. It moved as slowly as it looked like it would, a whale amongst cars, even more so with the new york traffic. Once they'd managed to get out of the city and onto the highway that would presumably take them down the east coast, its top speeds still felt like a plodding giant.
Up front, Liz held a stack of flashcards that she was quizzing the team from, each member armed with their own little metal bells to ring in their answer. Katya knew the answer to some of them, but she was still catching up academically. After her first day it had become apparent just how much was not being taught at the Academy. Or at least, not directly- they were taught to calculate the arc of an arrow towards an upwards moving target, and the angle needed to shoot where it needed to go, but none of it was written on paper. She knew exactly which pressure points were where to disable an opponent, and which nerves severed where would cause which results. She knew how to angle herself to zip down and through a window below with enough force to break it, and how to position herself to use her opponent's weight against her. She quickly learned that those use properties of Math, Anatomy, and Physics, but she'd never been called as much. And she had absolutely no history knowledge other than Academy propaganda.
Peter was easily one of the best on the team, that much was obvious. For every question a student answered, he'd steal at least three, and it wasn't his spider reflexes hitting the bell that got him the points. Katya knew he was smart of course, she'd seen him in class and they spent enough time together it was impossible not to realize, but still. It was…interesting to watch him in this setting. An entirely non-superhero no-fighting no-planning or plotting setting- just an abnormally smart, if awkward, teenager.
A few more rounds of questions passed, and Katya was watching the landscape change around her- crazy how much it was changing in just the few short hours they'd been on the bus, especially the trees, which she loved- when Peter stood up, phone to his ear, and walked to the back of the bus towards her and Ned.
"-And I gotta say, Happy, you tracking me without my permission is kind of a violation of privacy." He said into the phone. Ned pointed to the holograph of their own tracker's location, that he'd been watching the entire time on his lap, but Peter waved him off "That's different- no, nothing" he said back into the phone, "It's just the academic decathlon, it's not big deal."
There was a pause.
"Yes, she's with me. She didn't tell you she'd joined the team?" Peter looked towards Katya and rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know. Bye Happy."
Katya raised an eyebrow, but Peter launched into an explanation without her having to ask. "He just saw that we left New York and wanted to know where we were going, so I told him the truth." He shrugged, before grinning smugly. "Just left out some parts."
Katya smiled, playing with her phone. She'd downloaded a chess app that she managed to finagle so that she was playing against herself, which had so far been a fun challenge. "You're looking good up there." She nodded towards the front of the bus.
Peter rubbed the back of his neck, and Katya wondered what he could be nervous about- lying to Happy maybe? Had he never done that before?
"Do you mind if I, er-"
She waved him off as her white bishop managed to check her black king. "No, no, you go."
After a pause where it looked like he was going to say something, he nodded, and headed back to his seat in the front.
– —
Once they'd arrived at the hotel, Katya took advantage of the commotion that most hotel parking lots seemed to have to slip away into the maze of parked cars. Hopefully Mr. Harrington wouldn't realize she was gone, or if he did, would assume she'd gone to wherever she was supposed to 'be' in the first place.
Which was technically true, of course, she found herself exactly where she was supposed to be about an hour later, though half of which had been spent wandering and reconning the grounds. This was a nice hotel; not Avengers Tower Tony Stark Stamp of Approval nice, but they had a cool back garden she got to hang around in for a while. All of the little leaves on the rows of tightly manicured flowerbeds and the larger fronds of the decorative ferns made her smile- She hadn't seen much plants in real life growing up- a lot of holographic images during the Foraging and Identification units, of course, but the first time she'd been let out alone- for the two hours she'd actually been on her mission- she was high in the mountains of Siberia, where there was nothing but blinding snow outside of the jet's windows, whenever you could see anything between the clouds. Just blank, cold, nothingness. Of course, she hadn't cared at the 'd still been under the Serum. She felt the fronds of one of the ferns, clearly in the eucalyptus family, as it almost felt rubbery. She pushed her nail in just a smidge, just enough to let the thick water in it weep out. "I"m sorry," she muttered to it, regretting her actions immediately.
She was just curious. And now she'd hurt it.
She wiped the dribble away like a tear before her cellphone buzzed in her pocket, notifying her she had a text message.
Room 402, it's me and Ned.
She sniffled a bit, realizing her eyes had gone hot, which didn't make any sense- almost like they'd been exposed to gas, water was starting to well at the edges. What the hell? She wiped it away with her forearm roughly before glancing up at the u-bend of hotel rooms that surrounded her. In front of her, straight through the rest of the garden, was a set of double sliding glass doors that lead to the interior of the first floor. Beyond them were elevators, and signs on each side.
Rooms 100-135 -
- Rooms 135-170
Okay, that was easy enough, she just had to take the elevator to-
She stopped short, nearly running into the glass of the double doors in front of her. Why hadn't they opened? Weren't these usually automatic?
On her left there was a black box with a slit on the bottom and three glowing yellow lights. Shit, she needed a key.
Katya pressed her face closer to the glass and looked down the hallways on each side as far as she could, but for all the chaos of the parking lot and lobby earlier this area of the hotel seemed weirdly empty. She could just wait for someone to come down the elevator and ask to be let in, claiming she forgot her key-
But that could take ages.
Screw it, she'd just go in the back way.
She glanced up, counting out the windows, until she identified what had to be 402, whose shades we drawn. No big deal-. She'd get up there, check, and if it was the wrong room, she wouldn't be too far off.
Katya made her way to the corner of the garden where a vertical gutter stood and started to climb, keeping herself pressed flat against the wall so the security camera mounted on it couldn't see. After that, four floors up, it was just a few balcony hops until she reached 402. Careful to stay on the outer edge (so nobody in the rooms in between would be able to see her if they'd looked outside, - if a classmate or Mr. Harrington saw her four stories up there'd be a lot more explaining to do than 'Aunt Elsa was late."- she finally made it to Ned and Peter's room, pulling herself over the railing and knocking on the window.
A hand pulled the shades back, soon followed by Peter's stunned face. Ned, on the bed behind him, looked equally as dumbfounded. She waved.
Peter slid the window open and ushered her inside before shutting the window and the curtains closed once more. "You couldn't just take the elevator?"
Katya shrugged, settling on the foot of the bed and trying to orient herself with what was going on. They'd plugged Peter's suit into Ned's laptop, which seemed to be screening it for something. "I couldn't go through the front, and I needed a room key to get in through the back. I wasn't just going to wait around to ask someone to let me in."
"So you scaled the whole building?!" Ned asked in amazement.
"No, Ned. You're only on the fourth floor. There's like ten."
"Still-" he cut himself off, shaking his head, impressed.
"What's going on here?" She pointed to the suit, tucking her feet under herself. Peter picked up the tweezers off the chest of the suit and stuck a pen light that had been right next to it into his mouth. He answered her, but it came out garbled.
"He's trying to remove the tracker from his suit, because he's lying to Iron Man now."
There was a garbled protestation from Peter's direction and Katya rolled her eyes, tugging the pen light from his mouth so he could speak but keeping it aimed at the area he was working on.
"Thanks. I said I'm not lying, I just don't need Mr. Stark to know exactly where I'm going tonight."
Katya nodded, though this had clearly been said more for Ned's benefit than hers. Keeping the pen light steady, she used her other hand to dig into her jacket pocket. She fished out the ear pieces she'd brought for her and Peter, holding them out to Ned, "Is there a way we could connect these to his suit, too?"
Ned leant forward a bit to take them from her palm, scooping them up as delicately as if they were baby birds. "I think, but what are these?"
"Comms." Katya and Peter said in unison. Peter was still focused on the suit, but she could see his ears go pink.
Ned nodded, " Sure, not a problem." He leant over to reach the bedside table, which was riddled with different cords and cables. He selected one, plugged the USB portion into the computer, and set the earpieces onto the flat, black disk on the other side. Though she was constantly surrounded by tech, especially in Avenger's tower, she still barely knew how to use her cellphone. The tech that she did know how to use, she had no access to- or didn't want to.
"Gotcha!" Peter declared victoriously, pulling out a small wire that ended in a coiled disk. "Okay Happy…"
As Katya watched Peter gently tug the metal piece from his suit, she couldn't help but become hyper aware of the scar on her upper thigh,where her own tracker had been, before the older Widows had told her to cut it out. It hadn't been as easy as disconnecting a few wires, but it had to be done. Even with Dreykov dead, it was better to be safe.
"...have fun tracking this lamp." he finished, nestling the hardware between the canvas and the lip of the lampshade.
"Comms connected," Ned announced, but his eyes were still glued to the computer. "There's a ton of other subsystems in here."
Katya splayed out from her place on the edge of the bed, since Peter didn't need the light anymore anyway, and scooted up until her head was level with Neds so she could see what he was talking about. The screen was riddled with code, only half of which she understood.
"But they're all disabled," Ned continued, "by something called the Training Wheels Protocol."
Katya snorted with laughter and sat up, just as Peter dove over to see what Ned was talking about. "Training wheels-?! Turn it off."
"I don't think that's a good idea, I mean, they're probably blocked for a reason."
Peter sighed in frustration. "C'mon man, I don't need training wheels-" he leapt onto the other bed and bounced once, angrily. "I'm sick of him treating me like a little kid all of the time."
"But you are a kid." Katya piped up, more to rile him up than be of any help.
"Yeah, a kid who can stop a bus with his bare hands! And you-" he spluttered, "You're one to talk."
Katya held her hands up defensively. "No, that is not the same-"
"Peter, I just don't think this is a good idea. I mean, what if it's illegal?" Ned complained. Katya resisted the urge to snicker- this was so far beyond the bounds of legality- it wasn't even in the same category.
"Don't worry Ned, it's not." She assured him, though it was probably a flat out lie. Peter leapt down from the bed.
"C'mon, man, this is my chance to prove myself." he glanced at Katya for a moment before turning back to Ned. "We can handle it Ned, c'mon."
"What does 'we' mean, anyway?" Ned adjusted himself on the bed so he was sitting up straighter. "I get that you're Spiderman, but what do you do?" Ned turned to Katya.
"I"m his combat trainer." She said simply, without missing a beat. "I go where he goes."
"So where's your suit?"
Katya shrugged. "I don't have one. I"m not a superhero. I just tag along to make sure he doesn't die." Ned was going to have to be satisfied with that answer, because she wasn't going to get into details now.
"See? I have help! C'mon….guy in the chair" Peter goaded. Ned scowled before pounding a couple of keys on the laptop.
Suddenly light flowed through the wiring of the suit, and the gears of it powering up were audible. "Yes!" Peter grinned. He unplugged the suit and began to suit up.
