Note: I...I clean forgot that the timeline was an absolute mess around the Civil War SNAFU before preparing this chapter. Needed to make a few changes to my plans, and then I discovered some other stuff and got lost in the wonderful world of research and real life, I work 10 hours a day for six days so that tired me out. That's my bad. Because of that, this may be the hardest chapter I've written for this project, but I think. One more reason to hate that nonsense, it would seem. On to business - here you go.

High school... was exactly what I'd expected it to be, and like nothing I'd done before.

MSST was easily, by a margin so wide it could be measured in parsecs, the best school I had ever attended. I loved my old high school, I did, but it really didn't hold a candle to how awesome - and loud - Midtown was. Everything was just so... new. Fancy. Better, even. I couldn't think of many secondary schools in Africa - except the elite-class ones possibly - that could even hold a candle to the place.

But yes, it was getting louder as time went on by and I decided not to take the earphones off entirely - at least, until classes began.

So, being a year back, Peter was a freshman. Not just, he was in the middle of it, just past the second half of the school year. I didn't have to do too much adapting since I had direct access to his memories and processing capabilities, but he had chosen quite a few interesting classes to go with. I honestly wished I had this much freedom when it came to classes in my old high school.

I was actually pretty early, just the way I liked it - it gave me time to assimilate the sensation of viewing everything Peter Parker had long been used to with entirely new eyes. Ned, I did not see - and he would probably arrive within the next twenty minutes. I submitted my homework where I had to (turned out I was only supposed to hand it in during class and not, ya know, before homeroom even started like in my old life - I made a note to watch out for those little details), waited for Ned, met up, and - of course - did the secret handshake.

"You good, dude?"

"All good for a Monday."

"I feel that. You're a little early today, actually."

"I know, right?" I shook my head. "I woke up super early for some weird reason and May didn't even have to wake me up. She hadn't even made breakfast yet."

(May actually wasn't a horrible cook when she was actually making something she knew. She just liked experimenting. Also had a fixation on trying to make the perfect date loaves and wheat cakes - and if Peter and MJ's commentary on May's wheat cakes was anything to go by, she'd probably get it right someday.)

"Were you getting ready for school or the airport?"

"I totally should've gone to the airport - at least they let you leave."

"...I don't think that's how airports really work, but okay."

Edward 'Ned' Leeds. Closer, really, to Ganke Lee than Ned Leeds (which raised awkward questions about the actual Ganke that would stay somewhere in my head until I met Miles - if he became Spider-Man), he nevertheless was Peter's best friend. They'd met up all the way back in late elementary and between their shared smarts, social awkwardness and love for Star Wars, just hit it off pretty quick. They'd done quite a lot together as kids between then and now; some of the memories of the chaos they could cause just made me laugh. He was the more adventurous and boisterous one between the both of us, and enjoyed hanging out at the arcade and sometimes causing trouble that we sometimes got away and sometimes didn't. Peter was ostensibly dragged along for the ride, but any observant person could tell he wasn't just that - he plotted with Ned too. But man, Ned did pull off some crazy crap sometimes. Sometimes, if he was really, really driven to do it, he could pull some pranks - and only three I had ever known of, before he'd even become a teenager. More than likely, he'd grown out of them. The last one he'd done was nothing special, but it was the mystery about it that just killed me.

I still had no earthly idea how Ned set up that one trap straight out of Home Alone that resulted in Mr. Duncan sustaining paint all over his suit, or even found his exact apartment to set up said trap, and he would not tell me - said it added to his mystique and would make him look even cooler (that, and he wanted plausible deniability, but being a preteen, he was more focused on the former, but smart enough to take advantage of the latter). To be fair, he was mean to Murph. Copped some annoyed yelling on Delmar's part, but Ned wasn't so nice about it. Apparently, he rigged a classic setup of an open bucket of paint over the door, but somehow made it so it could detect the man when he stepped in front of his apartment door and react accordingly. How Ned set that up in such a narrow hall where the bucket would have to be in plain sight was beyond me, but he was mum on it. "The only thing I regret," he'd told me, "is that I wasn't there and didn't have a camera on me at the time. I mean, I didn't have to be there, and it was probably for the better that I wasn't... but still."

Then, of course, we entered high school, met Flash Thompson, that bum, and things... changed. We went from being faces in the crowd to those nerdy underdogs (it wasn't 2018 yet, Fortnite hadn't been released, and we were literally inside the MCU, so nerds weren't considered the cool guys quite yet, but we were getting there). I wouldn't say Flash's disses were creative, but he knew how to get sheep crawling around with him - he reveled in being the center of attention like that - Ned and I, not so much, especially me. While Ned was still into living the life with his best friend, he was also invested in climbing up the social ladder and becoming one of the cool guys.

Once again, Flash Thompson, that bum. I'd sort him out.

Anyway, Ned would grow out of it.

"Oh! Did you see the Outer Rim trailer?" he asked.

"Outer Rim?" I echoed. "Like Star Wars Outer Rim? Is it a movie? I thought the next one was... what, Rogue something-something? Did they change the name?"

"No, no, it's actually a DLC for Battlefront."

Oh, crud. Battlefront. I hadn't actually played it - my potato did not meet the requirements at the time - but I remembered the sequel. Everyone did. Ned would be so disappointed for a while...

"Oh. I haven't, actually -"

"It's. So. Freaking. Cool!" he gushed as we went to our lockers. Yeah, those were a thing too. Super convenient. "You get to fight in Jabba's place in Tatooine and -"

"Ned," I interrupted, but he didn't appear to hear me.

"- those factories in Sullust too, oh! And there's this new -"

"Ned. Ned."

"- Extraction, I don't know what it is actually, but it sounds -"

He was on a roll. "Ned, c'mon."

"Oh! And then there's Gree -"

"Ned!" I hissed, shaking his shoulder for emphasis.

"Huh? What? What is -"

"Spoilers much?" I pointed out. "Because I haven't actually watched the trailer?"

"Wait, you haven't...?" The deal finally clicked into place, and he gasped. "Oh. Oh! Shoot, that's my bad!"

"Yeah, that's your bad." We finally reached our lockers; I took a second to dredge up Peter's combination, got it, and unlocked it. "Now I gotta check it out before you spoil even more stuff for me."

Ned sighed. "This is not gonna go away, huh?"

"Until I do the spoiling later, no."

"You suck."

"You can play as Greedo and... Numb something whatever!" a familiar voice said behind us - I whirled towards him, and go figure, it was Flash Thompson, walking away to his own locker. "They all have dumb names anyway!"

"Really?!" Ned yelled after him. "How do you even know that? Why do you even know that?"

"What's wrong?" Flash taunted. "Thought you losers were drooling for details?"

"That's not cool, man!"

"Ned." I pulled him back. "He's not worth it. Leave it."

"He spoiled you, dude. That's a thing you don't do. He spoiled you." Ned paused and gave me some closer scrutiny. "How come I'm more upset about this than you are?"

"I figured out something that might pretty cool, actually." I told him. "You ready?"

"Uh-huh."

"If you ignore him, he'll go away."

"Uh, I don't know if you remember, but I'm reasonably sure we've tried that before. Like, at least 80%. 95, tops."

"If we ignore him, sure, he'll just throw everything at the wall to get us to look at him," I acquiesced. "But I'm also reasonably certain he doesn't have an infinite amount of crap to throw at the wall. We can wait him out, waste his time, or even just pretend he's not there. He's not dumb enough to stick around forever, especially when..." I jerked my head towards the left, where Principal Morita was walking through the halls - he did that every morning, sometimes specifically to mess with us. Like the sophomore over there with pictures of a cheerleader in his locker.

Ned and I took a moment to wince in sympathy when the poor guy jumped at the sight of the Principal right behind him, like he was less human and more Xenomorph.

"Point," Ned admitted. "But then he gets physical."

I smirked, remembering what he tended to do when he got physical. "I'll take care of that."

"You sure, dude?"

"Sure I'm sure." I took my - his - phone out, looking at the time. "C'mon. Homeroom's about to start."

Getting back into the school grind was pretty neat, actually, if at least for one reason:

It kept me busy.

Sure, I had to work on the finer details, right? Just because I had a good outline of two plans didn't mean jack. I needed to delve into the net, see what the public knew about the Avengers in general and specifically, so I could fine-tune my plans and accommodate for that knowledge to avoid awkward questions about how I knew everything. I wasn't entirely sure if I could slyly convince them I was a secret eldritch being the way Mike Allen did - that man was smoother and more badass than I would ever be. Plus, given his experience as a security guard, he'd definitely been on the end of some hard talks with people that simply couldn't take the hint, so through that, he'd learned to forcefully get someone's attention and keep it.

I, on the other hand, ascribed to no such experience.

I had... challenges with being rude. It just wasn't the way I was raised, besides which seeing people lose their shit and proceed to cause problems for themselves, whether on animated movies or the God of War trilogy, it all taught me a valuable lesson about controlling my temper. Sure, there were times they tried flaring out in my high school days - and I couldn't be blamed for that, I was a teenager - but I'd learned a lot about life by watching other people go through it.

Suppressing my negative side like that came with unexpected side effects, though, and I hated those. So, in a way, swearing the way I did was a safe outlet for me.

So, worldbuilding time. Ready?

The public knew a bit more about the Avengers than I'd expected, but also a bit less than I'd hoped. First popped out as a team in that New York mess, and again during Ultron Week, and whatever appearances they'd made since or before then were limited in terms of scope, compared to their hit appearances. They'd done a few behind-closed-doors ops against HYDRA since the fall of SHIELD, and they'd fallen off the radar after Ultron Week. Now, a massive problem I immediately noticed was the complete lack of presence on social media they had. No PR team, no Twitter or Insta page to interact with the people. Literally the only person that did press releases in the team was Tony Stark - Cap's ridiculous PSA videos and Nat telling off the government back in '14 aside. I wasn't expecting them to be like The Seven or the Protectorate/PRT, but there should've been something to bridge the gap between the Avengers and the public. It was bad. This meant it'd be easy for any enemy forces - HYDRA, obviously - to adjust public opinion to a more negative outlook on the Avengers.

Whatever was left of HYDRA was working pretty fast, even. Peter didn't have any social media accounts, so I had to set those up to get an ear to the ground. It was just as bad as I feared, and Lagos hadn't even happened yet.

If it was possible to fix this, I would do what I had to. I had to try.

Great power, I told myself, great responsibility.

I was worried that going on more detailed searches could possibly get eyes on me, so I refrained from doing anything dumb, like looking up specific names. I did, however, rely on going on Wikipedia tangents to build a bigger web of intel, the biggest I reasonably could in school. I'd have to do more once I was out, but for now, it'd have to do. The challenge, though, was...

"I love the confidence, but that's actually the Third Law, Kyle. Are you still with us, Mr. Parker?" Ms. Warren called, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Uh, yes ma'am."

She raised her eyebrows expectantly, clearly waiting on an answer. I risked a glance at the board. Oh, Newton's Second Law?

"Oh, the magnitude of force acting on an object is equal to its mass and the acceleration with which it moves, ma'am," I said.

"At least you did the reading. Very good, Mr. Parker." Ms. Warren turned to the keyboard, proceeding to jot down the formula, F = ma. "As you can see..."

... Right. That.

The classes weren't as difficult as I feared they'd be, but that didn't mean they weren't demanding. Good grief, it was like having a girlfriend or boyfriend that you thought was totally hot and things seemed to be going smoothly until you discovered they were actually clingy yanderes that could and would quite literally lock your sphincter somehow until you had their green light to go take a two and if you broke things they would go full Yuno Gasai on every perceived challenger, and of course that incredibly specific in no way meant I was speaking from any accrued personal experience because I, even with a wingman throwing all kinds of girls at me, had absolutely no game whatsoever.

And given this was a straight-up STEM school, that made things a bit more involved than they otherwise would be. I was finding things surprisingly less difficult than I expected - most likely Peter's mind at work - but that didn't make for less work, to be honest. Finding the balance between this and being Spider-Man was going to take some work.

How did other teenage superheroes do this stuff, man?

(Also, imperial units, man. If I remembered correctly - and yes, a quick Google did confirm this - literally only three countries in the world used those, one of which was America. How come they hadn't gotten the memo that literally everyone else was doing things differently? I had no idea. But it was going to be a stumbling block in my classes until I got used to it. What a pain.)

School was out at 2:45, which was weird, and a lot earlier than I'd subconsciously anticipated. I felt weirdly guilty just walking out the gates - and of course it was only then that I promptly remembered that I had Decathlon practice, so from there, if one would be so kind, Midtown was once again treated to the luxurious sight of a panicked Peter Parker fighting a crowd to once again retreat to her bosom we colloquially referred to as the hallway. Mr. Dell, at the least, was not entertained, since the fool driving Peter Parker's body nearly caused a spillage of that warm, energy-giving black beverage.

"If you could just not with running in the school halls," he yodeled after me, "that would be greatly appreciated!"

"Sorry, Mr. Dell!" I yelled back.

Luckily for me, Abe was late too.

"You too?" he grinned. I could only shrug helplessly in response.

"Got lost on the road of life."

"The road of life isn't on Google Maps yet?"

"I did complain to Google, but they had nothing."

"Do you even know where that is, man?"

"... That's kinda why I got lost, Abe."

"Point."

Now, I wasn't in the main team just yet - at the current time, I was sixth alternate and that would obviously change within the next few months - but these meetings were important for getting us newbies acquainted with the grind so we could start killing it on the team when the cycle started all over again. The main team was about to start furious practice for regional competition under Captain Josh Mitchell's direction on the other side of the hall, while Liz would take care of the newcomers as part of her training towards taking over from Josh eventually. As far as I could remember, literally no one in her year had argued this.

Mr. Harrington was pretty hands-off with this kind of stuff a lot of the time.

Of course, there was one itty-bitty thing with Decath.

"Oh, look who's finally graced us with his presence," Flash called out. Most of everyone else was already seated, and most of everyone I remembered from Homecoming was there - Charles, Abe, Cindy, Sally, Ned, and MJ; I noticed two other guys I'd never seen before - Carla Randall and James Sumter, fellow Freshmen Peter's memories told me - did they quit later on or something? The desks were arranged in a semicircle around Liz, who herself was leaning on her own desk with some books and flash cards on them. The last pair of seats were situated on Liz's extreme left. By that arrangement, Thompson would be sitting opposite me, I noticed - and I was not sure whether to be thankful or annoyed about that. At least Liz broke line of sight - and that was a very good break indeed. I gave Ned a friendly nod, and he thumbed me right back.

"Sorry we're late, everyone," I apologized. "There was something I had to attend to outside for a couple of minutes."

"I had to make a quick trip to the nurse's office," Abe explained. "Got a headache, but I'll manage."

"Yeah, sure. Can you believe this guy?" Flash rolled his eyes. "And I'm -"

"It's okay, we hadn't started yet actually," Liz assured. "So you're still on time, Peter."

"Great!" I smiled. Not gonna lie, unpopular opinion incoming - I liked this Liz a lot better than her comic version. "So, uh, wha-where do we start this time?"

"Let's do Bio for now," she said, reaching for her. "I'd like us to cover cell division, then we'll move on to..."

I decided to go home first.

If there was one thing I failed to understand about this Peter, it was his impatience to get webbing so fast that he went through five backpacks in an insanely small amount of time. Like, why put the stress on May like that? All he had to do was go home, grab a paper bag or some shit, stuff his costume in, get changed somewhere private, and get moving. Why all the bullshit?

I wanted to stick around and build on more of the aforementioned web of research, but I decided that I needed to get used to the basics sooner rather than later. So, first things first, I made a stop at Delmar's - the owner in question wasn't there at the moment, something about his niece, so it was just Sergio and Kay - for two orders of my number five, a Dagwood - delivery for a friend, I told them - and two Mountain Dews, because why not? New life, new experiments. Plus it helped cover up the costume. I found a perfect building - an apartment well away from Forest Hills that led on to some more buildings tall enough to build on initial momentum - and took an elevator to the seventh floor, two below the roof, to avoid any possible awkward questions from the three other male occupants in the lift - elevator, I reminded myself firmly, use American terminology, you goof. I was looking up some stuff on Tony Stark's Badassium - had been since I'd gotten into the building - when I got accosted by one of the guys in the lift wondering who the hell I was there to see, though - because of course I did.

"I don't know you," one of them said. He was a tall, lanky bastard, close-cropped hair, blue-eyed, annoyingly smug, punchable face.

"Be weird if we knew each other, I think," I replied, lifting the paper bag. "Just making a delivery."

"Who's eatin'?" He tried looking in my bag, so I shifted it away. "Wait, I know that smell. That's the number five. Delmar's?"

"You know the place?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," one of the other guys spoke up, big, didn't look keen for a lot of words. I didn't recognize him.

"We go there all the time," the third supplied, turning back over to me - and my blood froze in my veins.

Oh, fuck. Are you kidding me?!

Michael Mando's face grinned back at me - no scar on the face though - and the box started feeling a whole lot smaller. Only two ways out, one easy, three guys, and they went to the same fucking eatery, and they knew my face, which could mean they'd know my name, which meant a whole fucking lot of trouble. How did I not fucking see him?! "Some good shit they have over there. Me, I'm more of a sub guy, y'know?"

"I-I'm partial to a number five," I said, doing my best to keep a poker face, "but the sub's good too. Just a little pricey."

"Makes sense," he nodded. "Still in high school, right? Running some errands for Delmar?"

"Nah, this was just a favour for a friend."

"How's he doing?"

"My friend...?"

"Nah, Delmar."

"Oh." I cleared my throat - stop it, you idiot, you're giving the game away! "Last I checked, he's alright, but he wasn't in today. Sergio said he had to go see his niece."

He nodded along - and I felt my guts churning. I really was hoping there wasn't something I fucked up already. Fuck.

"Yeah, they told me the same thing. Cool." He nodded again, and the guy with the punchable face tapped me on the shoulder, giving me a friendly nod. I'd have startled if I hadn't felt this weird, teensy buzzing sensation before he touched me. "What's your name?"

Oh, dear. I could give him a fake name, but if for some reason he decided to check back with Sergio...shiiiiit. I was starting to wish I hadn't been on the phone at all. Dammit, dude. The one time you should've paid attention, and of course you get in trouble.

"Peter," I blurted out, and forced myself to not say another word. Peter was a common name. He did not need to know my full name.

"Name's Mac," he introduced himself. "Tobey over there, and the big guy's Alex. Nice meeting you, kid."

"Yeah, sure." I gave them a friendly nod. I was about to say more, but I felt the elevator jerk to a stop. Looking up, I noticed it was the fifth floor.

"This is our stop," he announced, and reached into his pocket. I tensed, but a glance revealed there was no way he could hide a gun on there - but he could hide an Okapi...

He... extracted a twenty-dollar note and forked it over to me while his guys were leaving. "Try out that sub, huh? Worth it, believe me."

"I can't take this," I said.

"Nah, relax - there's plenty more where this came from," he assured. "Just for the sub. Try it out. That's more support for Del anyway, right?"

I took the twenty. I had no idea why he'd decided to give me the money. "Thanks," I said. "I'll pay you back if I see you around, though."

"Anytime, kid." With one last nod, he walked off, and the elevator closed. I looked at the doors, as if I could see past them. Then I looked at the twenty dollars. It looked real, clearly had changed plenty of hands, and I couldn't pick up any lingering alarming smells. It was clean as it would probably get, coming from Mac fucking Gargan.

Seriously, what was that?

"... Did that just happen?" I muttered. "Okay. Nothing alarming, just that I just nearly had a heart attack and died because it turns out -" I stopped talking, remembering there were probably cameras in here. "I forgot the last Mountain Dew. I'm dead. Welp."

I took a deep breath. "Right. I need to get the fu -"

My phone buzzed, interrupting me. I'd gotten a notification.

I poked around. News?

My eyes widened. If my blood had been frozen before, I probably had to be a Jotunn, because otherwise it was a miracle that I was even alive right now.

"Huh? What? Why? Why?!"

Lagos. Brock Rumlow just blew up Lagos. Except he was too dead to take any blame, so the Avengers were about to go through some bullshit.

This was literally just a day after my ass got reincarnated.

This was way too early!

This was... why?!

I fell back against the elevator, even as it jerked to a stop on my chosen floor. Are you fucking kidding me?! What even is today?!

The next chapter won't be as long to come as this one. I just had to reconfigure a few things once I re-realized the timeline around Civil War was pretty iffy. That, and work. I don't take my laptop to work, so I didn't have any time to write, if at all.

Hope you enjoyed, and do leave a review if you can - feedback is always appreciated.