A/N: IM BACK! It's been a fat minute, so here's a relatively decent chapter I'm kind of alright with.
Chapter song: Zero by Imagine Dragons (note: I haven't actually seen Wreck It Ralph 2, I just like this song... and ID in general)
Headcanon of the chapter: Jack and Wanda got into a truth or dare competition during their time at the Avengers Compound. It eventually got so heated, Fury threatened to get involved when the sky started to change colors and worldwide blackouts began to occur, forming obscure shapes with lights on satellite imagery. This incident was dubbed by the rest of the Compound as 'The Light Penis Electric-Witch Incident'.
—
After the near-death experience last night, Danielle had to take over ten ibuprofen pills alone that night and then into the morning just to get her piercing headache manageable. She figured that if last night had any indication of how difficult it would be taking down the rest of the weapons dealers, she was really going to have to buy another bottle from the drug store.
By morning, Danielle had woken up with only a partial headache, but no more pills. The brunette groaned as she was forced to rush getting ready that day; throwing on some black jeans (a rare occassion for her), an oversized white and black 'the 1975' tee with matching Converse shoes. And to top it off, she had five minutes to throw her barely-tamed hair into a messy bun atop her head.
She quickly grabbed her Penthouse keys, her phone with the Bluetooth headphones pulled around her neck, her two suit components as a just in case, and wallet before sauntering out of the door...
...
Only to return five minutes later to grab her discarded backpack she'd left on the kitchen floor that night.
Danielle's morning was starting to look up as she skipped through the crowds lining the subway entrances, her upbeat and mellow music acting as a soundtrack to her life as she took the train all the way to Queens, almost three blocks from school. After exiting the subway lines, the teenager dashed through crosswalks until she made it to the drug store just across the intersection from Delmar's, the restaurant still under construction after what happened with Peter and the ATM robbers.
The brunette stopped momentarily before entering the drug store, taking a long look at Delmar's charred remains. A part of her felt pity for Mr. Delmar, the nice man with his cat who always gave her a comforting smile and friendly greeting each time her and Peter went in to grab a sandwich or study. She wondered if she should've gone over and offered him maybe some money to help rebuild or her condolences for his store, but, unfortunately, time wasn't on Danielle's side and she was already pushing its limits.
The teen quickly walked into the drug store, grabbed the large pill bottle of ibuprofen frm the back and made her way up front to pay. As she stood in line, her stomach began to growl and she realized she had forgotten to grab a bite to eat in the Penthouse kitchen due to her rush to grab the pills. So, she decidedly just picked up a blueberry muffin from a nearby shelf along with a bottle of lemonade from the freezer. After buying her items, Danielle checked the time only to find she had mere minutes to run the three blocks it took to get to school.
The moment the cashier at the drug store put her things in the plastic bag, Danielle dashed out the front door, the jingling sound of the bell echoing behind her as she shoved the bag of crap into her backpack and ran along the sidewalks trying to get to school.
Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap!
Danielle's small legs were dashing faster and faster until finally she made it to the football field. She made it across the football field in record time just as the warning bell went off from inside the school. The brunette teen didn't pay any mind to the honking cars she cut off as she ran across the street, up the front steps of the school, and through the entrance. Her Converse skid to a halt as she slid into the hallways. They were almost all empty.
Danielle checked the large clock on the wall. One minute. Crap!
Danielle broke into a full sprint down the halls.
Finally, the last bell rang in her ears just as she skidded to a halt inside her first period class of Geometry with Ms. Warren, Ned, Michelle, Abe, Charles, and Cindy.
"So nice of you to join us, Miss West," Ms. Warren's voice had Danielle's head snapping up to attention to the teacher standing in the far corner of the class by her desk, all the other student seated at their tables to the right of Danielle. All eyes were on her and she could feel her already flushed face grow even more red from embarrassment. "Take a seat," Ms. Warren instructed the girl. Danielle happily obliged.
The girl awkwardly stepped down the aisle towards her usual seat in the back corner where Michelle, Ned, Abe, Cindy, and Charles say near the window. Cindy and Charles seated at one table, across from them was Ned and Abe, and in front of them was Michelle next to an empty seat Danielle was quick to occupy. She could still feel eyes on her as Ms. Warren began her introduction lesson. She nervously brushed a piece of her hair that had fallen out of her bun behind her ear, quickly turning her attention to grabbing her notebook from her backpack while pretending not to hear the giggles and whispers about her. If there was one thing Danielle hated about high school, it was how easy it was to be embarrassed and not have anyone forget about it.
Midway through Ms. Warren's lesson, the chatter about Danielle's awkward entrance had died down and Michelle was quick to ask her about it once their teacher's back was turned to them. She was writing down an equation about Sine and Cosine on the board when Michelle turned to Danielle. "Why were you late this morning?" She whispered bluntly to her, Danielle's eyes not leaving her notes in front of her.
"Uh," Danielle tried to multi-task with talking to Michelle while also taking notes. "I got held up at the store. I bought myself a muffin."
Michelle glanced up at Danielle frm behind the comfort of one of her many books. "Don't you take the subway to school?"
"I got off early," she replied lamely.
There was a beat of silence before Michelle spoke again. "Hope your muffin was worth it," she eventually muttered. "You looked like you could've used it last night," she continued. Hernstatment, catching Danielle's attention then.
Danielle turned to glance at Michelle, her eyes wide with alarm. Did she know what happened last night at Liz's party? Did she know about Eris and Spider-Man?
"I saw you when you left. You looked like shit," Michelle explained nonchalantly, picking up on the way Danielle looked visibly relaxed after she had.
"Right. I, uh, probably shouldn't have played those two rounds of Flip Cup," Danielle mumbled as she went back to taking notes. She could practically feel Michelle's eyes burning into the back of her neck. Why did Michelle have to be so good at catching onto her sketchy behavior? Why couldn't she just pass it off like everyone did? Then Danielle remembered who she was dealing with: Michelle Jones, the most paranoid and suspicious person ever.
Luckily for Danielle, Geometry went by in a flash (mostly because she had slept through half of it) and she was able to get to the next class without feeling Michelle's burning gaze on the back of her neck Everytime she put her head down, or yawned, or stretched, or took a bite of her really good muffin Ned and Cindy kept trying to steal from her and the lemonade she halfed with Liz during English a few class periods later.
The day was going by slowly, with little to no major incidents aside from the one last night, and it wasn't until the brunette had gotten a notification on her phone from Peter did she realize she hadn't seen him at all since their kind-of argument at the party. Danielle had to sneak a glance down at her cell to avoid getting caught by the teacher at the front of the class.
From: Peter Parker Picked A Patch of Pickled Peppers
To: Bend and Snap!
911 – Wood shop, ASAP!
Whatever excess exhaustion and sleepiness Danielle still had abruptly left her body fter receiving his ominous and worrisome message without any context whatsoever. She sat up straight in her chair, her hand shooting up into the air.
"Yes, Miss West?"
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
—
It took Danielle a few minutes to find exactly where the wood shop class was, considering she'd never actually taken the class before nor did she have any friends– aside from Peter and Ned– that did either. But, nonetheless, the teen was able to navigate fairly well with help from one of the hall monitors she knew. She had managed to slip it past him that she was on her way to return something from the front office, and since she had such a trustworthy way about her, the hall monitor let her slide.
When she eventually arrived at the wood shop class just down the hall from the art rooms, she took a quick peek into the class window on the door. Inside, past all the students and tools, she saw a man (whom she assumed as the teacher) sitting at his desk, his feet propped up with thin-rimmed glasses on the edge of his nose as he read the book he had in his lap. He was so preoccupied, the teacher hadn't noticed the petite brunette in the navy blue hoodie slip through the door and hastily walk to the back of the classroom where Peter Parker and Ned Leeds were trying to pry open some kind of glowing piece of a dismantled weapon.
Both boys had their back turned to Danielle when she approached. Which made their reaction of jumping at the sound of her voice when she said, "Hey," a lot more understandable.
"Elle," Peter gasped slightly at her sudden interjection. "Hey."
Ned merely smiled and waved. "Hi, Danielle," he greeted.
She smiled back at him before turning to Peter again. "You texted me '911'. What happened?"
"Oh, right." The teen boy then moved out of the way for Danielle to see what he was working on prior to her entrance, and she quickly understood why he had called her down to the class. Sitting on the table top was the glowing core of the broken weapon they had picked up last night. The same weapon that had nearly killed both of them. "I think it's a power source. Ya know, for their weapons," he explained, bending over to try and take off pieces of scrap around it with the hammer in his hand.
"How are they transferring power from this..." she gestured vaguely to the purple glowing core. "What is that? Why does it look familiar?"
"It's from the aliens that attacked New York a few years ago," Peter explained.
"Yeah, but it's connected to all these microprocessors," Ned interjected. Danielle and Peter turned to their friend, silently inquiring about what else he knew. "That's an inductive charging plate," he explained, gesturing to the wiring connected to the glowing core. "That's what I use to charge my toothbrush."
"Whoever's making these weapons is obviously combining alien tech with ours," Peter concluded from his best friend's evidence.
Danielle pressed her weight against the table as she cautiously looked down at the weapon piece. "Then how are they getting it? Where do bank robbers and weapons dealers get alien technology?"
"Guess we have to find out, huh?" Peter asked her, Danielle turning her head to the right of her to meet his eyes in a silent agreement. Like she had told herself the night before, Peter wasn't going to back down from these weapons dealers, and she wasn't going to let him go at them alone.
"This is literally the coolest conversation anyone has ever had," Ned interrupted their small moment with his comment, his voice filled with awe as he stared down at the weapon piece with child-like wonder. Danielle turned to him, her back to Peter as he picked up the hammer had had been using nearby. "I just want to thank you for letting me be apart of your journey into this amazing-"
"Woah, woah, woah!" Danielle whisper-shouted at Peter when she glanced over her shoulder only to find him with the hammer raised over his head, ready to bring it down against the glowing core. "Wait!" She protested, trying to grab at his arms just as he brought the hammer down. The good news was that it hadn't hit the core due to Danielle pushing Peter slightly. The bad news was that it had hit the wooden table creating a loud noise that echoed across the classroom.
Peter, Danielle, and Ned all cringed as they slowly turned to see if the teacher had heard. Luckily, he still had his nose in a book and didn't even spare them a glance as he called out, "Keep your fingers clear of the blades." Man, he really didn't care about his job at all.
Peter turned to Danielle after they were out of the clear with Mr. Hapgood. "What was that for?"
"We don't know if the core is explosive," She promptly defended herself. "We could burn the entire building if we're not careful."
She watched as his shoulders fell and his eyes drifted down to the hammer in his hands, considering her argument. "Well, what do we do then? We can't keep carrying around a whole piece to a weapon."
An idea then popped into the brunette's head. It was a crazy idea, and a bad idea that would wind up giving her yet another headache. But her irrational side internally reminded her that she had just bought a new bottle of ibuprofen so it was worth the risk.
Danielle pursed her lips as she turned back to the glowing core. Her eyes darted around the classroom, checking to make sure no one was looking as her hand slowly rose t rest a few inches above the glowing core. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She felt the small pinpricks of her invisible force wrap itself around the small glowing piece beneath her palm. Once it was completely engulfed in her power, she slowly began pulling it out of all the excess machinery until it was all the way into the open, levitating in her hand.
Once it was removed, she carefully and gently set it down on the table top without even touching it.
"You make it look so easy," Peter muttered beneath his breath.
Danielle chuckled at his response. But she hadn't really remembered there was another person with them that wasn't completely aware of who she really was... Until the sound of a loud choking noise had her and Peter turning back to look at Ned. "Um..."
His eyes were wide and practically bulging out of his head as he stared at her in shock and awe. His mouth was dangling open and he looked like his dark skin was slowly turning pale.
"Ned?" Peter called to his friend, but there was no response. "Ned?"
Finally, he began to move his mouth as his hand moved to point a shaky finger at Danielle. "You... You-"
The brunette quickly threw her two hands over his mouth, sensing he was about to either explode, scream, or panic. "Please don't freak out," she pleaded with him in a single rushed breath.
Ned, who still looked at her with wide eyes, merely nodded. Hesitantly, Danielle removed her hands away from his mouth. "You... You're actually... You're really-"
"A superhuman? Yes," Danielle answered him.
"Are you... Are you an Avenger?" When she nodded, his face lit up with total excitement. "Wait, wait, wait, are you... Are you Eris?"
"Ssh," both Peter and Danielle hissed in unison, throwing glances over their shoulder to try and make sure no one heard him. Luckily, no one seemed to.
"Holy... Holy crap," Ned muttered, still looking slightly pale and extremely starstruck. "She's... She's actually-"
"Ned," Peter quickly cut into his best friend's freak out in the middle of the wood shop classroom, hoping that no one was actually paying attention to anything he was saying. "I– we will explain everything later."
Danielle quickly joined in, "But first, we need to figure out what this thing is." She gestured to the glowing core on the table, as well as the scrap of weapon beside it.
"And who makes it," Peter added as an afterthought.
"And if it's actually explosive," Danielle muttered.
Peter turned to the brunette and nodded in agreement. "Yeah. That's probably a good idea."
Ned, who had calmed down some during their workshop talk, nodded frantically. "We can go to the lab after class and run some tests," he suggested. He might've been the only normal person in this little group of misfits, but, hey, they were both his friends, and he was way more helpful in the lab behind a lens or computer screen than he was freaking out at the fact that he not only knew one superhero, but TWO.
Danielle turned to Ned, a small smirk on her lips as she stated, "That's a great idea."
Peter looked between both his friends and nodded. A feeling blooming within his chest that felt like both pride and excitement that his plan was coming together. He had his two closest friends working with him, and he didn't care what Mr. Stark, Happy, or anyone for that matter said; Peter was going to catch these weapons dealers– him and Elle– and prove that they weren't just some bored and immature kids. They were ready for the big leagues, especially him.
"Let's do it," Peter said, determined with a nod. The teen then turned to Ned, holding out his hand as they performed their mariculture and odd handshake. While doing so, Danielle watched them with mild amusement. She'd seen them do it countless times before in the halls, at lunch, a fee times when they came to her soccer games, even at Decathlon competitions and meetings. But, it still ceased to not make her laugh every time she saw it.
After the pair of teenagers finished their handshake, Danielle piped up, "So... do you think the teacher would notice if we snuck out to the lab?"
Peter, Ned, and Danielle's eyes all traveled behind them to Mr. Hapgood still seated at his desk, feet propped up and book still in his lap, only this time it looked like his eyes might've been slightly closed and his mouth a little parted. Danielle tilted her head curiously. Was he... sleeping?
Peter and Ned glanced at one another, then back at Danielle as they replied, "Nope," in unison.
—
It was entirely too easy to sneak out of the wood shop class. And even easier to get to the chemistry lab after the bell rang, dismissing the entire West side of campus to lunch.
The trio of high-schoolers had to try and blend in in the empty hallways as they made their way to the lab. But, it was slightly difficult when Ned and Peter were speaking so loudly.
"First, I say we put the glowy thingy in the mass spectrometer," Ned remarked as he walked in between both Danielle and Peter.
"First, you gotta come up with a better name than 'glowy thingy'," Peter replied.
Ned nodded in agreement. "You're right-"
"Do you think we could walk a bit faster and talk a bit quieter?" Danielle interjected with a polite whisper, her eyes darting in every direction each time they turned the corner to a new hall, afraid someone would catch them. She kind of hated getting in trouble at school. Sue her, she had a reputation to uphold after all her abrupt disappearances last year.
"Come on, Danielle," Ned said with a smile as he jokingly nudged her arm. "It's lunch right now. No one's even in this wing-"
It was as if the universe hated her and Peter, because as soon as Ned had uttered those words, two very suspicious looking men came walking around the corner at the end of the hallway. It took Danielle only a moment before she began to feel familiarity towards one of the men, the darker bald one holding an odd looking device in his hand. But it took Peter even less time to process just where he recognized the man from.
"Crap," he hissed. Danielle opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong when she was abruptly pushed behind the hallway pillar to her right by Peter who had moved in the blink of an eye.
When Danielle's head and back hit the hard wall of the hall, she winced slightly. "Ow..." she muttered beneath her breath as she ran a hand on the back of her skull.
"Sorry," the enhanced teenager beside her whispered before both him and Danielle turned to glance back at Ned who was still standing frozen and confused in the middle of the hallway. "Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on..." Peter hissed at his friend as he gestured for him to move towards where him and Danielle were standing. Ned, still confused, listened and found himself standing awkwardly to the side of the pair as they slowly leaned around the corner of the wall to catch a glimpse of the two men at the end of the hall.
"High schools creep me out. They got this funny smell, you know what I mean?" the shorter one with long hair and a baseball cap remarked as they strided down the hall. The darker man was busy studying whatever was on the device he was holding as they sauntered through the halls with purpose. They were here for something. But what?
Simultaneously, all three teens hid back behind the wall again. "Do one of those guys look familiar to you?" Danielle whispered to Peter and Ned.
While Ned shook his head, Peter replied, "Yeah. That's one of the guys that tried to kill us last night."
Danielle gave him a knowing and worried look while Ned glanced between the two with saucer-wide eyes. "What?"
Peter and Danielle both winced at the memory as they answered in unison, "Yeah..."
"We gotta get out of here," Ned urged while trying to grab his friends' attentions that were occupied elsewhere around the corner at the two men wandering the hallways still.
Danielle watched as they looked down at the device in their hand and turned in the direction of the wood shop class. Oh, crap. If they were tracking something, what other thing could they be looking for but them? "Ned's right," Danielle said in a rushed breath of words. "We have to go."
Peter was quick to swing back around to face her. "But if we follow them, they can lead us back to the guy who dropped us in the lake," he reasoned. When Danielle returned his pleading gaze with a knowing look of protest, he tilted his head and mouthed the words 'come on'.
"But they're here tracking something, Peter. What else could they be tracking but us?"
Peter threw his hands up to gesture towards his backpack on his back. "The glowy thing."
Danielle bit back the need to scream to stop calling it a 'glowy thing'. "And what if they catch us? We'll be exposed and they can find out who we are."
"We won't get caught!" Danielle clamped her mouth shut as her and Peter entered a tense staring contest. "Come on, Elle. Please."
While Danielle was calculating the risk of going after the two men who could possibly be tracking them in her head, she was interrupted when Ned interjected. "Someone dropped you in a lake?"
"Yeah. It was not good," Peter replied. Danielle had to fight the urge to roll her eyes and reply, 'understatement of the century'. Peter continuously looked between her and around the corner where the men still were. Until finally, he took a deep breath and glanced down at her. "Come on, Elle. I need you on this."
Danielle glanced down at her feet. She didn't have time to think this through rationally like Steve, Wanda, Jack, and almost everyone in her life had always urged her to do. But, then again, when did she ever really listen to them? "Fine," she reluctantly sighed.
She watched Peter set his jaw and nod. The pair then went back to spying on the two men who were just starting to walk into the classroom they had been in only a few minutes earlier. "Let's go," Peter whispered to her, ushering for the brunette to dash past him around the corner to sneak towards the classroom.
As she ran, she barely caught the sound of Ned calling after them, "Guys-" Peter then told him to stay put before turning the corner and carefully following after Danielle, who stood a few yards away, across the hall from the wood shop. Once he had caught up with her, the paid carefully ran (or in Peter's case– bounded) across the hallway and into the open wood shop class.
Once inside, Danielle and Peter immediately ducked down behind the railing of the staircase going down into the wood shop work shop. They slowly made their way down, trying not to be heard, all the while watching the two men going through a bin of broken parts beside where Peter, Danielle, and Ned had all been working on the piece of weapon. Danielle tilted her head curiously. So maybe they hadn't been there for her and Peter after all, they were there for the weapon.
"Hey, can you imagine what the Boss would say if he knew where we were?" The man in the ball cap asked as he continued to scavenge in the bin of parts. Danielle wondered if this 'Boss' they were referring to was the man that had the wings and had dropped Peter in the lake. The brunette shuddered at the memory of being dangled hundreds of feet in the air, only to be dropped and caught up in a parachute, drowning in the cold water, choking for air and thrashing-
"Hey," Peter nudged her arm, snapping out of the horrible memory she was reliving and bringing her back to the present where the two men who could lead her to the man that had done those things to her and Peter were still standing and talking.
The dark-skinned bald man was using the device as he ran it over the table, shaking his head. "It's saying that there was an energy pulse right here." Was– past tense, Danielle noted. She concluded that maybe the pulse it had picked up was the glowy thing's (dammit, Ned and Peter) reaction to being pulled out of the weapon piece by Danielle's powers.
"There's no sign of the weapon," Baseball Cap Guy remarked. "And even if it was here, now it's gone." Danielle tilted her head as she began to descend the stairs, crouching behind the turned over stools on the table as she walked closer to hear better.
"So are we-" Before Danielle could react, her body froze when she realized the man was turning in her direction. The teen barely had time to react when she suddenly felt two strong arms wrap around her middle and drag her down underneath the table. She bit her tongue, biting back the urge to help when her forehead had hit the edge of the table in her descent.
When Danielle turned to see who it was that had grabbed her, she found Peter holding a finger over his mouth, signaling for her to stay quiet. The sound of footsteps had Danielle glancing beneath the legs of the other tables to find the two men walking closer to where they were, and walking at a slower pace than they needed. They knew they were there. Oh crap, they knew they were there.
As the men grew closer and closer, a bright idea popped into Danielle's head when she realized that they could probably see her and Peter if they were to remain on the floor. Instinctively, Danielle ran with it by turning to Peter and whispering, "Stay still." Peter drew his eyebrows up in confusion, but didn't have time to question when him and Danielle were both raised off the floor. He resisted the urge to freak out or squirm, and did just what Danielle said to do: stayed still.
Danielle, on the other hand, had a hard time focusing. Her heart beat was right in her ear, her blood was rushing, her head was pounding. But, she remained calm, she hd to. She had to keep her eyes closed and mind sharp. She felt her powers pushing back against her and Peter's bodies, raising them in the midair. The seconds that passed between the men leaving felt like years. Until, finally, the sound of the creaking stairs exiting the wood shop told Danielle they were gone.
With a heavy exhale, Danielle and Peter were slowly placed back on the cold, hard tile beneath them.
"Phew," Peter mumbled. "That was a close one. Nice move with the levitating thing, by the way... Elle? Elle?" Danielle hadn't realized it, but when she tried to move to talk, the words weren't coming out of her mouth. "Danielle?" she felt numb, she felt cold, her head hurt. Her head. Her head. Her powers! The pills! "What pills?" She heard Peter ask. She must've said all that stuff aloud.
"My backpack..." she moaned as she held a hand against her forehead. It hurt there, but it also hurt everywhere else on her head. She could've sworn she had taken enough pills the night before, but apparently it had taken a lot out of her with all the swinging and car chasing and the two times Peter had pushed or dragged her down that resulted int getting her head hit.
While she was panicking on the floor beneath the table still, Peter was a few feet away by the base of the stairs where they had left their backpacks, searching Danielle's things for the pills she was talking about. "Where are they? Which pocket? Elle, I need you to talk to me."
"Mm... The small one," she answered. Oh, why was everything so bright and loud?
"I found them. I found them," Peter exclaimed as he slid back over to Danielle, helping her out carefully from beneath the table, and helping her sit up as he opened the bottle of pills and handed them to her. He watched as she poured herself a few and popped them into her mouth. After swallowing them down, the brunette let out a sigh before closing her eyes and just resting her head and Peter's shoulder. For a moment there, Peter had thought she was knocked out, but eventually realized that whatever she had just done with the levitating might've just taken it all out of her.
The pair say in silence for a few seconds before Danielle mumbled something unheard into Peter's sleeve. "What?"
Danielle moved her face from off of his shoulder and rest her cheek there instead before repeating herself, "Tell me something."
"Like what?"
"Mm-mm," she shrugged. "Anything." Just distract me from the pain...
"Um..." Peter looked up at the many wooden structures dangling from the ceiling of the wood shop as he thought of what to say. "I, uh, I put a tracker on the bad guy's foot."
Peter glanced down at Danielle. She looked almost peaceful as she rested against his shoulder. And as the what he said processed, Peter watched as Danielle's expression morphed from peaceful and content to deeply confused. Her eyebrows furrowed as her eyes opened. She turned her head to glance up at him. "You... you what?"
"I put a tracker on the bad guy's foot," Peter repeated, his smile growing wider as he himself processed his own words.
Peter glanced back down at Danielle and watched as her eyes glistened with joy and a dazed smile graced her features. "You did it," she beamed. "You actually did it." The pair fell into a laughter that was both dazed, joyful and unbelievably excited. But once the laughter died down, a bored and disappointed look crossed Danielle's face as she wondered aloud, "What if Tony finds out? He told us to stay away..."
Peter frowned. She was right. They both knew if Mr. Stark were to find out they weren't listening to what he said about staying away from all this, there would be consequences. Peter didn't even want to think abut what they could be. But... they were too involved with these dealers now. They were at their school for crying out loud and he had just put a tracking device on them. There was no turning back.
"We can't stop now," he told her. "I mean, look at where we've gotten– I just put a tracker on someone!" Danielle winced from the loud noise. "Sorry," Peter apologized with a grimace. "But seriously, Elle, we can take these weapons dealers down. Without Mr. Stark. Just us." Danielle blinked lazily up at him, looking as though she were debating whether or not to even consider what he was saying. "You in?" He asked her hesitantly, inwardly hoping she would say yes because he really, really, really, really, really didn't want to do this without her.
Danielle turned her head away from Peter for a moment, her eyes darting across the tile floor as she weighed her options. Behind his back, Peter crossed his fingers in hopes she would say yes. Eventually, the brunette sighed before turning to rest her chin on Peter's shoulder again, her eyes twinkling with childlike wonder. "If I help you..." she paused. "Can we have a cool handshake, too?"
An abrupt laugh escaped Peter's lips, while a giggle escaped Danielle's. When the laughter died down, Peter turned to Danielle and offered her his hand. "Partners?"
Danielle glanced at his extended hand then back at him. She smiled as she took it in her own and shook (he had a strong grip, she'd give him that). "Partners," she agreed with a nod.
As their hands clasped and their eyes locked, Danielle felt something she didn't recognize. It was a feeling of a combination of emotions: friendship, partnership, comradery. She smiled up at Peter and he smiled back. She realized then, sitting there on the floor of that wood shop class, that she'd never had something like what she and Peter had.
In the past, she had Jack, Wanda, and Pietro, but they were different. They loved her and took care of her, but they treated her like what she was to them: a younger, vulnerable sister. And Danielle also had Steve, Sam, Sharon, Rhodey, Natasha, and Tony. But, they treated her like a child or a student.
Peter was so very different from them. He treated her like an equal. Not an insubordinate or a colleague or someone beneath him or someone that needed to be taught or protected. Peter treated her like his friend, his equal, his partner. Because that's what they were now. Partners.
"Um... guys?"
Both of the teenager's heads snapped up in the direction of where the wood shop door was still open.
"Danielle? Peter?" It was Ned. "Are you guys dead...?"
Danielle grimaced at the same time Peter cringed and exclaimed, "We should probably go... check on him."
Danielle nodded in agreement. "Yeah." And with that, the pair snatched up their backpacks and bonded up the stairs to the exit of the wood shop. When they reached it to the hallway, Ned met them there. His eyes going wide before he let out a sigh of relief at the sight of his friend's coming out of the wood shop... intact and breathing.
"Phew. I thought you guys were goners for a second there," he admitted with a playful grin. The pair of enhanced teens furrowed their eyebrows in confusion, but just passed it off as Ned's weird quirkiness. "Uh... why are you guys holding hands?" Both Danielle and Peter's eyebrows creased further in confusion as they glanced down at their hands, only to find them clasped together.
"Oh," both broke apart with a gasp, not having realized they'd never let go from their handshake down in the wood shop.
"Um..."
"I-"
"We were just-"
"-it was an accident."
"-didn't mean to-"
Ned watched in amusement as he watched both his friends' faces grow a bright shade of red, fumbling for words as they tried to explain the situation. They ultimately failed, but he still found it amusing. "So," Ned decided to chime in to change the subject and save them both from further embarrassment. "Did you guys figure out what those guys wanted?"
The pair's faces immediately lit up at the topic change. "Right," Peter sighed. "Well, apparently these guys were tracking the core."
"The glowy thing?"
Danielle closed her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. "I thought we agreed on giving it a different name."
Ned and Peter exchanged a knowing glance before sharing a shrug and turning back to the petite brunette. "It stuck," Peter said cheekily, Ned agreeing with a, "Yup."
"So, the guys were tracking the glowy thing, and then as they were leaving, I put a tracker on one of them," Peter continued to explain to his best friend as the trio of teens made their way down the hall towards lunch, the labs quickly forgotten now that they had a new lead on the guy that had thrown the pair of vigilantes into a lake to drown.
"No way!" Peter smiled and nodded smugly at his friend's expression of disbelief.
"Well, how can we track the guys now?" Danielle piped up. "What's the tracker connected to?"
"My suit," Peter answered. "I was thinking we can all meet up at my apartment and track them together and see where they end up. It could lead us to that winged guy."
"Cool," Ned exclaimed. "I'll ask my Mom... And hey– I can bring over the Lego Deathstar so we can rebuild it together after you broke it."
Peter drew back in distaste as he glared at his best friend in a joking matter. "I broke it? You're the one who dropped itin the first place!"
"Because you crawled into your room on the ceiling, dude!" The pair broke out into laughter.
Eventually, the pair remembered there was still a third member of their group walking at the far end of the little line. "What about you, Elle?" Peter asked the brunette. "You coming? I'm sure May would be cool with you staying over. If its okay with your Aunt...?"
Danielle nodded as the trio eventually entered the cafeteria. "I'm sure I can make it-"
"Ellie!"
Danielle, Peter, and Ned all turned to see who it was interrupting Danielle's answer, only to find Liz walking over, a bright smile on her face as she approached her friend. "Hey Ellie... Ned, Peter," the student body president nodded to both the boys, her eyes lingering for a moment on Peter. Danielle could practically feel him freeze then flush. It was how he always reacted whenever Liz acknowledged him.
Then, sure enough, Peter chuckled nervously from beside Danielle and replied, "Hey–" he cleared his throat. "Hey, Liz."
"Hey," Danielle greeted her friend as well.
"Okay, so, you know how I was telling you about my parents still being out of town?" Liz asked the brunette who nodded in response. She vaguely recalled it, but she was pretty sure the party was a one time thing. Dear God, she hoped it was a one time thing. Danielle didn't think she'd be able to handle another hangover as bad as the Ine she had today... then make it ten times worse because of Nationals the next day. "So, Betty brought up the brilliant idea of just going over to my place and having a small get together before the big day tomorrow while my parents are still gone." Dammit, Danielle cursed herself. "So... what do you say?"
"Um..." Danielle felt a like a deer in headlights. She had nearly reluctantly agreed out of habit when she was suddenly reminded of the conversation she had been having with Ned and Peter prior to Liz's arrival about the plan to track down the weapons dealers. When Danielle turned to glance back at the pair, she noticed the defeated expressions on their faces, as if they were expecting her to leave them for Liz and her uppity friends. Danielle set her jaw and turned back to Liz with a new determination. "Uh, actually, I already had plans to just stay at home and study... Sorry, Liz."
Liz looked just as shocked as Danielle was sure Peter and Ned probably were from where they stood behind her. "Uh... Yeah. Yeah, no problem," she stammered, still a bit in awe that Danielle would define an offer to hang out. It had been almost year that Danielle had been agreeing to go to things or doing things with Liz and her friends. A year that Danielle had been missing out on better things with Ned, Peter, Michelle and her other friends that actually were her friends. No more, Danielle inwardly vowed. "I'll see you tomorrow at the bus then," Liz told her friend, a bit deflated.
Danielle nodded. "Mhmm. See you there."
"Bye, Ellie. Ned, Peter," she waved goodbye as she departed back to the table of friends she she waiting for her. However, Danielle did feel a twinge of guilt when Liz did eventually glance over her shoulder at her before taking a seat with them. At least she didn't just completely blow her off like Danielle thought she would, but that made it even more heart-wrenching. It reminded Danielle that even though Liz hung out with some questionable people, she was still her friend. But, she had a duty to uphold with Peter. They were partners now and she couldn't just leave him to track down these bad guys with just him and Ned.
When Danielle turned back to them, they both looked mildly surprised at how she had declined Liz's offer to hang out. "I think I can make it to the apartment tonight," she told Peter with a small smile.
"Awesome," Ned replied, him, Peter, and Danielle falling back into step as they made their way to the lunch line to grab some food. While in line, Ned couldn't seem to stop talking about all the cool modifications him and Peter could make to his Lego structure. Danielle tried to keep up, but when he started making references to movies of the Saga she he yet to see, she kind of zoned out.
She was in the middle of grabbing a milk from the small freezer when Peter nudged her arm. She glanced up at him and he leaned over to say, "You didn't have to say 'no' to Liz, ya know? Me and Ned can handle the tracking thing by ourselves if you really wanna go."
"Honestly," Danielle sighed. "I don't. Besides, we're partners, remember? We stick together."
Peter smiled and nodded. "Right. Partners."
"Also... I think I may have a place we can go."
—
A/N: In honor of the end of Spidey's reign in the MCU, I would like to post this chapter in commemoration for yet another Spider-Man trilogy with potential lost to legal battles between Disney and Sony... Respectfully, fuck them all. We love you Spidey. Gone, but never forgotten...
On a side note, your girl is getting ready to fight her fiancée if we don't decide on a color scheme for the wedding soon. I'm honestly getting ready to just put up a poll and have you guys decide for us because our marriage is literally going to end before its even begun. Lol, just kidding. He can't escape me }:)
Also, I realized last chapter I just didn't do reviews, so:
Reviews:
RedDragon395: Eek, glad you liked it. I really enjoy writing different character POV's just because it's so fun getting to dive into how other characters see Danielle. More of these different POV's to come.
JennyElephant: Thanks! Here is your next chapter, babes!
JustADerangedFangirl: (You had a lot of reviews - thank you! - so, I'm just gonna respond to all of them in this response). Lol, yeah, I don't know if we can delete reviews :/. For real, I wondered how no one really noticed Thor aside from those two girls. But the reason Danielle didn't do shit was because she's a fucking idiot. It's apart of her personality trait (Side note: she gets it from Alice as well as her father). Lol, you're up at 1 reading, I'm up at 1 writing. I'll try and send help if I find some myself. :)
I. D.'s Fantasy: Aw, thanks! If you have any good ones for me to read, let me know. I love reading to procrastinate.
rjstx1: F
stylo1: Oh yeah, the first part of the story sucks ass, I'll give you that. I've honestly had no time to go back and fix it so it's just gonna kind of stay shitty. Bare with me, this is one of my first fics and I learn as I go. -\_(:/)_/-
Incorrect Quote of the Chapter:
Ned: *at 4 am* Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor and dish washing liquid made with real lemons?
Peter: Ned-
Dani: Wait, he has a point. Let him finish.
