***Lab***

With the new arrival of Foster and Peter, the hope for this mission seemed just a little bit brighter. Jamie and Peter had gone back inside with the Spider-Man going his own way to the lab/Tony's workspace so he could upload his digital blueprints for the Quantum Time Machine.

He had set his stuff down and was now at the holo-table, which lit up as it turn on as Peter began surfing through some things.

"Welcome back, boss!" A familiar woman's voice spoke.

"Hey, FRIDAY. How's it going?" He replied, as he swiped along the screen.

"Going well. Though, I didn't expect you back so soon. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, some stuff just came up and hopefully, it's good."

"Well, I'm here for you if you need me."

"Thanks. Actually, I have a blueprint I need to upload."

"Transferring file now. It'll take a while for it to come up."

Peter nodded as he began to swipe the holoscreen, deciding to look through the Iron Spider suit layout as he felt he might need it during this mission.

"FRIDAY, can you open Mr. Stark's personal files please?"

The image of the screen flipped through a few codes before it stopped on a window loaded with files. "Done."

"Thank you."

Peter scrolled through the huge flock of files to find the one for his suit. There must've been at least over two hundred here alone.

'Ah, Mr. Stark. Wheels were always turning, weren't they?' He joked to himself.

Finally, after six long scrolls down, he had found the 'Iron Spider' file. As he reached to press it, something else caught his eye. A file alongside it labeled: 'Nxt Avngrs'.

"Huh?" He said out loud to himself. What was this?

He decided to explore it and tapped on it, opening the file.

Once it opened, a page full of profiles and video footage came up. Immediately, Peter's eyes went wide and his breathing got deeper.

"Peter, I'm detecting a rise in your heartbeat. Are you alright?"

"Uh...uh yeah. Um...could-could you call Jamie up here for me, please?"

"On it."

A separate small square appeared on the screen, a blue line running across it. Still at first, but moving as the voice of Jamie came through.

"Hey, Pete! What's up?"

"Hey Jamie, could you come up here right quick, please?"

"Everything ok?"

"Yeah. I just uh...there's something I think you need to see."

"Alright, I'm on my way."


About five-to-ten minutes later, Jamie walked in, slowing down from having ran the whole way over. He walked over to where Peter was sitting on a stool.

"Hey man, what's up?"

Peter nodded to the redhead before pointing to the file onscreen. "This."

"Whoa...what is all this?" Jamie asked, pulling up a stool for himself and sat next to his friend.

"I was hoping you'd know."

Jamie shook his head before looking back to the screen.

"FRIDAY, what is this? He asked, confusion and interest mixed together in his voice.

"This is a special project Mr. Stark was working on. It's called the Next Avengers Initiative. A backup response team compiled of multiple gifted young people. Each candidate with a special ability and personality that gives them the potential to be an Avenger."

Peter was speechless at this. There were almost twenty something files here. And one of them caught Jamie's eye. "Hey Pete, look! It's you!"

Peter followed Jamie's finger and squinted his eyes before widening them as he saw his very own profile. Along with it was the video footage of him in his early days as Spider-Man, it was the video Tony had shown him back in 2016 when they first met. That threw him off a bit.

"Wait, I'm a part of this too?" he asked, thinking out loud.

"Indeed, Peter!" FRIDAY replied, "You were the first recruit for this team. Phase One. The Test Phase, if you will. Mr. Stark felt it necessary to start off with just one of you rather than a lot of you at once."

Peter snorted and nodded as he began to piece things together. "The Training Wheels Protocol."

"Precisely!"

That made Jamie crack up. He laughed at the name of his friend's first protocol. Peter looked at him and Jamie put his hands up as an apology, but still laughed.

"Man, looks like Uncle Tony was busy with these." He stated.

"Yeah, he always did like to try and be one step ahead."

"Guess you were part of that step, huh?"

"Indeed, he was, Jamie." FRIDAY cut in. "In fact, Peter, there's a message Mr. Stark left for you with this file."

That caught both of them, but more so Peter.

His eyebrows scrunched at that. "A message, for me?"

"Yes."

The AI didn't wait for a reply as she began to commence with playing it. The room grew dark as the lights dimmed and two small circles on the side frame of the holoscreen, which were actually projectors, lit up.

They flashed across the room and showed another holographic image. It was a stool. But suddenly someone stepped in and sat on it. It was the Iron Man himself, Tony Stark!

Peter's eyes widened and his breath hitched at the sight of his mentor/father figure. Jamie's expression showed awe as he too was surprised by it as well, having a handful of memories of his surrogate uncle. Their emotions began to flow as the image of Tony smiled and began to speak.

"Hey there, Underoos!" He started jokingly, casually waving as he was his norm, "How's it going?"

Peter smiled and teared up a little at the sound of Tony calling him by the nickname he'd made up for him way back in 2016. Jamie noticed this and smiled too. The two listened as the hologram continued.

"I know this may be a bit of a shock to you, but this is a little fail-safe message for you. So, if you're seeing this...then unfortunately, it means I'm dead."

That painful feeling of reality came back to Peter and Jamie as they heard those words.

"I'm sorry...I know, it's not an easy thought to process. But that's a part of life...but it's also part of the hero gig. Part of the journey is the end... But, be that as it may, the world will always need heroes. And right now, it needs you. And so you don't get lonely, I made out a list of people to help you. Ya know, a little failsafe/super friend list. And you can't use the excuse of homework either, cause that never stopped you before.

"Don't worry, you'll be all right. If you could handle the vulture guy all on your own, then I'm sure you can do this. You can, Peter. You can. Not everyone is gonna support you though. When me, Cap and the ol' gang were together, sometimes people didn't all like us. Some even tried to stop us. And they might look down on you even more so since you're a kid... but don't let the keep you down. Show 'em what you got, kid. If you have to do it, go for it...whatever it takes.

"And don't worry , you're not gonna be empty handed. You've got all the stuff you need. All of our resources, the Facility, the tech...it's yours now. If you can be a 'friendly neighborhood Spider-Man', then saving the world is just a hop, skip and a boat ride away. So go do it, go save the world, Spider-Man.

"Oh, and one more thing... I'm proud of you, kid."

The holo-message ended and left the room in silence. Tears flowed from Peter as he took in the touching words from it. Jamie was touched by it too.

"Looks like Uncle Tony had a lot of faith and high hopes for you, Pete."

"Yeah, I guess so." Peter replied, wiping off a few tears and sniffling a little, "I kinda knew about it a little, but I never knew how big."

Reaching over, he patted Peter on the back and gave him a side-hug , which he returned.

After they hugged it out, they turned their attention back to the holoscreen behind them.

As they looked at it, Peter sighed a big one. "This is a lot, Jamie."

The redhead nodded at that. It was a lot indeed. "Yeah, but at least he didn't leave you empty handed."

Peter chortled at that, as did Jamie.

As he examined all of the profiles, Jamie began to think. Tony had obviously done a lot of research to acquire all of this info on these people. He would've wanted them to used too if there was a need. And there kinda was now. Then, he got an idea.

"Hey Pete?"

Peter looked at the redheaded teen curiously. "What?"

"Why don't we do it?"

"Do what?"

"Recruit these guys. That way, we can expand our team."

A look of hesitancy came to Peter as he looked back to the green full of profiles. "Us?"

"Why not?"

Jamie waited for an answer, but all Peter could do was hold his shoulders up mid-shrug and stand there speechless.

"We're gonna need all the help we can get with this thing, Pete. And with more people, we could have a better chance of succeeding. There's strength in numbers."

Peter thought about it and realized that Jamie did have a point. They would need help, and a good-sized team could make things go smoother too. And it would give them a chance to test out one of Tony's ideas.

"Plus, you did ask me about us getting a whole team together. Well, this is it. This could be our team."

Peter nodded a little as he figured that if things went south, it couldn't be worse than things already had gone after the Snap...hopefully. Yeah, why not.

"So what do ya say?" Jamie asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

Looking to Jamie and up to the multiple profiles onscreen, Peter let out a sigh and nodded before looking back to Jamie and saying, "Alright. Let's do it, Captain."

And with that, they began examining the profiles and footage and began evaluating their future teammates for recruitment.


ONE HOUR LATER


***Courtyard***

Scott sat down on a bench with his food and began to unwrap it. Two fully loaded hard-shell tacos, chips and a large soda.

He picked one of the tacos and was about to dig into it when a loud 'BOOM' sound passed through the air. It almost made his eardrums go numb. Looking up, he saw the source of the noise high up in the sky. It like a small ball of blue fire. Sounds weird, but that's what it looked like to Scott. And said ball of blue fire was getting closer too.

But before it got any closer, it came to an abrupt halt. Then it resumed it's descent much slower. And just before it was a hundred feet away from the ground, Scott heard "WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!" come from it before finally the blue energy disappeared completely and a person clad in shiny black armor came hurling towards the ground, landing in a one knee position and a fist to the ground. Put simply, he just watched someone do a superhero landing.

"WHOOO!" He heard the person say as they took off their helmet. "Touchdown!"

Now that the helmet was off, Scott could see that the person was a young adult. Possibly a teen. And he was sure happy.

"Nova: one, Benatar: nothing!" He cheered, looking up into the sky before walking towards the Compound by Scott. As he did, his armor seemed to disappear almost like a nanotech suit. It all went until he was in casual wear, a yellow shirt and jeans.

The whole thing slightly confused Scott, but didn't frighten him. When you've seen things like giant ants that are really regular sized but you're shrunken smaller than a pinhead, you don't exactly get scared by stuff so easily.

"Hey, how's it going?" The kid waved at him as he stepped up to him.

Scott lightly nodded at the approaching kid. "Good, good. Nice landing."

"Thanks," the kid nodded back with a smile before holding out his hand, "Sam Alexander."

"Scott Lang."

"Nice to meet ya."

"Nice to meet you too."

Their conversation was cut short when a gushing wind came and blew not only leaves and dirt, but also all of the ingredients in Scott's taco. Like a leaf blower right on it, it all flew out and knocked over his drink and his other taco. Through squinted eyes, Scott could see the source of this strong wind.

Descending above the courtyard was the Guardians' ship, The Benatar, landing near the same spot Sam had landed.

The engines of it turned off and the ramp door opened with steps. And descending those steps was none other than Rocket Raccoon and Nebula.

"Beat'cha!" Sam yelled over to them with a victorious smile.

"Yeah, yeah yeah!" The "raccoon" retorted with a smirk. He had stopped halfway down the steps whilst Nebula kept walking toward the Compound.

"Hey, humie!" Rocket called out, referring to Scott, "Where's Big Green and the Red Kid?"

"Uh, kitchen, I think." He stuttered, a little thrown off by the spacecraft before him. He casually waved to Nebula as she passed by. "That's awesome."

Though Nebula, being Nebula, was instantly irked by Scott. So much so that she had no shame with saying her message out loud. "Rhodey, careful on re-entry. There's an idiot on the landing zone." She said into a communicator on her collar.

Moments later as she walks past him, Rhodey himself, clad in his War Machine armor landed right in front of him without warning and a loud "CLANG".

"Oh, God!" He exclaimed, gasping for air. This had caught Scott by surprise so much that out of shock, he jumped in his seat, grabbed his chest over his heart and dropped what remained of his taco shell.

"What's up, regular sized man?" He heard the iron-suited man say to him before walking into the facility.

Sam, who hadn't flinched in the slightest when Rhodey landed, laughed at his question and Scott's reaction before following Rhodey inside.

As they walked in, Viv and Bruce had walked out with some tacos of his own. When they came up to Scott, Bruce could see that his lunch had been blown all over the place and that he was without it.

Feeling sorry for his friend, Bruce took two tacos from his pack and handed them over to Scott with an encouraging nod and smile as well. Scott reluctantly, but gratefully, took them, nodding back to him in thanks as he did. Once he took them, Bruce and his daughter continued their way towards the ship.

As they went on, Peter and Jamie walked out of the compound.

"So we're heading to New Asgard." Jamie stated as they walked over to the Benatar.

"Torunn?"

"Yeah, what about you?"

"Me and Sam are heading to Rocinha."

"You mean..."

"Yeah."

"You read the reports, right?"

"Yeah, and I've seen the footage. Why?"

"Well, I'm just...ya know, surprised you're not scared. I mean, they're making her out to be some kind of monster."

"She's not a monster."

"You saying that because you believe it, or because you have a crush on her?" The young Captain asked teasingly, wiggling his eyebrows at his friend.

Peter scoffed and smiled. "Shut up, man."

"Hey, you're secret's safe with me, Pete!" Jamie laughed as he followed Bruce over to the Benatar.

And Peter walked back to hangar for the Quinjet, shaking his head at his younger friend, but a smile still on his face.


OMG, it's happening! The Next Avengers are about to be assembling! It's all been leading up to this, baby. And I'm gonna tell you now, the next few chapters, which ranges from about eight to ten, are gonna involve Jamie and Peter going all over to recruit their new team. Interestingly though, the chapters that I have in store for this story are in the early 50s and that's BARELY half of what this fic is gonna be fully. Meaning we're looking at close to a 100+ chapter story. So we'll see how it goes, but trust me when I say you're gonna love what's in store. ;))))

Also, in the second to last chapter, I asked if you guys wanted to see the showcase of my 'Next Avengers Initiative', and you guys gave a pretty good response to it. So, I've decided to give it to you little by little. The first being is for the sequel to this story, The Next Avengers 2. So, without further ado, here's the title for that sequel. I give you...

The Next Avengers 2: Civil War II.

Now some of you might be thinking: "Dude, come on. ANOTHER MCU Civil War? What, are you gonna have some guy make these kid heroes fight against each other? Get some new material!"

Well, you'd be wrong there. I've got something special and different in mind. And the solo stories that come after this fic will lead up to it. It's like my own little MCU inside of the real MCU. Hehehehe! So yeah, that's what's coming, guys! If you'd like to see the teaser poster for the sequel, then go check out this fic on my Wattpad or my Ao3. The name is the same for the story and my profile.

Lmk what you think of the chapter or the poster! Please!

Next up is the first recruitment. So, in the words of Sam L. Jackson "Hoooooooold onto your butts!"

Laters!