Perched up atop the corner of a roof overlooking the archway and the main gate to the barracks, Peter could both stay out of sight and keep an eye out for Emilia's inevitable emergence from the building. He had been a bit too rambunctious and hadn't considered how frightening things like being thrown dozens of feet into the air could affect someone. Part of him often forgot how short a time she had known him and also how little she understood about his capabilities.

This world had all this magic and these people with fantastical powers, but he had yet to see anything else like him. The idea of Spider-Man would take some getting used to for her and the rest of the people he came across.

Peter turned to look off in the direction of the castle. This was as close to it as he had ever been, part of him had to wonder if he would see the inside of the place. One day, he assumed, when Emilia took the throne he could go in and out of the place as he pleased. Would he have even found a way home by then or would he be stuck here.

If Aunt May was here and he could assure that this world needed him…if Emilia needed him, would he mind being stuck here? Part of him knew it was crazy to think of a girl he had only known for a month like this. May had been big on telling him that he would get wrapped up in emotions that would feel like everything was dire and serious. The kind of things that he would look back on one day and realize hadn't been nearly as intense as he had thought.

He was still in the middle of all that and right now, at least, he felt that not treating all of this like it was something he really felt wouldn't be fair to the current him. That was if she even wanted anything with him besides a friend. She needed friends as there didn't seem to be many people she considered close to her like that.

Peter thought about that knight kissing her hand earlier and the immediate reaction he had to it—but that wasn't the way friends regarded each other. They didn't place each other on a pedestal like that, did they? It was the same with Lord Roswaal, he wasn't friends with Emilia or even her guardian really. He saw her as something else. Peter assumed that he wanted the prestige that came with being an early backer of the new ruler. With what he knew about the desire for power and the world that explanation made the most sense.

"…over. You wouldn't want us to mess up that pretty little face of yours?" Came a raspy voice that was oddly familiar.

"Give up everything you got!" There was another voice, this one lower and speaking at a much slower cadence.

Peter leapt to the next building, scampering over the roof on all fours to reach the building edge. He peered down into an alleyway to see three figures looming over a young woman in a red and black dress.

No need to do this sloppy, he webbed and awning and tested his weight on it. Using the strand of web, he lower himself down until he was just out of eye line of the woman and right behind her attackers.

"You should know better than to even hoist your lowly gazes in my general direction, gutter trash," the woman in the red and black dress spoke with a dignified and confident tone. The kind of tone someone had when they didn't expect to be shanked in an alleyway and robbed of all they had.

Even at a glance, Peter could tell that she was wealthy and probably of noble blood. He had yet to come across anyone dressed as finely as her. She opened a fan in front of her face and used it to brush aside a strawberry blonde flyway bang that had fallen on her cheek.

Peter lowered him self down just enough that the woman spotted him and gasped, her crimson eyes going wide.

The three would-be-muggers didn't have time to turn around before he spoke. "Really, the whole knights barracks is right there…wait, you three again?" Peter was stunned to find out that these three were the exact robbers that he had faced the first day he was in Lugnica.

"It's that asshole from the bridge!" One of them yelled as he lunged for him.

Peter jerked his head out of the way. And then he dodged another oncoming attack and another. "Aren't you boys a little far from your jurisdiction?"

He dropped into the alley in front of them still holding the web he had slung down on in one hand. Their full attention was on him now and they were pinned between him, the woman with the orange-red hair, and two walls. For some reason they were frozen, either in fear or shock. Peter held the web out at the big one.

"Here, take this," Peter said and before the man could doge or move to the side, Peter fired another web through the first, sticking it to the man's chest and causing him to spring up into the air above them.

The smallest of the three went to run and Peter fired a web into his back that spread out into a net and pinned him to the wall of the alley. The third man, the one who had the knife before was standing before him, pierced tongue dangling from his mouth as he went for the weapon.

Peter danced to either side of the attacks with ease, the threat of him being harmed so low that his tingle never even trigged. The white haired man swung wide and Peter leapt out of range before the strike came anywhere near him. Then he rushed forward, elbowing the mugger so that he stumbled.

With a sweep of the legs, Peter flipped the man upside down and webbed him to the wall of the alley. His knife had dropped due to the force of the kick and his head was hanging just a foot off the ground.

The woman with the strawberry blonde hair was still standing there, her arms folded under her breasts with a fan propped up in one hand. Peter knew it was impolite to stare at just any part of her. Judging by the tone she had taken even before her rescue was apparent she wasn't the kind of take any shit.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" Peter asked.

"Hmm, so it was you—that's interesting," she said.

"What was me?" Asked Peter.

She tilted her head back, lifting her chin up so that it was almost as if she had grown two feet taller just from the power of that stance. Her red eyes burrowed into him. "Those vagabonds were no match for me, but even so this world is designed to work in a way that best suits my needs—you showing up was only part of the equation," she said.

"Equation," Peter repeated the word. He had no idea what was going on.

"What's your name? What manner of magic did you use to do those little tricks?" At her mention of 'little tricks' she opened her fan and flicked flippantly in his general direction.

"Peter Parker? Interesting."

"I haven't seen you around in a while, Pete!" Came a familiar grumble accompanied by the sound of a jingling chain further down the alley to his back.

Peter turned around to see Rom's towering figure lumbering toward him and the woman. "Old Man Rom," Peter said. "We went to the slums looking for you earlier, but the Loot House was demolished."

"Well, yeah fool, you're the ones who demolished it, but I suppose we did get out of there with our lives. The only thing is I haven't seen or heard from Felt since that night," Rom said.

"The slums!" the woman in the red dress practically spat the words out of her mouth like they were snake's venom.

Peter and Rom ignored her as Peter continued. "We were looking for you or her to ask what had happened too, Reinhard showed up with some of the other knights and she was taken into custody. It was weird, we even objected to it since what she stole had been returned," Peter said.

"Taken into custody, by an Astrea—had to be one of them lot," Rom said with a chuckle. "Maybe it's just fate."

The woman in the red and black dress turned toward the castle in the distance, it was visible from the end of the alley and somehow it looked much bigger from right here than it had even from the building top where Peter had been. The white brick with tiered ramparts and blue roofs glistened in the afternoon sun.

"What does it mean?" Asked Peter.

"I don't know, but you try not to cause any trouble around these parts," said Rom. "Tell that pretty friend of yours I said hi."

Rom walked off down the alley out of sight as Peter stood staring out after him.

"Pretty friend," Peter said under his breath. It took him a little while to realize that the old man had been talking about Emilia. Did Rom have any idea who Emilia truly was? Sure he had to have seen the silver hair and slightly pointed ears, but did he know about her being part of the Royal Selection when he saw that insignia.

Did normal folk out here in the city just trying to get by even care about the outcome of the Royal Selection? Did they think that depending on which candidate came out on top that their lives might improve?

"First drop in here out of nowhere and the next thing that I know you're canoodling with half-beasts," the woman he had just attempted to save said.

"I don't think that word means what you think it does," Peter said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Canoodling, I think it means something else." Peter was actually sure of the meaning, he had seen it on a vocabulary test in an English class, but he was embarrassed to say what it was due to what it implied.

Despite his best efforts to contain it, Peter snickered to himself. He brought his hand up to cover his face.

"What's that? What's funny?" Demanded the woman, her hands balled into tight fists and pressed into the sides of her dress. She looked younger in that moment, where as Peter had judged her as being well in her twenties based on something he had seen there before, he could now tell she was closer to his age.

He didn't know how, he could just sense it based on how she was acting.

"There you are," said a voice with a tinny echo.

Peter looked to the end of the alley for the source. A man who stood about his height stood next to Emilia with a mustard yellow, cloak draped over his shoulders. The cloth looked worn from age and it did a poor job of hiding the man's imposing and muscular frame. His left arm are gone below the elbow and there was a thick bladed sword slung across his lower back. Probably the thing that stood out about him the most was the metal helm he wore that had a bright red plume jutting up out of its top.

"Oh," Peter slapped his hand to the back of his head. "Sorry, I wondered off. This lady here was about to get mugged and look who I found out here still mugging people." Peter approached her, while pointing to the walls of the alley as an indication of what he was talking about.

Emilia's soft smile at seeing him again turned into wide eyed panic in an instant, he saw her glance to the woman Peter was with. The moment that he stepped in close to the helmet wearing man, he proceeded to introduce himself.

"Peter Parker," he said, holding his hand out to the newcomers hand.

"I'm sure she'll forgive you," said the guy in the helmet. "I'm Al, your friend here was helping me look for a lost child."

Peter hadn't thought about it before, but Emilia had her cloak pulled up. She was standing close enough to him that she was hidden from the woman down the alley. For some reason she seems to give no second thought to the woman's companion Al. Emilia grabbed Peter's arm. "Right, but now that we found her," she said.

"Huh?" Peter glanced over at her.

"We need to go," she pleaded.

Peter could feel the tension rising in the alley again, he didn't sense any immediate danger, but he didn't want to wait until it came to that if that was where it was going. He wrapped his arm around Emilia's waist and turned to go. "Now that you found who you were looking for and she found me—I guess this is where go our separate ways…"

"Eh, nice meeting you both," Al said, his voice sounding very tinny through his helm.

"Wait—Peter, was it?" The woman in red said.

Peter froze and glanced back, Emilia almost pulled out of his grip. "Yeah?"

"How did you stick to the wall like that and fire those little strings?" She asked.

Peter thought for a moment. "There's Metia that fire the strings and the sticking to walls is just a power I have."

"Oh?"

"We've really got to be going though, kind of late for an engagement—oh if you could alert the guards that these guys are over here." And with that, Peter tightened his grasp on Emilia, webbed the side of the build and swung up into the air to make their way out of the area.

The bridge that crossed over one of the city's many canals was easy enough to spot from high up and people tended not to pass through there. It was hard to tell why, but Emilia assumed that during a flood the area could be hard to navigate or it could just be that there was nothing nothing down on that level. Peter webbed to a steeple, swinging the both of them around on it to slow their approach before he dropped to land in front of the bridge

Emilia hadn't said anything since they left the area where she had found Peter with that woman: Priscilla Barielle was one of those people who had been outwardly vile to her. She didn't even address Emilia by name. And now here Peter was standing and talking with her?

This time, when he had been swinging through the city back to this point, Peter had adopted a much slower pace. Before when he would change direction or fling the two of them high up into the sky she could fee her insides lurch as if they were rushing to keep up with their movement.

With her feet firmly on the ground again, it still took her a second to get the feel of walking. It was as things were still shaky and each step that she took was just a bit unstable.

Peter stepped back from her, looking her over with those big brown eyes. "Man, it seems like people really don't come down here," he said with a smirk.

Emilia glanced around as if to check for other people, though she knew him to be correct. She brushed the hood off of her head and stepped in closer to him. "Peter, I need you to tell the truth: that girl back there in the alley. Where did you meet her?"

"In the alley—just a few minutes before you stepped out," Peter said.

She had to question it, there were so many coincidences lining up in weird ways and she just couldn't trust some of what was happening. First there was her insignia being stolen and pawned off to some assassin, but the assassin survived and the thief has vanished. That same day Peter shows up and he is completely unafraid of what she is, despite the whole world telling him to be. He has an Aunt that appears and is connected to another Royal Selection Candidate camp and now she finds him talking to still another Royal Candidate directly.

"Do you know who she is?" Asked Emilia.

For a moment Peter seemed to really think about it, then he folded his arms. "Actually, I never did get her name. I rescued her from those robbers, ran into Old Man Rom—he says hi by the way—and then you appeared with that Al guy," Peter said.

No one was this nice to her. Why was he being so nice to her? It only made sense if he was a spy, no one would throw in their support behind a silver haired half elf. But if he was spying for someone, who? Could they have set up the event with her insignia? If she were being truthful, there was no telling what the Royal Selection entailed. Maybe Peter was administering a test.

Maybe it was his job to see what she did when put under different conditions.

"Wait, who was she?" Peter asked.

Emilia had to stop herself, sure she could twist the things that had happened into an entirely different series of events that made it so that everyone was out to get her, but that didn't make it right.

The outcome that she wanted, the thing that she wanted to be true, was that Peter was really there because he enjoyed being around her and he found her interesting. And when he said that he thought she was pretty or touched her face or held her hand through the night it wasn't because those were just the things he had been told to do or because they were the polite things to do; they were the things he wanted to do.

"Emilia?" Peter said, leaning out to look her in the face. "Is something—wrong?"

Emilia closed her eyes. After all, Puck had sensed zero malicious intent behind Peter and if that had changed he would have surely let her know. She just wanted to believe in Peter.

"Do you remember what I told you about promises?" Emilia asked.

Peter's entire demeanor changed. They had hardly discussed that night and it seemed the further that they got from it, the more it became background noise to everything else that was going on.

"I didn't think you had remembered. Even if you didn't, I planned to make good on my promise. You said they're very important to Spirit Users," Peter said.

Emilia nodded, her eyes still closed. "How could I forget," she started. "Promises are very important to me."

For a moment Peter didn't seem to know what to do with his hands or even where to look, he hooked one hand behind his neck and averting his eyes from hers. "Yeah," Peter said. "I guess that really makes sense."

When Emilia opened her eyes again they were teary, but she was smiling. Other than the coincidences that she had strung together a long that line, nothing about Peter trying to betray her really fit with what she had seen. Even him meeting that woman could be explained away by how any number of Royal Selection Candidates would be in the same area around the castle the day before an important meeting.

And then she thought back to that night a few weeks ago. "That night you held on to my hand while I slept. The boy who would do that is probably a boy I should trust, huh?" Emilia asked as if he had been privy to her doubts.

"Uh, I would say so," Peter said.

Emilia's smile grew. "Even so, you misunderstood my words back then and I was too tired to explain myself."

"Oh. Sorry?"

"It's okay, Peter," she said his name and watched the way his stance softened. What was this effect she was having on him? "I asked you to stay with me and maybe, in the moment, I did need you to stay in that room," she said trailing off.

For a moment it looked like Peter was going to speak, but then he seemed to get the idea that she wasn't done with what she was saying yet. Emilia turned and looked over the side of the bridge into the water before continuing.

"What I mean to say is: you've become important to me and… I needed you to stay here. With me. Here," she pointed down at the ground. "—in Lugnica. For as long as you can."

"I'll stay as long as I can," Peter said. "I promise," he added.

"Good, I just want it to be clear," Emilia rubbed her the backs of her hands under her eyes to wipe away the beginnings of some tears.

"Can I ask you though: who was that girl back there?" Peter asked.

"Baroness Priscilla Barielle, she is the matriarch of a the lands to the south of the capital and she is also…another one of the Royal Selection Candidates," Emilia said.

"Holy shit…" Peter said.

Emilia blinked, putting her finger to her lips. It didn't match up with anything that she had been told about the Baroness. "No, at least I am not aware of anything that she has to do with blessed excrement…"

"Huh?"

He must have meant some expression that she didn't understand. It happens. "It's nothing," she said, feeling her face redden.

"This Baroness is one of the other candidates? And then May was working for this Crusch lady, but who are the others?" Peter asked.

"Anastasia Hoshin is the only other one, she's a business woman from Kararagi," Emilia explained.

"Wow, so they're all like nobles and hyper rich?" Peter said.

Emilia nodded. "It's hard to believe that I am going up against all of that."

"Well, you're rich in kindness," Peter said.

She tilted her head to the side and glared at him. "Come on, Peter, even I know that is really lame," she said.

He chuckled. "But it's true!" Peter pointed at her nose. "And that wasn't one of your serious glares, you're holding back a smile so it worked."

"Stop trying to make me laugh," Emilia said.

"I'm not saying that your concern isn't valid, but kindness does count for a lot. You'll see," he said.

In her head she wanted him to be right, but for right now she didn't know how to vocalize that. "Hey, what do you say we head back to the manor," she said, the smile fading from her face.

"Okay, which way is it?" He asked.

Emilia pointed. "But, would you mind swinging me there Peter?"

"Oh, sure. Yeah, we can do that. I'll go slow," Peter said as he wrapped an arm around her. Emilia wrapped her own arm around his neck and pushed her face up onto his shoulder.

"Thanks," she said.

This was just faster, right? And Peter did seem to enjoy doing it. Yeah, that was why she had asked him to do this.