As Mystique drove away from the Parker household she couldn't help but feel a sense of vindictive elation at the addition of yet another massive powerhouse to her team. And to think it started with that disgusting toad.
Don't get her wrong, Todd Tolansky certainly had his uses, but she would be lying if she said the unwashed teen was a few screwups from being permanently booted from Bayville and into an unmarked grave.
Next came Lance Alvers AKA Avalanche, his ability to generate and control seismic waves made him an excellent addition. Though he was immature and hot-headed the boy had street smarts and obviously subscribed to the pecking order mentality.
He certainly wants to be the top dog, and so far he's become something resembling the leader amongst his brotherhood peers. But he was intelligent enough to realize he couldn't stand up to her.
Then there was Fred Dukes, the Blob. She found him using his powers to entertain the unwashed masses of "who-cares" Texas by performing feats of incredible strength.
His powers were simple and straightforward: he was the ultimate brick-shithouse with the intellect to match. Useful in that she could point him at anything and he would decimate it with that unbelievable strength.
Next came their most recent addition Pietro Maximoff, Quicksilver. The boy was nothing more than a spoiled brat clawing and braying for respect that he hasn't earned.
That's not to say his powers weren't useful, mystique could think of at least a dozen ways in which he could defeat some of the most powerful mutants in the world singlehanded. But his prissy platinum head was too far up his own ass to be an actual contributor. If he wasn't the son of Magneto, the heir to continue his legacy, let's just say Mystique knows a lot of ways to hide a dead body.
Lastly was her unknowingly adopted daughter, her beautiful Rogue. The young girl was so scared of herself, of her wondrous abilities, with time that fear would fade and she would become one of, if not the most powerful mutant the world has ever known.
Sometimes Mystique felt guilty for the underhanded method she used to recruit her daughter, but every time the feeling is pushed back by the idea that it was worth it to get Rogue on what was obviously the winning side of this conflict with the Xavier institute.
And now she adds Peter Parker, the infamous Spider-Man, to her roster of mutant fighters. If she were still a little girl she would be vibrating in her seat.
It amazed her that Charles hadn't sent someone out to recruit the teenager, he hasn't been all that scrupulous in hiding his powers so Cerebro should have picked up on the boy months ago.
Even without the infernal device it wasn't exactly difficult to track him down, she just spent a night staking out the city until he showed up in full Spider regalia, then she just transformed into an owl and followed the brunet until he went home. Why Charles didn't jump at the opportunity was no matter, the important thing was that the Spider-Man was hers.
It was annoying that she would have to wait an extra week to have the boy in her clutches, but it was worth it to not raise any suspicion from his ignorant aunt. She wasn't lying when she described him as 'the complete package.'
She didn't think it was possible for a single mutant to have so many different yet complementary powers. On top of all this the boy was a certifiable genius if grades were anything to go by. And his web shooters, just Mwah.
It was him, more than anyone she had collected so far that would give them the edge against the X-men. It was a shame that their relationship had to start out so sour, her threatening his worthless human aunt and all that. But soon he would turn to their way of thinking, and any previous perceived slights would no longer matter.
Just one more week and she would have the Spider-Man for Magneto's army.
Peter spent said week on two things: Spending time with his Aunt May and ensuring that the city would be as safe as possible while he was gone.
The first of these was easy enough, they cooked and ate together for breakfast and dinner, they took walks in the park, and he even managed to take her to see a play. The only difficult spot was the initial conversation after Ms. Darkholme left.
Peter had walked back inside where May had begun to cook breakfast.
"Hey May, can we talk for a minute" he started.
"Of course Peter, can you put the toast in the toaster" she asked as began cracking eggs into a large pan, sausage was already sizzling in another pan. Peter grabbed two pieces of bread and pushed them into the toaster, his aunt seemed focused solely on her cooking.
"May," Peter began, trying to get her attention, but she avoided him by checking the eggs and sausage. "Peter, how would you like your eggs? Fried, over easy, scrambled?"
"May," he tried again, and again she acted like she didn't hear him. "You know I heard the weather is supposed to be beautiful today, maybe I can invite the Watsons and we can all go for a walk in the park. Peter can you take the sausage off the stove"
Peter did just that, piling the meat onto a plate, it was then that he realized May had made way too much food. A sure a sign as any that she was far more stressed then she was willing to let on.
"May," he tried again. "Oh that reminds me we're almost out of some essentials, we need to go grocery shopping," his Aunt continued to ignore him.
The toaster dinged as lightly crisped bread popped up, Peter ignored it, instead putting a hand on his aunt's shoulder and turning her gently to face him. "May, please talk to me."
The older woman didn't move at first, seeming unsure of what to do, but after a moment she turned and gave her nephew a tight lipped smile. "Alright Peter" she said, and the two of them sat down at the kitchen table.
Neither spoke at first, Peter was gathering his thoughts, mind racing. Why was his aunt so okay with the idea of him moving away like this? Sure Bayville was a great school, one of the top 5 public schools in the country, but Peter couldn't imagine why she would want him to leave her like this.
Well… that isn't exactly true, there are a few reasons he could guess. The foremost being that he hasn't been around as much as he should be to take care of her. Between Spidermaning, school work, and spending time with his friends he hasn't been giving his beloved aunt nearly enough attention.
He began to speak, his words a jumbled mess as they poured out. "Aunt May… I'm sorry I haven't been around for you as much as I should've been, I know i've made a lot of excuses before, but… but none of that matters, you're the most important person in my life May, you're the closest thing I have to a mother, and I think I've failed to be a good nephew…a-a good son, and now that I'm gonna be going away… I just… I don't know, I just don't want you to be mad at me, I'm sorry."
The woman in question sat there mouth agape. She never expected Peter to be harboring such guilt, especially over something she herself never considered to be a problem. Sure it was a bittersweet feeling knowing that Peter was growing up and spending more time with his friends and away from the proverbial nest.
But that didn't mean she held any ill will towards her nephew, quite the opposite in fact, she couldn't be prouder of the boy turning man.
"Peter, you stop that kind of talk in this instance," she took his hand in hers "I could not be more proud of you, and I know Ben would feel the exact same. I have never felt anything as rewarding as watching you grow into the man that you are destined to be. I love you, and I will always love you" she said with complete sincerity.
"I… thank you Aunt May" the adolescent boy says simply, feeling at a loss for just how forgiving his Aunt truly was.
May keeps her smile up, even if it can't quite reach her eyes. "I love you so much that I have to let you go."
"May?" Peter started, but his aunt held up her
"I know you're not happy about the Idea of going away from the city like this. But with everything that's been happening these last few months… you being out there with all these- these super criminals."
"May I'm fine, I always stay super far from the actual fighting, I swear, that's what the long range lens is for '' again Peter asked himself how the lies flowed so easily when talking to his aunt.
"Oh I know you do Peter, you're a smart boy, you'd never willingly put yourself in danger" she took his hand in hers and continued "but after what happened with Ben I realized that it doesn't matter how careful you are, the unimaginable is always possible, and I think Mr. Osborn's death reminded me of that fact."
Peter sat there mouth agape, he never imagined things like this were going through his Aunt's mind. Sure he knew she was worried about him going out but he always assumed it was a general sense of concern that any parental figure feels at the idea of their teenage children starting to go out on their own. He never considered that her concern stemmed specifically from what happened to Uncle Ben.
He squeezed her hand before saying "I'm sorry I ever made you worry. I always thought, well I don't know what I thought, but I never imagined that me going every night to get pictures would upset you this much. I just wanted to help you pay the bills."
"I know Peter, I know, and I couldn't be prouder of you. But you're still just a teenager, it's not fair to make you take up all that responsibility."
There it was, the R-word that never failed to make Peter flinch no matter the context. He took a a second to just digest his aunt's words. This was just one of the many moments where it was apparent to him just how incredibly self sacrificing she is, heck it seems like everyone in the Parker family always put others before themselves. After collecting himself Peter responded
"But May I don't mind it at all, I mean you and Ben gave me so much, give me so much and-and you deserve so much, I owe you everything. Let's say it isn't fair to me, which I disagree with, but if that's the case then it's not fair to you either" he told the most important person in his life.
"Well you won't have to worry about that now, Peter, I'll do fine on my own, and the Watsons are next door if anything happens." She attempted to reassure the boy.
Peter wished it did reassure him, maybe if this really was a great opportunity for him it would. But knowing that this whole 'school opportunity' was just a scam to get Spiderman made any of May's comforting words mute.
So what if Bayville is one of the best schools in the country if it was being run by an evil lunatic bent on who knows what. Heck this Darkholme lady might not even be the actual principle, this could all just be an elaborate hoax to make sure he wouldn't step out of line and he'll be shipped to some shadow government facility to be experimented on.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts, it did him no good to think about this kind of stuff right now. All that mattered was making sure his aunt May was ok.
"I guess so long as you're ok i'm-" he stopped mid sentence as something assaulted his senses "do you smell something burning?" He asked.
They both looked at each other confused before their eyes widened at the same time in realization. Both jumped up and shouted "The eggs!"
Without thinking he grabbed the pan and took it off the stove. The eggs were completely blackened and smoking like a chimney, or Jameson on a bad day. It was on the stove for so long that the heat resistant handle was too hot to comfortably touch, unfortunately for Peter that's exactly what he grabbed.
He spent a panicky few seconds trying to find a good place to put the burning pan, all the while muttering "owowowowow."
He eventually decided on the sink, that was a safe bet right? He dropped the pan in and started shaking his hands in an attempt to stave off the heat. He then had the brilliant idea to start the faucet, the thought process being that it would cool down the pan and make sure the eggs didn't spontaneously combust into flame.
That was a bad idea, as extreme heat + water = a ton of steam, which proceeded to fill the entire kitchen. Peter coughed and attempted to wave away the smoke, turning the faucet off. At that point the fire alarm went off.
"May are you alright?" he called out. The woman in question responded with a good natured giggle, "yes Peter i'm fine."
He heard her walk over to a window and open it to let the steam out of the room. As it cleared he watched her turn the stove off, as he forgot to in the panic.
"How about we go to Mike's diner for breakfast hm?" she asked with a grin
Peter guiltily grinned back and nodded. "I'll pay?"
Who was paying for the meal ended up being an ongoing debate up until they got the check. Peter did manage to pay for it, but only by swapping May's debit card with cash from his wallet when she wasn't looking. He gave the card back to her once the waiter took the money to the register.
She gave him a half hearted glare, which quietly melted into silent pride at the boy's action.
The rest of the week from Sunday to Friday was spent in his spider suit. Living on the edge, fighting crime, spinning webs, the whole bit.
Peter spent so much time in the suit that holes started forming in the joints of the spandex. At one point he was on patrol from 7 pm Monday till midnight on Tuesday. Doing everything from webbing up muggers to saving people from burning buildings to saving a tree from a cat… yes you read that right.
There was one benefit to running himself ragged swinging all over the city, he got a truckload of pictures to sell to the bugle. Enough that Jonah could fill every page with pictures of the webhead for the next month.
The first night he handed in the pictures he informed them that he would be moving away for school.
There was a mix of reactions from his co-workers.
Betty and Ned wished him luck and were all around supportive.
Fosewell seemed to not care at all.
Robertson clapped him on that back and gave him an advance on his pay, with a raise. One Peter apparently wasn't allowed to say no to.
Jameson himself began yelling about 'two week resignations' and 'where am I gonna find someone willing to chase after that nut-job Spiderman.'
But in the end they all wished him well in some form or another. It felt good, in a bittersweet way, to know that all these people did actually care for him even if they didn't all show it outright.
It was late Thursday night (or maybe it was early Friday morning?) when he heard someone call out to him from a rooftop. Looking mid-swing he saw it was an African-American man in a bright yellow tee-shirt and jeans, who he recognized as Luke Cage AKA Powerman.
Landing on the roof he noticed several other people on the rooftop. A man clad in a red kevlar costume with a horned mask: Daredevil, a ginger woman in yellow spandex with a cat themed mask and clawed gloves: Hellcat, an asian man in a black and red gi and a caucasian man in a green gi with a yellow mask: Shang Chi and Iron Fist, and lastly a raven haired woman in a baggy overcoat and ripped jeans with a cigarette in her mouth: the PI Jessica Jones.
Together they made up the day to day vigilante crime stoppers of New York. They weren't an actual team in any official capacity, they all just kind of did their own thing for their own reason and occasionally they would work together if they were after the same crook. The Webhead had teamed up with each of them at one point or another.
"Hey guys whats up" Spidey said breathlessly. He was slightly surprised at how breathless he sounded. How long has he been out today? He stopped counting at 13 hours.
Powerman just gave him a raised eyebrow before saying "'whats up'? That's all you've got to say man?"
"Is there something else I should be saying?" Peter was honestly confused, Luke didn't sound angry, and looking around it didn't seem like anyone on the roof was particularly pissed.
Well maybe except for Jessica but she had a RBF that could kill a man. No, instead everyone here had varying expressions of concern on their masked, partially masked, and unmasked faces.
"Is this an intervention? Because I'll have you know I can stop whenever I want to I just don't want to" he quipped.
Luke chose to ignore the attempt and said "Dude you've been running around like a madman all week."
Hellcat spoke up "all my usual alleys have scumbags webbed up in them already"
"You single handedly defeated a whole dockside of drug traffickers the other day, in less than an hour!" Shang Chi exclaimed
"You saved that tree from that cat." Iron Fist said in disbelief
"You busted a cat burglar I was tracking for the last two weeks." Jessica informed him
"I saw you break a man's legs yesterday." Daredevil finished there little sharing circle
That last one made Spidey wince. "Th-that was an accident"
It really was, it was late wednesday and he was dead tired, running on nothing but fumes and his spider-sense. It was the last group of muggers he was breaking up for the night and he wanted to just get it done. One of the mooks managed to sneak behind him and his spider sense just went off.
He didn't even think about it, one second he was making sure the victim was alright and the next he was in a horizontal handstand and the mugger's knee's were inverted. It was a silent swing home that night.
"I'm not judging you kid" the red clad man said
"None of us are," Luke confirmed.
"We're just a bit worried about you, you haven't exactly been yourself lately." Hellcat stated.
"Yeah, you've been rounding up crooks without insulting them even once, what's up with that dude?" Jessica asked
"Aww i'm touched, I didn't realize you guys cared so much" Spider-Man said with way more of an edge to his voice than he was intending.
"I didn't mean it like that," he was quick to amend.
"Well what did you mean it like?" Shang asked him.
"I… I don't know man," Spider-Man sat down on the lip of the rooftop, rubbed his masked face and said "I'm just tired"
"Yeah no shit" Iron Fist helpfully supplied
A few moments of silence passed as Peter just grappled with how lethargic he felt while the rest of the heroes on the roof watched him.
"So?" Luke asked expectantly.
"So what?" Spidey respond in confusion
"So are you gonna tell us what's going on" Luke spelled out for him.
"Nothings going on, I just-" Spidey's explanation pettered off into mutterings that they couldn't quite make out. Well almost all of them, Daredevil stiffened and said with some alarm "you want to say that a little louder for the people without super-hearing"
Spidey winced, he's been doing a lot of that this whole conversation. Damn this really did feel like an intervention. Spider-Man spoke up again, clearer this time "I'm just going away for a while, I won't be here to help out around the city so I guess I'm just trying to make my last hurrah a good one."
'Last hurrah' Jessica muttered to herself before saying "you're making it sound like you're gonna die. You're not dying are you?"
If Peter didn't know any better he would think the PI sounded concerned for his well being… nah.
"It's nothing like that, It's just that a… scholastic opportunity came up and I'll be moving away soon."
Everyone crowded around the arachnid and what followed was various versions of 'what do you mean you're leaving' and one 'how old are you?' from Hellcat.
Eventually Daredevil decided to be the adult in the situation and pushed everyone back, "alright alright everyone settle down, none of us have ever pried into each other's lives before and we're certainly not going to start now."
He turned back to Spider-Man "do you know how long you're going to be away?"
The webhead scratched the back of his head before admitting "at best, several months," if that school thing isn't a complete lie "at worst, never."
They all stood silent, digesting this new information. None of them wanted to admit it, superheroes were surprisingly prideful when it came to stuff like this, but Spider-man was easily the best person to keep the crime of New York in check.
Sure they could all manage their own individual parts of the city sufficiently enough, but Spidey was the only one who could get to every part of the city fast enough to cover its entirety. Not having that constant overwatch across the metropolis would be felt, especially with the crime wave happening in the power vacuum left by the Goblin.
Eventually Daredevil spoke up "well I guess that means we're just going to have to pick up the slack right everyone"
Luke was the first to agree "sure, I can make sure the northern districts are covered"
"Danny and I can split up most nights to cover more ground" Shang Chi supplied. This caused Luke to turn to Daredevil and mouth 'Danny', the man without fear just shrugged in response.
"I can probably spend a few extra nights out on the streets," Hellcat tentatively added.
They all turned to Jessica, who was on her fourth cigarette at this point. "Hey I'll be working myself to the bone like the rest of you, only difference is I'm getting paid for it."
"I, uh, wow" was the webhead's intelligent reply "thanks guys, It helps knowing the city will be in good hands."
They all said their goodbyes, Daredevil, Shang Chi, and Iron Fist all shook his hand, Luke gave him the predator hand clap, Hellcat actually hugged him which caused the teen to blush under his mask, Jessica gave him the finger.
It was all very loving and supported.
Peter gave a two finger salute and swung off the roof, feeling marginally lighter.
So yeah, I ended up including a bit more than just Daredevil, oops.
You know ever since the netflix show aired Charlie Cox's voice is what I hear whenever I read Daredevil. That's when you know it's a superb portrayal.
Just to give you a sense of the timeline I'm planning to do one more prologue chapter, then a chapter of Peter meeting the brotherhood and then we'll slide smoothly into the actual Evolution episodes. I'm planning to do one chapter per episode but we'll see how it goes once I actually have to transcribe the things.
So far it's pretty neck and neck between Kitty and Wanda as far as the shipping is concerned, with kitty being just a little bit ahead in terms of sheer numbers. Rogue was pretty much immediately thrown out of the running, poor girl, but hey none of these relationships are going to become romantic until way later so maybe there will be a shift in the tides.
Also some people have suggested Peter and X-23, which usually I'm all for, I think its an adorable ship and it adds a whole new dimension to any and all interactions between Peter and Logan. The only issue is that she doesn't show up until halfway through season 3 of 4 in the cartoon. I'm totally for keeping Peter single until she shows up and having her stay in the Xavier Institute at the end of her episode. But I would need to see a pretty significant demand for it.
I will say though that who Peter ends up with romantically won't really change the way he interacts with the other girls and how they interact with him, it just won't be as romantically charged. Instead of "Hey babe can you get me a drink" its "hey dude can you get me a drink" (if that makes any sense)
*VAGUE SPOILERS* For example I plan on having Rogue and Peter become pretty close over the course of the first season no matter what (she's pretty integral to the overall plot so they kind of have to be if I want Peter's inclusion to functionally matter). But that relationship can be either completely platonic or completely romantic depending on how I write it and how you want to read it. Likewise I plan to reenact that Tobey Magurie scene where he catches MJ in the cafeteria with Kitty no matter where the votes fall. It's just a matter of if and when the relationship becomes romantically charged.