Wed, 11:13 - AmajikiT: Hello Mr. Parker
Wed, 11:13 - AmajikiT: Would you rather I call you Peter?
Wed, 11:13 - AmajikiT: Hello Peter
Wed, 11:13 - AmajikiT: I apologize for saying hello twice.
Wed, 11:13 - AmajikiT: What would you prefer to be referred to as?
Wed, 11:16 - AmajikiT: Hello?
Wed, 15:34 - PP: Just Peter works!
Wed, 15:36 - PP: Sorry, I was at a vet's office seeing a guy about a dogZ. Are you the tutro that that one guy was talking about?
Wed, 15:43 - AmajikiT: Yes.
Wed, 15:43- AmajikiT: Allow me to introduce myself
Wed, 17:36 - PP: ?
Whenever Peter has time to himself, he perches. He finds somewhere high or hidden and stops to stalk or think. It was almost funny, the number of times he'd caught people up to no good by simply standing around in one place for twenty minutes, finding shapes in the clouds reflected in the lenses of his mask before being called to action. This experience has lent credence to a theory: stay in one place long enough and you might just become invisible.
There is a suspension bridge leading out across the sea towards a stretch of rolling verdant hills just a mile off of the easternmost part of Musutafu. By it was a pier, typically and ideally occupied by sightseers, joggers, and kids Peter's age just looking for a view to ruminate on such abstract concepts as love, death, and whether or not they should get that piercing.
Were he native to these streets, Peter might have found himself enjoying the public space like a normal person—inasmuch as a person can be normal in this particular world, at least. Instead, he sits crouched underneath the bridge overlooking the pier, his now just beyond shoulder-length hair dangling down towards the impetuous waters below while he taps away at his phone. Forty-eight minutes he spent sitting on the underside of the bridge, visible to whoever found it in themselves to look up. Almost bewilderingly, no one had. Considering these peoples' propensity for keeping their eyes on the skies, he figured someone would've called out to him or tried to write him up for this, but he supposes the view's a lot more enamoring than his amazing spider powers.
Which he must unfortunately concede to. It is an incredible view.
Alright, Peter's Log. Star date, Thursday: Sandwich has taken his heartworm medication, my Japanese is slightly better; costume's still in ribbons, my webbing's all out and I have been left on read by the guy who's supposed to help prepare me for my second go at high school enrollment. Awesome week. Super cool.
Peter exits the note-writing app and switches over to the texts app. One conversation, one last desperate 'Hello?' sent to the mysterious individual known as AmajikiT a few hours ago. Peter had to assume the guy had been struck by lightning the millisecond after he sent that last text. Or a falling air conditioner. Maybe both!
A few uneventful and utterly ineffectual seconds pass; Peter taps away at nothing in particular. A notification pops up, and he taps it with such speed that he's afraid he might accidentally break it.
Thurs, 1:13, AmajikiT: Arrive at around 4:30 P.M. [Link]
Placing one hand on the bottom of the bridge, he takes his feet off the surface and lets himself dangle by his ever reliable sticky fingers. A link. Map directions more specifically—a little red arrow hangs over a street he's sure he's passed over a hundred times by now and the time to arrival's calculated to be around twenty minutes on foot. Though a little off-put by the clipped directions the mysterious AmajikiT gave him, he didn't have much other choice but to follow. That, and he didn't have much else to occupy his time with.
He blows a few stray brown hairs out of his face. It's another three hours before he has to be there. At the very least, he should attempt to look presentable.
Here's a fun fact: Peter Parker hasn't gotten a haircut in five months. It was already starting to get a little unruly before he was whisked away by the pale rider, but in the last week it had just become an issue. When he looked in the mirror that morning, he swore he could hear Aunt May fishing all her tools out of her bag. Ben's old comb; the too-sharp shears; the gel she got in bulk that Peter was quite fond of. Things were busy in those last few weeks. May was working extra hours and Peter was occupied in the ways only Peter could be.
So he looked a little shaggy. Were he not trying to get a functioning mask together for him to wear sometime soon, Peter would consider just getting a bun or ponytail, but he unfortunately had enough taste beaten into him by now to understand how that would look sticking out of his costume. Not to mention how easy to recognize him it would be. And the fear of someone tugging on it as some underhanded tactic.
But herein lies the rub: he has no gel, no comb, no May. All he's got is sharp enough scissors that came with the kitchen, his hand-eye coordination, and a mirror. The end result of his attempt is, generously, an improvement. Certainly less professional than the usual style May would end up giving him—now it's a short but unruly mess of brown that darkens at the roots, shoots off in whatever direction it so pleases as though alive, autonomous, and yearning for a freedom Peter can't give it.
Mary Jane would probably think it made him look cool. May would say he looks like an amoretz from Williamsburg.
Peter washes off after the fact. Sandwich tilts his head at him as he steps out—which Peter takes as a compliment inasmuch as a dog is able to convey a compliment—and trots off to some other corner of the apartment to go do whatever it is he does. The boy gets dressed in jeans and a sweater, keeps the well-washed but still tattered remains of his costume underneath. It's habitual at this point; some part of him feels naked without it, even if the top's got one too many holes in it and the web pattern would need to be restitched to look even remotely whole again, Spider-Man has to be ready to reveal himself at a moment's notice.
Instead of the usual self-defenestration, Peter chooses to walk down the stairs out of the apartment complex like a normal person would. The time to arrival's short enough that he'd have too much extra time waiting around for someone whose face he doesn't know. Really, could he not have been given the courtesy of a selfie? Or a more specific place to meet than what is, as Peter learned earlier, just some fast food locale.
Whoever this AmajikiT was, he had better be paying for dinner.
Peter makes his way there at an even pace, attentive of the time and traffic on the road. This was the first time since he'd arrived that he's chosen to really blend in with the crowds and walk about the streets of Musutafu without just looking for a place where he could surreptitiously take to the rooftops. Now he moves like any member of these quotidian afternoon throngs, and it's just—
Well, he can't really find a word for it, but it doesn't feel very good at all. Taking this quiet comfort in a pleasant walk when he's still racing against the clock, dread still snapping at his heels—it feels so profoundly wrong.
Eventually Peter arrives at his destination. It's a seafood place with a colorful squid mascot that seemed to be helping itself to a comically large plate of calamari, which he assumes everyone just thinks is okay.
He pushes past the clear double doors and sees what one might expect; three lines of exhausted salarymen getting a cheap dinner, mothers with their squirming children trying to get a coherent order together, and the odd groups of mutant teens milling around and waiting for their buzzers to go off. Still not sure exactly who he's looking for, he considers the facts: it's an upperclassman, so someone just a little older than him; taller too, most likely. And they're probably alone, waiting for Peter at a table if the intention was to get acquainted one-on-one.
For a moment no table seems to fit the description, until he eventually sets his sights on the one booth sequestered nearby the trash bins, separated from the rest of them by a pillar. The guy sitting there, who he would for now assume was AmajikiT, looked plainer than he expected considering the last few people he's had conversations with.
Black hair, thoroughly boring clothes, eyes set on the buzzer on the table in front of him; if anything he just seemed a little lonely. The only significant distinguishing feature that Peter could parse out were the shape of his ears—sharp like a Tolkien elf.
Did the books exist here? He hasn't bothered to check.
Peter makes his way to the table and at no point does AmajikiT look up and acknowledge the taller teen doesn't so much as give a cursory glance in his direction. His gaze was fixed strictly on that buzzer, staring expectantly at the little red number seventeen glowing on the tiny screen above the restaurant logo.
"Hello?" Peter says in a language not his own, carefully spacing out the syllables in kon-ban-wa. Embarrassed as he is at his poor showing, Peter is more or less certain that he's caught on to the quirks of the language faster than most would.
The other teen looks up and cycles through a variety of emotions upon finally realizing he's been approached. Jumping from bewildered, to a little bit startled, to, well, something adjacent to constipation. Peter doesn't quite know what to think about all that, but he can't suppose it means anything too concerning.
Then an uncomfortable silence lingers between them, locked eye-to-eye; an amplified silence, really. Like the sterile droning of a hospital after dark, fluorescent lights emitting that awful hum. Peter expects a hello in return at least, but it doesn't seem like he's getting it.
Deciding he's had well enough of that, Peter speaks up again, "Are… You… Amajiki-T?"
Unbeknownst to Peter however, the teen known to the world as Tamaki Amajiki was too busy trying to perceive the young foreigner as a talking mountain yam. Hado had suggested mountain yams in particular, insisting they were the nicest and most amicable conversational vegetables. There was no reason to take her word on that other than the vain hope that such a tactic might work, but here he was: tongue-tied before a talking yam with an American flag sticking out of it. A possible underclassman talking yam, no less! How shameful!
Amajiki searches, searches through the dark for any words to say, and eventually lands on, "I—yes. Yes, I am Amajiki Tamaki." He stumbles and stammers, jumping from Japanese to English between words. "You are Peter Parker?"
There's a look of relief on the Parker boy's face after he receives the reply. Tamaki watches him step closer to the table a little cautiously, pointing to the seat and briefly waiting for some sign of assent. The older of the two nods, and the younger sits opposite of him at the booth, quiet as a mouse.
Amajiki musters up the bravery of a true hero, and continues, "I would like to—like to apologize for leaving you… For leaving you with no response until this evening. I was busy. That is very rude of me." He finishes with a slight bow of his head, contrite.
"Hey, don't mention it," Peter replies, noting the heavier accent and less practiced speech than the last two he'd spoken to. He appreciated the gesture, knowing well enough that the conversation would be completely one-sided if Peter needed to use what pitiful amount of the local language he could employ. "I'm sure you were up to something more important than—"
Peter is sharply and abruptly interrupted by Amajiki slamming both arms on the table, generating a noise so loud that the former might have registered it as a sign of danger if he wasn't looking directly at the source. The upperclassman stared intensely at the prospect, his body trembling such that the table—which Peter is certain is bolted to the ground—began to shake.
His voice is a strained, tremulous whisper as he speaks, "I'm so sorry. I'm ashamed to even call myself your guide; an aspiring hero, even. I… wasn't busy at all! I was afraid to embarrass myself further after that initial text… And—And spamming your texts was completely, truly unforgivable! Hado had said that the best thing to do would be to lie and say I was busy, but I just can't live with that. It's a dishonor to the UA, myself, my family—everything…"
Amajiki looked downcast, depressed, dejected and positively dispirited. Wandering eyes scrutinized both teens from every end of the restaurant, and a few of the workers looked ready to make sure things were alright.
"And, to top it all off," Amajiki continues, slowly raising his head and locking eyes with the bewildered boy before him, "I didn't even decide to be your upperclassman guide out of the kindness of my heart… I only took the position because I did poorly on my Calculus final, and Mr. Yoshioka said that doing this would count as extra credit. I truly am… Terrible…"
Now Peter, for his part, did not get up and leave like he might have otherwise. This could be attributed to his newfound acceptance that things would only get stranger before they found their way back to normalcy, and the fact that Amajiki had delivered that whole speech in Japanese, meaning that Peter could only understand about a third of it. Which, miraculously, were all the parts he needed to get the idea. As Amajiki sat there, shaking like a wet dog and practically on the verge of or experiencing a mental breakdown, Peter took a moment to consider what he would say or do next.
That particular train of thought was broken when Amajiki's buzzer finally went off. Order number seventeen.
Amajiki sputters, "I have to g-go pick that up."
"Yeah that's cool, man," Peter responds, words coming out of him faster than he intended. Amajiki stands up and ambles on over to the counter with his buzzer in hand.
Alright, so he's a neurotic weirdo. Which honestly, not altogether shocking given the caliber of people I've met so far. Drumming his fingers on the table, watching Amajiki stumble through communicating with the restaurant staff, Peter struggles to see where this is all going. He wonders, what was he even being guided through? Where was the guidance here, exactly?
The so-called guide sits back down with a fishy-smelling tray of more food than one person can possibly eat on their own. "Well, uh," the student starts, back to his imperfect English, "I have to tell you that if you h-have any questions about the school, or the entrance exams, you can ask to me first. But I can not tell you what will be on the exam or what you will face in the practical."
"Right, that makes sense." Peter leans forward, scanning the food with shamelessly wide eyes. May would call him rude for drooling over another's meal, but it wasn't like it was especially couth of the other boy to hoard all that food. "You could've just said that first, you know? Before the whole… That."
The older lad blushes and Peter feels a bit guilty about putting him on the spot. MJ would find this guy cute, and he would only kind of agree.
"But it's fine! Glad to know I've got someone to confide in in the meantime." Peter gives him a thumbs-up, trying to lighten the mood and build some kind of rapport. "You seem like a more well put together guy than me, so I already basically trust you with my life."
Amajiki blanches, the crushing weight of added responsibility settling deep in his bones.
"In—in like a metaphorical way," Peter clarifies. "You seem like a—y'know, a pretty cool guy. A good guy. A reliable guy."
Amajiki then considers his words, the cogs in his nervous brain turning briefly, and smiles, modest and demure as always. "Thank you. I will not let you down."
There's something in that which makes Peter smile back. He hadn't exactly meant it when he said Amajiki was a good guy; he wouldn't know, really. But it's a good smile. The sort that May would trust. "I don't really have anything to ask right now. I still haven't really finished the actual application, honestly. But I'll keep it in mind if anything comes up."
"Okay," Amajiki affirms with a small nod, reaching for one of the little cartons of food. "I was not able to—to stay very long. I have t-training later tonight. I am sorry."
Peter shoots him a quizzical look. He asks, a little rudely, "Is it okay to be eating that much before you go, y'know, work out?"
While already chewing up his first octopus ball of the evening Amajiki's eyes widen in mild bemusement, then soften in understanding. He swallows. "This is… for training. My quirk needs me to eat."
The foreign boy gives him a bit of a look, something firmly between curiosity, befuddlement and an odd sort of realization. While he'd learned it himself some time ago, it was still strange to be talking to someone he knows has a superpower in such a candid, out-of-costume scenario. It hadn't even occurred to him that the kid was probably training to be a superhero. Like he'd forgotten exactly what it was he was signing up for.
Food for thought later. Peter, however, needed literal food right about now.
"Can—Is it okay if I take something? I sorta skipped breakfast."
Amajiki nods, quickly and kindly passing him one of the small cartons containing three small skewers spearing through some seared chicken and vegetables. They eat together in silence, the older of the two leaving after a few minutes. Peter wanted to ask how his powers worked—why they seemed to require eating octopus, chicken and half a hamburger before using them—but he didn't exactly know what the decorum was around here with that sort of thing. He figures it's like asking what their bathroom habits are: weird, invasive, and only something that would come up if a discussion needed to be had.
Time does that thing it always does and passes by poor Peter Parker like a bus he failed to catch. It's just slow days this time. There're a few more hairs on Sandwich's body and he's fumbling through hiragana. The written exam comes and he's put in a stuffy room alone at the monolithically large H-shaped school building and given a standard test he probably could have done in middle school. Then there's the day of the practical test. Whatever that meant.
They tell him to show up in something flexible, meant for physical activity and getting 'down and dirty', as Present Mic put it. Amajiki recommends he not worry too much about it, which is only a little funny considering the guy in question seemed to be the biggest worrier on Earth.
Peter shows up some thirty minutes ahead of time because he's got nothing else to do in the evenings. The school's all empty; there're streamers and signs put up which, from what he can read, proclaim that the entrance exams are upon them. But no one else is at the entrance but Peter, and he can't help but wonder why he seems to be kept away from the rest of the student prospects. He asks himself, was this how it's always going to be? It must be some sort of weird clerical conflict, what with his situation being an utterly bizarre exception to what appears to be just about every rule and common sense decision there is.
Still, he would at least like to get an idea of what his classmates would be like. If Amajiki was any indication, he was certainly in for something that might just require time to prepare.
(As if he could even get a grip on normal high school.)
He's told by some three-headed snake lady at a desk that he's to report to Ground Beta, which is on the westernmost end of the campus. She gives him some directions—Past the parking lot and track field, go outside the boundaries of the school's main wall and keep down the road until you see another, even bigger wall with a three-story tall dark brown double-door—and he gets there quick enough. It's all a bit mysterious when he's standing before the gigantic entryway, staring up at it and questioning whether or not this was actually where he was supposed to be. The walls cast a shadow over Peter in the waning sunlight of the late afternoon.
Then what he believes is a loudspeaker blares, the distinctly disconcerting shrill of one Present Mic coming through, "Alriiiiiight—! Welcome to Training Ground Beta Mr. Parker! My sincerest apologies for the wait, we're just getting our admissions committee ready to spectate for your performance review! But that little head of yours might be thinking, 'what am I gonna be performing?!'"
It takes a moment for Peter to realize it isn't an electronic speaker at all. Behind the wall, he can just barely spot the small shape of Mic standing high atop a building, dramatically gesticulating like he was hosting a concert.
"Behind that big door is a replica city that we at our fine school use as a training ground to accurately simulate scenarios that heroes, young and old, are likely to find themselves in! Now you're also probably wondering: 'why exactly am I doing this all by myself?' Well! Given the footage we reviewed of your recent exploits, we determined that your abilities and skills might be a smidge above those of our typical applicants!"
Peter smirks, a little pleased by that. It makes sense to him, really. Experience outdid everything else, and he's got a year on those kids—
"But not by that much!"
The smirk drops.
"Even still, we like to keep things even around here! We've catered the challenge before you to a single person, but a few knobs have been turned to really test your mettle! Now, the doors'll be open in just one second, but if you have any questions I'll take them now!"
Peter yells, "What's the actual challenge!?"
"What?!" Mic replies, and Peter quickly deduces that the man must not have super-hearing. "Sorry, you're gonna have to be a little louder! Ah—whatever, you're fine! Just knock us dead, kiddo!"
"Then what was the point of asking if I had any—y'know what? Whatever," the young man groans. The heavy doors start to part inward, slow as whatever control pushes what's likely thousands of tons of dense steel. A thin vertical light beam washes over Peter, growing wider, yet wider, revealing a dense city behind it. But it was a city in ruins; one of steel husks of mechanical monsters dripping oil and wheezing static, trails of pitted asphalt down what might have been used as a road once.
Peter steps through the threshold, coming into the run-down city with a quirked eyebrow and a bad feeling in his stomach. The doors shut slowly behind him, leaving fewer options than he already had.
Spider-Man heaves a heavy breath, and proceeds forward.
Hundreds of feet above, a quarter mile away, five men watch a teenage boy stumble through a desolate city street from within a viewing station lit only by blue screens and the one window they'd let wide open for circulation. There's a too-serious air in the room for Present Mic to be even remotely comfortable with; every breath feels so terribly dry whenever Safety Commission stooges feel the need to drop by. And he's best friends with Aizawa, so that's really saying something.
One of the aforementioned stooges, a thin fellow with ears the size of satellite dishes, inquires, "So, have we learned anything new since the Cube King incident?"
"Nothing substantial. He quite likes to jump, if that's at all satisfying to know," is the sharp reply of Nezu, the top rat-dog-creature at the head of the table, elbows rested and paws together. Mic notices he doesn't take his eyes off the screen for a second.
"Whatever the case, I'm still of the belief that this trial might be insufficient for testing the upper limits of the boy's abilities. With what little we know now, it might be best to push harder than you would with your usual students," another opines; some bespectacled suit with tangerine hair and a forked tongue. "By exactly how much did you increase the aggression of the imperials?"
"Fifteen percent. But alas, as we do not intend to harm the boy, I cannot fulfill your desire to see it increased any further," Nezu says, concise and cutting as ever.
Mic was just glad their boss found them insufferable to be around, too.
The suit huffs. All Might, bony and hollow-cheeked, shifts a little uncomfortably in his seat beside Nezu as he watches the young man meander down the empty road. It's only a little more surprising to see the big guy react this way to, well, anything—something about the Parker boy must have rattled him, but Mic couldn't begin to guess why. Maybe it was just the need of a second open window.
Remember the SHSAT?
Peter walks down the empty road, stepping over a robot that looked grimly like a scorpion with three tails. His Spider-Sense is quiet and the air is still.
Of course I do. I barely studied for it and it was the easiest test of my life. 'Specialized' schools my butt—I could've gotten into Brooklyn Tech easy. I mean, honestly, what was the big deal with that anyways?
He hops over a crater where the shell of a robot lays caked in ash.
I went into that testing center without a care in the world and came out with a near perfect score. Which, y'know, should've been a perfect score if the reading sections weren't so intentionally obtuse. But I went to Midtown to stay with MJ, which was the best decision of my life. But even still, I think about the test often. How much it stressed out all those eighth graders. And on that test day I could see it in their faces—all that anguish and anxiety, built up over months.
Bounds over a hollowed out car, keeps down the main road where all the action must have happened. The burnt smell of it all is still so fresh. They must have not bothered to clean up since the last time it was used.
I didn't really get it at the time. But y'know what?
Spider-Sense. From his right.
One of the robots, tall and green, clunky and steel-bound, ripping down from a shadowed alleyway with a glowing red eye. It raises one of its two large arms once the distance is cleared, ready to strike a dent into the Parker boy's skull. Swift as ever, the young man leaps out of his spot, and the robot's arm goes crashing into the earth.
It whirls around, searching frantically for its target, finding… Nothing. The air is still again, the only sound being the electric whirring of its wheels and limbs.
I still don't get it.
A sound soon followed by the crunching of metal and the tearing of wires as the robot's sight goes black, its thin head ripped right off its neck. It's a nearly effortless ordeal with his spider-strength—like unscrewing the cap off a water bottle. A little bit of torque can go a long way.
He examines his handiwork, understanding that what he just did was a little mortifying by most standards. Extreme, maybe, Peter thinks, tossing the likely expensive piece of training equipment aside as its body crashes to the ground, the boy balanced on its back, but I'm in dire need of therapy. This' a serviceable alternative.
Spider-Sense blares again. Four more robots break from the shadows—one behind him, another two on his right, and one coming down the main road—moving as a unit with a surprising amount of strategy. They form a restrictive circle around him, spinning closer and closer with a speed that betrays their size.
If this were closer to a month ago, he might have been worried. One would think weeks of rest and repast would dull Spider-Man's sense for violence, rust the gears in his powerful body. The truth was that he hasn't felt this physically healthy since he first got his powers. All that time fighting week-to-week villains and losing sleep was worse for him than anything else.
So when one of them takes the plunge and tries to throw at him, only to have its arm ripped off and used as a throwing weapon against another, he can only think,
I can't believe they're letting me do this for free.
"He's… Well, he's certainly something."
Nezu hums at the stooge's comment, and cannot help but agree. The only one to perform as efficiently as this was the Bakugo boy, whose attitude left a sour taste in his mouth. Not that he couldn't say the same about this Parker lad; the way he privately smirked, barely visible on one of the imperials' cameras as he punched his hand through its carapace, brought on similar feelings.
Toshinori still looks discontented. This sort of thing would usually garner a more positive reaction, but given the circumstances—well, he can't be blamed for his concern.
Another quirkless boy with this kind of power, seemingly from nowhere? It just didn't bode well around here.
"Wait, is he… Talking to us?"
From his left this time. Peter knows the spiked tail is coming for him before the loading noise of the bladed end even whistles its sibilant warning through the air. He flips over it, grabs the tail, swings it around until the appendage tears off and the body goes flying into one of the already destroyed buildings. Six more burst from the shadows of the city, hidden in ways he can't quite see, and he realizes he's finally starting to break a sweat.
"So like, I can't really get quippy with you guys," Peter says to no one but himself, perfunctorily sidestepping another attack. "You're robots. You don't have souls to mock. I haven't been able to get quippy with anyone since I got here—we either can't communicate or they're not even living human beings."
Peter pivots, raising his leg and spin-kicking through the torso of another. Electronic bits fly from its destroyed body, little shattered remains clinging to the bottom hem of his pants and the soles of his shoes. Another machine tries to capitalize, using both arms in an attempt to catch the boy in its grip.
"You guys should be programmed to cry when you're insulted. Like real people." Peter raises both arms, palms facing the robot's large metal ones, and catches them just in time. "Or at least get a little nettled. It's not as fun if you're not a little nettled." He grips both arms and tugs, ripping the limbs right out from its mechanical sockets.
The next couple go down just as swiftly. A well-placed kick, a small explosion, followed by him simply picking one up and tossing it across the road head-first into a light post. It was starting to get a little too easy. Then another seven make themselves known. After they're dispatched, ten. And then ten more.
As he's punching through the chest of another, hands and mind occupied, another wraps some kind of whip around his foot from behind. Spider-Sense warns him about it before it happens, but he can only do so much.
It drags him away from its ally, roughly pulling him across the ground as he tries to get his bearings again, and flings him into a wall. The concrete cracks and buckles from the impact, but Peter only grunts, lands, and wipes the spittle from his lip.
Another five roll and skitter into view. Claws ready, eyes casting crimson light as the sun sets behind the wall and the shadows of the city become deeper.
Spider-Man's fists clench. "Staring's rude," is all he says.
The group of robots charge, and Peter does too. It's a mess of iron limbs and deformed armor—their attacks miss him by the breadth of a hair every time. He's starting to slow down, if marginally; more close calls than there were before, more slip-ups. There's a brief moment of surprise when he tries to fire web from the web-shooters he knows well enough were left empty and useless in the apartment. One tries to capitalize on that, only to have its legs swept out from under it, its chest caved in, and its body employed as an improvised shield.
With one left standing, Peter decides to put on a show. He takes one of the stray scraps of robot he found, pivots around to face the remaining enemy as it tries to clear the distance between them. Then, as casually as he can, drops the metal bit and kicks it with all his might in the direction of the robot. It only whiffs, striking and embedding into the wall behind the robot.
Man, why did I even try that? That was such a Daredevil thing, he thinks a bit bitterly, finishing off the final robot with a simple dropkick.
All is silent as he expects another fifteen or twenty to pop out. The thought concerned him a little bit—though these things broke easily, he was starting to wear a little thinner than he'd like. How many had he gone through by now? Somewhere in the ballpark of forty, surely.
"Is… Is that all?" he says, voice raised loud enough so that someone might hear him through any kind of microphone they might have nearby or in one of the robots, some kind of response telling him that the test was over or would continue shortly. But nothing of the sort happened. You could hear a penny drop on the sidewalk.
"I guess I'll uh… Leave. Yeah. Seems safe to leave," Peter says aloud to himself, strolling back down from where he came after stopping to catch a breath.
Somewhere else high above, a button is pressed.
The ground shakes. Spider-Sense sounds the fire alarm. Peter turns, but can't even look at whatever's coming when the wind and dust pick up. It's something big, something powerful, barreling down the main road without a care for the structures surrounding it.
Windows shatter as it drags its massive metallic arms through buildings and dips its many-eyed head down to look at its target. Two large hands clutch the structures of the city in a way that's so eerily sentient, and it examines its prey as one would a rat under the sink.
Peter is frozen still, staring back up at it with wide-eyed confusion.
Are you serious? is all he can think as he watches one of its massive fists rear back, poised to strike. A giant robot?! Are you serious?!
The robot brings its fist down, dust exploding into the sky and a new crater being dug into the ground. Peter lands on a nearby rooftop, having leapt out of its trajectory just in time.
Do—Do I just punch it? I'd usually try to, I dunno, trip it up, but no webs! Zero webs! Zero futzing webs!
The colossal machine drags its arm through the city, head raising to peer over at the prospective student it was programmed to terrorize. Spider-Man braces himself, watching it raise its free arm and go for another, terrifyingly powerful blow.
This time, he leaps towards it, landing on its forearm and latching onto the surface. He crawls as fast as he can up and down the roaring beast, wincing as the noise of the thing's very movements shakes the world around him.
It reacts as a human would, plucking and picking at itself in an attempt to catch the bug on its body. Spider-Man nimbly evades it, twisting and turning in the safest ways he can immediately maneuver, and gets to wracking his mind on how to topple the giant.
Okay, this' a test, and not one of strength. Wrapping his fist against the giant's hull, he finds its armor much thicker than the smaller ones. Denser. Punching through it would be ill-advised. They can't expect me to just rip this thing apart like the rest. So—So what?
He leaps from off the robot, landing on the facade of one of the taller buildings still standing. The robot turns to him, fast as its size can allow it, and prepares yet another attack. In the few seconds he has before he has to get moving, Peter allows himself to think. Alright, discernible weak points. Joints, maybe? Its face? No, that's all armor, I'd need to hit in the same spot more than once to even put a dent in it.
The robot strikes the building, and Spider-Man's already halfway to ground level. As it pries its arm from the structure, the boy catches himself on a flagpole. Then, to his surprise, the giant tosses its bulk forward, falling into the building and collapsing it right over its target's head. Glass and rubble rained from above, and all Spider-Man could do was keep moving, keep on the run, keep his eye on wherever's safe and away from the thing.
C'mon man, think!
Danger rears its down head at him again. The red light of its eyes seems brighter as the world darkens. It moves to attack the target once more.
Think!
The world shakes as he just barely leaps from the trajectory of its attack, the building he'd been running across being crushed into a pile of rubble and rebar. He lands on his chest, tries to stand before the raging robot moves to strike again, but.
Thinkthinkthink!
It's too late. Another warning from his Spider-Sense, but he's too slow this time. Much too little, much too late. The gargantuan hand comes down on him like a hammer, and Peter's feet sink into the ground quite like nails. But his arms raise to push against its palm, his strength true, if just for now.
Peter can barely think, barely breathe. He feels like a hydraulic machine about to burst into pieces under the increasing weight, like he's just going to explode out of his own skin. His body trembles as his strength begins to fail him. Feeling himself start to give out, the desperation suffuses his mind and for a moment, he forgets where he is, forgets the world around him.
He's just about to let out a strained scream when the pressure stops altogether. Peter's arms go limp for a moment, but he's just able to catch himself before tumbling face-first into the small crater formed from the impact.
Once more, his feet have been jammed into the road. Once more, he's more exhausted than he thought he could possibly be in this situation. Once more, he's angry—angrier than he wants to be, but it's a rational fury this time. Afterall, he just got done being thoroughly convinced these people were going to kill him with a giant robot that was now strolling back from whence it came as though nothing had happened at all.
What was supposed to happen now?
"So you're going to keep him?"
Nezu turns to the stooge with glasses, briefly nonplussed. Of course, he understands what the man means by that, but he can't help but be offended by the audacity of the question itself, the sheer gall of him to insinuate that the boy was a thing to be kept. The study and examination was quite enough dehumanization already.
"He will be considered for enrollment as all other students have been once we are finished deliberating over the results of his exam."
Toshinori glances at Nezu when he says that. The rat-dog-possum creature catches it, but does not make the acknowledgement known.
"Right, then we'll be on our way. Clearly we have nothing we can do to convince you otherwise at the moment," the other man in a suit says, standing from his seat in unison with the former. They nod, walk in step with one another out of the room towards the exit. "Contact us if you reconsider."
The two less furry men in the room let out relieved sighs. "Yeeeeeesh!" Hizashi says, stretching out his arms. "Serious mood-killer! Just how the heck did they expect me to put on a show with'em breathing down our—"
"Mr. Yamada, could you please step out for a moment? I mean no disrespect! But I've something to discuss with All Might privately. If you could, might you go see young Parker off for us?"
Present Mic looks bewildered, if momentarily; it just wasn't often that Nezu referred to them by name like that. The rat-dog-possum-bear-raccoon knew this, and used that fact whenever he felt it necessary. It was a good way to set the tone, afterall!
He steps out with a nod, and a wave, off to check on the boy.
A beat. All Might's doesn't have much to say.
"I don't believe you've anything to do with this, Yagi. But you must admit, it's quite strange."
The hero nods, glued to the screen. "If those x-rays are to be trusted, then there's no way this young man should be exhibiting any sort of quirk, and yet…"
"It's quite strange indeed!" The rat-dog-possum-bear-raccoon shrugs, curiously noncommittal. "I had hoped you did have something to do with it, despite having already found your successor. The issue is, despite the effort of our best and the Safety Commission, we've come up with nothing on either existing transferable quirks, nor the boy himself!"
"...I have working theories." Though changes in his expression were difficult to read in his small form, something seemed to trouble him. "None good, I'll say that. I don't want to make conclusions. If what's been said about this boy bodes true, then there might be little to gain in keeping him contained. But enrolling him in U.A. seems…"
"A healthy amount of suspicion is excellent, Yagi. But we must consider that if we didn't get our hands on him, then the Safety Commission likely would."
"Would that really be a bad thing?"
Nezu remains silent, letting his wordlessness speak for itself.
"...Right. But we've no way of proving that they would go so far as to—"
"I would much rather avoid the possibility," Nezu interjects, "and for what it is worth, I'd much rather have avoided this sort of thing, too. But there's no safer place in the world for this young man to be than with, well, you."
Yagi raises an eyebrow at him, taken aback.
"We've tested his strength, perhaps too much really. The boy's nowhere near as strong as you and likely won't be a challenge for your successor once his training is even halfway to completion. While it has its risks, I can say with absolute certainty that any one of our newest students and delightful staff can do what must be done if he truly is a trojan horse of sorts."
"But if—"
"Yagi! You must be willing to take more risks." Nezu reaches for his tea, paws at an empty tabletop. All Might pretends not to notice. "As of now, we know too little to do anything extreme or that might strain our relationship with the boy any further. From what the police have gathered, he seems to have a healthy amount of distrust in us too. Let us see his lack of obsequiousness as a boon—he doesn't feel he has anything to prove to us."
"I… See what you mean. I still disagree with the decision, but… I'll give him a chance."
"And that is all I needed to hear."
Toshinori hears the rat-dog-bear-possum-raccoon sip some tea while he's watching Mic help the boy out from the rubble, and does not bother asking where it came from.
Whenever Peter has time to himself, he perches. Finds someplace high and secluded to brood and stalk; somewhere to sequester himself in the urban sprawl. It was difficult to do in a city he doesn't recognize, and he's still finding comfortable places to do so.
Tonight, he chooses the rooftop of the mall he'd gotten his first pair of shoes here. The lights from below aren't too distracting, but there's not many good places to sit.
Peter's angry still. The anger festers somewhere as dark and secluded as the places he chooses to brood, quieting down with each heavy breath and becoming little more than a frighteningly inevitable feeling to mull over later. But he didn't make it apparent to Mic when he was asking if he was ok or telling him he did a good job, and he tried not to think about it till he found a place where he could think comfortably. Because thinking is a dangerous thing for Peter Parker. But so's not thinking, so he'd rather do the one he has some kind of control over.
He hates this place. He really, truly does. Whenever things seem cool they turn out to be awful and he's certain that trend will keep going for the length of his stay. The end can't be too far now, surely? If he's desperate he'll just spill. Screw the consequences, screw them thinking he's some kind of psycho or not even being able to do anything to help, he'll find a way.
With or without some stupid superhero school.
Knockoff Xavier's School losers.
The wrong moon isn't particularly receptive to his scowling, so he takes out his phone. There's a good luck text from Amajiki he missed, and that makes him feel a little better, but he's got business with the internet right now. So he opens the web browser and types in a specific name.
No results. He searches again, specifying the name of the book. Maybe it was a different author? Nothing again. He searches for the movies, just to see if they failed in this universe and never became the sensation they were in his.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
"No Tolkien. Yeah, worst universe. By far."
And no one's around to argue against that.
End.
And thus the not-really-a-twist is revealed.
I don't imagine it's too surprising given the inspiration from USM but putting the Safety Commission in a slightly more antagonistic light feels like a fun exercise in how to talk about corporate/government hegemony and pit it against Spider-Man. I mean, one of his primary villains is a CEO businessman, when isn't he fighting guys in suits?
So that about does it for the 'prologue' if you'd call the first handful of chapters that, which we would but I dunno, you might disagree. If you DO disagree, feel free to leave a review and let us know! If you enjoyed it, also let us know WHAT you enjoyed so we can really hammer that nail in, too.
