I reuploaded with a couple edits and linebreaks that got lost during the initial upload.
A.N
I find it hard to write a new chapter on a blank canvas immediately after finishing a past one, especially considering that was the ending of the intro arc, but I'll do my best. Also, as I said, I will be speeding up this fic and definitely will be fucking around with the MCU timeline, mainly so I can fit in other events/training/whatever the fuck I want. . Also, I might go towards the 2k/3k chapter length in favor of publishing more often. I find that while reading, 4k seems nice, but while writing, for me at least, after 3k, it sometimes feels stretched.
Chapter 5: Good or Evil, who really knows?
After my superhero moment, Jean and I were unsure. Unsure about us. Unsure about where we were going. Unsure about how to get to civilization. Simply, unsure.
That last problem was solved, though not of our own volition, and not exactly how I would've wanted it.
The roar of an engine echoed in the distance, and crescendoed. The increase in volume signified a similar increase in proximity. In less fancy terms, something was coming.
Jean and I searched wildly for it before catching a glimpse of a very sleek looking plane coming towards us. As it touched down and the engines shut off; curiously, the noise of the engines persisted, though quieter.
Like Darth Vader exiting a ship, a ramp was let down from the ship, and it emitted a cloud of smoke, through which a silhouette became evident.
"If you are trying to seem ominous, it's totally working," I called out in amusement.
Jean punched me in the shoulder and muttered a soft "hush," evidently not amused by my antics.
Out strolled a man in a very distinctive costume. A red helmet with the face exposed, armor, and a long flowing cape. Any guesses as to who? Maybe this will clear it up.
Master of Magnetism.
I'm fucked.
Magneto floated above the snow, casually, almost dismissively, as if nothing could bother him.
Knowing his powers, he probably had every right to.
Spider-man was not powerful enough to defeat Magneto normally. This bruised and battered Spider-man who didn't know how to fight and just used instinct? That would be a fucking disaster. Jean had no control over her powers yet, and her telepathy couldn't get past Magneto's helmet anyways.
Long story short, we act nice, or we probably die. Not the greatest of situations
"Hello. My name is Magneto, and I have a proposal for you."
I squeezed Jean's hand tight to let her know I would do the talking. While I'm not exactly a diplomatic mastermind, I knew how to stall and appease well enough. I'm pretty much a master politician already.
"We're listening."
Oops. That was harsher than I meant it to be. Jean nudged me hard as Magneto levelled me with a glare. Nice job Parker, off to a great start.
He addressed Jean.
"I don't know if you know this, but you are a mutant. Because of this, humans will think you are worse than them. They will be scared, and they will hunt you down. But, we are better than them. Join me and help me build a new world with mutants in charge, for we aren't Homo Sapiens, we are Homo Superior."
Well damn, he gave his whole spiel. He didn't ease Jean into this at all.
"What are you going to do with humans when your Homo Superior is in charge? Throw them in concentration camps like the Nazis?" I responded, trying to not antagonize him too hard. I would appease him more but with Jean here, I couldn't have her think that I was supporting this cause, especially if it influenced her to join.
"What did you say about Nazis?" He growled.
Oh, shit Parker, act dumb.
"What's a Nazi?"
Not that dumb you nincompoop!
Thankfully, our conversation was interrupted by another plane touching down. Once it stopped, the lingering sound of engines finally ceased.
Magneto looked extremely unhappy with the new occurrence, which meant it was probably who I think it is. Out of the ship came 3 people. A man dressed in yellow and black with sharp claws, a beautiful woman with flowing white hair and electricity crackling around her, and a bald man in a wheelchair.
'Hey, it's the X-men, maybe I won't die here.'
Then Magneto raised a hand and sent Wolverine flying into a wall.
On the other hand, maybe I will die here.
At least Storm wasn't so easily taken care of. She floated up into the sky as it darkened around her, the smell of ozone filling the air, as the crackling air alerted everyone to what was about to happen.
A large bolt of lightning struck down near Magneto, sending him flying. Regaining his balance, he sent the X-men plane at Storm, nearly knocking her out of the sky.
I ran in towards Magneto, approaching him while he was distracted, and threw a punch. I made contact for a moment, severely disorienting him, before parts of scrap metal flew at me and tied me to the ground. I broke out with very little effort, but my battered body was closed to giving out completely.
Charles was using his low-level telekinesis to constantly bother Magneto while Storm continued to duel him. At this time though, Magneto's skill far exceeded Storm, and as the battle between metal and lightning raged on, Storm grew exhausted, her powers weakening as well.
Jean stood there, simply scared. And who could blame her? She had no experience with anything like this, no clue what was going on, and no idea how to control her powers.
When it seemed like we were moments from all crashing down, we heard a voice that had Logan cursing, and myself amused.
"Baby boy? Are you out there Petey?"
How many times would I get saved by the walking Deux Ex Machina known as Deadpool.
Wade saw my bloodied form on the ground and gasped in shock. While my Spider-healing was helping, it wasn't that fast.
"I can't believe that KindaJustChillin almost got you killed. You must have some good plot armor!" Deadpool rambled.
I groaned, out of pain or annoyance I didn't know. Trust Deadpool to rant about nonsense while I lay there dying.
The battle passed in a haze for me. Deadpool running at Magneto, hitting him, getting sliced up or decapitated, and getting back up again. Storm throwing lightning bolts. Logan constantly going in and getting thrown around, sometimes into his teammates. One time he landed on Wade, and Wade tried to kiss him. Logan was much more careful after that. Jean tried to focus on doing something, anything, but seemed to have no success. Charles was throwing anything he could find at him.
As for me, I lay there, slowly healing from the shards of metal that I had been impaled with.
We definitely weren't beating Magneto, but maybe we were annoying him enough for him to leave.
I continued to heal slowly through the fight, when disaster struck. Magneto had knocked out Storm, severely weakening the attacking force. Deadpool landed another kick on Magneto, sending him towards me, when I took advantage of the proximity. I didn't think there would be another chance.
Despite having very little strength remaining, I used my Spidey-powers to stick onto Magneto, and I held on for dear life.
Please. I need to stop him. I don't know how; I just need to STOP HIM.
My fingers were sparking. Magneto was trying to shake me off, but my stickiness proved too strong. I pressed harder, trying to stop him, and the yellow electricity looking thing built up. Didn't Miles have something like this? It shot through Magneto, sending him into spasms. He seemed like he was about to fall unconscious.
I didn't stay conscious long enough to see it through.
I awoke to see the interior of what seemed like a plane. Glancing around momentarily, I noticed that it was all friendlies around. Thank god.
"You're awake!" I saw Jean run over to where I lay. She leaned down and gave me a big hug. I contemplated making a joke about her breaking my ribs, but I decided I would much rather hold the beautiful woman close to me. Sometimes I have to be nice to myself.
"Where are Magneto and Deadpool?"
Jean frowned.
"After you shocked him, Magneto was out for a bit, but woke up and flew away before we could do anything, but we did take his plane because he destroyed the X-men's ones. Deadpool, I'm assuming is the psychotic guy who helped us while babbling out curse words. All we know is that he's gone. No one knows what happened."
Sigh. Yeah, that checks out.
We went quietly back towards the X-mansion. Jean and I sat together, conversing quietly, with me telling Jean she didn't need to thank me, for the 100th time. The 3 X-men were at the other end of the jet, or in Logan's case, in the cockpit.
When we finally arrived at the X-mansion, I was ready to get going. Xavier gave both Jean and I his spiel, and while it was good, and I definitely wanted the training I would get, I knew that the X-men was simply too limiting for my goals. So, I declined his invitation to join, while Jean accepted. I could see she was hurt that I didn't join with her.
Before I left, back to New York City, I took Jean aside.
"Jean, I'm sorry I didn't join with you. I know you wanted me to, but I have a lot of stuff I need to get done, and I don't think I could here. I do like you a lot and want to stay in contact with you though, because I do care for you, if that's okay with you?" I tried to get it all out in one breath.
"I'd like that a lot Peter," she said, as she leaned up and kissed me.
I returned to New York City and the first thing I did was go to see Aunt May, because she was awesome.
I went up to her Apartment Door and knocked.
As May opened the door, her eyes opened wide in shock.
"Peter! Where have you been? I haven't been able to call you!" She spoke quickly as she pulled me into a hug. I may not have known and loved Aunt May as the original Peter did, but that didn't stop me from being drowned in feelings of comfort and shame.
I explained to her about being captured for being Spider-man and she simply pulled me into a hug, offering her comfort. It was something I didn't know I wanted til I had it
My next stop was my job that I had ghosted for nearly 6 months. As expected, after talking to Max Modell I was fired.
"Peter, you were unquestionably the best scientist we had, and if you want to rejoin, you can reapply, but we can't have you disappearing for 6 months at a time."
Honestly, the opportunity of reapplying was generous. I couldn't blame him for firing me at all.
The question was, did I want to reapply?
The answer? No.
I had to get better at being Spider-man.
I needed to get better at fighting, learn how to shoot a gun, become more tactical, and simply get better. Where was the best place for that?
And so, Spider-man joined the military. I was joining as Peter Parker, because god knows how much stupid shit the government would do if they had Spider-man under their thumb. Truth be told, I didn't want to work for the government, but I had to do what I had to do to learn how to be good at anything battle related.
So, I decided to join the SEALs. Honestly, it wasn't that difficult. For a normal baseline human, the conditioning may seem insurmountable, but I was enhanced. 4 miles in 31 minutes? That was a breeze. 70 pushups in 2 minutes? A joke. I breezed through conditioning training, acting like it was a bit tougher than it was, so as not to ring any alarms.
I wasn't close with anyone in my group. Sure, I could talk with some of them, but I didn't get to know anyone that well, and I was always ahead in conditioning, so we didn't bond through mutual suffering.
Hell Week was tough, because I do like sleeping, and 4 hours of sleep and over 100 miles of running wasn't fun. It wasn't ridiculously difficult, but it was definitely more than unpleasant.
Underwater training was peculiar, because I didn't think that my physiology would grant me any more advantages than just enhanced strength and endurance, but it turns out that I could swim fast. Really fast.
Surf Torture was the toughest part honestly, because it wasn't much to do with conditioning. It was completely a mental exercise. How long you could sit there and take the cold.
Learning to shoot was fun, and not that difficult. It helps that I had an inherently good sense of balance, direction, and trajectory. My spider sense influenced me to point the gun correctly as well, which was a peculiar feeling, but it helped immensely. Soon I was tops in conditioning and marksmanship.
I continued to learn all there was to learn. Small-unit tactics, large scale tactics, demolition, land navigation and more. Enhanced body, mental fortitude, and genius level intellect made the entire thing much easier. It was interesting to see though that being enhanced did not make it all easy. Mental strength and willpower were equally a part of it, which made me respect the SEALs that much more.
It was over a year of conditioning and training, but thankfully, nothing major of the Marvel variety happened while I was training.
During this time, I wasn't allowed to keep in contact with Jean much, but I had let her know that in advance, so she didn't think I was ghosting her.
Jean was frustrated. She had moved into the X-mansion and had slowly learned how to control her powers to a decent degree, but still hadn't made as much progress as she would've liked. Worse still, after her prison experience, being in a mansion was a stark change, and it didn't feel like anyone could understand her. Not only that, but Charles also kept pushing her to work in politics or psychology like he had, when she just wanted to be an engineer.
But all of that was second fiddle to the true issue: the other students. Don't misinterpret this, Jean knew that most were good people, and she was good friends with many, like Kitty, but Goddamn did Scott annoy her. He kept coddling her in training sessions, and kept trying to ask her out. She kept rejecting him, and told him that she was dating someone else, but he had seen her hesitance in stating that. It wasn't because she didn't like Peter, she just wasn't sure if they were officially dating. That being said, she wanted to talk it out with him before even considering dating anyone else.
Jean was studying ahead of high school in engineering and was doing extremely well in school. That being said, there were annoying moments, like when she was at soccer practice the other day.
"Hey Jean, want to go out on a date?" The football captain Duncan walked up to her with a swagger.
"No thanks, I'm dating someone else."
"Yeah, we totally believe you have a boyfriend you met in Canada. Come on Grey, you know you want to" Duncan continued, putting a hand on her arm.
"Get. Off. Me" Jean growled at him, shoving him away.
"Ooh, feisty," Duncan said, trying to approach closer.
It took all her effort to not use her telekinesis to send him into orbit.
After the training period was complete, Peter Parker was deployed and took on a few missions. Most were simple search and destroy missions. One mission involved sieging a fortified location from underwater and using explosives to get in from underneath. A shark had arrived in the middle of it and sniffed around the blood of the fallen enemy.
I hadn't needed to kill many people and was often assigned as the head of my small groups due to my prowess in tactical training. Our team hadn't lost a man in the 4 missions we'd been on. I don't think the SEALs had this many missions in my original reality but maybe this one, being the marvel universe, was particularly chaotic. It would make sense.
"Parker! Get your ass over here!"
An officer called me over. This officer was a particularly annoying one as well. Huge superiority complex, and all that jazz.
"We have a mission for you."
"Me? Don't you normally brief the whole team?"
"This mission is from the higher ups Parker. It's a high-profile extraction that needs to be done without anyone finding out. You are the best we have in stealth, so you and two others are being assigned to the mission."
This was weird. Normally SEALs operated in full teams and split into smaller groups during the mission. It must be something that desperately needed to be secret. There was no way in hell I was turning down something like that. State secrets? Gimme.
"Alright, I'll take Smith and Garcia," I gave the officer the names of the two I would bring
with me.
"Not so fast Parker. We've already assigned you the two people you are going to be working
with."
"That's not standard protocol sir, Smith and Garcia are some of the best we have at infiltration, I should take them."
"That isn't your call, Parker. We have two men already coming in who are better at infiltration and takedown than anyone on this team except you. One is a marine, one is a SEAL."
That was extremely weird. Something was going on. A marine and 2 seals from different teams for an off the books missions was definitely not standard.
"Fine. Who am I being partnered with?"
"The marine is named Frank Castle." I froze. The officer continued on, ignorant to my shock.
"The SEAL is named Erik Stevens."
A.N
Well, canon is out the window now. Don't worry I'm not going to be X-men bashing, I'm just showing Jean's frustration. Also, this may be the last update for a while. College is starting up soon. If anyone seemed OOC, oops but it's for the plot so suspension of disbelief. Please leave a comment because that means even more than a favorite, kudos, or follow. Have a good one!
