So, what exactly is Shocket up to? I guess we'll find out.


While Peter was off at the bar with Beck, Shocket grumbled to herself as she scanned the area for the weird object she saw earlier. "Call me a pet, will he? I don't know how heroes work on your world, 'Mysterio,' but there's plenty of animal-based heroes where I'm from." She sighed as her scan turned up a negative. "Great, my tech's acting up again. Bloody brilliant. There's way too much electromagnetism in the air from the Elemental fight… Which is weird, considering it was fire-based and not electric, but what do I know about interdimensional space monsters?"

The ottercoon decided it would be better just to give up for now and head to the hotel to regroup for the night. Climbing up the building, Shocket slipped into her room and quickly ditched the Stealth Suit for her casual attire. The sounds of talking caught her attention as Ned greeted Peter outside his door.

"… I'm done with the mission," Peter said.

"Dude, the trip's over," Ned said.

"What?" Peter and Shocket said at the same time.

"There's monsters coming out of the ground everywhere we go. Of course our parents want us home," Ned explained.

'Well shit,' Shocket thought. 'Oh well, I guess I'll have more time with Morgan than I thought.'

"…We're going home in the morning," Ned continued, snapping Shocket out of her thoughts.

"No, no, no, all the Elementals are gone," Peter tried to say, only for Betty and Flash to interrupt their conversation.

Shocket stepped out of her room then to talk, only for MJ to pop out her room at the same time. "Where were you two?" the human girl asked.

"At the carnival, like all of us were?" Shocket answered. "I had to go pick up my drone, and then that fire monster attacked so we hid until that died down. Of all the times to leave the ice rounds in my bag…"

"Then we got lost," Peter added.

"We were worried about you," MJ said. "Good thing you're back. So much for Paris, right?"

"Right," Peter said. "You look ni-" He was cut off by MJ closing the door. Taking a deep breath, Peter went to knock on the door, only for MJ to open it again. "Uh, look, um… I'm not ready for this trip to be over yet, and I kind of want to do something fun that's not on the itinerary or planned or with Mr. Harrington."

"Yes," MJ agreed.

"'Yes' like you wanna go?" Peter asked.

"Yes," MJ nodded.

"Okay, awesome. I'll meet you outside in 10 minutes," Peter said.

"Meet me outside in five minutes," MJ smiled.

Peter shrugged. "Five's good."

'Oh my God, these two were meant for each other,' Shocket rolled her eyes with a smile. 'And I am totally following them to make sure Peter doesn't screw his confession up.'

[***]

With the Festival of Lights over, the city of Prague was quiet for the night. Peter and MJ walked through the streets, with Shocket following close behind as to not attract attention to herself. Once the two humans were over a bridge, they stopped for a moment, enjoying the night air.

"You know they used to execute people on this bridge," MJ said. "They would put 'em in a basket and then drown them in water." There was an awkward pause. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Peter said, their hands brushing up against each other. "Uh… There's this thing I've been wanting to talk to you about for a while."

"Yeah?" MJ asked.

"It's our last night in Europe, and I had this plan that I wanted to tell you." Peter reached into his back pocket to pull out the box containing the necklace. Shocket held back a squee as she realized what was about to happen. "MJ, I-"

"Am Spider-Man," MJ said.

Shocket popped out of her hiding place. "WHAT!?" Luckily, she was about to duck down again before the two could see her.

"That's what you were going to say, that you're Spider-Man," MJ clarified.

Peter shook his head slowly. "No. I'm not Spider-Man."

"I mean I've been watching you for, like, a while now. It's kind of obvious," MJ said.

"That's what I said," Shocket whispered loudly through gritted teeth.

"I'm not Spider-Man," Peter continued to deny. "What would make you think that I was Spider-Man?"

"Peter, Washington?" MJ brought up. "The fact that you disappear out of nowhere for no reason?"

"No, I was sick, remember?" Peter tried to say.

"You know that Susan Yang thinks that you're a male escort," MJ said.

"What? No, I'm not a male escort!" Peter said in confusion.

"Then you're Spider-Man," MJ said. Peter continued to deny the truth, making MJ roll her eyes. "Then how do you explain tonight when you snuck off and fought that thing? I saw you."

"You can't have seen me because I'm not Spider-Man," Peter insisted. "Also, on the news, it was the Night Monkey and Flying Fox. That's what it said on the news, and the news never lies."

"Night Monkey, okay," MJ rolled her eyes. She took off her backpack and pulled out a mechanical part- in fact, Shocket recognized it as the one she had been looking for earlier. "Well then, do Night Monkey and Spider-Man use the same webs?"

"I mean, maybe? He could be a Spider Monkey, who knows?" Peter tried to say. He looked down at his feet before taking a deep breath. "Were you only watching me because you thought I was Spider-Man?"

Shocket could feel the hurt in Peter's voice there as MJ replied, "Yeah. Why else would I be watching you?"

Peter sighed. "Doesn't matter. I just thought that maybe-"

He was cut off when MJ ran her finger over a part of the machine, causing a projection to shoot out and startle the teens. Shocket gasped as the image of a cloud monster rose above them. 'Wait, a fourth Elemental? But it's a projection. Oh no, don't tell me…'

"What the hell was that?" Peter asked as the projection cut off.

"I don't know," MJ said, looking equally as shaken.

"Okay, I'm making myself known now," Shocket announced, coming out of hiding and picking up the device.

"Wait, were you following us?" Peter asked.

"Duh. I wasn't about to leave you hanging if you messed up your confession," Shocket said. She eyed the device as it sparked and sputtered. "It looks like a projection device, similar to the ones my drone uses."

"It- It looked so real," MJ breathed.

"Yeah, really real," Peter added.

"Wait, does that mean-"

"The Elementals are fake?" Peter finished. "That doesn't make any sense because we were there, right? There was fire and destruction and… Who would do something like that?"

"Let's find out," Shocket said, though in her gut she already had a good idea. Pressing the button, she activated the projection of the Wind Elemental, with the three of them watching as none other than Mysterio was projected along with the monster. "Aw Flark. I knew something was off about him!"

"Mysterio," MJ said, still in shock by the revelation.

Peter quickly turned to her and said, "I am Spider-Man. And I really messed up."

"Wait. You're being serious right now?" MJ asked. "You're 100% serious because it's not funny."

"He's not joking," Shocket said. "You think it's a coincidence that a Guardian of the Galaxy chose your field trip to tag along with? I just wanted to mess with my fellow teen hero, but then all this happened and well…" The ottercoon shrugged.

"I was only 67% sure of it…" MJ confessed. "So, why are you here? Why are you on this school trip? I-"

"MJ, look, I know you have a lot of questions, but we really have to get out of here, okay?" Peter interrupted.

"Okay? Okay. I can't believe I figured it out!" MJ said, the trio running back to the hotel to get into a more secure location.

[***]

Once they got back to the hotel, Peter got to closing the windows while Shocket pulled out a device from her bag and turned it on. The room lights flickered for a moment before going back to normal. "Oh shit. Oh Flark. Flark it all," Shocket said.

"What does 'Flark' even mean?" MJ asked.

"It's the customary curse word on my home planet," Shocket quickly explained. "Okay… With this device, we should be on a total audio-visual blackout, so Beck can't track us while I have it up. Unfortunately, that also means that we can't contact anyone, not that we have enough time to get any Avengers to our location anyway."

"How could I be so stupid?" Peter berated himself. "He's probably sending killer drones to come and kill us."

"You had access to killer drones?" MJ said.

"I mean, this is Tony Stark we're talking about," Shocket said. "I turned off the lethal force, but Beck probably found a way to get it back online."

"Don't worry, we didn't try to kill anyone," Peter assured MJ. He closed his computer and sighed. "We need to call Nick Fury, but then Beck could track us here."

"So what are going to do?" MJ asked.

"I need my suit, and I need to go to Berlin and talk to Mr. Fury in person," Peter said quickly.

"I can't believe you gave one of the most advanced AIs in the world to a stranger!" Shocket growled.

"He seemed trustworthy at the time!" Peter argued.

"I agree that it was a bad call," MJ said.

"See, MJ agrees," Shocket nodded. "We could have just called Tony and had him take it back, give it to Morgan in a few years, but no." She sighed. "Let's just- Ugh, focus! Get into your suit so we can go."

It was at the moment that Peter started to change into his Stealth Suit that Ned walked in the room, surprised to see MJ and Shocket there. "Ned, MJ knows about Spider-Man," Shocket said before he could try to come up with an excuse.

"I figured it out," MJ added with a smirk. "Like, a long time ago."

"Look, Mysterio is a fraud," Peter said.

"He's been faking the whole hero thing with illusion tech," Shocket explained. "He's got drones outfitted with hologram projectors that can make the 'fake' fights look real."

"Woah," Ned said. "That's crazy. So you guys were like, working the case together or what?"

"It's been mostly me," MJ said.

"Ned, you need to call Mr. Harrington and tell him that Peter is going to stay with family in Berlin per his aunt's orders," Shocket said. "We've fried all of our communications just in case Mysterio hacked into them.

"Got it, easy," Ned nodded.

"Wow, you guys lie with such ease," MJ noted in a sarcastic tone.

"We gotta go," Peter said, Shocket nodding as she had put on her own Stealth Suit in the meantime. The ottercoon had the projector at the ready as well. "MJ, Ned, don't tell anyone about this. Anyone else that knows is in danger."

As they swung off into the morning, Shocket got to work hacking into the projector. "Any advantage we can have over Mysterio is to our benefit," she said. "Once we get on the train, I'm going to be doing some backdoor work to see if I can figure out who Quinten Beck really is."


Author's Note

Just assume that the bar scene happened the same way it did in the movie.

While there are more Avengers around in this timeline, I still had to come up with a reason why they wouldn't respond. Enter in Shocket having to fry all of their communications so Mysterio can't track them. There will be more of Shocket digging into Peter about giving EDITH to Beck, but that will come later. It's time for action!

Next time, confronting Mysterio in Berlin!