"Wait, May is his Aunt?" Happy asked. "How did I only just realise that?"
"God, you really are a forehead of security, aren't you Happy?" Tony teased his old friend who mock glared at him.
"That's never going to go away, is it?" Happy asked, secretly glad Tony was insulting him like this. He may not understand everything that's happening right now, but his oldest friend was back, at least for now, and that's all that mattered to Happy. He wasn't sure he'd be able to handle all of this as well as Tony had, if he was Tony.
"Are you alright, Happy?" Rhodey asked, seeing the look of consternation of his face.
"Yeah. I'm good, James. Thanks." Happy smiled back at him.
May and Peter discussed how withdrawn he was recently over Thai food, May saying she wasn't a big fan of Tony Stark, before he noticed the news report about Delmar's, telling Peter if he ever sees a superhero fight, to run away from it. Peter said he would as the waiter brought them a free desert, May said he was nice, Peter made a joke about the food and the waiter liking May.
"How can anybody not be a fan of me?" Tony asked in mock outrage.
"I larbed her too." Happy said, looking sadly at May in her element and so happy. Memories hit him of simpler times with May, sharing lunch in her office, going out for meals and drinks together. Sitting together and chatting in her apartment.
"I'm sorry, buddy." Tony said, putting his hand on Happy's shoulder. They may not have explicitly said it, but the fact they had all somehow forgotten Peter, the sadness he could tell Happy was carrying, he had known something must have happened to May.
"I spoke to someone a few weeks ago, by her grave. I asked if all she had done, all she stood for, was that gone now as well? He told me that it wasn't, if we stood up for what she stood for, she was never going to be truly gone. I liked the idea of that, that she was still here with us, in some way." Happy said, before his eyes went wide.
"What is it?" Steve asked, noticing the surprise on Happy's face.
"I think it was this Peter I spoke too."
"Do you remember if he said anything else?" MJ asked.
"I don't think he did. Just wished me well I think." Happy tried to rack his brains, to see if Peter had said anything else at all to him. He was just pulling up blanks.
Ned and Peter discussed his powers and what he could do during all of their classes, Ned asked Peter if he knew Captain America, Peter told him that he had stolen his shield. As they were in gym, they heard Liz admit she had a crush on Spider-Man, before Ned blurted out that Peter knew Spider-Man.
"He stole your shield?" Ned asked, turning to Steve.
"Only temporarily!" Steve protested, seeing the gleeful looks on the faces of the other Avengers. "You guys know I won when he tried to fight me, right? You all saw it."
"Sure you did." Bucky teased.
The rest of the class asked Peter if it was true, Peter tried to backtrack on it as Flash made fun of him, before Liz invited both Peter and Ned to a party she was hosting, asking them to bring Spider-Man along to say hi.
"God I'm an idiot, I've set it up to give Flash a free laugh and put Peter in a bad situation, haven't I?" Ned said.
"It's not your fault." MJ said. "You're basically an excitable puppy even now. Something like this happening to you? Of course you weren't going to keep it in properly."
"Still, I should have done better." Ned said.
"You can't beat yourself up, kid." Sam said to him. "You just gotta make sure you do better, and when we do get back, when we do remember Peter again, we will do better. All of us. Right now, he's probably out there all alone. He's going to need a support network."
"We'll be there for him." Ned promised as the Midtown alumni all nodded, the Avengers silently agreeing to be there as well for the kid. They'd find him and help. However they could.
At the party, MJ called them both losers for being at the party, when they said she was here as well, she asked if she really was. Peter and Ned talked about the plan, Peter telling Ned he wouldn't appear as Spider-Man was it wasn't a cheap tool to be used, until Flash tried to humiliate him by asking where Spider-Man was in front of everyone and insulting Ned.
"So why did you go anyway?" Betty turned to MJ.
"To be honest, I don't think I had anything better to do." MJ admitted. "It was nearly a decade ago now. Time flies, doesn't it?"
"Are you sure it wasn't to stalk Peter?" Betty teased as MJ flushed.
"I don't even remember him! How could I have been?" MJ hissed at her as Betty grinned.
"Peter and MJ sitting in a tree-" Ned started as MJ turned around and punched his arm.
"Finish that sentence and you'll wish you were never born." MJ said to him as Ned shut up.
Peter tried to think of how he would introduce himself, saying he knew Ned as well, as he sat on a nearby roof in his costume, before he saw the sign of an explosion in the distance. Realising it was his duty, he swung away towards it, leaving the party and an impatient Ned.
"The heroes job is never over, is it?" Sam asked sadly.
"It's the duty we have." Rhodey told them all. "The kid knows it, he's got heart."
As Peter reached the scene, he decided to hang back as he saw three men by a van, two of them showing off some gear to another. Offering him things like Ultron arms and Chitauri cannons, the buyer protested that he just wanted something small to threaten someone, he didn't want to kill anyone or blast them back in time.
"Well, I mean, he's a bad dude, but at least he thinks it's overkill is all of this." Scott spoke up.
"Still a criminal, still needs stopping before he hurts someone." Hope pointedly said to him.
"I used to be a criminal as well." Scott reminded her.
"Yeah, but you weren't violent, at all. And you have become a hero, you were a criminal for doing a good deed, not for trying to rob people."
"I know, but I could change, and I could become just a hero. Other people can improve, can change as well."
Peter got involved and attacked the buy, scattering them, as he chose to go after the sellers, he chased them through the suburbs, as they called their boss in, saying they needed help.
"So this is where he's first going to meet Toomes, isn't it?" Abe asked.
"He needs to be careful, that suit is going to be dangerous." Steve said.
"You do realise this was years ago, we know Spider-Man won." Natasha told him.
"We were on the run at the time, I wasn't really paying much attention to the news back then." Steve reminded her.
As Peter closed in on them, he felt himself rising into the air, turning, he saw a giant vulture creature lifting him, managing to wriggle free, he plummeted towards the Earth at great height, getting tangled in his parachute and crashing into a lake.
"PETER!" Tony screamed at the scene as memories came flooding back to him. The kid on a spinning wheel in orbit, dropping off of the spaceship, the kid in Maw's ship, discussing strategy to deal with Maw with him, the kid giving constant pop culture references. "I need to help him."
"You will, Tony. You will." Steve promised him.
After a moment, an Iron Man suit flew into the lake and retrieved Spider-Man, speaking to Peter, he laid into him as Peter found out the suit was being remotely operated.
"I'm an idiot. I should have been there for him." Tony panicked.
"You couldn't have known, Tony. You can't beat yourself up for everything bad that happens." Rhodey told him.
"Peter's clearly a trouble magnet. You can't keep[ 24/7 tabs on him, Tony. You've got your own life as well." Happy tried to reassure him, judging by the frown that Tony gave though, he doubted this topic was exactly gone.
Peter argued how Tony didn't think he was a kid when fighting Captain America. Tony told him if Steve wanted to finish him quickly, he would have done. He told Peter to leave the Vulture and the weapons thing alone and focus on neighbourhood issues. Before Peter could retort, FRIDAY informed him that Tony was gone and the suit flew away.
"Wow, that's pretty heartless." Betty murmured, luckily Tony missed it, too caught up in the few precious memories he had been hit by of Peter and their time together to hear it.
"So you went easy on him when you two fought, huh?" Bucky teased Steve.
"I mean, I could tell it was just a kid under the costume, of course I wasn't going to go all out and crush him. He had let Tony's point of view influence him and wasn't open to hearing my side of things. I couldn't just flatten him for that."
Peter phoned Ned to tell him he was returning to the party, when Ned told him that he shouldn't bother, putting the phone away from him so Peter could hear Flash riling up the crowd and everyone insulting Peter. Peter told Ned he would see him at school the next day as Peter began to look at the tech he had managed to swipe from the criminals.
"Sorry I was such a dick, Ned." Flash said, having thought on his past actions over the time they had been there.
"It's fine, we were both kids then, we're men now."
At his base, Toomes landed, berating the sellers as idiots as Mason told him his wife kept texting, asking about her brake light, with Toomes telling Mason to stay off his phone. As the sellers pulled up in their beaten van, Toomes launched into them verbally, saying how they had gone on for years under the radar, avoiding Damage Control and the Avengers, how they were all at risk, they all had families to provide for, they couldn't make too much noise to be caught.
"Looks like someone's illegal activities are about to come crashing down." Betty said in a sing-song voice.
"Well he definitely put himself on my radar when he chose to mess with Spider-Man." Tony snarled. "If he was still out there, I'd definitely make him a top priority now I recall the kid under the mask."
Toomes told "The Shocker" that he was out of the crew, he couldn't be trusted, the Shocker said he'd go, but could Toomes afford him out there, blackmailing him. Toomes turned and grabbed a weapon, firing at The Shocker, disintegrating him. He turned to Mason and said he thought that was the anti-grav gun, Mason said it was the other. Toomes gave the Shocker gauntlet to the other seller and told him he was the Shocker now, and to find their missing tech.
"He...He killed that man." Cindy said, eyes filling with tears. Abe nodded with a grim acceptance. He had seen death, lived through it, he hated it, but he accepted it as a fact of life. But to see a man killed like that, even if he was a bad guy, that wasn't right.
"Men like him are despicable." Scott snarled, Hope nodding.
"He killed to keep a secret. I mean, I can understand it, I've had to do it before, but to do it just to get money, to keep despicable things you've done hidden? It's disgusting." Clint said. Not that he'd admit he had done things possibly worse than Toomes had. He didn't want to reopen that can of worms, not after he was so close to finally closing it for good with Kate.
As they began complaining about how bad Toomes was, Spider-Man 2 and 3 looked around as they could sense an uneasiness in the air, the world seemed to fall quiet, everyone seemed to drop away, as they looked at each other.
"You feel it too, right?" Spider-Man 2 said.
"Yeah, whatever it is. It isn't right." Spider-Man 3 confirmed. "We need to be on guard."
Suddenly a light filled the room, blinding everyone, and when it cleared, they saw another man sat in the far corner, eyes wide and darting around, they could hear him mumbling to himself.
"Where are we now?"
"Wait, who are you?" Spider-Man 2 asked to the newcomer, recovering from his shock the fastest. He seemed somewhat familiar, he just couldn't place where from. With his torn clothes, his unkempt hair, growing beard and the reek of alcohol, the guy clearly didn't have his life together, whoever he was.
"My name is Eddie Brock." The man explained, as Spider-Man 2 took a cautious step back, a step that wasn't totally unnoticed. "Where am I?"
"Eddie Brock. Why do I get the feeling that...Spider-Man 2, is it? That you know who that is."
"I've met Eddie before. But not this Eddie. The Eddie I knew, he had...let's say a friend with him."
"A-A friend? L-Like who?" Eddie asked, scratching his neck as he freaked out. Did this guy know about Venom? Was he after him?
"Let's just say, it was a parasite." Spider-Man 2 sneered as Venom felt his rage building, before Eddie could say anything, he burst from his back and rose into the air above the room.
"PARASITE?!"
"He doesn't like to be called that word!" Eddie pleaded.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" Everyone yelled, looking at it as Spider-Man 2's eyes hardened.
"WE….ARE VENOM." The black goo spoke.
Totally just realised at my third viewing of No Way Home that Venom will know who Peter Parker is still. Many shenanigans will occur no doubt.