53: Some Groundwork

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Tony Stark growled and lunged forward, preparing to throw a huge blast at Spider-Man, but the latter didn't seem to be in the mood for such a prolonged battle. That is exactly why Spider-Man decided to test one of the powers of his suit he hadn't tested yet.

Peter stared at the "? ﾸﾏ". This was one of his suit's features, one which he hadn't tried yet. Peter wasn't sure how powerful It was, as he hadn't really tested it before. And, in his opinion, it would be weak, quite a lot so, as there hadn't been much damage to his suit. He'd only blocked some bullets with it, some punches, and nothing supernatural; no supervillains yet.

Except for Abomination, of course, but Peter hadn't really let that fuckface touch him.

Oh, he'd been thwarted around by Silver a lot too, and coupled with some of the spells—by Magik—he had to face, Peter was sure there was a lot of power left. So, Peter just thought of using this, and surprisingly, a system message alerted him.

[The multitude of attacks are being combined into a shockwave of pure Eldritch Energy, and physical force!]

[3… 2… 1… Brace for release!]

Peter was surprised that the system would bother with his suit since, well, it wasn't related to the system, but then he remembered that the suit was linked with him just like the system, so the suit and the system were, technically, related too.

The next second was a bit of a blur. Golden lighting erupted out of his suit, and sent a shockwave out of his body—a shockwave which Spider-Man tried to redirect into Tony's direction only so that the damage wouldn't be much, on things other than Spider-Man, and Pepper, who was at the back.

The shockwave exploded outwards, moving towards Tony at a blinding rate while Spider-Man was hurled back, both slamming against walls. Spider-Man groaned, that was a bad idea, that was a really bad Idea. He shouldn't have done that without testing this feature of the suit. But it had, somehow, left his mind. He'd been neglecting this for too long. When he got up, he was left agape at the damage this caused.

Tony was lying there in the rubble. Spider-Man's attack destroyed the walls, and some of the ceiling. Spider-Man was left a bit flabbergasted, and he couldn't help but wonder; what would happen if this suit had sustained attacks from someone like Hulk, or Abomination for a while? If Peter didn't dodge, of course. Peter was sure that this thing was able to cause a lot of destruction with the right preparations.

"Tony!" Pepper yelled, tearing Peter out of his mind, as she ran up to the seemingly unconscious Tony. Peter, too, was a bit concerned that he might have killed Tony. He wasn't feeling bad if he had, but he was concerned about the implications. His hero image would be ruined and he might have to go into hiding.

But, it seemed that his worries were for naught as Tony started moving—at least the Iron-Man suit did.

"Fuck," a metallic curse resounded out of Tony's helmet before the helmet opened up, revealing a haggard Tony Stark. "You almost killed me!" Tony hissed.

"You seem sane now, at least," Spider-Man said, not in the least apologetic about what he'd done. Tony's suit was damaged—the arc reactor and the repulsors were flickering.

"Yeah…" Tony muttered, looking at his damaged house. "You're not paying for this, are you?" Tony asked, though Spider-Man knew that he didn't really need money. Tony had plenty, and a little to recover the damage wouldn't hurt his pockets.

"Yeah, I guessed." Tony sighed. He was, all in all, feeling quite ashamed of himself, now that he'd snapped out of his stupor. "Why are you here? I doubt you'd come to my fake birthday parties even if I asked."

"I wouldn't even if it were your real birthday. I was here to help." Spider-Man pointed at the arc reactor.

"Oh," Tony relaxed. "How do you even know?"

"Magic."

"Bullshit." Tony snarled.

"Exactly," Spider-Man shrugged, looking over at Pepper. "You still got Tony's dad's thing?"

Pepper looked confused, "Thing?"

"Yeah, what thing?" Tony asked.

"That city model thingy," Spider-Man didn't know the real name, so that's what he called it; he was sure Tony would know about it. And sure enough, Tony's eyebrows rose slightly.

"What about that model?" Tony asked him.

"It has what you're looking for," Spider-Man said. "And once you do manage to make it, I want a favor—if you would."

"Okay?" Tony looked confused, but couldn't really do anything as Spider-Man had already vanished from his spot. Tony cursed, and looked at Pepper. He immediately regretted looking; he had a lot to answer her.

"Pepper…" Though he couldn't, as Pepper had already come and delivered a solid slap, which resounded against his cheeks.

"Bastard!"

Peter got back to the warehouse, and was faced by a pouty Yuri. He frowned, wondering what was wrong with her so suddenly. He slipped down on the bed beside her, his suit vanishing as it got replaced by his clothes.

"What's got you so grumpy?" he asked her, hugging her waist.

"Nothing."

"You know I'm not stopping until you answer, right?" Peter nudged her.

Yuri sighed.

"I don't wanna sound like an insecure bitch bu-"

"Just tell me," Peter said again. "You don't need to feel insecure about anything at all."

"I…" she bit her lower lip. "You aren't going to throw me aside once you've had enough sex with me, are you?"

"What?" Peter looked at her. "Why would think that?"

"You know," Yuri said softly. "We only fuck each other; I don't know anything about you. It's like we're just there for the sex. And while I do agree that it started that way; I like you, you know that, right? I don't want to be just another fucktoy of yours."

"Hmm," Peter hummed, "I'm not leaving you anywhere, you're mine, were mine, and will be mine forever. As cringy and edgy as that sounds, engrave this in that head of yours. Anyways, what do you wanna know?"

"What?"

"What do you wanna know about me?" Peter clarified, smiling at her blush. He loved the way she could act cute sometimes. Though he also knew that this cute side was only reserved for him since she could be a badass dangerous cop if need be.

"Like, your hobbies, your favorite color, your birthday, your…" Yuri started listing the things she wanted to know about him and Peter waited till she was done before he started talking. It took a while, but needless to say, Yuri seemed happy that they hadn't fucked for once and were having a normal chat.

Peter also realized something. That he might end up neglecting some of the girls. He didn't care about Mary Jane or Liz, but he did care about Gwen, May, and now, Yuri too—somewhat. So, Peter promised to himself that he'd try giving time to each of his girls so they wouldn't feel left out.

Tony Stark spent quite some time talking with Pepper, and he would admit that it wasn't the most pleasant of talks he had with someone. Tony sighed. He'd gone ahead and picked up the model Spider-Man talked about, and was, currently, working on finding 'answers' as Spider-Man put it.

Tony wasn't sure what he'd find, but he hoped it would help him in his current situation quite a bit.

Tony had, recently, learned that the palladium core he was using in his arc reactor to keep himself alive, coupled with the powers of the Iron Man suit, was slowly but surely poisoning him. That didn't bid so well with him, and he'd started searching for different kinds of elements he could use as substitutes for the core.

Tony didn't want to die, of course, so when he found out that none of the elements were working, he'd been quite literally devasted. His days were numbered, and he wouldn't survive much. That made him go around doing everything and live his life to the fullest so that he could die peacefully.

But now?

He had a lead.

And Tony would a pathetic fool if he didn't try and survive.

Tony was able to find a hidden message in the diorama of the 1974 Stark Expo; it proved to be a diagram of the atomic structure of a new element. Tony was ecstatic, and with the help of Jarvis, he managed to synthesize this new element. Tony was really happy with this as he placed it within his arc reactor.

"We did It! Jarvis! We did it!"

[Congratulations, sir.]

Tony was so happy he wanted to fuck some girls right then and there, but… he'd realized something, lately, and he didn't want to fuck some random girl now. He had his eyes set on a particular someone.

Justin Hammer was quite impressed with the progress they'd made.

He was not really happy that Vanko wasn't able to make suits for him, but he was happy with the drones and the robots he got nonetheless.

Back when Hammer had seen the fight between Vanko and Tony on TV, he'd been really impressed by Vanko's performance. Hammer had always wanted to be better than Tony, he wanted to smash that bitch's face so much that he was only able to control himself by thinking of the implications. Whenever he was around Tony, Hammer couldn't help but feel inferior.

Which he wasn't.

At all.

He was better than Tony.

That's exactly why he'd researched where Vanko was kept. Then, he'd faked his death and broke him out of prison. It wasn't easy. Not at all. But it wasn't hard either. All in all, Hammer had been able to get the man to work on some projects.

Ivan Vanko was a genius, that much Hammer knew only by the fact that he was able to create an arc reactor. Something so small containing so much power.

Too smart for his liking, actually.

That's why he planned on getting rid of him, once he was done with showing Tony his place.

Peter's life returned to normal.

He would wake up, go to school, return, play hero, train with Silver, train with Magik, fuck his girls, and go on dates—yes, he was going on dates with Gwen, May, and Yuri now. Peter didn't want his girls feeling neglected—work on his projects, earn money and look for good houses, or maybe good places he could build a mansion on.

Yes, Peter was thinking of moving to a new house. A house—or a mansion—big enough for his harem, oh God, he felt weird thinking about it.

Anyways, it seemed that his "? ﾸﾏ" feature of the suit was quite a bit powerful—he'd tested it. Peter had given it a name since there wasn't one for now.

[Release].

Yeah, he didn't find anything better in his genius mind that was pathetically unfunctional when it came to this stuff.

Other than that, it seemed that the Stark Expo was coming near, and considering the way things were going right now, Peter knew that there was nigh 100% chance that Justin Hammer would try and flaunt his dick with the drones and robots. And it would turn out to be quite disastrous.

Peter didn't care if people got hurt, at least, not anymore; but he did care about some of the students who were going there. Say, being the nerd she was, Gwen would want to go. So would Betty, which meant that Ned would too.

That was enough reason for him to prepare for it now so he won't be caught unprepared.