Author's Note: Hey, everyone. It's time for the next installment of the Spider-Nick series: SP/dr: Peni and Jimmy's Adventures.
For those who don't know, the Spider-Nick series is a set of fanfiction created in a collaboration between myself and MajorBrony95. Each fanfic will be about a different version of Spider-Man taking place in a Nick show. Some of those variants will be familiar while others will be originals created by me and my friend in this. For this fanfic, we will go over a very familiar version of Spider-Man who has gained quite a lot of popularity in the past few years: Peni Parker and her mech suit, SP/dr.
Now, normally, for the Spider-Nick series, I start each of the fanfics with a couple of chapters to settle the premise of them, but for this one, I decided to do something different. Before I start any of the other Spider-Nick series, I'm going to go over the events of the original Jimmy Neutron movie, which will take more than just a couple of chapters. Once I'm done with all that, I'll have a break for a couple of weeks before moving on to start the next series.
That's about it. Enjoy the chapter. Hope you like the start of it. Any and all comments are welcome.
"All right. Let's do this one more time. My name is Peni Parker. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, became psychically linked to him, and since then, I am able to pilot the mighty SP/dr mech. How did that happen? Well, let me take you back.
"It all began with my dad, Renji Parker. He's a genius scientist who's specialty is robotics. I guess you could say that I inherited my dad's intellect. Eleven years old, and I'm already a science whiz. To exercise my smarts, I help my dad with his latest project: a defense mecha suit that we call SP/dr. It's still not ready for full use, but that doesn't stop me from using it for… certain conveniences.
"Anyway, my dad and I used to live in New York, but times eventually got a bit hard, and plus, my mom got sick and… passed away. So, we had to move in with my Dad's adoptive older brother, Uncle Ben, and his, wife Aunt May, in Retroville, Texas. We took all of our stuff with us, including our experiments and the SP/dr mech, which we keep under lock and key in a shed in the backyard.
"Moving in was okay. But the real problem is school. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE school and all, and I made some good friends like Cindy Vortex and Libby Folfax. Sure Cindy has a bit of an… attitude problem, but she at least accepts my genius as a fellow female. Plus, she isn't that bad once you get to know her. Libby is also neat; spunky, sassy and has GREAT taste in music.
"The problem is, there are some other kids there who aren't really my favorite people. One of them is Nick Dean, the quote-unquote 'bad boy' of the class. All the other girls like him and think he's mega cute, but personally? I think he just seems like a huge cliché. Always acting like he's 'so cool.' Ugh. I can easily see through it, trust me.
"Another student who really gets on my nerves is a guy who goes by the name of Jimmy Neutron. He's a kid genius like me, but he's got a head as big as… Well, his head's naturally big already, so that should be enough. He makes all these nutty inventions that barely work any of the time and seems bent on making everything about him. So as a result, he tends to go over the top, even when he's threatened by other smart kids like me.
"Also, he doesn't seem to believe a GIRL could possibly be his intellectual equal. Cindy actually holds the same animosity towards him. Apparently, SHE used to be the smartest kid in school until Jimmy arrived and displaced her. Now she's around third after Jimmy and me respectively. It's ironically one of the things she and I have bonded about: Always seeming to come in second to Neutron.
"So anyway, that's life in Retroville. I'm a kid genius hanging out with a bunch of other kids and dealing with a big-headed pain in my neck. It's been the same thing for the past six months now. Little did I know, however, that everything was about to change."
It was an early morning in the Colorado Tracking Station. The workers in the military installation were doing their usual routine with General Ernest Abercrombie watching over them. However, one of the agents on the monitor summoned him over to look at two dots on the screen.
"Commercial flight?" General Abercrombie asked.
"No. Too fast, sir." the agent replied. "Plus, they're too close together."
"One of our own?"
"Air Force has nothing scheduled."
General Abercrombie looked at the screen seriously. "We've got ourselves a couple of bogeys."
The Air Force scrambled their jets. Four aircrafts flew out of the base right in the direction of one of the dots on the screen. They spread out to cover more ground. Soon, the frontmost pilot noticed a silhouette in the clouds and began to fly closer to it.
"Orange leader to delta group. Anticipate visual contact… now!"
At last, the first aircraft came into view. However, it was the last thing they expected. It looked like a rocket, but it was made from junk and small machines. It had two seats in it with a young boy in each one. The one in the back seat was an overweight boy with circular glasses. The one in front was a kid with a big head and brown, curly hair. The boy in front shared his seat with a robotic dog that barked at the Air Force pilot.
"HOLY COW PIE!"
The boy in front, Jimmy Neutron, turned back to smile at the pilots. "Hi! Nice antiques! Gotta blast!" With a push of a button, Jimmy's rocket flew faster and higher into the sky.
"Orange leader, this is ground control! What was with that cow pie comment?"
"Uh, you're not going to believe it, ground control." The orange leader pilot answered before noticing another silhouette in the clouds.
When he leaned in closer, he saw something even more unusual once it exited the clouds. It was a very large robot in blue and red. It had a black, dome-like head with red eyes shown like a video on a screen along with two rocket jets on its back. It looked over at the pilot and saluted at him before flying up into the sky.
"Uh… Ground control… We may have a unique situation."
Up in the sky, Jimmy Neutron checked his rocket's systems while his dog, Goddard, and his unofficial assistant, Carl Wheezer, rode with him. "Fusion mix stable. Engine cycling at one million gigajoules. Cool. We didn't blow up."
"Great." Carl said before noticing the red-and-blue robot flying next to them. "Uh, Jimmy, there's some kind of robot flying next to us."
"What?" Jimmy asked looking at the same flying mechanism. "Leaping Leptons! What on Earth…"
The dome opened up revealing a Japanese-American girl riding inside the robot. She had short, black hair that matched her outfit and skirt.
"Konnichiwa, Neutron!"
"Peni Parker?" Jimmy asked surprised before he narrowed his eyes angrily. "What are YOU doing here?"
"Checking out an alien signal I discovered! Looks like I'm not the only one!"
Jimmy groaned. "Where'd you even get that robot suit?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Um, I think he would, Peni." Carl said innocently. "He did ask, after all."
Peni shook her head. Carl was a nice guy, though a little naive and he wasn't known for his smarts. How a guy like that was best friends with a genius like Jimmy was beyond her. "Sorry, Neutron, but if anyone's going to make first contact with an alien species, it's gonna be me!" Peni declared before flying higher. "See ya!"
"Oh, no, you don't!" Jimmy shouted working his rocket to fly higher. "Carl, stand by with the satellite!"
"Okay." Carl said holding up a tricked-out toaster. "What do I do again?"
"You're the deployment system, Carl." Jimmy reminded. "As soon as we clear the atmosphere, you just… throw it. Preferably so it reaches space before Peni's."
"Um, right."
Inside the robot suit, Peni reached underneath her seat and pulled out a small, mini-laptop. She examined it smiling the whole time.
"All right. The video's stable. All that's left is to send this thing into the direction of the signal."
She reached out her real arm to pass the laptop over to her robotic arm before closing the door over her. She then worked at lightning speed on her controls while occasionally sticking her hand into a bag of snacks and eating the contents inside. Once she was high enough, she used all of her robot's strength to throw the laptop into the air like a frisbee.
Peni had succeeded. She laid back in her chair to relax only to feel woozy. She was getting double vision as he shook her head left and right.
"Oh, boy. The interface glitch is acting up again. Well, at least I did what I set out to do."
Peni looked out of the robot seeing Jimmy's rocket finally reach the edge of the atmosphere.
"Oh, no! We can't let a GIRL beat us!" Jimmy said. "Engaging pulse rockets… NOW!" Jimmy tugged hard on a lever, but his engines burst into flames and left nothing but smoke. "NO!"
"Now?" Carl asked before throwing the toaster satellite into the air. However, it fell back down to Jimmy's head hitting his face.
All the while, Peni just chuckled watching Jimmy's engine fail. "Oh, man. Cindy's going to love this."
Now, when all else fails, Jimmy usually gets into his 'brain blast' moments, where he focuses entirely on details he has seen or has knowledge of to find a solution to his situations. And that's exactly what he did then.
"Think, think, think!" Jimmy thought to himself. Within the inner recesses of his mind, his brain flashed memories of a soda can, his satellite, and a roll of duct tape.
"Brain blast!" Jimmy exclaimed. He then turned to Carl. "Give me your lunch."
Without question, Carl handed Jimmy his lunchbox, and he pulled out a can of Purple Flurp. He shook it up while Goddard gave him a roll of duct tape from his mouth, which he used to tape the soda to his satellite. He then pulled on a loose threat from Carl's shirt revealing his belly button. After attaching the string to his satellite, he threw his satellite as far as he could into the air. Once it was high enough, he pulled the string and let the Purple Flurp spray out of the can. With the extra force, the satellite was able to fly out into space.
The boost from the soda gave Jimmy's satellite enough of a push to catch up to Peni's satellite. It knocked right into it and sent the laptop flying far into the right side of space much to Peni's shock. Jimmy's satellite, however, remained at its current course.
"Hey! That was MY message!" Peni shouted.
"Shoulda, woulda, coulda, Peni." Jimmy said before his engine burst again. "Now, if you excuse me, I better go home before Carl and I crash."
"Before Carl and I wha… AAAAAAHHHH!" Carl screamed as the rocket plummeted back to the planet.
Inside her suit, Peni crossed her arms and lowered her head angrily. "That's not fair. My space message made it out first. And now, Jimmy's message is going to be found by an alien species while mine just wanders into the vast emptiness of space. Well, I better get home. School starts soon."
Peni rode her robot back to Retroville and stopped when she was right over her house. She descended down to her backyard where three people waited for her with their arms crossed. Two were a middle-aged American couple while the other was a Japanese man with slick, black hair and a pair of black-rimmed glasses.
When Peni climbed out of her suit, she chuckled nervously at the adults. "Hi, Dad. Hi, Uncle Ben. Hi, Aunt May."
"Hello, Peni," Renji said with an unamused tone. "Now, would you mind telling me what you were doing with the SP/dr unit? And did you mod it with rocket boosters?!"
Peni tried to think of an excuse, but no dice. "I'm sorry I took it without your permission, Dad." Peni sighed. "It's just that… I picked up an alien signal, but it was too garbled to make out. So I thought I would establish a connection with them with a message of my own. I had to do it before I lost the direction of the signal."
"You were trying to talk to aliens?" Uncle Ben asked. "That sounds dangerous."
"Your uncle's right, dear." Aunt May said. "Haven't you watched Alien, Independence Day, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers?"
"Come on. I'm not going to decide my human-alien relationships based on movies." Peni scoffed. "Besides, haven't you watched E.T.?"
"Look, Peni, I appreciate a debate based on popular media as much as the next guy," Renji said rubbing his head, "But I have a specific rule when it comes to the SP/dr mech. Do you remember what it is?"
Peni sighed. "Don't use it until it's complete."
"Exactly."
Renji climbed up to the open cockpit and pulled a lever from outside. Once he pulled it, the mech bent its arms and legs down and developed wheels. He then motioned for his daughter to help him, and Peni proceeded to push the mech into the shack with him. Ben and May opened the door allowing them to bring the mech in more carefully.
Inside the shack was a standard laboratory you'd find in a household. Shelves covered the wall that were filled with small, electronic devices and chemical containers. Tables were placed on the sides of the SP/dr mech as soon as Peni and Renji hung it up.
"I'm sorry I took it while it's still in its experimental stages, Dad," Peni said, "But it was very convenient."
"That's not the point, Peni." Renji said after muttering to himself in Japanese. He picked up a screwdriver from a nearby toolbox and proceeded to unscrew the rockets from the back of the mech. "I'm just trying to protect you. Tell me, did you feel dizzy while you were up in the stratosphere?"
"No..." Peni lied before waiting for a minute. "Maybe."
"That's the one problem I have with the suit." Renji said finally removing the rockets. "The user interface system is too taxing for a single mind to use it to its full potential. It's good for walking, but if it's used for something more extravagant, it'll start draining you of your consciousness. It's too dangerous for a single mind to use."
"But you built it to be for a single human being." Peni reminded.
"I know. That's a contradictory factor that I'm trying to deal with. I need to find a way to make it like two minds are manning the interface while only a single human being can fit in the cockpit."
"Why don't you plug in one of those smart computers?" Ben asked.
"You mean like an AI?" Renji asked. "No can do, Ben. Those things are more trouble then they're worth. Hopefully one of these other inventions will have the answer, like…" He looked around until he picked up a mechanical box with two large prongs on top. "Like this radio ionizer. I theorized that a self-generating, radioactive energy source was the key to stabilizing the interface, but I still have no idea if it'll have any side effects on the pilot. Until then, it's stuck like this…"
Renji turned on the machine which produced an electric jolt of electricity between the prongs. He set it down without even knowing that a spider was crawling on the ceiling above them.
"Maybe there's something in the hardware that I missed." Renji guessed. He opened up its arm to find full cannisters of white fluid inside. Renji shook his head at that. "Now, Peni, taking the SP/dr mech is still wrong, but couldn't you at least use the web-shooters?"
"I had to be over 6000 miles in the air, Dad." Peni said. "Not a lot of stuff to swing on."
"…Okay, I'll give you that one."
May glanced to the side through the area beside the house and saw a yellow school bus stop in front of their house. "Oh, dear! Peni. The bus is here."
"A, nantekotta!" Peni exclaimed in Japanese. "Good thing I already packed before I left! Gotta go! Love you!" She quickly hugged all her relatives before running out of the shack and toward the bus.
Seeing her daughter sprint, Renji sighed as he left the shack. "What am I going to do with her?"
"She's just curious, Renji." Ben said. "You were just like her when you were her age. Maybe you should be more open about that."
Renji considered his brother's words as he kept his eyes on the bus.
Meanwhile, inside the shack, the wandering spider began spinning its web and climbing down closer. It crept down closer and closer to the active ionizer. Within a minute, it made contact with the electricity and got shocked. It was shot off the table and landed on the floor unconscious.
After getting into the bus, Peni sat next to one of her friends, Cindy Vortex, a girl with blonde pigtails who noticed Peni sigh deeply and slouch on her seat.
"Hey, Peni." Cindy said. "What's wrong?"
"Well, I was on the verge of a great advancement in science until I got held back." Peni said.
"Sounds rough." Cindy nodded. "What was the problem?"
"I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with 'Timmy Pewtron'."
Cindy groaned in disgust. "Neutron. Should have figured. Just like him to try and one-up a fellow genius, especially of the female persuasion." She then gave a superior smile. "Don't you worry, Peni. I plan on showing him up with my extra credit dinosaur report today during show-and-tell."
"Yo, Peni," a black girl with a teal dress and an afro puff on her head said behind them. She held out some yellow headphones attached to a CD player. "How 'bout some music? That usually cheers me up."
"I wouldn't mind, I guess. Thanks, Libby." Peni said taking the headphones and putting them around her ears. "Hmm. Bowling For Soup. I like it."
"I thought you would, girl," Libby said with a smile. "I admit, I'm more of a pop fan myself, but some days, nothing wrong with good ol' rock and roll. Especially these guys." That was when she noticed something bouncing beside the bus. "Uh, oh. It looks like you-know-who's got another one."
All three girls looked outside the bus where Jimmy Neutron was. He was at the center of a gold-colored bubble that bounced forward at the same speed as the bus.
"Nice invention, Nerdtron!" Cindy scoffed. "Too bad somebody already invented the bus!"
"Hey, guys!" Jimmy called out. "I've got it down this time!"
"You got nothing." Peni responded. "Whatever that is, it's excessive and impractical."
"Just you wait." Jimmy said. "Internal combustion is such old science. Bubble travel is the way of the future!"
"Uh, huh. And how do you plan on stopping?" Peni asked.
"Stopping?" Jimmy asked before…
BOOM! POP!
In an instant, Jimmy's bubble collided with a tree branch that popped it. He then fell into a trash can covered with garbage and gum. All the while, everyone on the bus laughed at Jimmy's predicament.
"I guess trees are, like, the brakes!" Cindy laughed.
Even Peni couldn't help but giggle a little. "Karma. It works better than coffee."
Later on, once the bus arrived at Lindbergh Elementary School, Peni joined Cindy, Libby, Carl and Jimmy (both of whom surprisingly managed to get to school on time), and many other kids in their homeroom, which was headed by their teacher, Ms. Fowl, a middle-aged, gray-haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses, a beak-like nose and who often inexplicably made bird noises and odd gestures. Peni often wondered if she was an offshoot of evolution from birds rather than apes.
Currently, Peni was watching Cindy's report, which included a diagram of a pink, female dinosaur mocking a green male dinosaur that was shaken. Beside her was also a skeleton model of a dinosaur.
"...And my fossil-to-chromosome ratios clearly demonstrate that female dinosaurs- like this Plesiosaurus- were the stronger and smarter of their species. But, so what else is new?" This got a chuckle out of the class, mostly the girls like Peni. "After class, I'll be happy to demonstrate how BOY dinosaurs got their butts kicked by girl dinosaurs on a regular basis!" She directed this last comment towards Jimmy as she passed him while going back to her seat.
"Excuse me," Jimmy interrupted as he suddenly plucked a piece of Cindy's model off, "but the mandible crest of Cindy's alleged 'Plesiosaur' is actually that of a MALE Megalosaur, as defined by last week's World Congress of Paleontologists!"
"Those findings were inconclusive, and you know it, Neutron!" Cindy argued harshly.
"Those two fight more than Jimmy and myself." Peni thought to herself. "It's almost as if there's some unspoken thing between them or something." She thought for a second before shaking her head. "Nah. No way."
"Hello!" Jimmy yelled out. "Ms. Fowl, what is the standard for research on these extra credit reports?"
"Um… Yes… Well, um…" Ms. Fowl said unsure of how to answer Jimmy's question. "Let's move along to show-and-tell now, shall we? Peni?"
"Sure thing, Ms. Fowl." Peni said. She got up from her chair and presented herself in front of the class. She reached into her shirt and revealed a black necklace with a Japanese word engraved on the pendant. "This necklace was the last thing bought by my dad before he moved to America. He bought it as a reminder of his homeland. This engraving is Kanji for 'spider', which actually became the inspiration for his scientific research."
The kids were all pretty impressed as they 'ooed' at the cool pendant.
"Stylish AND exotic. I can dig it," Libby complimented.
"How informative, Peni. Thank you." Ms. Fowl said followed by a random squawk she has a habit of making. "Who would like to go next?"
"Ooh! I do!" shouted a boy with a triangle-shaped head and a T-shirt for a superhero called Ultra-Lord. He put himself in Peni's place while she returned to her seat. He then picked up a boxed toy with Ultra-Lord on it. "This is Ultra-Lord!"
That made everyone groan a bit.
"Sheen, this is the seventh week in a row you've shown Ultra-Lord in class." Ms. Fowl admonished.
"Ms. Fowl, this one is different." Sheen said proudly. "This purple vengeance version with power fists and nuclear knees is in rare, never-been-seen condition, making it highly collectible!"
"Never been seen, huh?" Cindy asked. "Well, then, how do you know it's even in there?"
To prove her wrong, Sheen opened up the box and pulled out the Ultra-Lord toy inside. He showed it off to her, but after seeing the smug look on her face, he realized the mistake he made when he unboxed the collectible toy.
"NOOOOOO!"
Everyone laughed while Sheen returned to his desk with his head hung low. Even Peni thought it was a bit amusing how Cindy had outwitted him.
"Carl, would you please share with us your show-and-tell?" Ms. Fowl asked.
"Okay." Carl said taking his place in front of his classmates. He pulled out a small, handheld spray from his pocket. "This is my inhaler. It provides fast-acting relief of bronchial swelling due to asthma or allergies. One touch of the button and…"
Carl was interrupted by the quick spray he accidentally made as it was pointed at his face. It stung him in the eyes and he yelled out in pain running back to his seat.
"Thank you, Carl." Ms. Fowl said. "Next, we have…"
Before she could say another word, the classroom door opened up. Everyone looked up and saw a tan-skinned boy with greased black hair, a blue jacket, and a ring necklace that he wore. He leaned on the doorway with a sucker in his mouth. He gracefully pulled it out, making most of the girls in the class swoon over him.
The only one who wasn't drawn into the boy's charms was Peni Parker, who rolled her eyes. "Oh, boy. It's 'Mr. Cool'."
"Ah, yes, Nick." Ms. Fowl said. "You are a tad tardy again!"
"Oh, my. Am I?" Nick asked casually pulling out a note which he gave to Ms. Fowl. "Yeah, it took me a little while to copy my mom's handwriting for this late note."
"And he thinks that's smart HOW?" Penny thought with a scoff. "Besides, school's nearly over. Why bother coming at the tail end? Honestly, this guy was a mystery to her sometimes.
"Your show-and-tell, please." Ms. Fowl asked.
"How's it going?" Nick asked a girl putting his sucker into her mouth. "You know, I don't really do show-and-tell."
"We're shocked," Peni muttered sarcastically, watching Cindy pretend to drop her pencil so Nick could then pick it up for her, making her stutter like a moron. Jimmy and Carl made grossed out faces and she could help but feel like she wanted to do the same. As Nick took his seat, he cast his eyes about at the swooning girls before he noticed the bored Peni simply looking at her pendant. He quirked an eyebrow at that, but just slouched down 'cooly' in his chair.
"So, next we have…"
Once again, Ms. Fowl was interrupted. This time, it was by a cloud of purple smoke which poofed in front of the class. When it cleared, a boy with green clothes and a purple jacket presented himself dramatically.
"Behold, ladies and gentlemen! For today, I, the great Mysterio, will turn even the most adamant of skeptics into avid believers and aficionados! Today, I…"
"QUENTIN!" Ms. Fowl interrupted. "This is the tenth week in a row you put on a magic show for show-and-tell!"
"Yeah! Even I only did mine seven times!" Sheen shouted.
"What's your point?" Quentin asked dismissively. "I mean, I put the 'show' in 'show-and-tell'! Besides, it's good practice for when I become a famous stage magician and do repeat performances for huge crowds in Vegas!"
"Quentin, what do you think you're trying to accomplish with this smoke-and-mirrors stuff?" Peni asked.
"For once, Peni and I are in agreement," Jimmy said with an eye roll. "How logical is it to place your entire future in the hands of cheap prestidigitation and showmanship?"
"First of all, Neutron, no one cares about 'logic'. Ambition is the way to go these days!" Quentin said proudly. "And secondly, is this a cheap trick?" He put his hand to Carl's ear and removed it with a quarter in his hand. "Tada!"
"Wow!" Carl shouted in astonishment. "My ear's an ATM!"
"He hid the quarter in his fingers and rolled it around when they were close to your ear, Carl." Peni said dryly. "Everyone knows that trick. Plus, we've seen it eight times already."
"Oh, yeah, right." Carl awkwardly said. "I-I knew that. I was just… just seeing if YOU guys did." He reached out for the quarter, but Quentin pulled it away from him angrily.
"Yeah, seriously, 'Mysterio'." Cindy mocked. "At least come up with some new tricks already."
Quentin narrowed his eyes and returned to his seat in a grumble. "I would if I had a way to pull off new tricks. All my equipment is outdated."
"Well then," Ms. Fowl said, "It looks like we have enough time for one more show-and-tell. Jimmy, we eagerly await another one of your, uh… interesting show-and-tells."
"As a matter of fact, I brought my latest invention." Jimmy said taking his place at the front. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a tricked-out remote control with a text screen on it. "Behold, the shrink ray!"
"What's the matter, Neutron?" Cindy asked with a smirk. "Aren't you short enough already?" This made the majority of the class chuckle. Jimmy, despite his genius, was rather short.
"Funny, Cindy," Jimmy retorted sarcastically. "But this device is more suited to shrink something as vast as space itself! Like, say… your mouth!" He quickly pointed his device at Cindy and pushed a button. However, the device sparked and nothing happened, causing everyone in class to laugh more.
Cindy mockingly hid herself lower in her desk. "Help me! Help me! I'm so tiny! Just like Jimmy's brain!"
"Okay, as funny as this is," Peni said trying to hide her chuckle, "He's probably had enough. You should lay off a tiny bit."
"HA! Tiny! Good one, Peni!" Cindy laughed along with the class.
"I wasn't… Never mind." Peni sighed.
At that moment, the bell rang signalling the end of class. Everyone in class left while Jimmy was the last to go, not knowing that as he left, he accidentally blasted a beam from his shrink ray that blasted Ms. Fowl.
Out in the hall, Peni walked along with Libby and Cindy.
"So that's a full day of school, a couple of Nerdtron's inventions failed, and we all go home waiting for tomorrow." Libby said.
"Yep. Just another boring day in Retroville," Peni said with a sigh. "Nothing ever changes."