Finding Spider-Man

Chapter 1

"…hey, look, I know you're like, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, or something, but you do realize that Gaston dies at the end, right?"

"Shut up you filthy bug!"

"Hey hey hey, first of all, spiders are not—"

It was the rush of dodging the punch, rather than any sort of impact, that jolted Peter from sleep. He remained with his eyes closed for a moment, disoriented. Within seconds, the contents of the dream faded away. There was the bed under him, the comforter over him, the sound of car tires over wet streets. The air smelled damp and humid, the way it smelled when there was ongoing rain.

The room was dark when he opened his eyes. The clock showed 6:45. He lied in bed for about five more minutes, nearly falling asleep again, but he needed about an hour to get to school, and school started at eight.

Rolling out of bed, Peter began his morning ritual: fetching his glasses, staring stupidly at himself in the mirror, brushing his teeth, throwing on some shirt, some sweater, some jeans, socks, going downstairs to grab a breakfast bar. His aunt was still sleeping, while his uncle had already left for work. Peter would never understand how Ben Parker could stand to wake up so early.

About fifteen minutes later, Peter was making his way toward the death trap that was Queens Boulevard, though luckily for him, he did not have to cross it. He saw some unfortunate kids that did, probably heading toward Russell Sage Middle School. They all looked younger than him, short and small with giant backpacks. The cars drove a little slower due to the rain, but they were still aggressive, and he saw one sports car speed down the lane as if it were a highway instead of a local street, though thankfully after one girl already crossed.

Someone's gonna get ticketed.

A moderate number of people waited on the platform, especially on the side going to Manhattan. Peter recognized some of them as classmates that he occasionally passed by in the halls, but he had never spoken to them and did not know their names. Supposedly there were between eight hundred to nine hundred students in any particular class at Stuyvesant. Peter neither needed nor wanted to know all of them. It was much too early in the morning for anything but a snooze, if he could find a seat. Besides, despite being a school full of nerds, Stuyvesant had its cliques, like any other school. There were the goths, the sort-of-jocks, the popular-and-beautiful, the remorselessly crazy, and there were those like Peter Parker, who got good grades and had different research interests, and did not really see the need to add to those.

Eventually, however, as Peter was taking a nap, one friend he did know got into the same car as him.

"Yo," and a butt squeezed next to his just as the previous one's left.

He looked up. It was a kid named Jason, who shared his homeroom. "Hey!"

"Stupid rain!" Jason was holding his umbrella over his backpack, since there were too many people standing for him to hold it out over the floor. "I wish we had rain days and not just snow days."

"I know," Peter groaned, "I hope it doesn't keep raining when we have to get home."

"I got totally soaked walking two blocks to the subway," Jason pointed at his sweatpants, "because the wind kept blowing the rain under my umbrella. And I think my umbrella is broken now, but I couldn't really check."

"It wasn't raining that hard when I left home," Peter blinked.

"Dumb luck…"

They exchanged several questions about the upcoming math test, since Jason had the same teacher even if they did not share the same class. Peter drifted off to sleep again, and did not rouse fully until he sensed everyone get off the train.

"Come on," Jason tugged at his arm before swinging his own backpack over his shoulder. Peter hastily stood. One guy was staring at him; solidly-built, with a leather jacket and a very intense gaze. Peter glared back at him as he swung the backpack on. Yeah, I have school and I got up before the sun rose. Go off yourself, man. It was far too early in the morning to deal with jerks.

The rain had lightened to a drizzle when they came out and began the trek towards the school grounds. As they approached, other kids were joining them, and they all flocked indoors. First period started in about three minutes.

"Catch you in homeroom?" Jason waved.

"See you," Peter waved back.

"…thought Peter Parker was in Midtown High?"

Peter turned, but saw no one he recognized who could possibly be talking about him.

Maybe it's another Peter Parker. He shrugged, and went on his way.

oOo

Every year, eighth graders around the city of New York took a test, known citywide as the specialized science high school entrance exam. The best of the bunch, supposedly, went to Stuyvesant High School, though there were others, like the Bronx High School of Science. Students flocked from Staten Island to Brooklyn to attend these schools if their scores were high enough to be admitted, and it was a way out of the local schools defined by zones, especially in places where the neighborhoods were poor and the schools did not have enough funding for good education.

Back when Peter received his own results, his uncle and aunt were ecstatic. It meant he would be among the top students in one of the largest cities in the world. So many people from Stuyvesant went to the Ivies, to MIT, to Cal-Tech, and getting into Stuyvesant meant that Peter would mingle with the brightest minds of his age. The travel was long, but they all felt it was worth it. Everyone in the city knew what "Stuyvesant" was, and it was a certain relishing pride to be able to say, "My name is Peter Parker. I study at Stuyvesant," though Peter never told anyone else unless they asked.

At Stuy, as the school's name was abbreviated, students were all self-identified as nerds. It was actually a little laughable how little they cared about anything besides studying. None of the jocks even bothered to show off the fact that they were in sports teams, and the popular people needed good grades to be able to afford networking. Studying was a priority, and without that, everything else became minor. Added to the fact that around three quarters of the school were made of Asians, the whole student demographic just did not resemble that of a typical school in the city.

With over three thousand people roaming the halls, there was no such thing as a true loser, since most of the class would not even recognize the name. There was also no such thing as the "most popular" boy or girl, since at least half of the students would not recognize that name either. Every day was a potentially new start, if Peter chose to. He could mix in with the sci-fi geeks or chess club duelists or robotics team any time he wanted, and no one could bias anyone else with prior impressions of him. Stuy was pretty much a city all on its own.

It was nice, this sort of anonymity. He was left alone and he left others alone. There was no bullying, because what could others bully him for? He had none of the deficiencies they would not see in themselves. All of them were already the best of the best, told again and again by their teachers. They had all passed the bar, and had accepted each others as worthy colleagues. Though other teenagers might strive to find a niche they could fit in, Peter could find one almost effortlessly, and if he did not, no one would find this odd either. Plenty of loners roamed the floors just like him. Such was the culture of Stuyvesant. They were all already given the benefit of a doubt, because they all had to take that citywide entrance exam, and had passed with flying colors.

But the same anonymity had its costs. Peter might have been the brightest student in any other high school, but at Stuy he was just the average Joe. It was hard to gauge whether he was excelling or just barely making the mark. There was also a pressure to constantly work, and he often wondered if he would be able to relax and take a breath in another high school. Here, he was constantly racing forward, because there were so many others just like him who were running the same track, and a moment of failure would cost him the lead.

Today was one of those days.

"What did you get?" one of the boys whacked him on the shoulder, and he quickly rolled up his test to hide the big fat "86" written in red. Not a bad score by any means, and people at Stuy have had worse, but students tended to view ninety as a cut-off for their pride. Something that would be viewed as obnoxious anywhere else, but the type of people who got into Stuyvesant were the sort that would be a little obnoxious.

"Oh come on, Pete!"

"I failed."

"Pfft, no you didn't."

Peter genuinely did feel like a failure. "No, it's bad. What did you get?"

"I'm the one that did bad!"

The guy had been crying over his test when he got a ninety-three, which was actually not an uncommon occurrence at Stuy. Peter was not buying it.

"Uncool, man! If you ask, you gotta be willing to give," he pointed out.

"Oh fine." He revealed an equally fat "89" on his test, which made Peter want to hit him with his pencil.

The teenagers griped about this useless topic for another minute, before one of the other students interrupted to inquire about a question she got wrong, and they all started comparing answers to make sure the teacher didn't misgrade. The rest of the class was doing the same thing, and soon the room was filled with the din of voices as three quarters of the students discussed their answers. The rest played on their phones or hunched over their desks to nap, because sometimes even Stuy kids stop caring.

Eventually, the teacher called for order, and they went over all the questions people had issues with. Peter spent the remainder of the period calculating what he needed on future exams to get above a ninety.

He was actually pretty safe, as far as course grades went. Feeling a little better, he left the class whistling when the period ended.

The halls were packed, and some idiot freshmen were clogging up the corridors to socialize, which created a ton of traffic. Peter had the strange urge to jump to the ceiling and crawl over them, and he even glanced up to contemplate the deed. Wouldn't it be awesome to just go upside down over all of them?

Someone poked him in the back, hard.

"Hey Pete," a boy from his English class, Juan, tucked his notebook under his arm. "Are you gonna show up for hacky sack?"

"Dude…" Peter groaned.

"Oh come on man, it's not like you take a bus. Stay after and play hacky sack."

"Right, because last time went so well." Peter found the particular activity especially boring, and could not understand why Juan and his friends liked it so much.

"What else do you have to do?"

He blew out a breath. "Dude, it's gross out there."

"So? Indoors. Oh, and you're coming to Halo tomorrow."

That, Peter actually found more interesting. "I'll try. I got a test this Friday. Pre-calc."

"Boo," but Juan let it go. Tests were always valid excuses for missing events. "Well, hacky sack today, and if you show up today you're excused from Halo."

Peter rolled his eyes, pushing up his glasses.

He did part of his homework during his lunch period in the biology office, since there was no work for him to do. A girl named Eunhwa was with him, studying for her social studies exam.

"No me gusta this thing," she grumbled. "I hate that we have essays and exams."

"When is it?"

"Tomorrow. Ew. Spider." She pointed with her pen. It paused on the desk they were sharing, and she cringed back when it approached her notebook.

Peter swatted it away. "Afraid of bugs?"

Spiders aren't bugs.

"Not my favorite," she admitted.

The rain splattered against the windows.

"Ugh, they should cancel school when the weather sucks so much."

"Yeah," Peter agreed, wondering if how poorly he would fare on the walk from school to the subway later that afternoon. Maybe by the time he was done with hacky sack, the storm would let up. Eunhwa went to the window to watch the downpour.

"Man, you should see this, you can't see anything out there."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Huh. Three guys are just standing outside. No umbrella. Weird."

Peter did not think much of it. There were all sorts of lunatics in the city.

The rest of the day passed normally, until he made his way to the rendezvous where the hacky sack club was meeting. He had his backpack in his hand instead of over his shoulder, and his umbrella tucked under his other arm.

At the doorways separating the halls, Peter stopped. Leaning against the wall was the man Peter had seen in the subway, leather coat and all. He was not alone; there was a man in a suit, who looked a little tired, with dark hair and hunched shoulders. A third man, blonde and tall wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, was on the other side of the door with his arms folded. They both stared at him in that unnerving way that made Peter wonder if he was in trouble for some reason.

"Uh, hi?"

"Peter Parker?" The first man began.

"Yeah?"

He was not the kindest looking man. He actually seemed a little dangerous, though Peter could not put his finger on why. Surely anyone who entered the school should be alright; Stuyvesant was not exactly a terrorist hotspot, and a school was supposed to be…well, a school.

"My name is Clint Barton," said the man, holding out a hand for Peter to shake. Peter did so reluctantly. "We're part of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, also known as SHIELD. We're going to need you to come with us."

"Tony," said the blonde in a voice that was a little louder than necessary and looked down at the ground, "found him."

Peter turned to the tired man who was presumably Tony, but he did not respond to the blonde.

"Uh…" The feds? Really? Shouldn't these guys be in suits…or something? "What do you want me for?"

"Kind of an emergency," said Tony, "we'd wait until you were done with school, but we really can't afford to. It's for your own safety."

"Hold them off," said the blonde, "we need more time."

Tony apparently looked alarmed at this.

"Is Tony alright?" he asked.

Why is he referring to himself in third person? Peter looked at the blonde and noticed that he had a hand to his ear. Oh. Earpiece.

What is going on here?

"We need to go," said the blonde, "Tony's not going to hold for much longer."

A hand gripped his arm. Clint Barton had him in a firm hold.

"Sorry about this," he even looked a bit apologetic, and then there was a sharp sting on his arm.

Peter yelled, but even as he opened his mouth, he felt his energy drain, so all that came out was a whisper. His legs folded under him, and he would have smacked his nose on the floor if arms did not grip his waist.

"He seems younger every time I meet him."

"This time he is actually younger than the last time you saw him."

"Wonder if going to a different high school's going to change his character…"

There was suddenly a curse, and something that sounded like gunfire, before the world went dark.