chapter thirteen!
adventures with the suit lady

"HELLO?!" Peter spun around, very confused. His suit lit up from collar to shoes, following every fibre of faux webbing. He looked up at the sky, behind the trees, down below at his classmates in the pool, but there was no one who could have spoken. He glanced up at the sky again. "Hello?"

"Congratulations on completing the Training Wheels Protocol," said the female voice in his ear. His eyes widened, breath hitching to see his lenses flicker like a television screen━a very, very advanced television screen before they narrowed in, and Peter saw annotations of almost everything around him. He saw what type of trees were planted on the side of the road, what the temperature was, the humidity, even the trajectory angle for a perfect swing from the next building ... even a thermal optics view mode! (What the fu━?) Peter barely even had the capacity of amazement to blink and read every single thing that popped up, "and gaining access to your suit's full capabilities."

"Ah," he felt awkward speaking to what felt like thin air. Peter cleared his throat. He wanted to sound cool for this voice in his ear. Was it from the suit? Does his suit speak? Can suit's do that? "T━thank you."

"Where would you like to take me tonight?"

Peter put his hands on his hips, nodding to himself. He wanted to be authoritive ... wait, can this suit lady actually see him? "I━I put a tracker on someone," he said. That was authoritive ... right? "He's a bad guy."

"Tracker located."

And in his lenses, the world zoomed in around him. Peter felt a fresh sense of vertigo, like he was diving from a very high building. The streets around him upturned like a holographic map, following a line of red that appeared, all the way to Maryland with a little spider-man face tab. Peter grinned at that. "Plotting course to intercept target." The lenses returned to normal, and a small GPS notification showed of a truck coming his way right now. Peter got ready to jump.

"Okay," he told Suit Lady. "As long as I make it back in time for Decathlon, it's fine."

He leapt off the roof and landed onto the back of the moving truck, his feet sticking to the trailer with little problem. Peter watched the motel get further and further away, part of his stomach twisting. "Yeah," he muttered to himself. "Make sure to get back in time ... we have to get back in time so I don't disappoint Nina and Liz. Maybe I should call Nina ... just to let her know I'm not coming to the pool?"

"Nina?" Suit Lady responded immediately. Peter jumped. Okay, he will not get used to that. "Nina Hart. Contact: Nina Triple-Heart-Emoji━"

Peter winced, "Okay, can you━"

"Calling Nina Triple-Heart-Emoji now━"

"Wait!" Peter threw his hands out, shaking his head, "No, no, no, no, don't call━!"

Immediately, Nina picked up. "Peter?"

Peter sat back on the truck, throwing his head to the sky with a mental groan. "Hey, Nina!" he put on his best positive voice.

"Are you okay?" she asked, unsure. "Y━You never call me anymore. What's wrong?"

"No, no, nothing's wrong!" Peter quickly assured her. He really hoped she couldn't hear the sound of the truck moving along the road. "I just━uh━just wanted to let you know that━uh━I decided to study in the business centre."

"Oh," Peter sat up at the disappointment in her voice. He resisted the urge to sigh, but placed his head in his hands as the truck moved onto the next street. "Okay. That's ... that's all right."

"I'm sorry," he mumbled to her.

"No, no, it's okay," she replied, but he could hear the tone to her voice. He knew her too well. "Do you want company?"

"No!" Peter said that too quickly. Damnit, Peter!

"Oh! Oh, okay," Nina muttered, taken aback, and sounding hurt. "I get it━I'm sorry, I didn't━"

"No, no!" Peter gripped the side of his mask. "I just meant, I━you━uh━you know me, I just━sometimes I prefer to study alone."

"You're not studying," said the Suit Lady.

"Shut up," he told it out of the corner of his mouth.

Nina heard him. "Sorry?" she let out, scoffing.

"No, not you!" Peter rushed to fix his mistake. "There's━there's this kid who's trying to talk to me. I just━I gotta go, bye, see you tomorrow!"

Suit Lady ended the call, and Peter finally groaned, frustrated and embarrassed with himself.

"She seems nice," said Suit Lady.

This was going to be a long night.

*ೃ༄

NINA WOKE up the next day with her nerves making her jittery. She paced the motel room, searching for everything she needed while MJ just watched her, blank-faced and packing a book to read. She threw on her yellow blazer, taking deep breaths as she thought through all of her answers. Felicia still hadn't replied, to any of her messages, which didn't make Nina feel better at all.

But she had no choice but to step outside when Liz rapped her knuckles on their door to say, "Come on, guys! Let's go, or we'll be late."

"Coming!" Nina grabbed her school bag. "Okay, okay, MJ, test me on the way, okay?"

"Yeah, no, I'm not doing that," MJ grabbed her own bag and walked past her, opening the door with a quick look over her shoulder. Nina sighed, but followed. She kept glancing back down at her phone for a reply from Felicia and got nothing, but also thinking about Peter calling her last night. That was the first time Peter had called her with intention to actually speak to her in ages. To say sorry for not coming down to the pool━he doesn't do that, not anymore.

But maybe he does now, again.

Nina was actually excited to see him today. She was excited to sit near him at Decathlon again, sharing quick glances whenever they answered a question or got something right, or just for no other reason than they couldn't help it. Despite her worries, and her fear, and Felicia not texting her back at all, Nina was excited to see Peter, and she hasn't been excited like this in ages.

But when she and MJ met up with the others downstairs, her excitement fell to a frown. Confused, she stopped beside Cindy, checking her friends for a familiar face, and saw nothing. Nina settled her eyes on Ned, who stood there, awkwardly alone and clinging onto his bag like it was a lifeline.

"Where's Peter?" she asked him specifically, but it wasn't Ned that answered.

"He's bailed on us," said Flash. He didn't sound upset by this idea. "Again."

"What?" Nina couldn't believe it. She didn't want to believe it. She shook her head, not wanting to think that Peter had rejoined them, and she had thought he wasn't going to quit on them again, only for him to do exactly what he's always done ... again, and again ... and again.

"Yeah," sighed Liz. She pursed her lips, fiddling with the sleeves of her blazer. She looked disappointed━but not in the way she was angry, but sad ... and Nina knew that feeling all too well.

It made her set her jaw as Mr. Harrington sighed, "Well," he checked his watch, "we can't wait any longer on him. You sure he's really not okay, Ned?"

"Oh, no," Ned said, shaking his head vigoriously. "He is not okay. It's bad━like━really bad. He's━uh━he's vomiting and vomiting even more. I think he ate something bad for dinner last night."

"But you guys didn't come to dinner last night," frowned Abraham.

Ned stared at him, mouth-agape for a second before he fixed his posture, "Uh ... didn't we?"

"You were in your motel room since we got here," Sally crossed her arms, suspicious.

"Uh ... right!" Ned snapped his fingers at her, chuckling nervously. "It was━uh━room service. The room service here sucks..."

Nina wanted to demand what was going on. She knew he was lying. She new goddamn well that Ned was lying. Oh, screw her for giving Peter a second chance! He had done two good things and she fell back to him like nothing had even happened! Peter was probably in his room, chilling out, and not even coming━ditching on everything because he thought he was so cool, and so good, and so smart because he had that stupid Stark Internship. Yeah, well, if Peter wanted to be anything like Tony Stark, then Nina knew he'll end up as some shit-eating, rich dickhead who hides his insecurites behind some shitty iron mask.

As everyone else started to leave, Nina stayed back to walk beside Ned. Under her breath, she said, "I know you're lying. And I know you know exactly what Peter is doing, and since you're the only one he answers the phone to these days, how about you tell him that I think he's been an arrogant coward recently?"

She stormed off to keep up with Liz after that, knowing that if Felicia heard what she just said, she'd be the proudest friend in the world. Nina knew she was proud of herself.

"Let's win this thing," Nina muttered to Liz. "We don't need Peter, at all."

I don't need Peter, she added to herself.

The United States Academic Decathlon was held at the theatre within the motel. Nina waked onto stage behind Liz and in front of Cindy Moon, seeing a small crowd of other students, teachers and academic personas. The opposite team from Brooklyn Vision Academy came up from the otherside, and Nina found it slightly funny that they would be going against their most competitive opponents in the state━but it also made it going to be extremely satisfying when they win (without Peter).

The two teams sat at their tables, nervous, but determined. Nina was glad she didn't have to sit next to Flash, who was sweating straight through his Ralph Lauren shirt and looked as though he might be sick.

It was tense as they went through each round; speeding through the Super Quiz, had Liz slam the speech with no trouble and perfect articulation and confidence. They wrote their essays and answered the questions on arts, economics, literature, science, maths━Nina aced any chemistry and biology ones that came her way. (And Flash didn't answer a single thing).

So far, everything seemed to be going really well. Cindy was as frigid as a board beside Nina, and she gave her a quick rub on her arm as a quiet, it's going to be okay. You're doing great. Flash was flushed and discreetly fanning himself. Liz seemed composed, but Nina could hear the slight flutter in her slow breaths. Charles Murphey's leg was bouncing up and down, Sally gripped her pencil tight. Ned looked a little sick, too, while Abe fiddled with his fingers. The only real calm one out of them all was MJ━which, when Nina thought about it, seemed correct.

Nina was nervous, but above all of that, she was stubborn. She had the idea of winning in her mind to spite Peter that they could do this without him after begging him to return, and him leaving them in the dirt when he did, and so Nina will win. When she had something in her head, there was no way to get her to stray from it. Recently, Nina hadn't been too sure with herself, in anything, not like she used to be. But now, Nina was sure, and she intended to stay sure.

She fixed the sleeves of her Midtown blazer over the top of her high-rise jens and crop jumper. Nina set her jaw and set her gaze onto the judge, waiting the final round with an angry confidence.

"We have now entered sudden death," began the judge into the microphone. Flash made a strange noise in the centre of the row. It was sort of a mix between a gag, a squeak and a belch. "The next correct answer wins the championship..."

The question was long, and it seemed complicated, and the other team glanced at each other, horrified by it as they tried to think it through. Flash was ready to pass out, slipping down in his chair. The other team tried to scribble it out on paper, Abe Brown brought his hands to his lips, confused. Nina frowned a little, trying to think it all through━

Then she realised something realy easy about it. It was a trick question. All of it was multiplied by zero ... which meant ...

MJ tapped her buzzer nochantly. Everyone turned to her, breaths hitched, eyes wide, hearts racing with anticipation. She hadn't spoken a single word this entire Decathlon either, and now she chose to participate. For sudden death. If she didn't get this right, that would give the other team the time ...

"Midtown Tech?"

In the silence, MJ was incredulous. She shrugged, frowning at their dramatics. Nina smirked a little to herself when Michelle stated, nochalant, "Zero."

The judge watched her for a moment, if not a little startled. MJ shrugged again. Then, the judge turned to the microphone to say, "That is correct."

Nina and her entire fellow Decathlon Team lit up in cheers. Flash jumped to his feet, his arms flinging up into the air with a cry of, "I WON!" that no one cared about. They all swarmed MJ, hugging her and laughing and Michelle didn't exaclty know what to do. She hunched up at all the people throwing their arms around her. Nina squeezed her, laughing with delight, "You did it!" she told MJ, and Michelle managed a nervous chuckle, not expecting such positive attention from anyone ... ever.

They won. They won! Without Peter━they did it, and they didn't need him for one, single moment.

In fact, Nina didn't even care where he was, or what he might be doing right now. She just hugged MJ tight with Cindy Moon as they jumped up and down on the stage, happy when Michelle let herself relax just for a moment to laugh with them. They won!

*ೃ༄

PETER'S HEAD hurt.

Sure, being Spider-Man saved him from a lot of injuries, helping him avoid them, heal quicker or just not feel them as much, but jumping full speed head-first towards the roof of a metal trailer? Yeah, not a good thing, even for Spider-Man.

He groaned, twisting his body to try and get back up. He was still in his suit, and his head throbbed like a fifteen-pound drum against the material of the mask. He remembered what happened. He had tried to stop that Bird Guy from stealing from this trailer, and then he fell through those matter-phase shifter things (that were so cool), and knocked them askew. when he tried to get up, he hit his head, and now here he laid, aching and bruised and still rather dizzy.

That was the second time that Bird Guy got the upper hand against him. First he dropped him into the lake where he almost drowned, and now, Peter had been lucky he didn't do worse than just hit his head. This guy━whoever he was━was no joke. He managed to sit up, his eyes slowly adjusting to the environment around him. At the sight of trays, boxes and casings, he figured he was still inside the back of the truck.

"Ow," he mumbled, his hand pressed against his temple, "my head..."

"You appear to have a mild concussion," said Suit Lady.

Peter forced himself to get back up, holding onto the cages for support as he rocked slighly on his feet. He groaned as he let go, stumbling back to hit the ones opposite. But he seemed to slowly be getting back to focus. "Hey," he said, "so where am I right now?"

"I'm not sure," said the voice in his suit. Peter peered through the storage cage bars at strange objects; weird staffs, helmets and what could be modified weapons. "The container walls are hindering my sensors."

Then, it struck him.

Peter stepped back, his eyes widening as he realised. "Wait a minute," he held his hands out, admittedly a little excited. "They must have hijacked the truck and taken me to their evil lair!" He nodded to himself, shaking the mild concussion out of his system (which he does not exactly reccomend). "Okay, okay, Suit Lady, we're gonna have to fight our way out of this one."

He turned to face the door. Bouncing on his toes, Peter readied himself for the blow, and for what dangers might lurk outside. His heart raced. He was nervous, but he was also eager. He was already thinking of all the quips he could say: Hey! Did somebody order stolen goods? Have a kick to the face━it's on me!

"Okay, okay," he psyched himself up, stretching out his shoulders and bending his knees. "Three, two, one━"

Peter broke out into a run and slammed himself straight through the corrigated iron doors. He tumbled out into the light, hitting concrete ground and pushing himself into a roll. He got back up onto his feet, hands extended out to web the closest attacker ... only to falter.

His heart jolted with confusion. This didn't look like a secret evil lair. It was a warehouse; a huge, lit, packed warehouse with more corrigated iron cargo boxes he had just been in. Concrete floors, walls and ceilings━his quick breaths echoing out, alone into vast grey aisles. Peter glanced around, and his stomach dropped to see a large, bolted door. "What is this place?" he asked, fearing the answer already. "Suit Lady, where am I?"

"You're in the most secure facility on the Eastern Seaboard," she answered. Peter felt the realisation falling onto him in gushes of dread. "The Damage Control deep-storage vault."

"No!" Peter flung his hands to his head, staring at the words written in big bold letters on the bolted door. This is not good. This is bad. This is really, really bad. "Seriously?!"

Peter spent the next few minutes desperately trying to pull the door open. Even with his strength, it was completely useless. They didn't move an inch apart from each other. Suit Lady gave him helpful tips as he tried, such as: "The door will most likely remain closed until morning━" which, now that he thought about it, were not helpful. Like, at all. Peter pulled, he tried to break them apart with his webs. He gave it an angry kick for good measure, but surprisingly, that didn't work either.

His only option was to wait until morning. Which meant he was going to miss Decathlon. Which meant he'll worry Ned. And disappoint Liz. But most importantly: disappoint Nina. They had gotten along last night. They had a conversation that was good, like old times, and Peter had messed it all up again.

Peter tried to keep himself entertained. He talked to Suit Lady, who he kind of fell bad calling Suit Lady. He made a hamock out of webs, but he got bored of that pretty quickly. The cargo vaults were pretty good objects to practice parkour on, but that got repetitive.

"I think I should probably give you a name," Peter swung lowly from cargo containers, throwing his legs up as he drifted so close to the concrete he almost grazed it. "Like Liz━No! No, no, no━" he dropped down onto his backside, shaking his head. "God, that's━that's weird. What about ..." he sprung up another web to the ceiling and rolled his body backwards, "... Nina? Wait━no, that's even weirder! What am I doing?" He swung along, brainstorming names to call this strange voice in his suit. Could he call her Karen? Or was that mean? Karen seems like a weird Mom name. But Peter doesn't know a Karen━he doesn't know any Karen's at all. He's gonna call her Karen.

Peter got bored of swinging. So, he dangled from the roof upside down to read through his physics text book. He couldn't keep quiet though━when can Peter ever keep quiet in a room where there was so much silence it was deafening? "Hey, Karen," he asked Suit Lady, suddenly curious, "what else can this suit do?"

Something shot out from under his arms. Peter glanced down and gasped to see webbed wings. "Yo!" he dropped his book down. "What?"

He started to get cold. So, he put on his jumper and his Decathlon blazer, back to swinging around the storage vault. Peter ran through the system of his suit to fill up time. Mr. Stark seriously overdid himself. Peter had richochet webs, web grenades, splitter webs, taser webs, night vision, thermal vision, GPS ...

It was awesome. This suit was awesome.

Somehow, Peter ended up ontop of one of the containers. He lied down on his back, tired and cold. His thoughts wandered, fixing onto Nina━as they usually do. He knew she'd be angry, and perhaps he won't be able to ever go back from it this time. Peter wondered whether he had ruined their friendship forever━in a way that even showing up at her window as Spider-Man wouldn't fix it.

They had known each other since forever. And Peter thought seeing her as Spider-Man would make him feel better. It would make him feel like things hadn't changed. That he could still hang out with her, but still keep that distance, still keep her safe and not drag her down with him. But then she went ahead and put herself in danger anyways. Peter now felt like he hadn't done anything. He felt like he was leading her on with a lie that was making her turn around in circles.

But it hurt. Peter wanted to tell her the reason why he couldn't come was because he was stopping bad guys. He wanted to tell her that he heard every message, saw every time she called, heard every whisper of how she was worried underneath all that anger. And he wanted to tell her, I'm fine, I'm right here. I heard you. But when he was at that window, he wasn't Peter Parker, he was Spider-Man, and they were separate. They had to be separate. Peter often began to wonder whether Nina would prefer Spider-Man over him if she found out. She would realise who was under the mask and be disappointed.

Peter just wished he could explain he was doing it to keep her safe.

Sighing out a long, sad sigh, Peter stared up at the blank, grey concrete ceiling. "Should I tell Nina that I'm Spider-Man?" he asked Karen.

"Who is Nina?"

"Who's Nina?" Peter couldn't stop the small chuckle that escaped his lips. It was sad, and it was painful, but it was also filled with those memories of baking with Aunt May, dinners with her parents, Star Wars marathons with Ned and promising each other time and time again: where you go, I go. "She's━heh," Peter was filled with nostalgia. "She's an old friend━uh━well━she's the best. She's awesome. She's a girl who goes to my school. We used to be really close, but ... I screwed it up."

"What do you mean you screwed it up?"

"I just ..." Peter's smile fell as he remembered it all. "I broke up with her because I'm Spider-Man, to protect her. I didn't ... I don't want to get her into danger but ... it's really hard, you know? I want her to understand, and I want to tell her stuff because she was supposed to be my best friend no matter what ... and now she hates me because all she thinks is that we broke up because I didn't have time for her. I really want to tell her, but I can't. Besides, imagine how'd she react. Hey, I'm Spider-Man. I've been lying to you to protect you. She'd hate me."

"I don't think she'd hate you."

"I avoid her as me, and then I talk to her as Spider-Man," replied Peter, frustrated with himself. "I lied to her, and we never lied to each other. A━and what if she sees it's me, and is disappointed? What if she expects something different? Someone better."

"Well," said Karen gently, "if I were her, I wouldn't be disappointed at all."

Peter smiled a little. "Thanks, Karen," he muttered. "It's really nice to have somebody to talk to. Hey, how long we been here anyways?"

"Thirty-seven minutes."

Peter shot up, "What?!" He jumped to his feet, shaking his head. No, that felt like hours. "Thirty-seven minutes? That's insane! I cannot take this anymore." He jumped off the container and back onto the ground, marching towards the one he had arrived here in. "I got t━I gotta get out of here."

He threw off his blazer and jumper, stepping up to the bag the Bird Guy had tried to take with him. "There's got to be something in here I can use." Peter crouched down and rummaged through, taking out interesting pieces as he went. "Okay, let's see ... nope━" he set aside what could be some gravity holder, "━okay, that's awesome━" he chucked out a robot head. Then, he found something he recognised. "Oh, hang on ..." he held up the same power source that he had found in that weapon. "Hey, it's like the glowy thing."

"That glowy thing is an explosive Chitauri energy core."

Peter jumped. "Whoa, whoa━whoa!" He dropped it back down, his heart starting to race. He leapt back onto his feet, stepping back. His breathing quickened as he understood just what he had done. "You mean, we've been carrying around a bomb?!"

A bomb Ned had promised to keep with him at all times today.

A bomb he held right now to the Academic Decathlon.

Peter screwed up. He had screwed up real bad.

*ೃ༄

a/n: update: still recovering from no way home

but also coming up with so many ideas ... dialogues ... conversations ... also stressing over fitting in spider-man 3 flashbacks but we'll figure it out.

(btw sorry for any mistakes xx)

and yet this is gonna be me when I have to rewatch no way home in order to write it. and tasm2 ...

It's also me writing httyd 3 rn but pretty sure half of u don't even read my httyd series lol bahahah