The exit bell rang through the halls of Midtown High with that universal relief that the end of a Monday drags with it. Peter stepped out into the tide of students, backpack on his shoulder, flanked by Gwen, Ned, and Harry. The talk was light, accompanied by scattered laughter that floated in the warm evening air.
"So you didn't like the new Star Wars one?" asked Ned, shocked. "Not even the scene of the duel in the desert?"
"Do you know I do?" Peter said, smiling, "But the script was a disaster. It's as if halfway through they forgot everything they built in the first two.
"I liked it," Gwen added. Music, at least. And Daisy Ridley was amazing.
"What was amazing was the budget," Harry laughed. Almost a hundred million just for effects. Do you know what we could do with that money?
Peter raised an eyebrow and gave him a foothold.
"A real lightsaber?"
"Better still," Harry said cheerfully. A start-up. Really, I've been thinking about it. Oscorp is funding a lot of projects by young entrepreneurs, especially in bioengineering and alternative energy. We can aim there.
Peter looked at him, somewhere curious and wary.
—A start-up? You and me?
"Why not?" Harry shrugged, with that carefree attitude that hid the pressure of being an Osborn. You are a genius in science. And I know how to move with investors. All we need is a solid idea.
Gwen and Ned exchanged an amused look.
"Parker Industries?" Are they going to save the world or become billionaires?
"Both," Peter said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
As each headed home, Peter said goodbye with a calm gesture and disappeared down one of the back streets of Queens. His expression changed as soon as he was alone. Being "Peter Parker" at school was only part of the job. But the night... The night was different.
Once at home, he dressed in his "uniform": black cargo pants, dark thermal shirt and a light jacket with a hood. Nothing that screamed "superhero", but everything he needed to move through the shadows without attracting attention.
He slid his makeshift gloves and adjusted a black bandana around his face. He wasn't Spider-Man yet. Just a boy with powers, shaky morals, and too many questions piling up in his head.
And Queens was sick.
The patrols were not only for justice. I needed money. For parts. For materials. To build their own net-launchers and a functional suit. Polymer-reinforced fabric was still in the experimental phase, and an industrial-grade 3D printer didn't pay for itself.
He jumped across the rooftops like a fleeting shadow, following the logic of instinct. I already knew the patterns. The corners where drug deals simmered. The alleys where the robbers felt safe.
That night, luck smiled on him.
A trio of armed guys were robbing a liquor store on Steinway Street. The owner, an old man, was pointed at gunpoint while one of them emptied the cash register.
Peter didn't hesitate.
He jumped off the roof with a perfectly controlled fall, rolling on the pavement and firing a direct kick into the first burglar's face. The impact knocked him unconscious instantly. The latter barely had time to turn his gun before Peter disarmed him with a sharp blow to the wrist. The third tried to flee, but a flying cardboard box — thrown by Peter — hit him squarely in the head.
When it was all over, the old man looked at him with wide eyes.
"Who... who are you?
Peter did not answer. He only collected the bills that the thieves had accumulated during the day, no more than $300, and also the cell phones and valuables that he found on them. He left them unconscious on the ground.
He did not kill. But he was not a saint either.
And money, at this time, was an operational necessity.
"You should call the police to take care of these guys," I muttered and then left the place.
What he didn't see was that the tablet carried by one of the thieves had a half-erased logo on its back: Stark Industries. Nor did he notice the small drone that drove away down a nearby alley, silently filming the scene. It was not from the police. Nor the FBI.
It belonged to someone else.
As Peter walked across the rooftops on his way home, his mind went over the conversation with Harry.
A company of your own... would it be crazy?
Maybe. But it was also the most effective way to build what he needed: access to materials, to laboratories, to infrastructure. If he wanted to prepare for what was to come—and deep down, he knew something was coming—he needed more than brute force. He needed resources.
In another corner of the city, the echo of a different destiny was beginning to take shape.
Adrian Toomes stared silently at the pieces scattered in front of him: components stolen from Oscorp and fragments of Stark's old military technology obtained from the black market thanks to his new contact on the Kingpin's network.
He had been one of Oscorp's top engineers, with a revolutionary individual propulsion project based on electromagnetic wings. But Norman Osborn had seen its potential... and destroyed it.
He was fired. They snatched his license plate. The design was stolen, archived, forgotten.
Adrian did not forget it.
"If they want war... They're going to have it," he murmured, as he welded the first reinforced alloy plate.
The wings. The claws. Propulsion.
Everything was beginning to take shape.
The next day, Peter came to class with a lab thermometer hanging from the inside pocket of his jacket. Ned noticed it instantly.
"Experimenting with dangerous products at home?"
Peter winked at her.
"Don't we all do it?"
Gwen joined them at the cafeteria table, and for a few minutes, the world seemed calm. Peter allowed himself to laugh, listen to Gwen's sarcasm, watch Harry play his father's imitation, and watch Ned tell conspiracy theories about the Mole Man living under the New York subway.
But his mind wasn't completely there. Because while he was smiling, a part of him was already analyzing the new design he had sketched the night before: His first spider web launchers.
In the afternoon, as she walked with Harry to the subway, she returned to the subject.
"Did you ever think about what we could build if you had access to all those Oscorp resources without your father overseeing every step?"
Harry paused for a second. He looked up at an indeterminate point in the sky.
"All the time.
Peter watched him in silence.
"Then..." Let's do it. Not tomorrow, not next week. Let's start gathering ideas. Something small. Really. Maybe Ned will join us. Even Gwen, if she wants to.
Harry smiled.
—Do you think he would join?
"He has more vision than any of us.
"And it's scarier than any of us if something goes wrong," Harry added.
They both laughed, and the train roared past beneath their feet.
That night, Peter patrolled again. He jumped between buildings more fluidly, his balance sharpened, his night vision sharper. Every day he felt more comfortable in his body, as if the muscles knew what they were doing before he thought about it.
In Williamsburg, he stumbled upon a group setting up a quick transaction on a back street. Drugs, probably. He watched from the rooftop, waited for the exact moment, and descended in silence.
This time it was faster. A sharp blow, a spider's web that immobilized the one who tried to run. He stole their money, took away their weapons and left without a trace.
He almost had the full budget to build his hidden workshop in the basement of the house. I only needed a few hundred more. And then... the suit.