The crowd went quiet in the way crowds go quiet when something unexpected has just happened in front of them.
Several students looked at each other. One put a finger in his ear and wiggled it like he was checking his hearing. Flash himself looked like the concept of being spoken to this way had not previously been introduced to him as a possibility.
"Did I hear right?" someone nearby said. "Did Parker just threaten Flash?"
"Are you crazy, Parker?" someone else said. "They are going to massacre you."
"Get your phones out!" a third voice said, already excited. "Let's film Parker getting destroyed!"
Peter put a hand over his face and shook his head slowly at that one.
Flash himself looked like a fish that had been suddenly and unexpectedly removed from water.
It was clearly not a common occurrence for the person he spent the most energy making miserable to stand in front of him with crossed arms and a completely calm expression and tell him to back off.
He let go of the kid he was holding, who also looked surprised, and then snapped out of it and let his expression shift into the mocking smile he defaulted to when he wanted to reassert control of a situation.
"Well, well, Parker," Flash said. "Did you grow some courage today? Or did you just wake up feeling stupid? You know who I am. You had better take back what you just said before I remind you what happens to people who talk to me like that."
"And do you know who I am?" Peter said, in the same calm tone. "No, of course not. But to answer your question, yes, I know exactly who I am talking to. I am talking to a caveman who never evolved and has air where the rest of us keep our brain cells."
The crowd's reaction to that was immediate. Flash's expression shifted from amused to something that required considerably more internal temperature to sustain.
Someone at the edge of the crowd pushed through to see what was happening. She looked surprised when she recognized the two people at the center of it and immediately looked worried.
She had red hair.
Peter registered her with a quick glance and then refocused on Flash immediately in case of a sudden movement.
"What is wrong with you, Parker?!" Flash said, louder now. "You are actually answering me? Like a man? What happened to all the other times? You sounded like a mouse! Go on then, keep talking! I want to hear it!"
"You want to know why I never answered you before?" Peter said, still calm, because getting emotional would only make things worse and he had no interest in making things worse for himself. "Fine. I will tell you."
The crowd settled. Several phones were already up.
"First," Peter said. "Do you want to know why I stayed silent every time you insulted me? My silence had nothing to do with fear. The truth is your level of stupidity and ignorance left me with nothing to say. There is only so much a person can do when faced with something that spectacular."
Laughter rippled through the crowd, quiet at first and then less so.
Several people who had been filming the expected humiliation of Parker were now filming something considerably more interesting, with noticeably more enthusiasm.
Flash's expression was shifting from surprise to something that was building toward genuine anger.
Peter kept going, because stopping now would defeat the entire point.
"Second. Do you want to know how I feel every time I am around you and your friends? I feel like Noah. Surrounded entirely by animals." He paused just long enough.
"And do you know what I did with every comment and opinion you ever had about me? I deposited them in my bank account. To see if they would earn any interest."
The reaction to that one was louder. Several students made the face that cartoons had made famous, somewhere between a wince and a grin.
He could see Gwen and the red-haired girl both covering their mouths with their hands.
Flash looked like a cartoon character with visible steam rising from the top of his head.
One more.
"And third," Peter said. "Do you want to know why I am doing this instead of walking away? From the moment we met and you decided I was worth bothering, you have not left me alone for a single day. It is genuinely impressive, Flash. I doubt any woman alive could match that level of dedication. Actually, wait. There is one person who probably could."
He thought briefly of Norman Osborn, dismissed it, and continued.
"But if you enjoy the activity that much I would suggest asking some of your friends, because I do not swing that way, and if I ever gave that impression, which I sincerely doubt, then I apologize for being unable to return the sentiment."
The crowd erupted.
It was like the Joker had released laughing gas into the courtyard. Students bent over, grabbed each other's arms, filmed with shaking hands.
And Peter stood in the middle of it with his eyes on Flash, who had stopped pretending to be in control of his expression and was now looking at Peter with the focused intensity of someone who had made a decision.
"You think you are funny, Parker?"
"From what I can see, yes," Peter said. "And it is significantly funnier when you are the joke."
"Consider yourself dead, Parker."
Flash came at him in a boxing stance, moving fast, leading with a hook aimed at his face.
Before it arrived Peter executed a Haishu Uke, deflecting the blow with the back of his hand in the same clean redirect that Ip Man had used to make larger opponents feel the geometry of their own mistakes.
With his right hand he gripped Flash's wrist firmly. With his left he took the back of his neck, and with a 180-degree rotation that required almost no effort he sent him straight into the ground.
It was almost exactly like the moment Miyagi had thrown Terry into the mirror, except here the floor was the mirror.
"You are very impulsive," Peter said, looking down at him with a calm expression. "Anger can be useful as a catalyst but if you cannot control it then it controls you, and a person being controlled by their anger is just a predictable object. That will cost you in any real confrontation, Mr. Thompson. Are you finished?"
Flash was not finished.
He got up faster than Peter expected, glaring, and came back with another punch aimed at the same target, which Peter stopped with his open palm before stepping smoothly behind him and delivering a precise kick to the back that sent Flash stumbling forward hard enough to collide with a student standing at the edge of the crowd.
Flash rounded on the student immediately and shoved them hard out of frustration, sending them to the ground, and Peter's expression went flat.
"Seriously, Flash?" he said. "Now you are hitting women. What a pathetic excuse for a man."
He heard fragments of conversation from the crowd around him while he kept his eyes on Flash.
"Is that really Parker-the nerd? How is he dodging everything Flash throws?"
"Look at those movements, that is obviously some kind of martial art."
"Peter Parker..."
That last one, delivered with a specific tone he recognized, gave him a very strong urge to shout the word reference internally, but he set that aside because Flash was coming at him again, and this time the target was not his face but his ribs.
Peter caught it with the palm of his left hand, and with the back of his right hand he struck him across the nose in one clean motion.
Then, before Flash could fall, Peter dropped his weight, drove his right elbow into Flash's stomach, and stepped back.
Flash turned with the impact, slipped, and went face-first into the stone bench behind him.
Several students watched Flash lying on the ground with considerable interest. Others were still filming. Peter walked past all of it, crossed to the student who had been knocked down, and extended his hand.
"Are you alright?" he asked the kid Flash had been holding earlier.
"Yes, thank you," the boy said, taking the hand and getting up. "Are you Peter? Another one of the people Flash used to go after?"
"Yeah," Peter said, glancing back at Flash lying on the ground. "I do not think he will be going after you again anytime soon. Go clean up and get something to eat, recess is not going to last much longer."
"Thank you, seriously," the boy said, and left.
Peter turned to the girl who had been knocked down by Flash's shove. "And you, are you alright?"
"Thank you for helping," she said. "Not many people do."
"I noticed," he said. "Same advice, go get something to eat. I am heading to the cafeteria myself if you want to walk over."
"Do you mind if I come with you?"
"Not at all," he said, picking up his backpack and his board from where he had left them at the start of the whole situation. "Come on, I want to eat something before a teacher shows up and I have to explain all of this."
....
Behind them the crowd was already talking, phones still up, replaying the footage with the specific enthusiasm of people who had just witnessed something they did not expect to see today.
Peter did not look back.
....