The Quinjet's engines roared over the Pacific as the rear ramp slowly lowered, howling wind flooding the cabin. A red-and-gold suit of armor dropped in like a meteor, and Iron Man landed cleanly on the deck. His faceplate snapped open, revealing Tony's usual smug, amused grin.
"Did you guys miss me?"
One look at everyone's windblown hair and blank stares, courtesy of him opening the ramp like that, told Tony exactly what the answer was. Still smiling, he told JARVIS to shut the door.
"That kid got to work the second you left, Tony." Janet did not even look up, her fingers moving quickly across the tablet in her hands as she monitored Avengers Tower in real time. "I've never seen anyone get this obsessed with the superhero thing."
Tony glanced over the rest of the team.
Hank was still studying the data on the batch of smuggled Vibranium samples. Bruce had noise-canceling headphones on, probably listening to some kind of yoga soundtrack to keep himself calm. Even Steve, sitting up front in the pilot's seat, looked unusually distracted, blue eyes fixed on the empty sky outside the canopy like it was hiding an answer from him.
As for Thor, well, he was probably still in Asgard.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Tony shrugged and dropped into the seat beside Steve, pretending to glance at the flight data. "That's why I left him there. No point letting the Tower sit empty. What do you think, Cap?"
"The kid can handle New York." Steve pulled his gaze back in, then paused before continuing. "I've been thinking about something else. Maybe we should invite King T'Challa to join the Avengers. I knew his grandfather. We fought together during the war. Every Black Panther is one of the best fighters on Earth."
Then Steve followed that up with something that almost contradicted it.
"But we can't interfere in Wakanda's internal politics. We're not the U.S. government. The biggest problem with this mission might not be the enemy. It might be politics."
Tony smirked, wearing that familiar look that said he thought he could solve anything.
"Politics? I've dealt with more politicians than I have armor systems. Trust me, Cap. A king with a country to worry about? I can handle it."
A few hours later, the Avengers' Quinjet was hit by a Vibranium weapon and forced into a smoking crash-landing deep in the Wakandan jungle.
Looks like they weren't coming back anytime soon.
Peter, of course, had no idea the Avengers were about to be out of New York for days. The second Tony left, he got busy. He tossed his backpack onto the table, shoved the old suit inside it, and headed straight for the lab to start working on a new one. He even dug out that ancient camera, tossed it to JARVIS, and told him to get the photos developed.
"All right, let's do this." Peter rubbed his hands together, eyes locked on the rotating holographic model of the old suit while his brain ran a mile a minute. He started rattling off everything he needed done. "JARVIS, keep an eye on anything happening in New York and alert me if something comes up. Also, pull the surveillance footage from the March twelfth Oscorp expo. Can you do that?"
[Mr. Stark already archived the relevant data.]
"Of course he did." Peter was not surprised at all. His fingers moved across the virtual display. "And pull up the full list of everything Herman stole. I want to see exactly what he took."
A detailed inventory of the stolen items appeared across the screen. While studying the old suit design, Peter asked, "What are the Avengers' suits made of?"
[The latest high-stretch composite fiber developed by Stark Industries. Its primary structure consists of...]
"Then use that, but widen the spacing in the red web pattern by twenty percent..." As he spoke, he yanked the mask off the hologram and tossed it aside, redesigning the lenses into a more rounded white shape instead of the old narrow black ones. It was his first time using the system, but he picked it up absurdly fast.
"This feels friendlier, right, JARVIS?"
[If you wish to convey a more positive impression, I would recommend a brighter color balance.]
"Good call."
A few minutes later, a completely refreshed Spider-Man stepped out of one of the upper-floor bathrooms in Avengers Tower.
The new suit used brighter reds and blues, with 3D-printed composite fabric that fit him perfectly. Under the arms were webbed wing panels for gliding. The white lenses could shift in size with his facial expressions, making it easier for him to actually show emotion through the mask.
The spider emblem on the chest was a little smaller, while the one on the back had changed from a more aggressive design into something rounder, almost cute. A closer look revealed it was actually a compact storage unit. The suit could automatically fold down into a palm-sized spider-shaped disk, making it much easier to carry around.
There were hidden pockets on both sides of the waist, replacing the old awkward belt. Right at the center of the waist was a spider-shaped light designed specifically for dark places like sewers. And the coolest part was the built-in tactical display inside the lenses, which could connect to Avengers satellites and provide real-time communications and analysis.
In simple terms, it still looked like the classic Spider-Man suit, just upgraded with high-end tech.
And to be safe, Peter made two of them.
"All right, I'm uploading the keyword-search program I wrote. I still can't believe I memorized the whole thing." Peter typed across the projected keyboard. "JARVIS, can you tap into the Avengers' shared network with NYPD? You guys should have access, right?"
[Access to NYPD dispatch and fire response systems established.]
"Wait, infiltration?!" Peter blinked. He had not expected the Avengers to skip the legal route entirely. Still, this was not the time to get hung up on it. As long as the system worked, that was what mattered. The NYPD probably wouldn't love it, but whatever.
"Okay, uh, integrate my program into that, then cross-reference every police and fire dispatch in the city and analyze them together."
Live incident data immediately appeared across his lenses. Crimes in progress. Whether police or firefighters could respond in time. Whether the criminals were armed heavily enough that Spider-Man needed to step in. Everything was right there.
The whole system would let him avoid wasting time on things the police could already handle and focus on the situations that actually needed Spider-Man.
Then he pulled up the Oscorp expo footage Stark had somehow gotten his hands on. Using surveillance from multiple angles, he reconstructed the scene with a full holographic model, Same kind of reconstruction tech Stark had used before. Only now Peter was using it to recreate the moment he got bitten.
He poured himself a cup of water from the dispenser and stood there watching the reconstruction unfold.
The hologram replayed the scene in detail.
He and Gwen were walking through the exhibits, joking around, when the glass case holding the altered spider suddenly shattered without warning and the crowd immediately descended into chaos. The image zoomed in. Carl King bent down, picked up the spider, slipped in close, and pressed the deadly thing against the back of Peter's neck.
"What caused the display case to break?"
[No relevant record exists in the Oscorp database.]
"No record?"
Peter kept watching.
He instinctively slapped away the altered spider after it bit him. Then, in the corner of the footage, a blurry figure suddenly crouched down, but the image looked like it had been tampered with. No matter how long Peter stared, he could not make out the person's face.
"Can you pull up that person's information? The one who crouched down?"
[Data encrypted. Warning: this segment was externally altered.]
Someone tampered with it.
S.H.I.E.L.D.? Hydra?
At this point, for all he knew, those could be the same thing.
Realizing he was not going to get much out of that, Peter put the mystery aside for the moment and turned back to the list of tech Herman had stolen. Exoskeletal spinal neural interface. Extreme-environment survival system. Photonic projector...
He dragged the holographic image of the photonic projector out from the list.
"A fishbowl?"
[Photonic projection device. Developed by Horizon Labs. Designed to manipulate reflected light particles to generate virtual images.]
"He stole nothing but unfinished prototypes. That means someone else has to be refining them." Peter frowned. "JARVIS, search for researchers working in photonics."
No match.
"Then what about special-effects people with related experience?"
JARVIS seemed to pause for half a second, clearly not expecting that leap in logic, but he still pulled up the closest matching file.
Quentin Beck.
One of Hollywood's top special-effects artists.
Missing for the past month.
Found you.
Mysterio.
(End of Chapter)
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