Inside the Administration, the room was quiet save for the soft hum of monitors. A panel of esteemed experts sat glued to the massive screen, their eyes locked onto the young superhero, Peter Parker. Admiration radiated through the room.
Johan leaned forward, his eyes shining with deep emotion. "This is the true mental state human beings ought to strive for! Pure, fresh blood!"
Darwin nodded along in deep respect. "To be honest, what I admire most about Parker is his unyielding spirit and core ethos."
"'With great power comes great responsibility,'" Tonio remarked softly. "Tony Stark is truly his mentor, his talent scout. He steered Parker's sense of duty onto the right track, starting right from his own neighborhood. It was crucial for Parker to grasp that baseline."
The Director let out a long, heavy sigh. "It's no wonder Tony's armor looks so imposing, yet carries such profound emotion."
On the live projection, Spider-Man, Peter Parker, was barely fourteen years old. Back during the superhero Civil War, Iron Man had made up his mind to trust this fourteen-year-old kid, and he invited him to join his team to stand against Captain America
Once the battle concluded, he gifted him the advanced Spider-Man suit, deliberately playing down the grandeur so the kid wouldn't be crushed by a soaring, premature burden. He instructed Peter to simply be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
That series of choices was never a simple, transactional partnership. Tony was utterly devoted to protecting Parker's innocence.
The atmosphere felt slightly solemn. Occasionally, a few people briefly stepped offline to initiate past-life captures, attempting to analyze the bright spark of humanity captured on the broadcast screen.
On screen, Parker and Ned pushed open the heavy wooden door.
The muffled thumps of music suddenly burst into crisp, vibrant beats. High school students were talking, laughing, and messing around everywhere. Parker had never been to such a lively party before. Walking in beside Ned, both of them looked like country bumpkins stepping into a grand palace for the very first time, staring up at the ambient lighting and warm, bustling atmosphere.
Parker pursed his lips nervously as the upbeat music echoed around them. Looking toward the DJ booth, he spotted his classmate Eugene, Flash, skilfully spinning tracks.
Ned nudged him, pointing toward the crowded wall and whispering, "Okay. We're gonna have Spider-Man swing in... say you guys are tight, and I get a fist bump or one of those half bro-hugs."
Parker remained silent, unsure.
Out of nowhere, their classmate MJ Jones wandered over, holding a piece of bread. "Can't believe you're at this lame party."
Ned blinked, speechless for a moment. "But you're here too"
MJ looked vaguely confused, taking a bite of her bread. "Am I?"
She turned and drifted away without another word.
A moment later, Liz walked up, a welcoming smile on her face. "Oh, my gosh. Hey, guys. Cool hat, Ned."
"Hi, Liz!" Ned nudged Parker hastily. "Hi, Liz."
Liz held her drink, her smile warm and gentle. "I'm so happy you guys came. There's pizza and drinks. Help yourself."
Parker quickly offered a compliment. "What a great party!"
"Thanks," Liz replied. There was a faint beat of friendly flirting hanging in the air. Ned watched them blankly. Liz smiled warmly at Parker again. "Oh, I... My parents will kill me if anything's broken. I gotta..."
Parker smiled back. Just seeing Liz smile at him like that made his entire night. He quickly waved it off. "Yeah."
Liz waved her hand. "Have fun. Bye."
"Bye."
As soon as Liz walked off, Ned groaned in disbelief. "Dude, what are you doing? She's here. Spider it up."
Parker shook his head firmly. "No, no, no. I can't... I cannot do this. Spider-Man is not a party trick, okay? Look, I'm just gonna be myself."
Ned sighed heavily. "Peter, no one wants that."
"Dude." Parker frowned, holding his ground.
Inside the Administration's live stream comment feed, Parker's stubborn integrity sparked an outpouring of praise.
"Parker's words are so grounded. Just be yourself."
"Yeah, everyone wants to see Spider-Man, not the awkward kid underneath."
"To Parker, Spider-Man isn't just a cool heroic title; it's a heavy weight of responsibility."
"That's the difference between him and Tony Stark. Tony was completely ostentatious back then, outright announcing to the entire media that he was Iron Man."
"Well, that's different! If I had that armor, I'd announce it too; who doesn't want the applause and cool attention? But Spider-Man and his suit weigh thousands of pounds in Parker's heart. How could he use them just to show off?"
"Honestly, his buddy Ned is pushing it a bit too far."
Just as Parker was deciding whether to step into the party, a loud, taunting voice boomed over the DJ speakers. "Penis Parker, what's up?"
Parker snapped his head back. Up on the DJ booth, Eugene was directly dissing him into the microphone, deliberately putting him on the spot. "So where's your pal Spider-Man? Let me guess: In Canada with your imaginary girlfriend?"
The room instantly erupted into mocking laughter.
Facing the public humiliation and ridicule, a flare of anger flared inside Parker, but Eugene kept taunting over the music. "That's not Spider-Man. That's just Ned in a red shirt."
The relentless mocking pushed Parker past his limit. He turned around and walked straight outside. He was going to change. He would put on the suit, step back inside as Spider-Man, and prove to every single one of them that he actually knew Spider-Man. Eugene's taunts had successfully poked at his pride; he needed to prove he wasn't a liar.
Out on the roof eaves beneath the night sky, Parker pulled off his jacket, revealing the red-and-blue suit underneath. He pulled out the mask.
"Hey, what's up? I'm Spider-Man," Parker practiced under his breath, trying out voices. "Just thought I'd swing by and say hello to my buddy Peter. Oh, what's up, Ned? Hey, where's Peter, anyways? He must be around..."
After playing out a few silly scenarios to himself, Parker stopped and let out a long sigh. This wasn't what he truly wanted. He just wanted to be himself, but Eugene's mockery had pushed his competitive spirit too far.
Through a half-open window, he watched his classmates dancing and laughing inside. Complex, conflicting emotions swirled inside his chest.
"God, this is stupid. What am I doing?" he muttered to himself. He hesitated, completely torn over whether to go through with this foolish stunt.
Suddenly, a sharp explosion rocked the distant woods. A bright blue light flashed against the tree line.
Parker's face instantly turned grave. He straightened up, staring into the darkness. "What the hell?"
Realizing a potential crisis was unfolding near the small town, Parker didn't hesitate for another second. He pulled the mask over his face, leaped off the roof, and shot a strand of web, swinging toward the source of the blast.
Watching the stream, the audience sighed in admiration.
"Sure enough... in the end, Parker chose responsibility."
"That leap didn't have a single second of hesitation."
"Think about how worried he must be for others."
"If it were any normal high school student, it'd be natural to chase popularity and show off, but Parker..."
"If it were me, I would have used the suit to flex a long time ago."
"Being a superhero is never easy."
"Tony was right; it's dangerous for a kid like Parker to handle this alone."
"Whoo! Unh!" Parker swung across the rooftops, but this was the quiet suburbs; there were no skyscrapers to anchor his webs. When he tried to latch onto something high, he swung out only to find empty sky. The web stretched too far and snapped.
Left with no choice, he dropped to the ground and sprinted across gardens and lawns, startling a flock of chickens along the way.
"This sucks," he groaned.
Approaching the outskirts, another loud BOOM echoed through the trees. A bright explosion lit up the forest, followed by crackling arcs of electric blue lightning.
"Whoo! Ha-ha-ha." A man holding an alien, crystal-powered heavy gun laughed loudly, showing it off to a buyer behind him. "Now, this is crafted from a reclaimed sub-Ultron arm straight from Sokovia. Here. You try."
A perm-haired buyer frowned. "I wanted something low-key. Why are you trying to upsell me, man?"
Parker quietly crawled along the edge of an overpass bridge, listening intently.
The seller shrugged helplessly. "Alright, fine. I've got lower-key stuff in the back too. You name it, I probably have it. Hold on, let me look."
A van was parked nearby with its rear doors wide open, showcasing a terrifying collection of high-tech black-market weapons.
"Okay, okay. I got what you need, all right?" the seller muttered, searching through crates. "I got tons of great stuff here. One sec. Okay, I got, uh, black-hole grenades, Chitauri railguns..."
A bald man sitting in the front seat stepped out, glaring at them angrily. "You letting off shots in public now? Hurry up," he snapped at the perm-haired buyer, "Look, times are changing. We're the only ones selling these high-tech weapons."
Parker instantly connected the dots. "Oh, this must be where the ATM robbers got their stuff."
The perm-haired guy told the bald leader, "I need something to stick up somebody. I'm not trying to shoot them back in time."
The seller rummaged around in the van. "I got antigrav climbers. Yo, climbers?"
Just as the buyer leaned in to inspect them, the ringtone on Peter's phone suddenly blared loudly from his pocket. The piercing sound shattered the quiet night.
The arms dealers instantly froze, going on high alert. "Okay, what the hell is that?"
The bald leader yanked out a high-tech gun, pointing it straight at the perm-haired buyer's chest. "Did you set us up?"
The buyer threw his hands up in panic. "Hey, hey, man."
Parker glanced down at his phone; it was Ned calling. He quickly hung up, took a deep breath, and dropped down from the bridge structure, landing directly in front of the crew.
Back in the Administration room, the Director and the experts gasped, taken aback by his recklessness.
"Parker is still far too young... He should have stayed in the shadows."
"Exposing himself directly like that is way too dangerous."
"Hey! Hey, come on. You're gonna shoot at somebody, shoot at me." Down below, Parker tried to confront them, but his total lack of combat experience showed immediately.
"All right." Before he could react properly, the bald leader aimed his high-tech weapon and blasted Parker off his feet with a powerful concussive force. The dealers scrambled into the van and sped off into the night.
"Unh! Aah! Aah!" Parker struggled to his feet, gritting his teeth, and gave chase.
He shot his web at the door, but the door fell. "Great. Guess I'm gonna have to take a shortcut."
He ran across someone's house, "Hey, guys. Good game. Have fun."
"Hey, hey, buddy." A dog ran up to him, "Sorry, no time to play. Here, go fetch. Whoo! Now, this is more like it."
"Whoa!" He swung from the tree, and someone's treehouse fell. He ran through a fence as a man was grilling. He swung through the air and fell into someone's pool party. Finally, he swung and fell in front of 2 children's tents, causing them to scream in fear.
"Thought you got away from me, didn't you?" He bounded across rooftops, keeping the van's taillights in sight. "I got you right where I want you."
But just as he leaped toward the roof of the fleeing vehicle, a massive, vulture-like mechanical beast plunged out of the dark sky. Sharp metallic talons slammed into Parker's back, hauling him violently into the air. The Vulture carried Parker higher and higher at terrifying speeds. "Surprise!"
"What the hell?" Parker gasped, turning his head. All he saw were two glowing green mechanical eyes staring down at him.
At that moment, the spider symbol on the back of his suit suddenly flashed bright white. With a loud snap, a high-altitude emergency parachute deployed from his suit. The sudden, massive air resistance ripped Parker free from the Vulture's grip, sending him tumbling head over heels straight toward the ground below.
BOOM! He plummeted out of the clouds and slammed into the dark water of a large lake. The heavy parachute instantly collapsed over him, wrapping around his body like a suffocating shroud. He thrashed frantically beneath the dark surface, rapidly running out of air.
Just as the audience held their breath in sheer panic, a brilliant streak of light pierced the night sky. In the next second, a red-and-gold Mark series suit dived into the water, grabbed Parker by the collar, and pulled him effortlessly up onto the grassy shore.
The chat exploded.
"My God! Is that Tony?!"
"Tony was keeping an eye on Parker the whole time! He really cares!"
"He's literally acting like a worried father!"
"Thank goodness Iron Man arrived in time!"
"Incredible! I'm so jealous of Parker."
"If I fell into a lake, nobody would come save me..."
After dragging Parker to safety, the Iron Man armor hovered a few feet off the ground, watching Parker wring out his soaked costume.
"Huh? Oh, hey." Parker was breathing heavily, babbling frantically from shock. "And then he just, like, swooped down like a monster.... and picked me up, and took me up like a thousand feet and just dropped me."
Shivering violently from the freezing water, Parker stammered, "How'd you find me? Did you put a tracker in my suit?"
Tony's voice echoed clearly through the armor's speakers. "I put everything in your suit. Including this heater."
The moment he spoke, thick steam burst from the seams of Parker's spider suit, instantly drying the fabric and restoring his body temperature.
Parker let out a huge sigh of relief. "Whoa! Whew, that's better. Thanks."
Tony scolded him sternly. "What were you thinking?"
Parker tried to defend his actions. "The guy with wings is the source of the weapons. I gotta take him down."
Tony's voice turned sharply sarcastic. "Take him down now, huh? Crockett, there are people who handle this sort of thing."
"The Avengers?" Parker asked eagerly.
"No. This is a little below their pay grade."
Parker gestured wildly, his emotions spilling over. "Mr. Stark, you didn't have to come out here. I had that. I was fine."
"Oh, I'm not here." The Mark armor slowly shook its head. "I didn't come in person."
With a soft mechanical hiss, the armor's faceplate flipped open, revealing a completely empty interior.
Parker froze in shock. Tony wasn't inside the suit at all; he was piloting it remotely from thousands of miles away on another part of the planet.
"Thank God this place has Wi-Fi... or you would be toast right now." Tony's voice snapped. "Thank Ganesh while you're at it. Cheers. Look, forget the flying vulture guy, please."
Parker couldn't accept it. "Why?"
"Why?" Tony lost his temper, his voice booming through the speakers. "Because I said so! Sorry, I'm talking to a teenager. Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping little people, like that lady that bought you the churro. Can't you just be a friendly... neighborhood Spider-Man?"
Parker didn't want to settle for small tasks. He pressed on. "But I'm ready for more than that now."
The armor's faceplate snapped shut. "No, you're not."
Parker pointed into the distance. "That's not what you thought when I took on Captain America."
Tony waved a metallic hand dismissively. "Trust me, kid. If Cap wanted to lay you out, he would've. Listen to me. If you come across these weapons again, call Happy."
Parker hung his head in defeat. Suddenly, he heard the faint sound of a car engine humming through the comms system. "Are you driving?"
Tony continued, "You know, it's never too early to start thinking about college. I got some pull at MIT. End call."
"No, I don't need to go to...," Parker tried to speak, but the suit's automated system announced that the call had ended.
Friday said, "Mr. Stark is no longer connected."
With a sudden blast of repulsor fire, the armor soared into the night sky, disappearing into the clouds.
Parker watched the faint light fade away, lowering his head. "That's awesome."
His voice was thick with disappointment. His desire to prove himself had been brushed aside, and he had completely ruined his own night.
Sighing softly, Parker began the long walk back alone. Tony's stern words echoed in his head: "Stay close to the ground?" What is he talking about?"
As he walked along the dark roadside, a glint of purple caught his eye. He stopped and knelt down. It was a small metallic component from the exploded weapon, glowing with an eerie purple crystal at its core. Parker inspected it curiously.
Inside the Administration, the audience's appreciation for Tony's hidden care grew even deeper.
"It turns out Tony was constantly keeping tabs on Parker's safety."
"I wonder how many hidden gadgets he put in that suit."
"That Mark armor looks like an older model, doesn't it?"
"It might be older, but being able to remote-control it over a wireless network across the globe is incredible."
"Dropping in the exact moment he was in danger, that suit design is brilliant."
"Seeing how close they were makes it so heartbreaking when you remember how hard Tony cried when Parker died later on..."
The next day at school, Parker sat in class using a small tool to carefully pry open the purple crystal core.
Ned hurried over, leaning down. "Hey, thanks for bailing on me."
"Yeah, well, something came up," Parker murmured, focused on the delicate task.
Ned stared at the glowing stone on the desk. "What is that?"
"I don't know," Parker replied. "Some guy tried to vaporize me with it."
Ned's eyes widened. "Seriously?"
"Yeah." Parker unclipped several small connectors from the housing.
"Awesome." Ned backtracked, "I mean, not awesome. Heh, totally uncool of that guy. So scary."
"Well, look, I think it's... a power source."
Ned, well-versed in tech, pointed at the exposed wiring. "Yeah, but it's connected to all these microprocessors. That's an inductive charging plate. That's what I use to charge my toothbrush."
"Whoever's making these weapons is combining alien tech with ours."
"That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said." Ned babbled excitedly without stopping. "I just want to thank you for letting me be part of your journey... into this amazing..."
Parker picked up a small hammer and tapped the housing firmly, popping the glowing purple core cleanly out of the metal casing.
BANG! The sharp sound echoed across the room, but the teacher at the front barely glanced up.
"Keep your fingers clear of the blades," he called out absentmindedly.
Parker stared at the isolated purple stone glowing on his desk, his expression hardening with resolve. "I gotta figure out what this is and who makes it."
Ned rubbed his chin. "We'll go to the lab after class and run tests."
"Let's do it."
The purple crystal pulsed softly with inner light, as if unstable energy was swirling within it.
Far away at Nolan's Base, Guerino stared intently at the thumb-sized purple crystal displayed on the main screen. A strange, puzzled expression crossed his face.
"That energy core... I feel like I've seen something like it before," Guerino muttered, rubbing his chin as he searched his memories.
It wasn't from a previous life, back when he was young, he had ventured into the mountains to dig for rare ores and had occasionally uncovered strange, glowing stones. But that was decades ago, and those stones had shattered easily.
A terrifying thought suddenly struck him. Could Terra still have hidden remnants of Chitauri technology left behind?! Alarmed, he quickly reached for his communicator to call his superiors. This could be a major historical breakthrough. If actual physical relics from that era still existed on Earth, could they recover tangible artifacts from the ancient superhero age?
After all, everything humanity currently knew about that era was limited to stream recordings. The primary purpose of capturing past lives within the Tiandao network was precisely this: to fill in historical blanks, use history as a mirror, and uncover the truth of the past.
On screen, time passed quickly until the final bell rang. Parker and Ned hurried through the hallways toward the science lab to analyze the stone's composition.
"First, we put the glowy thing in the mass spectrometer," Ned said as they walked. "We gotta come up with a better name than glowy thingy."
Parker smiled faintly. "You're right."
"Crap!" As they rounded a corner, Parker suddenly caught sight of something and hid behind a locker.
Further down the corridor, two men were walking slowly, carrying a handheld scanner. They were the very same arms dealers Parker had encountered by the bridge the night before. The two men grumbled quietly about how uncomfortable it was searching a high school while sweeping their tracking device back and forth.
Parker's eyes narrowed. "Hey, that's one of the guys that tried to kill me."
Ned gasped, horror in his eyes, and Parker nodded grimly.
"We gotta get out of here." Ned squeaked.
Parker shook his head. "No, no, no. I gotta follow them. They can lead me to the guy who dropped me in the lake."
Ned swallowed hard, whispering nervously, "Someone dropped you in a lake?"
Parker grunted. "Yeah, it was not good."
"Peter..." Ned was saying.
"No. Stay there, Ned." But Parker signaled for Ned to stay hidden, then quietly slipped into the shadows, tailing the two men down the hallway.
Watching the stream, the viewers couldn't help but marvel at the young hero's grit.
"Parker is so brave."
"He's actually going to take on those two dangerous guys single-handedly!"
"Well, when you have powers like his, it makes sense to be bold."
"I really didn't expect him to face a life-and-death crisis so early on."
"No wonder Tony put so many safety protocols inside his suit."