In the end, the family meeting concluded with Uncle Ben and Aunt May joining the plumbing and electrical business.
Though, to be honest, it was mostly Uncle Ben joining.
The Parker family had a bit of a macho streak; Uncle Ben didn't want the kids risking their necks, and of course he wasn't about to let his wife take risks either.
Harry felt like he'd finally extracted himself from the oppressive atmosphere from earlier.
What followed was the tense and electrifying moment of injecting the serum.
On the sofa, Uncle Ben rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm gone a bit soft from high body fat. Anxiously, he asked, "Do we really not need to go to a lab? Doing it here feels kind of slapdash, and I remember Captain America had a whole special apparatus when he was injected."
"Relax, times have changed."
Bante picked up a vial of serum, walked over to Uncle Ben, and jabbed it into his left shoulder.
Instantly, the serum inside the vial began pouring into his body.
Right after, he injected Aunt May and Harry with the serum as well. The three of them collapsed onto the sofa, no pained expressions on their faces, but their bodies rapidly kicked into high-gear metabolism, excising the genetic defects they'd originally carried.
"You think Uncle Ben's gonna end up like Cap?" Peter asked.
Bante shook his head. "How could he? Uncle Ben's old, after all. He's not gonna shoot up from a little guy to as tall as Steve all of a sudden."
He figured Uncle Ben would probably just return to about his height from when he was young.
Without any instruments, Bante and Peter could observe the changes happening in Uncle Ben, Aunt May, and Harry with vivid clarity.
The two middle-aged-plus candidates' heads of silver hair began turning brown, the wrinkles on their faces slowly vanishing. Slack skin plumped up with collagen, making them look decades younger all at once.
Aunt May practically became Sister May.
"I'm guessing Uncle Ben's in for a treat tonight," Bante said, crossing his arms with an air of great authority.
"A fierce, intense battle's probably unavoidable. I'm planning on not sleeping at home tonight."
"Then where will you go?" Peter asked.
"Felicia's place, of course."
"What about me?" Peter asked.
"Can't Spider-Man just sleep in the sewer?" Bante said.
Peter: ???
It was a good while before the three injected people groggily came to.
Right away, they started yelping in amazement at each other. Especially Uncle Ben and Aunt May—it was like a complete rebirth, a return to youth.
Of course, it wasn't actually that exaggerated.
Right now they looked to be about thirty or so. Uncle Ben's height, which had shrunk some from years of toil, had now sprung back.
"I've gotten taller," he said, measuring himself. Delighted, he added, "One seventy-seven. That's a couple centimeters taller than when I was young."
Just as he was speaking, Sister May—no, Aunt May—came sashaying over excitedly, twisting her hips. She pinched his ear and asked, "So, am I still an old lady now?"
No woman in the world doesn't want to be young and beautiful.
Uncle Ben surrendered immediately.
As for Harry, he didn't change too drastically. His body just looked a little bit more robust than before.
But he could feel that the power inside him had grown considerably.
"Actually, the Super Soldier Serum can only push the recipient's physical fitness to around the limits of human potential. To become a qualified plumber and electrician, you've still got to undergo training," Bante said.
Uncle Ben immediately declared, "I can't wait!"
So Bante had them each wash off the impurities their bodies had expelled, then brought them to Premos.
The company was still only a handful of people.
Banner and Otto had teamed up and were researching the Mind Stone. Connors was taking a stroll with his little pet lizard.
According to him, bringing psychological comfort to mutated creatures was beneficial for the experiment's progress.
Bante ended up dragging him along to the underground training facility.
"Get ready to record their physical data. Also, have Wanda and Quicksilver come back yet?"
"Who?" Connors asked while booting up the computer and controlling the various training machines in the facility.
"Forgot you haven't met them," Bante said, covering his face. "They're also newcomers to the Heavenly Work Union, and once trained, they could very well become the main force against Thanos."
Bante still couldn't forget that witch from Avengers: Endgame who practically tore Thanos apart with her bare hands.
Not to mention the witch in Doctor Strange 2: The Wanda Escapade who slaughtered the Illuminati and casually rewrote reality.
The Chaos Magic originating from the elder god Chthon was one of the mighty forces on par with the Phoenix.
At this moment.
Wanda and Quicksilver, already changed into new outfits, were in the Manhattan area.
They had both used the money Bante gave them to buy new clothes, but Pietro hadn't gone to the arcade. They came to Manhattan, staring at the Avengers Tower, which had long been reduced to rubble, from morning all the way until dusk.
Excavators for the reconstruction trundled back and forth before their eyes, hauling away broken debris of the building.
That shattered landscape looked just like Sokovia nine years ago.
Back then, they had been only ten.
"Remember?" Pietro said. "Our family of four was having dinner. The bombs first went off two floors below. The floor was blasted into a huge hole, and then Mom and Dad fell through."
Wanda nodded. In a voice full of emptiness, she said, "I was completely stupefied. Then another missile smashed through the window at home. It didn't explode; it just sat upright on the rubble like a gravestone…"
She didn't sound sad, only desolate, hollow.
Like the hole blasted in the floor—once you fell in, you were never seen again.
"Then you found me, grabbed me, and pulled me under the bed. We were trapped for two days before we were rescued."
"If that was a gravestone, then the name written on it should've been Stark's," Pietro said venomously.
"He could never dream that the children from back then would come back to take their revenge!"
Of course.
For him, not right now.
Pietro knew full well his current strength was still very weak. Besides, with the Manhattan district devastated and Tony Stark no longer living here anyway, there wasn't even a way to get his revenge.
Only once the sun had set did they finally walk out of the postwar ruins of Sokovia.
New York's late November weather was already starting to turn chilly.
Wanda tugged at the collar of her new clothes, drawing her head in slightly. "We should head back, Pietro."
"Of course, can't keep our boss waiting." Pietro flipped the bank card in his hand up into the air and caught it.
Half an hour later.
Wanda and Pietro returned to Premos. Since Premos was so shabby it didn't even have a receptionist, Eunice guided them down to the underground training facility as well.
In the basement, Bante was helping Uncle Ben, Aunt May, and Harry test their stats.
"What's Uncle Ben's peak strength?"
"The highest figure recorded so far is 2.34 metric tons. Sprint speed can hit eighty kilometers per hour. Both reaction time and cognitive ability show significant improvement," Connors said as he crunched the numbers.
After testing, it was clear the same Super Soldier Serum didn't work exactly the same on different people.
Harry's stats were more balanced, though he had his Green Goblin armor and didn't really rely on the serum.
As for Uncle Ben and Aunt May, each leaned in different directions.
Physically, in both strength and speed, Uncle Ben held the advantage, but Aunt May was superior in reaction speed, and her thinking had quickened considerably.
Uncle Ben joked that if she went to a senior university now, she'd definitely win a scholarship, standing out head and shoulders among a bunch of already befuddled old folks.
Aunt May promptly told him to go compete in the Olympics. Since they were both on the juice, Uncle Ben was bound to be far stronger than those purple people.
"That way they wouldn't have to split a swimming event into thirty-five disciplines."
"In a bit, have Connors take you to test your muscle density and run the rest of the diagnostics," Bante said.
At that point, Pietro saw they were free and came over with Wanda.
"You're back. How was the arcade?"
"Games in New York must be a little better than in Sokovia, right?"
"But in my book, games are only fun when you've got friends to play them with." Bante turned his head, smiling.
Pietro spun the bank card between his fingers and looked at Bante oddly.
It hadn't occurred to him Bante would actually think he'd been off playing games all day.
"You didn't send anyone to spy on us?"
At that, Bante's brow furrowed. He asked back, "Why would I do that?"
"Why?" Pietro said, astonished. "You gave us a million dollars!"
"One million each," Wanda added.
"Right, two million! That much money! And you weren't afraid we'd just take the money you gave us and run?"
Truthfully, Pietro was baffled. He figured he'd known Bante less than a day and couldn't understand how the guy could trust him so much.
He'd spent years scraping by in that small gang in Sokovia; he'd seen gang members come to blows over a couple thousand bucks more often than not.
"I'm not afraid," Bante shrugged.
Just two million bucks—what was there to be afraid of?
"You trust us that much?" Pietro had clearly misunderstood.
Bante said, "It's not that I trust you. I just don't care about those two million."
"You're welcome to take that two million and leave the country. I absolutely will not go after you, because it's not worth it. The person who betrays me, I give them two million; how much those who follow me get goes without saying, yeah?"
"You get it? Give it up, applause!"
Bante rattled off one MLM sales pitch after another.
But truth be told, a few million dollars really didn't amount to much in his eyes these days.
Not long ago, the U.S. government, Stark Industries, and Wakanda had already wired the reconstruction funds for New York into his account. He'd long since lost count of how many zeros were on it.
Who'd still care about a measly two million?
Pietro had never heard talk like that before. Instantly, he was stunned into a daze.
The key was, once he thought about it, he realized it really seemed to be the case.
So the siblings fell silent.
"Also…"
Bante drew out the word, his gaze shifting to the transformed Pietro and Wanda. Then he said softly:
"Welcome home."
Had some family stuff these past couple days, so only two updates today, and maybe just one tomorrow.
Also, I finally figured out why I keep making so many damn typos. It's the Sogou input method acting up. I'll type the right pinyin, and it insists on giving me something else. Like, I type "sheng," and it shows me characters for "shen." When I start with "j," it always recommends "ai." For example, I try to type "tuijian," and it gives me "tuiai"—leg fucking cancer. And it thinks it's so clever putting it first. What a goddamn idiot.
/-\
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