Over the next few days, a strange sight appeared after dark on the quieter streets near Klein's apartment building in Queens.
Klein — wearing his oldest, most beat-up jeans — walked a carefully chosen route through the neighborhood with his hands in his pockets and a thick wad of crumpled cash stuffed into his back pocket. It was everything he had. Probably less than ten thousand dollars total, which was a deeply uncomfortable amount of money to be using as bait, but it was what it was.
He let a small corner of the bills poke out deliberately. Under the dim glow of the streetlights, that little green edge caught the light with every step, bobbing at the rim of his pocket like it was advertising itself.
He walked back and forth across several blocks, whistling softly, doing his best impression of a completely oblivious, defenseless young guy wandering around alone at night with visible cash hanging out of his pocket.
The route was calculated. He avoided the well-lit main streets and stuck to the areas with dim lighting, intersecting alleys, and the kinds of corners that looked like they belonged in a crime statistic. The exact spots where, logically, someone should've been waiting to relieve him of his money.
Nothing happened.
Night one: nothing. Night two: nothing. Three nights in a row — no muggers, no drive-bys, not even a pickpocket taking a casual interest.
Klein stood under a streetlight on the fourth night, looked down at the very obvious wad of cash sticking out of his pocket, and slowly deflated.
"Huh," he muttered.
He walked home, pulled the mattress up, and stuffed the money back into the gap underneath it.
"Okay. I miscalculated." He sat on the edge of the sofa bed and stared at the floor. "Apparently Queens is just... fine? People actually live here normally?"
He thought about it for a moment and had to admit it made sense.
His apartment building was old and cramped, but it was stable — the kind of place where the same faces had lived for twenty years, older residents who knew each other and paid their rent and kept things quiet. That kind of neighborhood self-regulated. If it were actually dangerous, an orphaned college student living alone without connections or backup would've been cleaned out long ago.
He'd let the reputation do the thinking for him. Rookie mistake.
If he actually wanted to find the kind of chaos where his particular skill set had obvious application, he'd need to go looking somewhere else. A different neighborhood. A different kind of street.
But that was a problem for later.
School was starting back up, and Klein had decided, without much drama, that he was going to attend.
The next morning, after a simple breakfast, he changed into a clean t-shirt and jeans, loaded a few well-worn textbooks into his battered backpack, gave his hair a half-hearted ruffle in the bathroom mirror, and headed out.
Queens in the early morning had a different energy than the afternoon — less noise, more purpose. Kids in backpacks cutting to the bus stop, commuters moving with the focused stride of people who knew exactly where they needed to be. The coffee shop on the corner two blocks down was already wafting its smell into the street.
Empire State University was about a twenty-minute walk from the apartment. Klein had made the commute enough times that his feet knew the route on autopilot.
When he reached the front gate — old stone archway, ivy crawling up the pillars, the particular atmosphere of a school that had been around long enough to feel permanent — he spotted Peter almost immediately, standing under the covered entrance and looking around with the expression of someone who had arrived early but wasn't sure that was actually a good thing.
"Peter!" Klein raised a hand and cut through the stream of students.
Peter turned, and the mild uncertainty on his face shifted into a genuine smile. "Klein! Hey."
They fell into step together, passing through the arch and into campus.
The place was alive again after the summer — students crossing the quad with books tucked under their arms, groups clustered on the lawn catching up, the low murmur of a hundred separate conversations layered together into background noise. The air smelled like cut grass and the particular brand of barely-contained anxiety that came with the first week back.
Peter kicked a fallen leaf off the path as they walked. He was quiet for a moment, clearly working up to something.
"I kept thinking about what you said the other day," he started, pushing his glasses up without looking over. "About the internship."
Klein waited.
"I think you were right." Peter turned to look at him then, expression straightforward and serious in that way that was just genuinely who he was. "I was assuming things without really thinking it through. So — thanks for that."
Klein smiled but didn't say anything. Let him finish.
Peter stopped walking. He turned to face Klein fully, and there was something unusually deliberate about it, like he'd rehearsed this part.
"So from now on — if there's ever something I can actually do. Anything, for real — you have to tell me. Don't just wave it off." He held Klein's gaze. "We're friends."
Klein looked at him — this slightly awkward, genuinely decent kid who had just made a point of stopping in the middle of campus to say something he'd clearly been sitting with for days — and felt something quietly warm settle in his chest.
In a world full of people he didn't know yet, Peter Parker had shown up first. Clumsy, earnest, and completely real.
"Of course." Klein slung an arm around Peter's shoulder and gave him a light shake. "We're friends. When I actually need something, trust me, I'm not going to be polite about asking."
Peter laughed — a short, relieved sound. "Good. Deal."
They walked until the path split, one fork curving toward the Biochemistry building, the other leading toward the older Economics wing on the far side of campus.
"See you after?" Peter asked, already backing toward his building.
"Cafeteria at noon," Klein confirmed, raising a hand. "Don't be late."
Peter waved and disappeared into the flow of students heading toward the science buildings.
The Economics building was old red brick, the hallways narrow, the walls hung with oil portraits of past department chairs who all seemed to share a look of quiet self-satisfaction. The air smelled like aged wood and chalk and the kind of dust that had been settling for decades.
Klein found the lecture hall and slipped in through the back door.
It was still early. Less than half the seats were filled, most of the students either buried in notes or chatting in low voices. Klein drifted on habit toward the back corner near the window — good sightlines, minimal foot traffic, acceptable for tuning out if the lecture went sideways.
He dropped his backpack onto the chair beside him to hold the spot, rolled his shoulders, and let his eyes move idly over the room as more students filtered in.
Familiar faces. Nothing unusual.
Then the front door opened.
Her hair caught the morning light first — long and blonde, so pale it was almost platinum, pulled into a neat high ponytail that swayed slightly with each step. She wore a simple white t-shirt and light blue jeans, carried a canvas backpack that looked like it had been through some use, and moved through the room the way people did when they were comfortable in a space — directly, without hesitation, choosing her seat like she already knew where she was going.
She settled into a spot in the middle of the front row, slid her backpack off, and had her notebook and pen out in one smooth motion.
Her profile, visible from Klein's angle, was sharp and clean. Straight nose, strong jaw, skin that looked like she'd spent genuine time outdoors rather than chasing a tan.
Klein's eyes stopped.
Gwen Stacy.
He recognized her from Klein's memory fragments — and from a different kind of memory entirely.
Top of her class, with a particular gift for the sciences that had made her a favorite of half the faculty. Active in what felt like every club on campus. Sharp, self-possessed, the kind of person who was friendly to everyone but close to almost no one, which tended to read as intimidating until you figured out it was actually just clarity.
Her father was Captain George Stacy, NYPD. That mattered in ways that would only become relevant later.
And she was Peter's first love. That mattered too — for reasons he needed to be careful around.
What he didn't understand was why she was here. Gwen's academic focus was biochemistry and physics, not economics. He was reasonably sure she wasn't supposed to be in this building at all.
Ding.
The sound rang clean and quiet through the center of his mind.
[Ding!][Marvel key plot character detected: Gwen Stacy.][Identity: Daughter of Captain George Stacy. Top student, Empire State University. Peter Parker's first love. Ghost-Spider of an adjacent universe.][New plot character encountered. Reward: Lucky Draw count +1. Would you like to draw now?]
Klein stared at the back of that blonde ponytail in the front row.
Peter had triggered a draw — that made sense. Peter Parker was basically the load-bearing wall of the entire Marvel universe.
But Gwen?
He turned it over quickly. If Gwen counted, then the system wasn't limited to main protagonists. Supporting characters with significant plot weight qualified too. Which meant the draw conditions were broader than he'd assumed — potentially much broader.
Which meant the city was full of triggers he hadn't mapped yet.
He'd need to test that. Carefully, and with more examples.
But for now —
His face stayed completely neutral. He pulled the Intermediate Macroeconomics textbook out of his bag, flipped it open to a random page, and settled back in his chair like a student who had nowhere else to be.
Draw.
[Ding!][Drawing now. Please wait...]
[End of Chapter 4]
Show Some By Powerstones
Next BONUS CHAPTER at 200 powerstones