Issue 30: Trials of Merlin Part I
Peter woke up the next morning to MJ laying her head on his chest with her arm wrapped around him. He smiled, kissed her forehead, and snuck out of bed. Heading downstairs, Peter started cooking her breakfast, and thanks to visiting the Renew your Vows Peter Parker he picked up a tasty banana pancake recipe MJ was very fond of.
He had to admit it was pretty good, he could see why it would become Annie's favorite over the wheat pancakes he adored. The smell of the food woke up MJ and made her smile in embarrassment as she thought of what she did last night. She took the chance to take a shower before heading downstairs with a radiant smile that never left her lips.
As Peter finished making breakfast, he placed the plate on the table around the same time he saw MJ walking down the stairs. Her hair was still wet, and her face was glowing just like Peter's was, and he couldn't help but blush.
She swallowed her embarrassment and marched over before giving him a kiss and said, "Morning, Tiger! Last night was..."
Peter smiled as he responded, "Yeah, it was…"
After laughing a little, they sat at the table MJ took a bite of the Pancake and said, "Oh my god, Tiger this is amazing. I should get you to cook more often."
"Well, if every time is as good as last night…I might just do that for you," Peter gave her a quick kiss.
The two then chatted back and forth about menial things, mostly about tech, when MJ said, "By the way what happened to you when you were all cocooned up?" Peter had an idea of what happened, but for some reason, he didn't remember meeting the Spider-God, all he could remember was the word Champion Totem.
"I think that there is a magical aspect to our powers, but I have no idea what they are."
"Magic? But we got our powers through a science experiment, right?" MJ asked.
"Yeah, but maybe that's just a catalyst that allows us to tap into this force, like our bodies being more aligned towards a certain force or realm. Thor said it was a Totem God, and I think with what we both know, Strange might be able to enlighten us on that matter," Peter replied.
After they finished their meal, they sat outside and waited for their parents to come home. They texted a few more times to make sure they were alright and learned that they were waiting for a couple of roads to be cleaned up.
It took a while, but after a few hours had passed, a beat-up Volkswagen Type 3 drove into the driveway.
Peter jaw dropped as he saw the damage to Uncle Ben's car, and walked up to them, "Hey, are you guys alright?"
Ben and May hopped out of the beat-up vehicle and ran up to Peter hugging, "I'm so glad you're okay."
MJ's parents did the same as they told them what they experienced. After helping out the people had to clear the roadways, and slowly making their way back, they ran into quite a few situations. Along the way home, they helped out survivors, helped remove wreckage, and eventually had to spend the night at a human services center.
"Actually MJ, and I were planning on going out to help with helping the Disaster Relief, but we wanted to wait for you to come home," Peter said scratching his head when he saw their expression and continued, "We're actually planning on joining some friends from school, so we'll be moving with a large group."
May looked like she was struggling with the idea when Ben patted her shoulder with a smile on his face and said, "Let them go!"
"Ben!" May shouted with a worried expression.
"It's a good thing that the youth want to take care of their city, and the fact that Peter and Mary want to take part makes me proud."
Everyone smiled at Ben's words. After all, it was because of his nature that they helped so many people while trying to get back. Every time he saw someone in need of help, Ben was the first one to jump into action.
After some light convincing and a breakfast to unload all their thoughts, the Spider-Duo left the house and webbed off towards Stark Towers. The real repairs would start there.
After gaining some altitude they switched into flight mode and shot off into the sky before activating their glider suits to gracefully fall towards Tony's home.
When they arrived, they made sure not to intrude like they usually would and rang the doorbell. After waiting a few minutes, a screen popped up on the display screen showing Tony and Pepper in bathrobes.
"Hope I'm not interrupting!" Peter chuckled, making Tony reply, "Actually yes, could you give us, one, no two hours."
Pepper took over and said, "Hi Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Tony will be right down!"
"I will?" Tony replied with a sad expression.
"You will!" Pepper shot back.
"Ugh,,,I guess I'm coming down. You know Spidey, your timing is horrible." Tony shut the Camera off and opened up his gates.
The Spider Couple made their way inside and greeted Pepper before she took them to Tony's lab. Peter still couldn't get enough of this place, the upper lab was just for fun time projects, but the real lab was below.
Peter and MJ rode an elevator down and entered into a very large open space that had two webbed up Chitauri war ships stuck inside a containment field.
Peter smiled as he waved to Tony, "TONY, MY MAN! These look great!"
As they approached Tony noticed the strut in Peter's stride as he grinned and said, "Looks like I'm not the only one who got some last night."
"Tony!" Pepper shouted.
Tony laughed before saying, "What Spidey's walk has a chipper mood to it, Jarvis's recognition software is never wrong about these things. Either he just hit the Jackpot, or he got some."
Peter could feel the embarrassment coming off of MJ as she readied her hand to slap him.
Tony raised his hands to protect his face while wearing a worried expression, "Easy Spider-Woman, I'm not in my suit. A slap like yours could knock my head off."
"It's a good thing I can control my strength!" MJ smiled.
"Oof," Peter chuckled.
"Do it Spider-Woman!" Pepper shouted.
Peter winced as he heard the slap. Tony's face had a red imprint on his cheek and an 'I deserved that one' look on his face.
"Why'd you say it? You had to know this was going to happen?" Peter whispered.
"Did you have fun?" Tony grinned.
"Ahem…yeas…" Peter rubbed his throat while acting like it was a cough, "Ow!"
MJ slapped him in the back of the head and walked over to Pepper.
Spider-Man walked over to the ship and saw the Prototypes to the cleanup robots. These would dispose of rubble and recycle it using his webbing as a new bonding agent. It would replace and fix most of the damage to the city. Tony even made an A.I just for the cleanup and repair, he called him, Handybot.
Peter laughed and said, "Why not Mr. Clean, or Agent Soap."
"Because those names suck," Tony replied as he rolled his eyes.
The Spider-Hero also saw a test run using Peter Parker's regular permanent formula. The building was in the middle of being coated, sanded down, and painted over. Since the adhesive was capable of bonding things on a molecular level, the end result looked no different than any other building surface.
"The Spinneret for the device was made by a kid I know, I made some changes to it to suit the purpose though, and the results are amazing, take a look at this." Tony brought them over to an I-Beam made from the webbing and there was a section of it covered in the liquefied organic webbing he handed over to Tony yesterday.
It looked like it had been subjected to a series of stress test as there were burn marks and dents around the coating.
"If we coated this substance over the surface of building materials, they would vastly expand the conditions needed to cause wear and decay, they could absorb damage and supply energy to the city, and they wouldn't have to go through constant maintenance. Mr. Parker what you have here isn't just money, it's real wealth."
MJ was shocked when Peter memory holed it because of how interested he was in the drone's sphere-like design.
"Yeah, I kn..." Peter paused when he realized what Tony called him. Slapping his forehead, he turned to his friend and asked, "How long have you known?"
"I figured it out when I saw your webbing on the battlefield. Jarvis ran some scans and found a 30% match to the adhesive formula you gave me?"
"Yeah, but those have been out on the market for a while now! Anyone can make my webbing in some form if their smart enough."
"True, but in combination, the 3d printer you built had too many similarities to those shooters on your wrists. I was really impressed by your work you know?" Tony pulled open a screen showing his Nanobot design, "I was mostly impressed by your reactor. How did you create such a powerful and precise Magnetic field? I get the Hypertorus shape, but you don't just luck into these kinds of specifications, it took Jarvis a full day to run through all the calculations to get this to work."
Peter removed his mask making Pepper gasp, "So you knew even before the whole Avengers Initiative?"
Tony replied, "I kept waiting for you to trust me, but then I thought, Nah! That's not me! Better to rip it off like a worn band-aid and embarrass you, tease you, make jokes at your expense."
MJ removed her mask as well and said, "Hi Pepper, good to see you again." Pepper smiled and turned to Tony and said, "Tony, you should make me a suit."
Tony smiled and replied, "Could you say those words again."
"Tony, build me a suit, please…" Pepper smiled as she crossed her arms.
"One more time, please!" Tony couldn't help but push his luck while biting the bottom of his lip.
"No!" Pepper shouted.
"Awe, come on. I've been waiting forever for you to ask me to make you one. I've already got a few designs ready! Seriously though what brought this change on?" Tony pleaded, making them laugh.
"I thought that I couldn't be both a couple and a superhero, but apparently..." Pepper looked to Peter and MJ before saying, "I was wrong. Nothing bad about moving forward. After all, it just seems like the most logical step."
"Oh, most logical, huh?" Tony grinned as he nodded his head in agreement, "So it has nothing to do with what happened last night?"
Ignoring the couple flirting beside them, Peter walked over to the Warship and said, "I can control Magnetic Fields, so I kind of sense how much energy was being produced while making it, not to mention I can if I can learn more about my power, I could even rearrange molecules in metals to make other metals." Peter waved his hand collecting the webbing that he originally used to tie down the ships.
He then made a basket using his web shooters and proceeded to fill it up with his organic webbing. After turning it into a liquid with his Ferrokinesis, he closed it off with his regular webbing and patted his hands like he just got done working.
"Now then, I think that's a little over 3,000 Gallons for you to play with. I'm gonna charge you for the material," Peter said grinning.
"Amazing! Imagine the alloys we could craft, Kid. I'm gonna give you a crash course on Stark methods of metallurgy," Tony said as he stared at Peter and the ship in front of him.
Peter laughed as he opened up a hatch in the ship and said, "What do you say to a little exploration?"
Tony summoned his armor and said, "Kid, I thought you'd never ask."
MJ stood up beside Peter and said, "I can't believe we're about to investigate an alien spacecraft."
The stepped inside and wondered at the technology. Most of the equipment seemed to be operated by psionic command, there was enough space to house hundreds of thousands of people, and it was full of many high-tech machines that left them clueless. However, what made them drool with excitement was the anti-gravity engines and atmospheric manipulation device.
Tony was looking at the bridge trying to figure out the material they used to make the circuitry. MJ was looking over it and said, "It appears to be some kind of synthetic crystal or quartz, it not wired like a computer it's..."
"It's like a neural network, this is incredible. Jarvis, take pictures, a lot of them, also, scan the environment and get me a 3d reconstruction of the entire ship."
"Right away Mr. Stark." a spherical object detached from Tony's suit and began scanning everything in sight.
While Peter was studying the engine, he couldn't stop being fascinated by the massive device that could focus powerful electromagnetic fields and manipulate the ship to move in any direction. The hero found out that the machine could mimic his ferrokinetic power, although it was with much less finesse and only capable of accessing a fragment of its potential energy.
The engine could produce energy through a powerful anti-matter reactor to emit graviphotons that would control the spatial barrier around the ship. Any direction the EM field moves, the ship follows. The fuel the ship used was an unknown element that glowed with an orange-yellow light. At the moment, Peter could only call it Exotic Matter until he learned its proper name.
They spent a few hours studying the ship before Peter stepped back outside to work on the repair-robots. Tony and MJ soon followed after, and as they worked, they discussed their findings while making vast improvements on the clean-bots.
Once they had the first robot up Peter unwebbed the other spaceship and made another 3,000 Gallons of M-Titan Webbing for Tony to use. Within a few more hours they had finished building a few hundred of them, which was more than enough to send out into the city.
Tony started up the A.I and they watched as they were spread over the city and began repairing it.
Everyone freak out at first, and a lot thought that the invasion wasn't over, but when they all noticed the Stark Tech Logo, they started to think. Their suspicions were confirmed when Tony sent out a mass text telling people what the objects were for.
The cleaning-bots would scan the damage and use a mixture of Peter's formula to repair and enhance their buildings and broken housing.
MJ and Peter continued to web around helping people, and along the way, he met up with the Defenders, "Power Man!" Peter called out to him.
"Hey, Spidey. Been a while, I saw you during the invasion but didn't have any time to spare. Sorry about that. So, how have you been?"
"Pretty good, actually. I owe you some thanks, one of the people you helped out with yesterday were relatives of ours, so, thank you for saving my family."
MJ smiled as she said, "Thank you."
Power Man smiled and said, "Hey, we're all friends, no need for that. So..." Luke pointed to the drones flying around, "Is this Ironman's work?"
"We helped! It's more like 40% us, and 60% Stark." MJ said laughing.
"Well, I have to get back to helping people, good seeing you again Spidey Couple." Power Man waved his hand as he went to help fix up a broken-down shop by helping them clean up the heavy debris.
Peter and MJ webbed to a nearby high rise and looked over the rapidly recovering New York, they held each other's hands and laughed when they saw how quickly the machines were working.
"That is really cool to see. I should make one for my house," MJ's eyes sparkled.
"I guess we can say goodbye to chores," Peter chuckled.
"Alright, I guess we should get back to work. We have to free up some time to study magic. So, I was thinking once we get back to school, we should apply for early graduation. Since Tony already knows our not-so-secret identities, he can help us start up a company, but I wonder how long of a hiatus we'll have to go on. I'm sure delaying our college education isn't going to make our parents completely freak out."
"I'm sure we'll do fine, Tiger! After all, even if it takes a couple of years, we have the Avengers to help pick up the slack, and since we won't have to worry about money anymore, it really isn't that stressing." MJ gave him a kiss on the cheek as she jumped off the high rise and webbed towards where they were needed.
Peter followed after and the two started fixing up and helping the many citizens of NY, and they continued to do so for two weeks. Only when the city started to look like its former condition did life return to normal and school start up once again.