Just A Kid ◇ Peter Parker

4◇ THE BITE

"Do you know what kind of stuff they have at the labs?" Riley asks as she steps up onto the platform and awaits the train. Peter joins her.

"Don't you listen in class? Or-or read the letter?" He stammers, trying not to sound rude to the girl. She just shrugs her shoulders, dismissing is trouble.

"Nah. I get bored. And I only read books. Interesting books." She tells him with a raise of her eyebrows as she quickly steps onto the train and takes a seat.

The boy laughs and sits down next to her, pocketing his phone as he wouldn't need it for this conversation.

"They have different kinds of lab equipment, tests, all sorts of formulas for different kinds of stuff..." Peter lists a long list of stuff that goes on at Oscorp lab, even going into detail about what he knows goes into the equipment and formulas used.

"Oh and there is also some form of cross species genetics." He adds at the end. This particular sentence caught Riley's interest, and she turned to look at him with an interested eye.

"What kind of cross species genetics?" She asks and he looks at her in shock. Yes, he knew she'd be interested, just not that interested.

The train continues to glide over the rails, getting closer to their destination. Gwen had texted to tell Riley that they were waiting for her at the school. Peter goes into an explanation.

"You know, using the genes of two living organisms to make one living organisms with those genes. They tried it with lizards." He tells Riley who stares in shock at him.

"Lizards? As in, those scaly reptiles?" She asks and the boy tries to hide a laugh. She was being extremely dumb at the present moment, and he didn't know why.

"Yes. Lizards. They tried to use their cellular growth genes on humans to make it so that we could reproduce our own limbs. It didn't exactly work though." He says matter of factly. He gets up from his seat as the train slows to a halt. Riley stands up, perplexed.

"Why didn't it work?" She asks, the doors opening up onto the platform that leads down to their school.

"Im not sure. Oscorp tried to cover it up, not even J.J Jameson knows." He tells her and heads down the stairs, speaking the name of the dude who runs their city paper. He was an idiot. But he made catchy headlines.

"Oh. Well that's a bummer." Riley says with a sigh and follows after Peter.

"I guess it is." She hears Peter say as Ned walks up to him, a huge grin in his face.

"I finished the Falcon!" He says triumphantly and shows Peter a photo on his phone.

"Thats awesome!" The boy replies, motioning for Riley to come and take a look. She smiles and jogs over to them. Ned shows her the photo of the completed Lego structure and she smiles.

"Looking good, Ned." She laughs and he nods his head, pocketing his phone.

"Thanks!" He smiles and turns around to see Gwen and Harry coming towards them. Riley forgot that she had ignored them the whole day before. But neither teens said anything about it, and instead walked towards her with a smile.

"Hey! Ready for today?" Gwen says, a huge smile on her face, trying to cover the fact that she's slightly annoyed that Riley had ignored her.

"Yeah. You?" The girl replies, sending Harry a wave which he returns with a smile. He obviously had nothing against the girl.

"Yeah. It should be good. Peter, Ned, you gonna walk around with us?" Gwen asks the two boys, shocking them and Riley as Gwen had never asked them to do things with them before.