Walking the Wire | PETER PARKER [1]

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Peter leaves before Eloise can stop him.

Is he crazy? He can't just go up to Hank, Russo's tech supplier, and ask him whatever he wants; it's like Peter expects him to just give him all the answers.

"Interrogation," Ned murmurs to himself. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Eloise stands from the bed and paces the floor, her hands tangling themselves in her damp hair. Ned's eyes follow her movements.

"Calm down," he says. "His suit has this thing called interrogation mode; I tried it out, it's pretty legit."

Eloise shakes her head. Peter can't interrogate Hank, it'll go over the wrong way and he'll just get himself hurt, or worse—killed. Eloise turns to Ned and grabs his shoulders. His eyes widen in surprise.

"We have to help," she tells him. "He can't take on Hank and whatever advanced weaponry he has by himself."

Ned sighs and sets his hands on hers, taking them off of his shoulder. Eloise's hands fall to her sides.

"I'm worried too," Ned admits, his voice softer than before. "But we'd just get in the way."

Eloise turns and paces the floor again. "I don't know, Ned," she says quietly, voice unsteady. "I can't—I can't lose him." As soon as the words escape her lips, she realizes how true they are. She has only known Peter for a few months, but somehow, he has wiggled his way into her heart, whether he knew it or not. The same goes for Ned, but for him, it's different. It took a while for Alev, Cliff, Lucy, Elena, and Luis to have access to her heart strings, but with Peter, it was almost instant. Looking at Ned, Eloise repeats, "I can't lose him."

"I know," he says, eyes soft. "But trust him. He can do this, and then we'll all stop Russo and save the world together."

She swallows dryly and nods. Peter has to do this, and he has to come back unscathed.

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"We're going to New Orleans," Peter says, climbing in through the window and whipping his mask off his head. His brow is creased in thought as he moves to his dresser and starts pulls articles of clothing out. He picks up his backpack that was slumped against the wall and stuffs it with a handful of clothes.

Ned and Eloise watch with confusion and concern. As soon as Peter returned he started talking, leaving barely any time for his friends to feel relieved.

"What?" Eloise asks, watching as Peter moves and packs more home-made webbing that goes into his web-slingers.

Ned staggers up from his sitting position on the edge of Peter's bed and questions incredulously, "Now?"

Peter turns and pauses packing, his eyes moving between Ned and Eloise. Slightly frazzled, Peter turns back. He continues to pack. "Russo's going to alter time."

This puzzles Eloise's brain even more. Alter time? How do you even do that? It sounds like something that you would see in a science fiction movie. 

"What are you talking about?" Ned asks, throwing his hands up.

Starting focused on packing select files and documents from his stack, Peter explains in one breath, "The government is hiding a wormhole."

What the hell is a wormhole?

Peter catches his friends' befuddled silence and rushes out with hand gestures, "A wormhole is like a bridge with two openings, one on our end and one on another. It can, theoretically, connect different space-times, kind of like a short cut of sorts." He glances back at them to make sure that we're following. Ned seems to grasp the concept well, but Eloise is still as lost as before. Peter continues on despite her state of puzzlement. "A wormhole, again, could theoretically be used used for short-cutting through different periods in time, although it isn't likely because you would have to be moving faster than the speed of light and have an infinite mass." He stops and adds, "So time travel, basically."

While Eloise's mind is in turmoil over the entirety of what Peter just said, Ned accepts the idea immediately.

"Wait," Ned says, and when Eloise thinks he's about to question the sanity of the people they're fighting against, he goes, "Why would Russo want to time travel?"

Eloise leans back against the wall. She still has no idea what's even going on anymore.

Time travel? Wormhole? This seems more like a crazy conspiracy than their actual situation.

Peter pulls his backpack over his shoulders and turns to Ned and Eloise. He exhales and gathers his thoughts. "It's a long story. Hank said that Russo said something about killing all of the Avengers before that battle in New York that happened, like, six years ago that destroyed cities. According to the files, six years ago was also when Russo's wife and daughter were killed, and I'm starting to think the events are related."

Through the fog of her incomprehension, Eloise manages to ask, "So ... Russo's trying to prevent the Avengers from destroying the city, which the wife and daughter were probably casualties during?" She's honestly so confused even as she says it. However, Peter nods, and suddenly it starts to make more sense to her.

Russo is just wants his family back, Eloise realizes. He's a man who is probably still mourning the premature death of his wife and daughter.

However human his intentions are, Russo killing off the world's—and possibly the galaxy's—greatest heroes would be a mistake. They may have destroyed cities in New York as they battled, but if they didn't, then what they were fighting would have destroyed the entire world, killing everyone. Sacrifices have to be made, but they need to be made at the bare minimum. Eloise believes that those who fought in that war against those giant alien flying-slug-things that Thor's brother Loki sent did less damage than the aliens. You really can't please everyone, even after saving the world with your life at risk.

Collecting her thoughts and getting up to speed, Eloise pushes herself off the wall and steps forward. "So do we have a plan?" She asks. "Or are we just going to storm into that armed government facility, hoping to stop Russo?" She doesn't know if the boys have noticed this yet, but Peter would be the only one out of the three of them that could fight. And, even with him, he's only one teenager who has the powers of a spider; he wouldn't be enough.

Peter sighs and, hesitantly, pulls his mask over his face.

"Karen? Call Happy Hogan."

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Attached Song: Young, Dumb & Broke + Thunder by Imagine Dragons & Khalid

So I was going to do a double update on Friday since it was my birthday, but I ended up just spacing it entirely. So yeah. Update today and update tomorrow.

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