I Am Karen - Spider-Man / Peter Parker [1]

Chapter Twenty-Seven - It's Begun

"He does like you" she stated louder than before with a smirk on her face, she wanted Peter to hear. Maria groaned quietly and shrunk back in her seat as she covered her face with her hand.

"And what -" Maria started trying to keep her cheeks from permanently being stained red.

"You should tell him" Michelle commented, thankfully saying no details. Maria was just praying that Peter's intelligence failed him and he stayed oblivious to her feelings towards him.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no" Maria repeated, her head shaking in denial as she moved her hand to cover her mouth to muffle her words. She knew it probably didn't help at all but what else could she do.

"Why not?" Michelle asked turning her confused gaze upon Maria.

"Because ..." Maria didn't want to say it for fear it would come. Unable to speak looking at Michelle, Maria dropped her gaze and concentrated upon her hands that were playing with her phone, running the device between her palms. "What happens if you're wrong? If you misheard and I lose when one of my closest friends? I can't risk that ... he's ... he's too important to me." And that was it, Peter could never know because she would be risking their friendship that had grown so strong. She didn't want to put Peter in that position, she didn't want to make him feel awkward.

Whilst Maria's mind was occupied, the inevitable was happening and was about to arrive.

"Maria?"

The young Stark frowned. That didn't sound like Michelle. Along with the new voice an array of gasps and some shocked shouts echoed through the bus catching everyone's attention. Maria turned to the new voice and immediately saw what had everyone gasping. There in the middle of the bus was a large sparking golden circle, that was a portal to another place. A place Maria recognised as the New York sanctum. And the man who had walked out of the circle was none other than Wong, a Master of the Mystic Arts and keeper of the Kamar-Taj.

"Wong? What are you-" Maria asked in shock. She certainly hadn't expected Wong to appear on the bus. However, his face informed her that he was not there for anything good. His eyes stayed locked on Maria

"It's begun."

Everyone on the bus was confused, their gazes all flickered to Maria whose face paled considerably. She knew what those words meant, she knew they were connected to the Titan, Thanos. And Thanos was no longer coming, no longer a threat she had to prepare for ... Thanos was here.

~8~

It wasn't a hard choice really; Maria knew that she had to go with Wong. It had confused her friends especially Michelle who she had hugged tightly. The truth was Maria didn't know if she would see her best friend again. It was one of the things that terrified her.

Within seconds Maria had walked through the portal and had entered the New York sanctum of the Masters of the Mystical Arts which she now just stood in. She had been inside the beautiful, old building before several months ago when she had hunted down Doctor Stephen Strange.

Weeks after Homecoming, Maria had been visited by two figures in her lab and this meeting had plagued her ever since. What the figure had asked Maria to do was simple enough but the consequences of her actions had left Maria's mind haunted.

The figure had demanded that she research a man named Thanos, the Black Order, the Chitauri, the Outriders, the Sakaarans and the Infinity Stones; she had even been given Maria a piece of alien technology that would boost KAREN's signal range far into the universe so that she had ample amounts of resources. And she had agreed to do the research and to her horror she had discovered some hard truths she had had to live with for months.