[A/N: Sorry for taking so long to update, but I hope you enjoy this chapter. More notes at the end.]
Dinner with Phil had been a pretty tame affair considering all of the horrible scenarios Peter had managed to imagine beforehand. They had talked about a lot of things, but perhaps most notably they discussed Peter's plan to join the SHIELD Academy and what alias he should use. In the end, he decided to just apply as Peter Parker, after all, it is the name he enjoys using the most and since not much is known about him anyway, it should be easy enough to keep SHIELD out if his business.
Originally he was going to use a fake name (well, another fake name technically) but he has spent enough of his life having no real sense of identity, now that he finally has one, the thought of having to go by anything else in his day to day life (not including missions of course) leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
And thats how three months after that dinner, Peter Parker, the 19 year old kid from Queens with 2 PHDs and counting, finds himself standing in the SHIELD Academy of Operations, looking at the wall of valour.
When he applied to Ops, many of the people on the committee who select who actually gets the opportunity to attend, had tried convincing him that he was better suited to the Sci-Tech Academy. As if somehow his 2 PHDs would make him incompetent at anything except science.
He had shown them.
You see the SHIELD Academy has pretty tough entry requirements. By normal people's standards that is. 6 weeks of training designed with the sole purpose of weeding out the weakest among them, and getting them to crack. In the end only the strongest of them survive the whole six weeks and actually earn the chance to attend the academy, where things will only get tougher.
They expected him to wash out within the first week.
He finished top of the class.
It has been a month since then and he seems to have earned the grudging respect of most of his instructors, even if most of the other cadets resent him. That is, most of the cadets in Ops resent him. He has actually become rather well liked among the cadets from Communications and Sci-tech.
Despite having only been there less than a month, he even sometimes finds himself attending classes in the other academies in his free time.
He loves it.
He feels more comfortable here than he feels anywhere else (except of course being with Natasha, but that is to be expected) and he for the first time in a long time finds himself acting like himself in public. Of course he plays down his physical abilities a little, but he can actually embrace all of his skills here and people don't judge him for it. At least, not in a bad way.
Since he is on the younger side compared to a lot of the other cadets, he had found himself on the receiving end of a number of pranks, but he couldn't find it in himself to mind, nobody had really pranked him before and it was actually kind of refreshing. Although he did shut down some of the pranks that were meant to be cruel rather than funny. He wasn't going to take shit from people just because they were jealous, but those stopped after some retaliation that showed why it is a bad idea to start a prank war with someone with 2 PHDs. Some of his methods were, shall we say...creative.
After the cruel pranks stopped, the pranks that were intended in good fun continued, and Peter wouldn't have it any other way. And if he got into trouble after some of his...messier pranks, it is totally worth the hours of clean up (even if glitter is still being found in random places weeks later).
The thing is though, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. This might come as a surprise to you (it really should not) but Peter Parker is a loner. Sure he can socialise with people when it is necessary...but that doesn't mean he has to like it.
He survived high school sure, which in a sense was worse than the SHIELD Academy (especially if that sense is smell). The main difference however, is that in high school, once the day was over, he could retreat to his own space which he knew was secure. Here...he doesn't have that luxury. Sure he has his own dorm room which has a surprising lack of listening devices and cameras, but it isn't secure, and honestly those flimsy locks might as well not even be there, and are obviously useless considering how many times people have picked the lock to play a prank.
All of that means that he doesn't have his own space to retreat to and be himself, which makes talking to Nat difficult...
But he isn't a genius for nothing, and the security systems were pitifully easy to hack. So he had hacked into their systems and created a program that monitors everything and alerts K anytime something happens that he should know about. K then filters that information and if it isn't something she can deal with herself, she alerts Peter.
It is also set to alert him if someone breaks into his dorm room while he isn't there, or if they are approaching while he is there so that he is never caught off guard.
The biggest change he has made though is inserting his own security system into his dorm, which of course is monitored by KAREN and works independent of SHIELDs systems. That way he can monitor what people do if they make it inside.
Some might call it paranoia. And they would be correct but just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Not to mention the fact that Peter knows HYDRA has its claws in SHIELD, it would just be stupid to assume they weren't within the Academies. As students or teachers he cant be sure, likely both. But he can't be sure, so he has to be cautious.
But that is just how he lives at this point and that will probably never change, but he makes sure to observe the people around him. He has already found at least three people he knows are HYDRA, and a couple others who he suspects.
Since he can't act on that information right now he simply takes the opportunity to learn everything he can about them and everything they know about HYDRA. Even though being around them makes his skin crawl, he knows being in the presence of HYDRA is mostly unavoidable if he is working for SHIELD, so he just turns that to his advantage.
However, he needed a way to store and manage all of the data they can not only collect in future but also to properly manage their existing intelligence. So he, KAREN and Nat worked together to create a new AI system before he joined the academy. She is amazing really. They call her PRISM. Short for 'Parker-Romanoff-Intelligence-System-Matrix'.
She monitors all of the information they gather from...well literally everything. She has come in particularly handy with monitoring HYDRA though. She is currently monitoring HYDRA activity in Sokovia, there is currently a civil war going on there and while HYDRA is on neither side, they are deliberately fanning the flames, keeping the conflict going to cover up their presence in the area.
It turns out they have illegally acquired some STARK weaponry too which they are using against civilians. That is something that will be dealt with very soon, and PRISM is currently monitoring the situation for any developments.
In the meantime, She interfaces with K to make sure they always have any information they might need in any particular scenario.
PRISM can be accessed through K, or through any of their safe houses at built in terminals. She has every bit of information they have ever collected and then some. She can basically hack into any unsecured system and take all of that data, which means she has a whole lot of information about a whole lot of random people, not to mention any information Peter or Natasha may retrieve from secure systems.
She is practically omnipotent, which is fantastic, but it means she has a lot of data to constantly mine through, which is why K couldn't do that while also maintaining her primary functions.
Speaking of K, she was feeling a little jealous that PRISM had an acronym and she didn't, so KAREN is now short for 'Kick-Ass-Rapidly-Evolving-Network'. Which to be fair is rather apt.
All of that is beside the point though, he is currently standing in front of the wall of valour. A small voice in the back of his head is wondering how many people on this wall died because of HYDRA, if he could have saved any of them. He pushes those thoughts aside, they won't do any good now after all.
He is actually on his way out for the weekend, all academy students are free to leave on the weekends although many don't. Since he has a company to run though, he usually heads back to New York, thankfully the commute isn't too long from New Jersey which makes secretly running a tech conglomerate while attending 'spy school' much easier.
He has been managing the business remotely through K for the most part, although Ned and Michelle were invaluable in helping keep the company going. However this wasn't why he was headed back to the city today. No. Today was for something far more important as far as he was concerned.
Today was for Nat.
She had just called an hour ago. He had been planning to spend the weekend at the academy for once since things were fairly slow with the company this week. But Nat had received some good news and so he was headed to spend the weekend at home so they could hang out together to celebrate.
Besides Nat had been given leave for the weekend and their schedules don't match up as often as they would like.
The news?
Nat just got promoted to level 2.
She is still a rookie, but she is slowly proving herself to Fury, and to be promoted so soon, by such a paranoid bastard no less, is truly cause to his celebrate.
Peter would have gotten her a gift of sorts, but he didn't exactly have time, he had however had KAREN place a rush order in at a local bakery. Her favourite blueberry and lemon cheesecake, from Mr Lee's Bakery, Stan, the owner was like family at this point since Peter and Nat helped save him from a mugger.
He had thanked them with a slice of cheesecake, a new recipe he was trying out. They have been hooked ever since. By now, even stepping foot in another bakery feels like a betrayal.
So now Pete was headed out to his car for the ride home, planing to stop by Stan's to pick up the cake in the way. He was gonna pick Nat up at the airport later, and they were gonna go out for a meal to celebrate. Thai food.
It has somehow become their go to cuisine for celebration ever since they had it the night Nat moved in.
As he started the car he wondered if he should buy her flowers or something but he didn't want to make it weird.
He would think about it...
[A/N: I am considering starting a second book with short stories relating to Peter's time at the Academy. Might that be something you would be interested in? If so, what sort of thing would you like to see. Your feedback will be appreciated, thank you!]