So... I promise I first wrote down this concept before What If was a thing, but it kinda... well it kinda gives off the same vibes. Enjoy!
Peter had a problem. A girl in his class, Cindy Moon, was convinced that he was secretly the crime fighting vigilante hero of Queens, and wouldn't rest until she'd proved it.
There was just one issue - he wasn't.
Peter Parker has a secret, that nobody knows yet.
In the daytime, he was just a normal boy with a normal life. But at night, he became the Spider, notorious supervillain of Queens.
He had powers - freakish spider powers he'd gotten just before his Aunt had died in front of his eyes. The city had been under attack and the so-called 'heroes' had left so much wreckage in their wake that it took Peter twenty minutes to find May's body underneath the rubble.
He'd screamed at the sky. His Uncle Ben had been devastated, had mourned. Had begun to drink. He was either at work, at the pub or unconscious at home. Peter couldn't blame him - after all, he'd dealt with his own grief by becoming a villain. By lying and stealing and fighting. He didn't need any of it, but he relished the feeling of power it gave him to undermine the heroes of this city. To see fear in the eyes of others. He hoped that maybe someday, that would be enough to fill the hole of helplessness that had filled him as he watched the building crash on top of his beloved aunt.
His suit was black, like any supervillain's, with bloodred web patterns up the arms and legs. And, as the best villain in Queens, he had his very own superhero nemesis. Of course, he fought other heroes, and Iron Lad fought other villains, but their fights were different. More intense. Personal.
Peter didn't know who Iron Lad was. Nobody did - the mystery of his identity was only rivalled by that of the Spider's. And Peter had done plenty of research, but all he knew was that the hero had first appeared wearing a ski mask and some home-made gadgets and saving civilians from street-level criminals. When the Avengers had almost torn each other apart in Germany, Iron Lad had been hired by Tony Stark to fight with him. He'd been upgraded and returned to Queens with a new sense of self-importance, thinking he could take on the Spider. Well, he'd failed. And had been failing ever since.
But it was only a matter of time until Peter made a mistake. So he needed to know the identity of his nemesis, so he could have something to hold over the hero. Everybody had a price. Peter had learnt at a young age that ideals of loyalty and heroism never stood for long when faced with money. For the more righteous, secret identities were just as effective.
Everything was going just fine. The great thing about being a villain was that Peter got to pick and choose when to be the Spider, meaning he could do homework in his own time. School was great grade-wise and whilst you'd think a villainous personality would make you unpopular, Peter actually had a few friends, the closest being Ned. Luckily, Ned was oblivious enough not to catch any of Peter's early slips, and as he got better, Peter kept his identity under so many wraps that sometimes even he doubted if he could possibly be a villain.
There was just one issue. Cindy beamed at him from across the classroom with a wink. Peter sighed and buried his head in his hands. It had all started a month ago...
It was the end of biology, and everybody was leaving drowsily. Peter had vaguely noticed his classmate Clare or whatever her name was watching him. In fact, she'd been watching him for the past week, if not more. He would have passed it off as nothing, but now she was heading towards him with a small smirk. She brushed past him, standing on tiptoe briefly to whisper in his ear. "I know your secret." Peter couldn't help his eyes from widening. 'Meet me after school,' she mouthed as she disappeared into the crowd.
Peter worried through maths, and was the first out of the door at the end of the day. Cindy met him by the bikesheds, trying to suppress a grin. Peter tried to hide his concern and played confused. "Why am I here?" He asked her.
"I know who you really are," she grinned at him, not able to stop herself.
"I don't know what you-"
"You're the Iron Lad."
Peter blinked. He was not expecting that.
"It all makes sense. I know he has to be young. You always look annoyed whenever anyone mentions the Spider and curious when they say anything about Iron Lad. You disappeared when Iron Lad had that big fight with the Spider. You always look really tired and sometimes you have injuries. It all adds up."
Peter shook his head. "You're mistaken. Sorry, Cindy." He pushed past her.
Ever since then, Cindy had become a minor nuisance. She was constantly watching him at school, giving him 'subtle' grins and winks whenever anyone mentioned Iron Lad. It was beginning to attract attention. Occasionally she would just start squealing and giggling when he came close, and she always seemed to be on the verge of telling her friends.
But recently she'd stopped being a small inconvenience and started getting in the way of Peter's plans. She'd started following him after school, meaning he couldn't turn into the Spider. What he really needed was for Cindy to see him and Iron Lad in the same place, but the hero never showed up when he was actually wanted. The only sure way to lure Iron Lad was with the Spider, and... well.
Peter couldn't try too hard to lose Cindy, so with a sigh he walked home. He'd sneak out later.
He didn't bother to call a greeting. Ben probably wasn't awake. Peter had no homework so he locked his door, closed his blinds and pulled out his suit. It had leaf-shaped eye lenses and an internal computer interface that Peter had spent ages developing. Waiting until his Spider sense told him Cindy was gone, Peter left the building and walked to his usual place, an alley in a seedy part of town. He pulled his mask on hastily, then scrambled up the wall to a place where two roofs met at different heights, providing a crawl space just large enough to change in whilst sheltered from any prying eyes above or below.
A minute later, the Spider emerged in his red and black fury. He hummed to make sure his voice distorter was working, and smiled when it came out as a hiss. Time to go terrorise Queens.
The girl he attacked was a bully. The shiny new Stark phones in that store were just crying out to be robbed. That building was set for demolition anyway. And okay, maybe he didn't have to hack the bank, but he was bored and couldn't resist.
"Stop! Your reign of terror ends today, Spider!" Iron Lad's robotic voice called.
Peter grinned under his mask. "That's what you say every time, wannabe Avenger. Hey, I heard you were only a kid. How's school?"
"Wh-what?" Iron Lad froze, and though he didn't show it Peter was surprised to see that Cindy had most likely been right about the hero's age. Maybe they were in the same year. "Why do you do this? What have these people done to you?" Iron Lad called.
"Puh-lease. It's like you're begging for me to do a villain monologue - which isn't going to happen, by the way."
"Monologue or not, you're a villain and everyone knows the hero always wins."
"Or maybe the heroes are just better at calling their fights wins, no matter the fallout. Besides, you only have gadgets. I have gadgets and enhancements."
Ending their stalemate, the Spider shot a web at Iron Lad's faceplate and flipped closer. "Why do you keep looking for a motive, kid? Maybe I just like seeing their fear. Like seeing you all squirm," Peter relished the discomfort in Iron Lad's posture as he hid in the shadows, slinking towards the hovering hero.
"Enough!" Iron Lad lit up the arc reactor on his chest, banishing Spider's shadows.
"Ooh, shiny," the Spider lunged straight at the hero, sending him backwards from the direct attack. He let out the day's frustration in a flurry of punches and kicks that barely scratched the armour but kept Iron Lad on the ground until the vigilante got in a repulser blast, sending the Spider flying backwards with an angry hiss.
Not letting Iron Lad push his attack, the Spider launched taser webs. They didn't do anything.
"Got Stark to fix up your chinks for you, huh? Don't worry, I have plenty more where that came from." The Spider switched his web settings and shot the newest version of his webs. Iron Lad jerked back, then tilted his head and laughed.
"You've failed, Spider!"
Peter frowned at his mask display, waiting. But the tiny drone that had been on the web had indeed failed to reach the control unit. He'd work on that again tonight.
"Catch you later, rust bucket!" the Spider went to leap away, but Iron Lad caught his foot.
"You're not escaping this time."
"If you say so," Peter blinked at a screen in his mask and the 'failed' drone sent out a small electromagnetic pulse, deactivating Iron Lad's suit just long enough for the Spider to slip out of his grasp and sling away into the night.
Peter slipped back into his bedroom past a snoring Uncle Ben on the couch, and pulled up the blueprints for the drone he'd designed. It was meant to act as a way for him to wirelessly control Iron Lad's armour from his own suit, but it clearly didn't have enough battery power to make it there. He'd think of a way to fix that later.
Closing that tab on his laptop, Peter crossed his fingers and opened another. He grinned as the map became visible, a small red dot marking the place their fight had taken place earlier. Whilst he'd been punching Iron Lad, he'd actually slipped a small tracker onto his suit. It was so basic that it was undetectable, the downside being that it could only send out a GPS signal every hour. That was fine, Peter could wait.
There was an email notification, and Peter checked it. It was from Stark industries. Peter ignored it - they'd been trying to offer him an internship for weeks now, but he wasn't interested. He had far more fun and profitable things to do.
When Peter checked the tracker the next morning, he was disappointed to see that Iron Lad had spent the night in Stark Tower. Probably adding yet another update to his suit with Stark's fancy tech.
But the morning didn't have to be all bad - during the night Peter had come up with a genius idea to get Cindy off his back. At 3 am he'd sent a small encrypted message to the drone that had failed its mission to Iron Lad's CPU, and he trusted the hero's intelligence enough to know he'd find it and decrypt it just in time to rush to the rescue.
All it read was: Bomb at Midtown Tech. Better hurry =)
Then Peter sent an email to the school, telling them a special guest would be coming to do an assembly that morning in the hall.
So far everything was going to plan. A whole-school assembly had been called, and all the teachers were confused when nobody showed up. Peter could hear them talking about sending the students back to class, and was beginning to worry that Iron Lad wouldn't play his part.
But just on time, the hero burst through one of the windows, causing students to cry out as they were showered with glass. "Scan for weapons," Iron Lad demanded of his suit, and a blue light encompassed the room. Iron Lad hovered for a moment, obviously confused by the apparently clear scan. Then he groaned in frustration. "Spider!" He lowered to the stage, and apologised to everyone, then left.
Cindy sought Peter out on the way back to class. "I'm really sorry. You kept telling me... But I was so sure- I'm so sorry Peter."
Mission success.
At lunch Peter discreetly checked Iron Lad's location again. He wondered if his tracker was malfunctioning or had fallen off, because for some reason he still appeared to be at Midtown.
His theory was disproven when Iron Lad returned to a block of flats that night. Did that mean the hero went to Peter's own school?
Iron Lad was spotted out in Queens, and Peter decided to go play.
"Hey rustbucket," he said, startling the hero from where he'd been stood on a rooftop overlooking the city. "Oops, didn't mean to scare you."
"You! You think you're so funny, don't you?"
"Well, I do have my moments... Oh, you're talking about that bomb at Midtown! Was it funny? I hoped it would be funny."
Iron Lad growled. "Why Midtown?"
"Why not? They must have been so shocked when you burst into their surprise assembly."
"That was you too? Of course it was."
"Seems like a nice enough place," the Spider continued. "Of course, you'd know more about that than me."
"Wha- I don't know what you mean."
Peter smirked. He'd been right.
The Spider kept a low radar for the next week, letting Iron Lad panic about the fact that a villain potentially knew which school he went to. According to the tracker, the hero's daily routine took place at his apartment, school, on patrol, at Stark Tower, and back at his apartment.
Now, Peter could easily go stake out Iron Lad's apartment and discover his identity in just a day, but where was the fun in that? The great thing about being a villain was that you didn't have to rush things, you could do them in your own time and enjoy every second of suspense, knowing you were in complete control of the situation. So naturally, Peter wrote an email back to Stark Industries, finally accepting their internship offer and requesting a slot at the time Iron Lad was usually at the tower.
Clearly they were eager to get him, because he got an email back not five minutes later, inviting him to start work the very next day. So the following evening, Peter heading to the building of the man who'd killed his aunt. He was assigned to one of the lower levels, and spent the session doing exactly as he was told for once, so as not to raise suspicion.
The day after, however, he finished his tasks speedily (and probably not all that well) and started working on a new device to help him fight Iron Lad. He knew better than to outright sabotage Stark's company, but he sure wasn't going to be one of his loyal workers. Stark would regret his actions soon enough, when-
Peter stopped himself before he got too into the monologue. When he'd decided to go down the path of evil, he'd decided he wasn't going to be one of those villains that monologued. That way, if the hero managed to escape and save the day even without the extra time the monologue provided, leading to Peter's death or downfall, he would never know what had driven the Spider to exist. That way, even if Peter was defeated, there would be some element of torment at the not knowing all the way up until the hero died.
Plus, it was horribly cliche and completely unnecessary. In Peter's opinion.
On the third day, Peter excused himself to go find some coffee, and casually wandered into an elevator heading for the top floor. He stepped out, making a big showing of looking around and frowning, as if this wasn't exactly where he'd intended to find himself. He meandered down a few corridors, and almost walked straight into a boy coming out of one of the labs.
"What are you doing up here?" He demanded.
"Harley?" Peter gawked. The boy on Tony Stark's lab floor was none other than Harley Keener, popular jock supreme two years ahead of Peter at Midtown Tech. Did that mean...?
Harley squinted at Peter. "Oh, I know you, you're at my school, right?"
Peter nodded. "If you don't mind me asking, which floor am I on? I only started interning this week, and I was sent to fetch some papers for my supervisor but, um, I think I'm lost." Peter lied like it was second nature, the words rolling sheepishly off his tongue.
Harley smiled sympathetically. "I got lost loads here when I started interning. This is the top floor, I'm actually not entirely sure how you got up here. It's meant to have access restricted to Mr Stark and his personal employees only."
"You're Tony Stark's personal intern?" Peter asked, eyes suitably wide.
"Yeah, kind of. Come with me, I'll take you back to your floor."
Helpful urges, likeable personality, student at Midtown, unexplained clearance and vague connection to Tony Stark as well as access to the most advanced labs... Could Harley Keener really be Iron Lad?
Peter spent the rest of that session lost in deep thought as he bluffed his way through a project.
He was busy the next day and there was a party he wanted to go to with Ned the day after that, so it was Saturday before the Spider was crawling up the wall of Iron Lad's apartment complex. Peter quickly realised that looking in all of the windows for somebody who went to his school (possibly Harley Keener) was going to be futile, so he went home and thought up a new plan. Peter had legged it out of school before the bell even rang, and changed into the Spider in record time. Then he sat on the wall of a shaded building and watched the students flooding out, scanning the crowd for Harley. He wasn't hard to spot, surrounded by the rest of the basketball team. They hung around for a while, laughing, but eventually Harley left and headed into an empty area of Queens, the Spider following silently at a subtle distance. Glancing around, Harley pressed something on his watch, and nanotech surrounded him until he was Iron Lad.
Peter was almost disappointed that it had been so easy.
(Quick note and shout out to @Autie_The_Almond, who I've forcefully adopted as my editor/person to bounce ideas off. She didn't exactly get a say in the matter, so I hope that's okay and I really hope she's going to help me finish my Part 2 for this. On the upside Autie (can I call you Autie?), you might get to see some of my exclusive works-in-progress before they're published! On the downside, you have to deal with multiple horrendous typos.... Good luck, and thanks again!)