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ELEANOR RAN THROUGH THE suburbs, it was late at night and most people were inside their homes. The blasts became louder and louder as she approached the location, until they suddenly stopped. She did as well when she heard a car drive away. The teen found herself in an empty street, trying to find the car. Out of nowhere, she heard a car trying to speed off behind her, and when she turned, she jumped off to the side just in time, or the car would've hit her. She rose her head from the grass she fell onto and distinguished a van driving off, with what seemed Spider-Man hanging from the back door, sliding behind them. Eleanor quickly stood up and came up with a plan.
She lifted herself with her electricity to a roof top - which, she needed to practice more, since the landing was a bit rough - and jumped from house to house until the girl got a clear view of the speeding vehicle. On the right moment, she leaped from the roof, and landed on the top of the vehicle, making a loud thump noise. She grasped onto the metal edges of the roof to keep her balance.
"I knew you would keep your promis- Ouch!" Was the very first thing Spider-Man said when he saw Eleanor. She maintained herself on top of the speeding van and peeked in the vehicle back's opening.
"Hey guys, watcha doing?"
"Who the hell are you?" One of the guys asked, Eleanor quickly noticed that the van was filled with weapons, and he had one in particular on his hand, giving an unfamiliar purple glow that scared her.
"Just a friend of this guy." She replied, nudging the poor Spiderman who was still holding to the thin web.
"Might as well join the fun." The guy with the weapon replied, launching an energy blast towards the roof, but she moved fast enough. Eleanor peeked into the van once again, and lunged her hand towards the man, making an electric ray from her palm hit his hand. The man, cursing, dropped the weapon, which turned on by the impact and launched another energy blast at Spider-Man. Eleanor was scared, the energy blasts were way too powerful. She thought the weapons had to be illegal in some way. They were out of this world.
The vehicle reached a road bump, making Eleanor fall from the roof and making the guy fire another hole in the van. Eleanor fell into the hard concrete of the street, and in less than a few minutes, she saw the car slam Spider-Man to a parked car, and then through some garbage bins, before finally colliding to a brick pillar and falling onto the ground. She stood up, and ran towards the disguised man, lifting him up.
"You okay?" She asked.
"Yeah." He recovered himself, and both of them saw the car drive away. "We need to follow them, they got these powerful weapons, they're too dangerous."
Eleanor brushed off the fact that Spider-Man's voice seemed way too familiar and just turned to him to say, "Meet you there," and ran towards the vehicle. She wasn't speeding as much as she liked to, but she knew she ran faster than average. The people inside the van hadn't noticed Eleanor following them yet as they rushed through the suburban streets. She lunged her hand again, this time, towards one of the wheels, missing. She cursed and tried to lunge another electric ray towards any of the wheels.
From the corner of her eye, she recognized Spider-Man's figure, jumping from a roof to another, making her smile. As she got closer, she heard Spider-Man yell, "Surprise!" jumping onto the roof, but a mysterious figure in a metal winged suit snatched him and soared high. Eleanor stopped dead in her tracks and watched the winged figure fly higher into the sky.
She stopped following the van and instead, ran below where the winged figure was. They were both flying so high, it was hard for Eleanor to see where they were headed. She cursed under her breath and stared into the sky, hoping Spider-Man was okay. A few seconds later, she saw him: Spider-Man was now wrapped around fabric falling from the sky. Eleanor needed to think fast: she studied her surroundings, looking where he could fall into, which was a lake. She approached it, but her actions were limited. In one touch, she could electrocute New York's favorite hero in a second, and her forcefields weren't strong enough to hold people just yet. She felt she couldn't do anything. Eleanor watched as his frame became closer and closer until he finally dropped into the water. She then remembered the leather gloves in her pocket, and quickly placed them on.
Eleanor then jumped into the cold water of the lake. She swam deeper and deeper, until she got ahold of Spider-Man's hand, and pulled him up, gathering all her strength inside her. She got her head out of the water, her lungs breathing air in. The girl placed Spider-Man's arm on her shoulders and lifted him up from the water. She gently placed him onto the ground, before taking action. As he lied on the grass, an ethical problem formed inside her head: Should I remove his mask? She asked herself.
The man could suffocate inside it, but she knew he wore that mask for a reason. Noticing that the man hadn't woken up yet, in a moment of panic she took his mask off and gasped loudly.
It wasn't Spider-Man who was unconscious, it was her friend, Peter Parker. The one she walked to school every morning, the friend who brought her takeout when she was sad, the guy who made her heart want to burst with joy. She was astonished, this new revelation had taken out the air inside her chest.
Eleanor stopped her train of thought and decided to take action. She placed her ear on Peter's chest and heard a faint heartbeat. She was relieved, but she needed to wake him up. The teen tried her best to remember the CPR course she had taken back at San Francisco, and placed her cold hands on his chin, opening his mouth a little, trying to open the airwave.
"Come on, Pete." Her heart was down at her feet at the moment. "Please, Pete."
She was about to begin the mouth-to-mouth breathing technique to continue with the compressions when he woke up, coughing. He sat down, and Eleanor separated herself from him. When Peter stopped coughing, he turned to Eleanor, his eyes widening.
"El?" He asked, and that's when Eleanor noticed she no longer felt the mouth cover on her. "Y-you-"
"I'm sorry for taking off your mask, but you fell onto the water, a-and I went in t-to get you." Her stuttering became more noticeable when more air breezes passed by.
Peter kept quiet. He grabbed his mask from beside him, and he turned to look back at Eleanor. "Y-you saved me."
"I-It's okay." She replied, shivering. "I-I guess you know n-now."
"Y-yeah. I guess you know too. How-?" Before Peter could reply, they both heard the familiar sound of a certain billionaire's suit in front of them. Eleanor cursed under her breath, as she turned her head to see Iron Man hovering in front of both of them.
"Well, well, well. Look who I caught having a date night." Tony Stark's voice came out from the suit, making Eleanor and Peter reply immediately.
"We're not dating-"
"It's not date-"
"Yeah, sure. What happened to both of you?" The billionaire asked, and before Eleanor could answer, Peter began telling his side of the story.
"- And then he just, he just, like, swooped down like a monster and he picked me up and he took me up, like, a thousand feet and just dropped me. T-then El got me out of the water." He finished and glanced at Eleanor for a second, before turning back to Tony. "How'd you find me- us? Did you put a tracker in my suit or something?"
"I put everything in your suit. Including this heater." Tony responded, and on cue, vapor started to come out of Peter's suit. Eleanor envied him, she had been shivering for quite a while now.
"Whew, that's better. Thanks-" Peter continued, but Tony interrupted him.
"What were you thinking?" It seemed that his question was towards Peter, but Eleanor felt deep inside it was for both of them. She had been staring at the ground all this time, the feeling of guilt building inside her.
"The guy with the wings is obviously the source of the weapons. I gotta take him down." Peter replied.
"Take him down now, huh? Steady, Crockett, there are people who handle this sort of thing." Tony continued, his tone intimidating Eleanor.
"The Avengers?" Peter questioned, staring up to Tony.
"No, no, no. This is a little below their pay grade." The man replied, before turning to the girl, who was standing in the same position. "What about you, Miss I-don't-wan't-to-be-an-Avenger? "
"Peter was being dragged down by a van, they had these powerful weapons. A-and-"
"You know you're not ready for this, not yet kid. You haven't learned to control your powers yet. You can't go out like that."
Even though Eleanor knew it was true, she couldn't help but respond. "But I can't let that happen! Even with this, condition, I can't let these things happen. If I don't do anything, they will happen because of me, Mr. Stark."
"Kid," Tony said, and Peter kept his silence. "You're not ready yet."
"But-" Eleanor tried to continue but was cut-off by the billionaire.
"Don't. We'll talk about this later, and don't even get me started on your suit."
"Anyway, Mr. Stark, you didn't have to come all the way out here. We had that, we were fine." Peter broke his silence, but Tony's reply surprised both teens.
"Oh, I'm not here." The metal mask of the suit lifted, showing that no one was under that suit. "Thank God this place has Wi-Fi or you would be toast right now. Thank Ganesh while you're at it. Look, you both need to forget the flying vulture guy, please."
"Why?" Peter and Eleanor unconsciously responded at the same time.
"Why? Because I said so!" Tony remarked, following by him muttering to someone that he was talking to teenagers, before turning to Peter. "Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping little people, like that lady that bought you the churro. Can't you just be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?"
"But I'm ready for more than that now." Peter replied, and Eleanor felt him getting angry, a side of him she had never seen.
"No, you are not."
"That is not what you thought when I took on Captain America." Peter argued, making Eleanor's arms wrap around her frame, feeling unneeded in that dispute.
"Trust me, kid. If Cap wanted to lay you out, he would've. Listen to me. If you come across these weapons again, call Happy." At that moment, both teens heard a car starting on the other end of the call.
"Are you driving?" Eleanor asked, her arms now crossing.
"You know, it's never too early to start thinking about college. I got some pull at MIT." He said, looking at Peter, before turning to the girl. "And El, Rogue does sound kind of nice. End call."
"No, I don't need to go to col- Mr. Stark-" Peter started, but was later interrupted.
"Mr. Stark is no longer connected." The artificial intelligence on Tony's suit replied and flew away, leaving both teens in an awkward situation.
Peter then stood up, and helped Eleanor stand up.
"I left my stuff at Liz's place, I'll text Ned so he can bring my sweater for you."
Eleanor's wet hair had stuck to her neck, her hands were hugging her waist as she shivered. "T-that be awesome."
They both walked along the suburbs in silence, until, Peter spoke again.
"I have so many questions."
Eleanor, who was beside him, chuckled lightly. "Y-yeah, m-me too. I guess this makes the early m-morning conversations w-way more interesting."
They both laughed enough to forget for a few seconds the positions they were in: two local teen heroes that had just been scolded at by Iron Man.
"Stay close to the ground? What is he talking about?" He asked out loud, and before Eleanor could formulate a reply, she spotted something on the grass near her. She found a purple, glowing rock, like the guys with the powerful weapons had.
"Peter, l-look at this." She called out, and in less then a second, Peter was behind her. Eleanor grabbed the glowy thing, and analyzed it, when Peter received a call.
"Hey, man, what's up? We're on our way back." He said, taking a step away from Eleanor. Meanwhile, she took the time to watch the glowy thing. Her fingertips grazed the metal protecting the rock, it seemed to be a power source to the weapon.
Her thoughts were stopped by Peter coming back from his call.
"What do you think it is?" He asked, leaning towards her to inspect the unknown object.
"I-I, I don't know."
Both kids were silent, they both knew that what was coming was way out of their league, and Eleanor knew she had to train harder than she thought.
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a/n: this what El's suit kinda looks like!
and this is the mouth cover:
i loved writing this chapter sm!
amazing things are coming.
-a.