✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

"CAREFUL OR YOU'LL BREAK IT."

(Y/N) warned Peter as they both stood over one of the tables inside one of the school classroom, where most students were busy working on their own machinery and didn't pay them any mind.

After spotting the energy core last night, Peter had taken it in his responsibility and brought it to school for further investigation. The core was still glowing pink, put it didn't explode or cause any more damage as Peter hit it with a hammer.

"Hey, thanks for bailing on me," Ned appeared behind the duo, standing on (Y/N)'s side.

"Yeah, well, something came up," Peter explained, lifting his gaze from the weapon to him.

Ned looked down and his eyes widened when he saw the glowing core. "What is that?"

"That's what we're figuring out," (Y/N) began as Peter handed her a screwdriver without having to ask for it, carefully moving the wires around it. "Some guy tried to kill us with it."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome," Ned muttered with a dreamy tone in his voice as he stared at the two with surprise, but he changed it when he received a frown from Peter and a raised eyebrow from (Y/N).

"I mean, not awesome. Heh, totally uncool of that guy," Ned clarified. "So scary."

"Well, look, I think it's. . ." Peter lowered himself to get a closer look on the weapon and pulled on the screwdriver that he had in his hands. "A power source."

"Yeah, but it's connected to all these microprocessors," Ned leaned on the table and pointed over at the parts he recognized. "That's an inductive charging plate. That's what I use to charge my toothbrush."

"So, whoever's manufacturing these weapons in mixing alien technology with ours," (Y/N) followed on.

"That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said," Ned stated. "I just want to thank you for letting me be part of your journey into this amazing — "

He was cut off when Peter smashed the hammer against the core again and it jumped out of the spot it was wired in, accidentally causing a loud noise all over the classroom. The trio looked back at the teacher to see if he had noticed anything and prepared for the worse.

"Keep your fingers clear of the blades," the teacher only said, his eyes glued on the magazine he was reading in his desk.

"I gotta figure out what this is and who makes it," Peter muttered after they turned back around to the table.

"We'll go to the lab after class and run some tests," Ned finished his thought.

"Let's do it, boys," (Y/N) declared.

Ned and Peter did their secret handshake, and (Y/N) only watched them with a strange look, the one she reserved for every time they did it in front of her.

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

AFTER CLASS, the trio walked through the empty hallways of the school, taking the opportunity that the entire student body was outside, the sound of the school band playing their instruments being heard all the way to their spot.

"First, we put the gooey thing in the mass spectrometer," Ned said.

"First, we gotta come up with a better name than 'glory thingy'," Peter replied.

"I agree," (Y/N) muttered.

She and Peter froze in place when they saw the two same guys from the night before walking in across the hallway like they were searching for something in the classrooms.

"Crap."

(Y/N) ran to hide behind a wall and Peter did the same, practically jumping out of the way to hide from the two guys. Ned, confused, stood alone in the same spot from earlier as he looked on both sides before moving to stand besides the two.

"High schools creep me out," one man whispered to the other.

(Y/N), Peter and Ned all peeked their heads from behind the wall to eavesdrop on the conversation and see what they were planning to do here.

"They got this funny smell, you know?"

"That's one of the guys that tried to kill us," (Y/N) informed Ned in a whisper as they leaned back on the wall.

"What?" Ned asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Peter added.

"We gotta get out of here."

"No, no, no. I gotta follow them," Peter interrupted. "They can lead us to the guy that dropped me in the lake."

"Someone dropped you in a lake?"

"Yeah — "

"Don't have time to explain now," (Y/N) mumbled and felt a tug in her wrist, seeing that Peter was waiting for her to follow after him to get a closer look at the two men.

"Peter — " Ned took a step forward, indicating that he wanted to go with them, but was cut off.

"No. Stay there, Ned."

"(Y/N) — "

(Y/N) and Peter only quieted him down and snuck carefully into the classroom after the two men, kneeling on the ground as they followed down the stairs, two loud voices speaking inside the room with no worry in the world, forgetting the fact that they'd snuck in.

"Can you imagine what the boss would say if he knew where we were?" Randy, one of them, asked as he rummaged through shelves, obviously searching for something.

"It's saying there was an energy pulse right here," the other spoke up, one hand gripping a machine.

(Y/N) locked eyes with Peter after she heard that sentence and saw him remove one of his backpack straps off his arms.

"There's no sign of the weapon," Randy said. "And even if it was here, now it's gone."

"So are we."

The conversation was quieted down when one of
them noticed one of the stools slightly moving in its place, signaling that someone had been there to move it on accident. One of the guys pulled on the side of his coat to reveal his gun, looking around the classroom to check any sign of someone listening to their private talk.

Once they noticed that no one was there and that it probably was something part of their imagination, they walked away, heading over the stairs that led away into the hallway without looking back.

Peter carefully opened the door of the closet him and (Y/N) had snuck into to hide from the two men and aimed at the feet of the guy, successfully sticking the tracker to his shoe without making any noise.

Peter leaned back to his spot in the small closet and blushed when he noticed how close he was with (Y/N), his chest being pressed against hers as their heavy breathing from barely getting caught was the only sound in the small space, or that's what he thought. He could hear the loud pumping of his heart in his ears and he didn't know why.

"This is the most clichéd hiding place you could've chosen," (Y/N) muttered to him once she was able to speak again. "This is the stupidest hiding place."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Peter said. "I didn't take us to the Bahamas of hiding places."

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

AT PETER'S HOUSE, Ned saw in amazement how he was able to see the location of the tracker in one of Peter's gadgets, a small version of a map protecting in the object as it moved constantly.

"This is so awesome," Ned said, still in awe.

Peter jumped on the bottom bunk. "I know, right?"

(Y/N), who sat on the floor of the bedroom, moved over to get a look on the map too and saw it with amazement in her eyes, still not processing what they were doing.

"They're in Brooklyn," she said.

A few hours later, the trio still sat on the inside Peter's bedroom, having him dangling over the rails of the top bunk upside down as he ate from the bag of chips in Ned's hand, who was leaning his back against the wall. (Y/N) sat close to the two, her back pressed on the ladder of the bunk bed as she painted her nails.

"Staten Island," Ned said.

More time passed and they were still in the same room, but they had completely changed their respective seats. Peter was working on manufacturing something in his desk. Ned was on the floor, the tracking device standing in front of him as he busied himself with building the Lego Death Star, having (Y/N) help him with it as she played with the blue mist on her fingers.

"Leaving Jersey," Ned cut through the comfortable silence and then moving back to placing the Legos on their respective spot.

After a long time, when the sleep and tiredness from the day was already getting to them, a loud beep broke through the quiet room and Ned was the first one to check it out, being the closest to the device as he rose from the bed with the Spider-Man mask on.

"They stopped," he said.

Peter was hanging upside down from the ceiling and got a look on the device, along with (Y/N), who was laying on the floor of the bedroom and sat up so she could see the image clearly.

"Maryland?"

"What's there?" Ned asked.

"I don't know," Peter confessed before he let out a quiet laugh. "Evil lair?"

"They have a lair?" Ned perked up at the sound of that.

"Dude, a gang with alien guns, run by a guy with wings? Yeah, they have a lair."

"Badass," Ned nodded his head. "But how are you gonna get there if it's, like, 300 miles away?"

Their attention drifted off to the poster of the Academic Decathlon team on the wall, which reminded them of the trip they were supposed to take to go to nationals that takes place in Washington, D.C.

"It's not that far away from D.C," (Y/N) said.