ANTEBELLUM: IV
PETER PARKER

"OH, MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?" Aunt May exclaims worriedly, she gently grips my chin as she tilts my face to give her a better view.

I kindly remove her hands off my chin as I wave her worry off, "Oh, it's nothing. I'm alright. I just... I fell, skating. No need to worry." I tell her with a smile.

Aunt May gives me an exhausted sigh before nodding, believing my lie. Suddenly, Uncle Ben walks into the kitchen holding a box, a wet box. I frown as I take in his presence, his shirt sleeves are rolled up and so are his jeans, revealing his wet legs. He mirrors my expression, "What happen to you?"

At the same time, I ask him, "What happen to you?"

"He fell." She butts in. "Why do kids ride those things, I'll never know."

I scratch the back of my head as I listen to their comments, if Aunt May were to learn the truth behind these bruises, she'll want to have a meeting with the principal and Flash's parents. Which, cannot happen. No, sir.

"Because it's stupid and dangerous." Uncle Ben chuckles before turning to my aunt. "Remember when we were stupid and dangerous?"

Aunt May shakes her head as she resumes washing the dishes. "No."

Uncle Ben laughs and turns to me, sending me a funny look. "Trust me, we were."

"Good to know." I chuckle before my eyes travel down to his wet feet. "Where's the flood?"

Uncle Ben glances over at his feet before motioning me to follow him, "Follow me, I'll show you."

He begins to walk carefully, trying not to fall. I glance at Aunt May, who urges me to follow him, "Go. Get off my kitchen, you, Mr. Blue eye."

I guffaw at her words before nodding and starting to make my way toward Uncle Ben, but not before saying. "Oh, I see what you did there. Nice pun!"

I follow the wet trace which led to the basement, I carefully started to descend the wood stairs. My eyes widen as I notice that the flood was deep, I saw Uncle Ben standing on the last stair as he fumbles with his flashlight. Light shoots out of the flashlight as Uncle Ben skims it over the water, so I could see the deep flood.

"I think it's a condenser tray." He points out, he turns to me and I shake my head.

"No, too much water for it to be the condenser tray... or the heat exchange tubing." I state. "I bet it's the filling."

Uncle Ben looks back at the flood and gives a slight nod, "That's the only thing that makes sense then. Can you fix it?"

"No, not tonight. I'll go by the hardware store tomorrow." I offer, Uncle Ben nods once again before stretching his back.

"Good deal. Meanwhile," Uncle Ben hands me the flashlight before reaching for his lunchbox, he unzips it and takes out an ice pack, and hands it to me. "Put this on your face."

I take the ice pack from him before shooting him a weird look, "You carry an ice pack everywhere you go?"

"Son, I'm not getting any younger. The back pains are killing me." I chuckle lightly at my Uncle, I press the cold pack on my face and felt it burn but, pleasantly. "So, how does the other kid look?"

My brown eyes meet his brown ones; I am left dumbfounded for a second before I begin to shake my head. "No, no, it's not like that."

Uncle Ben gives me a knowing look, "Come on, you can trust me I won't tell your Aunt May. Besides, I'd pity the kid who'd have to suffer her wrath."

He offers me a smile and pats my arm affectionately before beginning to climb the stairs, I heard him stop, and I look up at him. "Hey, before you come up, see if there's anything else worth saving."

I give him a thumbs-up, and I watch him resume his climbing, I remove the ice pack and set it on his lunch box. I take off my shoes and socks before rolling my trousers up the best I can, I slowly descend the stairs and the cold water stops below my waist. Furthermore, I reach over and take the flashlight from the stairs, I begin to move toward a pile of boxes to see if there is anything worth keeping. I aim the light over the contents of each box, noticing that the majority are old clothes and items. Hell, I even found some of my toys here, I make an ugly face at the toys before moving onto the next box.

The light touches a brown leather surface, I frown, I feel a familiar tug in my chest as I grab the old leather briefcase. I aim the flashlight at the briefcase, I blink twice in recognition. It belonged to my father, I turned the briefcase around and as I did, I felt its weight, meaning there is content inside the briefcase. What I couldn't fathom, is the question that seemed to be embedded in my mind. How did my father's briefcase end up in here? He took it, I saw him. I remember it so clearly as if it were yesterday.

I take the briefcase with me and I climb up the stairs before making my way toward the kitchen, I could hear Aunt May laughs at something my uncle must've said. I drop the flashlight on the couch before entering the kitchen, I stood there holding my dead father's belongings. How was I not aware of this?

Soon the kitchen is engulfed in silence, I look up and meet Aunt May's shocked eyes and Uncle Ben's tense shoulders. I never understood why they adopted a defensive demeanor whenever I brought up something dad-related.

"Where did you get that?" Aunt May asks, her voice delicate, as if she's speaking to one of her injured patients.

"The basement." Uncle Ben sigh, there was a grim look on his face as his eyes bore a hole in the floor.

"What? I thought I threw that old thing on the trash." She slaps the piece of cloth on her thigh.

"This belonged to my father's, why would you throw this away?" I questioned her, my eyes staring at her as I couldn't believe they were trying to get rid of the last thing I owe to him.

"Yes, that was the only thing they found of them in the plane crash." Uncle Ben said, "It's yours now."

I gave him a grateful nod before leaving them behind, I swiftly closed my room's door before locking it with my homemade locking system. I sit on the floor and began to shake the briefcase while things fell down the rug. Furthermore, I grab the first thing, which were his glasses, I study them before removing my eye contacts and trying his glasses on. I then grabbed his calculator before tossing it aside, huffing in annoyance, and grabbed the briefcase and began to examine it. My father was always a secretive man; he was a scientist, after all. As I was digging my hand inside the edges of the briefcase, I felt an opening, frowning I dig my fingertips and the wall of the briefcase opens; revealing a folder.

For some odd reason, my heart was beating hard against my chest. I don't know if it was excitement for finding a secret pocket or fear of what I'm about to find out. I pull the folder out of the briefcase before opening it, noticing the amount of formula and pieces of information; I realize it is a research folder.

Furthermore, I paged through the folder until I stop on a loose sheet of paper with an equation that is marked in red. "What is this?" It had a symbol, two zeros were crossed with a diagonal line. "Zero, zero, decay rate algorithm."

A knock startles me, my head snaps to the locked door. "Peter?"

"Yeah! Yeah! One second!" I push all the things from the briefcase beneath my bed, I fall on the swivel chair before unlocking the door.

Uncle Ben pushes open the door but doesn't come in, "You okay?"

I nod, "Yeah, yeah, what's up?" I tell him.

Uncle Ben stares at me before giving me a light smile, "My god, you look just like him."

I frown for a second before realizing that I was wearing my father's glasses, feeling uncomfortable for some reason I take them off. "May I come in?"

"Yeah, sure."

Uncle Ben enters the room; his eyes are on the floor as a crease forms in-between his eyebrows. He then turns to me, "Listen, umm... I don't have much education, you know, Peter. Hell, I stopped being able to help you with your homework when you were ten." He chuckles before clearing his throat. "What I'm trying to say is, I know it's been rough for you without your dad, and I know we don't talk much about them."

I shrugged. "I know, it's fine, though."

Uncle Ben disagreed with me, "No, it's not alright. I wish I could change it, but I can't." His shoulders fall in defeat, I averted my eyes from his.

A heartbeat goes by and no one says something but, then Uncle Ben sigh and begins to walk near the door. "Just know, you can count on us."

As Uncle Ben turns to leave, I raise my head, "Uncle Ben?"

He hums in response, his eyes observing me. "You're a pretty great dad, alright?" I tell him, Uncle Ben seems in loss of words before a smile overtakes his features.

He closes the door and that's when everything starts, grabbing my father's research paper I begin to investigate on cross-species genetic.

Dr. Curtis Connor and Dr. Benjamin Parker – OSCORP/oscorp.com

Without thinking twice, I click on the link, learn as much as I can about the topic before noticing that tomorrow there's an internship meet and greet with Dr. Connors at OsCorp.

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HOLA RAZAA!! So, we are getting close to the juicy stuff and the sad stuff. 

I'll stop right there because I don't want to spoil anything! So tell me a bit about yourselves, what've you been doing in this quarantine? I'll start, I attempted to learn how to cook, I AM doing some exercise gotta get rid of this quarantine belly fat (HAHAHAHAHA), also I tried to do some edits for some books, I tried drawing a croquis in order to design a superhero suit which kind of went as planned?

So, what's up with you guys? Where are y'all from?

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