C150 Spider-Man (Patreon)
Content
“They aren’t waking up...” Ned says as he walks into the living room, where May, MJ, and Grace were sitting.
The TV showed a random news channel, though no one was watching at the moment.
“It’s probably one of Peter's spells. He must not want them knowing about the whole Spider-Man thing.” MJ says as Ned takes a seat on the couch.
“Then why does your mom get to know?” Ned asks as he points toward Grace.
“Well, other than the fact that we’re together. My mother is married to a member of the Avengers Council. She would have learned about this sooner or later.” MJ explains, which caused Ned to huff a bit.
“I just wish that I could tell them...” Ned says dejectedly, though he understood the reasoning behind it.
“Your father is an Avenger?” Grace asks in disbelief. “That’s not possible.”
“Yes, it is.” MJ says as she explains her father's background. “Nick Watson isn’t even his real name. It’s Nick Fury.”
“...” Grace goes silent for a moment as her mind processes all the lies she’s been told up until now. “How long have you known this?”
Her tone carried a hint of betrayal, as she felt that MJ should have told her this already.
“I-I...” MJ didn’t know what to say.
Thankfully, they were interrupted before her mother’s glare could do any more damage. Suddenly, the TV cut to a black and white mess as a loud static sound played through the speakers.
Though this didn’t last long.
Before May could grab the control to fix the TV, the static disappeared and a picture of a blue-skinned man took its place. Behind him was a big window with the image of the Earth in the background.
“Greetings citizens of C-53.” The Blue man spoke with an air of superiority. “I am Ronan the Accuser. I have come to this insignificant backwater planet in search of a cube known as the Tesseract. Bring me this object within the next 18 hours or my army will invade and I will take the tesseract from the rubble of your barren home world. Your time starts now... Greetings citizens of C-53. I am Ronan the Accuser...”
The same speech replayed over and over.
“What the...” May mutters as she changes the channel, but no matter which one she chose, they were all playing the same thing.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” Grace asks worriedly.
“Yeah, Peter will take care of them.”
———————————————
“... Your time starts now.” Ronan says as the live broadcast ended.
Ronan chose that time frame specifically, as they left the Chitauri half of his army behind. Of course, he would rather just scare the planet into handing over the Tesseract, but if they don’t give it up, he would rather attack with his whole army.
“Do we just wait now?” Nebula asked from the side.
“No, you will lead a stealth team to the planet.” Ronan says as he turns to her and waves, shooing her off. “Make yourself useful and find the cube.”
“...” Nebula seethed silently at her treatment as she begrudgingly turned and left the room.
———————————————
Walking into one of the larger meeting rooms in the Tower, Peter and Tony found it filled with every current Avenger.
“Yo!” Peter called putting with a wave. “What’s the occasion?”
“You’d know if you answered your damn phone!” Fury says angrily.
“Well, I’m here now. What’s up?” Peter asks as he takes a seat beside Mystique, who was looking at him funny. “Tony said something about Barney the Dinosaur?”
“...” Fury glared in Tony’s direction.
“What? I’m not allowed to joke?” Tony asks with a shrug.
“No, now shut up.” Fury says as he starts explaining about Peter's heist of the Tesseract. “Banner and Beast have been trying to track its energy signature, but that hasn’t been going well.”
Fury’s gaze immediately turns back to Tony as he glares in annoyance.
“We could have had a breakthrough in this by now if someone didn’t run off without informing anyone.” He says.
“Sorry, I thought that having our venerable leader here would help morale.” Tony defends as he points toward Peter.
“Who made him leader?” Sabertooth asks with a scoff.
“Shut your mouth, Victor.” Logan barks at his brother.
“...” Sabertooth glares and begins to growl, which is soon matched by Logan.
“If you two start fighting, I’ll chain you both to a mountaintop for a month in 69 positions.” Peter's commanding voice fills the room. “Don’t worry though. You’ll never go thirsty. After all, you can drink each others... Well, you know.”
Instantly, the growling stops and the two look in the opposite direction. The room goes silent for a moment before Jarvis's voice appears out of nowhere.
“Sir, there’s a foreign signal broadcasting across the world.” The AI informs.
“Show us.” Tony orders.
“Yes, sir.” Jarvis says as a video plays on the large flatscreen for all to see.
“Greetings citizens of C-53. I am Ronan the Accuser...” Ronan appears and explains his hunt for the Tesseract. ”Bring me this object within the next 18 hours or my army will invade and I will take the tesseract from the rubble of your barren home world. Your time starts now...”
“It repeats after this.” Jarvis says as the video paused. “This message is being played on a loop through every television channel and radio station.”
‘What is Ronan doing here?’ Peter thought in confusion. ‘Shouldn’t he be after the Power Stone?’
The ripples from the waves of Peter's actions have begun to really show themselves. Without Loki, Thanos was forced to send out Ronan the Accuser.
‘I wonder if Nebula is with him?’ Peter thought as she was assigned to him during his search for the power stone in the movie.
Nebula is one of the few characters that Peter felt bad for. Yeah, her sister Gamora was better than her in combat, but that doesn’t mean Thanos had the right to do what he did to her.
‘Forcing cybernetic enhancements onto your own daughter is just sick, especially an adopted child.’ Peter thought as he remembered the idiots from his past life that agreed with Thanos’ cause and saw him as a good man. ‘A good man would never mistreat his family.’
“Looks like our satellites were correct.” Tony says, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What do you mean by that?” Fury asks and Tony explain the alert that they received.
...
“But, this doesn’t make any sense.” Professor X says.
“Yes, if they already have the tesseract, then why are they broadcasting this?” Magneto agrees.
“...” The room goes silent as no one had a viable answer.
“We could be dealing with multiple enemies.” Peter says offhandedly.
He is the reason for this confusion, so he should clear it up. Of course, he didn’t think the day he impersonated Thanos, an alien invasion would take place.
“One stole the tesseract already, while the other was a bit late to the game.” Peter explains his thought-out lies.
“Makes sense...” Mystique agrees as she tries to cover for Peter.
“Yes, but how do we handle this?” Natasha asks next. “We don’t have what they want. At this rate, we have 18 hours until an alien invasion starts.”
“17 hours 53 minutes and 22 seconds to be exact.” Jarvis informs them.
...
The room went silent again as everyone tried to come up with a plan.
“Why wait?” Peter was the first to speak.
“What do you mean?” Storm asks from beside Charles.
“Quickness is the essence of the war.” Peter quotes Sun Tzu. “Waiting for the enemy to attack is pointless. We should strike swiftly before they can even break into Earth's atmosphere.”
“I love the Art of War as much as the next guy, but I don’t think old Sun Tzu was writing about an Alien Invasion.” Tony says with a laugh.
“No, but he was writing about war, which this is.” Peter says matter of factly. “Just think of this as a foreign country at our border.”
“A foreign country with blue soldiers and alien tech. Should be easy.” Tony says jokingly.
“I never said it would be easy, but there isn’t an alternative.” Peter says with a shrug. “Either we attack now, or we wait for the timer to run out and they attack. Either option is war.”
“We could give them the cube.” Charles offers his thoughts.
“Okay, where is it?” Peter asks sarcastically. “Oh, that’s right. We don’t have it, and for all we know, it could already be off-planet with Barney the f*cking Dinosaur.”
...
All doubters went quiet without a word to say.
“...” Mystique was especially quiet as she wrestled with the idea of revealing what she knew.
Though after a few moments, she decided to keep her mouth shut. After all, Peter wouldn’t feel very inclined to fulfill her request anymore should she out him.
“I know that we aren’t soldiers, but this is war. A war that we are going to fight either way. It just so happens that my way will save a lot of innocent lives. If we can contain the fighting off the planet, that is.”
“Did I hear someone say war?” Peggy says as she walks in with Steve beside her.
“Need any help?”
A/N: 1549 words :) GN