章 61: Fresh Start
It was late August. The sun was shining, birds were peeping, and Eren Parker was walking to his first college class by himself with his hands in both pockets. As he walked around the campus of Empire State University, Eren thought about how different this new chapter of his life would be as a biophysics major.
'Finally, a fresh start.' He thought to himself, looking around at all of the unfamiliar faces walking around. It felt nice being unrecognized by everyone, it was almost peaceful to the undercover hero. The only people he knew so far were his roommate, Harry Osborn, and his girlfriend Cindy Moon. He may have recognized a couple more people from his old high school, but no one he'd actually say he knew.
However, this would change almost immediately.
"Parker!?" A voice, a dreadful voice caused Eren's entire being to jolt.
'God, no...' Eren thought, ignoring the voice and hoping it would go away.
"Parker! I didn't know you went here." The voice was extremely close before the source of it grabbed Eren by the shoulder. Eren sighed, stopping in his tracks before turning around to see Flash Thompson smiling at him with some blonde girl around his arms.
The blondie had short hair, half of it was shaved and the tips were dyed pink. She also had a piercing in her eyebrow, seemingly adopting a somewhat punk aesthetic.
Eren said nothing, looking at Flash with a blank stare before looking down at the girl. She waved at him, looking up at him with friendly blue eyes and he raised his eyebrows as a greeting. He then looked back at Flash before speaking to him in the most unamused voice one could imagine.
"Hi." He said plainly, wanting to jump off of a building and die if that meant having to never see Flash Thompson again.
"What's up, man! How have you been!" Flash greeted the boy as if they were best friends, pissing Eren off as he knew this was all a facade.
"What do you want?" Eren asked him, causing Flash to speak to him as if he were offended by Eren's standoffishness.
"Woah, bro. Don't tell me you're still upset about the past!" Flash was speaking as if he didn't make Eren's life a literal Hell on Earth.
The girl next to him looked puzzled before asking Flash what he meant. "The past? What happened?"
Flash chuckled, wrapping his arm around the girl before explaining the entire thing to her, or at least, his version of it. "You see, Parker and I go way back. Elementary school. We've always had this sort of rivalry goin' on, you know? He's just having a little trouble letting go of our kiddy little grudge."
Eren was furious.
'Little grudge? You made me want to literally KILL myself every single day of my life.' Eren thought, taking a deep breath before speaking to the girl in Flash's arms. "Hello, I'm Eren Parker." He said, extending his hand to give her a handshake.
The girl grabbed his hand, accepting the handshake before introducing herself to him. "Oh! You were the valedictorian of our school, right? I'm Gwen, Gwen Stacy."
"Surprised anyone remembers me. Yeah, that's me." Eren admitted before asking her one last question. "Are you dating Flash?"
"Yup. It's been four months." Gwen admitted, smiling up at her man and showing her adorable tooth gap.
"Nice. Have fun with that. See ya." Eren decided to be the bigger man and just walk away from the situation. Based on the girl's looks, she seemed like the type to be into guys like Flash, so he figured it'd be pointless to even tell her about how awful of a human being he was.
Eren walked away, heading to class and praying that he'd never have to see Flash Thompson ever again in his life, but he knew that wasn't going to actually happen.
To Eren's delight, he didn't encounter anyone else that recognized in throughout both of his Monday courses. It felt good having no distractions and actually caring about the content being taught in his classes. It was actually somewhat exciting, knowing that he was just a few steps closer to making Parker Industries a reality.
Before he could have his own business, however, he needed experience. A while back, Norman Osborn offered Eren an internship at Oscorp, so Eren thought now would be as good a time as any to accept the offer.
There were a few reasons this offer stood out to him, mainly the fact that Oscorp was like Disneyland to Eren and the fact that the Project V case hadn't been cracked yet. He thought it could've been Doom, but none of it made any sense. If the V stood for Valeria or Vibranium, what would Fisk have to do with anything? He was also certain that Doom hadn't set foot in New York, at least not publicly.
As much as he'd love to dismiss the case, he knew that it had to have been something else. With Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom on the list, the list was growing smaller. Norman Osborn was of course the largest name on the list, followed by a few others such as Otto Octavius.
With Project V in his mind, Eren entered one of the labs of Oscorp to find both aforementioned men, Norman Osborn and Doctor Otto Octavius. Norman was watching his associate as he used four metallic tentacles to stack a house of cards. The movements were incredibly precise, even more precise than that of a normal human. Eren was impressed.
As Otto placed the final piece, both he and Norman noticed the boy entering the lab. "Ah! Mr. Parker, welcome. Impressive isn't it?" Octavius said as he used two of his tentacles to walk him over toward the young man.
"It's amazing. It's as if they were part of your real body." Eren began closely inspecting the arms, touching them without permission as his nerd's brain began taking over. He was enthralled with the technology, wondering how exactly such precise movements with a prosthetic device were even possible.
"It's because they are. Look here." Octavius pointed to the back of his neck, showing needles impaling it. It appeared that his entire spine was being impaled by those microneedles. Eren winced looking at them digging into the doctor's flesh. 'That's... disgusting.' Eren thought to himself as he glared at the flesh being perpetually stabbed into Octavius's body.
"They're directly connected to my brain. They get commands directly from the source instantaneously." Octavius added as he continued to point at his neck. "And now I can move on with my main project. Renewable energy." Otto extended both his human hands and his tentacle hands in a grandiose manner, however, this wasn't making much sense to Eren.
"What do these arms have to do with renewable energy?" Eren asked the scientist.
"These arms are special. They are impervious to heat and magnetism. Now it allows me to use these hands in places a human hand could never even come close to. My new fusion-based energy source would melt me if I tried to control it myself, my friends here can do that work for me." Otto began petting his arms and they sort of responded as if they were puppies. Eren's eyebrows furrowed, finding it disturbing. "You'll see by tomorrow. I would like you to be there when I unveil my new breakthrough."
"Oh, sure. Yeah, I'll be there." Eren was stoked to be able to see whatever presentation Otto had planned, but also, this made him think of an opportunity. He knew that many of the employees of Oscorp would want to see the presentation as well, so the building would be nearly empty on the upper floors.
He had a plan.
For the rest of the afternoon, Eren fulfilled his internship duties as he normally would before dismissing himself and calling it a day. After Eren said goodbye to his colleagues and began leaving the building, he found himself being approached by a familiar voice.
"Eren?" A girl's voice spoke, one that he wasn't too familiar with, but he recognized it nonetheless.
Eren turned his head to see Flash's girlfriend, wearing the same Oscorp lab coat that he was wearing, catching up to him. She too had an intern's badge on her chest, looking up at Eren shyly as she corrected the glasses on her face.
"Oh, hi." Eren said as he continued walking and the girl walked beside him. He was surprised to see Gwen Stacy here of all people, considering he assumed she was an idiot like her boyfriend. He immediately felt bad for profiling her. "You intern here?" He asked her, getting a quick nod.
"Mhm! Surprised?" She asked, smiling up at the boy with her hands behind her back.
"I'll be honest, yeah. You look more like the partying type. Especially without those glasses on." He told her.
"Yeah, I look like a total dork, that's why I don't wear them unless I'm working or in class." Gwen laughed to herself as she admitted this, though Eren remained stonefaced.
"I think they suit you. I used to wear glasses, I miss having them sometimes." Eren told her. He did actually like wearing glasses, and he still wasn't used to how different his face was without them.
"You wear contacts?" Gwen asked him, looking closely at his eyes as if she were able to tell.
"No, I got surgery..." He lied, knowing he can't just say he woke up with good eyesight due to having superpowers without blowing his cover.
"Oh, that's cool. Nice." After Gwen said this, there was a brief silence between the two. They were both heading to the same place, back to the dorms at ESU.
'Can this girl leave? Don't tell me she's going all the way to ESU too... Should I ditch her?' Eren began thinking of some excuses he could make to get away from the girl, however, he realized she probably just wanted to walk with someone she could somewhat trust. It was nighttime after all, so she probably would prefer to not be alone. 'God I hate being a good person.'
"Hey, Eren?" Gwen speaking snapped Eren out of his thoughts, gathering his attention.
"What's up?"
"What's the deal with you and Flash? Your interaction earlier was really weird."
'And she's observant. Great.' Eren thought to himself.
"He's your boyfriend so, you probably don't want to hear me bad mouth him." Eren admitted, hoping to drop the subject.
"Wouldn't that be all the more reason to tell me?" Gwen figured that if Flash did something awful, it would be best for her to know these types of things.
Eren sighed, feeling reluctant, but he went ahead and gave her the gist of the situation. "Flash used to bully me. Ever since we were about seven or eight years old. Physically and mentally. I won't go into the details on why but that's what happened." Eren saying this made Gwen's eyes widen, she couldn't believe it.
"Flash? Flash Thompson?"
"Yes, Eugene Flash Thompson. What, you don't believe me?" Eren was annoyed, it was clear by the expression on his face.
"It's not that I don't believe you, it's just hard to believe. He can be a bit... brash sometimes, but he's so nice to everyone." Gwen's words shocked him. In what universe was Flash Thompson nice to anyone?
"He must be a good actor then." Eren told her.
"Or maybe he's changed." Gwen said quietly, smiling softly up at the boy. "I think people deserve second chances."
Eren exhaled, knowing that what she was saying was true. It was something he lived by as Spider-Man, it was part of the reason why he has people arrested rather than killing them. He believed that criminals, even the vile ones, have a chance of being changed. Even if that chance was minuscule.
"Did you not see what he did to me for the last four years at our school? Eren asked her, thinking it was impossible for her to not have seen him getting beaten almost daily.
Gwen shook her head sadly. "I transferred last semester." Conveniently, it seemed that Gwen had transferred right when the bullying stopped, so she only saw the supposedly changed Flash Thompson.
"I see... that explains it then." Eren was clearly upset, bringing on another awkward silence between the two of them as they continued walking back to campus.
After a few minutes, Eren finally spoke. "I'll think about it. Forgiving him, I mean. You seem like a really good person, so I'll believe you."
Gwen gave him a gentle grin, giving him a single quick nod. "Thank you. Maybe you guys can become friends."
"Don't push it." Eren told her, having the slightest grin on his face, compelling her to laugh.
The two of them continued their walk together until they eventually made it to campus, going their separate ways once they reached their respective dormitories. As Eren walked to his and Harry's dorm, he kept thinking about Flash. 'Did he really change?' He thought to himself.
However, he would have his answer soon enough.
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