"This is not what we agreed to," I stated dryly as I stared at the one-eyed pirate sitting right across from us in one of S.H.I.E.L.D's black SUVs.
"Life is often full of disappointments, learn to get used to them," Tony answerd amused from Nick Fury's phone. "Anyway, have fun. And next time you call, I won't pick up."
Beep.
"Well, best get comfortable, this will be a long ride," Nick Fury said while keeping the phone away. "I don't usually deal with kids, so I'll make it quick. I want to offer you a position in S.H.I.E.L.D."
I turned to Nozomi as we shared the same thought. 'That's pretty convenient.'
"Yeah, that's a no. I am fully ready to commit to any type of work right now. And besides, we have school," Nozomi responded. "But, we aren't inclined to work with you on certain missions, provided that you pay us properly, and we need information on any anomaly you may discover in this world."
Fury thought about it for a moment. "I can work with the first term, but the second one is kind of risky. Why?"
Nozomi flexed her soul-flux and created a sound-dampening barrier around us.
"As we told the other, and I am sure your report says, we come from another dimension sent out here on a mission. We need to find the anomaly in this world and eliminate it before it destroys this world."
Fury's face grimaced, and he leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "Let me get this straight, there is an... anomaly in this world that could lead it to destruction. Then someone from another dimension senses it and sends two child soldiers to save it. Just who do you serve?"
Nozomi and I exchanged looks before nodding to each other. "We will tell you, but we need your word that none of this conversation will reach anyone else's ears."
He scoffed. "Who do I look like?"
"We work for Lady Death," I told him.
His jaw dropped so fast I thought it might come off. "Motherfucker."
...
I fell back on the plush sofa in our new living room. The apartment we found was not easy to find. It took the whole day of running around town to find a good one. Or it would have if S.H.I.E.L.D didn't provide us with some contacts.
The house was fairly spacious, mostly in the living room. It extend upto three meters high and five meters wide. The rooms lined the second floor's hallway, each with its own bathroom. The kitchen offered enough storage space for enough food to feed a family of three for a month. But the basement was the absolute winner. It offered enough space for our research and experiments.
"Let's go eat out to celebrate the new apartment," Nozomi suggested as she descended the stairs.
"Sure," I answered, getting off my feet and opening the door. "Ladies first."
"Hehe~ Gentlemanly." Nozomi purred as she walked out the door.
...
The rope burns against my wrists, but that's more an annoyance than anything else. I let my head hang, surveying the warehouse we've been strung up in through half-lidded eyes.
Across from us, Spider-Man is putting on quite the show.
He moves like water, all fluid grace and desperate economy, dodging the chain wrapped around the villain's fist. The man—calls himself Deadlock, some techno-kinetic mercenary with enough hardware in his skull to scramble Spider-Man's usual tactics—swings wide again. The chain catches a support beam, and Spider-Man uses it, flipping, twisting, landing on Deadlock's shoulders, and driving him into the concrete.
"Just stay down," Spider-Man says, breathless. His voice modulator crackles. He's been at this for twenty minutes now. A solo fight against someone who can turn his webs against him, disrupt his suit's systems, and anticipate his movements.
Deadlock doesn't stay down.
He surges up, a blade extending from his forearm. Spider-Man twists, but it catches his side. A grunt. A stumble.
Nozomi shifts beside me. I glance at her. She raises an eyebrow.
'We could end this.'
I shake my head minutely.
She rolls her eyes but settles back against the chain, letting her weight hang. She looks like nothing more than a captured girl playing at being unconscious. I imagine I look much the same.
Deadlock presses his advantage. The blade retracts, replaced by a concussive blast that sends Spider-Man skidding across the floor. He hits a crate, hard, and doesn't get up immediately.
"That's it," Deadlock says, stalking forward. His voice is synthetic, layered, half-machine. "That's what I was told. The famous Spider-Man. Always holds back. Always pulls punches." He kicks a piece of debris aside. "But you're exhausted now. Your little tricks are spent. So here's what's going to happen—"
He gestures toward us. His chain whips out, wrapping around Nozomi's throat. She doesn't flinch. I feel my eye twitch.
"—You're going to give me a real fight, wall-crawler. Not this performance art you've been doing. Or I paint the floor with these two."
Spider-Man pushes himself up slowly. His mask is torn along one side. There's blood on his temple. He looks at Deadlock, then at us.
And he laughs.
It's a tired laugh, raw and cracked, but genuine. He shakes his head, leans back against the crate, and raises his hands in surrender.
"Go ahead," he says.
Deadlock's chain freezes. "What?"
"Threaten them. Kill them." Spider-Man waves a weary hand. "See what happens."
The silence that follows is perfect. I can hear the flicker of Deadlock's internal systems, the distant hum of the city outside, and Nozomi's almost inaudible sigh.
Then I move.
The rope disintegrates. Not metaphorically. Soul-flux ripples from my skin, and the fibers simply cease to be. I land on my feet, roll my shoulders, and Deadlock's chain—the one wrapped around Nozomi—shatters into rusted fragments.
Nozomi doesn't even bother to land. She floats, cross-legged, still suspended in the air, and fixes Deadlock with a look that has made gods reconsider their choices.
"You were saying?" she asks.
Deadlock's remaining chain falls from nerveless fingers. He takes a step back, then another. His cybernetic eye flickers rapidly, scanning, calculating.
"I... there's no record of—"
"No," I agree, walking toward him slowly. "There wouldn't be."
Behind me, Spider-Man hasn't moved from his crate. His breathing is still ragged. He's genuinely exhausted, genuinely hurt. But there's a satisfaction in his posture, the way he watches Deadlock realize exactly what kind of mistake he's made.
"You want a real fight," I say, stopping three feet from the man. "I haven't had one of those in centuries. But I'm told I need to be gentle with this world." I crack my neck. "So I'll make you a deal. Surrender. Or I show you what years of practice actually look like."
Deadlock's hand twitches toward his remaining weapons.
Nozomi tsks from above. "Don't."
He freezes.
"See," she says, drifting down to land beside me, "Hiro's the nice one. If you make me angry, I get creative. And I've been very bored since we got here."
Deadlock's systems whine as he overclocks, trying to find a solution, an exit, anything. There's nothing. He's boxed in, outmatched, and every sensor in his skull is screaming at him that the two teenagers in front of him are the most dangerous things he's ever encountered.
His hands rise. Slowly. Open-palmed.
"I yield," he says.
Nozomi smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes.
"Good choice."
Spider-Man lets out a long, shaky breath from behind us. "You two are terrifying."
I glance back at him. "We let you handle it."
"You let me get my ass kicked for twenty minutes."
"You were handling it," Nozomi says sweetly. "We were just... insurance."
His expression shifts under his mask. "Remind me never to actually fight you."
"You won't have to," I tell him, turning back to Deadlock and beginning to bind his hands with the remains of his own chain. "We're on the same side."
"For now," Nozomi adds, drifting toward the warehouse's broken windows. "The night's still young."
Spider-Man groans, pulling himself to his feet. "I need a pizza. And an explanation. In that order."
I look at Nozomi. She shrugs.
"Pizza first," I agree. "Then explanations."
Somewhere in the distance, sirens begin to wail. Deadlock says nothing; his systems still recalibrating from the sheer impossibility of what he just survived. Spider-Man limps toward him, webs him all over, then heads for the exit, already pulling out his phone.
"So Mr. Stark sent you?" Peter asked while chewing a slice of pizza.
"We were the ones who wanted to come here as you are the only one close to our age we know," Nozomi responded. She's sitting cross-legged on the same ledge, a slice of pepperoni balanced on her knee. Then her eyes narrow. "Also, why are you sitting upside down?"
We were sitting on a block of bricks sticking out of a tall building, and Peter was sitting upside down—feet hooked on a web line, torso hanging, pizza slice defying gravity in his grip. "It's fine this way," he replied, looking up—or down?—at us with the kind of casual confidence that only someone with wall-crawling abilities could muster.
"Look up, and I swear you will lose something you would regret once you have a wife," Nozomi threatened. Her expression was flat, dead serious, her eyes fixed on the hem of her skirt with pointed significance. She was currently wearing a skirt, and Peter's upside-down position put him on the offense of peeping on a Goddess.
I could practically sense the shiver that ran down Peter's spine. His face went through a rapid transformation—confusion, then dawning realization, then a violent blush that spread from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. He scrambled upright so fast he nearly dropped his pizza. "Jeez, you could have asked nicely. That wasn't even my intention." His voice cracked on the last word.
"Anyway, we are here for Midtown High," I said in an amused voice. I let my expression settle into something deliberately casual, watching his reaction through half-lidded eyes. "As tourists in this world, what better way is there to be protected than being close to a hero most of the day?"
Peter's face turned mock-angry as he dropped the crust of pizza. His cheeks were still flushed, but his eyes narrowed with playful suspicion. "Sure, if you mean protecting you from boredom. By the way, that stunt earlier was not appreciated." He stood up and jumped off the building. Mid-air, he twisted and webbed the block we were standing on, swinging and landing next to us with a practiced flip. "If your eye hadn't twitched when that two-cent villain chained her, I would have thought you were still unconscious. How did you two even get caught?"
I let out a small laugh, letting my expression shift into something sheepish. "We let him capture us to see how it ends. And I would say I am not that disappointed. We got to meet Spider-Man, even though it would have been better to surprise you the next day in your class." I murmured the last part to myself, but I am sure he heard it.
His expression shifted to scared confusion. His eyebrows shot up, his mouth fell open, and his head tilted slightly as if he was sure he had misheard. His face was caught somewhere between a laugh and a panic attack. "What do you mean by my class? We can't be in the same grade, right?"
I let the silence stretch for exactly three seconds, watching the realization dawn on his face like a slow sunrise over a disaster zone.
Nozomi grinned, wide and bright and utterly merciless. "Transfer students. Midtown High. Tomorrow morning."
Peter's face went through an entire spectrum of human emotion in five seconds—denial, horror, calculation, resignation, and finally settled on the expression of a man who has just discovered his nightmares have enrolled in homeroom.
"Oh no," he said weakly.
"Oh yes," Nozomi replied, and her smile could have powered the Manhattan grid.