"These are for you."
Bant set the serums down on the table and looked Uncle Ben in the eye.
Ben and Aunt May both froze. His eyebrows and lashes, gone silver-gray with age, and the spiraling wrinkles that fanned around his eyes all spelled out his bewilderment.
But more than that, he felt the things in front of him were simply too precious to be spent on himself.
The two old folks had worked so hard to raise Peter and Bant. All those years, they'd hardly ever spent anything on themselves; every good thing they had was saved for the boys. By now, no matter how valuable something was, the first people they thought of were always the children.
"This is too precious… May and I are just an old man and an old woman now." He glanced at Aunt May, who clearly did not appreciate being called an old woman.
She shot Ben a glare. "I'm not even fifty yet! I'm forty-nine this year!"
But she looks at least fifty-five.
Ben kept that thought to himself, naturally, and didn't let it past his lips.
Still, both of them felt it would be a waste to use something so precious on themselves.
"We're not worth it."
"Of course you are!" Bant shook his head. "I prepared these especially for you. As for me and Peter—"
He elbowed his little brother. "Go on, Xiao Liang—no, Peter, do a trick for them!"
Peter blinked, then jumped up and stuck one hand to the ceiling.
Ben and Aunt May stared blankly, not sure what they were supposed to be seeing.
"Not enough. Go clean up that cobweb in the corner."
So Peter simply hung upside down from the ceiling, crawled like a spider over to the corner, and wiped the cobweb away with his fingers.
That did it. Ben and Aunt May finally understood exactly who Peter was.
"Oh my God!" Aunt May covered her face, horrified. "You're Spider-Man!"
"Yeah. I'm Spider-Man."
Peter dropped back to the floor.
He didn't know why Bant had changed his mind and decided to reveal his identity to Ben and May, but as far as he was concerned, Bant was always right.
He's not!
Venom shot back inside his head. Peter waved a hand as if shooing away a fly.
The next thing he knew, Aunt May rushed at him in a panic, grabbed him by the shoulders, and looked him up and down, head to toe, not missing a single inch.
"You little punk, you're Spider-Man!"
After his initial shock, Ben's face quickly broke into a smile. He pointed a finger at Peter and said with approval, "I knew it. Who else but my nephew could be such a fine young man?"
"You've done well, Peter. You're using your abilities for good."
"Thanks, Ben."
Peter was thrilled to have his family's approval. He tilted his head and gave Ben a wink.
But a moment later, Aunt May grabbed his head and straightened it back.
Right now, the only woman of the house was letting her fury brew. "It is not fine at all!"
"My nephew is Spider-Man—have you all gone crazy?!" Aunt May looked close to breaking down. Peter tried to comfort her, but she spoke with the kind of breathlessness that came from pure distress. "Good God!"
"Good God!"
"So you spend your days fighting terrorists with bombs, getting blasted, getting clawed up by some big green monster, and even dealing with aliens?!"
"Uh…" Peter didn't know what to say. He caught Aunt May's hands to keep her from collapsing, then shot a desperate look at Bant, Ben, and even Harry.
Seeing that, Ben immediately stepped over and took her arm.
"All right, May. Our nephew's made something of himself. We should be proud of him, not be the ones holding him back. And didn't you always say Spider-Man was a pretty good guy?"
"That was before I knew the person under that mask was my nephew!"
Aunt May had been holding back a bellyful of hurt and anger with nowhere to put it. She didn't want to take it out on the kids, so she turned it on Ben.
"And you're still supporting him! I'm asking you, what happens if Peter gets hurt? Do you know how many times the papers have run stories about Spider-Man being wounded? How many times the Daily Bugle has sworn up and down that Spider-Man was dead and never coming back?"
Her eyes reddened, and the rapid-fire questions left Ben speechless.
"Wait," Peter pushed in between them. "Honestly, every time Jameson reported that Spider-Man was dead, I was sitting safe and sound at home. And anyway, every single Spider-Man story in the Bugle is fake news."
"But what if?"
Aunt May shot back.
"What if one day Spider-Man really is dead? If Spider-Man is dead, what happens to my nephew? Who's going to give my nephew back to me?"
She looked straight at Peter, her voice a little calmer but still carrying a weight that left him completely lost.
That weight had a name: mother.
The source of all of it was love.
Bant walked over slowly and wrapped his arms gently around her. "Don't worry, Aunt May. I'm not going to let anything happen to Peter. I've got him outfitted with the most advanced gear possible. He can handle anything."
At those words, Aunt May calmed down a fraction. She let out a long breath, as if she could finally breathe again.
Bant had always been the one who put her mind at ease more than Peter, so his words held more weight.
A mischievous child, even if he makes promises in front of his parents, is still hard to fully trust. Peter wasn't mischievous—he'd just always been too timid. In Aunt May's mind, Peter was the one who needed protecting, not the one doing the protecting. He'd be the one to get hurt, to cry, to be at a loss when things went wrong.
But Bant was different. He always did better.
Yet even so, Aunt May wasn't about to give an inch on this.
"I haven't even gotten to you yet! Peter is Spider-Man—what about you? Don't tell me you haven't been doing anything dangerous!"
Truth be told, Bant was the mischievous one. At the very least, he'd always had the bigger daredevil streak.
"I've been good, Aunt May. I mean, I'm Hacker Spider-Man, but I barely go out in the field. I much prefer doing research in my office."
"Really?" Aunt May gave him a deeply skeptical look.
She knew full well that Bant had been picking fights since he was little. Every kid at school who tried to bully Peter had gotten a beating from him. Now he was claiming he just liked staying in the lab? She found the whole thing absurd.
But then she reconsidered—lately Bant had started a company, invented all those things, and Hacker Spider-Man hardly ever showed up. That made her think maybe he was telling the truth.
So she nodded. "Fine. You pass."
At this, Peter's eyes went wide. He felt a massive sense of injustice. The things Bant had done were way more dangerous than his own, and without missing a beat, like the twin who's about to snitch, he blurted out:
"He's way crazier than I am! Last time he said he was going on a trip, but actually he went to an alien planet, helped the people there overthrow a tyrant, and made himself king!"
Aunt May: ???
Bant: …
Bant shot Peter a glare.
Seeing that look on his face, Aunt May knew it was true. A wave of dizziness hit her.
She'd already thought Peter helping out the neighborhood and fighting crime on the side was incredibly brave. And now there was an overachiever who, in a single month, became king of a planet? Whose kid is this? Still my nephew!
"In short, I absolutely forbid you two from doing anything dangerous ever again!" Aunt May said, stern as iron.
At this point, Peter and Ben didn't know what else to say. Harry, of course, had long since pulled his head in and was just watching the show.
Only Bant kept soothing her. "Aunt May, we only do what has to be done. It's not because the world needs me—it's because this family needs me, so I do it."
"There are enemies we have to take out, or our lives will be chaos too. Take Hydra—what would've happened if they'd completed Project Insight? Peter and I were both on Insight's list, targets to be eliminated. And Thanos, that purple little boy who just invaded Earth, wants to wipe out half of all life in the universe. Who'd be spared then? Who would survive?"
He hugged Aunt May and said softly, "I don't want to be killed by him, and I sure don't want to watch any of you disappear before my eyes."
The ones who survive are the ones who suffer the most.
Then Peter and Ben joined the hug, the whole family wrapped up together. Only Harry felt it was getting a little awkward for him to be standing there.
After a while, Aunt May finally relented. She said, "All right. I agree to let you keep being superheroes…"
Peter tilted his head toward Ben and whispered, "Usually when she says that, there's a 'but' coming."
"But," Aunt May said sternly, "someone has to keep an eye on you!"
"What do you mean?" Peter froze. Even Bant looked taken aback.
Then they heard Aunt May and Uncle Ben say, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "We certainly can't just let the two of you—the three of you, three minors, go off saving the world."
They hadn't forgotten to count Harry in.
"But I'm Spider-Man," Peter said.
"I conquered a planet!" Bant added.
"You're still minors."
Aunt May's tone brooked no argument. "And as it happens, we don't have to work anymore. And as it happens, little Bant, you brought three vials of Super Soldier Serum, so…"
Uncle Ben picked up the thread. "So why can't we be superheroes?"
He looked raring to go, so much so that Bant couldn't quite tell whether Ben genuinely wanted to keep an eye on him and Peter, or if he just plain worshipped Captain America and wanted to be a Captain America type.
"Now, tell me—do I need to fill out some form to join the Sky Hammer Bureau or that Avengers thing? Or do they only take people under thirty-five? That would be a shame, because getting laid off on account of being too old would really stink…"
Hearing that, Bant laughed.
"No, we're not Avengers. We're the Plumbers of the Sky Union."
/-\
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