Honestly, It amazed Peter how quickly those five days have gone by, you know?
One second he was sparking yellow electricity from his fingers, and the next, he was just making his way to school like normal.
Speaking of, Rumi's sparring sessions gave actually helped him get a better handle of his venom powers. He could actually regulate the output decently, so he doesn't faint out of exhaustion after using it once or twice.
But that sparring did help him realize something new.
His exposure to Rumi might have given him a thing for muscles.
Cause holy shit, did she have them. They had similar builds, now that he thought about it. More akin to the lean build of a swimmer instead of someone like All Might.
Nejire also pitched in with a whole bunch of help in increasing his regular endurance, all she asked in return was for him to zap her with the venom.
Which seemed incredibly dangerous, but he couldn't say no to her puppy eyes, so he went along with it. The results ended up being Nejire not being able to get up from the ground for ten minutes while she occasionally laughed and twitched.
She was fine in the end but it took an hour for the tingling sensation to go away, so that was cool.
Oh! He even trained his spider-sense a bit! While he had some trouble doing it, he opted to just putting on a blindfold while Rumi tried to kick his ass so he could get better at reacting to it. And he was pretty sure being deprived of his vision forced his spider-sense to compensate and make him decently aware of a radius of space around him.
Which was incredible, he didn't even mean for that to happen! Now he quite literally had eyes on the back of his head. Too bad he couldn't get the whole lie detector thing to work out as he wanted to but whatever.
Peter rolled his scarred wrist as he walked through the school gates, the walls around the school must've gone up like 5 feet or something during the break.
He felt himself get a few looks as he walked through the halls, people must have recognized him as someone that was in the USJ attack.
Great, more attention he didn't want.
His spider-sense tingled slightly as he felt someone get relatively close to him, but it didn't identify it as a threat, he didn't have time to react before the presence revealed itself.
"Parker." A stoic and cold voice came from beside him, Peter let go of his scarfed wrist and turned to see that Todoroki was walking alongside him.
Weird, the guy seemed pretty keen on being by himself.
Except for those times Moe went to flirt with him.
Peter flashed a friendly smile that Todoroki in no way returned, the taller boy's expression didn't change at all. "Hey, man! What's up?"
"I was meaning to talk to you when I saw you, but I would like for our conversation to be somewhere more…" He gestured to the walking masses of people around them. "Private, if that's alright."
Now, he was either gonna murder him or confess his love to him if his knowledge of movies served him right, but that didn't seem like Todoroki. He only gave a shrug and gestured for the boy to lead the way, the brunette simply following as Todoroki led him to the deserted school roof.
They had like five minutes until class, so they had time.
"Did you need something, icy-hot? Kinda weird that y-woah!" Peter's expression broke into confession when the boy in front of him took a deep bow.
Didn't Japanese people do that when showing respect or something? It looked so weird.
"I want to apologize for my inaction during the attack, I c-" Todoroki was stopped by a small chuckle and a hand on his shoulder.
While he did think fo Parker as someone with decent ability yet somewhat… annoying personality, he couldn't say he was expecting that reaction.
"Hey, dude? You don't have to do that. There's a reason you don't use your fire, right?"
"Yes, I'd rather not get into it, but it's something from my past." Todoroki rose from the bow and looked at the boy in the eye.
"Endeavor, right?"
Todoroki paused for a split second before regaining his composure, how did he know?
"Eh, figured. No offense but the guy doesn't really come off as #1 dad material or anything, so I get it. While I forgive you, you gotta get over that stuff soon, man."
Peter paused as he saw the two-toned boy adopt a puzzled expression.
"I mean, a hero who holds himself back from helping others is not a hero. If you ever need to talk about that stuff, I'm here, but I won't rush you. Just… please don't make someone else's life be on the line next time, alright, bud?" The brunette gave a warm smile and held out a fist for a fist bump, one that sadly wasn't returned.
"I'll… keep that in mind, and also…" That sense of coldness came back tenfold, Peter only frowned. "While you're strong, I am stronger. I will beat you at the sports festival, Parker. While my fire has been giving me much to think about lately, I will be the number one hero without his quirk." And with his piece said, he sent a cold glare and headed to class.
"Uh, nice catching up, too! I guess…" Peter said as be stood on the empty roof.
Alright… then.
That was a whole can of worms that someone would have to open sooner or later, he just hoped someone more qualified would be the one to do so.
Also, what was everyone's obsession with rankings? Weren't they just glorified popularity contests?
Eh, whatever, he'd figure all that stuff out later.
He didn't wanna be late on his first day back.
The boy didn't notice how small flames appeared on Todoroki's fist as he walked through the halls before he quickly put them out.
...
"Peter! Peter! Do the thingy!" Nejire was bouncing up and down in her seat, her blue eyes were sparkling… somehow.
The American only let out a small chuckle and let small bits of yellow sparks dance around the gaps in his right hand, the only ones noticing the action being his close group of friends.
He had decided to try and keep his new bioelectricity control a secret from the rest of the class until it was absolutely necessary.
It would add all the more shock factor when he actually did it, you know?
'Heh, shock, like an electric shock, man, I'm hilarious .' After all, Peter considered himself a showman at heart, and pulling out a brand new power while fighting on national television was exactly his style.
"Woah! That's awesome!" Moe exclaimed, keeping her voice low enough as to not draw too much attention. The girl's hair flared up as she inched her hand closer to the sparks before she recoiled at the small zap that jumped from his finger to hers.
"Yeah! I can't believe you figured out how to use your spider quirk to do stuff like that! Oh man, it just means you'll be an even better hero!" The blonde next to him pumped his fist in the air while giving a signature smile.
As he was about to speak, he felt a familiar presence enter the radius his spider-sense covered from outside the room, his eyes landed on the oversized door of the classroom as it slowly slid open.
"Good morning." The heavily bandaged form of Shouta Aizawa walked through the door and stood behind the podium, the man was about to speak but was interrupted by howling laughter.
"Dude! No way! What kinda tomb did you crawl out from, man?! R-Rumi! Send me those pics!" Peter laughed loudly as his friend cackled while taking picture after picture on her phone.
"A week of detention to both of you." The man grumbled, the two teens only gave a quick high five as their laughter slowly settled down.
"S-Sorry, man! Hey, are there gonna be any scarabs coming in or are we good?"
"Week and a half for you, Parker."
You know, he wondered if Aizawa forgot that he was the one who monitored detention for first years this week.
After finally settling down to a decent level, Peter watched as their teacher cleared his throat as to regain the attention of their class. While it was fun to laugh at the man right now, he couldn't help but be relieved at how made it out of the attack mostly alright.
He'll never tell him, though.
...
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