Room 203: Friday Afternoon

[sparkinyou]

Miles didn't know where else to go. He couldn't go home. His uncle was dead. He couldn't go to May's...

So he went back to the school.

He avoided everyone in town and climbed through his window once he knew Adora wasn't around. He looked up at the mural he had painted last week thinking how it felt like a year ago. He felt his breath become ragged as he tried not to think about what just happened in Queens but it was too much.

It was then that Miles heard a voice from the window.

"Hey, bud. You okay?"



Miles looked over to see Peter, Gwen and Spider-Ham climb through the window. Miles took a deep breath and tried to talk. He got as far as "My uncle-"

And then he couldn't talk anymore. Peter and Gwen came forward as Spider-Ham stayed back a bit.



"We’ve all been there," Peter said putting his hand on Miles' shoulder. "For me it was my Uncle Ben."



Gwen put her hand on Miles' other shoulder "For me it was my best friend."



Miles then watched as Spider-Ham came forward, tears in his eyes. "For me, it was my Uncle Frankfurter. He was electrocuted. And he smelled so good."

Everyone blinked at that one.

"Did he just say what I think he said?" Peter asked everyone.

Spider-Ham waved off the questionsto turn back to the one in need. "Miles, the hardest thing about this job is you can’t save everybody."

Somewhat aghast, Miles shrugged off his friends and turned away. "Look, it was my fault. You wouldn’t understand."

Gwen turned Miles around to face them all "Miles, we’re probably the only ones who do understand"

Troy figured this was kind of a long shot, but he also figured it didn't hurt to try. He hadn't really seen Miles around much, and, short of the possibility that he may have sort of made up a whole 'nother dude, he was a little worried about that. Plus, there was a very important and hilarious video he found that pretty much needed to be shared. "Hey, Miles," he said, as he opened the door, figuring he could easily switch gears if he just waltzed right in on Adora or something, "you in here? You have got to see--" So Miles was in there. And so were...a bunch of other people, and Troy stopped for a moment, head turning a little with the wrinkling of his brain, before he looked from what they were all wearing, down to the shirt he was wearing, and then back up to what they were all wearing, and... "...did I...miss an email? Or...?"

“Aw, man. Another one?” Peter asked in shock. “Miles why didn’t you tell us you knew another Spider-Man?”

“Uhhhhhh...” Sorry gang, Miles is having a bad day and can’t switch gears.

“We’re about to go explode a super collider. Want to join us?” Spider-Ham asked before turning to Miles. “Wait. Do you have talking animals here? I don’t want to freak him out.”

"Oh, no," Troy assured the talking pig in the awesome pajamas with a wave of his hand, "my big sibling is a talking cat, it's cool. What's a super collider?" Then he shook his head. "You know what, it doesn't matter, it sounds awesome, I'm in."

“Wait. What?” Mikes shook his head. “Guys, no. Troy is not a Spider-Man. He’s-“

a normal kid? What does that mean anymore?

“- my friend.”

Peter tilted his head at Troy. “Are you sure? There’s something familiar about him.”

“Yeah, I know. I got that vibe too,” Miles said with a smirk. “Troy, sorry man but this is dangerous stuff. There’s no danger shop saving our butts or anything.”

“It’s too bad,” Spider-Ham said shaking his head. “He looks really good in the suit.”

So, there was a lot to unpack here, to the point where Troy wasn't even entirely sure where to start, but the important parts that seemed to come to the surface was that something awesome was happening, it was probably dangerous, but he didn't want to be excluded, either, even if Miles apparently didn't think he was up to it, which was fine and not, like, lame or harsh or anything... So he just stuck with what he did know for sure about this whole situation. "The pig's got a point," he noted convincingly. "I do look good."

Peter and Gwen shared a look and they split up in different directions.

"Hey," Gwen said taking Troy by the shoulder. "We have a couple of things we need to talk to Miles about. Would you mind...?"

She nodded in the direction of the door.

Though he regarded this with a little bit of skepticism and doubt, Troy was nothing if not...pliable, easily persuaded toward the door. After all, he was popular. The idea that someone might be trying to give him the slip was...mostly foreign to him, so he had no reason to think it was anything but genuine. Right? And he had sort of barged in... "Oh, right!" he said. "Sure. You guys were in the middle of a...thing?"

"Yeaaaah," Gwen said, in a not-so-convincing fashion. She dropped her voice down low so Miles couldn't hear her voice. "Listen. We have to give Miles some bad news. He's going to need a friend. Will you be around?"

Troy's brow knitted, because that didn't sound good at all and now he felt a little bad about interrupting. "...how bad are we talking?" he asked cautiously.

"He's not going to like it," she said awkwardly. "But it's for his own personal good. He wants to be a part of something he isn't ready for yet."

Troy's suspicion went back up a little, eyeing her with doubt about how much of this really had to do with 'Miles' and how much of it had to do with this 'secret meeting of spider-people he missed the memo on'. "Yeaaaaah," he said slowly, "sure...but yeah, no, I can be here..."

"Ummm..." Gwen was now feeling extremely awkward as suddenly the conversation on the other side of the room got a little heated.

"You’re not getting it," Peter said, firmly, "You’re staying here."

Miles shook his head in response. "I need to be there. So you can all go home."

Peter looked down at Miles and sighed. It wasn't frustration, just from one who has accepted something bad. "They are going home, Miles. I’m the only one staying."

"You’re taking my place...? If you stay here you’ll die."

"I’m doing what needs to be done," Peter said, shaking his head. "I just wanted you to hear it from me."

Peter frowned and looked away from Miles. " Not everything works out, kid. I need the goober. Please don’t make me take it from you."

Miles and Peter locked eyes, a stand off beginning to grow.

Miles finally erupted, anger and grief showing on his face. "I gotta make Kingpin pay! You have to let me make him pay! I promise I'm ready-"

And with that, Peter dropped to the floor and did a spinning kick knock Miles off balance. With a swift leap, Peter grabbed Miles by the costume and held him in mid-air as Peter landed and stuck to the ceiling. "Then venom strike me right now," he told Miles, "Or turn invisible on command so you can get past me."



Miles hung in the air, fists clenched, his face straining as he tried to get something, anything to happen.

"I don't think," Troy whispered, helpfully, over to Gwen, after the argument had definitely managed to swiped his attention away their conversation to Peter and Miles', "he took it too well..." And, in that moment, wondered if he should do something, anything, that wasn't just...slowly backing out of the room, but he'd just said he'd be there if Miles needed him, so he was just going to see how this all went down.

Peter looked up at Gwen who sighed in return. "Sorry about this," Gwen replied.

And shoved Troy into a desk chair.

Peter gave Miles a sympathetic look. "Look, I know how much you want this, kid," he said dropping Miles into another chair and then shooting webbing around both Miles and Troy so they were stuck together back to back. "But you don't have it yet. I'm sorry."

"Hey!" An objection wrangled itself out of Troy, not that it really did much good, because one second, he was being thrown into a chair, and the next second, he was being covered in what looked like spider webs (right, spider-people would have spider-powers, it all made sense now!), and he considered himself pretty touch and strong, but he was definitely not making any headway on these constraints no matter how hard he flexed, and he couldn't even really turn his head far enough to see if Miles was doing any better, but, really, whatever this was, it was kind of his thing, Troy had only wanted to show him a funny video. Which he now thought about, briefly, in case anyone wondered why a small laugh might have escaped him despite being spider-webbed to a chair. It was a really funny one, okay?

Miles was not doing any better than Troy at the moment. And was he laughing? This was so not his day.

Miles looked up and focused on Peter who was now picking up the goober. Peter had the decency to look guilty. "I'm sorry about this, Miles."

Miles didn't want an apology. "How will I know if I'm ready?"

"You won't," Peter said and then winced a bit before he shot a web splotch over Miles' mouth. "It's a leap of faith. That's all it is, Miles. A leap of faith."



Peter gave one more guilty look and pulled the mask over his face before he, Spider-Ham and Gwen jumped out and swung away.

Miles let out a long sigh and looked up at the ceiling. After a moment he turned his head and tried to ask Troy if he was okay which came out all muffled and garbled.

Obviously, Troy had no idea what Miles had just said, but he did know one thing. "Yeah," the amusement of remembering the funny video had passed and now he was kind of annoyed because these spiderwebs were not playing, "I have a few questions..." Of course, he realized that answers might have to wait until Miles could actually, you know, answer them.

And then Miles' phone buzzed in his pocket. Did it ring? Well who knows when it rang in the last 24 hours. He shifted and struggled a bit before finally pulling out his phone. Maybe he could text Adora or Astrid to come help them.

And that's when he saw it was a voicemail from his dad. Not even thinking about it, Miles hit play.

"Miles? It's your dad. Please pick up."

There was a small pause before his father continued. "Yeah. Ok, I get it. I get it. Still ignoring me. Look, can we talk for a minute? Something happened..."

There was a sound that came from his phone. It was his father holding back a crying sound. Miles could feel the grief from here and he closed his eyes.

"Look sometimes, people drift apart, Miles. And I don’t want that to happen to us, ok? Look, I know I don’t always do what you need me to do or say what you need me to say, but I’m... I see this...this spark in you. It’s amazing, it’s why I
push you. But it’s yours and whatever you choose to do with it, you’ll be great. Look call me when you can, ok? I love you. ... You don’t have to say it back though."

Miles sat still letting his Father's words wash over him. Then he leaned over with his head and scraped the webbing off his face using the side of the desk.

"Troy? I'm so sorry, man," he said once his face was free. "Listen. I can get us out of this but it might hurt a bit. Okay?"

Troy was quiet for a long moment after that, because that was...that was all really heavy, and he felt even worse for intruding in on something like that than he had the secret spider-person meeting, and he didn't really know what to say, or if he even should say anything, he just sort of wished he wasn't back-to-back with Miles right now so Miles could at least see the look of sympathy on his face. Then, finally... "Y-yeah, man. It's cool. Whatever you need to do."

Miles took a deep breath and shut his eyes for a moment.

I see this spark in you. It's amazing. It’s yours and whatever you choose to do with it, you’ll be great.

He let out his breath and opened his eyes.



Reaching deep inside, he felt a familiar surge of energy run up his spine. Hopefully the webbing would take the impact of this.

"Brace yourself, Troy."

Miles pushed out, pushing the energy into his hands and-


The webs surrounding Miles and Troy exploded into pieces and Miles let out a sigh of relief looking down at his hands in amazement.

He looked over his shoulder to check on Troy. "Are you all right, man?"

And Troy was braced, not knowing what to expect next, but knowing that there was an odd little thrill inside of him for it, but also a weird sense that he might be a little disappointed, because sometimes a lot of things like this never really did a very good job of meeting the amped-up expectations he'd wind up building them up to in his head. But this? Almost felt better than expected, even when he didn't know quite what he was expecting, and it did hurt, a little, that sudden jolt that went through him, but it seemed that the webbing had gotten the worst of it, and that massive tingle felt weird and not in a really good way, but whatever it was, the important thing was that it worked and, apparently, had come from Miles. So Troy was looking back, holding up a hand that still seemed to have some sort of current rushing through it, and his heart was going crazy fast, but he still managed to get out a very intelligent, very introspective, "....whoa. Did you--?" Either Miles did it, or they'd just been sort of struck by some sort of very localized lightning bolt or something, and, honestly, at this point, both seemed equally likely.

Miles was feeling pretty confident at this point. He did that strike on command.

"Yeah, man," he said with a smug look on his face. "Now check this out."

And with that he concentrated and a second later there was a "blip" and Miles turned himself invisible.

Oh. It was on now.

Okay, if he wasn't careful, Troy was going to start getting a little bit of a complex on how everyone seemed to have awesome powers or be talking cats or be ghosts except for him, but at the moment, his friend kind of just disappeared into thin air, and that sort of was the important part. "Dude," he said, bolting up now from the chair and looking around as if half expecting to find Miles actually just behind him or something. "Please tell me you just went invisible and that that lightning stuff didn't just, like, scramble my brain or something." He still felt pretty tingly over it, after all.

"Just invisible. Your brain is not scrambled," Miles said, fading back into view. "Listen, man. I know this is so weird right now. I'm still freaked about it myself."

He let out a sigh somewhere between exhaustion and relief.

"Listen, I have to go. I have to get back to Brooklyn because there's some stuff going down there and I have a promise I have to keep. Are you okay? Do you need to go to the clinic or anything? I think the webbing insulated you from the most of it but if you're hurt at all, I'm taking you to the clinic first."

Yeah, Miles fading back into view was not helping, or maybe it really was the shock of it all just starting to hit him as an after effect, but Troy shook his head a little, blinking, but still felt like everything might have been going fuzzy or disjointed or something. "Yeah, man," he had to admit, looking at his fingers, which he made sure he could still curl and see and stuff. "I don't know..." But here his friend was all going invisible and zapping webs and everything, so the urge to just tough it out surged inside of him and he dropped his hand, shaking his head. "Nah, I'm fine. It's fine. I'm...good?"

Miles looked at Troy with a wary eye and moved to his desk, scribbling out a quick note to Adora apologizing for the mess in the room and letting her know the webs would deteriorate over a period of hours.

"Troy, I think you need to check in with the clinic," he said finishing the note. "C'mon. I'll give you a lift."

And with that, tiny little Miles threw Troy over his shoulder as if he was a feather pillow. He then crawled out on to the ledge and thwipped out a web line.

"Hang on, man. I'll get you there in no time."

[Preplayed with the wonderful x_discospider_x. Because if you're going to do a Miles Morales/Spider-Man origin story, you should somehow work in an appearance from a Donald Glover character.

NFI. The fact that Miles came home and had visitors including Troy is okay to broadcast. Everything else is NFB.]