Peter Parker. Young, teen, socially awkward — and secretly heroic — Peter Parker trekked along the sidewalk with his mind full of not-so-teenage problems.
And no, it wasn't because Flash and his cronies were being a dick, like usual, no, but because he broke his first prototype webshooter. Yes, the thing was rather big and clunky, and yes it was a prototype, but it was his first working one and he just had to bust it. Great!
He could make another one. He had a few ideas to tweak into a second working version but he still missed WS – 1.02. He was an aspiring scientist with a heart of invention, he was allowed to be sentimental! Sue him!... Or maybe don't.
And now, not only did he have to worry about when he could whip up a new webshooter, but he also had to worry about whipping up new batches of web fluid for however the new shooter came out.
"Ugh, come on!" Peter whined as that particular thought stuck. That meant his little savings were already booking a ride down the drain.
Fixing computers and appliances around his neighborhood, and even doing homework for a few kids at school — and Flash still owed him up to 50 bucks for all the ones he refused to pay for — could only get him so little. And he couldn't in his heart of hearts ask Aunt May for a few extra bucks. Yikes no.
He brought his hands out of his pockets and looked at the broken parts of his former webshooter. Yeah, the shit was busted through.
He could make do with the parts he got at home for the hardware, that part was easily taken care of.
He winced as he cut off a sharp right towards his neighborhood of Queens, already sighting a visual of the building he lived off in the distance, smushed tightly on both sides by buildings of distinct architecture.
"I can't keep skimming ingredients off chem lab." He mused painfully. No matter how little, on a consistent basis and Mr. Bradley was bound to notice.
And then there was the problem with his suit. Or rather the makeshift hoodie with passable swing skills, patented by Aunt May™, with a mask and oversized goggles, he called a suit.
Too much washing had made the fabric loose and faded and there was only so much patchwork he could do on it before it started resembling something he stole off a garbage truck.
"Why?!" he cried and asked no one in particular. In a world of super powered people and strange events, take a socially awkward teenage kid from the tail end of Queens, genetically modify his DNA, make him a pace smarter than the average kid and you wouldn't need three tries to get the result.
Only no one told him being a local hero (publicly acclaimed vigilante) would take away his feeding money too.
"Stupid stupid thugs. Who even robs a cinema?" he came to a stop at the main road leading directly to his house and sighed again.
"Right. Aunt May won't be at home for at least," he quickly checked the time, "three more hours. Might as well just drop these off before I leave."
His mind had turned into a conducive battlefield of thoughts as he absentmindedly made his way towards his house, got in, dropped off his bags, a quick shower and a change of clothes and just as easily left through the door.
He went past the old train station and the supermarket that was a front – used to be – for a drug house, all the while thinking that he might have bit more than he could chew when he donned on his hoodie to play hero. This shit cost broken arms and legs, as well as his feeding money.
He was quite the ways from his neighborhood, his head still filled with how he would procure a substitute for the chemicals he used in his web fluid. So far he had to make his webbing right there in the lab and then stash it home to line into the capsule he used in his shooters and that had a lot of risks to it.
He would have been infinitely better if he could make them in his room but that meant buying the chemicals and apparatus himself. And yeah, no one was going to sell that to a fifteen-ish kid.
Not to talk of his suit. He needed to replace it asap. With better material if possible, but that also meant money, which if no one was paying attention to, the teenage kid had no substantial amount of.
God! It sucked being a superhero. Not entirely true, but a good part of it sucked. Like being broke, and having to do homework every night.
He still doesn't have a name.
"I mean, the Human Spider is good right? Yeah, it's good." Unfortunately the avenue to announce it never came up, not even when he mistakenly bust up a drug house.
That particular one had been scary.
It was in this haze he came across a sign that read: Junk N' Stuff.
Pretty catchy.
It also amused him that someone would announce that they sold junk, well with stuff too, can't forget about that.
Idle curiosity on par with the teenage mind tugged him forward as he pushed open the door with the silent tinkle of a welcoming/alert bell.
The inside of the store looked full and with a first glance of how things were padded to every corner of the place, it did look kinda like a junkyard.
"Not you though, you look cool." Peter said to the dinosaur head hanging off a wall. It looked cool.
Now that he had more than a cursory glance, he instantly got a feel of why the place it was named so. He could see things from synthetic grass to potted plants, TV remote to strings for guitars, aluminum foil to copper coils in different parts of the store. Arranged in seemingly no order.
"Sick." He excitedly moved towards the dino head and ran his fingers over its skin. Weird. It didn't feel like plastic.
He was still trying to figure out what material it was made from when suddenly he was forced to duck as a gout of flames surged over his head.
"Holy! What the frick!" What the hell was that? It would have singed a lot more than his hair if he didn't have the tingles.
"Hello."
"Ahhhh!" A startled Peter spun around, hands and hackles raised, to see the unassuming man standing behind him.
"Um, sorry about that, sir. Um, good evening…" A wave of awkwardness travelled through him as he realized that he just screamed in the shopkeeper's face after touching his stuff. Aunt May would skin his hide if she found out.
"Don't sweat it, kid. What up?"
Right. He had wandered into this store without any particular reason. Honestly he'd rather just leave after embarrassing himself like that–
"How can it breathe fire?" he pointed at dino head. That was really cool. Not the part that it almost turned him into Scarface, but the part that it was a dinosaur head that breathed fire.
The man just shrugged. "Not really sure. Got it along with a few of the junks lying around."
The man moved into the counter and Peter walked to stand in front of him.
"So? Interested in anything you see?"
Not really, Peter thought. It really was just a lot of stuff lying around, not really junk, but not stuff he had any need for
That name thing really was on point.
"Not really." He said tentatively. The man scoffed.
"Trust me, kid, I'm pretty sure I got whatever it is you would want. A portable boomtube, a Transponder Snail, an Alchemist 5000, or even a Bread Slicer."
The man started listing off a bunch of things Peter had no idea what they were even about. What even was a portable boomtube? Some kind of retro music box?
"Well as long as you can pay for it that is." The man said with a smirk that left Peter even more stumped than anything.
"Wha— what makes you think I would want to buy something?" The question hardly left his mouth before he bookmarked it in the stupid category.
The owner chuckled. "Listen kid, I'm a Merchant. I can sniff out a potential customer even with my eyes closed."
It was Peter's turn to chuckle. "Who calls themselves a merchant nowadays?"
The look the man gave him was one you would give an endangered panda at a zoo. One that said: oh you naïve and dumb thing.
"I'm not your run-of-the-mill regular salesman, kid. I'm an inter-extra-dimensional Merchant. I've even got things from the next mirror-verse over. So, what can I hook you up with?"
At this point Peter hesitated, maybe this was why Aunt May always warned him about getting scammed. Was he so easily convinced?
"Don't worry kid, even if it were a nuke, I'm pretty sure I can hook you up with one. And you don't have to worry about anyone knowing, it falls under Client's Confidentiality."
Peter looked at him funny, playing off the nuke as the joke it was. "You know, store owners don't usually have a Confidentiality Clause."
"Pfft. Your regular store owners perhaps. Hello, multi-dimensional merchant here. Now, what can Junk N' Stuff get ya?"
At this point, had he been a normal teenager, he would have already hightailed it, because the so-called shopkeeper-merchant looked sketchy as hell.
Probably like those guys trying to sell kids drugs.
Well Peter didn't really have anything he wanted to b–
"Chemicals… do you have like chemicals, you know, for science labs and stuff." Peter asked slowly, and seeing the man just staring at him he tried to explain. "I'm trying to set up a small lab in my room, you know… yeah."
The man smiled and Peter shifted. It was one of those knowing smiles that hid a lot of teasing material behind it.
"Hold up for a sec, I think I got a catalogue for 'High school chemicals' lying around somewhere."
He opened the cabinet behind him but Peter couldn't really see what was in there except for some vague shapes.
He took out a thick bind, red covered, and flipped through its yellow-rimmed pages with an appreciative hum.
"Yep, got a few standard solvents: acids, bases, a couple of the more obscure indicators and pigments. How about you make a list and I'll set it all up for you, as well as the price tag."
And that got Peter nervous again. His joy of getting his own stash of chemicals was run through when he realized he probably didn't have money for them.
Sure, all he needed was a pint of various chemicals and he could make a batch of fluid to last him a few days of patrol but he doubt the shopkeeper would be inclined to sell such little volume.
"Yeah, I know that look. Low on green?"
"Hmm." Peter scratched his head sheepishly. "Well I was thinking of buying in small amounts."
Unfortunately for the broke rookie hero, the Merchant shook his head.
"Figures." He shook his head despondently.
"Tell you what," at this Peter looked at him suspiciously. That sounded a lot like an intro to an incoming scam. "got anything on you you'd like to sell?"
"Like?" He took a cautious step backwards.
The Merchant shrugged. "Junk. Stuff. Anything at all, if it has value I'll make sure to compensate you."
Peter was about to outright refuse and leave the shop and its strange owner when he remembered something. He did have something of little value to him — except for its sentimental attachment that is.
Think of the web fluid of a new suit. There's no more spare hoodie to use.
It was a hard choice between an honest man's work and the greater good. His lips twisted upwards as a choice was made. Alas, teenage fantasies won in the end.
"I only have this. It's broken but I made it myself." He brought out the broken WS-1.02 and gave it to the man.
The man took it, holding it softly to his eyes and hummed appreciatingly. This was better than selling his web fluid recipe to Oscorp or some other company. Well, not really.
"What do we have here? A jettonsing trinket that shoots at what, 30 clicks. Impressive."
Peter's eyes widened. Was it surprising that the man could tell the general use of it? Very.
"Y-yeah, something like that." He said. "It is shoddy make but it did pretty well for itself."
"I can tell." The man said as he put down the shooter with a thinking expression. "Say, this 'ol piece of junk, you got any more like it?"
Peter shook his head. Even if he did, he wouldn't say.
"Sorry no. It's the first of its kind, well the first one that worked."
The man's eyes lit up. "So it's an original. An antique, huh."
"Yeah, you could say that." Technically it was.
The man started murmuring to himself but Peter couldn't clearly hear what he was saying, only bits of it.
"… OG shooter… red and blue suit… not yet."
And then he turned around with a smile.
"You're in luck kid. Quite an antique you got there, even for a junk. How about I cut you a thousand for the shooter?"
"…"
"Kid?"
"… a thousand bucks?"
"Yeah, for the shooter. If you don't want it–"
"Deal. No take backs."
"Take backs? What are you, twelve?"
"15… not 12. Oh, and I'm Peter by the way." He stretched his hand out and the man took it good-naturedly.
"Hm, Peter. Call me Isaac. The Merchant." Isaac said with a smile. "Now how about we sort you out with those chemicals."
Damn. Today really did turn out a great day for Peter.
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Portable Boomtube: Boom tubes are wormholes created by handheld sentient devices called mother boxes used by the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips. They allow instant transportation between any two points and are such named due to the distinctive large "BOOM" sound they make upon opening. (DC Multiverse)
Transponder Snail: Transponder Snails are a class of telepathic snails that can communicate via vocal and visual means worldwide. (One Piece)
Alchemist 5000: The Alchemy 5000 is the microwave shaped device can turn metal into gold created by Mary and Susan. (Johnny Test)
Bread Slicer: The Bread Slicer is a special knife invented by Dexter specifically for the purpose of perfectly cutting bread into even slices. (Dexter Laboratory)