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The first time it happened, Tony thought it was a fluke.
“Hey, kid,” Tony called out across the lab, spinning in his chair. “I’ve been trying to fine-tune this vibration dampener for the Quinjet landing gear, but it keeps destabilizing at high altitudes. Thoughts?”
Peter didn’t even look up from the sandwich he was eating.
“Did you check the phase shift in the alloy matrix? If the polymer’s flexing at altitude, it might be interfering with the micro-vibration syncopation. You’d need to introduce a counter-frequency using a phase-dampening mesh. Like… uh, crosshatch nanocarbon lacing?”
He took another bite of his sandwich and added, mouth full, “Or just, like, glue it better.”
Tony stared.
Bruce blinked. “That… actually makes sense.”
Tony turned slowly to Banner. “I know it makes sense, that’s the problem.”
Peter blinked innocently. “Wait, was that not what you were gonna do?”
—
The second time was at the Compound’s mini-conference between the science team: Shuri, Bruce, Tony, and Peter. (Peter had been invited last minute because he was “around.”)
The topic? An interdimensional rift Strange had warned them about. It was emitting strange particles no one could identify.
Everyone took turns presenting theories. Some got technical. Some involved diagrams. Some included poorly drawn stick figures (Tony’s).
Peter sat curled in the corner with his hoodie pulled over his head like a raccoon, holding a glass of chocolate milk. Eventually, someone asked his opinion.
He looked up, confused. “Oh. Um. I dunno, it kinda sounds like quantum slipstream particles. If they’re fluctuating on a decaying sine curve, it’s probably not a wormhole—more like a rift echo. You could cancel it out if you bounce a neutral charge in reverse through the entry point and collapse it like a folding pocket dimension.”
Silence.
Shuri turned slowly. “I’m sorry. Say that again?”
Peter blinked. “Which part?”
Strange actually choked on his tea.
Tony muttered, “That’s it. I’m putting an age cap on genius. This is ridiculous.”
—
It didn’t stop.
Peter casually hacked into a Stark prototype without realizing it was locked down.
He solved a math problem Bruce had been working on for six months while waiting for his pizza rolls to cool.
He corrected Strange on an inter-dimensional geometry theorem. Strange.
When Natasha asked him how he knew all this, Peter blinked. “I don’t. I just… guess? It’s like a gut feeling.”
“Your gut can decipher quantum string theory?”
“I guess?”
Natasha stared at him and muttered, “Terrifying.”
—
One day, Sam saw Peter fiddling with some old junk tech in the lounge.
“What’re you doing, kid?”
Peter didn’t look up. “Oh, just repurposing this old drone module into a Wi-Fi extender slash holographic projector slash burrito warmer.”
“…What?”
“Yeah, I figured, like, if you’re gonna stream movies in the kitchen, you might as well have snacks.”
He held it up. It worked.
Sam stared for a full ten seconds before turning and walking away, muttering, “I’m not asking. I don’t wanna know.”
—
Peter wasn’t trying to be smarter than everyone.
He didn’t even realize he was.
He just talked, solved things, made weird gadgets, and muttered ideas that changed the direction of entire projects — then walked off to get ice cream.
Bruce once whispered to Tony, “You think he’s playing us?”
Tony just looked at Peter — who had an upside-down book balanced on his face while laying on the couch, muttering, “Ohh, I get it now. I was reading it backward this whole time,” like that wasn’t insane — and said, “No. He has no idea.”
It started in Physics.
Mr. Harrington was mid-lecture on basic Newtonian laws when Peter, politely as ever, raised his hand.
“Uh, sir? I think your force diagram is off. The arrow for gravitational force should point toward the Earth’s center, not just ‘down.’ That’s not always the same direction, especially when you’re not on a flat surface—like, say, orbit.”
Mr. Harrington paused. “…Yes, well, we’re on Earth right now, Peter.”
Peter nodded, cheerful. “Right! But I figured it was worth mentioning in case anyone’s ever in space. You know. For future reference.”
The class snickered.
Flash muttered, “Weirdo.”
Mr. Harrington sighed and crossed out his diagram.
That was Day One.
—
Day Five, Ms. Warren (biology) was already twitchy.
“Your assignment was a three-page summary of DNA replication. Not… this,” she said, holding up Peter’s paper like it had personally offended her.
Peter tilted his head. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You mapped the entire replication cycle of Tardigrades. In Latin.”
“Well,” Peter said, blinking innocently, “they’re more radiation resistant than most lifeforms, so I figured it’d be interesting to contrast their protein structure to humans.”
“You drew diagrams in 3D.”
“…Yeah. Sorry, was that not allowed?”
Ms. Warren walked straight to her desk and popped two Advil.
—
English class was the breaking point.
Principal Morita later found Ms. Sinclair (an MFA-holding, poetry-loving, caffeine-fueled woman in her thirties) sitting motionless in her classroom, staring at the wall.
When asked what happened, she just handed over Peter’s assignment.
Assignment: “Write about a personal experience using metaphors and imagery.”
Peter’s Submission:
“The Collapsing of Stars” – A poetic metaphor comparing grief after Uncle Ben’s death to supernovas, time dilation, entropy, and dark matter.
It referenced Hawking radiation.
It RHYMED.
“I don’t know if I just read poetry,” Ms. Sinclair whispered, “or a dissertation. By a sixteen-year-old.”
Peter was actually fifteen. She did not find that comforting.
—
Math went no better.
Peter corrected the textbook.
He didn’t mean to. He just… noticed a flaw in the solution steps.
“Sorry, Ms. Kolinsky, but I think this equation assumes a constant rate of acceleration, but the second derivative here shows a variable input. So the final answer should actually be negative seventeen, not thirty-two. Also the graph’s labeled wrong.”
Pause.
Peter added, helpfully: “Want me to send a corrected version to the publisher?”
She just walked away.
—
Flash, of course, tried to use it against him.
“What, you live for extra credit? Nerd.”
Peter blinked. “There’s extra credit?”
Flash’s eye twitched.
—
At one point, three teachers cornered Principal Morita in the hallway.
“We think Peter Parker may be a mutant,” Ms. Warren whispered.
“He might be a robot,” Ms. Kolinsky said.
“He fixed my SmartBoard,” Ms. Sinclair snapped. “I didn’t even tell him it was broken. He just walked in and said, ‘Your calibration grid’s misaligned,’ and FIXED IT.”
Principal Morita sighed deeply. “He’s been like this since freshman year.”
“He was fourteen!”
—
Peter, meanwhile, just assumed school was like this for everyone.
“I’m… not even top of my class,” he said once, clearly baffled.
Ned snorted soda out his nose.