Free Fall [PETER PARKER]

ONE: ARE YOU MYSTIFIED?

chapter one

"No sports, wear your safety goggles in Chemistry, I don't care how stupid you think you look with them on, no healing, no moving shit with your mind, and no getting into catfights." Thea said finally with a sigh.

Ana raised her brows at her mother expectantly, "Is that it? Or do you want to send a probation officer with me, too?"

Thea pursed her lips. "I'll probably think of something else but I actually think I'm being quite generous compared to what you put me and your father through in Sokovia."

"I thought we were over that." Ana replied with a huff. "And you didn't even see me out there, I was killing it. Captain America saluted me. Me! Ana Michaels."

There was a hesitant look on Thea's face, which worried Ana immensely. "I don't know." She said in deep thought. "Maybe this school is too much, we don't want to be driving too much attention towards us."

"No, Mom, please don't take this school away from me. Out of everything, please just let me have this one thing. Whatever else you want to limit me to, however many more days you ground me for, I won't say another word about any of it if you just let me go to this school." Ana's eyes filled with hope and desperation for her mother to find the goodness in her heart to grant her what she was asking for, while Thea raised her brows at Ana, not entirely convinced. "This is the school that you and Dad went to. I just want to have something that I can connect to you guys with on a different level. This is normal, this isn't flying, this isn't moving things with my mind. Can't I have something normal that's even remotely cool as school can get?"

The woman let out a laugh at Ana's speech, before pulling her daughter in for a tight hug. "You are anything but normal, because a normal kid would never put the word cool and school in the same context as you just did." Ana smiled as she hugged her mother tightly back, before they each released the other from each other's grasp. "And we really shouldn't have told you about how your dad and I met because I don't want you making boyfriends at fifteen and thinking it's okay and true love and all that, just because your mom and dad did it."

Ana quirked her brow, "You never added that to the list of things I wasn't allowed to do?"

Thea rolled her eyes. "Well I didn't think I had to before. Now go before you're late for your first day or I forget everything you said in your little speech and change my mind about you going to that school."

Ana smiled before giving her mother a chaste kiss on the cheek and slinging her heavy backpack that was full of school supplies over her shoulder. "Thanks, Mom. I will be home by 4:30, 5 at the latest."

She opened the door and stepped out of the apartment, into the hallway. From there Ana anxiously went on her way to Midtown School of Science and Technology, where all the smart kids supposedly go in Queens. This was the school that had educated both her parents and had been the place where they'd met and fallen in love. And it was meant to be, it had to. What were the odds that two kids with superhuman abilities had attended the same school at the same time? Zero is what Ana would've guessed.