Malen'kaya Zemlya [2] [P. Parker]

3.10 Quote: "Excuse Me?"

When Peter came up to me the next day after classes had ended, I was not prepared.

He pulled me aside and stood close to me.

"Um-" I started.

"I told Ned about the glowy thingy," he said quietly.

I groaned and hit my head on his chest. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah, and we're going to check it out now. You wanna come?"

I sighed. "Yeah, you need someone with at least a semblance of initiative."

"Did you even understand what any of those words meant?" he teased skeptically.

"Of course." I scoffed. "Need is something you have to have in order to survive. And you have to have me with you in order to survive."

I started to skip off, him following after me at a much slower pace. "That's not what I- oh, nevermind.

"First, I say put the glowy thingy in the mass spectrometer." Ned started.

"First, we gotta come up with a better name than 'glowy thingy'." Peter cut in.

I nodded in agreement.

"You're right." Ned agreed too.

Footsteps other than my own reached my ears.

I frowned, but my frown turned to shock as two of the guys from last night entered the hallway.

"Crap," Peter said, ducking away behind a corner.

I swiftly followed but Ned stood in the middle of the hallway looking awkward.

"Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on." Peter hissed as I watched the two men.

Ned looked around awkwardly before quickly shuffling over to where we stood, hiding behind us.

"High schools creep me out." one guy said.

Peter, Ned and I watched them warily.

"They got this funny smell, you know?" the guy continued.

I sniffed the air to see if he was right and shrugged. "He's got a point," I whispered.

"Not exactly the time..." Peter muttered, looking at Ned. "Hey, that's one of the guys that tried to kill us."

"What?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"We gotta get out of here," Ned said, panicked.

"No, no, no, no, no. I gotta follow them." Peter shook his head. "Maybe they can lead us to the guy that dropped us in the lake."

I nodded. "That makes sense. Okay, how are we doing this?"

"You're staying here," he replied to me.

My brows raised. "Excuse me?"

"Wait, wait, wait. Someone dropped you guys in a lake?" Ned asked, drawing us back.

"Yeah, it was not good," Peter replied.

My brows were still inching closer to my hairline. "What do you mean, I'm staying here?"

"I mean, you're staying here."

"Make me. I dare you to try."

"Stay here."

"Peter-" Ned said as the two guys went into a classroom.

"No. Stay there, Ned, Ash." Peter said, raising an arm to keep us where we were and sneaking off.

Ned and I exchanged a glance before leaning around the corner to watch him as he snuck down the corridor.

A knock on the window behind us made us jump.

"What are you doing?" the guy who I recognized as Brian McKeever asked.

Ned's eyes widened. "Nothing."

I sighed.

"Oh," Brian replied.

"Yeah. You good?" Ned asked.

Brian gestured to the chessboard he was playing on. "Chess."

"Cool." I smile weakly, peering around the corner to see if anything had happened. You know, such as Peter getting thrown out of the classroom. That could be a problem.

"Yeah." Brian nodded.

Back at Peter's apartment, Ned and I were seated on the bottom bunk of Peter's bed.

Ned was holding one of Peter's web-shooters with a hologram of the city hovering above it.

"This is so awesome," Ned said.

"I know right?" Peter grinned in reply, hopping onto the bed beside me.

I reached forward and poked the hologram and was surprised it actually did anything as the model became more defined. "Cool..."

"They're in Brooklyn," Peter said.

A while passed and the three of us were still in Peter's room, watching the hologram.

Peter was hanging upside down from the ceiling, eating chips and occasionally throwing a few down into my mouth where I lay on the floor below him reading a book. Ned was still on Peter's bed.

"Staten Island." Ned declared.

A little while later, it was dark.

Ned was lying on the floor where I had been before while Peter worked at his desk and I braided the seventh part of my hair in a mirror.

"Leaving Jersey," Ned told us.

Peter projected a symbol of his mask on the wall.

I sighed, tying the plait with a loom band off of my finger.

Don't ask why I had loom bands.

Just don't.

More time had passed when the hologram began beeping.

Ned, wearing the Spider-Man mask, sat up on the bed, moments after I had. "They stopped," he said.

Peter hung down from the ceiling. "Maryland?"

"Wait, Maryland?" I repeated, standing up. "What's in Maryland? People named Mary?" I paused.  "Ignore that. That was dumb."

Peter smiled at me and shook his head. "I don't know. Evil lair?"

"They have a lair?" Ned asked.

"Dude," Peter said. "A gang with alien guns run by a guy with wings? Yeah, they have a lair."

I nodded in agreement, pulling google up on my phone. "Definitely. But why Maryland? From what I can tell, it's main attractions are some harbors and some Navy stuff."

"There's Ocean City," Ned added. "I went there once. Anyway, how are you guys gonna get there if it's, like, 300 miles away?"

The two exchanged a look and then looked at the Academic Decathlon trip poster on the wall.

I tugged one of my ten braids. "Decathlon?"

Peter said what we were all thinking. "Maryland's not too far from D.C."

(A/N)

Everyone tag yourself in the montage scene thing. I'm definitely Ashley.

But yeah, that's all I got today.

-lost_in_a_book__