"Nice to meet you too," Amadeus said. His eyes immediately darted down, locking onto the homemade taser strapped to Peter's palm. He didn't even blink as he reached out. "That pressure mechanism is brilliant. Do you mind if I look at it?"
Peter unstrapped the taser-patch and handed it over, watching his new classmate closely. Amadeus Cho. If this was the same Amadeus Cho who ranked as the seventh smartest person on the planet in the comics, what was he doing in an ordinary public high school? Someone like him should be defending a doctoral thesis at an Ivy League by age fifteen.
I am getting a very distinct feeling my high school experience is going to be incredibly complicated, Peter thought.
Amadeus turned the device over in his hands, his eyes tracing the wiring. "The internal circuitry is actually pretty basic. I could probably replicate this for self-defense." He offered a sheepish grin.
So, he was a genius who could reverse-engineer his taser-patch from a thirty-second glance. Great. That was just more evidence for Peter's theory.
"In my experience," Peter said, taking the device back, "bringing a weapon to a bully fight just makes them hit you harder the next time." He slipped it into his pocket, secretly wishing he had the battery specs to wire the charge directly into his web-shooters. "The trick is to just get faster than them. Uncle Ben ran me through combat drills all summer until I stopped getting hit."
"Alright, boys," Gwen's voice cut through the conversation. She crossed her arms, nodding toward the lingering crowd of students whispering in the hallway. "Are we going to stand here analyzing homemade weapons until the sun goes down? I feel like an exhibit at the zoo."
"Right, sorry," Peter said. "Guys, this is Gwen. Neighbor, childhood friend, and the person who usually chases off bullies or drags me to the nurse's office."
"Hi," Gwen said crisply, shutting down any further introductions. "We need to keep moving, Peter, or we're never going to escape this hallway."
"Right," Peter said, waving a hand toward the gymnasium doors. "We were heading out to check the club recruitment fair. You guys want to tag along?"
"Sure," Harry shrugged. "We're all freshmen. Might as well."
The four of them pushed out into the central quad. It was chaos. Upperclassmen barked through megaphones, trying to recruit for track, football, and the student council. The three boys instinctively gravitated away from the athletic booths, drifting toward the quieter, nerdier fringes of the fair.
"They actually have a tabletop gaming club," Peter noted, looking at a folding table with a single, lonely upperclassman sitting behind it. "Looks completely dead, though. I thought everyone loved Dungeons & Dragons?"
"Running a campaign is fun with friends in a basement," Harry said, shaking his head. "I'm not committing to a school-sanctioned roleplay schedule."
Peter looked at Harry, his mind suddenly connecting the dots. Harry Lyman. He had been so distracted by Amadeus Cho that he hadn't fully processed the tall, handsome kid with the leather jacket. The cheekbones. The inherited confidence. It made perfect sense why Harry Lyman was hanging out with Peter Parker instead of Harry Osborn.
Could Harry be Norman Osborn's kid flying under the radar?
Peter's mind raced. A billionaire heir hiding out under his mother's maiden name in a public school. Even without the looming threat of the Green Goblin in the background, the sheer narrative potential of these two sitting at his lunch table was staggering. And Peter just accepted it. After all, he was Spider-Man. Weird was his baseline.
"This is going to be an absolutely unhinged four years," Peter muttered to himself.
Gwen shot him a sharp look. "What was that?" She raised an eyebrow. "Are you pouting because there's no Lego club? Or are you just realizing you're going to spend the next four years on the sidelines again?"
"I wasn't on the sidelines in middle school," Peter protested weakly.
Harry stopped walking. He turned to Peter, his eyes wide. "Wait. You like Lego?"
"Uh... yeah?" Peter blinked. "Is that weird?"
"I've been trying to find someone to help me build the Millennium Falcon!" Harry said, his cool-guy facade entirely vanishing. "I bought it months ago, but it's massive. I can't build it alone, and none of my old friends care to help!"
Amadeus leaned in, suddenly intense. "Wait. Are we talking about the new one?"
"No," Harry said seriously. "The Ultimate Collector's Series. UCS 10179."
Amadeus gasped. "Oh my god. You actually have the UCS?"
Peter felt his jaw slacken. That set retailed for $500 on its released, but now since its discontinued the price triple to $1500 - $2000. It was a mythical object. He could never justify asking Uncle Ben for that kind of money. Ironically, the chemical cost of Peter's two spare Spider-Man suits and his entire web-shooter arsenal was cheaper than Harry's Lego set.
"Wow," Gwen said dryly, looking at the three boys who were now vibrating with excitement. "Okay, I'm going to leave before this turns into a full-scale convention. Rock band tryouts are calling my name. I wouldn't understand this Lego meeting anyway."
"See you later, Gwen," Peter said. "Actually, wait. I've got a... thing after school. I can't walk home with you today. Catch you tomorrow?"
Gwen's eyes narrowed slightly. "Why did that sound like a question?"
"It wasn't," Peter stammered. "Just... make some cool friends! Have fun at the drums!"
"Don't worry, smart boy," Gwen smirked, turning on her heel. "I'm already way more popular than you."
Peter watched her walk away. When he turned back around, Harry and Amadeus were both wearing identical, malicious grins.
"What?" Peter asked, suddenly defensive.
"Are you absolutely sure you guys are just neighbors?" Harry smirked.
"Yes!" Peter said instantly. "We're just very good friends!"
Harry ignored him, turning to Amadeus. "Thoughts?"
"He was completely terrified of her just now," Amadeus noted clinically.
"I wasn't terrified."
"So she just aggressively controls your schedule?" Harry teased.
"Okay, fine, I'm a coward," Peter sighed, burying his face in his hands to decisively kill the topic. "Can we please go back to the Lego? How are we doing this?"
"Right," Harry said, regaining his focus. "My house is a little... inconvenient right now. And Amadeus is staying with a host family. We don't have the floor space to build it. Can we do it at your place, Peter? Would your family mind?"
"No problem," Peter said immediately. "Aunt May will probably cry tears of joy that I actually brought friends home."
The three of them continued their lap around the courtyard. They lingered near the Anime Club booth for a solid five minutes, though none of them were brave enough to actually sign their names on the clipboard. Harry almost got roped into the tennis team, while Peter and Amadeus interrogated the upperclassmen running the Astronomy and Geology booths. Ultimately, they passed on both.
"Astronomy requires way too much expensive gear," Peter sighed. "And geology isn't even a real science."
"Agreed," Amadeus nodded solemnly. "Geology is just astrology for rocks."
Harry, who had just been politely rejected by the tennis captain, looked at them in exasperation. "I like science, but is geology really that bad?"
"Yes," Peter and Amadeus said in unison.
Before Harry could argue, Peter stopped dead in his tracks. "Wait. Is that girl cosplaying Sherlock Holmes?"
A few yards away stood a completely deserted folding table. Behind it sat a striking girl wearing a heavy, classic Ulster trench coat and a deerstalker hat—the exact same ridiculous style Gwen had thrown at Peter that morning. She was waving a clipboard with aggressive boredom.
"Midtown Detective Agency is recruiting!" she yelled at nobody in particular. "We take anyone who can pass the entrance question! Come on, are there any takers?"
Peter wandered over, leaning on the table. "What does a high school detective agency actually do? Are people hiring you to find stolen lunch money?"
The girl slumped in her chair, the Holmes facade cracking. "No. Literally no one hires us for serious mystery work. It's basically just an excuse to sit in an empty classroom, read mystery novels, design puzzles, and get an extracurricular credit."
"I'm in," Amadeus said instantly. He looked at Peter and Harry. "Think about it. We don't have to do anything. Just read a few books, solve a few puzzles, and get free credits."
"Don't get too excited, kid," the girl said, sitting up straight and tapping her pen against the clipboard. "You still have to pass the entrance exam. Ready? A wealthy man who loves ciphers dies. His final will is locked in a vault with a five-digit passcode. No one knows the combination. The only clue in the room is a desk calendar from the year 2015 with a single date circled in red marker: March 14th. What's the code?"
"31415," Peter and Amadeus said at the exact same time.
"March 14th... oh, Pi Day!" Harry realized a second later. He looked at Peter and Amadeus, shaking his head. "You guys react terrifyingly fast."
If this were across the Pacific Ocean, the date format might have made the code entirely different. But in America, March 14th, 2015 was 3/14/15. Pi Day.
"Alright, color me impressed," the girl said, tossing three application forms onto the table. "Fill these out and drop them off at Room 114. Tell them Jessica sent you. I'm the club president."
The three of them filled out the forms in silence. As they walked away, Harry looked down at the paper.
"The president is out here recruiting in a trench coat?" Harry muttered. "Is this club actually legit?"
Peter didn't answer.
As they walked toward the exit, Peter's eyes caught the glow of a large digital bulletin board scrolling through student job listings. One particular posting flashed across the screen.
STUDENT INTERNSHIP: WEB MAINTENANCE & SERVER UPTIME — THE DAILY BUGLE.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, noticing Peter had stopped.
"Nothing," Peter said, a slow smile spreading across his face as his eyes locked onto the screen. "Just saw something interesting."
PS: In the main 616 comic universe, Jessica Jones and Peter Parker actually did go to Midtown High School together! She even had a massive crush on him before he got bitten by the radioactive spider. But this is not Jones, but another Jessica!