Peter jolted up from his bed, drenched in cold sweat. He looked around frantically, searching for the danger, but nothing happened. Peter took a deep realizing he’s alone in the dormitory and no attacks were coming his way. He brought a hand up to his face and let out a shaky breath.
“It was just a nightmare”, he told himself as he turned to let his feet touch the ground. What was the nightmare even about? He couldn’t remember. Peter took out his phone to check the time only to see it was already seven in the morning.
“Shit, I’m late for breakfast!” He jumped up to his feet and was about to run out and straight to the cafeteria when suddenly his world went dark. He hit the floor hard and stayed there a minute waiting for his vision to come back. “What the heck was that?”
As he waited for his vision to stop being blurry he wondered what could have caused this. His legs completely gave out under him out of nowhere and he got a complete blackout in front of his eyes. Was something wrong? He shook his head to get the last of the blur from his vision and stood up again, this time much more careful. He stood there motionless for a moment waiting to see if the incident would repeat, but when nothing happened he shrugged it off as just him standing up to quickly.
Just as he did that he remembered why he got up so quickly in the first place and rushed towards the cafeteria to catch at least the end of breakfast before school. As he swung through the corridors he started noticing the uncomfortable feeling in his throat running down to his stomach. Each pull on the string to move him forward made him more and more nauseous and by the time he reached the final corridor he gave up on swinging and started to wobble his way over to the cafeteria. He opened the door shakily only to see everyone else halfway done with their meal. As he moved closer to sit with his friends Nova noticed him.
“Hey, guys! Look who finally decided to wake up!” Everyone turned to look at Peter who waved weakly in greeting.
“Yeah, yeah, thanks for waking me up, by the way.” Although it wasn’t visible under the Spider-Man mask, Peter rolled his eyes as he sat next to Nova, sarcasm clear in his voice.
“Don’t be like that web-head, we left you a portion.”, Nova slid a tray over to Peter. It was filled to the brim with half a dozen sandwiches, a bowl of cereal, a scoop of scrambled eggs, some fruit and a glass of apple juice to wash it all down. “Your favorite monstrosity! I really don’t know how aunt May managed to feed you before the academy.” Peter didn’t say anything back, so Nova just turned back to the conversation he had with Squirrel Girl earlier.
Peter stared at his tray with a grimace. It really was his favorite and he always ate everything that was served, but after that morning rush he felt too nauseous to be hungry. Regardless he lifted his mask so it was just over his nose and started munching on one of the sandwiches. Even if he felt like throwing up he couldn’t just not eat anything, there was a lot to do with school, training and patrols that day, so he needed all the energy he could get.
He gave up after halfway through the third sandwich he gagged and dropped the uneaten half onto the plate. He guessed that was enough for now and looked around to see if anyone had noticed his little mishap. Luckily everyone seemed to be absorbed in their own conversations and wrapping up after eating. Peter let out a breath of relief and decided to also clean up. He stood up, walked up to the window leading to the kitchen and slid his tray through it.
“Spider-Man, are you feeling alright?” Startled by Iron Fist’s voice right next to him Peter turned around.
“Yeah, why you asking?”
“I have noticed you haven’t eaten most of your breakfast. That’s… unlike you.” Peter groaned at the dramatic pause.
“Why do you always have to talk in this weird melodramatic way? I'm fine, just not really hungry. Plus I don’t want to be late to class.” Iron Fist pursed his lips into a thin line as he slid his own tray through the kitchen window still looking at Peter as if his words weren’t convincing enough.
“I believe you friend, but just know that even the strongest of trees may fall under the strength of a storm.”
Peter stared at him for a longer moment before turning around and walking away. As he moved to the door he yelled over his shoulder, “I told you already, I don’t understand what your weird riddles mean.”
Danny watched as Spider-Man left the room noticing his little stumble while walking through the door. He clicked his tongue in disapproval, but decided not to push any further for now. Instead he walked up to White Tiger and Power Man to walk with them to class.
_______
Two classes had passed by and it was becoming harder and harder to pretend everything was fine. In the beginning Peter wanted to believe his malaise was caused only by his morning rush, but when instead of subsiding, it began to grow worse he couldn’t say that anymore.
Now, alongside his previous nausea, he felt burning hot in his gut while his arms and legs felt as if they were about to freeze off. His limbs felt heavy like lead and he was feeling slightly lightheaded, so his movements became sluggish and he decided to not sling through the halls like how he would usually. Peter groaned as he opened his locker.
“Yo, Spidey!” He looked over in the direction of the voice to see Agent Venom walking towards him.
“Hey, Flash.” He said meekly and smiled slightly, which caused the lenses of his mask to shrink in the specific way that allowed other people to somewhat know his expression. Venom came to a stop right before him.
“Woah, you don’t look so hot.” Peter let out a low grumble as he kept searching his locker for a notebook.
“Thanks Flash, didn’t know that.”
Venom backtracked a little surprised, “Wha-? No! I meant like, like, you don’t look very good, I mean, well,”, Venom tried to correct his slip up, convinced that Peter misunderstood him. He took a deep breath to calm down the word vomit he just spewed and start from the beginning. “I meant to say, you look sick. Are you feeling alright?”
Peter glared at Venom annoyed. Usually he had a lot of patience for almost everyone on the team, but at the moment his patience was at its breaking point. He sighed heavily trying to calm himself down. Maybe it was just his tone that didn’t make his sarcasm noticeable. There was no reason to get angry at Venom.
“I feel fine Flash, but thanks for asking. I must’ve just slept wrong or something.” Venom nodded accepting the excuse and was about to walk away, but stopped when he noticed something.
Spider-Man twitched as if someone just shocked him with electrostatic. Spider-Man must’ve noticed the way he was staring and was now staring back with a raised eyebrow.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You just twitched.”
Spider-Man stood there quiet for a bit surprised by the answer. Finally he cleared his throat, “It’s cold in here, so it’s only normal that I flinch.” Right after saying that he shut closed his locker and started rushing down the hall.
Flash gazed after him worried, noticing how the other twitched two more times before disappearing behind the corner.
_______
Peter rubbed his temples as he trudged towards the training room. His head was killing him and he felt unreasonably tired, but he made it this far and training was the last thing on the schedule. Granted it lasted over two hours, but if he’d given up now there wouldn’t be any chance for him to go on a patrol later. He felt horrible, but he still wanted to go out and simply enjoy some alone time in the city.
His team was great, but living in the same room with eleven other people was exhausting and he needed to get out of there from time to time even if it meant pushing through some weird kind of migraine. He felt his shoulder jerk up and sighed heavily. Earlier he took some medicine for his headache and was hoping it would start working soon, but ever since Flash pointed out those twitches he couldn’t stop noticing them too and there wasn’t much he could do to stop them.
It was annoying and all he wanted was to get over that last training session and go out already. Maybe he could visit aunt May and take a nap in his own room? Peter smiled at the thought. He walked up to the heavy metal door and scanned his hand to open them. Everybody else was already there waiting for him.
“Finally! What took you so long?” White Tiger called out to him from the middle of the room. As he walked up to her Peter rubbed his arms hoping to warm up his freezing limbs and relieve some of the soreness from his tired muscles.
“Bathroom.” He said simply, not in the mood for witty banter. Power Man raised an eyebrow at him, surprised by the lack of quips.
“That must’ve been one hell of a trip. We were about to start without you.” Peter only nodded instead of answering. He didn’t want to talk about how he went there to vomit in hopes of getting rid of the nausea, but sadly it didn’t help and now he felt even worse than before. The duo didn’t say anything and only exchanged knowing looks.
Suddenly Iron Spider called out to them from his place next to the console. “Are we ready?” He got a round of agreeing murmurs and nodded. “Alright, I’m turning the bots on in three… two… now!” He jumped over the retracting console into the center of the room.
A plethora of guns, lasers and other weapons emerged from the walls and immediately started shooting at the young heroes. Peter jumped up to the corner of the room, hoping to avoid most of the blast from his spot close to the ceiling. He started observing the others and giving them advice when he noticed things they didn’t, which wasn’t much since he had to really squint in order to fight off the blur creeping at the edges of his vision.
“Dagger, look out! Behind you!” Peter yelled out the moment he noticed the laser cannon that was aiming straight at Dagger’s back. He quickly swung over to kick the weapon from its base before Dagger could even turn around.
“Thanks, Spider-Man!” Peter raised a thumbs up and was about to answer when suddenly his whole world tilted sharply to the side and before he could even think of stopping it Peter’s head hit the ground. The pounding in his head took on strength causing Peter to wince and squeeze his eyes shut tightly.
He vaguely registered someone talking to him, but couldn’t focus on the voice as it was muffled by the gunshots. Or maybe it was this exhausting ringing in his ears? It didn’t really matter to him at the moment which one was it. Instead he tried to pry open his heavy eyelids to see who was trying to communicate with him, but didn’t achieved much as his vision was now almost completely black. Peter winced and once more closed his eyes before curling into a ball.
His body felt so heavy and he didn’t have any strength left in him to fight against it nor the wave of sleep that overwhelmed him. Right before passing out Peter thought about how he was going to miss his patrol.
_______
After Spider-Man passed out the training was cut short. No one knew why this happened or what was going on, so after sending their team leader to the medbay everybody decided to head back to the dormitory where they could wait for any new information.
“Ugh, how long is this going to take?” Nova groaned loudly as he laid upside-down on his bed, his head hanging over the edge.
“We need to be patient, Nova. Doctor Connors said he’ll notify us when he finds out what’s going on.” Iron Fist walked up to the bed and sat next to Nova.
“I knew something was wrong! I should’ve dragged him to doc right then and there by force.” Agent Venom walked around the room wildly gesticulating.
“Now that you mention it I also noticed he was acting quite odd.” Cloak said as he floated down from one of the top beds onto the floor.
“Yeah, and he was, like, super weird too!” Squirrel Girl chimed in.
Suddenly the door slid open and in walked doctor Connors. Everyone turned to look at him as he walked up to them reviewing Spider-Man’s file. White Tiger stood up from her place at one of the desks and moved closer to the group.
“Doctor Connors! Do you know what’s going on with Spider-Man?”
“Yes, it seems that Spider-Man’s condition has been caused by his last encounter with Armin Zola.” Rhino and Agent Venom exchanged a glance, before the former stepped to the front.
“But, we defeated Zola. How could that harm Spidey?”
“Well, remember when in the report you said Zola tried to take control of Spider-Man’s body?”, both Rhino and Venom nodded, “It looks like, even though the transition wasn’t successful, it still took a toll on his body. The tests haven’t shown anything concerning though, other than what we already knew, so we’re just going to keep Spider-Man in medbay under observation for a few days and then he’ll be free to go.” Connors smiled as he finished the sentence and a collective of relieved sighs could be heard.
“Can we go see him?”, everyone looked at Nova surprised and the teen grew flustered, “What? I just want to make fun of him for fainting in the middle of training, is all!” Nova’s face started turning red, so Connors decided to put him out of his misery. He cleared his throat gaining everyone’s attention.
“He’s still asleep now and probably will be for a while, but you can come in later if you want.”
The moment that was said the room erupted with happy chatter. Someone threw in an idea of buying Spider-Man some get-well-soon presents while someone else thought baking a cake would be better. Doctor Connors just smiled and backed out of the room unnoticed.
He walked into the medbay and sat down by Spider-Man’s bedside.
“Your team is really happy you’re doing well, Spider-Man.” Peter only mumbled something incoherent under his breath and went right back to snoring softly. Connors chuckled at that and stood up to head out of the room. He turned off the lights and looked over his shoulder one last time before closing the door to let the teenage hero rest.
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