Spidey and the Iron Girl: Vol. 1

#3: By Order of the Parenting Committee...

Saturday morning came too quickly for both teenagers. Peter, at least, got to sleep in after a long night on patrol. (Though he kept having nightmares about girls in glasses stepping all over him in their high heels... huh. Wonder who that could be about...) Collin, however, was in for an early morning ordeal.

Her father had her driven to Stark Tower in Manhattan where he outfitted her with two bracelets. With a press of a button-- or a remotely controlled access program Tony had on his phone--she would be enveloped in a suit made of a space-grade alloy composed of titanium and vibranium. It had all the same functions as the suit she was used to-- flight, increased strength, built in access to FRIDAY's database-- with one major exception: no blasters, lasers, bullets, or weaponry of any kind.

Collin would have complained-- What, you don't trust me not to kill your precious Spidey-kins?-- but she and her father were not speaking at the moment. She knew some people used that phrase lightly. She, however, was not one of those people. She barely even looked at her dad as he placed the bracelets on her wrists and walked her through the programming.

"Are you paying attention? This is important," He'd asked, a little thrown off by her continued silence. She'd just nodded, finally making eye contact with him. He was struck by how much she looked like her mother when she was angry. Like a pillar of ice. He resisted the urge to try to joke away the tension, call her Peanut, do something-- anything!-- to get her to smile at him. He was the one who was mad at her, not the other way around. Collin was just going to have to get over this.

The one time Collin spoke to her father was when he told her about the first part of what he was referring to as his Premium Punishment Package™: taking the subway to Queens.

"The subway?" She'd all but gasped, eyes rounding slightly. "H- Happy's not available?"

"Nope," He replied, self-satisfied to have cut through the ice. "Here's your metro-pass. Have fun being one of the little people!"

Her nostrils had flared. She'd sucked on her teeth. And then she'd grabbed the metro-pass and gotten the fuck out of there. The subway was just as gross as she thought it would be and twice as confusing, but she managed to catch the right train and find a seat without being mugged, so that was something. What no one-- not even Tony Stark-- could have planned for was the deluge of rain that soaked her through when she finally emerged from the subway in Queens.

"Of course," She groaned, running to duck under a storefront. By the time she found Peter Parker's apartment building, she was dripping wet. Her teeth chattered in the sudden onslaught of cold air in the lobby and in the elevator up to his floor.

This was not the condition she wanted to see Peter in. Frankly, she just didn't want to see Peter, period, but if she had to she would have preferred a full suit of armor, complete with heat-seeking missiles. But you can't always get what you want, can you? With a heavy, irritated sigh... Collin knocked on the apartment door.

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Peter heard the knock on the front door from his bedroom. He purposely did not make a move to get up. He figured his Aunt could take the first hit for him. He heard her footsteps as she padded down the hallway to open the door.

"Good morning, you must be Collin--!" He heard May stop short. "Oh my goodness, what happened?"

"I h-had to t-take the s-s-subway," Collin's voice carried to him, minced by the sound of her teeth clacking together. He sat up in bed. What was going on out there?

"Come in, come in! Let's get you out of those clothes," May could be heard shepherding the Stark girl in and closing the door behind her. "Christ, you are soaked through, honey..."