𝐝𝐞𝐣𝐚 𝐯𝐮, peter parker

i. in the background

chapter one!
in the background

IN A WORLD of superheroes and supervillains (and everything in between), Nina Hart always felt quite small. As a simple mortal with nothing that special about her that could stop a whole alien invasion, she was nothing more than a mere background character. If this was a novel, or a movie, or something straight out of a comic (because it honestly felt like it was these days), she was always sure she'd be that girl no one cared about. The girl who had a very rushed design and character growth━or perhaps none at all! Just trying to make her way to work without being some love interest being abducted, or some superhero fighting some arch-nemesis in the middle of the street (because every villain had a god complex, apparently, and needed to be the centre of attention).

She was just trying to maneuver her way along the concrete towards the front steps of her high school. Just trying to find her friend among the many heads and bored faces. Just trying to live a normal, mundane life in a world where mundane didn't fully exist.

The good thing about being a small character in this huge story that belonged to someone else was that Nina wasn't alone. She was surrounded by background characters no bigger than herself. She drifted around fellow students, tilting her board just right to make smooth turns; bypassing those just trying to make their way through life much like her. No one extraordinary, with superpowers and a comic book origin. Just normal people, living normal lives━going to work, going to school, paying their bills. The little guys stuck in a much bigger guy's world.

(Truth was, Nina was never a background character; in any universe. And while she slumped and she rolled her eyes and she scrolled through her phone to find the right song to listen to, she could feel it. There was something strange in the air; a feeling as if her life had been planned from beginning to finish, and had happened just like this many times before).

She reached the steps. Fixing her sneaker on the back of the board, the cream-coloured, doodle-filled skateboard skidded to a halt. She took the tip in her fingers and jumped up the steps, quickly returning to her position to slide in through the open doors.

Right now, Nina Hart was small, and meaningless, and she was okay with that. She could start to make her way to her locker before a teacher could go off at her for riding her skateboard inside. She could take a deep breath and start every day as normal as the next with only one thing different ths semester (and that was without her best friend beside her).

Everyone warned her about dating her best friend━that it wasn't going to end up well. That one day, it would fall apart, and she would be left on a dry ocean, watching the waves of everything that they had been before drift so close, but the tide never close enough to reach her. The baggage was too much to keep a friendship going when you had kissed when you thought no one was watching, and laughed at the tables at Mr Delmar's Sandwich Shop, and ate the whole box of strawberry icecream instead of studying. But Nina had been so in her head that she didn't even think about that. She ate that icecream far too quick, and now she was left with a terrible shock from the brain freeze.

"Nina!"

She glanced over her shoulder, coming to a stop on the tiles. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes when her biology teacher gestured angrily to her skateboard. "In the air, or it's in my office!"

Nina scoffed to herself but grabbed her skateboard and held it over her shoulder with a sarcastic shake. Her biology teacher nodded, "There you go━now keep it up there! And I mean it, Nina!" Their voice drowned out as she continued her way down the corridor.