𝐝𝐞𝐣𝐚 𝐯𝐮, peter parker

lxiv. the return of electro

chapter sixty-four
the return of electro

THE UNDERCROFT was not the easiest place to make their own, but the group of friends made do. Ned, MJ and Felicia all wandered around the basement room, checking out bits and pieces and putting together a workstation with everything they could possibly need. As Ned tried to find a table to set up his laptop, Felicia swiped through her Tiktok to try and find anything that could be related to a flying green elf. Though, all she got close to were elf cosplays and some strange thirst traps. MJ found a goatee template that was important enough to forget about Tiktok as they snickered, realising Dr. Strange's goatee was fake. The loud crash made them both glance over. The Black Cat and MJ shared a frustrated sigh to see Ned standing in the middle of a pile of books, his hands hovering by the desk he had been trying to move.

After cleaning up Ned's mess, they dusted off the remaining Christmas ornaments and MJ found a working lamp to set up on the edge. Felicia squeezed her shoulders in passing and her girlfriend smiled. Until they watched Ned snatch the back of a camp chair out from under a small, round table▬and crash! went everything off that surface, too.

Felicia dared MJ to try out the pilates machine as Ned set his laptop up on the dusty table. He flipped it in his fingers and placed it down with a smug grin.

The girls gazed at a few bobbleheads that they swore for a moment had moved their eyes to follow them. MJ frowned over Felicia's shoulder, reaching out to poke one▬

Behind them, an entire aisle of boxes, buckets, old lamps▬and whatever else they had hoarded in this place▬tumbled down onto the floor. They turned around and once again, there Ned stood, holding a chord extension sheepishly in his hand.

From the crypt, even the malicious Doc Ock sighed in his disappointment.

Finally, after everything was cleaned up and they were sure there would be no chance Ned could destroy anything else, they had their workstation prepared and ready.

Felicia spilled out her bag of candy and potato chip packets onto the table in front of Ned's computer. He gave her a thumbs up in his appreciation▬there was no way Felicia would let any of them get hungry during this mission. She grabbed the packet of sour patch worms, already digging into it when MJ said: "Hey, come look at his▬"

She waved her over towards what looked like a dollhouse. As Cia got closer, she saw that it was a miniature design of the Sanctum Sanctorum▬to the very exact, right down to the mysterious globe at the very top. Felicia shuffled in beside MJ, briefly glancing at her profile with a gentle smile until focusing on what her girlfriend wanted to show her.

There was a silhouette in the glowing eye of the Sanctorum. Cia frowned, thinking that there was nothing really abnormal until the shadow moved. It disappeared behind the glowing light and she gapped, shocked.

A voice whispered behind them: "What are you looking at?"

Both girls jumped only to sigh and scowl when they realised it was just Ned.

But while the three friends all chuckled and joked as they worked together, there was a storm cloud that hovered over their heads▬leering and looming out of the shadows of the undercroft. In the side room where a small laundry cupboard had been hidden, Nina Hart couldn't meet Peter Parker's eyes. She hugged her Spider Plush to her chest, sitting up on the bench with her heart pounding, her cheeks red from her tears, and feeling as though she lost every ability to speak.

She felt like she was lost in that river▬always drifting; drifting away from a reality that now she was so detached from. For so long, she was able to tell herself that no matter what she saw or what she dreamt, she would always wake up to this world here. They had just been dreams, but this had been real ... but now, she has learnt that they were all real. All of those dreams where she had scoffed at her imagination to try and hide how much they scared her ... was not her imagination. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, she couldn't even begin to comprehend those questions past her realisation▬that was too terrifying.