Peter clenched his jaw and sat back down in the chair, staring at his own thin frame with frustration and helplessness in his eyes.
Then he put himself in that situation and imagined it. If he had been the one facing those high-tech thugs, would he have been able to protect Mary Jane the way his brother had?
Of course the answer was no.
He would have gotten his teeth knocked out.
Looking at his little brother, Clark reached over and ruffled his hair. "Don't overthink it. You're a genius whose brain could change the world."
Then he pointed at the gauntlet on the desk. "Right now, it's time for you to do what you're best at. Help me figure out how this thing was put together."
Peter forced himself to stop thinking about the alley and focused instead on the glove in front of him. He picked up a screwdriver and started taking it apart at top speed.
As layer after layer came off, the internal circuitry became exposed in clean, intricate detail.
Peter's eyes lit up, and a stream of academic jargon immediately poured out of his mouth.
"This is unbelievable. There's no way some underground gang built this on their own!"
Then Peter launched into a long, rapid-fire explanation.
By the end of it, Clark's brain felt like it was smoking, and he had mentally checked out so hard that the tiny angel and devil in his head had started playing video games together.
Finally Peter finished speaking, looked at his brother's blank expression, and fell silent in exasperation.
Seeing that look, Clark rebooted.
"So... in English?" Clark asked.
Even if he technically had a super-brain, that part of him was sealed off.
Besides, he genuinely liked playing the clueless big brother so Peter could show off his talent.
"In simple terms," Peter said, swallowing, still visibly impressed, "if you crank this thing up to its strongest third setting, one punch with it would generate enough resonance to reduce a solid brick wall to powder, but it wouldn't do nearly as much visible damage to the human body."
"And this alloy..." He pointed to one of the dismantled pieces. "I've seen references to this in advanced materials journals. It's cutting-edge lightweight titanium alloy."
Clark's head filled with question marks.
So what did that mean?
Someone inside a high-tech company was leaking gear?
Peter set down the tools and turned to Clark. "Clark, this thing is absolutely military-grade or top-tier corporate lab tech. Someone is taking advanced experimental equipment, modifying it off the books, and selling it to street gangs. If even small-time thugs are carrying weapons at this level, it makes perfect sense that the NYPD is getting outmatched."
Clark nodded.
That much, he understood.
And he knew Peter's analysis was completely right. He knew how complicated this world really was.
Tony Stark's disappearance was only the spark.
The tech giants lurking in the shadows, along with the greedy interests behind them, were slowly extending their reach into the streets where ordinary people lived, using real human lives as test subjects.
"Don't talk about this to anyone," Clark warned. "Put the glove away. Tomorrow we'll try to feel Dad out a little. He's managing editor at the Bugle. His information will be better than ours."
Early the next morning, both brothers were already awake.
The kitchen was full of warm smells. May was making breakfast.
Ben Parker was seated at the table, holding a mug of black coffee in one hand and a marker in the other, circling notes on layout sheets, newspaper pages, and photo proofs.
After washing up, Peter and Clark came downstairs yawning.
Peter especially looked half-dead, since after Clark had gone to bed the night before, he had stayed up into the middle of the night, still fiddling with pieces from the gauntlet.
"Morning, Dad. Morning, Mom!"
"Morning, Uncle Ben, Aunt May~"
Ben looked up at them and smiled. "Morning, boys. Sleep well?"
Then, with one casual glance, he noticed the component in Peter's hand.
As a veteran newspaperman, Ben's powers of observation were razor-sharp.
He immediately asked, "Peter, where'd you get that part this time?"
Peter froze and looked at Clark, unsure whether he should tell the truth.
Clark smoothly took over. "Here's what happened, Dad," he said while assembling his own breakfast.
"Last night on my way home, I ran into a couple of punks hassling Mary Jane. I stepped in and scared them off. This piece came off something they dropped in the confusion, and Peter thought it looked unusual, so he started studying it."
Ben went rigid.
Not because Peter had torn something apart again, but because Mary Jane had been attacked, and because his son had stepped in to help, which almost certainly meant Clark had used his abilities.
"MJ was attacked?" Ben asked immediately, all trace of sleep gone. "Were either of you hurt?"
There was nothing fake about that reaction. It was pure fear and concern.
"We're both fine, Dad. Look, not even a scratch." Clark quickly turned in a little circle to show he was unharmed. "Mary Jane's safe too."
Only after confirming for himself that the boys were all right did Ben finally relax.
He searched through the pile of papers on the table, then pulled out a blurry photograph and set it in front of them.
In the picture, a bank vault door had been violently blasted open from the outside by some enormous force, the metal slab twisted into an unnatural shape.
And near the edge of the shot, barely visible, was a figure in yellow and black. On both hands, the figure wore metal gauntlets similar to the one Clark had taken the night before, except these were bulkier and clearly far more refined.
"This is..." Peter's eyes widened, unable to believe it.
"It's a surveillance still from a bank robbery in Brooklyn last night. Over the past month, ever since Stark Industries shut down its weapons division and Tony Stark disappeared, a major power vacuum has opened up in New York's underworld."
Ben took a sip of coffee and went on.
"Jameson may be loud and impossible half the time, but his instincts for news are real. He put me on a quiet investigation. Lately, the black market has been flooded with advanced gear, everything from impact-resistant exoskeleton armor to high-frequency vibration weapons. This stuff should still be locked up in major corporate labs or military storage."
"You mean somebody's trafficking weapons?" Peter immediately caught the key point. "And not just weapons, high-tech weapons?"
"More than trafficking," Ben said, shaking his head. "A source of mine in the police department told me there's some mysterious engineering genius behind all this. Maybe one person, maybe not. Whoever it is has been collecting or buying discarded parts and unfinished prototypes from places like Oscorp, Hammer Industries, even old abandoned Stark storage facilities. Then they rebuild and modify that junk into dangerous weapons and sell them to street-level criminals with no limits at all."
Ben looked deeply at Clark and Peter, his eyes full of the concern only a parent could have.
"That's why hearing you crossed paths with these people scared me so much. Clark, I know you're strong. I know you're brave, and I know you want to protect your friends. But the people you're dealing with aren't ordinary punks carrying pocketknives. They're violent criminals armed with technology powerful enough to tear apart a car. This is not something high school kids should be getting mixed up in."
He was mainly saying it to Clark.
Because he knew exactly what kind of person Clark was.