"Youth really is nice."
Watching Peter toy with the school bully on the court using his powers, then charge forward and shatter the backboard with a vicious dunk that sent the crowd into a frenzy, Fenris reached over and poked the drowsy Logan beside him, unable to help sighing in admiration.
"I really don't get what's so fun about a bunch of people fighting over one ball."
Logan let one eyelid droop, resting his chin on his hand in utter boredom.
Fenris looked at him with open disdain. "What an antique."
On the basketball court.
Crash!
The instant the backboard shattered, and hearing the gasp of the whole gym rising for him alone, Peter slowly lifted his head, his smile spreading across his face before he could stop it.
He casually tossed aside the rim and let his gaze sweep across the crowd.
Then suddenly, a figure in the stands came into view. A stranger, yet somehow familiar. The upward curve of his lips stiffened and dropped at once.
"How did he find me?"
"No, wait. How does he know it was me?"
Seeing Logan actually track him all the way to school, Peter felt not the slightest hint of joy. What filled him instead was raw fear that his identity had been exposed.
"Hi!"
Logan forced a friendly smile and waved at Peter Parker.
"I covered my tracks perfectly. It has to be a coincidence. It has to be..."
But Peter's eyes were full of alarm. And when his gaze shifted to Fenris beside Logan, a sense of danger unlike anything he had ever felt exploded in his chest.
The instant his eyes met Fenris's, an icy chill shot up from his spine to the top of his skull, while his spider-sense screamed a frantic warning.
Even facing several black gun barrels hadn't ever given him such an intense feeling of danger.
"Go. Just go."
Peter Parker swallowed hard, forcing himself to calm down. He casually tossed the ball back to Flash, then hurried out of the gym while pretending to stay composed.
"You scared him."
Watching Peter flee in a near panic, Logan shot Fenris a speechless look.
To people with sharp enough senses, the aura around Fenris was deeply intimidating.
Even Logan himself had been startled the first time they met.
"Mm-hm."
Fenris shrugged and left the gym first, strolling after Peter at an unhurried pace.
Because he had smashed the backboard, Uncle Ben had been called to the school by a teacher. Fenris and Logan silently watched as Peter got scolded by his uncle, then chatted for a while with a pretty blonde girl before finally leaving school on his skateboard.
"Wow, so there's a girl he likes too." Fenris watched the whole thing with a sigh. "When I was his age..."
"When you were his age, you were still living in a tiny little cell, spending every day with a little hedgehog guy who liked sticking snacks on his own spines."
Logan somehow produced a cigar from nowhere, lit it, and mocked him mercilessly. "I've already figured out your background these past few days, kid."
"Cool."
Fenris's expression stiffened for a moment, and he smoothly changed the subject.
"Didn't you notice he seemed nervous?"
"If two weirdos were staring at you while you talked to the girl you liked, you'd be nervous too." Logan went all in. "You don't actually think our tailing skills are that good, do you?"
"..."
Fenris suddenly understood a little better why Scott found Logan so irritating.
After a stretch of silence, the two of them watched Peter walk into a run-down factory.
Fenris and Logan exchanged a look and followed without hesitation.
Rounding a corner, they found an empty factory floor before them.
Peter Parker, however, was nowhere to be seen.
"Where'd he go?"
Logan's nose twitched.
But the heavy smell of metal and machine oil completely masked Peter's trail.
"Peter Parker, we're not here to cause trouble."
Following the reaction from the Titan Encyclopedia, Fenris turned and looked unerringly toward Peter's hiding place.
"Who exactly are you people?"
Seeing there was no point in hiding anymore, Peter finally stepped out of the shadows. Even so, his entire body remained tense and guarded.
"I don't know you."
"It's me, pajama boy." Logan hurried forward a step. "You saved me last night and took me to Manhattan. Remember?"
"I never saved you. You've got the wrong person." Peter Parker's eyes drifted, intentional or not, toward Logan's hands.
He had never saved people because he wanted repayment or gratitude. More importantly, Logan and Fenris clearly weren't ordinary people. Getting close to them as Peter Parker would only bring endless trouble into his life.
"I..."
Seeing Logan about to say more, Fenris suddenly reached out and stopped him.
"Sorry. We were being presumptuous."
Fenris glanced at Peter, then flicked his hand. A thin card flew neatly into Peter's grasp.
"If you ever run into trouble, you can come find us."
"Logan. Let's go."
With that, the two of them turned and left cleanly.
Peter leaned out from behind cover, checking several times to make sure they really were gone before finally letting out a sigh of relief.
He could tell neither of them meant him any harm. They probably really had just wanted to thank him. But for safety's sake, when he wasn't wearing the mask, people like that were best avoided whenever possible.
"Besides, what kind of trouble could I even run into?"
Peter opened the card dismissively.
Neurosurgery. Dr. Strange.
Peter's mouth twitched. He flipped the card over, and a handwritten number came into view.
"What a pair of weirdos..."
After a moment's thought, he stuffed the card into his bag and headed for Oscorp.
Dr. Connors had invited him to visit the lab today. He had already been delayed for a while, so at this rate he might end up late.
In the distance, Logan slapped Fenris's hand away and looked at him in confusion.
"Fenris, why did we just leave like that?"
Fenris shot back with a question of his own. "Why were you looking for him in the first place?"
"To thank him."
"And did you thank him?"
Logan froze for a second. "Yeah."
"Then there you go." Fenris spread his hands. "Our gratitude got across. He doesn't want to admit anything, so why keep pushing it?"
"...Fair enough."
Remembering the Professor's warning not to bring Peter any trouble before they left, Logan stopped overthinking it. "Then are we heading back to the school now?"
"No." Fenris shook his head. "I still have something to do."
From that brief contact just now, he had already figured out the exact source of the reaction: Peter Parker's wrists, the place where Spider-Man shot his webbing from.
If he had still been a little unsure before about which Titan he was about to unlock, now he was almost ninety percent certain.
The next Titan was going to be the Queen of the Monsters, Mothra.
This Titan was powerful, with an absurdly high upper limit. The kind of support she could bring Fenris was nearly impossible to measure. If she kept growing, she might not fall far behind Godzilla in all his various forms.
And with the power of immortality on top of that, she would also let Fenris establish himself more securely in this dangerous world.
"You're going back to find the kid again?"
Logan remembered the near-fanatical look in Fenris's eyes when he had plucked that strand of webbing off him.
"No. I'm going to save someone."
"Save someone?" Logan blinked, realizing he was having trouble keeping up with Fenris's train of thought.
"Ahem..."
"Cough!"
Mid-sentence, Fenris suddenly began coughing violently.
"What's wrong with you?"
Logan was startled. Everyone had seen Fenris's physical condition. Was he seriously getting sick?
"No idea. Maybe I haven't been drinking enough water. Lately it keeps feeling like my throat's on fire..."
A strange look flickered in Fenris's eyes.