Chapter 28: Symbol in Distress III

"So, anyone here any good at swimming?" Togata asked, standing by the edge of the water next to his classmates.

Peter had to admit, the sight of All Might floating around face up while surrounded by a bunch of training dummies was incredibly weird.

This year was gonna be like this, wasn't it?

"Not really? Haven't gone to a pool in a while." Hado responded, cupping her chin while still floating off the ground.

Shrugging, Peter followed up. "I fell into the Hudson River while trying to save a car from falling off a bridge once and almost drowned, so not really."

Looking to the side, he could see his classmates looking at him with small bits of concern, which was kinda understandable.

Although it was crazy how falling into that river didn't give him superpowers or make him radioactive.

Well, more superpowers than he already had.

Or more radioactive, but he still wasn't too sure about that.

Probably shouldn't be donating any blood before he figures out that little thing.

"Doesn't matter, I'll tell you about that some other time; Amajiki, please tell me you can manifest fins or something?"

Amajiki perked up at being addressed before nodding and opening a pouch of his carrier vest with what Peter thinks was the word 'Salmon' written in kanji.

Pulling out a small piece of salmon and eating it, they watched as Amajiki took off both his hood and cape before growing gills and diving into the water.

"Huh, I didn't even know he could do that!" Togata laughed, already in the process of taking off his cape to jump into the water.

As Peter was about to say something, his eyes widened at the fact that some of the dummies were starting to think into the water.

Which, in all honesty, wasn't too good of a thing to be happening.

"Crap, some of them are sinking! Uh, Togata, go in and swim some of them back to shore, I'll swing in and get All Might, Hado will fly some of them out of the water, let's go!"

Not waiting for a response, Peter shot two webs at the side of the massive boat in the middle of the water and took a few steps back before slingshotting himself forwards.

Sticking to the side of the ship and climbing up to the deck, he flicked his wrists and shot out the now empty cartridges before inserting new ones from his belt.

Now that he thought about it, he should probably swing by the short department and make some more cartridges.

Who knew they'd have a chemistry set no one used?

Also.

Heh, swing.

Get it?

He should probably focus.

His lenses scanned over the water's surface, watching as Amajiki dove down and grabbed many of the sinking dummies with the tentacles that replaced his hands.

Hado had begun flying back and forth while carrying two dummies under each arm before repeating the process while Togata simply swam to shore while carrying one on his back before going back.

Well, they weren't doing bad!

Shooting a web line at All Might's chest, Peter began to pull the floating man towards him.

"C'mon, big guy, I got you! Y'know, again." Pulling him up, Peter hoisted the man onto his back, grabbing him with one arm for support and shooting a web with his other.

The hero's body was still tense for reasons Peter didn't know.

Quickly, he pushed off of the boat by his feet and began his swing back to shore, trying his best to not do unnecessary tricks with someone on his back.

Last time he tried that he got cursed out, which wasn't fun.

That lady cursed him out for like, half an hour even though he pulled her kid out of a burning building!

How was he supposed to know he got motion sick easily?

The feeling of his feet landing on the ground brought him back to reality; quickly, he sat All Might down and tried to think of what to do next.

There was a chance that the guy would try to roleplay drowning or something like that, right?

Oh, he hoped not.

"Uh, you alright? No wacky stuff going on?" Peter asked, kneeling down to All Might's sitting height.

The man simply grinned and flexed, accidentally sending some of the water on his suit onto Peter's goggles.

Man, they were gonna be blurry now!

"I am… completely fine, my boy! Thank you for the rescue, quite the splendid job! It has been a while since I've had someone be able to lift me, young man! Does your quirk give you any type of strength enhancement?"

His voice was cautious at the end, almost sounding as if he was dreading an answer.

All in all, Peter was confused.

Why would All Might ask a question like that out of left field?

"Well, it gives me the proportionate abilities of a spider, like how they can lift 60 times their weight? It makes me able to lift a few tons."

All Might's eyes narrowed slightly in a sense of suspicion Peter couldn't understand.

"Quite strange that an animal-based quirk gives you such an extreme version of their abilities, and yet without any physical mutations." The grin on his face was becoming increasingly forced, Peter couldn't help but start to become a bit uncomfortable.

"I-I guess? Look man, I gotta get back to the exercise." Peter quickly rose back up to his feet, shooting a web at the side of the boat without taking his eyes off of All Might.

"Oh, of course! Sorry about that, I suppose I just got… curious." All Might laughed a fake laugh, the boy standing there for a moment before pulling himself back towards the boat.

Alright, what was that about?

First with what All Might said when they got to USJ, and now this? Peter was starting to get less and less comfortable around the guy.

Cause while he's still new to the whole legit hero thing, he was pretty sure that doing a semi interrogation out of nowhere wasn't too common.

But whatever, he just needs to get done with the exercise and forget about it.

As Peter stuck back on the side of the boat, he began to shoot web lines at the nearby dummies and pull them over his shoulder.

"Hey, Hado!" He called, making the girl fly up to him just as she finished dropping off three dummies on the shore. "How many of these do we have left?"

"To be honest? I kinda lost count at 28!" She shrugged, and Peter couldn't blame her.

"Alright, just take these while I grab a few more."

As the girl took the 'Civilians' out of his arms and into hers, Peter got an idea.

Suddenly, he began to shoot webs connecting the side of the boat to shore, connecting the lines to each other to make a semi-flat surface, creating a makeshift web slide for dummies to go on.

So cool.

He should probably practice on making more web constructs.

"Oh, cool! Slide!" Hado laughed, dropping the dummies in her arms and watching them slide to shore.

Man, now Peter wanted to try it out!

"Togata! Give Hado your dummy so we can get them to shore faster! Also, do you know how many we have left?" Peter called, the blonde boy in the water perking up and handing the girl the dummy he was carrying.

"Sure thing! Also, I think we're at… 58?"

"58? Where's the last one?"

Out of nowhere, Amajiki rose from the water with a dummy on his back while looking out of breath.

Wait, how do you lose your breath underwater?

"H-Here!" Amajiki announced, letting Peter pull the dummy onto his arms with a web before sending it down the slide along with the one Hado had.

And that should do it! Rescue done!

Oh, please tell him they were done.

Walking up to the shore and standing before them were Aizawa and Thirteen, with the tired-looking man helping All Might back up to his feet.

Thirteen began clapping, the eyes on their helmet portraying a happy expression as All Might clapped along and Aizawa rolled his eyes.

"Bravo! Well done, students! You all did truly wonderfully rescuing the fake civilians along with All Might, congrats on completing today's rescue exercise!"

Oh thank God they were done, Peter really wanted to go home right about now.

Cracking his neck, Aizawa followed up. "Yes, a job well done to all of you. Everyone played to their strengths and helped out even if their skill set wasn't suited to water rescues, and the creativity that Parker demonstrated with the slide at the end is exactly what I look for in heroes."

Peter grinned, taking off both his mark and goggles before returning the high five Hado offered without even looking.

"Anything to add, All Might?" Aizawa asked, his voice still sounding miffed at the man.

All Might's blue eyes trailed towards Peter, narrowing when finally landing on him before the man forced a grin.

"I do not believe I have anything to add, Aizawa! They all did marvelously!"

Nodding, the underground hero wrote some things down in his clipboard and checked the stopwatch in his hand before looking up and grinning.

What scared Peter was that it was the same grin he had during his acceptance letter and the quirk test.

"Change of plans, you only took 7 minutes to complete the exercise so we still have a little less than half an hour left of class." Aizawa began, the brunette dreaded what he was gonna say next. "So we'll do one lady exercise, get yourself to the conflagration zone and get to it."

All Might simply leaped away and stepped into the zone while Peter reluctantly put his mask and goggles back on.

Yeah, he wasn't gonna get him that mug anymore.

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I wanna make it a recurrent theme in the story about how Peter separates himself from Spider-Man since I think it's fitting for his character, you know? Maybe we can have a chapter where he talks about it with hound dog.

Also, I wanted to start hinting at Peter suspecting All Might's identity along with All Might becoming more and more suspicious of Peter due to his quirk.

Quickly, I wanted to say that we will be getting to see more marvel elements later on! I'm not planning on doing miles morales or spider-verse any time soon, and just not doing any alien/cosmic type stuff, but just offhand mentions and eventual cameos as of now.

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