Gwen Stacy

As I still had some time before my bus arrived, I decided to research the universe I was in, crossing my fingers that it was the normal MCU.

Well, my hopes were dashed the second I looked at the current date, October 2009. In the MCU, Peter would still be a small boy at the present time, not an 18-year-old going to high school.

I try to be careful about my search terms so as not to be paid a visit by Nick Fury in case I search up words like Thor, Hulk, tesseract, and Avengers one after another when they don't yet exist or are only known by Shield.

The first person I look up is Tony Stark. Unsurprisingly there are news about scandals and new technology related to him but nothing about Iron Man or being kidnapped in Afghanistan. He seems to be completely healthy with no arc reactor in his chest.

In the MCU, he would only be kidnapped in around half a year from now while visiting Afghanistan to present the Jericho missile.

Something giving me hope is that Tony looks precisely like Robert Downey Jr, so hopefully, at least some parts of the movies stay true in this universe, as while I remember seeing all the movies, I only read a few comics, probably less than 5% of all the ones released.

Taking a bigger risk, I search for 'mutants'. This brings up a whole lot of news about protests against mutants as well as crimes committed by them. Anti-mutant sentiment seems to be at an all-time high.

One interesting article that catches my eye has the title "Fantastic Four - heroes or mutants?" published by the Daily Bugle.

Looking more into it, I find that the Fantastic Four have already been active for over a year. There are those that call for their actions to be forbidden or for them to be arrested, but most of the public seems to be on their side.

Hearing the school bus approach, I put away my phone and enter. As soon as I do, I see a blonde woman waving her hand at me from the back, calling me to sit next to her.

Quickly sorting through Peter's memories, I remember her being Gwen Stacy. It seems like Peter in this universe was even more anti-social than usual, with Gwen being his only friend in the whole school.

Peter was also Gwen's only friend. With both of them being nerdy in nature, they seemed to get along well and hadn't made many friends other than each other.

Even M.J. and Harry don't really know him. Well, know me now that I have taken over Peter's body, I guess.

Not that I mind the lack of friends, the fewer people that knew the old Peter, the easier it is for me to hide that I'm different now.

Going over to Gwen, she scoots over to the window seat to let me sit next to her.

The moment I get comfortable, as comfortable as you could get on a school bus seat anyway, she excitedly starts talking about the trip to Oscorp.

"Good morning Peter! I couldn't sleep at all last night thinking about today. The teacher said Curtis Connors is going to be our guide today, isn't that like super exciting!."

I just nod along at her crazy amount of energy, I guess it makes sense since she sometimes does an internship or works at Oscorp or something similar. And did she say, Curtis Connors, isn't he the guy that turned into a lizard?

Seeing me nod in thought, Gwen waves her hand in front of my face, looking worried. "Peter? Are you okay? I thought you would be more excited about this."

"Oh yeah, of course, I'm excited, just slept bad and feeling a bit sick, don't worry about me, I'll be fine." Naturally, I'm excited for this. I'm becoming spider-man today, after all.

She looks at me skeptically but eventually comes to her own conclusion about me acting weird "Oh, you must have slept badly because you were excited as well, right?"

Yeah, sure, let's just go with that and change the subject before she starts getting suspicious, "Hey, didn't you want to do an internship at Oscorp?"

"Eh? I do want to, yes, but I don't think I talked to anyone other than my dad about it." She looks at me with confusion.

Oh shit, "Ah… you told me about it a few weeks ago at lunch…?" I say, trying to sound confident in my answer but absolutely failing.

Scratching her head, she accepts my excuse after a few seconds of thinking, "You're probably right, and I just forgot. I mean, there is no other way for you to know… unless my dad told you? Nah, you don't even know him."

Phew… crisis averted. In the future, I really need to think before saying something to make sure I'm not revealing things I'm not supposed to know.

"Anyway, what I was getting at is why don't you ask Harry? He is the son of the CEO of Oscorp, I'm sure he could help you out."

Hearing my question, Gwen just scoffs, "If I asked and got hired because of that, I would forever be known as the person that only got in thanks to connections, and no one would take me seriously. I want to get in as a result of my own abilities."

I feel like she would have better opportunities and only get treated well if people knew she had connections to the CEO, but I'll keep that to myself since it doesn't seem like she wants to hear that.

Now thinking about it, wasn't there a storyline where Gwen had children with Norman Osborne, and those children went on to try to kill spider-man? Maybe it's better if the two have as little contact as possible for my own sake.

We spend the next little while talking about everyday teenager things like music, movies, or video games. All things that are giving me trouble right now since I haven't had time to go through all of Peter's memories in detail.

The media in this world is slightly different. Many things like Star wars exist just like in my old world, but there are also lots of bands and movies I have never heard of before.

Gwen gets increasingly worried about me acting weird during the chat, but I manage to chalk it up to getting bad sleep, and thankfully, she doesn't question it too much.

Without noticing, we have reached our destination as the bus stops at a parking lot near the Oscorp Tower.

[DING!]

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[New Quest - The beginning]

[Description - Find and get bitten by a radioactive spider]

[Failiure condition - Leaving the Oscorp Tower without getting bit]

[Reward - Spider-man class]

[Failiure - All stats -1]

[ACCEPT?]

[YES / NO]

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