Archive of Our Own ^beta

Seiko Kimura was walking home from her middle school when she heard a strange voice.
“Hello?” it called, “is anyone there?” The words weren’t in any language she knew, but they sounded confused, so she went to see if anyone needed help.
“Is someone hurt?” she asked the air.
“Is this better?” the voice returned. She understood what it said now, but it sounded more robotic than before.
“Where are you?” she turned the corner into a nearby alleyway.
“Over here,” the voice said, “I should be in the TV. I’m facing the other way so I can’t see you.”
Seiko looked around, unsure of what it meant. Eventually she saw a TV monitor, showing a boy with glasses, who looked to be a few years older than her.
“Are you trapped in there?” she asked confused.
“No, I was just testing a teleporter, I needed to see where it went,” the boy gave a friendly smile, “can I ask where you are, I want to see how far it went.”
She looked around nervously, like she was scared.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “just the name of the city, or major landmark will do.”
“Umm,” she gulped, “I’m somewhere around Hope’s Peak Academy, is that good enough?” Hope’s Peak Academy was world famous, so everyone should know of it.
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said, “is it a local school?”
“You haven’t?” she asked confused by the thought someone might not have heard of it, “It’s sponsored by the Japanese Government, and all of its students are said to be Ultimates, and the best in their fields.”
“If it’s anything like my school it’ll just be a bunch of people into sports,” the boy said, “I can look into it though.” The signal flickered, “looks like I’m losing signal, if you come by here again maybe I’ll be able to get it working again.”
Are you sure you want to talk to me?” she asked, “I don’t have any friends, they all say I look weird.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I get that too, but look at it this way, if I can get this to work more often, we could be friends.”
“Really?” Seiko cheered up hearing that, “I’m Kimura Seiko, who are you?”
“Oh right,” he said, having completely forgotten to introduce himself, “I’m Peter Parker.”

Over the next week Seiko kept checking the alleyway where she’d seen the strange TV. She tried to see if it was broken, but her specialty was medicine, not machinery. Exactly one week after she’d first heard it, the TV came on, and the face of the first person to call her a friend returned to the screen.
“Uuh,” he seemed confused, “I didn’t change anything so why is it working now?”
“Hello?” she said, hoping he remembered her.
“Kimura right?” he seemed happy to see her, “or Seiko? Sorry, I just, don’t know what changed. It’s working now, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong.”
“Seiko,” she said, “I was hoping to talk to you more.”
“Well we can talk now,” he said, “I looked up Hope’s Peak Academy online, but I couldn’t find anything.” Seiko found that odd, as the next class had been posted in the past few days, and it was even on the news. “Wait, you said you lived in Japan right?”
She nodded, wondering what Peter could possibly be thinking about.
“Isn’t it cool?” he said excitedly, “your governments sponsoring its very own team of superheroes!”
“Superheroes?” Seiko didn’t understand “Those don’t exist.”
“Of course they do,” he seemed confused, “haven’t you seen the Avengers on the news? Or, wait it’d be Big Hero Six wouldn’t it?”
“I-I don’t know who any of those are,” the more they spoke, the less Seiko seemed to understand about him.
“Huh,” he said, “well it looks like the signal is breaking down again, have you been coming by here because of this or do you walk by it often?”
“It’s on my way home from school,” Seiko said, “but I have been stopping here because of this.”
“Hmm,” he paused to think, “don’t worry about stopping by here, I think the signal can only get through once a week. I have an idea about what’s going on, but I’ll need you to keep an eye on the news. There are some things that aren’t lining up.”
“So,” Seiko said nervously, scared that she may lose the closest thing she had to a friend, “come back here in a week?”
“Yes,” he said, “definitely. We are friends after all, and I have some more things I want to talk to you about.”
The signal cut out, and Seiko spent the rest of her day wondering about that boy who seemed like he was from a different universe.

As it turns out, that was more correct than Seiko had originally thought. The next week Peter asked her questions about the news, but nothing matched up. He explained that he may have created a device linking realities, rather than just a teleporter. Whatever the reason was, he could only get the signal through whenever his device linked up with the one here, and even then it only worked for a few minutes.
He tried to send stuff through so he could come and visit, but any food he sent through would instantly decay, and even with her medicine, they didn’t want to risk trying anything else. Eventually he was able to figure out that if she moved the receiver to her house, it would still work, but at a slightly different time. Working from there, they were able to get the link to hold steady for half an hour.
Seiko and Peter spent the next several years teaching each other about their worlds, and learning the language. Peter told Seiko all about the heroes and villains of his world, and how they would protect people. Seiko, in turn told Peter all about the Ultimates at Hope’s Peak, and how she hoped to one day be accepted there.
Even as time passed, and they made new friends, they still felt that the person who could not be further away, was the person they were closest to.
“Peter!” Seiko shouted one day, as soon as the screen flickered to life.
“Ugh,” Peter answered, barely lifting his head up “what is it?”
“Are you alright? I have some…” Seiko started reaching for some medicine, but stopped when she remembered that she couldn’t give him anything.
“I’ll be fine,” he said slowly, “just hasn’t been a good day.” Peter looked like he was about to faint, but without being there, there was nothing Seiko would be able to do. “What are you excited about?”
“I got scouted by Hope’s Peak,” she said.
“Really?” he instantly brightened up, “that’s great! I can’t wait to see what you learn there.”
“I wish you could come with me,” she said, “you’d be a much better Ultimate than me, you did build this after all.”
“This isn’t really that impressive,” Peter scratched his head, “superheroes already had this kind of thing before I made it, I just managed to cobble it together. But you, no one else can do what you do.”
“Seiko,” a feminine voice called, “are you home?”
“I have to go,” Seiko said, “my friend just arrived.”
“Okay,” Peter said, “just don’t let her boss you around, you’re supposed to be friends. See you next week.” He turned to shut down the TV, when Seiko noticed what appeared to be a spider bite on his hand, but before she could say anything, the signal was already gone.
“Hello,” Seiko said nervously as she opened the door. Ruruka barged through without pausing, with Sonosuke following closely behind.
“Did you get one?” she asked.
“Get what?” Seiko asked nervously.
“A letter to Hope’s Peak Academy?” Ruruka said, “I got the title of Ultimate Confectioner, and Yoi is the Ultimate Blacksmith.”
“Oh yes,” Seiko smiled beneath her mask, knowing that her two other friends would still be with her, “I’m, I’m the Ultimate Pharmacist.”
“Yay,” Ruruka cheered, “you two can help me.” Seiko was nervous that Ruruka meant that she wouldn’t be doing any of the work.

The next two years were hard on the friendship between the two, even though they were able to move the TV to the new school, Seiko kept ending up staying in the lab longer than she should have, and Peter was constantly busy with his new job.
For the first time in months, the TV screen flickered on.
“Sorry,” Peter said, “it’s just been a rough couple of months.”
“I-I understand,” Seiko said, “I’ve had a lot of stuff to do here too. Did you move?” The area behind Peter was covered in cardboard boxes.
“Yeah,” he said, “I was having some trouble with my clo-cousins, I was having trouble with my cousins. How are you-”
The door to Seiko’s room burst open, as Ruruka and Sonosuke came in. “Seiko,” Ruruka said, “we need to figure out-oh, who’s that?” Ruruka walked over to the screen.
“I-I’m talking a friend,” Seiko said, “we’ve been busy so we haven’t been able to talk in a couple months.”
“You must be Ruruka,” Peter said, “Seiko’s told me all about you.”
“Yeah,” Ruruka started to turn away, apparently satisfied with that answer, “we need to figure out what our project is going to be.”
“I thought you didn’t have group projects,” Peter said.
“We don’t,” Sonosuke said, “but the judges realized that we’d worked together, so they gave us a month to make an impressive display together.”
“And while Seiko and I can do a lot,” Ruruka said, “we need to figure out how to get Yoi to fit in.”
“We need to figure this out quickly,” Ruruka went to shut off the monitor, “so bye.”
“Wait,” Peter said, “I have an idea.”
“Already?” Sonosuke asked in disbelief.
“Why don’t you make a superhero?” he gave a huge smile at the image.
“Yeah, no,” Ruruka said, “goodbye.”
“Thing about it,” Peter said, “Seiko is able to enhance a person’s natural ability, and Sonosuke can make armor and weapons.”
“Th-that doesn’t give Ruruka anything to do,” Seiko didn’t want her friend to be left out.
“Oh I have something for her to do,” Peter said, “but she’s going to need to know where to begin first.”
After that, they began to listen to him, and plan out their very own superhero.

Three weeks later, Seiko was putting the finishing touches on her new strength enhancing medicine. While her previous versions did work, the psychological effects would prevent the user from becoming a hero. She had to completely redesign it, this time drawing on the abilities of a far less ferocious beast, and had eventually settled on a spider, as it had incredible proportional strength, but was very patient in its hunting patterns.
In the next room over, Ruruka was baking something not meant to be eaten. It felt odd to her, but as Peter had explained, it was still baking. It was a compact string-like substance, holding miles of material in a small pill sized object. She just had to apply a constant, low heat to the pill for the next three hours in order for it to hold its shape.
“Hello?” A white haired boy came walking into the bakery. “Are you in here?” He turned to see Ruruka carefully setting the temperature on the oven. “You don’t look like a pharmacist.”
“A pharmacist?” Ruruka turned to look at him. In her haste, she forgot to remove her hand from the dial, rapidly turning the heat to 500o C. “Are you looking for Seiko?”
“Uhh, yeah,” he said, “I think. I’ve been having some trouble-”
“No,” she stopped him from continuing, “she’s busy, so go bother someone else.”
“Are you sure I couldn’t at least ask-” as they were speaking, a rumbling sound started at the oven. Ruruka quickly opened the oven to pull them out, but it was too late, as the pills exploded, filling the room with a white substance.
The explosion shook the building, causing Seiko to drop the two chemical compounds she was holding, shattering the test tubes, and releasing a gas that ate through her mask, and filled her lungs. She turned to find something to help, but passed out before she could do anything.
“Uhh,” the boy said, “sorry. I guess I’m not very lucky.”
“How is this…” Ruruka paused as she realized what the boy’s talent was “we are going to be stuck here for a while.
“How bad could it be?” he said cheerfully.
“This is supposed to hold for eight hours,” she looked annoyed, “I just hope Yoi can get us out before then.”

Seiko woke up feeling very dizzy. The room looked off, as if the lights in the room had somehow been tinted every color. She grabbed onto the desk to pull herself up, but it crumbled in her hand. She eventually managed to stand, before looking around. According to the clock she had been asleep for only a few minutes, but from the light that was now streaming in from the previously black window, she could tell that it had been over twelve hours.
She looked around at the shattered remains over her experiment, and thought that she must have completely ruined her entire groups project. She then looked at the remains of where she had grabbed the desk, and realized that it may not be ruined, but that she was the only test subject they were going to have.
Seiko started walking over to the next room, whenever she heard shouting. She ran to see two girls from the Reserve course yelling.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” a brunette said, raising what looked to be an improvised weapon.
“What’s going on?” Seiko said in a much more demanding voice than she had initially intended.
“Uhh,” the brunette lowered her weapon, “she-she keeps threatening my friend.”
“Do you really think she’s better than us?” the blond girl asked.
“You two,” Seiko said, “need to calm down. No one is going to do anything rash okay?”
“Don’t you know who she is?” the brunette said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Seiko said, “just go home, and think this through. You’ll realize I’m right.”
The brunette backed off, and went down the stairs.
“I could’ve taken her,” the blonde said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Seiko said, “if I see you two fighting again, I will tell a teacher.”
The blonde gave a sigh, before leaving. Seiko looked around, unsure of what she had just done. She had seen a fight, and stepped in before anything happened. Normally she stayed back, and tried to heal whoever lost, this was new for her.
Seiko then remembered that she needed to check on Ruruka, and rushed over to the bakery, hoping she was still there.
“Hello,” she said as she entered.
“Oh no,” came a reply, “please tell me you aren’t,” Ruruka turned around to see Seiko “oh good, it’s just you.”
“What happened?” Seiko said, looking around at everything thrown out of place.
“Last night the Ultimate Luck decided to stop by,” Ruruka spat his talent, “he ruined an hour’s work, and had me trapped in here for another ten. The string only held for eight, but he broke the doorknob, so we had to wait two hours for someone to fix it. I’m finally back where I was before he showed up.”
“Oh,” Seiko said, “well, I accidentally broke the beakers,”
“Oh no,” Ruruka said, “are we going to have to start over?”
“No,” Seiko said, “it did work, but I’m going to be the only test subject.”
“Yoi won’t be too happy about having to redesign the suit to fit you,” Ruruka said, “but we can start testing. Any idea how strong you are?”
Seiko walked over to one of the serving stations, with a large granite countertop, and with one hand managed to set it back into place.
“Wow,” Ruruka said, “is that better than your old one?”
“Maybe,” Seiko said, “the old one you could always take more pills to get stronger, but this one appears to be holding.”
“Well,” Ruruka looked around, “we’ve got an hour until the pills are finished, can you work on setting this room back up?”
“Only if you help,” Seiko said, shocked by the fact that she said such a thing to her friend.
“Uh, sure,” Ruruka said in surprise, “I’ll see what I can do.”
They spent the next hour putting the room back into order, and met up with Sonosuke when they finished.
“I’ll have to resize the suit,” Sonosuke said, “but we haven’t decided on a name or color scheme yet, so I was going to need to dye it anyways.”
Seiko looked at the armor that was now hers. It was designed similar to chainmail, as to not limit movement, but was made of interlocking pieces for increased strength. Whenever it was properly fitted, it appeared as though it was spandex, rather than the steel it truly was.
“I might have an idea on that,” Seiko said, “but first we’ll need to see all of my powers, and test how Ruruka’s we-string holds up.”
“It’s strong,” Ruruka said, “I should know.”
“Yes, but I might have an idea of exactly how to use it,” Seiko gave off a sly smile, only now realizing that she wasn’t wearing her mask, but surprisingly okay with that.

“Really?” Spiderman said, “We all know how this is going to end, so why do you even bother?”
“Not this time Spiderman,” yelled the Hobgoblin, “this time we have a plan.”
“Really?” Spiderman taunted, “Then what did you have the last time?”
“We don’t need to beat you; we just need to stall you!” The Rhino yelled as Spiderman jumped over him, narrowly avoiding his horn.
“Stall me?” he said, webbing up the Rhino, “What is this plan?”
“You talk too much Rhino,” Shocker said, his blast just missing, “our escape plan will solve our little hero problem.”
“Come on guys,” Spiderman swung past him, “its’s no fun if I don’t know your plan too.”
“You not knowing is exactly the po-ack!” the Beetle screamed as the Shockers blast hit her.
“Sorry,” Spiderman said, “I couldn’t understand that, what shouldn’t I know?”
“Stop answering him you dolts,” the Wizard fired off several blasts.
“It’s done!” came a cry from Doctor Octopus, “get away from him and we’ll make our retreat.”
“But I wasn’t done,” Spiderman slung a web at Octavius, who cut it with one of his arms. A blast from the Shocker managed to throw him into some nearby crates, distracting him long enough for the Sinister Six to run to Octavius’s machine, and vanish in a blast of light.
“Almost had them,” Spiderman said, “now what is this thing?” He grabbed the device, and started looking at it. “I’ll have to analyze it at home, I’m just glad Jameson isn’t in charge of the Bugle anymore, this would make things easy for him.” Spiderman grabbed onto the sides of the device and picked it up. It was heavy, but not more than he could lift.
After getting it back to his lab, which was really a corner of his room with some open space, Spiderman changed out of his costume, and back into Peter Parker’s clothes. Peter hooked the device up to his computer, and started looking through its code. Eventually he started to recognize certain lines of the code, and realized exactly what the Sinister Six’s plan was.

“The plating will deflect most kinetic force,” Sonosuke explained to Seiko, “so anything short of a car shouldn’t hurt, but we won’t be using anything like that.”
The suit was more form-fitting than Seiko was comfortable in, but if she was going to be a superhero, there was no other way to go about it.
“There should be more than enough webbing for the demonstration,” Ruruka said, “but just in case there are some extras in the pockets,” pockets was a generous term, as they were barely large enough to hold the pills as it was, “try not to squeeze them too hard, because if the casing cracks it’ll explode, and you’ll be stuck in place for eight hours.”
“Alright,” Seiko said as she grabbed the black mask with a red design on it, “you two tell the judges what everything is, I’ll show it off.”
Ruruka smiled at her friend, grateful to have finally been able to help Seiko on a project, and not to have been holding the other two back for once. Ruruka and Seiko went on ahead, while Sonosuke put the last of the supplies in a bag.
“Seiko!” static filled voice screamed from the nearby monitor, “Seiko are you there?”
“I’m here,” Sonosuke walked over to see, “I thought you could only get through once a week.”
“It’s a long story,” Peter stood on the side of a skyscraper, holding up the transmitter, “I need to speak to Seiko, where is she?”
“She went ahead to the presentation, what do you need?” Sonosuke wasn’t sure what Peter could possibly be so worried about.
“You’re not going to believe me, but supervillains are about to attack your world,” the screen slowly started to fill with static, “I’ll try and get help, but you have to warn Seiko.” The transmission cut out, leaving a confused Sonosuke alone.
Sonosuke decided that whatever game Peter and Seiko were playing could wait, as they had a presentation to do.

The Judges sat patiently in a large auditorium. The room was packed, the audience waiting to see what the three Ultimates could come up with when they worked together.
“Where have you been?” Ruruka asked Sonosuke whenever he walked in.
“Peter called,” he said, “it didn’t sound to important.”
“Ok,” she whispered, before standing and saying “Hello everyone, we are ready to give our presentation!”
“Weren’t there three of you?” one of the judges asked.
“Seiko will be here soon enough, we just wanted our demonstration to be a surprise,” Ruruka gave a beaming smile, “We spent some time considering what we could do, a confectioner, blacksmith, and pharmacist. At first we couldn’t see how they fit together, but then it hit us, we should make a-”
Ruruka’s words cut out as an explosion rocked the auditorium.
“Hello there,” a figure with four extra arms climbed through the newly created hole in the wall, “we heard this would be the best place to get advanced technology, so give it up.” Five other figures followed him through, each more intimidating than the last.
Sonosuke started to draw his swords, but Ruruka gestured for him to lower them. “Oh,” she said, “it looks like we have some volunteers to test our new project.”
“Whatever it is,” said the Wizard, “it won’t be able to take all of us.”
“Won’t it?” asked Ruruka, “because our project was to create A SUPERHERO!” She shouted the last part, signaling the new Spiderwoman to spring into action. She jumped over the judges and landed immediately in front of team of supervillains.
“Spiderman!” shouted the Shocker, “How did you get here?”
“That’s Spider-Woman to you,” returned the new superhero, “now how about you make this easy and go back home.”
“Not gonna happen,” said the Rhino as he began to charge at her. Spiderwoman felt a strange sensation, and jumped on instinct, avoiding the blow. She then fired off the webbing Ruruka created, trapping him in place.
“Let’s take this outside,” Spiderwoman jumped over the heads of the other five, and landing in the courtyard.
“Keep an eye on her,” Ruruka said, “but don’t step in unless she starts to lose, we need to show off our project after all.” Sonosuke nodded in agreement, before heading after the villains.
After Sonosuke vanished Rhino said “That was dumb.”
“If you think Sei can’t beat your friends, you’re in for a big surprise,” Ruruka said.
“No, leaving yourself alone with me!” with those words Rhino tore himself free of the webbing and charged at her. Ruruka ran through the doors, hoping he wouldn’t find her.
“Hey,” said a boy Ruruka had seen before, “what are you doing there?”

“So you know why I’m all dressed up,” Spiderwoman said, “but what’s your deal? Did you all come here from a clown convention?”
“Fool,” Octopus said, “we are supervillains, you are no match for us.” He tried to grab her with his tentacles, but he missed.
“Oh,” she said, “you’re from the psych ward. Just calm down and a nice padded bus will be here soon enough.” She grabbed Octopus’s arm, and flung him at the Shocker, who leapt out of the way.
“Stop talking,” Beetle said as she threw a punch at Spiderwoman, “it’s unprofessional.”
“Unprofessional?” Spiderwoman scoffed, “I am in a full body suit with a spider design on it, everything about me screams professionalism” She webbed up Beetles hand, threw her into the buildings wall, and webbed her down.
A blast from the Shocker came flying at her, but when she jumped out of the way, a disk from the Wizard caught her, freezing her in place.
“Did you really believe we weren’t prepared for a Spider?” asked the Wizard, “Almost anything else would’ve been a bigger threat.”

“Out of the way,” Ruruka shoved the boy, having just realized what she could do. She turned down the hallway, looking for a room.
“Running won’t get you away from the Rhino,” cried a voice from behind her “I’ll get you.”
Ruruka shouted back “Then why are you so far away?” She needed him to stay close for her plan to work. She turned into the kitchen, and ran towards the oven. She turned the heat on as high as she could, and grabbed a few of the spare webbing pills she’d left in here.
“There you are!” The Rhino said as he knocked down the wall, “Nowhere to run now!”
“Funny,” she said, “I was just about to say the same to you,” she threw the pills into the oven, and stuck her head out the nearby window, where she could see the fight going on below.
“What is that-” the Rhino started to speak, when a rumbling came from the oven, before a flood of webbing filled the room, freezing the Rhino in place.
“Well,” Ruruka said to herself, “at least I can see this time.”

“How about this?” came a voice, as a knife went flying through the air, striking the center of the disk, freeing Spiderwoman.
“Who dares?” asked the Wizard, when a girl came flying in and knocked him to the ground.
“Watch it,” said Akane, “you ruined my landing.” Several of her classmates came running up.
“What manner of event is transpiring?” asked Gundham.
“It appears that our school is under attack,” said Peko, “we should make quick work of them.”
“Do you really think a bunch of high school students can take us down?” said Shocker.
“I’ve done more with less,” said Nekomaru, as they began to charge the villains.

“Hmm,” said a voice near Ruruka, “I guess I was worried about nothing.”
“Who’s there?” asked Ruruka, “I can’t turn my head that far.”
“It’s Peter,” he said, “nice to properly meet you. Good job on the Rhino, he usually a pretty threatening guy.”
“Thanks,” Ruruka said hesitantly, “are you going to help them?”
“Why? They’ve already taken care of it,” Peter said. Ruruka looked over to see that the last of the villains were being webbed up. “Where’s the chemistry lab? I can make something to get you out of there, but I’ll need equipment.”

With the combined efforts of Peter and Seiko, Ruruka was freed in under an hour. Peter then had to explain everything to security. It took some convincing, but they eventually agreed to let him stay at the school for the week, and granted him the title of the Ultimate Spiderman.