Homecoming: The Junior Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PHOTOS

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © 2017 MARVEL © 2017 CPII

  Cover design by Ching N. Chan.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at lb-kids.com

  marvelkids.com

  First Edition: June 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-43817-9 (pbk.), 978-0-316-43818-6 (paper over board), 978-0-316-43819-3 (ebook)

  E3-20170426-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PHOTOS

  The famous skyline of New York City shimmered in the morning light as the sun danced across Avengers Tower. Home to the greatest Super Heroes on Earth. Yes, the world had Super Heroes now. Billionaire geniuses in iron suits. World War II super soldiers. Even godlike beings from other worlds wielding mystical hammers. New Yorkers thought they had seen everything until one fateful day when the sky opened up and a full-scale alien invasion rained from a portal above. Monstrous beings known as the Chitauri crashed into buildings and wreaked havoc in the streets. Fortunately for Earth, the Avengers assembled and drove them back, saving the day and announcing their presence on a global scale. After that, it was time for New Yorkers to do what they did best: move on with life.

  And clean up. There was always the cleanup.…

  Deep inside a roped-off tunnel of Grand Central Terminal, music blared from a radio as a salvage crew hacked, hammered, and torched its way to try to break through the hide of one of the Chitauri serpents. The crew’s boss, Adrian Toomes, smiled as he paused and addressed his workers.

  “Now, see, fellas, you can’t just saw your way through this stuff like normal. These beasties are crafty,” he said, a glint in his eye as he raised his hammer. He swung it down on a piece of alien tech embedded in the serpent’s hide, and the tech flew off, landing in his hand. “Gotta use their own tech against them.”

  Toomes was tossing the Chitauri tech onto the back of his truck when he spied a member of his crew trying to sneak by.

  “Afternoon, Brice!” he called out. “So glad you could make it.”

  Brice stopped, busted. “Sorry, boss,” he replied. “Alarm didn’t go off.”

  Toomes looked over at another member of his crew, who was tinkering with a generator. “Hey, Mason, think you can whip up Brice an alarm that only plays this one song?” he said, reaching for his phone. “Here, let me cue it up.”

  “Please, Toomes,” Brice pleaded, knowing what song it was. “Anything but that.”

  “Gotta pay the piper, Bri—” Toomes started to respond, before being cut off by the sudden appearance of men and women in crisp suits and shiny hard hats. The badges on their uniforms identified them as some sort of governmental agency, but Toomes didn’t recognize it. A stern-looking woman, obviously in charge, stepped forward, with another agent at her left flank. Toomes turned off the music, ready for a standoff.

  “Attention, please,” the woman announced. “In accordance with Executive Order 396-B, all post-battle cleanup operations are now under our jurisdiction! Thank you for your service. We’ll take it from here now.”

  “Who are you?” Toomes demanded.

  “Qualified personnel,” answered the man at her side, pointing at his badge.

  “Qualified? I’m not the one with the price tag still on my hard hat, Agent… Foster, is it?” Toomes sneered and laughed. His crew chuckled behind him.

  The woman remained firm. “You can collect your tools and go,” she said as she and Foster turned to leave. Toomes circled around her, noting the name on her badge.

  “Look, Agent Hoag—”

  “Director Hoag,” she corrected him.

  “Director. You can’t do this. I got a contract with the city,” Toomes insisted.

  Her face was unmoved as she responded,

  “All salvage contracts are now void.”

  “I bought trucks for this job, put on more guys!” Toomes snapped, his voice beginning to rise. “They’ve got families! So do I!”

  Hoag met his pleas with silence. Toomes’s face flushed with anger.

  “Okay, okay, I’m a smart man,” he said, taking a breath and leaning in to whisper. “I’ve been trying to do this the right way, but if there’s someone I have to pay… y’know…”

  Hoag looked at him with disdain. “The only thing you have to do is turn over any exotic materials in your possession and leave.”

  “C’mon, lady,” he practically begged, “I’m all in on this thing. You pull the plug, I’m gonna lose my house.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sir,” Hoag replied coolly.

  Foster had a smug look on his face now. “Maybe next time, don’t overextend yourself,” he said.

  That was all Toomes could handle. Without thinking, he swung at Agent Foster with a hard right hook, connecting across the man’s jaw. Foster and the other agents immediately drew their guns. Toomes’s crew picked up their tools. The air was tense, both sides ready for a fight.

  Finally, Hoag motioned for her men to lower their weapons.

  “Mr. Toomes, we are done here,” she said, her voice quiet, but steady. “You have your instructions. If you have a grievance, you’ll have to take it up with my superiors.” She walked off as the other agents began to call in orders for their cleanup crews to take over the site.

  Toomes was left speechless, along with the rest of his crew members, who started making their way to their trucks. Finally, he called out after her: “Who are your superiors?”

  On a beat-up television screen, a TV news reporter stood outside Grand Central Terminal as agents dressed just like the ones that Toomes had encountered moved intently through a cordoned-off section. In the background, Agent Foster was directing a group of men in brand-new workmen’s uniforms and the same shiny hard hats he wore.

  “Announced today,” the reporter said, “a joint venture between Stark Industries and the federal government, the newly created Department of Damage Control will oversee collection and storage of a
lien and other exotic materials—”

  “Shut it off!” Toomes bellowed.

  He and his crew were in the workshop of Toomes Salvage Company, still sulking about the day’s blow to the business. The workshop was a large building that held a fleet of trucks and equipment. Toomes wasn’t lying when he said he’d invested his life’s savings in the Battle of New York cleanup contract.

  He hurled a bottle, narrowly missing the television. “So now the jerks like Stark who made this mess get paid to clean it up?” he grumbled.

  “And we’re out of a job,” said Mason, absentmindedly tinkering with his tools.

  Another of Toomes’s crew, Schultz, raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to the little guys like us! Work hard, pay your dues, and always get it in the end!”

  The rest of the crew gave halfhearted cheers and raised their glasses, but Toomes was in too foul a mood. His eyes were on one of the trucks. Nearby, Brice followed Toomes’s gaze and saw something peeking out from under the tarp that covered the back of the truck. His eyes widened, and he moved in for a closer look.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Brice asked as Mason came over to join him.

  “Some of that alien tech from the site,” Mason said. His mind racing, he turned to Toomes and asked, “Should we turn it over?”

  Toomes didn’t respond immediately. His eyes were fixed on a child’s drawing on his desk. A simple stick-figure drawing of a dad, a mom, and a little girl in front of a house. It seemed out of place in the grimy workroom. But it was clearly special to Toomes; he kept it in a place where he would always see it, a beacon of hope among the rubble. Finally turning his attention away from the drawing, he looked over at Brice and Mason.

  “No,” he answered, his voice low. “Bring it into your workshop, Mason.”

  Brice and Mason exchanged an uneasy glance, but one look at Toomes’s darkened face told them it was best not to question their boss’s orders. As Toomes watched the men unload the tech from the truck, the gears in his mind began to turn. After all, he was—just as he told Hoag—a very smart man.…

  CHAPTER 1

  New York. Queens.” A booming voice set the stage as buildings whizzed past the lens of a camera. “It’s a rough borough. But hey, it’s home. Hard to say good-bye, but the world’s not gonna save itself. Sometimes a hero—”

  A slightly annoyed voice chimed in. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Huh? Oh, no one…” The booming voice cracked a little. “No one. I’m just making a video of the trip.”

  Okay, okay, it was actually my voice. And maybe it wasn’t so booming.

  I held up my phone to the driver of the limo to show him. This entire day had been unreal. Can you imagine me, Peter Parker, of all people, in the back of a limo? And not just any limo—a limo owned by Tony Stark and driven by his bodyguard, Happy Hogan! (I still don’t know how he ended up with that nickname—“Happy” hadn’t smiled once since picking me up.)

  “You know you can’t show that to anybody, right?” he grumbled.

  “Yeah, I know.” Who would I even show it to anyway?

  “Then why were you using that voice?” Happy continued.

  “Just for… fun. Y’know…” I tried to lighten the mood by giving a smile, but I think it looked more like my just showing the dentist my teeth.

  “Uh-huh,” Happy grunted.

  Before I could stop them, the words flew out of my mouth: “So why do they call you ‘Happy’?”

  The partition raised slowly in response, ending the discussion.

  “Cool, I get it, not much of a talker.” Happy didn’t seem nearly as excited as I was to be taking this trip. But at least with the partition closed, I could go back to my filming in private. “Where was I? Oh yeah. Sometimes a hero has to fly off when duty calls.…”

  If Tony Stark’s limo was cool, his jet (at his own private airport, naturally) was insanely cool! The seats swiveled and were made with real leather; TVs were everywhere, along with a working Avengers pinball machine!

  I accepted the cream soda one of the flight attendants offered me and turned to Happy. “Uh, is there a bathroom, or should I…?” I asked preemptively.

  “First time on a private plane?” Happy said with… was that a smile? Or a smirk?

  Blushing, I admitted, “First time on any plane.”

  After recording the full tour of the plane (which did, indeed, have a bathroom), it was time to take off. The jet roared, and soon we were over the Atlantic. Happy snored the entire way, giving my video journal a gravelly soundtrack, but the scenery made up for it. Before I knew it, we were flying over Western Europe and descending into Germany.

  Everything after that seemed like a blur. Another limo. Speeding past really old architecture. Being ushered into a hotel room that was almost the size of May’s apartment in Queens and a hundred times nicer (not that I’d ever tell her that). The phone call saying, “Mr. Stark will be arriving in ten minutes.” Ten minutes—ten minutes! I wasn’t even dressed yet!

  The knock on the door came just as I pulled my mask over my head. “Come—ahem—” Sound more confident, Parker, I scolded myself. “Come in.”

  But he was already in. And it wasn’t Tony Stark. It was Happy. He walked right in without a word and stared at me. What was he staring at? Then he waved his hand at me, his face looking confused, with a hint of impatience.

  “What is this?” was all he said, still staring.

  “My… suit…?” I took a guess that he wasn’t talking about the room’s décor.

  He looked confused, glancing around the room. “Didn’t you get a box? There was supposed to be a box,” he muttered, mostly to himself. He walked through a small doorway into an adjoining room and spotted it. “There’s a box.”

  I walked in to see him pointing to a dresser. I hadn’t even bothered to explore the multiple rooms of my hotel room. It was a box, all right. And it came with a note: A minor upgrade.—TS. I pressed a button, and the case opened.

  So far, I’d been excited by the limo, blown away by the jet, and astounded by the hotel. But this… this was…

  “Whoa.” I couldn’t muster any other words. It was an amazing, beautiful, shiny, magnificent work of art. It made my hand-sewn Spidey outfit look like a cheap Halloween costume. This—this was a Spider-Man uniform! I was still trying to absorb everything in front of me when the open case unfolded even more, revealing compartments filled with accessories, like web cartridges and some other things that I really hoped came with a user’s manual.

  “This is way better than mine!” I blurted out.

  “Now,” Happy said, folding his arms as a serious look crossed his face, “ready to earn it?”

  Oh man. I should have asked what he meant by “earn it.” I went to an airstrip with the Avengers to fight… other Avengers? Oh well. Gotta trust the boss man. But this was definitely going in my video journal. I webbed my phone to the wing of an airplane, hit RECORD, and…

  “Whoa, there’s Iron Man—and the War Machine guy—and the Romanoff lady.” No need to use a booming voice to narrate the video; I was too excited to keep my cool. “Black Panther is awesome!”

  “Underoos!” Iron Man yelled as he and the others prepared for the showdown.

  “That’s my cue,” I said, looking into the camera. “I gotta steal Captain America’s shield! Wish me luck!”

  THWIP! I shot some web, grabbing Cap’s shield and yanking it as I flipped onto a truck. Man, that felt… freaking, terrifyingly great!

  “Hey, everybody!” I said as I landed.

  Then the action really started.

  Thank goodness I got it all on video, because I can hardly remember most of it. I remember fighting against Captain America and his physics-defying shield, and seeing everyone’s powers and skills. I remember trying to figure out if the purple guy flying straight at me was on our side or not. I remember taking down the giant-size Ant-Man old-school Empire Strikes Back–style. Yup, it’s moments like those that phone camera
s were made for.…

  “I thought I was gonna freeze up after Tony yelled out ‘Underoos.’” I was back in my hotel room, watching and rewatching the video over and over, doing my own postgame breakdown. “Then I grabbed Cap’s shield like—PFSHEWWWWW!”

  I was so into reliving the moment that I didn’t notice I’d flicked my wrist and fired a web. Only this time it didn’t shoot out like my regular webbing; it was more like a ball that bounced all over the room, zooming over my head, almost hitting a lamp, making way too much noise as it hit the walls and ceiling and floor. Finally, it landed—SPLAT—in a gooey pile of webbing right by the hotel doorway.

  Unfortunately, standing in the doorway, his face inches away from a mouthful of webbing, was Happy. In his pajamas. Heh, Happy wore pajamas. As usual, he wasn’t smiling.

  “This hotel has thin walls—” he started.

  “Right,” I said, trying not to let my excitement show too much, “you are absolutely right; won’t happen again. Sorry, Happy!”

  Happy gave me a look that suggested he wanted to continue his scolding, but sleep won out in the end. “Go to bed,” he said, shutting the door. “We leave first thing.”

  As soon as he was gone, I examined the web cartridge on my wrist. A holographic display read RICOCHET WEB. “Cooooool,” I whispered.

  Everything was so freaking cool. I heard Happy’s voice in my head telling me to go to sleep. I tugged at my glove to start changing out of my suit when another voice popped into my head. My voice. I wonder what else this suit can do. My head-voice drowned out Happy’s as I grabbed my phone, webbed it to my chest, and started to climb out the window. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw myself in the mirror.

  “Shhhhhhh,” I told my mirror-self as I swung out into the German night.

  I burrowed my face into my pillow and snuggled in deeper. Beds in Germany felt so much better than the ones in Queens.

  Queens!

  I opened my eyes and sat up so fast I almost flipped out of bed. Happy’s words echoed in my head. We leave first thing. First thing? What time was first thing? Clocks didn’t have “first thing” on them, but it was probably second or third past first thing. I glanced in the mirror and realized my suit was still on. I must have fallen asleep after saving that old lady from being mugged last night.