What Tangled Webs - Ch 2 (Adv) - Day One (Patreon)

Natasha, 10 days ago

The sky was just starting to brighten as we crossed the East River over the Whitestone Bridge. We’d been driving all night, since my mission in Cleveland concluded late last night. An unparalleled success, if I did say so myself. Hopefully enough to make up for the failure of my prior task — I had not been at fault for what happened in Hungary, but I still hadn’t been disciplined over it at all. Cleveland had been urgent though, so I suspected now it would be time for the Sword of Damocles to fall.

Presumably after whatever disciplinary action the Americans favored, I would be debriefed before my next task, but the nondescript driver hadn’t offered anything but a mild congratulations. I had expected to be returned to the Triskelion building, but I had long since realized we were heading almost due East. The last hour we’d spent traversing what could only be New York City more than confirmed that.

“Так зачем мы здесь?” So why are we here? I was speaking under my breath, just thinking aloud, but my driver gave a bland smile in the rearview mirror.

“Вы скоро всё узнаете,” he replied. You will find out everything soon. His American accent butchered– No, not ‘butchered’; that’s the brainwashing talking. His accent… belied an otherwise good command of the language.

“You should probably get used to speaking English though, Natasha,” he added, and my eyes narrowed.

“That’s Natalia.” Like hell was I letting some chauffeur call me by a diminutive.

“Natalia,” he corrected himself, seeming unbothered. “At least for the moment. Most likely you’ll be assigned an alias for this mission.”

“Obviously.” I looked back out the window, reminding myself not for the first time that this level of petulance wouldn’t have been tolerated in Russia. “This is far from my first assignment.”

“Indeed, S.H.I.E.L.D. selected you for this task as a ‘final exam’ of sorts,” he replied, and I blinked, because how the hell would he know that?

Another glance forward showed only that same bland smile, and my training presented seven different ways I could kill him without even needing to undo my seatbelt. Nine if I was willing to crash the car.

I forced my gaze away again. If explanations were forthcoming anyway, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking now… but I would memorize his face, because he either knew something he shouldn’t or he was more important than I’d realized.

Soon enough, we pulled off the main road and parked in front of a completely nondescript row house. I was out of the car before the driver as soon as the parking brake was set. My eyes swept the area, but I didn’t see anything out of place. Certainly no people, since dawn was barely breaking.

If anything, it made me more nervous. Why the hell were we here instead of debriefing back at the Triskelion? Was I about to find that my employers weren’t at all different from the Red Room? Because if so, I wouldn’t hesitate to disappear again even if it killed me–

“When you’re ready, Natalia.”

The driver’s calm voice derailed my train of thought, and I turned to find him holding out my bag. I didn’t take it. “Lead the way.”

Still with that same damn smile, he inclined his head and turned away.

He knocked on the door, four times in an odd rhythm. Rather than wait for someone to answer, produced a key and inserted it. Only then did he pause, and faintly I heard four taps in a different pattern. Nodding, he turned the key and opened the door, entering without glancing back at me. I wasn’t sure if he actually trusted me not to run, or just assumed that our employers would find me if I did… which was probably accurate.

The faintly lit rectangle of the door frame taunted me. I knew they didn’t trust me. How could they? I had betrayed the Red Room, betrayed Russia; to their minds, a traitor would always be a traitor. They were just using me until I stopped being useful… the wider bars didn’t make any less of a cage.

And yet… it didn’t make sense to bring me to a suburban neighborhood if they were planning to eliminate me. So whatever we were doing here, it had to be because they needed me here for

I followed the driver, pausing only to knock three times on the doorframe myself. Fast, slow, slow.

Inside, the chauffeur had set my bag on the table, and was saluting a fit black man with a goatee on his chin and a patch over his left eye. Scarring visible all around the patch suggested it wasn’t a mere fashion statement. He was seated at a table and watching me, not the driver.

“Come in and sit down.” His face was professionally blank, and I couldn’t help but commend him.

“I prefer to stand.”

He studied me a moment longer before turning back to the driver without comment. “No issues, Agent Coulson?”

“None, Sergeant Fury,” Coulson replied. “The Cleveland operation was flawless. Little bit of paranoia on the way here, but I think that’s entirely justified.”

“Quite. Dismissed.”

“Sir.” Coulson saluted again, and left, taking care not to walk behind me. Was that a power play, or a sign of respect?

“Shut the door and come over here, if you won’t sit,” the Sergeant ordered. “As you’ve no doubt been wondering, you’re here for a new briefing.” He slid a folder across the table, but kept talking. “There are additional details in here, but to bring you up to speed: We’ve taken an interest in the masked vigilante known as Spider-Man. We’ve been aware of him for some time — difficult not to when he streams himself online — but he seems to have taken a particular interest in one of our defense contractors.”

He pulled something out of his own folder, unfolding it to reveal a map of the city. The boroughs were outlined, and each stickers of various shapes and colors dotted around them. A handful in Brooklyn and the Bronx, several in Manhattan, and dozens in Queens — Staten Island uniquely had none. He paused, evidently waiting for me to ask something. I didn’t. You can learn a lot more than people think by knowing when to stay silent.

“Based on the frequency of incidents, encounters, and sightings, our analysts have determined that Spider-Man most likely lives nearby,” he announced. “Your knock on my door tells me you’re at least as observant as I’ve been told, which is quite impressive considering your age… which is the other reason you’ve been selected for this job.”

Now I could tell he wanted a verbal response, and prompted him, “Sir?”

Fury dropped a finger on a particular spot on the map. “This is Midtown High School. As you can see, it’s smack in the middle of the most frequent sightings… and not coincidentally, Spider-Man is very rarely spotted during school hours. We think it’s likely one of the teachers there is beneath the mask, but his costume is all-encompassing, preventing any hair or skin samples from being collected casually. On the very few occasions he’s been injured by a so-called supervillain, he or someone else has been careful to neutralize any blood spilled. We simply have nothing to go on.”

I could see where this was headed, but… “It’s 2025. Surely between security cameras and civilian phones, it should be trivial to narrow down his identity?”

“That’s the rub. We naturally thought the same thing, started analyzing security camera footage. Spider-Man is rather adept at avoiding them; he hasn’t actually been spotted at the school, just nearby… and only for a short time last year before he began dodging their sightlines entirely. A few nearby have been manually adjusted to leave blind spots that his powers are able to bypass; we have the footage of them being moved, but not even his suit appears in them. The vast majority of footage we have is from random people’s cell phones which only tell us where and when, or his own streams which have had all identifying metadata carefully scrubbed.”

“Why hasn’t the streaming service been subpoenaed?” I asked, seizing on that. “If he’s making money off this, there must be a paper trail.”

Fury gestured at my folder, indicating these questions had indeed been raised before and the answers lay within. “The trail ends with a private banker, a Mr Joel Jacks, who Spider-Man saved a few months ago from the so-called Doctor Octopus. He doesn’t know Spider-Man’s identity, and we have no leverage to press any further because Jacks’ name is on the account. Whether he’s paying Spider-Man’s civilian identity outside of that is far beyond what we can ascertain without a warrant.”

“If we can’t, couldn’t the Internal Revenue Service do so?” If there was one boogeyman that American businessmen feared, at least according to Hollywood, it was ‘The Tax Man’. Who was… most likely a metaphor, though who knew if some mutate might claim it as an identity.

Fury shook his head. “Jacks pays taxes on the income to that account as an LLC. He’s actually overpaying slightly, just to ensure that the IRS has no motive to audit, and I would spuriously suspect that the uncostumed Spider-Man is likely being taxed a second time to avoid scrutiny.”

I frowned. “If he’s harassing a defense contractor, wouldn’t further surveillance be called for? Have him followed by a drone, and beef up security around the company in case he comes near.”

“Drones that follow him lose signal and tend to crash from interference in their target-seeking,” Fury replied. “As for increasing surveillance, the company declined, citing ‘trade secrets’.”

“That seems… suspicious,” I pointed out. “By all accounts I have heard, Spider-Man is unusually conscious of the law for a vigilante; providing but not interfering with evidence of the crimes he stops and even giving statements to the police where necessary, if from a distance. If he’s investigating a defense contractor, and they’re refusing to increase security…”

“It is suspicious,” Fury agreed. “And I’ll be looking into that side of it. You, on the other hand, will be working from the other end.”

“In the school,” I surmised. “Have you secured a role for a substitute teacher? A custodian?”

“Not quite,” said Fury. “You’ll be entering the senior class as a transfer student, Nancy Rushman. As I’ve said, we currently suspect Spider-Man to be a teacher, but don’t rule out anyone you encounter.”

“You want me to go to an American high school.” I wasn’t questioning my orders… but I was definitely skeptical.

Which, admittedly, was another difference between here and the Red Room. There, it was expected we obey without question. Registering my doubts about orders was accepted here.

…As long as I still obeyed. That much hadn’t changed.

I looked at the map again, tracing the streets from the school South to a marked building. “Am I staying here?”

“We are staying here,” he corrected. “As you are allegedly a high-school student, I will be standing as your guardian: Marcus Johnson, a researcher at the New York City Municipal Archives. Given your age, you may refer to me as Marcus while in cover; when we are alone, I expect you to call me Fury. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Your bedroom and bathroom are on the second floor. You can do what you want with them. Mine are on the third.” He leaned forward, his one eye boring into mine. “Do not climb to the third floor.”

“Yes, Sir,” I repeated, keeping my face carefully blank.

I had already held some fear of this man, since he was clearly important in whatever organization now held my leash, but the way he’d said that… This man was not important merely by rank. Whoever Fury was, he was a field operative first, and rising through the ranks hadn’t made him any less dangerous.

If I couldn’t work alone, at least I could be satisfied working with a professional.

He sat back, apparently satisfied. “In that folder you’ll find a dossier of everything we know about Spider-Man, along with our analysts’ best speculations. Anything that isn’t backed by data should be marked as such; kindly inform me of any discrepancies so I can have the responsible analyst disciplined.”

I nodded. Educated speculation was good, but taking speculation as fact was no better than bad intel… and bad intel got people killed.

“There are also small profiles on key persons of interest,” Fury continued. “Both staff and students. Most of them are included for completeness, but with as little concrete data as we have, any one of them could be Spider-Man. In addition, you’ll need to complete some standardized tests — not to ensure your placement, as we’ll take care of that, but for us to arrange a tutor for the areas you’ll need additional background.”

Things to make me a more reliable spy, I translated. My education in mathematics and the hard sciences were top-notch, but my knowledge of American history was understandably at a different standard than a native’s.

Seeing that I understood, Fury dismissed me.

“I do have one question, Sir,” I said before he could turn back to his work.

Fury raised an eyebrow, and I pointed at the map again, to a marking directly across the street from us.

“Why is this building marked? Are the residents here also suspects?”

“No.”

He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, but I waited, and once again the power of holding my tongue paid off.

“The residents there are of interest to us for different reasons, unrelated to your mission,” he said finally. “One of them is a boy who will be in your class, which is the only reason I’m telling you anything at all.” He immediately changed the subject. “You’ll be inserted in ten days. Take the time to prepare yourself.”

That was clearly all he was willing to say, so I nodded again. “Understood, Sir. I’ll start on this briefing now.”

Peter, present day

Okay, ow.

I splashed some water on my face in the bathroom. What the hell was that about?

‘Migraine’ had been my excuse to Mr Warren, and I’d been in about that much pain at the time, but migraines didn’t go away this fast… or tend to start at the base of the skull. No, that was where my Spider-Sense originated to warn me of danger. And it was usually just a tingling sensation close to pain; it wasn’t actively debilitating because what was the point of having a danger sense if sensing the danger put me in more danger!?

And that was just the start of what was weird here… I might have identified who set it off, but my Spider-Sense hadn’t gone off that strongly even when Sandman tore my mask trying to straight-up murder me! If that incident had been a 7 or 8 on a theoretical 0-10 scale, this had felt more like it went to 11!

Which meant that whoever or whatever Nancy Rushman was, she was more dangerous than a guy with Dissociative Identity Disorder and the ability to turn into sand making him nearly indestructible.

If I hadn’t happened to be fighting him near that industrial vacuum cleaner…

Anyway, the fact that some random high school girl set off my Spider-Sense worse than that meant that there was no way in hell she was actually a random high school girl. It was still tingling very faintly, although it had receded sharply the moment I left the classroom. It only indicated danger to me, and how much, not the exact source if there was more than one, so I didn’t know for sure that it was still picking up on Nancy… but really, what else could it be? She was the new factor here. Was she a mutant? A supervillain? A Russian spy!?

…Okay I might be watching too many Cold War movies. I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for spy fiction, and The Hunt For Red October is a classic! And… it made me feel closer to my biological parents, since I knew they’d died in Volgograd.

Uncle Ben never talked about what his brother and sister-in-law did for work in front of me if he could help it, but I knew they had worked for the government, and from a few conversations I overheard growing up I eventually narrowed it down to one of the Alphabet Agencies: CIA, DIA, or NSC being most likely. I still thought about it from time to time, but I was too busy these days to research the Alphabet Soup seeing as I wasn’t planning to join any of them.

What was I thinking about…? Right, the scary-ass redhead in my homeroom. I would have to keep an eye on her — preferably from a discreet distance — to make sure she wasn’t a danger to anyone at school. That would not be fun, especially since I had really been hoping for a stress-free end to senior year after that kerfuffle with Daredevil and Mysterio over Christmas, but such was life when your name was Peter Parker.

At least I knew she couldn’t sneak up on me.

Drying off my hands and face, I finger-combed my hair and tried to plan an excuse for when I returned to the classroom. Mr Warren would give anything I said the benefit of the doubt, but taking advantage of that made me feel like a dick, so I should probably swing by the nurse for some painkillers and stick with the headache excuse. That meant being out of class for a bit longer, which wasn’t a problem academically but would just compound the rumors that were bound to spread about this incident.

On the upside… such as it was… Seymour would make sure my reputation tanked even further because of this. Because obviously, Pathetic Parker couldn’t just have a migraine; no doubt by lunchtime the whole school would believe that I’d fallen in love at first sight and was too chicken-shit to even sit near her. That would be extremely awkward, and probably tank my chances of having even a friendly conversation with Liz, much less the odds of her agreeing to go to prom with me.

…Yeah, they were long odds to begin with, but a guy can hope!

Sighing, I made my way toward the nurse’s office, my mind drifting back to the enigma that was Nancy Rushman. The only real upside I could spot at the moment was that my Spider-Sense wasn’t increasing even as I made plans to return to the same room she was in. It wasn’t going away, either, so I’d probably have to just get used to it always low-key going off when she was anywhere nearby, but as long as it stayed at this background level I should be able to work through it.

Hopefully that remained the case, because I obviously wouldn’t be able to avoid her completely seeing as she was in at least my homeroom if not other classes, but I would definitely avoid talking to her, and work on keeping as much distance from that crazy redhead as I possibly could!

“–fortunately you share all your classes, so I would consider it a personal favor if you could help bring Nancy up to speed anywhere that she’s struggling, Peter.”

“…Yes, Mr Warren.” Everyone else was gone, since the trip to the nurse’s office had caused me to miss the end of Homeroom.

Hadn’t I just been thinking how I was going to stay as far away from her as possible? Me and my big mouth. Er, my big inner-monologue? Hey Murphy, no fair targeting me this hard when I didn’t even say any of it out loud!

“I appreciate it, Mr Parker,” said Nancy. She reached out to pat my forearm, which would have been a completely innocuous gesture if not for the tingle from my Spider-Sense intensifying slightly. Nowhere close to how bad it had been before; more like going from a 1 to a 1.5 instead of jumping to an 11 like earlier, but it still had me leaning away instinctively to gather my books in a way that coincidentally prevented her from touching me.

“Not at all, Miss Rushman,” I said politely.

“Please, call me Nancy.” She smiled, and while the suspicious part of me would have liked to say it didn’t reach her eyes… it totally did. She smiled with her whole face, eyes included, and if not for the ongoing minimal tingle of Spider-Sense I wouldn’t suspect a damn thing about her. Shit, I might actually have been nursing a little crush, with how pretty she was and nice she was being.

“Peter is fine,” I replied by rote even though being casual with her was the last thing I wanted. “If you’re in all my classes, it’s organic chemistry next, over in the other wing,” I added, hauling my backpack over my shoulder and glancing at the clock. “We can make the last bell if we hoof it.”

“Not to worry, I’ll write you both a pass,” Mr Warren waved it off. “Are you certain you’re all right, Peter?”

“Yes, Sir,” I gave a wan smile. “It turned out to be a small headache that coincided with a dizzy spell, probably from staying up too late last night. Sorry for overreacting.”

“Not at all, just try to take better care of yourself, son.” He handed the passes to Nancy, and I opened the door for her.

“My, what a gentleman,” she smiled again.

Nancy kept up easily when I started walking, almost close enough to brush elbows, and I suppressed a sigh. At this rate I wouldn’t be able to shake her off until lunchtime.

Nancy

It was patently obvious Peter wanted some space, and my investigation wouldn’t be resolved today, so once we entered the cafeteria after History class I let him peel away, heading for the restroom myself. I didn’t need it, but it was a convenient excuse to kill some time so I could observe where he sat when left to his own devices.

If he was completely alone, I could position myself nearby. Otherwise, I could mark those he sat with. Or, I supposed it was possible he might collect his lunch and leave the cafeteria entirely, but that would also tell me something, and I could trail him tomorrow to see where he went.

He was surprisingly cagey at the prospect of spending time with me, I thought as I washed my hands. Or… perhaps being seen spending time with me? I was fairly confident in my read on his place in the social hierarchy — particularly given the rumors I’d already heard circulating about how he’d acted during homeroom, he definitely didn’t have a positive reputation in the school — so there had to be some other reason he was so leery.

Psionics would be useful at a time like this, but alas, I didn’t have the talent for it. The Red Room taught methods for protecting all but the most superficial thoughts, and after so many years of conditioning it was simply part of who I was, but I would have to do the rest of my investigation the hard way instead of simply reading minds.

I might have attributed it to simply being shy, or nervous around women, but he’d had no particular issue talking to Gwen during Chemistry class. Maybe I reminded him of someone…?

I didn’t have enough information for speculation to be constructive, so I dried my hands on the coarse paper towel, retrieved my lunch from my backpack, and went to survey the cafeteria.

It wasn’t paranoia that stopped me from eating school lunch, exactly. Nobody except Fury knew I was here, after all, and attempting to poison me through the cafeteria food had a huge chance of drawing attention via unintended victims. Rather… I’d heard about the terrible funding American schools received, and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resources made it trivial to confirm that this particular instance hadn’t simply been Russian propaganda: American school lunches really were as poor as I’d been told.

Really, for a country this rich, the absence of political will to keep children fed was appalling, and thanks to the Red Room I couldn’t even have children.

I shook my head, scanning the room to locate Peter again. He was just exiting the line, heading for a table by the wall, near but not in the corner, already occupied by a hunched boy with brown hair and hooked nose, and a red-haired girl dressed in black.

Not the totally friendless type of nerd, then; socially isolated on the whole, but with a group of, presumably, fellow outcasts around him.

I was just debating where to sit nearby without drawing his attention when my attention was caught by someone waving from a couple tables over. “Nancy!”

Ah, Gwen. No doubt seeking a kindred spirit as a fellow ‘new kid’. Still, she’d been a competent lab partner in Chemistry class, providing answers and explanations at least as detailed as Peter’s, so she was clearly intelligent despite falling in with what I instantly assessed as the ‘in’-crowd.

“Hi!” Gwen smiled. “It was great working with you in Chem; have a seat.”

Well, conveniently they were positioned near enough for me to eavesdrop on Peter’s table, so I headed her way. It would be a chance to compare the school’s ‘popular’ clique to my pop-culture understanding anyway. I sat, and Gwen rattled off everyone’s names, allowing me to put faces to the brief dossiers S.H.I.E.L.D. had compiled on the students in my class.

“This is Sally Avril–” A short-haired, athletic brunette with gold hoops in her ears reading a magazine called Inside Gymnastics. If I recalled correctly, she had ties to the school district administration.

“–Jason Ionello, Sally’s boyfriend–” A smarmy-looking boy with black hair who was fiddling with a camera.

“–Liz Allan–” A multiracial girl who barely looked up from her biology notes.

“–Emma Frost–” A statuesque blonde with a superior smirk on her blue-painted lips.

“–Seymour O’Reilly–” A tall boy with a patchy goatee; I recognized him as the one from my homeroom who landed himself in detention.

“–Brian McKeever; I don’t know why they call him ‘Tiny’–” An even taller red-haired boy who kept sneaking glances at Liz.

“–Charlie Murphy–” An unassuming-looking boy working on a drawing of a supercomputer in a sketchbook.

“–Scott Summers–” The well-built boy from the front row of my homeroom; he was wearing red-tinted glasses that were listed as a required disability aid.

“–and Eugene Thompson–”

“Call me ‘Flash’, baby,” the muscular blond boy cut in, smiling in what I suppose he thought was a charming way.

I gave a polite smile and started making conversation. Despite my hope that Peter would turn out to be a useful source of information, he was far from the only one available, and even with him ruled out there were still plenty of people in the school who could be, or could have information about, Spider-Man.

Peter

“So Payyyter.” No sooner had I sat down than St. John threw an arm around my neck, dragging me halfway out of my seat. Thankfully I’d already set down my tray. “Wot’s this oi heah ‘bowt yeh faintin’ at the soight of a stunnah?”

St. John was born in Sydney, Australia, but he’d moved here when he was eight. His accent wasn’t actually that strong; he was deliberately playing it up to be obnoxious.

It was working.

I shoved him off, groaning, “Is that what they’re saying? I mean, I knew there were gonna be rumors, but that doesn’t even make sense!”

“I’m afraid so,” said Jean with an apologetic smile, and I groaned again.

“I got a headache and went to the nurse!” My head thudded to the table, barely missing the edge of my tray. Thankfully, because with my luck it would’ve flipped the mystery meat special all over me. “Literally fifteen people saw me walk out, how does that morph into ‘fainting’?”

“You know how Flash and Seymour are,” Morty shrugged. “If they had more than a passing acquaintanceship with truth or decency, they wouldn’t be them.”

“I just don’t understand what happened,” Jean sighed. “Aside from Flash and Emma, the rest of us have known each other since elementary school. We used to be friends!”

St. John shrugged, and when he spoke his voice was back to normal. “People change, Jean.”

“Scott hasn’t, so why does he still hang around them?” she demanded.

“And there it is,” St. John sighed, rolling his eyes. “Of course it’s because of Scott.”Jean ignored his attitude. “He’s a good guy; you all know that.”

That was true. I might not quite understand what drew Jean to the guy so strongly, but I’d readily admit he was decent enough.

“He doesn’t pick on anyone,” she went on, waving one hand in aggravation.

Also true, I had to admit. Scott was never less than nice to anyone, even Morty.

“So I don’t understand why he hangs around with jerks like that!”

“If you wanna know that so bad, the only one that can answer is him,” St. John pointed out, and Jean instantly wilted.

“I can’t just walk up and ask that! Even if I don’t know why, they’re his friends!”

“Well then, maybe Peter can find out through his new girlfriend,” St. John smirked.

I didn’t dignify that with a response, just ate my mystery meat.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to the new girls yet,” said Jean. “What are they like?”

I shrugged, but answered, “I actually ended up with both of them as lab partners in OrgoChem. Gwen is pretty good at Chemistry, and Nancy isn’t far behind. Can’t wait for the next batch of rumors that I’m trying to two-time them both or something,” I added sarcastically.

“We know you wouldn’t two-time anyone,” Jean assured me. “If you ever dated more than one person I’m sure it would be negotiated and consensual.”

“I’d be happy with either one; they’re both sort,” St. John mused, glancing over at the table where Gwen and Nancy were sitting with Liz and her friends.

“Color me shocked,” Jean sniped back at him after his earlier comments.

“Oh, Peter,” Morty spoke up as everyone in the cafeteria stood, the noise in the room redoubling. “I’m going to go visit Jess after school. Do you want to come?”

“Next time,” I promised. I did need to visit Jess in the hospital again, but right now I had another thing that demanded my attention. My Spider-Sense never acted back up throughout the school day, so let’s see if I can’t get a better sense of why you’re so dangerous by seeing where you go after school, Nancy Rushman.

A/N: If you’re enjoying this story, feel free to check out my discord server at https://discord.gg/H6V854Fvbg

I make no promises about the Russian; it’s not one of the languages I have any kind of handle on. If it’s wrong, blame Google.

Phil’s knock is a C in morse code (-.-.), and Nick’s reply is F (..-.); not a complicated signal, but a simple enough way to convey who has arrived. Natasha knocks a W (.--) for Widow, indicating that she understood both the form and the purpose, which Fury indirectly acknowledges.

Volgograd (Russian: Волгогра́д, Romanized: Volgográd) is a city in southwest Russia, formerly called Tsaritsyn (Царицын, rom.: Ꞩariꞩyn) since around 1555 and after that Stalingrad (Сталингра́д, rom.: Stalingrád) from 1925 to 1961, when it was renamed as part of Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinization’ policy.

The American school lunch thing has been a frequent and easy punching bag in media for at least as long as I’ve been alive, but the sheer fact that it’s still a thing should indicate that the country lacks the political will to feed children. I’m not going to sit here and massage statistics (although I fucking well could); go read them yourself and come to your own conclusions about the 90+% of non-free school lunch programs that reported having students with unpaid meal debt/charges.

Because ‘lunch debt’ is definitely a thing schoolchildren should be worrying about. /s

Don’t sweat trying to memorize Flash Thompson’s circle of sycophants, this is just to establish their names; if they’re important to the plot later they’ll be introduced properly.

Remember, ‘St. John’ (pronounced like “Sinjuhn”) is the character’s first name.

Glossary

stunner (Australian slang, noun) – someone particularly attractive

sort (Australian slang, noun) – probably a contraction of ‘good sort’, usually meaning good-looking (again, assuming the internet isn’t lying to me)