The tense family meeting finally dissolved, not with an argument, but with an astonishing conclusion: Ben Parker, Sr. and May Parker were officially joining the Plumbers.
In practice, however, the new responsibility fell primarily on Ben Sr.'s shoulders. The Parker household, for all its warmth, still operated on a traditional undercurrent of patriarchal protectiveness. Having finally accepted that his boys would be putting themselves in harm's way, Ben Sr. was damned if he'd let his wife do the same.
Harry, who had been holding his breath for what felt like an eternity, finally let it out in a long, relieved sigh, the tension draining from his shoulders.
With the decision made, the atmosphere shifted from anxious to electric. It was time for the serum.
Gathered in the cozy familiarity of the living room, Ben Sr. sat on the edge of the sofa, his sleeve rolled up to expose a pale, slightly flabby arm that spoke more of long hours at a desk than superhuman feats. His brow was furrowed with worry.
"Are you sure we shouldn't be doing this in a proper lab?" he asked, his voice tight with apprehension. "This feels a little… casual. I remember the pictures of Captain America. He was in some kind of big, fancy machine when he got his injection."
Ben picked up a syringe filled with the glowing liquid, his movements calm and deliberate. "Don't worry, Dad. I guarantee the results," he said, his voice a steady counterpoint to his dad's anxiety. He walked over and, with a practiced hand, administered the injection into his dad's shoulder.
The plunger slid down smoothly, the serum disappearing into his dad's system in a heartbeat. Ben then repeated the process for May and Harry, one after the other. The effect was instantaneous. All three slumped back against the sofa cushions, their eyes fluttering shut. There was no sign of pain on their faces, only a deep, unnerving stillness as their bodies kicked into overdrive, their metabolisms roaring to life to purge every genetic flaw and weakness.
Peter watched, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and concern. "You think Uncle Ben's going to… bulk up like Captain America?"
Ben shook his head, a wry smile touching his lips. "Not a chance. Dad is older. The serum can reverse damage and optimize what's there, but it can't turn back the clock completely. He won't be growing from a scrawny kid into a giant like Steve." He crossed his arms, studying them with a clinical eye. "Best case? He'll get back to the peak condition he was in during his twenties."
Because they weren't surrounded by medical equipment, the transformation was starkly, intimately visible. Ben and Peter watched, transfixed, as the years literally melted away from them. The silver woven through their hair darkened, receding into a rich, healthy brown. The fine lines etched around their eyes and mouths smoothed out as if an artist were carefully erasing them. Their skin, once softened by age, seemed to fill out from within, regaining a taut, youthful glow.
May Parker was no longer just 'Aunt May.' She was May, a woman in her prime, vibrant and stunning.
Ben leaned over to Peter, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm thinking Dad is in for a very good night tonight." He adopted a serious, thoughtful expression. "A fierce battle is definitely on the horizon. I'm planning on making myself scarce."
"Where will you go?" Peter asked, a bewildered look on his face.
"Felicia's, obviously," Ben said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world.
"What about me?"
Ben gave him a deadpan look. "What, Spider-Man can't find a nice, cozy sewer drain to crash in?"
Peter just stared, speechless.
A long while later, the trio began to stir. They blinked, sat up, and then the exclamations started. They stared at each other, then at their own hands, their faces alight with pure, unadulterated astonishment. For Ben Sr. and May, it was like being reborn, a return to a youth they thought was lost forever.
Now, they looked to be in their early thirties. Ben Sr.'s posture, which had been subtly stooped from years of hard work, straightened out, his frame filling with a newfound vitality.
"I'm taller!" he declared, a joyous, booming laugh escaping him as he stood up to his full height. He practically skipped over to the wall to measure himself.
As he was celebrating, May—no longer just an aunt, but a vision—sauntered over, a dangerous glint in her newly revitalized eyes. She twisted her hips, placed her hands on them, and leaned in close to her husband. "So," she purred, pinching his ear playfully, "am I still an 'old lady' now?"
There isn't a woman alive who doesn't dream of being young and beautiful forever. Faced with this rejuvenated force of nature, Ben Sr. surrendered without a fight.
Harry's transformation was less dramatic visually, though he looked stronger, his frame more solid. The true change was internal. He could feel it—a deep well of power, a thrumming strength that was entirely new.
"It's important to remember that the serum only brings you to the peak of human potential," Ben explained to the giddy group. "To become effective Plumbers, you'll still need serious training."
"I can't wait to start!" Ben Sr. declared, his voice ringing with enthusiasm.
After giving them a moment to shower and flush the metabolic impurities from their systems, Ben led the newly enhanced family members to Primus Tower.
The company was still a skeleton crew. In the main lab, Banner and Otto were already hunched over a containment field, deep in study of the Mind Stone. Dr. Connors was out, taking his pet lizard for a walk—an activity he claimed provided essential "spiritual pleasure" to the mutant creature and was beneficial to his research. Ben had to drag him away from his stroll and down to the underground training facility.
"Get ready to record their baseline data," Ben instructed Connors, who was already firing up the diagnostic computers and calibrating the various machines in the high-tech gym. "And speaking of new recruits, have Wanda and Pietro gotten back yet?"
Connors looked up from his console. "Right, I forgot you haven't met them yet," Ben said, rubbing his face. "They're new members of the Plumbers, too. And if they train up right, they could be our ace in the hole against Thanos."
Ben couldn't shake the image from his memory: the Scarlet Witch, incandescent with rage, tearing Thanos apart piece by piece in another timeline. He thought of the reality-warping monster she became in WandaVision, a force of nature that single-handedly dismantled the Illuminati. The chaos magic she wielded, a power derived from the elder god Chthon, was one of the few forces in the cosmos that could stand against the Phoenix Force.
Miles away, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff stood in the heart of Manhattan. They wore new clothes, purchased with the generous funds Ben had provided, but their surroundings were anything but new. They stood before the ruins of what was once Avengers Tower, staring at the gaping wound in the city's skyline from morning until dusk.
Pietro had no interest in video game arcades. Instead, they had come here, to this place of ghosts.
Excavators and construction crews moved like metallic insects, hauling away rubble and shattered steel. The scene of controlled deconstruction was eerily reminiscent of Sokovia nine years ago. They had only been ten.
"Do you remember?" Pietro's voice was low, rough with memory. "We were all at the dinner table. The first bomb hit the two floors below us. The floor just… vanished. Mom and Dad… they just fell."
Wanda nodded, her gaze fixed on the wreckage. Her voice was a hollow echo. "I was frozen. Then the second shell crashed through the window. It didn't explode. It just sat there in the rubble, like a tombstone…" There was no sadness in her tone, only a profound, empty loneliness, as vast as the hole that had swallowed her parents. "You found me. You grabbed my hand and pulled me under the bed. We were trapped for two days."
"If it was a tombstone," Pietro said, his voice laced with a cold, hard hatred, "it had Stark's name written on it." He clenched his fists. "He could never have dreamed that the kids from that day would come back for revenge."
But not today. Pietro knew they weren't strong enough yet. And besides, Tony Stark no longer lived here. The target of their vengeance was somewhere else entirely, leaving them with nothing but this monument to their pain.
They remained there until the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, a beautiful scar over the city's wound. The late November air in New York was turning sharp and cold. Wanda pulled the collar of her new jacket tighter, shrinking into herself.
"It's time to go back, Pietro," she murmured.
"Right," he said, his tone shifting, becoming lighter. "We can't keep the new boss waiting." He flipped the black bank card into the air and caught it with a smirk.
Half an hour later, Wanda and Pietro walked back into the strangely empty lobby of Primus Tower. With no receptionist to greet them, Eunice's disembodied voice guided them down to the subterranean training grounds.
They found Ben in the middle of helping his family test their new data.
"What are we seeing for Dad's peak strength?" Ben asked.
"The highest recorded lift so far is 2.34 tons," Connors reported, his eyes glued to a monitor. "His sprint speed clocks in just under sixty miles per hour. Reaction time and cognitive processing have also shown massive improvements."
The tests made it clear: the same serum yielded different results in different people. Harry's stats were the most balanced, but with the Neo Green Goblin armor, he was less reliant on his physical baseline. For Ben Sr. and May, their enhancements were more specialized. Ben Sr. had the clear advantage in raw strength and speed, but May's reaction time and thought processing were off the charts.
Ben, Sr. joked that if she enrolled in a seniors' college program now, she'd sweep every scholarship. She'd be a genius among peers whose minds were slowing down. May immediately shot back that he should try out for the Olympics, arguing that with his enhancements, he'd put all the "purple-faced people" on steroids to shame.
"That way they wouldn't have to break up one swimming competition into thirty-five different events," she teased.
"Alright, I'll have Connors run you through muscle density scans and the rest of the diagnostics later," Ben said, smiling at their banter.
Just then, Pietro and Wanda approached, seeing a break in the activity.
"You're back," Ben said, turning to them with a welcoming smile. "How was the arcade? The games in New York have to be better than Sokovia's, right? Though I've always found it's more fun to play with friends."
Pietro stopped, twirling the bank card between his fingers, and gave Ben a strange, searching look. He couldn't believe Ben actually thought they'd spent the entire day playing video games.
"You didn't have us followed?"
Ben's smile faded, replaced by a genuinely confused frown. "Why would I do that?"
"Why?" Pietro repeated, his surprise evident. "You gave us a million dollars!"
"A million each," Wanda corrected softly.
"Yes, two million!" Pietro insisted. "That's a fortune! Aren't you afraid we'd just take the money and run?"
He was honestly baffled. He'd known Ben for less than a day, and he couldn't comprehend the level of trust the other man was showing. In the small-time gangs back in Sokovia, he'd seen men kill each other over a few thousand dollars.
"No, I'm not afraid," Ben said with a casual shrug. It was just two million dollars. What was there to be afraid of?
"You trust us that much?" Pietro asked, clearly misinterpreting the gesture.
"It's not about trusting you," Ben clarified, his tone shifting from friendly to coolly pragmatic. "It's that I don't care about two million dollars." He met Pietro's gaze, his eyes holding a depth that was far older than his years. "You could take that money and disappear. I would never come after you, because it simply wouldn't be worth my time. Think about it. If I give two million to those who betray me… you can imagine what I give to those who stay loyal, right?"
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in, a classic carrot-and-stick pitch delivered with chilling sincerity. "Understand? Applaud."
But it wasn't just a line. In his current position, with funds flowing in from the U.S. government, Stark Industries, and Wakanda for the reconstruction of New York, he had access to a fortune with so many zeroes he couldn't be bothered to count them. Who had time to worry about a mere two million?
Pietro had heard similar speeches from cheap gang bosses before, but coming from Ben, it felt entirely different. It felt real.
He and his sister fell silent, the reality of their new situation dawning on them.
Ben's voice softened then, the hard edge of the businessman melting away. He looked at the twins, seeing not just potential assets but two lost, angry kids in new clothes.
"Welcome home," he said gently.