The quiet was the first thing that Peter noticed when he landed on the Green, and then after that was when he realized this was nothing like Professor Xavier’s school. They had wooded areas around the huge ass mansion but he was pretty sure he was inside on his way to one of the professor’s classes. Also, it was definitely not this quiet around the campus. Where were the birds and the squirrels? The occasional plane overhead? The predictable scolding in his mind from the professor when he started to slack off which should have been coming up very soon since Peter wasn’t in the building at all?
He noticed the paper airplane gliding over to him from afar but didn’t let it move an inch more for he was already running up to it and pulling it open. “What the heck is a Derleth?”
It wasn’t long after he spoke those words when the quiet broke. They sounded a few miles away at first and Peter was initially tempted to follow the clicking sounds, but decided to let it come to him. Because it definitely sounded like it was coming to him. When they broke into the clearing, catching sight of him, he ran.
The monsters stood frozen as he did, giving him a chance to glance back and realize… well, how could have caught sight of him? They didn’t have eyes!
Was this some new alien thing he and the X-Men were going to have to fight again? After everything that happened with Jean Grey and the Dark Phoenix, Peter was going to tell them all he was out from any space-related adventures for some time.
He moved through the woods, half expecting it to be just woods until he caught sight of the building through the branches, and he ran towards it. Butler Hall said the words on the building, and that was where he stopped, wondering when the hell the mansion got renovations, when he found another one of those creatures sniffing around the window, unaware that he was there.
Also would you really call it sniffing if it was apparently opening up its skull? Alien sniffing? Is that how aliens smell?
Also times two, were there people inside?
Peter considered going inside and may have taken a step in that direction when his feet stepped on a twig and made a louder-than-normal crack that had the monster whipping its head at him.
“Oh, fuck,” he started toward the opposite direction, back through the Green, artfully dodging another one -- how many of these things were there?! -- and running up the tallest building he could find on the opposite end.
Up here, now he could see more of where he landed. This was definitely not the Professor’s land, that much was obvious now, but he also had never heard of Derleth before, and in order to proceed with much of anything else, he first had to figure out the layout of the land here, and maybe find whoever was responsible for the letter along the way.
He paused, kneeling down on one knee to peer through the woods for the sign of the monsters but none showed up for a while. He’d gotten away, successfully.
“Hah, take that, you… weird fucks.”
It was barely audible for any normal human being standing six feet away to hear him, and yet, there they came, scaling up the side of the wall even.