Assembly Line or, to give it its full name, Assembly Line (or Why It's a Lot Harder than Steve Thought to Recruit New Members)
is a Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfic, that after the first couple of stories, develops into a mixture of the MCU, Ultimate Marvel, and Marvel Universe.
The starting concept is Steve trying to recruit new members of the Avengers from the various superheroes cropping up across New York and its environs, with one of his first would-be recruits being Daredevil (who is notably unenthusiastic about potentially being dragged into the Avengers patented brand of crazy). However, this rapidly balloons out of control, with the next person on the list being Spider-Man, who Steve doesn't at first realise is a kid. Peter becomes the central character of the series, and leader of the 'After School Avengers' (this 'verse's version of the Young Avengers), whereupon things get even more out of hand, thanks to all sorts of shenanigans that can frequently be traced back to two things: HYDRA and the infamous Parker Luck.
This Work Contains Examples Of:
- Almighty Mom: Aunt May, who gains the unswerving respect/obedience of everyone up to and including Deadpool, Magneto, and freaking Loki, and is primary Team Mom for the After-School Avengers, and to a degree the Avengers themselves, very few of whom have had anything even approximating a normal upbringing.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Bucky and Jessica Jones take this up to eleven, to Tony's cackling amusement and Steve's utter horror.
- Big Brother Instinct: Tommy to both Billy and Peter, to their mutual exasperation.
- Clone Angst: Jessica has issues surrounding gender identity, owing to the fact that her template, and his implanted memories, are both male (and unlike in canon, this is actually addressed more than in passing) but she comes to terms with them.
- Cock Fight: A strange, non-romantic variant happens between Bucky and Magneto over who's the better Parental Substitute to Peter. Peter, as per usual, is rather bemused and beleaguered by it.
- Continuity Creep: It started out as a fairly continuity light MCU fanfic, and has since ballooned dramatically.
- Dysfunction Junction: Where to start? The Parker household, After-School Avengers, and associated Avengers... all of them are a mess, one way or another. A mess that can often be traced back to HYDRA.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Comes into play a few times when super-powered villains come into the equation whose abilities can hard-counter the skillsets of certain heroes while leaving them vulnerable to others. Most notably with Magneto, who routinely gives the entirety of the X-Men epic amounts of trouble, could probably kill the Winter Soldier with ease due to his metal arm, and yet gets dropped in two seconds from a pair of tranq arrows from the Hawkeyes.
- Incest Subtext: Briefly addressed and dismissed in the discussion of Wanda's creation of Billy and Tommy, with Pietro being justifiably somewhat worried about Tommy's near identical resemblance to him. Wanda, however, just rolls her eyes and points out that yes, Tommy looks very much like him - and Pietro, in turn, looks very much like their father.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Peter's school Dean, who ends up barely even bothering to pretend that he doesn't know that Peter is Spidey, in response to the Parker Luck.
- Mrs Kaplan has this response at the Passover Seder - which, considering that it involves Billy's extended reality-warped family; Wanda, Pietro, Tommy, and Magneto, and gets crashed by Deadpool, is an entirely reasonable reaction.
- Steve, Bucky, and Tony all respond to Peter's Doctor Strange and Loki related escapades by first spiking their coffee, then mainlining as much alcohol as they can lay hands on.
- Kid with the Leash: Peter to Deadpool, to his despair and exasperation. It actually gets to the point where Clint, who'd been thoroughly annoyed with Peter for implying that his lack of powers rendered him useless, foregoes any potential punishment on the grounds that nothing could be worse than Deadpool deciding that Peter was his new best friend.
- Open Secret: Peter's identity becomes this, with the entirety of his school knowing that he's Spider-Man. Likewise, the facts that his 'Cousin Reilly' is actually Bucky Barnes a.k.a. the Winter Soldier, and that his 'Grandpa Erik' is actually Magneto. Even Flash knows, he's just in complete denial over the situation.
- Running Gag: The Parker Luck, and, 'friggin' HYDRA'. It gets to the point where a number of characters seriously wonder if Peter is cursed.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Deadpool. Captain America and Aunt May are the only people who can make him stop for any length of time.
- Team Mom: Aunt May, to the point where it's practically a superpower - though as is also recognized, looking after nearly half a dozen superpowered and thoroughly dysfunctional teens takes a significant toll on her.
- Weirdness Magnet:
- The aforementioned Parker Luck. Worse part? It's contagious. Everyone who becomes a member of Peter's family, even tangentially, has it to some degree.
- The first time Tony met Miles Morales, he was informed that he was most likely a recipient of the Parker Luck. When Miles asked if that meant he was going to die, Tony said no. Instead, Miles would be the death of everyone around him.
- Vicariously Ambitious: The various adults in Peter's life eventually start competing through their children (adoptive and/or otherwise) via scholastic debate teams.
