During the last few months, Peter had been taken through quite an odd set of emotions. After finding out about - and understanding - his father's relationship with Doreen, he was taken aback by the situation. Although confusing at first, he did appreciate Erik's happiness and eventually found that it made him happy too. He liked having her around, both because she was a pleasant presence and because it gave him an excuse to spend time with Benjen.
"Good morning, darling!" - he replied just after the kiss, while taking her by the waist and pulling her close, their noses rubbing together for a brief moment. "Quite the big day ahead of us, isn't it? Peter's first day of school... our final prototype test-run for the nanite project..." There was obvious excitement in Erik's voice - even if dashed with some concern. After all, he had every reason to.
After that one first prototype test that went so well, the entire team forced themselves to exceed expectations. After weeks of work and four failed versions of the nanites (related to the concept schema), they finally had a working version that should - in theory - do all it's supposed to: replicate the DNA (obtained from any kind of sample, not just bone-marrow) and cellular structure of missing limbs or organs within a patient, fully recovering the lost body-parts (through the use of stem-cell creation and programming) at an amazingly fast rate. All the while the nanites would maintain integrity and ensure nothing infects the newly created tissues. Simulations had given this final version a 97% efficiency rate and 0% failure chances, so everyone in the team was sure it's ready to be tested on a real (willing) patient. With plenty of people in hospitals, especially military pilots, that wasn't going to be an issue.