As calmly as he can.

With a seven year old right there with him, Peter felt it might be a bit inappropriate to start freaking the hell out right at this moment. With that in mind, he decided to give away her position and see if maybe he could get some answers from Sue: maybe she could explain what was going on.

"She's in here!" He called as the little girl's smile remained undimmed in the face of her mother's imminent arrival.

"Valeria! You know you're not supposed to run in your socks when-" Sue cut herself off when she discovered Valeria was standing in front of Peter's kneeling form.

Peter carefully watched as her face ran through first disbelief than delight before briefly becoming what he might have thought was arousal before settling on happily surprised all within the span of a few seconds.

"Peter!" She said happily. "It's been too long."

"Yeah, definitely." He remarked, thinking how long could it have been to change Valeria's eye color and personality.

"How long are you going to be staying daddy?" Valeria asked abruptly, the question and the timing of it much more in line with what he remembered of her personality from before she called him that so heart-stopping title.

"Valeria!" Sue scolded, as though she was saying something she wasn't supposed to instead of something that was entirely false, alarming Peter further. "You know your father and I have talked to you about this before."

Valeria nodded only once before she dutifully recited what he assumed was something Sue and...himself apparently had told her multiple times before.

"I'm not to refer to my father as daddy, dad, or father within earshot of Mr. Richards until such time as Mr. Richards finally agrees to the divorce. I am not to imply or explain to my older brother Franklin that our father is not Mr. Richards until such time as our familial situation is settled enough that it will not cause undue mental burden on him. And I am not to discuss your relationship with daddy outside of the three of us unless the fate of the world or our loved ones is in imminent peril."

Peter's internal alarm had grown greater as she spoke. Not only at the words, but at the almost exasperated nature with which she had recited them. This wasn't something that had been come up with on the spur of the moment as a prank to be pulled on him. Smart as he'd known Valeria to be (and apparently still was if her vocabulary was anything to judge by) she'd never been one for prank pulling or joke telling. Too much of Reed in her for that.

"But Mr. Richards isn't here right now and he doesn't have cameras with sound installed in this area of the building because it's not near the laboratory or the armory. In addition to which his motion sensors are his primary means of monitoring possible intrusions. So unless daddy decided to try and make straight for his lab, there's a less than ten percent chance Mr. Richards is going to even pay the security alert more than five seconds of thought before going back to the experiment currently occupying his attention." She continued, as though hoping to rebutt Sue's repeated warning with infallible logic that couldn't be argued with. Complete with a deliberate dose of puppy eyes he could never fathom the girl ever thinking to use to get her way before this weird, Twilight Zone-esque day trip this visit was turning into.

Sue brought her right hand up to cup her forehead.

With a fond smile, he could've sworn he heard her whisper: "That girl knows too well how difficult it is to say no to Peter's eyes."

Bringing her hand away, Sue's expression appeared to be one of acquiescence.

"Alright young lady. But only, and I do mean only, if your father says yes too." She answered, fobbing off possible refusal to Peter at the last second.

Valeria's wide brown eyes turned their power on Peter now who was feeling distinctly trapped. On the one hand, he'd somehow web swung into a separate dimension where he and Susan Storm had been having not only an extramarital affair behind Reed's back for years, but she was actively trying to leave Reed for him and had apparently made it so that her babies were his children instead of Reed's without ever realizing it. On the other hand, he'd always had a soft spot for kids and Valeria seemed so eager to be able to bask in calling him daddy like a more normal little girl that it seemed a shame not to let her be more of a kid in a way he'd never seen her before.