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Marvel:New Beginning

Wilmington2
21
chs / week
The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 21 chs / week.
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Synopsis
Peter Parker was born with a dangerous mutant power that he hates and fears. It may be the only thing he hates more than himself.
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Chapter 1 - ch1

There were times when he could still see the moment when things changed.

Or at least how he thought the events played out.

In truth, everything had happened so fast and so quietly that he wasn't sure that he hadn't imagined everything that he thought he remembered.

It happened on the field trip.

That much wasn't in dispute.

He'd been excited. The jocks, as usual, had given him shit for being happy, because it was in their very nature to piss on his whole life, but it wasn't just being able to go to Osborn Pharmaceuticals that had piqued his interest. It had been the chance to be out of the classroom.

Away from school.

Away from everything.

He chose to linger close to the end of the line, not wanting to call attention to himself as he simply enjoyed following the student tour group as they had meandered through the facility. He'd considered a career in a place like this. Chemistry, much like everything else academic, had come easy to him. Biochem shouldn't be that hard to pick up, he mused. He had read so far ahead that he imagined he could probably teach better than his teachers could. Maybe.

It was actually an effort to not fall asleep in class most days. He'd already prepared all the assignments for the rest of the year and was simply counting time til graduation happened. He supposed if he pushed for it, he could've asked to skip a year or two. That would get him away from the idiot jocks, but he expected that college would just be more of the same. Only he'd get it worse for being younger than everyone else.

Not worth the hassle or the effort at the end of the day. Not really.

Those had been his thoughts. He had been lost in them. He'd remembered that he'd been thinking those same thoughts when it had happened.

The spider.

He hadn't seen it, but he could just imagine how it had lowered itself on a thread.

Slow and stealthy, despite being a brilliant red and blue.

Someone could have seen it, should have seen it.

In his mind's eye he could swear that he had seen it as a flash of blue and red releasing its thread.

He couldn't have.

No one saw it drop down and land on the girl next to him.

He didn't know her name. Truthfully, he really hadn't bothered to learn the names of any of his classmates beyond the ones who had hassled him. Those he'd taken great care to remember. It was something he'd promised himself for later.

But the girl whom he hadn't known and who, by pure and complete chance, had just been next to him.

And in that moment, a spider – the spider – landed on her.

The girl flinched as she felt it and the movement must've startled the spider in question, which then reacted as a spider is apt to do.

She screamed when it had bitten her and she'd flailed, swiping at the side of her neck where it had landed. She moved gracelessly and heedlessly, panicked either at the pinprick on her neck or from the unnerving sensation of the little beast still squirming beneath her fingers., Moments upon moments, and in that hair's breadth she stumbled… right into him.

That was the moment everything had gone completely wrong.

The moment that had sealed his fate.

She'd gotten tangled up in her own feet. Then into his feet, and they had both gone down, bodies and foreheads smacking before hitting the ground.

Some part of him would have reveled at the thought of actually making contact with any female form, much less a genuinely cute girl at that, but in that moment he'd been too busy being caught completely off-guard and he had panicked when he lost his footing.

That part of him had wondered, Was this what getting swept off your feet is supposed to be like? I don't think I like it.

Some other, smaller part of him, however, had been certain that the entire misfortune had been somehow engineered by the jocks to be some further humiliation, however unlikely it would have been to his rational mind. That the girl had been one of their patsies, bribed with a chance to hang out with the cool kids in exchange for messing with him.

Unlikely. Illogical.

But the bullies' behavior had always struck him as illogical.

But that small part of him was angry and it burned. That fire, that momentary spark of anger and resentment blossomed into something new. Something unexpected.

His hands couldn't find anything to hold on to as he had fallen.

But this new, unexpected thing had reached out and grabbed hold.

The girl gasped. Something that was starting to take hold within her, was abruptly ripped away at the root.

He felt it torn from her and settled within him.

They both screamed.

Peter jolted awake, a process that shot him upright in a sweeping arc that sent him from entirely horizontal to entirely vertical in a split second.

He clamped down and kept his jaws shut to stop the screaming from his dreams to come out in real life, the muscles of his neck standing out like cords as he smothered his own voice until he felt it die away. He didn't want the cops getting called down on him. Not that it really mattered in this neighborhood; police response time in this part of town was measured in days.

The cardboard boxes he'd had on top of him to keep the snow off and hide him from view had torn apart from frantic awakening. That's annoying, he frowned, what a waste.

Peter had finally gotten them just the right amount of flexibility that they'd draped over him properly without being too stiff in the chilly winter air.

And it was chilly, every breath sending wisps of fog misting around him. He could feel the cold, but it didn't bother or even hurt him. That was perhaps the strangest thing of all to emerge from the incident; most things nowadays couldn't hurt him when he had the power active. Peter had tried many, many things and the few things that did manage to actually leave any damage tended to heal quickly.

I'll bet they'd heal even faster if I used–

Peter shuddered, pushing that thought down. It wasn't something he really wanted to deal with in the wee hours of the morning in a dirty, frozen alley.

Or at any time, really.

Peter scrubbed a gloved hand down his face, letting the rough, scratchy wool scrape across his skin and force out the lingering fatigue. He didn't really need much sleep, not these days. More precisely, he could forgo it for extended periods, but he would still get tired eventually.

Especially if he didn't sustain himself.

The problem was boredom. What good was the ability to stay awake for a week at a time when there wasn't anything to do in the middle of the night? It wasn't like he could go into a bar, not at his age. Hanging out at 24 hour convenience stores usually got him harsh looks from the clerks. The libraries were closed.

Taking a nap seemed like a better way to spend his time than endlessly wandering the streets of Manhattan until the break of dawn. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to be, so this part of New York City was as good as anywhere else.

Or at least anywhere else that was still New York. It's not like I'm going to wander over and squat in Jersey, that's just a bridge too far.

That bridge being the George Washington Bridge.

He made himself laugh a little at that tiny joke.

There wasn't a lot to laugh about either these days, but he did what he could to keep his spirits up.

He had to.

Something strange, a tingle crawled up the back of his neck, and he frowned as his senses narrowed down on what exactly had stirred him from sleep.

It hadn't just been the dream that had woken him up.

The power that kept the cold away and made him strong also had other parts to it. Parts he didn't like to think about, but they were part of the package. That included a particular sense for things. It wasn't quite detecting life per se. It was a sort of sense for things of a predatory nature. He could sense potential prey (for lack of a better term) near him.

He could also sense when someone was trying to prey on him.

Like right now.

Someone was watching him. He could feel their eyes on him even though he couldn't see anyone.

Peter took a deep breath, letting the power sharpen his senses. Although there really wasn't much to smell beyond the alley itself and the sharp, cold tang of a New York Winter, there was something distinctive nearby. Musty and pungent. An unwashed body, but not one that had spent the whole night out in the cold.

It smelled wet. Something from somewhere warmer and more humid than a dinky alley in upper Manhattan.

He looked towards the alley's mouth, the tingle growing into full blown itching as his thoughts raced. The alley itself was a dead end and anyone else would have been trapped.

But he had other options.