Getting Started - Part 2

Peter shook it excitedly, "Yes Iron-, I mean Mr. Stark!"

"Kid, drop the formalities. I told ya to call me Tony," he went on.

"Um, s-sure!" The boy replied.

Tony aimed his gauntlet at Peter, who was surprised by a beam of light that passed through his body, as if scanning it. In a short time, the hero finished the analysis and projects a mini holographic figure of the boy above his forearm.

"Whoa..." said Peter, more than a little amazed.

"It looks like the effects from the spider bite have stabilized within your body," Tony noted, reading the results. "You're not feeling sick or anything, right?"

Peter shook his head, "No, not at all!"

Tony breathes a quick sigh of relief, "Well, that's one less lawsuit I'll need to worry about." The hologram of Peter was quickly surrounded by graphs and equations that the boy didn't immediately recognize.

"Okay, according to the primary analysis, two things are obvious," Iron Man said, deactivating his helmet so his head was exposed. "First; your sweat glands seem to have changed. They're capable of producing some kind of protein gel that solidifies on air contact, ejecting through the wrist."

"...Like a spider's web..." The boy said, staring at the hole on his wrist.

"Exactly." Tony replied, without looking at the boy. "But it seems that the amount you produce is too big to come out at once. That's why they broke your skin and it hurt you."

"So, what do we do about that?" Peter asked.

"Let's put it aside for now, we have other things to focus on." The hero made a motion and the image zoomed in on the boy's hand. Some tiny hairs on his palm came into view. "Like the second thing; you also apparently grew a special type of 'setules' in your hands and feet…"

"I read about those once," Peter said. "Microscopic hairs that let spiders and geckos climb vertical surfaces or even upside down." The boy stared at his hand, trying to find the tiny hairs, but failing. They were just too small.

"If you say so, kid. I'm not too fascinated by biology, but you can already do it," The hero said, bringing up footage of the Carnage encounter.

"I got this from the one traffic cam that wasn't destroyed in the fight. At this point here," Tony froze the video at the moment where Peter jumped to avoid an attack and lands on the concrete support. "You stuck to the wall. It wasn't for long, but it was there."

Peter looks at the video, "It all went by so fast, I could barely process everything. But something else happened." The events of the fight proceeds to where Carnage is about to strike the two boys.

"Before you arrived, before I shot the web..." He thought back, "It's like I felt Carnage coming. I didn't see him or hear him, but I knew…" Tony rewound the video, and sure enough, it showed Peter turning quickly and shooting his web as if on instinct.

"Hmmm…" Tony pondered the new information, and goes back to the stats from Peter's body. "Your normal body hair seems to have grown a bit in size. And your nerve skin sensors have increased the number of connections with the epithelial cells, which could mean…"

"...That I gained a super sensitivity in the skin..." The boy came to the same conclusion. "I read that some spiders hunt using reflexes with a nerve-conduction velocity so fast that some researchers believe it almost borders on precognition. Like an instant awareness of danger."

"A 'Spider Sense'..." Tony tried out the phrase. "I like it." He turned off the hologram and walks over to the bench press, picking up a 50lb weight. "You also demonstrated improved strength and agility. That's what most of the guinea pigs presented anyways, so no surprise there."

Without warning, he throws the weight like a frisbee at the boy, who dodged it Matrix style. The disk imbedded into the wall with a loud crash. Tony looked at Peter with slight exasperation, "You were supposed to catch that, kid."

The boy blushed with embarrassment, "Um, s-sorry." Peter grabbed onto the weight, and with zero effort, yanked it out of the wall.

"Eh, that works. It still serves my point," Tony shrugged. "You might have these powers now, but your body isn't used to them. You were completely exhausted after barely using them for the first time, yes?"

Peter nodded, "I felt like I could sleep for a week."

"Well, you've got a lot of catching up to do then," Tony went on. "That kid yesterday was talking about the M.A Entrance Exam. You're serious about enrolling, huh?"

"I've wanted to go since I was 4," the boy replied.

"I had a feeling," said Tony. "So I came up with a plan to help speed up your development."

He brought up a chart listing the multiple exercises and types of training Peter would be doing.

"Still, you'd be competing against kids who've had a lifetime to develop and understand their Quirks," Tony warned. "You've only got 6 months to figure it all out. You sure you're up for it?"

Peter nodded determinedly, "I always knew that I'd have to work harder than everyone else..."

The boy read through the proposed exercises, the necessary diet, even the hours of sleep.

"But now that I have a real chance, and I won't stop until I make it happen!" He declared.

"That's the spirit!" Tony says, smacking the boy on the back with his armored arm. Peter was knocked over face first onto the floor. "Whoops, my bad..."