The Choice

A week had passed since the memorable events. What can I say, it had been an eventful one.

First of all, talking to Uncle Ben made me look at many things from a different angle. Now I see why this man has always been an example for Parker, well, almost always.

You can just feel that innate wisdom in him. There's no other way to put it.

My relationship to my family has changed a little bit. If before I just appreciated and loved them very much, now these feelings have only strengthened.

The situation at school was no less interesting. The first second I entered the grounds, the eyes of all the students turned towards me. And then turned to Thompson, who immediately walked in my direction.

I remained standing quietly. Spidey Sense would help anyway.

- Hey, Parker.

- You too, Flash.

We stood there for a while.

- Look... I'd like to apologise," the footballer rubbed the back of his head in an uncomfortable gesture.

- Erm?

- Well, you were right, I was being an arsehole. All right? - Thompson held out his hand to me.

- No hard feelings," I shake his hand.

Flash immediately turns around and walks to school, not even looking at his friends. The group hurries after him, and Kong even nods in my direction in a friendly manner.

Oh well. That's a start. Even if this is Flash's way of dulling my attention for grand revenge, at least a couple of quiet days are assured for me. Plus, then I'll know exactly what kind of man Flash is. However it turns out, I'm on the plus side.

- Wow, what a scene. "Nerd and jock settle." Front page of the Daily Bugle!

- That's funny, Miles. Have you ever tried stand-up clubs?

- Stage fright.

- What a loss to the comedy community.

That's the way things were going. At school, I started forming friendships with Miles and Gwen. For a second, I wished I'd let the spider bite them too.

Some kind of reputation was starting to emerge. And now not just as a bookworm genius, but as a perfectly respectable human being. Isn't that a joke? The head athlete himself recognised your status.

Even the girls have started making eyes at you, but none of them have caught my eye yet, frankly.

Now I have time to develop my most important project.

Firstly, I resumed my trips to the lab and started digging through the records. As it turns out, I didn't get the ability to produce an organic web. Which means I'll have to work on creating an artificial one. And the a.k.a. Web shooters, we should not forget about them. We still have to build them. That means electronics, materials. The good thing is in the basement, which I proudly call "Spider's Lair." Go ahead, laugh. I'm not gonna change the name anyway.

So, in the basement there was a tonne of junk left by my father: under-inventions, old reagents and other little things. It was good that nostalgic feelings did not allow Uncle Ben to sort it all out, or worse, throw it away. So the materials issue resolved itself.

Still, you have to be careful, it's going to be hard to get it back in use.

Secondly, I finally had the time to go to the abandoned place, to finally test my abilities and, let's face it, to have a good time.

Though I took the matter of secrecy very seriously. I took out an old winter hat from the wardrobe, made slits for eyes and voila - a balaclava at home. Then I got Uncle Ben's old work gloves, put on all the old stuff I could spare and went for a walk.

Overcame the chain-link fence in one leap. It's six metres, no less. So the jumping ability/elasticity is still there. Next I decided to test the famous "proportional strength of a spider". The room was full of old storage boxes and containers. The average harbour container weighs four tonnes. I lifted one of these without much effort with two hands. Then, with the help of the ability to stick to various surfaces, I decided to cling to the walls of two such "containers" and see what would happen.

I lifted it all the same, but with more tension. Maybe it's the uncomfortable distribution of the weight and therefore more muscle tension. Or maybe eight to ten tonnes is my limit.

But even if so, hello, ten thousand kilograms is not weak to me.

Next I tested the previously mentioned ability to stick to surfaces, aka the ability to climb walls, aka just "tenacity" for short.

To begin with, I approached a large concrete wall, fourteen metres high. In these dilapidated, abandoned factories, you can't really tell what's what.

The standard four-legged climbing routine went off without a hitch.

It's funny how quickly I've come to regard these abilities as a given. It's really amazing. Being at a different angle to standard space. How does one's sense of balance not get disturbed at all? Maybe it's the inner ear? OK, I'll get into it later.

Trying to get my feet on the ground. I didn't ask the standard question "why can I even cling with such thick soles on my shoes". The answer is simple - spider biomagnetism. All it takes is the right footing. But the limits of this ability are worth testing.

Clinging with your hands and feet is simple. It's like a reflex. We learn to walk from childhood and, in the process, use all four limbs. The instinctive pushing off with hand and foot is familiar, so I started thinking outside the box. To start, I climbed into the centre of the wall and gradually began to remove my limbs. First my arms, good. Then the legs and... here I am attached to the wall with only my back. To be fair, this move was very hard. I'm a bit of a work-in-progress from Peter's canonical one-finger fixation. But I'm getting there.

And now it's time for the last but not least skill. In my humble, unpretentious opinion, this is the best ability of the Wallbreaker - Spider Sense.

As classy as it was, it was also unknown. Its capabilities varied depending on the tights version of the hero. Somewhere it works like a normal signalling system: danger on the right, so jump to the left. And somewhere it's almost a mini telepathy working just in relation to the user.

The latter version interests me the most.

In the "canonical" universe, it was eventually discovered that there is a thing called the Web of Destiny, to which all spider-power holders are connected. I don't know how applicable this knowledge is to my situation, but something tells me it's very much so. In an alternate reality, Peter Parker's daughter could even see the future through spider-sense. Also, let's not forget about a lady like Madame Spiderweb. So developing Sense to the highest level is my dream and main goal as Spider-Man.

That's something to aspire to, isn't it?

But that's fantasy, let's see how developed it is now. I climb the most flimsy-looking structures and after fifteen minutes of "backyard parkour" the beam under me bent and broke. Of course, a couple of seconds before my gut had steadily warned me of the danger. Of course, thanks to reflexes these few seconds were quite enough, but I would have liked a little more time to react.

In general, this is the Achilles' heel of this ability - impermanence. At one moment you are warned about an attack from the back, happening right now, in the other reports the danger that will happen, perhaps, in five minutes. Or, for example, how do you react to the "danger" coming from snowflakes during a snowfall or drops during rain?

And there are also such "glitches" as influence through radio waves or, for example, a gas that blocks the Sense. The Green Goblin developed such a thing in the comics. I don't even want to mention symbiotes.

So there you go, even the dream ability has weaknesses. That's why we need to train it, make it stronger. A plan for the future is in place.

What do we have in the end? Spider superpower, yes, four tonnes, we can't even feel it. Spider speed, it's not really super, to be honest. I can run faster than a lot of athletes, but that's about it. But something else comes out of it. Spider endurance, I've been testing myself for eight hours and I'm only breaking a little sweat. And, above and beyond that, Spider agility and reflexes. I have them in tandem, as they are the best developed. I react to everything like a mongoose. And I'm not talking about agility at all, I'm a born dancer.

That's all I found. I, of course, tried to shoot the web from my hands, I wonder if there would be channels for launching organic web, but in vain. Just as deaf to stingers on forearms or telepathy with spiders. There was that, too.

About cheat abilities like Miles from the comics, namely bioelectricity and the ability to become invisible for a while, did not even count. It's not evening yet, though.

My senses tell me it wasn't easy with that bite. After all, I don't recall any version of Peter killing the spider that bit him. So who knows what might have happened because its insides got into my bloodstream at that moment.

But I don't want to get worked up about it, less to worry about, more nerve cells to carry to old age.

***

The next month of my life went by like that: school, lab, training, and so on and so forth. But today I finally felt the first kick of canon.

The poster screamed: "Will you risk facing Crusher Hogan in the ring! Stay in the ring with our champion for three minutes and win five hundred dollars! And if you're skilled enough to defeat the invincible Destroyer, you get two thousand!"

That's the number.

A very common situation for Spidey, you could say the first outing, and the events after which Parker will make a decision leading to consequences that will haunt him until his death. Just because of the possibility of stopping the robber of this show, should take part.

Also it will not be superfluous to get a couple of extra finances. You need something to make your first suit. And materials aren't cheap these days. I remember Pete got fucked over after the show, but I won't make that mistake.

One, never take your mask off. Two, stand your ground.

- Speaking of the mask, I'm smiling slyly.

Performing as Spider-Man in a second-rate wrestling match?

A little small for me, but under the name... Masked Miracle, for example. Heh-heh. That'd be fun.

And with the costume will not have to bother: white T-shirt, jeans, shoes, and already made Balaclava, except that a little modified, beauty.

That's what we'll do. With these thoughts I went home, before that I tore down the poster. There are still copies on the stand.

- I'm home! - I'm on the doorstep.

- Hey, honey, how are you doing? Hungry? - taking off the oven mitts, my aunt asks.

- No, auntie, thank you, I'm going to the lab, and then to the city library, I need to prepare for the project, and in the library there are fewer distractions, - how I do not like to lie to my aunt, but I'm unlikely to be released if I say that I'm going to fight in the ring for money.

- Library, did I hear that? - Uncle Ben came down from the first floor. - I've got to go to the building, so I'll drop you off and pick you up.

Oh, shit. Having my uncle in that place is the last thing I want. Let's try to get out of this.

- I'll take the ride, but don't pick me up. I promise I'll be back before ten. You know, uncle, if I dive into books, I'll only come out of them myself, - and as honest eyes as possible.

- All right, I trust you. What time do you have to leave?

- A couple of hours.

- All right, then.

- I'm going to the lab.

- You mean the basement?

- The lab!

"Descending into the Spider's Lair, the hero began his plan." Ha, like it's actually in a comic book. All right, time to test what I've spent the last three weeks working on.

Once again, I'd like to thank the spider that bit me. If it wasn't for that little guy, I never would have figured out how to recreate the formula for a synthetic web. Apparently at the level of instinct I understood how to mix the necessary enzymes and after the selection of chemical compositions business went uphill!

And the box, in fact, simply opened. You take mixed liquids and put them in a special tank, sirech cartridges. I had to make them myself, with the help of a soldering iron, so I have only seven portions of spider webs so far. It's a bit difficult to make them from scrap or tin, even my genius in engineering is powerless here.

We'll think about it.

But none of that matters. Success. No less proud of web shooters. Of course, at the moment only a prototype, technology will be improved, but even the throwers available to me now, personal pride. Massive, we can not hide, before the development of smaller and more comfortable models need time. For now, they're half forearm bracelets, somewhat similar to the mechanisms from the '94 cartoon.

But for something that was created in less than a month, it's an incredible success. I've been up nights working on everything. Although the lion's share of success is due to my stamina, thanks to it I had enough 3-4 hours of sleep, and the rest of the time I worked in the lab. Grace.

Filled the throwers with cartridges and hid the "bracelets" in my rucksack. Now let's work on the face. I decided to do a little web work on the mask. What about it? If you look at it, it's just an old hat with slits for eyes, but if you take a specially reinforced web of the long decay formula and apply it to the mask a little, you get a slightly shiny greyish mesh substance. Looks good, plus a bit of canon.

Checked out his old gym class t-shirt, unremarkable blue jeans and ancient school shoes. Agreed, far from the best wrestler costume, or at least the Spider-Sapiens costume from Raimi's first film. But that's what I'm counting on. Not that I plan to shrug off the "showman" image if my current show is remembered in the future. Jameson, for example, but I'm going to make sure that Masked Wonder is not associated with Spider-Man.

The real question is, "Why do you put webs on the mask?". Come on, let's have some fun.

All right, everything's all set and folded. Time to set off.

***

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