9 Issue 9: X Factor Part II

As they made their way to Xavier's mansion, Peter looked around the blackbird and asked them, "So what are your abilities? I mean, it's not fair that you guys know ours and we don't know yours."

"Cyclops is my codename, Scott Summers my real name, I have the ability to shoot beams of energy out of my eyes," Scott said as he pointed to his glasses.

"Jean Grey, I'm a psychic."

"Kitty Pryde, I phase through objects."

"Kurt's my name and I can teleport to any place that I've seen."

"My name is Logan, and I can heal fast, As for our pilot, Strom, she can control the weather."

"My name is Ororo, it's a pleasure to meet you two," Storm giggled.

MJ was excited and while hearing how their powers work, but she was more interested in their personal lives. They chatted for a while about themselves. A little under ten minutes had passed by before Storm announced that they had arrived.

After exiting the Jet they were met by a bald older gentleman in a wheelchair, standing next to him was Beast, the furry with blue fur.

"Hello, it's a surprise see Spider-Man was the Mutant we were searching for," Charles said with a smile on his face.

Everyone exited the blackbird when Peter said, "It's an honor to meet you as well Prof. Xavier, but I ask that you respect my privacy and avoid reading my mind. I think a gentleman such as your self can do that right?"

Peter frowned under his mask, although he respected Charles, he had to be wary of one with his kind of power. Peter didn't know if Charles could pry into the memories of his previous life and would rather not take any chances.

Little did he know, those memories were protected by the One Above All.

Charles laughed before saying, "Of course, I wouldn't abuse my power without a good reason, but I think you won't mind me using the intell Jean gave me, Peter."

Spider-Man shook his head and said, "Let's get this straight, while we're in costume nobody call us by our real name. Secret identity and all."

"I'm going to have to agree with him on that one," MJ followed up.

Xavier turned his hover-chair around and asked them to follow him.

While Charles led the group throughout the mansion, Peter saw numerous unique children with many incredible abilities that caught his interest,

Peter smiled as he looked around at how happy the students were. He had to give Charles some props, as not many places would accommodate Mutants so willingly on top of letting their powers flourish naturally.

When Peter was observing the mutants use their powers, a kid around the age of 5 appeared beside him. The boy could change the surface of his skin to mimic the environment much like a chameleon, so his body was almost unnoticeable, and since he posed no danger, Peter was taken by surprise as the kid pulled on his suit and asked, "Are you Spider-Man?"

Peter smiled and gave a thumbs-up before he said, "Yepp! But you forgot the friendly neighborhood par.t"

Suddenly, the other kids took notice of them and started at the two spider heroes. Cheers erupted throughout the school halls. Peter and MJ were crowded by fans asking to sign their belongings.

After a few minutes of this, they made their way towards Xavier's office while signing shirts, notebooks, and toys made in their image,

Once the two made to the Professor's office, they sat down while the Charles poured them both a cup of tea.

"The children here love the Spider Duo, they look up to them," Charles said as he moved behind his desk and placed a cup of tea out for MJ and Peter.

The Spider-Couple lifted the lower half of their masks and took a sip of tea before smiling.

"I'm more of a coffee guy, but this stuff is pretty good," Peter commented as he took another sip.

"It's way taster than what we have at home, that's for sure," MJ said as she licked her lips.

Charles smiled, happy that they enjoyed the tea he prepared, he proceeded to proposition the spider heroes by asking, "So tell me Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, what do you two think of this place?"

"I think what you've done for these kids is a kind thing, and the place is full of interesting people!" MJ stated before she took another drink.

"It's pretty neat, could use some Spidey covered drapes, and a couple of posters, but other than that, I'd give you 5 stars," Peter said with a laugh.

"I'm glad you two approve. So, let's cut to the chase, shall we? How would you like to come to my school?" Xavier asked while Spiderman sipped his tea.

"I have to think about that one!" MJ said with a bit of a frown.

Peter put his cup down and said, "Sorry, Xavier. While I'm sure we'd get along, I don't want to join the X-Men. Nor do I want to attend school here, I have other goals for my education."

Xavier sighed in disappointment before saying, "If you want you can spend a few minutes here while we refill the Blackbird. Should you ever change your minds, please feel free to come and join."

Peter thank them as he took MJ to explore and meet several mutants, they caught up with Scott who was working on a motorcycle in their garage.

Peter offered to help, but Scott declined by saying, "No one touches my baby."

Peter smiled and couldn't repress the joke he came up with as he said, "Man, if that's your baby, then the mother must be one ugly monstrosity."

Scott laughed and loosened up, they started discussion different as the two chatted for a while getting to know each other better, Peter hoped he didn't become the dick that Marvel turned him into.

He recalled his early years reading the X-Men comics. Scott was kind, brave, and a damn good leader. It wasn't until the age of Soap Operas that they really started to mess the character up in just the worst ways.

MJ chatted with Jean and even offered Scott some advice to improve his bike's performance speed, which only made Peter laugh harder when Jean chided Scott for thinking, "Great, Logan will never let me live this down, I can hear him now, a girl can do a better job than you."

"What's wrong with a girl knowing mechanics better than you?"

Afterward laughing up a storm, the Spider-Couple met up with Kitty and Kurt in the courtyard. They chatted about school life, how they started attending Xavier's school, and how their abilities worked.

"So you can phase your body, huh? Is it like quantium-tunnling?" Peter asked.

"Quantum, what now?" Kitty asked with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Quantum Tunneling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle passes through a potential barrier that it classically cannot surmount. It's like popping in and out of existence to move through matter. The theory I have is very complicated, but I think you might be altering the structure of your body to become a wave, rather than a particle. Because as a wave, you'd be transporting your physical body to a reality that's aligned with ours, but in a realm where no matter exists," Peter explained.

Peter then turned to Kurt and said, "Your ability is a little more advanced, you could be entering another reality entirely, and once you are there, you can re-enter our universe wherever you chose. Or, you could be dispersing or shrinking your body to the point where you can access wormholes. In that case, your memories may be guidance-system used to access which wormholes to traverse and get to where and when you need to be on instinct alone."

Peter was fascinated by using science to try and figure out their abilities.

While he was discussing their powers and how they might be used, Beast came strolling along and joined in on their conversation.

Peter and Hank hit it off and became friends rather quickly. While they talked, quite a few of their ideas on biology, Peter turned silent for a few seconds before asking, "I was wondering, if you could take a look at my blood? I managed to identify my X-Gene and even the Spider Gene, but there's something else there I can't identify. With your advanced knowledge of genetics and bioengineering, I was hoping you could help me take a look."

Beast smiled and agreed before leading them to his very expensive looking lab. Hank took a sample of Peter's blood and placed under a costly microscope and began his examination.

Peter informed him that there was a possibility of his blood being radioactive, and helped Hank take the necessary precautions in dealing with his blood.

After running a few tests, Hank returned to Peter and said, "Any radioactivity in your blood has been cleaned out by your regeneration factor. The second mutation I discovered appeared to be a mutation caused by some kind of venom or serum, you spider-gene as you so elegantly said. The third is similar to your Spider-Gene, it wasn't originally part of your genetics. The best way I could describe the piece of genetic coding; is that it acts like a Blank-Gene that can allow your body to accept multiple strains of augmented genetics, and judging from how old the strain is, I'd say you were injected between the ages of four to six years old."

Peter was shocked because if what he said was true, someone inoculated him with this blank-gene when he was too young to remember, and whatever was he was injected with had already merged with genetic coding.

"Can you tell what used to be in the blank-gene before the spider bite took place?" Peter asked making Beast sigh.

"Peter, do you ever remember being sick?" Hank asked with a serious expression.

Peter frowned and searched through his memories, "Twice, once when I was a child and the second was after I was bitten by the radioactive spider."

"When you were young did you have problems seeing things? Did you have trouble moving your limbs, or have other symptoms such as clumsiness, walking problems, and seizures?" Hank questioned.

Peter frowned and then asked, "Are you saying it's a vaccine for NP Type-C?"

"Smart boy! Yes and if I'm not wrong, it used to be a cure for an extremely rare genetic disorder called Niemann-Pick Type C disease. As you know, that genetic disorder is a defect on the gene that regulates cholesterol metabolism in the cells."

Peter continued Beast's explanation, "Harmful amounts of the fatty lipid which our bodies make continuously and normally excrete, accumulate in the spleen, liver, lungs, bone marrow, and, ultimately, brain. Prolonged effects from the genetic disorder lead to neurological deterioration that can trigger seizures and loss of motor skills like walking, holding a pencil, even swallowing. NPC is sometimes dubbed "Childhood Alzheimer's" because it leads to severe dementia."

"Which is why I'm so impressed with the design of this serum. It managed to locate the disease and create a replicate antibody that targets this disease."

Peter gulped. He remembered a certain Viscus Ectosymbiotic Neuroactive Obligate Mutualist that sounded an awful lot like what Beast was describing. It was too close to how a Symbiote acts in order to cure cancer cells.

He thought of the Ultimate timeline and the fact his parents were the ones who helped make the Symbiote in that universe.

Peter got up off the examination table and destroyed the blood sample before saying, "Beast you can't tell anyone about this, Doctor-Patient Confidentiality and all."

Hank understood and said, "Relax, Peter, I have never broken my Hippocratic oath, but this has given me some ideas and how to target cancer cells. It could even be used to augment existing harmful mutations. I hope you don't mind me acting on this knowledge."

Hearing this, Peter felt reassured, out of all the X-Men Beast was actually his favorite, especially the gentlemanly version of him.

Hank always remembered to keep his humanity and morals above all else, so, Peter knew he could trust him to keep his promises.

Peter then returned to MJ who was chatting it up with the X-Men and told her to prepare to leave.

After saying their goodbyes and thanking Prof. X for his hospitality, the Spider Couple was dropped off a couple of blocks from the mall they were picked up from.

After spending the rest of the day shopping with MJ, the two of them headed home after grabbing a slice from Tony's Authentic Pizza.

After they got back MJ gave Peter a kiss and said, "See you later, Tiger! Remember to wear the one I like to our next date."

"I thought you like them all." Peter grinned as he turned around and carried in a few dozen bags of new articles of clothing through his front door.

Keeping the happy grin and the lipstick mark on his cheek, Peter greeted his chuckling Aunt and Uncle before heading up to his attic.

After putting away his new clothes, Peter headed up to the attic and started going through some of the boxes taken from his parent's old house.

Searching hundreds of files and boxes, Peter came across a set of tapes, along with dozens of locked cases. He easily picked the locked and opened the cases to discover a few hundred files that were titled 'Project V.E.N.O.M' and Med-Bed Blueprints.

Peter slapped himself in the head for being so forgetful.

He promised himself that he would clean out the attic in case there were any other dangerous projects that parents may have left laying around. Peter took the boxes to his lab and began going over the notes and videotapes concerning the research.

After four hours, Peter managed to go through the whole stockpile of mother and father's research. He had a pretty good idea of how Venom was made, and what materials were used to make it.

First, he was surprised to learn that a single drop from a unique sample inside a moonstone was the source and start of the V.E.N.O.M project.

It appeared that J.J.J's son found this on his exploration of the dark side of the moon and brought it back to earth. Peter couldn't find any information as to how his parents obtained the moonstone, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were being funded by one of the big agencies in the Marvel Universe.

Peter figured that if he had the same substance, he could even replicate his parents' experiments, but, he didn't know if he should. A Symbiote is a powerful ally and can give Peter a wider range of powers, but they were volatile and easy to fall prey to corruption.

Peter took a deep breath and sighed as he thought, "Venom has the capacity to do good, but his way of understanding things is problematic. Question is…how do you teach a Symbiote how to behave like a human…I hope Dr. Strange is around, maybe he could help me communicate and teach it, then maybe I could put up with sharing my body."

Peter also knew he had to go to steal the Venom sample from Eddie. He wouldn't put up with a Symbiote and monster-like Eddie constantly hunting him down. The kid couldn't help but feel rather depressed at the moment, it wasn't like just suddenly possessed Peter Parker, but he was Peter Parker from birth. These were his parents, and although his memories of them are fuzzy, he remembered that they did love him more than their own life. 

He was told so every night before he went to bed.

Seeing his dead parents on the video recordings made him cry and miss them even more. After so many years he could barely remember their faces, yet all of this sudden stimuli started to help him remember his youth, along with the happy times he shared with them.

As he was cleaning out the boxes, Peter noticed a key of unknown origin in his father's favorite first edition copy of Moby Dick. Putting it in his pockets, he proceeded to destroy all of the data his parents left. Everything on Project V.E.N.O.M was burned to ashes in a tin trash can.

Peter had a lot to do, so after nightfall, he called MJ and told her to meet him at 177A Bleecker Street in a few hours.

Sneaking after his Aunt and Uncle went to bed, Peter headed out to Reed Richards Science Center in an all-black costume. It looked just like the classic venom suit, without the spider.

Sneaking inside the facility, he easily found the Cold Storage Center, Peter then crawled along the roof and destroyed all the cameras in the room.

He stopped in front of dozens of locked cabinet-sized freezers and spent half an hour picking open all the locks. In the process, Peter managed to find two different samples of Venom. One that belonged to his father and the one Eddie made from his father's sample.

After webbing them up and placing them in his backpack, Peter closed all the lockers and exited the building the same way he came in.

Once he was outside, Peter carefully made his way through the city and changed into his Spider-Man costume once he was out of sight.

Standing on top of a tall building, he looked around for the path to Bleecker Street and began web-slinged his way towards New York's Magical Sanctum.

It took a while to reach because he had to be careful with the Venom Samples in his backpack, he didn't want to drop or break them. Peter didn't want a Venom to be born out of an accident, so he managed sure to stay on high alert throughout his entire trip.

When he saw the Sanctum, Peter spotted MJ on a nearby rooftop and landing next to her.

"Now be honest, did ya miss me?" Peter said after putting the samples down by his feet and throwing his arms out.

MJ jumped into his chest and wrapped her arms around his back before she replied, "Always Tiger, what'cha got in there?" MJ was looking at the webbed-up vials.

Peter picked the Venom samples back up and answered her by saying, "Something that I hope never becomes a problem for us. Come on, follow me."

Peter then swung down to the street alongside MJ and knocked on the Sanctums doors. After waiting for a few minutes, they were met with an older slightly tubby Wong. He was wearing the traditional leather robes master spell casters are given when they graduate from the Inner Sanctum.

Wong looked at both of them with interest before he asked, "What brings you to these doors young heroes?"

Peter coughed awkwardly and said, "I wish to speak to the Sorcerer Supreme, I require his assistance with an important matter."

Wong looked at him, then to MJ, and then at the webbed up vials before he heard the Master of the House call out, "Let them in Wong."

Looking past Wong, Peter noticed Stephen Strange, who looked like the MCU universe's Benedict Cumberbatch, walking down the stairs while holding his hands behind his back.

"So you're those Spider-People that have been gaining a lot of popularity recently?" Doctor Strange said as Peter and MJ stepped inside the building and the doors magically closed behind them.

MJ jumped at the sight of the door closing behind them and while she was little spooked, she turned to Peter and asked, "Who is this guy?"

Strange waved floated down the rest of the way and hovered in front of them before he said, "Didn't you hear him announce my tittle earlier, Spider-Woman? I am the Earth's Sorcerer Supreme!"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!" MJ waved her hands in front of her face before she asked, "So, magic is real?!"

Peter laughed and then said, "Well, yes and no, by the definition, magic isn't real, however, what Doctor Strange here knows is just science we don't understand. Yet."

Strange lifted a brow and said, "Very astute of you Mr. Parker. Madam Web was right about your intelligence. You accept science while keeping your mind open to every possibility. Very suitable for learning magic. The Ancient One would be pleased to meet you."

Suddenly Peter felt a cold chill drip down his spine as he thought, "The Ancient One is still alive?!"

It appeared that Doctor Strange became a Sorcerer much sooner than the MCU timeline and was closer to the Ultimate timeline. Meaning he hadn't met Dormammu yet either.

Peter sighed as he unwrapped the webbing around the Venom samples along with Peter's overall summary and personal notes on the Venom Project's research.

"As a doctor, I'm sure this will interest you, but there is a problem with the lack of control over the suit. I was hoping you could help me find a solution to this problem. Please burn that when you are done reading it." Peter requested as Strange took the items.