Chapter 15: Training (Part 2)

Peter and Nat stood on separate sides of the training mat, circling each other to gauge the other's stance. Peter's style was a free flow, fluid movements dictating his actions. Nat was the same, but more measured, more conservative in her movements.

Natasha moved first, running at Peter and attempting to throw a left head kick. Peter ducked underneath it, jabbing his right fist, pulling his punches as he'd said he would, into the back of her raised leg's knee. Off her reaction, his left foot cracked into the inside of her right knee, his left arm locking her raised leg. Her leg buckled, and Peter pushed the leg he'd locked, sending her into a backwards roll. He followed the roll, sending a left punch towards her face. Her right hand came up, blocking with the back of it. She pushed his hand to the side, that hand retorting with an attempted right jab. His other hand caught her hand, and he wrenched her arm using both of his. He let go with his right arm, using his left to pull up and rolling in with a right elbow to her face. He caught her on the cheekbone, and she recoiled. She flipped forward, in the direction he was twisting her arm. She landed on her back, kicking upwards and into his chin on the way down. His head snapped back, and he shook his head, jumping over an attempted leg sweep.

Nat got to her feet, a bruise forming on her cheek already. Peter started this time, running forward. he dove low, between her legs, rolling backwards into a handstand and double-kicking her back. He was good at pulling his punches, but not-so-good at pulling his kicks. He pulled it well enough, but it was still a lot of force. the double-kick sent Natasha stumbling forward into a roll. She came up facing Peter, ducking under a kick and jumping into the air with a knee to his chest. The air was knocked out of Peter, as he stumbled back just a bit, but enough for Nat to sneak a solid hook to his jaw. his head snapped around, and he turned away, his back to her, before he threw himself backwards, rolling his weight back with a Pele kick that caught Nat on the temple. She stepped back with a grunt, spots in her eyes, before Peter swung his body around, a hand sticking to the floor to anchor himself, and sweeping her legs out from under her. They were on the mat, so hitting her head on it wouldn't be a big deal at all. Peter breathed heavily, walking forward and holding a hand down to pull her up. Natasha smirked, wrapping her legs around his arm, attempting an armbar. His spider-sense kicked in the instant she began to move though, and so he simply flexed his forearm and lifted, now holding Nat out at arm's length, sort of just sitting there, wrapped around his arm. She sighed after a moment of awkward silence. "Yeah, okay, you win, put me down."

Peter laughed and squatted, allowing Nat to unwrap his arm and stand. He stood from his squat and smiled. "I haven't really had to fight somebody who knew what they were doing, yet. That was fun!" He touched a finger to her bruised cheek and then her temple, clicking his tongue. "I didn't pull my elbow or my foot back enough. Damn. Let's go get you some ice."

She stumbled a little, from his attacks on her knees and from his leg sweep, but they got to the kitchen soon after. Peter handed her an ice pack and a water bottle, snagging a water for himself as well. Natasha winced at the ice pack on her face, but sighed at it as well. After about 10 minutes of the icing, she set down the ice pack and thought for a minute. "I don't know how we can train your actual powers. I don't actually think we can." She swiped a towel off to the side to dry off her sweat. Trying his damnedest to ignore the way her sweat traveled in beads down her collarbone and into her cleavage (spoiler alert, he failed), he sat down next to her. At least he succeeded in not staring at her. Don't get it twisted, he considered himself lucky as all hell to have MJ, Gwen, and especially Death, but a sexy spy in the form of the Black Widow? She was hot, sue him.

Peter shrugged. "I train them enough just by traversing the city. The swinging, the crawling, the spider-sense. My spider-sense is what keeps me from missing with the weblines I swing from."

Natasha nodded and tilted her head back and forth for a second. "Well, that's fair I guess. As long as you're training and practicing them, then you should be good."

Peter's phone went off then, a text. He checked it and sucked air through his teeth. "Ooo, I gotta go. I'm a little late for a date. I'll try to be here later to help you lock up for the night." He waved to Natasha before he left to where he kept his clothes and his suit. Seconds later, he was out the window, swinging downtown to his favorite pizza place, Corsiglia's. He mentally kicked himself when he saw Gwen and MJ waiting on a roof near it, waiting for him. Gwen had her suit on, but her mask was off and her hood was down. He swung low to the ground, rising high into the air, corkscrewing through the air before landing in a roll on their roof. He jogged slightly, absorbing the momentum. He walked to Gwen and MJ, pulling his hood down and pulling his mask off, his brown hair flopping out. "So sorry I'm late, I was sparring with somebody at the tower. Wasn't expecting to be there so long." He rubbed his hands on their backs and then sat between them.

They both just rolled their eyes, but leaned back into his hands. Once he sat down, Gwen handed him a slice of pizza and kissed his cheek. "It's okay, Pete. We weren't waiting too long."

MJ kissed his other cheek. "Still though, for being able to swing as fast as you do, you're always fashionably late." She teased.

Peter shrugged. "Hey, at least it's fashionable." She giggled at his response, as he took a sausage-filled bite of pizza. About 10 minutes later, there was one slice left, and the three of them were drawing straws for who got it. The decision was made for them, though, when a police siren went off in the distance.

MJ laughed. "Well, I guess it's mine then. Be careful, you two." She gave Peter a kiss and pinched his butt as he and Gwen left, stuffing the last piece of pizza in her face.

What they found was a messy scene. Peter's "leaked" memories and knowledge told him essentially all he needed to know about who he was staring at:

Christopher Powell, also known as Darkhawk. Darkhawk's powers include a force blast which emanates from the amulet on his chest, the source of his power. Alongside a proto-android-esque armor, the amulet could allow a force shield, while the armor came with a claw cable which could serve as both a Wolverine-like claw, and a grapple cable, glider wings and later flight capability. Secondary benefits included enhanced vision and strength, and an image underneath the Darkhawk helmet which served to frighten and distract his enemies.

James Howlett/James Logan/Logan (He's got a lot of names), also known as The Wolverine. He's the best at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice. He possesses adamantium claws and skeleton, and a CRAZY healing factor.

Curiously, just beside him, was the girl Peter was already familiar with, Laura. He already knew nearly everything about her, and seeing her here solidified and confirmed everything.

Beside her, was a teenaged(?) boy with dark blue fur covering his body. He was skinny, wearing a red jacket and brown pants, a long tail peeking out the back of his pants. This was Kurt Wagner, also known as Nightcrawler. This was a younger version, so he wasn't a master swordsman yet, but he was capable of teleporting and using his prehensile tail for movement.

On the other side of Logan was the southern belle, in all of her emo glory, Anna Marie. Also known as Rogue, she could absorb a portion of someone's power, effectively draining them of what she absorbed, and could then use it herself.

Cain Marko, also known as Juggernaut. Super strength, superhuman stamina, a being of irresistible force, a perpetual and eternal rage boner, and bodily proportions that make NO sense.

Logan, Kurt, Laura, and Anna were all mutants, the latter three likely in training at the Xavier Institute. As best as Peter could infer, Wolvie had been chaperoning to stores, where Kurt had been using a cloaking-type device to appear human, and Juggernaut had found them. Logan was trying to protect the kids, while Darkhwak was trying to keep Marko distracted enough for the rest of the X-Men to get there and keep property damage to a minimum, as well as casualties. Peter had a feeling that wouldn't work though. Darkhawk couldn't really do anything to Juggernaut with his force blasts, and Jug's rage blinded him to anything that might scare him.

Peter sighed and turned to Gwen from their perch on a roof. "You get down there to Wolvie and the kids for added protection. If Juggy over there gets through me and Darkhawk, he'll need help." He jumped off the roof, webbing across the street and then down, towards Juggernaut's back. Spider-Man crawled up his back and made a curtain of web over the eyeholes of his helmet, his knees sticking to his back. "Hey, here, have a sticky situation! On the house!" He stuck his hands to the dome-like helmet and used that leverage to go into a handstand on it. He swung, using pendulum movement in conjunction with his own exertion to move, and planted both feet in Juggernaut's back, the impact landing just after Juggernaut tore away the webs.

The extent that Peter's strength had increased was truly on display here. He unstuck his hands from the helmet just in time, his double-kick catapulting Juggernaut about 10 feet back, breaking a fire hydrant and a traffic light, the water from the fire hydrant splashing into the open holes of the helmet. Darkhawk set down next to Peter and nodded his thanks, emitting another force blast, surging the water at Juggernaut along with it. The added force of the high-pressure water was enough to topple Juggernaut to his face. Juggernaut growled and rose to his feet and turned, just as a large black plane came in, several X-Men floating or jumping from it to land in the area. Professor Charles Xavier, the bald man in the floating chair, began to command. "Get the helmet off!"

Peter didn't need any other word. The only reason he hadn't already done that was because nobody with brain powers had shown up yet. He engaged his stingers, eliciting raised eyebrows from Logan and Laura, and zipped behind Juggernaut and onto his back. He repeatedly stabbed at the helmet, his stingers cracking and straining, until Peter had punched two holes into the helmet. Sheathing his stingers, he shoved his hands into the holes he made. Using his legs, arms, and any other muscle he could use for the task, he pulled the helmet off with a thunderous sound due to the force he'd exerted to do so, effectively bending the helmet in half. He backflipped off of Juggernaut, webzipping forward, passed Juggernaut. His other hand webbed onto Juggernaut's chest, zipping in and sending a heavy haymaker into the lifted piece of the helmet. The punch dented directly into the metal, his metal-wreathed fist clocking Cain Marko in the teeth, several of them flying out of his mouth, and dazing him badly, perfectly vulnerable to the psychic attacks from Jean Grey and Charles Xavier.

The X-Men who watched Peter work mostly stood with various expressions of awe at his sheer strength for such a small person. Wolverine just rose an eyebrow. Rogue and Laura both stood there, sweating profusely. They each exchanged looks, Anna's flustered and clearly... bothered. Laura's was far less reserved, as she licked her lips, a gleam in her eye. She could tell this was the same Spider-Man she'd previously met 'I wonder if he's used them yet...' The thought was enough to make her bodily response betray her to Wolverine. He sniffed, turning in her direction with an even higher eyebrow. She shut down her thoughts and clammed up, managing to suppress her hormones, though barely. No reason to give her genetic father a reason to skin her mate alive.

Peter walked towards the X-Men who had just arrived, as Logan and his entourage walked passed him. Laura left a teasing finger stroke across his back as she moved eliciting a slight shiver from him. He shook his head to clear the funk from it and crossed his arms when he was within a range that Xavier could possibly read a mind. Peter plugged one thought into his brain, a repeating message if you will: 'If you read my mind, Charlie Brown, I will not hesitate to complete your paralysis.' The knowledge that he wasn't exactly the same Peter Parker, in the mind of Charles Xavier of all people, wouldn't exactly be good. Peter was right to have the message play in his head. Just half a second before he stopped and crossed his arms, Xavier attempted to subtly read Peter's thoughts. All of the X-Men nearby watched as Xavier broke out in a sweat afterwards. Peter, from behind his mask, smiled, and uncrossed his arms. He walked into conversation range and held a hand out to Xavier. "Professor X, I assume? Name's Spider-Man."

Darkhawk, beside Peter, did a little two-finger wave thing. "Darkhawk. I uh, I have some other business to handle." He'd noticed the tension, and noped out, grappling away and gliding across the city. Gwen stayed back a bit, figuring the more experienced Peter would be better equipped to deal with the mutants.

Peter watched him go, but tilted his head. 'He'd be a good ally to keep around.' He turned his attention back to Xavier, who finally shook his hand.

"Y-yes, I've heard of you from young Laura. And from Iron Man." His sweating had died down, and he was now subtly sizing Peter up.

Peter laughed, letting go of Xavier's hand. "Tony talks about me? How sweet. All good things, I hope." Xavier gave a seesaw motion with his hand. Peter huffed. "Damn Tin Can. I gotta tighten his screws or something. Wasabi in his coffee? I don't know." He cut off his little ramble. "Anyway, glad I was able to help." He tilted his head to the younger X-Men trainees. "They looked like they needed a little help. Not exactly registered as official X-Men, I'm assuming."

Xavier nodded. "Correct. They are currently in training to become so." He turned to Logan. "Wolverine has been doing his best to train them."

Peter laughed. "Yeah, but that's not what he's the best at, because training is nice." Wolverine scoffed, but was mildly amused at the reference. "I hope the training goes well, then. I'll look forward to working with the full-fledged team if the time comes."

Xavier began to respond when, of all people, Cyclops spoke up. He was apparently another trainee, but he hadn't been with the others when the incident had happened. "Oh, really? What makes you better than us? You sound like you're the same age. I bet I could take you."

Peter cocked his head. 'Scott isn't always this bull-headed, is he? Odd. Meh, he's young. I'll cut him some slack.' Peter wandered over to Scott, actually being a little shorter than him (for now). "Tell me, Scott Summers, have you fought a giant green monster almost single-handedly?" At the name drop, every X-Man bristled.

Scott went pale. "U-uh, no?"

Peter laughed. "Then what makes you think you'd beat me?"

Scott stuttered for a second before he landed on a response. "Because what can you do against this!" He began to take off his sunglasses, but the instant they were off, a giant glob of web hit his eyes, turning red and burning through the webs slowly.

"Put. The glasses. Back on." Peter's playful tone was gone. Xavier and the other X-Men had just been too slow to stop Scott. "You can boast and showboat all you want, but when you begin to put my city in danger, you may not come out of it walking." Peter cracked his knuckles. Scott shakily put the glasses back on, Jean Grey coming down from floating to take the webbing away. "Thank you." Peter calmed down, blowing a breath. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he rolled up his suit sleeve a bit to check his watch, "I have a tower to help close up." He rolled it back down. "Mr. Summers, a word of advice? Know your power, and know when your power does not trump another's. You could put your team in danger that way." He webzipped into the air and began speeding through the air, flipping and dipping all the way.

As he left, Laura mentally cursed. 'Fuck, I'm gonna need to change my pants when I'm back at the mansion.' She stopped her legs from shaking after a moment. Wolverine had been too busy sizing up Spider-Man to notice Laura's exploding libido.

Anna blew a breath. "For such a skinny guy, he can be scary."

Laura shook her head. "Maybe. But he can be very kind, too. Believe you me." She thought for a second, before continuing with a more apt description. "He chooses his words and tone carefully, as a situation would demand of him. He was polite enough before Scott opened his dumb mouth."

Scott protested glibly, but none of the younger mutants paid it any mind. Scott was not at a level yet where his words were taken seriously. Not, at least, when he was too busy trying to impress a flying redhead telepath.

~~~~~

Peter swung with Gwen for awhile before they stopped at a roof just by Avengers Tower. They both rolled up their masks, gave each other quick pecks, before she went home and Peter went to the tower. Once they were both at their respective destinations, Gwen sent Peter a text.

{You sure you weren't too harsh on the guy with the red glasses?}

Peter thought for a second, sitting on the kitchen counter with a sandwich on a paper towel in front of him. [Maybe. But he needed to be set straight. he has the potential to lead the entire X-Men.]

{Really?}

[Yeah. He took stock of the situation as soon as he got there. I watched his alertness. His pride, and his pathetic puppy-like need to impress the flying redhead are his main weak points. Until he understands how to lead, no one will take his words seriously.]

Gwen took a second to respond. {Huh. I didn't notice any of that. Glad I let you handle it then} She ended the text with a "phew" emoji, before she sent a double-text. {I'm gonna hop in the shower. Talk to you later, Pete.} She added a kiss emoji.

Peter laughed. [Ok.] He ended it with a thumbs up and a heart emoji before he plopped his phone next to him, finishing his sandwich. He knew Natasha was in the Tower somewhere, but he wasn't exactly sure where.

He did eventually find her in the gym area, beating the tar out of punching bags and working up quite a sweat. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe. She usually, when he had seen her work out, never went this hard. He cleared his throat. "You're not taking your loss too hard, are you?" She gave one more hard punch to the punching bag before turning to face him. He was still in his suit, but his mask was in a pocket, and his hood was down.

She was in a white tank top and black yoga pants for flexibility. He had to focus on the age gap between the two of them to force himself to behave. She sighed. "Yeah well, it's not every day that a kid ten years younger than you wipes the floor with you in a fight."

Peter laughed. "Hey, that's okay. I've got edges in combat that you don't have. Besides, if you were actually trying, you could've wiped the floor with me easily."

She rolled her eyes. "Peter, you're just being humble. If you'd wanted to, your very first hit could've caved in my skull."

Peter laughed. "Yeah, well, too bad I care about scary redheads too much to kill them." He pushed off of the doorframe and walked into the room. "All of my fighting skills come directly from instinct, and my spider-sense. Your actual skill will always trump me in that regard. If I wasn't so strong, your trick armbar would've gotten me."

Nat scoffed, but blushed lightly at his mention of caring about her. "Maybe." He cocked her head a little. "I saw you use your stinger things. Where'd those come from?"

Peter shrugged. "They come out when I'm stressed or in a life or death situation. I'm getting better about increasing the availability of them to beyond desperate measures, but it still takes a little effort to get them out."

Nat nodded. "Interesting. Anything else kinda out of the ordinary? Ya know, besides the normal."

Peter sighed. "Well, there is one thing. But ah, let's keep it between us, yeah?" He subtly nodded towards the camera in the gym and started walking towards the men's locker room. No cameras would be in the locker rooms, because ethics.

Nat rose an eyebrow but followed him. Peter sighed and held his fingers up towards a wall, shutting his eyes. He tried his best to empty his head, imagining Norman Osborn in front of him.

Nat gasped when his shadowy webs slithered out of his fingers and began moving slowly through the air. Peter's breath cut and he opened his eyes, his hands going to his knees. His finger-tunnel things shut, his webs cutting off.

He gasped, turning to Nat. She shook her head in bewilderment. "What exactly was that?"

Peter sighed and sat back on the locker room bench. Forcing himself to use that was taxing. "It's a thing I can do with my webs when I'm feeling particularly violent." He sighed. "I've only used it twice. Once on a Weapon X torture lady who legitimately deserved to die, and I started to use it against Norman, but obviously Hobgoblin ended him instead." He shook his head. "There's more." He held one hand up in a finger gun, flexing his index fingertips as much and as hard as he could, but just one quick burst. A thin line of webbing, about the length of a ruler, shot out, splattering on the wall. Or, it would've, if the web didn't just simply go through the wall. Sort of, at least. It had enough force to punch a large hole in the wall, crumbling to create a much bigger hole. Like if a burly normal man had punched a hole in a wall, except this was from range and it was a much larger hole.

Peter relaxed his hand and turned to Nat, her eyes slightly widened. "How the hell powerful are you, Peter?"

Peter shrugged. "I don't think there's an actual limit on that. There's a lot at play behind my strength, some that I'm not at liberty to discuss, that translates to a level of power that can continuously increase."

Natasha blew a breath. "for your sake, I'll keep this to myself. If someone like Fury caught wind of this, I can't guarantee that he wouldn't try to corral you in some way."

Peter laughed. "He could try. I won't be corralled or controlled."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "There's the recklessness and the stubbornness."

Peter faked offense, just laughing as they both closed the tower for the night. Peter left the tower, his mask and hood up, latched onto the building wall above the door. Natasha locked the door behind him, waving at him from the other side of the glass. "I totally forgot she lived here." He mumbled to himself, leaping from the building, nearly flying across the city on his commute to home.