Chapter 12: They Are Themselves!

"Bingo!" I smirk smugly when I see a familiar name on the list.

I was thinking in the wrong direction. It wasn't just any of my classmates that might have been the spider's target. After all, in addition to the tour group, there were also the attendants. Here I found a familiar last name and initials in the list of college students who helped with the science fair: G. M. Stacy.

That wasn't so bad. After all, Gwen is not the kind of person who would use her powers to the detriment of people. And being on a TV show... her right, I made a lot of mistakes before I became who I am, too. I tried to use my powers in no-holds-barred fights, then, out of guilt, rejected any means of making money from my talents and led a miserable existence, selling for next to nothing pictures of Spider-Man to my most vicious hater, J. Jon Jameson, but it was fun in its own way. If you think about it, many of the problems of that period of my life were caused by a lack of money, disorganization, and indecision in matters unrelated to my superhero life.

And then it all became a secondary concern. Richard and I had to participate in many secret projects of the UN and the Shield, even the fight against the increased number of criminals was no longer my headache, because, as it turned out, in case of a global threat and the need to mobilize all the resources of the states themselves are able to ensure control. Tougher measures were just needed. Surprisingly, the arrival in my life of stern superiors in the form of Fury and the U.N. helped me solve my personal problems. That's when M.J. and I got married, though our happiness together didn't last long. After the accident that caused me to lose my love, the decision to freeze came easily to me.

But that didn't matter now. I'm not the same person as before, and I won't make the same mistakes. Besides, I'm young again, full of energy, and Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy are alive. And that means only one thing - life goes on and you have to appreciate it!

I'm a little overdone with energy, though, and I'm exhausted. I have a long ten-hour nap, and waking up, I will be different not only mentally but also physically!

I close the university database, which I had to hack into to get access to the lists... in fact, the university site was not just unprotected, it was just waiting for the push to collapse, there were so many vulnerabilities in the code that a schoolboy, who had read articles about hacking on the Internet, could take advantage of them... wait, that's exactly what happened!

After setting up an IV and securing my right arm, I injected the prepared solution containing the serum. There was no need to overexert my body unnecessarily. Everything would go smoothly, easily and painlessly, the solution itself and the concentration of serum in it were chosen in such a way that the changes would pass in ten hours of healthy sleep.

Asleep Peter couldn't see or hear the window in the abandoned laboratory on the second floor of his house open and an intruder entered the apartment. Remarkably, the unknown person was moving around, attaching herself to the walls with her hands, and climbing down the wall with her head down as if it were natural for her to do so. Once inside, the intruder, in a conspicuous tight black-and-white suit, covered the window again.

As of late, the life of Gwen Stacy, an ordinary girl, a Midtown college student, and a loving daughter, had changed abruptly. The science fair, which she was involved in organizing because she was working off debts, was the most important event in her life.

All because of that strange spider that clung to her wrist so unexpectedly.

However, the rest you already know. Since then, Gwen has begun to notice changes in herself. She became stronger, more flexible, more resilient, she could stick and walk on vertical surfaces, her senses sharpened, and her vestibular apparatus was the envy of cats. And, finally, a special sixth sense emerged. Gwen hadn't quite mastered it yet, but it helped her sense danger, and she was always able to choose the right footing during extreme gymnastics and parkour without fail. After sewing herself a stunning stylish costume, Gwen made her talent show debut, where she demonstrated her phenomenal agility and grace and became the one and only Spider-Woman.

But the day before yesterday the sixth sense began to give Gwen quite unusual signals, which she has not yet been able to recognize. The strange feelings were caused by a new acquaintance Connors - a high school boy with an unusual attraction to science. At first Gwen thought that the boy was simply dangerous, as absurd as it sounded, but that too had happened. But it soon became clear that something else was involved. Peter is not some drug addict or terrorist or even a radical chauvinist. He might stand out among other guys and especially his peers because of his work ethic and his atypical demeanor, not to mention the fact that he asked her out himself... okay, stop, don't get distracted! That's not why you're here, Gwen!

The feeling intensified today when Gwen found Parker in Connors' sleeping lab. He was doing something secretly from the professor. This caused a new round of suspicion in the girl. Which were only confirmed by the boy's reluctance to show what was being processed in the centrifuge.

This greatly interested the inquisitive girl. So much so that she decided to follow the suspicious boy to his house, but she found no answers. Whatever Parker was cooking, he was doing it for himself. Gwen wasn't sure how she should go about it. On the one hand, it seemed right to stop the process and get Peter to tell Connors, but on the other... what if there was no Stans, and the medicine he was supposedly preparing for her was meant for Peter himself. Connors had not prevented Parker from using his laboratory, nor had she doubted him when he said that a certain Stans was on the mend. So for some reason she believed in his discretion and trustworthiness.

Fortunately for Parker, Gwen overlooked the fact that her unyielding authority, Dr. Karen Connors, had been too excited about the breakthrough in her research in recent days and simply wasn't paying attention to Peter's actions.

On Parker's arm, Gwen noticed an incomprehensible bracelet device. It was equipped with a simple control panel without any explanation. The same device appeared on the boy's other arm... very strange, but still incomprehensible.

Looking for more information, Stacy decided to investigate what was going on in Peter's room. Like any child of the digital age, she started with the computer, only it was password-protected. Gwen didn't want to leave a trail, but she knew of no other way to gain access to someone else's computer than to reset the password. But she didn't succeed. Something hissed under the case of the PC, and two seconds later the screen went out.

"Cool!" Gwen exclaimed happily. "Now he would know for sure that someone had been into his computer. What am I supposed to do?"

She asked Parker angrily, but he didn't answer, because he was too busy: The Evil Queen had unleashed another mutiny on her and taken over Wonderland.

"Eh," not finding a better solution, Gwen drew some of the liquid from the capsule bag into a syringe found right there in Parker's house, and decided to leave the stranger's house, leaving the ruined computer as a gift for Peter.

Maybe Connors could figure out what the boy had mixed into his blood. Opening the shutters, she leapt out the window with a grace unavailable to any man or animal, disappearing into the darkness.

I woke up from the cold-soaked sheets and clothes clinging to my body, my stomach twisted with hunger. I pulled the needle out of my arm and pressed a piece of absorbent cotton to the wound, staring out the open window in astonishment.

"What the fuck?" I certainly couldn't have left it open. "Someone had been in my house while I was sleeping!"

"Awesome!" I exclaimed when I discovered that the intruder had ruined my computer by activating a rudimentary protection consisting of a fifty bucks killer flash drive and a couple of simple scripts that force USB ports to turn off. "Fucking bitch, I don't even have money for a new computer."

I looked around the house, and I didn't find anything missing. So it wasn't thieves. Someone wanted to go through the contents of my PC, but failed... or successfully bypassed the security, and then gave themselves away to... pretend they didn't find anything? Nah, that doesn't make any sense! I'll assume the self-destruct worked properly.

Who could it be? Although, there's no point in guessing if there's no trace of it. There were too many possibilities, from Gwen playing detective to Cindy's people coming on to me. Even Stance, awake from her coma, could have pulled something like that, especially if she knew I was continuing her research. I removed the absorbent cotton and moved my hand. The blood clotted almost instantly, and the wound was almost healed. At least the serum was working properly.

Of course, it would not give me a significant instant increase in physical strength, like the super-soldier serum, but it would bring my reaction speed to the peak, and even a little higher, for a human. By the way, I hadn't worn my glasses... how wonderful to have perfect vision again.

I stretched my whole body, noting with pleasure the increased elasticity of my muscles and overall flexibility. Now I would have to do some physical training. Fumbling for my phone, I first found five missed calls from Mary Jane, and then I noticed the date... I'd been asleep for more than ten hours, much more-almost forty! This could be the work of the night visitor, but who would want my inactivity for the past twenty-four hours?

No. I can't think of anything.

Okay, let's go another way, how did they do it? By administering extra injections of sleeping pills? I need to do a blood test. I'll find out what I was drugged and see how the serum worked... Wait! What if they just reduced the amount of the solution? Then the changes in my body would have slowed down, and I would have continued to sleep until the process was completed or until an external stimulus, like a draft or hunger, woke me up. As I ran back into the room and looked around again, I noticed something that hadn't caught my attention the first time I looked around-one syringe was missing. They had siphoned the solution out of the IV bag! Sons of bitches! Damn, now John Doe has a working sample of the eternal serum! Although the formula itself isn't easy to decipher...

All right, I'll deal with that later, I need to wash up and eat. After showering while I was making breakfast, I decided to call MJ. The girl answered right away and bombarded me with a hail of questions, but when she knew everything was fine, she calmed down and soon asked to come over. I did not mind. What could be more pleasant than the care of a beloved girl?

When I met Mary Jane on my doorstep, I was rewarded with a sweet kiss from the hot redheaded beauty.

"I was worried, where had you gone?" the girl asked, not letting me out of her arms.

"First I worked at Professor Connors', then I slept in," I answered honestly, without elaborating that the latter took much more time, "Come in, I'm just about to have breakfast."

"You're inviting me into your house," M.J. said playfully, "brave guy."

"And you didn't think so?" I grinned.

"It's kind of... empty," M.J. said as she looked around the living room, "Not even a TV?"

"Yeah, I don't really watch TV," I said absent-mindedly as I set the table. Last Peter really wasn't interested in anything, and I wasn't really interested in buying a TV in the early days. "Coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks," M.J. sat down at the table. "Wait, if you don't have a TV and you were busy all the time or sleeping, then you don't even know what's going on?"

She suddenly exclaimed, making me nervous. Trying not to show the excitement that engulfed me, I asked indifferently:

"Something important?"

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"Really?! There's a lot going on in the last 24 hours! Man, you gotta see this... do you have internet? You can't not have it!"

I unlocked my phone and tossed it into Mary Jane's hands and proceeded to devour my food.

After quickly typing something in the video hosting search, M.J. pulled up her chair and moved in close to me.

"Look!" She exclaimed excitedly, slipping the phone under my nose while she looked at the side of the screen with the excitement and anticipation that comes with sharing a video or music that you like.

With one arm around my shoulders, MJ turned on the video with the other, I just had time to see in the search bar, "P-a-a-a-ain!"

The shaky iPhone camera, obviously in the hand of some random passerby, captured the battle of the two...supers, I guess.

In the middle of the roadway, surrounded by overturned cars, a big black monster with glossy skin and impressive muscle bumps was attacking a scrawny man in a red leotard. The monster's razor-sharp mouth emitted a menacing yelp, its long pink tongue wriggling intermittently in his face.

Venom!

But he shouldn't be here! Where did it come from if Richard never did this project?

This one had feminine proportions and more graceful movement and form than the symbiote I was used to. Just beautiful! The only thing I needed was a Venom woman.

Then Venom's adversary in the bright red suit couldn't dodge the blow with her mighty paw, and flew into the nearest car, crushing its interior. Bad luck for the poor thing.

The creature roared furiously and turned toward the crowd of onlookers, then made a quick dash, frozen in a menacing stance over its random victim. A long tongue reached out to the trembling girl in the open dress and with a soft, wet slap ran down her face, climbing up her cleavage.

"So appetizing, I was just getting a little tired!" In her creepy voice the creature murmured.

Except Venom appeared to have thrown off the woman in red early. Apparently this was the first time Symbiont had met Bottomless Throat, the Talking Mercenary, or as she was usually called Lady Deadpool.

The swordswoman, detached from her auto, ostentatiously sneaked up to the relaxed monster and...

"Fuck!" I burst out.

Venom let out a high-pitched howl of pain, arching her whole body.

"Oh, believe me, I know how it hurts," Deadpool retorted as Venom fell silent, and then bounced off to the side, leaving the hilt of both swords in the monster's ass.

That's when the video finally cut off.

"And this is in our town?" I asked.

"Yes, but that's not all," Mary J. turned on the next video, titled: "They're on their own!"

This time a professional reporter's camera caught a broken window of a skyscraper, from which some girl in office attire flew out, screaming and screaming, and flew down. Since the video was on a resource with a strict censorship policy, I knew she probably wouldn't die, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that none other than Spiderwoman would save the girl. Gwen picked up falling in flight, coming as if from nowhere and landing quite gently afterward on the roof of the reporters' van with her burden. It wasn't a metaphor; Stacy really did appear out of thin air.

"Spiderwoman," the reporter immediately drew into the frame, "can you explain what's going on?!"

But then, right next to her, a wounded body in a red leotard dropped onto the pavement. The lady was frightened and fell on her ass, screaming, and Deadpool, grunting and groaning, got to her feet.

"Broke all her fingernails, fuck, goddamn skyscrapers. Hey, stop yelling!" The mercenary kicked the reporter, which had an astonishing effect.

"Lady Deadpool," the girl spoke in a hysterical but demanding voice. "Did you throw this woman out the window?"

Wow, that's what I call a professional deformity.

But Deadpool wouldn't be herself if even in this situation she hadn't found an answer:

"You know, it's not the first time in my presence that I've had people commit suicide, and this one even threw herself out the window. It's bad luck," the mercenary said with a sorrowful sigh.

"Don't let them do that anymore!" Gwen exclaimed, tossing Deadpool some sort of device. "I had to defuse it to save her."

"What a waste!" Deadpoole shook her head as she strapped the device to her belt, then said into the camera, addressing the unknowing onlooker, "I'll put it on the bill! Just so you know!"

That's where the second video stopped. Something inside me squeezed wistfully in a bad feeling: Gwen trying to stand up to Venom with no skills or even a web!

"Where did he even come from?" I asked myself, but got an unexpected answer.

"Who, the black one with the tentacles?" Mary Jane, an excited Mary Jane, retorted, "The forums say it's an alien creature, or a secret military design that's out of control."

Yep, aliens, yep, black slime-men. If aliens found this planet, Earth would know what the Age of Crisis is all about. After all, the universe is a Dark Forest, and it is full of lurking hunters, each ready to kill the other.

"They say," M.J. continued, "it bit the heads off an entire platoon of military personnel right in the central hospital building."

Shit! The hospital! Stans! That can't be a coincidence!

"Yeah, I missed a lot of things," I stretched out, finishing my coffee and wondering what to do in this situation.

"Yeah, the whole town's going crazy around here," Mary Jane confirmed, "and it all started with a pogrom at the university and rumors about a green thing with a tail. That must have been where the monster appeared. The witness was just scared out of his mind."

Really? A lizard, too?

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