Chapter 5 : Weaving Fate

 

Midtown High, Queens, New York, 23th of January, 12:26

 

I am once again in the library, digesting what the internet is telling me.

The principal of Bayville High, the nearest high school to the Xavier Institute and where Charles’ pupils are schooled, is a rather strict looking woman named Raven Darkholme.

 

Mystique, because there’s no way in hell this is a coincidence, being here tells me that I’m possibly dealing with both Kurt Wagner and Rogue, and I don't really know what to think of it.

The only explanation for her to be this close to a telepath that can out her in a jiffy would be because she’s looking after her biological son and adopted daughter in her kind of messed up way. Even if she’s psy-shielded, Xavier will start to ask himself some questions about it after a while.

 

With a sufficient amount of time, if it can happen, it will. Murphy’s law and all that jazz.

 

I scratch the back of my head in frustration.

 

“[Confusion] : Why does it matter ?” My blood-sister is wondering.

 

“Because it doesn’t make sense.” I mumble under my breath to her benefit, “I know this scenario, but it doesn’t fit with the narrative I was expecting.”

 

I am, after all, dealing with the plot of X-Men evolution there.

 

“What the fuck is this timeline exactly ?” I whine on the mind-link as I cross my hands behind my head.

 

It doesn’t change my most immediate plan, but it also means that I cannot rely on my ‘future knowledge’ equivalent as much or as reliably as I thought.

 

“If only I could remember when Tony Stark’s kidnapping is supposed to happen…” I complain under my breath.

 

“Penny for your thoughts ?”

 

I jerk and do a turnabout on my chair to find myself face-to-face with a smiling Gwendolyn Stacy raising a very well plucked eyebrow.

 

“Don’t scare me like that Gwendolyn !” I blurt out.

 

She smirks playfully.

 

“[Amusement]”

 

Great, I’m getting double-sassed.

 

“I've already told you to call me Gwen, my real name is a mouthful.” She scowls at me.

 

I lift my hands in surrender.

 

“Alright, Gwen, alright…” I concede as my heartbeat settles.

 

I’ve been avoiding using her nickname to keep a polite distance between us so far, but it hasn't worked anyway.

 

And she’s kinda right, her name is a mouthful.

 

“So, what got you thinking that hard ?” She asks as she side-steps my chair to look at the computer screen.

 

“Miss Darkholme has been Bayville High’s principal for two succesful years…” She starts reading aloud, jerks and looks at me in a rush, eyes bulging.

 

“Are you thinking about changing schools ?” She stammers, seemingly kind of bewildered and lost.

 

“[Amusement]”

 

The other side of the mind-link is giggling and I would probably find Gwen’s impression of a lost puppy funny too if I wasn’t the recipient of her unrequited feelings.

 

“No, I am not,” I sigh, raising my arms in mock-surrender, “I was just curious about something.”

 

Gwen schools her expression in a flash, a bit of red raising to her cheeks. She averts her eyes from mine, putting a lock of hair that came loose when she jerked her head back behind her ear.

 

Not wanting for her to feel even more embarrassed at her display, I lightly cough to pretend I wasn’t paying attention to it and elaborate.

 

“It’s just that I’ve read about that school in an article speaking of the Xavier Institute.”

 

She ponders for a bit.

 

“The rich eccentric that gathers supposedly gifted children ?” She thinks aloud, eyes raised in an effort to remember what she knows about it.

 

“The one and only.” I slowly nod.

 

“What about it ?” She asks archingly, composure restored.

 

“Well,” I drawl lazily, “I’m kind of curious at how gifted they are, see.”

 

“[Amusement, anticipation]”

 

***

 

The Thompson’s home, Forest Hill, Queens, New York, the same day, 22:39

 

Me and my blood-sister wordlessly stare at the same spot on the ceiling, the both of us sprawled on our back on my bed, with her being atop my torso with her hand snaked in the back of my neck because, and I quote, ‘it is comfy’.

 

I gave her a pointed look at that but she didn’t budge and made herself at home. Not one to judge the alien perception of comfiness, I let her indulge for now.

 

It will be a far better spot to laze in two days’ time if all works well, but I’m not confident about letting her have her fun on the top of my breasts-to-be.

 

It’s kind of silly because she’s me and I am her, but sometimes the mind is willing when the fleshy bits are not really convinced.

 

She started to make some little tentacles thingy as makeshift hair atop her head and I’m thoughtlessly playing with them as I evaluate my options and calculate the odds for the heist to be.

 

And it looks like it will not be a heist, but something akin to a series of ‘deals that you can’t refuse’.

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I do not want to antagonize a whole team of supers needlessly, after all. I can and will strongarm them into accepting the deals, but they will all get something of adequate value in return, like all the little secrets that their guardian is keeping to himself about them.

 

To ‘protect them’, of course. Not at all to make sure they stay loyal to him and his cause.

 

I can’t help but to pity the fool that he is. His inaction and laissez-faire attitude would bite all of them in the ass if I wasn’t planning to kick that anthill to stratospheric heights.

 

I don’t really want to deal with a rogue phoenix avatar on the loose, after all.

 

I flick the bed table light off and shift to the side, and her whole body melts and shifts to face me. Her arms hug the high of my back tenderly, and she starts making those little circle motion thingies that I like. She begins to softly humm a wordless tune. I instantly feel a little drowsy and I think she’s messing with my brain chemicals to ease my sleep.

 

I do not call her on it because all that radiates from the mind-link is love and care.

 

Eyes closed and head on what passes as her bosom, I nonetheless keep the sandman at bay for a bit to say my piece.

 

“It all depends on how tomorrow morning’s situation unfolds.” I conclude, “In the worst case scenario, the afternoon is going to get really intense for us.”

 

One of my blood-sister’s hand snakes on the high of my neck while the other keeps doing the miraculous thing she does so well on my back.

 

“Worst case being ?” She asks for confirmation, still humming her little tune.

 

Funny how she can both speak and sing at the same time. Not really having airways seems to allow parlor tricks easily.

 

“Both Parker and Moon get bitten,” I answer, “Peter can handle himself in the immediate future but Cindy’s going to screw up bad time and Ezekiel will show himself.”

 

I feel her head slowly nodding atop the pillow.

 

She knows that I remember, but she also knows that talking about it aloud helps me structure my thoughts.

 

“Best case ?”

 

“None gets bitten and I can have an easy school life ?”

 

I’m kind of begging aloud there, but I’m expecting the fecal matter to hit the wind’s rotary dispenser rather splendidly no matter what.

 

We are both in agreement about that actually.

 

I sigh.

 

“No use beating ourselves up about hypothetical scenarios for now, let’s just sleep on it for now.” I mumble in my breath, the drowsiness catching up to me.

 

“Sleep well, blood-sister.” She softly says amid her humming.

 

“Love you sis’.” I answer back, lost in her ocean of care.

 

I feel her stiffen, then her hug getting just a bit tighter. Happiness joins the previous feelings radiating from our shared bond.

 

“I love you too.”

 

***

 

Oscorp Tower, Entrance, Manhattan, New York, 24th of January, 9:00, Gwendolyn Stacy’s mind

 

Gwen was on cloud nine. She was going to visit the place where she wanted to work after college and she got to do it in company of her friends, and, more importantly, the greatly improved Flash Thompson.

 

It didn’t matter that he stopped playing football after his accident, the nickname stuck nonetheless. But the person behind it couldn’t be any different.

 

When before he had been the textbook caricature of the all-might-no-brain NSF player to be, lazily cruising through high school on a sport scholarship, his amnesia had transformed him into a person focused toward the future, hard-working and trying his hardest to compensate for his academic flaws.

 

Gwen had originally approached him as a flight of fancy, not thinking too much about it and more spurned by medical curiosity than anything else.

 

At first, she had been convinced he was successfully conning the whole school and found a convenient excuse to stop committing himself on the field, ashamed by a poor mistake that nearly cost him his life.

 

She couldn’t have been more wrong. It was like he was a totally different person. Calm and collected, soft spoken when he was in private, with little twinkles of mischief that sometimes showed in his baby blue eyes, like he was privy to some sort of joke that he kept to himself.

 

He had manners now, too. She had seen him frown when people behaved rudely. He still cursed, but it was more a thoughtless gesture than a habit, which pleased her greatly.

 

Cursing was quite rude, after all. She wished that Harry Jr. could be that classy, since he would be her future boss in a few years.

 

But there was something other, something amiss, that shone through those baby blue eyes that she found so captivating. If she had to tell, she would call it melancholia, like a deep-rooted sadness that sometimes escaped the mask when nobody was looking.

 

She had tried to make him open, but he closed himself each time, evading and giving non-answers. It was kind of infuriating.

 

She was starting to think that it was the reason he acted like her overtures were unwelcome. But with men, you never knew. One look at the poor Jessie’s attempts to woo Peter Parker and you’d realize that, sometimes, they couldn’t see what was right in front of them, like the fabled letter of Edgard Poe.

 

“Aren’t you excited ?” She finally asked, capturing his left arm in hers and stepping closer to him amid the gaggle of girls that surrounded them as the droning voice of the tour guide was giving them a proper introduction of Oscorp’s work.

 

She felt him stiffen for a bit, then relax as his left hand slipped into his pocket. He looked at her thoughtfully before nodding and looking around him anew.

 

“Actually, I am,” he answered in his soft tenor voice, gone were the bombastic speech patterns that he used to have, “Seeing this place for real is a unique opportunity, after all.”

 

Internally, Gwen was exulting ! She had boldly taken a step forward and he let it, a bit stiffly, happen.

 

Now the other girls would know that she had him in her eyes for sure and none would dare to make open moves on him once they realized the catch he was !

 

After her little happy mental gig, she centered herself to keep the conversation alive.

 

“Do you think we will see something interesting ?” She innocently asked.

 

“Oh, we will for sure, Oscorp is at the forefront of experimental science after all,” he answered easily, “I just hope it will not be anything dangerous.” He added, almost like he was talking to himself.

 

“Don’t be silly,” Gwen gently chastised him, “They must have all sorts of security to prevent incidents from happening.”

 

“Trust, but verify.” He answered almost reflexively, leaving no place for any kind of arguments.

 

Gwen chose to maturely pout at the rebuke as the group of students made its way toward the inter-species genetics research pole.

 

***

 

Oscorp Tower, Inter-species genetics research pole, Manhattan, New York, the same day, 9:07

 

I won’t lie, being inside the Osborn Chemical skyscraper was kind of a geek wet-dream, and I had a lot of trouble not to start fangirling my ass off at the one-in-a-lifetime chance I had.

 

But I had to stay focused. With how tall I am, it was child’s play to keep my attention on Parker as we finally found ourselves where his destiny was supposed to come into play.

 

That’s why I wasn’t really bothering to tell Gwen off. I may be uncomfortable about it, but right now, I have way bigger fish to fry. I also didn’t really want to act like a bitch and embarrassing her with all her girl friends around. It’s my fault, really, I should have said no when she invited me to stick with them during the tour.

 

The Osborn prick is preening like a peacock, as if he was the architect of his father’s success, which I'm finding annoying, but I can’t really blame him for growing up with a golden spoon up his butt.

 

As the tour guide kept exhorting the virtues and the revolutionary vision of his employer, our group found itself in front of the big glass cages where the ‘specimens’ were supposedly locked.

 

“And here,” the guide is explaining, louder for the benefits of unruly teenagers I’m surrounded by, “are gathered our most interesting subjects : spiders, whose DNA has been spliced and rearranged so as to make them produce the strongest, sturdiest and finest silk there is ! This is an entirely new breed, who will, in the near future, open to us a realm of possibilities like, at the top of my head, improving bulletproof vests for our soldiers and making the kevlar technology a thing of the past.”

 

Uh, that’s right, the reason why the goblin glider, armor and weapons exist is because Oscorp is contracted to the military, I almost forgot.

 

 “The process that gave birth to the seven specimens you’ll find here uses a special kind of radioactive isotopes to fix the…”

 

“I only see six of them, sir.” ‘Flashy’s old friend’ Jason interjects with a cocky smile.

 

Here it is.

 

The guide blink, look at the aquarium closely, and pales a little.

 

“I would like for you to stay here,” he asks us, “While I’m going to ask the lead researcher if any experiments were scheduled for today.”

 

The guy is smooth, I have to admit.

 

My eyes narrows onto Peter, watching him intently.

 

“[Panic] : Sister, watch out for…” The mind-link comes alive with a vengeance, but not early enough.

 

At my left, I hear a startled yelp, followed by a jerking motion.

 

What ?

 

“[Shame, restlessness] : …Gwen.”

 

My eyes are still following the arc of the little arthropod that I can barely see sailing through the air toward the members of the hockey team.

 

It disappears.

 

I watch Cindy Moon wince from the distance and she promptly starts cursing up a storm.

 

What the ?

 

I look back at Gwen who is nursing her hand with teary eyes.

 

Our eyes cross paths as I stare at her, not computing what just happened.

 

I see confusion and fear in her green mint orbs.

 

“Flash, I…” she starts to blabber.

 

I school my expression and fake a smile at her. Now is not the time.

 

“My, that was one hell of a mosquito.”

 

Luckily for me, she stays put.

 

“[Confusion, shame] : I don’t understand.” My blood-sister thinks at me, the bewilderment in her voice as thick as oil.

 

I mentally sigh at her as I play the role of a comforting pole bar to a very scared Gwen Stacy.

 

“It means that the Great Weaver, amid his Web of Life and Destiny, has chosen a new course of action for this world.”

I stay silent for a bit, watching the panicked guide come back and trying his hardest to fake a calm he doesn’t feel.

 

Gwen’s grip on my arm stiffen.

 

Cindy Moon remains oblivious and is merely intrigued.

 

I snake my left arm in the crook of Gwen’s back. She looks at me as I softly shake my head while giving her a very pointed look.

 

She gulps, then, after a few seconds, jerkily nods her head.

 

“It means it’s not a spiderman timeline, but a spider-woman, a Spider-Gwen, timeline.”

 

I put all my emotions, my anxiety and the urge to scream aloud that I have in a little box as I start to scheme about the fastest way to escape the tour and rush my way to Bayville High.

 

Time is running short.

 

I have a Silk to save and possibly a very awkward conversation to have with a teenage blond tomorrow.

 

 

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