Chapter 4: Arc One. Chapter Four. Testing the Limits

With Oscorp settled and a new sense of financial freedom, Peter had decided to lay low for a while. Whatever had happened to him needed to be tested, and sneaking out to find somewhere quiet and out the way seemed the best option. Aunt May had taken to checking up on him every few hours since he'd gotten sick, and while he appreciated the concern it would interfere with his tests. 

Aunt May had granted him a week off school, to make sure he wouldn't be sick again and to make sure that everything was settled. She had meetings with the Principal and the school board, even if Peter wasn't a child anymore, leaving a sick student was unacceptable. 

Peter shook his head though, with the issue settled with Oscorp and Peter being an academic student rather than one of the football rising stars, Aunt May would meet a roadblock. Whoever decided to leave him there would get a slap on the wrist, maybe a note in their record but Peter doubted much more would happen. He was a little fish in a little pond being circled by sharks.

Till then he had a week to figure out exactly what had happened. The figure in the mirror was still him, not as short, cute but now, now he had muscles. A lean taut six-pack that he knew without months of hard work and a strict exercise and diet routine he would never have achieved. Whatever made him sick at Oscorp also changed him, did something escape from a lab? Did he have super cancer? Peter began to hyperventilate, super cancer. He knew Oscorp studied lots of different infectious diseases. Pete get a hold of yourself, he thought, cancer doesn't give you abs, but then what did?

Studying himself in the mirror, Peter pulled the same poses he'd seen other, more famous bodybuilders pulling, until he realised that posing in a mirror was not only pointless, but he looked a bit dumb. He hadn’t become a big muscular guy, his body was lithe and wirey, built for speed, not strength. Shaking his head, maybe Gwen would like to see the new him, maybe she'd be more willing to go to the end of year Prom with him if he flashed her a little Pete treat. Laughing at his own stupid joke, he decided to head out, muscle tone was great but muscle strength was king.

Pulling on some loose clothes and a hoodie he called out to Aunt May "out for a bit, need some fresh air, love you," before heading out into the more deserted parts of Brooklyn. It wasn't too hard to find somewhere deserted. A local party animal made the mistake of setting up in what he thought was an abandoned warehouse, which was, in fact, a meth lab. 

Several gunshots and a few dead partygoers later, it turned into the shoot out of the week. While the tape was still up, there had been no cops or scavengers in the building for a while now, and the freshly pasted for sale sign showed that evidence collection was over, and the realtor was trying to offload the building to whatever poor sap bought the now named partymethdeath house.

Of course, Peter knew he had the money from Oscorp, maybe this was his chance to get a building and actually start on his first dream, Pete Tech, or even PTech. Rolling the name around in his mind for a while, he made a mental note to head to city hall and register himself as a fledgeling company. 

Working for Oscorp was great but he knew that he'd always be in Harry's shadow, even if they never spoke again. His tutoring the son of the company owner would follow him around like a bad smell. He'd be under constant scrutiny and have to deal with calls of nepotism. Maybe branching out on his own was a better idea, small and manageable tech companies were all the rage. If he had a hook, a piece of tech original to him he could see it happening.

Lifting the yellow police tape Peter made his way to the side door, still swinging free from where the cops busted it open. Inside was a mess, the floor was stained with the remains of blood, industrial cleaner reducing it to nothing more than a brown stain, and the heavy scent of industrial bleach and solvents clung to the air. The meth labs themselves had been stripped clean, fitments for power and water hung on empty walls where their cooking stations would have been. Four hollowed-out shipping containers held the labs and crude bunk beds for the workers, either held here to cook or just too lazy to move and risk more exposure. 

While the evidence collectors would take anything drug-related, and the cleanup crew would take anything of value or not too badly stained, the warehouse was still full of discarded counters, tables, and other household items. Trash and other unidentifiable refuse were everywhere.

Pallets and other debris littered the floor, covered in bullet holes and while the shell casings were all gone, it was obvious from the mess what had happened here. Surveying the 1000 sq metre building, Peters mind clicked over. Labs, fabrication rooms, server room, and even a small home to live in while he worked all swam in his mind. The portable office shoved into the corner giving a stark contrast to the rest of the rubbish littering the warehouse, the deals must have taken place there, relatively untouched with no blood stains or bullet holes they probably only got the cookers, not the dealers or the main boss, whatever kingpin ran the operation.

The building was sound, it had no running water or electricity but the windows and doors were all functional if a bit rusty. The first thing Peter did was to secure them all with hidden locks. This was to be his hideout and the last thing he wanted was a bunch of squatters to take it over while he was at school.

He splashed out a bit and fitted a new lock to the side door and made sure it looked jammed rather than locked, twisting the frame slightly so it appeared stuck after being battered open and made sure each other entrance was secured from the inside. There was now only one way in or out, and he had the only key.

Peter made his way into the portable office and it was clean, he guessed even drug dealers had standards or more that whoever drug dealers made drug deals with, had standards. Stowing his bag and removing his hoodie, he began to think of what he could do to test out whatever Oscorp had done to him. There were plenty of walkways to reach the windows he could run along, wrought iron staircases he could use for pull-ups, and as he searched his phone for exercise routines his excitement grew.

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For a week, Peter did nothing but come to the warehouse and test himself. Starting small he lifted pallets, crates, furniture, and anything he could get his hands on, and eventually, it came to the portable office itself. 

Lifting it gently at one end he found he wasn't even straining himself even when it was lifted from the ground a few feet. Peter lay it back down and stared at his hands, the rigid edge of the office hadn't even left a mark on his skin let alone cut him. 

Eyeing the shipping containers Peter had a smile on his face, soon to be proved right as with some strain he lifted one and held its edge above his head. He did grimace a small bit, as the rubbish inside shifted and clattered down to one end.

Next, he practised his agility, climbing up the scaffolding and leaping from girder to girder. The walkways up to the large windows gave him a suitable climbing frame. With ease he rappelled and swung between the solid welded struts, flipping and catching himself from one side of the building to another. He completely lost track of the time, even the dimming light from the windows was oblivious to the boy joyously swinging between girders and rafters. It wasn't until a rattle at the main door, a security guard must have heard his whoops and hollers, that Peter lost focus and missed his handhold.

Time seemed to slow as he fell, while the warehouse wasn't huge at 10 meters high, the fall would be enough that even enhanced he would either smash his head open on the floor or cripple himself. As he fell, reaching out to grab anything, he felt a strange sensation and a white line zipped out from his wrist, snagging and webbing itself to a walkway across from him. Tugging on the lifeline he was pulled by its elasticity onto the underneath of the steel grating where he found he was stuck, hanging on, not by the line he had shot out, but by his fingertips, glued like a bug.

A flashlight shone into the warehouse but as Peter was currently several metres in the air, in a dark warehouse, glued to the underside of a walkway, the guard couldn't see anything. Peter had made sure that even clearing the place he left it messy enough his presence would go unnoticed. Sighing with relief as the guard left, Peter dropped himself down, held onto the walkway by his fingertips but feeling no strain on either his arms or his fingers. Lifting himself, as if doing pull-ups, he found that unless he forcefully pulled his hand away from the steel he was stuck, each hand capable of supporting his weight. It took conscious effort to take his hand away, and testing one hand at a time soon found that he stuck when he wanted rather than all the time.

Peter, unwilling to kill himself by repeating the fall, stood on the ground and stared up at the underside of the walkway. lifting his arm he pointed his wrist and tensing his muscles, stared as nothing happened. He knew it wasn't a fluke, whatever he had done had sent a sticky line from his wrist and it might have happened in a panic but he was sure he should be able to repeat it.

Examining his wrist and forearm he felt a dense knot in the muscle, and a long tube reaching to the crease of his wrist where the veins stuck out. Using his fingers he pulled at the skin and as he pressed and prodded, a line of thick fluid spurted out. As he looked closer he could see several small holes within the ridges of his skin, small enough to be unnoticeable, but when pressed in the right place acted as a font for the fluid. Like a spider, Peter thought to himself.

The fluid was more a stringy mass, sticky and fibrous, gathering it up it pulled apart just like a web. Maybe it was a spider that bit me, Peter thought to himself as he stared at the mass. Scowling, he stared up at the walkway he had fallen from, and the line he shot out earlier was gone. Taking out his phone he checked the time and after a few minutes, the white webbing seemed to dissolve into some kind of light airy foam before dissolving completely.

After muscle training, Peter devoted some time to test out his web abilities, tensile strength, web thickness and duration, even if it was strong enough to make solid objects out of. Sadly while he could make the web thicker or thinner, the most he could do was make a small ball, soft and capable of splatting like a gel or hard like a rubber squash ball, but he discovered that by increasing or decreasing the pressure in his arm he could make the web last longer like a rope which stayed for hours or into a foam-like spray that evaporated after a few seconds. He was disappointed that he couldn't make a bat or shield but being able to make his own "bullets" was great. No need to get greedy, Peter thought to himself, having superpowers is badass enough.

Fascinated by the newest discovery Peter made it his mission to explore the limits of his new abilities. Right after I finish school, he lamented. It was then a smile crossed his face, and he chuckled to himself. Flash, he thought, let's see him try something now. And with the thought of getting revenge against Flash, and with a smile on his face, Peter took one look around the warehouse and a plan began to form in his mind.

~

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