Chapter 3

The day after the Parker household met Dr. Frost was challenging to say the least. I will not deny that there were plenty of tears. But in the end, a great weight had been lifted off our shoulders. We all grieved for the loss of six-year-old Peter Parker and while my relationship with the Parkers would never be the same, I was quite content.

They had woken me up the morning after their meeting with Dr. Frost. We sat on my bed and spoke for hours; a lot of hugs and teary kisses were exchanged. They told me that the doctor had shown them the truth. They had seen it, themselves. It made me uncomfortable that a powerful telepath had been in their heads, but Dr. Frost had only ever helped me.

"Now, you ready for breakfast son?" asked Ben kindly while rubbing my back.

"Yep!" I must have been sporting a megawatt smile because Ben practically tackled me and picked me up, easily going back to our old roughhousing. "Aah! Uncle Ben! Put me down!" I squealed barely able to keep in my laughter. For some reason, Peter Parker was the most freaking ticklish person in the world. I struggled to break free and the only retaliation I could make was to try and tickle him right back as I hung onto his shoulders, practically upside down at that point.

By the time he manhandled me to the kitchen, I was beet red. Both gravity and embarrassment coloured my face in equal proportions. Ben chuckled as he was finally forced to let go of me. I was so used to acting like an eleven-year-old around them that it was second nature to me now. It did not help that this was the eleven-year-old life I had always wanted.

Now that they know, however, my embarrassment was palpable. They knew I was like twenty-something years now, and I was still so childish. I probably singlehandedly undid everything Dr. Frost said to convince them I was a mature young adult.

"Grab your pancakes boys!" May called from the stove.

We both dropped what we were doing and dashed for May. May always made two kinds of pancakes at a time. One was a good, honest pancake with maple syrup and blueberries. But one was always a lie. She claimed variety was the spice of life, but I think it was just her way to make us get to breakfast quickly. Nobody wanted a potato pancake. Ew.

Score!

As usual, I got to it first; pretended to scarf it down all by myself and then traded over a bit more than May would prefer, to Uncle Ben. It was a good morning.

Days like this reminded me how lucky I was to be here. Not here in the Marvel universe, but here with Uncle Ben and Aunt May. It had been a long, long time since I have had to fake the love I showed to them. As a decidedly unlucky orphan in my previous world, the childhood I was living with them was my paradise.

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It had been several years since I met Dr. Frost. It was our first and last meeting. She did mention she would be going on a trip, but that was supposed to last a week. Her tone implied she had seen something in my head…which was worrying. She could have started any number of conflicts her character was known to have, and I did not know if she could make it out unscathed. She was never known to do things lone wolf after all.

Thankfully, about a month after her disappearance I received an email from one Emma White. At first glance it looked like it was sent to the wrong person but with a sender's name like 'Emma White' I knew there would be more to it than meets the eye.

It was not written in any sort of cypher but the content itself would be quite mundane to anyone else who read it.

Emma White had supposedly taken her three kids out of day-care because the principal was too arrogant for her liking. She decided to tutor her children herself and so she would have to cancel our supposedly ongoing tutorials.

I think I got the message. She did not have children, but she did have three siblings. The principal she mentioned must have been her father.

I, of course, replied that she had got the wrong address. I followed it up with a long description of my various middle school and side projects to show I didn’t need tutorials. Once again happily telling her things she did not have the time to read. An inside joke, to hopefully ensure she knows her message was received.

It did not hurt that it let me show her how thankful I was for her help. I was a more active part of my own life now and it was all thanks to her.

With an alleviated conscience, I had spent the years after our meeting simply living my new life and learning to be the new me. I realised I had been putting myself in a box by trying to relive Peter Parker's childhood. I was determined to try things neither of us had ever experienced before.

I had only recently started to visit a gym, not that they would have taken me seriously before, anyway. But self-defence was something that I have always wanted to learn.

In my past, I had taken up Karate. One of the few opportunities I had available at my public school. I enjoyed it, performed well, even. One day, my Sensei asked me to participate in a tournament, to represent their school of the art. I stopped going the very next day.

When Dr. Frost spoke of this in our marathon therapy session, she said I was so self-deprecating that I did not think I was worthy of the position. And rather than confront the teacher of my supposed deficiency, I simply took away their opportunity to choose me.

But I still believe I was just too chicken.

Well, that will not happen again. I was determined to Bruce Lee the shit out of that dojo.

The world had not worked in my favour, however. Unfortunately, despite all my efforts, I never actually found a place to train that I could both get to (I was still in a very fragile eleven-year-old body and needed Ben to drive me) and that would actually teach me. I really wish I had trained long enough in my last life so I could train myself here.

After years of no results, I did a little research and did what I could to ready myself for training.

Calisthenics were not known to have any adverse effects on a growing teen, so I kept up a light routine once I started going to the gym.

'Who knows, maybe I'd just run into a well-known martial arts trainer just running around the park?' I had thought.

While I had kept up my routine and hopeless prayers, I also took a deeper dive into Peter Parker's notes.

Cute, little Peter wanted to be an acrobat. Quite shockingly, I had found a few pages of drawings and sketches by a six-year-old peter detailing his tools for his dream trade. A light-weight grapple gun, likely the very first iteration of Spider-Man’s famous web-shooters.

Embarrassingly enough, his model had the same idea for the motor of the shooter as I did, an ‘RC’ car. An idea that had failed quite miserably.

Little Peter, of course, had absolutely no ideas for the web fluid. A fact that I was rather smugly proud about, having discovered the formula myself. It didn't matter that I was competing with a six-year-old.

This time, with Ben's blessing and help I was able to work on a far better prototype. It had the unfortunate downside of using lithium ion batteries, but the new shooters were far more powerful. The batteries were housed in tube shaped rings held together with a soft plastic coating. The rings would go around my wrists and tighten so that two sets of electromagnets could sit on the top and bottom, like a double-sided watch.

The shooters were quite bulky, mostly due to the makeshift materials that were used in its crafting, but the electromagnets could spin fast enough to shoot my web bomb pellet over fifty feet away. Which was about as well as I could hope for, really.

My first experiments with them were entertaining to say the least. Let's just say that I'm glad I did not try to improve the one-hour long dissolve time.

I wonder if wetting the web will increase the time it takes to dissolve? Something to test.

While I was getting better at aiming the webs, swinging was completely impossible. In fact, grabbing the web in general was pretty much impossible for me. It requires an almost supernatural level of speed and dexterity to be able to shoot the web and catch an end of it, something I simply did not have. Let alone the fact that the webs could not support my weight; they did not have nearly enough tensile strength.

On the bright side, the high entry level meant that when a particular cat burglar steals my shooters she won't suddenly skyrocket in manoeuvrability.

I designed unique pellets for each type of web. I had no idea how Peter Parker really did it, but I found this to be a pretty much necessary downside. It meant that until I could improve my shooters, I would be limited in ammunition as well as the speed in which I can switch between the types of webs.

But there was no need to be a sourpuss. I had web-shooters!

“Peter! The light is green!” called Uncle Ben from the kitchen.

Finally!

“C.A.L.I, Transfer ‘all open projects’ to the Linux Subsystem And Update Windows; it’s starting to get on my nerves,” I said to nothing in particular as I left my room.

Alright, then! Let’s do this!

Uncle Ben stood in kitchen wearing a large “hug me” cooking apron. He had removed his usual horn-rimmed glasses in an effort to keep them clean and was squinting at a paper manual.

I was, once again, testing a new iteration of my web fluid formula. I had not been able to increase the longevity of the webs, but boy, had the tensile strength gone up!

“Okay Peter, just stay behind the threshold and I’ll press the - red, button was it?”

I rolled my eyes behind the giant safety glasses Uncle Ben had procured, “It’s just a centrifuge Uncle Ben. Think of it like a larger than average juice maker.”

It had been decided that I would be treated like an adult for as long as I behaved like an adult. However, the caveat was that as long as I was in the body of a child, my health and safety was the responsibility of Uncle Ben and Aunt May. It was an unstable equilibrium that had spawned a lot of odd rules for the Parker household.

No alien Pets. No super-powered hostages in the basement. But here’s the kicker - No dangerous experiments. And boy had that been a pain to work around.

Simple experiments like this, however, could easily be performed with the blessings of Uncle Ben.

Albeit with an overprotective shadow.

“Remind me why I’m not in a super expensive lab, being paid for by whatever prestigious university begged to have me, again?”

“Because you said the eyes on you would restrict your movement,” drawled Uncle Ben, uninterested in my whining. He knew it was largely just pointless chatter.

A moment later he had pressed the start switch on the centrifuge and retreated to my side.

“Also, you claim my son and daughter-in-law were secret agents for a world-spanning organisation of pure evil,” he added.

I blushed at that, “That’s not what I meant Uncle Ben and you know it! And I didn’t say it was a fact!”

“Yes, yes, now run along. You said this would take two hours correct? Why don’t you go to the park? Play some ball.”

I had spent the years of my pre-teens and early teenage hood being very active, I had even made friends at the neighbourhood ball field.

I say friends; but really, it was hard to take them seriously most of the time. There was definitely a disconnect between me and my peers but that does not mean the sports weren't fun, or even challenging. Since I had the same physical build as them – weaker, when I first started, if I'm being honest. The games were not easy, and I had failed as much as I had succeeded.

“I’m a bit too old for that Uncle Ben, even my body. I’m going to head to the sports centre, I’ll see you at seven!” I called as I took two steps at a time up the stairs.

I had been avoiding lifting weights like the plague and planned to do so till my body matured. But a sports centre like this was practically a playground for someone with as much energy to burn as I had. There were gymnastics facilities that would make the young Peter Parker drool and my favourite, a climbing wall.

What started as a bit of an ‘on the nose’ joke to share with the Parker household slowly transformed into something I was genuinely passionate about. Wall climbing was a great combination of strength, problem solving, and grace and I had fallen in love with it.

I returned home tired and sweaty only to find the kitchen in a giant soppy mess.

Evidently Uncle Ben could not wait to try the shooters with the new web fluid.

“Hey at least, I finally know if water increases the time it takes to dissolve.” I thought as I confirmed it was seven o’clock, having left at three ‘clock it was over two hours after the fluid would have been completed.

Uncle Ben and I weathered the storm that was May Parker and I finally crawled to the safety that was my room after Aunt May was satisfied.

With the web shooters ready and my mirror finally showing me the fruits of my labour, I felt confident and comfortable. Which was good because it would be needed to deal with the news Ben and May had for me.

Ever since the day I first left the hospital, the Parker household has been living on the very outskirts of New York.

We were finally moving to Queens, an event I both awaited and dreaded in equal measure. Ben had been transferred to work at a bank downtown. The bank in their infinite generosity, made available a small house in Queens for our use. The rent was good considering we were going to live in New York proper. Or closer to it anyway. In the end, there wasn’t really a decision to be made.

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Our day of departure arrived in a blink of an eye.

"You ready squirt?" said Uncle Ben with a small smirk.

"I'm not a squirt anymore, ya know." I said while pulling my suitcase to the door, a piece of toast in my other hand.

Only fifteen, I was already as tall as Uncle Ben at five feet, seven. I wasn't a giant or anything but at least I shouldn't be the runt of high school which was comforting.

Perhaps it was the constant sun or simply puberty, but my brown hair was almost sandy now. It was always unkempt, but pulling it back usually got it out of my face.

I was standing by the door waiting for Ben to pull his truck in, already having brought Aunt May's luggage down. My brand spanking new letterman jacket was tied around my waist. The heat of the afternoon had gotten to me while I struggled with the bags.

"Going somewhere Pete?" called a voice from the house next door.

"Oh hey, Mona! Long time no see! How are you?"

"Well, my study buddy abandoned me a few weeks ago. So not so good." She pouted.

I had been visiting the public library almost regularly for the past few months; most recently I had been researching gamma radiation. Banner had done a number on New York City not long ago and well, I was curious. The Internet connection is better and more importantly, not paid for by me at the library and it wasn't like I was doing anything illegal anyway.

Needless to say, I came out of my trips to the library a little more knowledgeable about Dr. Banner's situation and a lot more friendly with the pretty brunette college student who lived next door.

I explained to her that we were moving to Queens. It was quite heart-warming to know I had made a good enough impression on her in a few weeks that she looked genuinely disappointed we were moving. She was fairly new to this area herself, being a new student at the local community college, so perhaps it was not so odd she felt attached.

Finally, with May ready and the car by the door, it was time to hug my new friend goodbye. I felt ready for anything Midtown High School had to throw at me.