章 8: Arachnid Blood Test
Peter woke up in the morning feeling refreshed, but not satisfied.
His attempt at revising the Lizard Serum with regeneration pathways would take a lot more than just a mere few hours. He had practically gotten drunk on his newfound prowess, which led him to self-hypnotize into forgetting that the serum made cancer look like a toddler stumbling about, tripping over air.
"It'll take a month at worst. A week if I'm lucky," he sighed to himself, leading his tired body to the bathroom to freshen up. "Well, adapting my genome will take far longer. I've planned for it to be in stages after all."
He quickly showered, changed, and went down for breakfast where he met a middle-aged man with graying hair reading a prominent newspaper while periodically sipping on a mug of black coffee. The moment he saw Peter walk down the stairs, his eyes lit up.
"Good morning, Peter!" he grinned. "Heard you came out of a car crash with only a bruise and cracked glasses. That's some damn good luck."
"Ben!" May chided from the kitchen.
"Good morning," Peter greeted him, taking a plate of bacon and eggs that May passed him. "Yeah, I did. Just made sure to wear seatbelts in the back."
"I know, I know," Ben chuckled. "George wouldn't shut up about it."
Peter just grinned in return before practically inhaling the meal.
"Aren't you hungry today?" May smiled, before dumping a few more eggs on his plate.
After gobbling three more servings of breakfast and getting fussed over by Aunt May, he went outside, to be met with Gwen and George Stacy, who'd decided to drive them to school.
Safety and all that.
After a somewhat awkward ride to school, while wearing seatbelts, they met up with Harry and MJ. They were together, like in the comics, but he noticed that their relationship seemed to be kind of strained. They both refused to stand close to each other, while Harry looked a bit pale and sickly. Did something happen yesterday that affected them?
Regardless of their odd behavior, his Pre-Boards went as well as it could have. The questions were elementary and with Peter's brain, he even spotted mistakes in the very structuring and content of the questions. He blitzed through questions within fifteen minutes and handed them over to the teacher, who looked as though she was used to it.
Gwen finished next. After another fifteen minutes went by, she dragged him to the exit.
"Shouldn't we wait for MJ and Harry?" Peter grumbled, a little miffed at getting manhandled by a person three inches shorter than him.
"They...," Gwen hesitated. "They won't mind."
"Did something happen between them? They don't seem right..."
"I saw that. It's best to not interfere... besides, I'm way too excited to see what you have in your room," Gwen said, her eyes so bright that they practically emitted light.
He grinned to himself, amused, but threw that thought right out of his head.
"Yup, you'll like it," he chuckled.
***
"Gwen!" May threw herself at the blonde who awkwardly hugged her back. "It's so nice to see you. Did Peter invite you?"
"I... errr... It's nice to see you too, Aunt May," Gwen said, stumbling over her words at the overenthusiastic welcome.
"We're here to work on a project for the science fair," Peter answered the second question for Gwen.
"Ah!" May perked up. "Like the one you sent O-
"AAAHHHHEMMM!!!" He cleared his throat as loudly as he possibly could.
May's face turned beet-red instantly, and she quickly ushered both of them in, which only served to increase Gwen's suspicion.
"Is this your room?" Gwen asked, standing before the door upstairs.
"Yup," Peter said. "You ready?"
"You're hyping this up waaayyyy too much. It better live up to it," Gwen folded her arms across her chest.
"Don't worry, It will," he replied before twisting the handle and revealing the room filled with enough complicated machinery to make their school laboratory look akin to a playground.
"What... the... f---
***
Gwen sat on the corner of the bed in the room, her mind in a haze. If the Oscorp Laboratory equipment didn't shatter her mind, the fact that Peter had casually mentioned that he had partially solved cancer definitely did.
She knew he was intelligent, but cancer had eluded scientists ever since the dawn of science and medicine. So many great minds mulling over a cure, and a school student with sub-par equipment had managed to beat them all.
"This will change everything..." Gwen whispered to herself. "No wonder you went home early, was it to use the machines?"
"Yup," Peter replied, a wide smile adorning his good-looking face. "The Amidator is what I use the most - the speed with which it can synthesize proteins is incredible."
"This is surreal..." Gwen muttered to herself. This was the last thing she expected to be the surprise. The absurdity of the news was almost equal to the fact that she got spider powers when a spider bit her.
"Now that I've kept my end of the deal, it's time to keep yours, Ghost-Spider. How'd it happen? Woke up with your powers?" Peter sat next to her on the bed, their proximity making her heart beat a tiny bit faster.
"So you really do know that it's me," she sighed to herself. She HAD to show her powers a tiny bit, or else Peter wouldn't have survived the crash. She would not be able to live with herself if she let him die all for the sake of preserving her identity.
"I do. Well, I did for a while."
"Wait what! I thought I hid it pretty well! Since when did you know?"
"From the very first day, you dressed in that ski outfit."
"WHAT?" Gwen's eyebrows disappeared into her hair. Since the very first day?! Was that why he gave her the formula for the web fluid? Did he find her pretending not to be the Ghost Spider amusing? "How?"
"The outfit you wear, barring the hoodie, reveals your... ahem... body shape. When placing Ghost-Spider's and your body side to side, it's a 1 / 1 ratio. It's the exact same."
"So you've been paying attention to my body?"
"You're putting words into my mouth."
"No, I'm not," she rebutted, subtly grinning after regaining her composure.
"It was for research purposes," Peter awkwardly said, before steering it to safer waters. "S-So what exactly are your powers? Anything that hasn't been shown to the public?"
She grinned to herself, amused.
"Not exactly. I have increased strength, punch harder, heal a bit faster, and have my spidey sense," she shrugged before walking to Peter's desk and grabbing one of the many hot dogs and tater tots that Aunt May had prepared for them. Since when did Peter eat this much?
"That's... vague," he shrugged before heading toward his wardrobe. "If I were you, I would test myself for every power under the sun before listing them all and testing their limits."
"I did check for a lot of powers, but I think I just got an enhanced human body that can stick to walls. Moreover, it's not easy to check the limits of a superhuman body."
"Well, this can," Peter gestured at the array of machines in the room. "Give me a week, and I'll figure out everything a human could possibly find out about your body."
Gwen raised an eyebrow, ignoring the accidental innuendo that the typical clueless Pete usually dished out.
It was a good idea. Knowing her hard limits would do nothing but help her in the long run. She would know if she was out of her league far more quickly.
"Sure, just tell me what to do," she shrugged, gobbling up the hot dog while Peter looked at her, scandalized.
"Get yourself cleaned up first!" he shooed her away downstairs, to the guest bathroom.
***
Peter carefully sterilized his equipment with an autoclave after wearing his new gloves. A white lab coat embraced his shoulders while he got the blood vials ready.
"That's a lot of vials you got there," a clean, crumb-free Gwen sat before him, her arm stretched out.
"The more, the better. I doubt you want me to take a sample every time one goes invalid."
"Fair enough," she shrugged and watched as he cleaned a spot on her arm with spirits.
The sterilized needle broke through her skin with a little bit of pressure but refused to budge; the first two layers were compromised.
"Enhanced durability, then," he murmured before switching to another part of the forearm with thinner skin. "There we go..."
It took quite some effort, but he eventually managed to gain ten vials of Gwen's blood. He wished to take more samples, but any more, and it would start to become a bit awkward and not make much sense. Anyhow, it was more than enough.
He used a pipette and carefully placed a drop of her blood on a slide while she watched with rapt attention. The slide was closed with a slip of glass and placed underneath the microscope.
Peter bent his neck and placed his eye on the viewing lens.
"Oh... Wow."
***
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