Web-Slinging in DC

New York

August 11, 07:15 EDT

"Uunnnnhh." groaned Peter as he came to, "What the hell was in that scampi?"

Peter quickly fell asleep after his mother checked on him. He wasn't expecting a restful sleep by any means, he was expecting himself to wake up to rush to the toilet multiple times, but he did not expect the very odd dream.

It started with him relieving being born again, except instead of coming out of his human mother, he came out of a spider's epigynum aka the vagina. If that wasn't weird enough, he wasn't even born as a human but rather a spider.

Not only that, he lived through the entire life cycle of a spider. He even had a spider wife and spider kids. Well, more like a spider baby mama since he scrambled out of there before she could eat him.

The nightmare ended with him going out to explore his surroundings, where he quickly realized he was in the restaurant's restroom from the night before. Odder still, he saw himself, his human self, pick himself up, his spider self, and bite himself before he woke up.

'Guess I had that scarring spider nightmare because of the spider that bit me yesterday. That plus my food poisoning made for one nasty combination.' 

He threw the sweated-through blanket onto the floor and sat up, rubbing his eyes as he yawned. Standing up from his bed, he quickly stretched, his entire body popping like never before, making him slightly surprised.

He noticed something as he looked over to his nightstand to check the time; he could see the clock clear as day.

Unsure if he was imagining things, he rubbed his eyes before checking again; it yielded the same result.

Immediately his heart started to pound and his mind began to race, going to that same place it was about to the night before.

He reached for his glasses, his hand shaking the entire time before putting them on. Instead of the usual sharpening of his vision, all he saw was blurriness.

"C-calm down. Don't get too excited yet." he mumbled to himself, unable to keep a smile off his face, "It's looking like what you think it is, but there's one way to be absolutely certain."

He moved to stand in front of the wall, inhaling and exhaling a deep breath before placing his hand on the wall, and that's when he felt it. An undeniable interatomic attraction between the molecular boundary layers of his fingertips and the wall. 

Unable to resist the temptation, he placed his other hand higher up on the wall, feeling the same attraction happen again.

As he began to climb up the wall, he imagined the music playing just like it did when Tobey Maguire first climbed the wall. The blow of the trumpet sounded in his mind with each of his hand placements until he ended upside down on his ceiling.

"Yeah, baby! Whoo! Yes! Fuck yes!"

He did not care that it was early in the morning nor did he care that his family would be confused by his screaming. The pure unadulterated joy he was feeling at having the powers he had been dreaming of since he first saw Spider-Man bypassed all his rational thoughts. 

Even with all the good stuff going on in his second life, his family, intelligence, rebirth, etc, at times he felt like he had been cheated. It was a selfish and greedy way of thinking that he hated, but some dark part of him felt like that, and now to finally have the so-called final piece of the puzzle, made him feel better than he ever had before.

As he was lost in his joy, a tingling sensation at the back of his skull suddenly appeared that caused him to snap out of it, and his body instinctively turned off his wallcrawling, landing nimbly back on the ground without a sound.

Moments later, his door swung open with his dad walking in, glasses askew on his face and a baseball bat in hand.

"Peter, what's wrong? Is there an intruder?" asked Richard, scanning the room ready to swing.

"Nothing's wrong, Babe Ruth. I'm peachy." said Peter, smiling at both the events that had transpired and the picture his dad was painting.

"Then what's with the screaming? It's way too early for that." Richard asked tiredly, his batting pose dropping.

"Sorry. I got a little excited that I ... didn't throw up or end up on the toilet all night." said Peter quickly coming up with an excuse.

"Oh. Well, I can understand that. Trust me I've been there." said Richard, "Alright, good on you for not shitting yourself, but keep it down. People are still sleeping."

"I will. Sorry." said Peter as Richard made to leave the room before turning back to look at Peter.

"Have you been working out more?"

"A little." said Peter, realizing that his body must've changed even though he was already fit.

"Nice work. Keep it up." he said before leaving and closing the door behind him, letting Peter breathe a sigh of relief.

'Looks like my spider sense is working as it should. Though if I remember correctly, it doesn't react to people I don't consider a threat so the fact that it reacted to Dad must've been because it's brand new.' thought Peter, remembering times in the comics when the spider-sense didn't work for Peter like when it came to Aunt May or when he played poker with fellow heroes, 'That's two abilities confirmed, I should confirm the rest. Starting with the most important one.'

He looked at his wrists and did not see anything out of the ordinary. There was no odd opening or slit that wasn't there before, leading him to believe he had not developed the organic webbing many of the Spider-Variants had developed.

To be completely sure, however, he struck the iconic pose with his right hand, aiming at the wall in case something shot out of him. Yet, no matter how many different hand poses he did or how hard he tried to expel webbing from his body, nothing came out.

'I can't say I'm not a little disappointed about not being able to shoot webbing from my wrist, having been introduced to Raimi's Spider-Man first. Yet at the same time, I am a little relieved I won't be expelling webbing from my body. One, because it's kind of weird, and two, it stymies creativity.

With the web shooters and web fluid, I can create different variations for different situations while with the organic webbing, I can't. Of course, there are downsides to web shooters, the biggest being that I need to be mindful of how much web I'll be using. I wouldn't want to run out mid-swing. But even with that possibility, I think web shooters are better. Good thing I've already made them.'

After his childhood stint of being bitten by spiders with no effect, besides some nasty bites, he had not given up his hope of being Spider-Man. There were plenty of street-level heroes that had no powers, the arguably most famous of which lived in a city not even two hours away from him. He knew it would be harder without powers, but he could still be Spider-Man, there would just be more emphasis on the Man aspect rather than the Spider one. 

He would be remiss, however, if he did not put his intelligence to use and create gadgets to make his potential future of crime fighting easier, much like Batman. With that train of thought, the first thing he created was a prototype version of the iconic web shooters and the web fluid. 

Unfortunately, he underestimated just how big a part Spider-Man's super physique plays in being able to use the web shooters and he dislocated his arm. Needless to say, that ended with his parents destroying his web shooters and forbidding him from building new ones, though he only abided by it after having been caught, and punished, twice for making new ones.

Even though he had not physically made new ones since then, he had been mentally refining the prototype as he learned more along with using what he knew from various media. At this point, the mental image he had of the web shooters was very much in line with the ones from the Insomniac Games, a red and black chevron-shaped device that could be magnetically fit on a bracelet with a rotary system to replace the empty cartridge.

'I won't be able to make that version with the materials I have on hand. I'll have to settle for a slightly better version of the first one I made which happens to be the one made in the first Amazing Spider-Man.'

Already mentally planning what he would need and how he would build the web shooters, his body went on autopilot, leaving his room and heading for the shed.

Thanks to being distracted, he bumped into Zatanna as she came out of Teresa's bedroom, but he reacted fast enough to catch her before she fell onto the ground.

"Sorry about that. Was a little distracted. You okay?" Peter asked as he looked at her with a smile.

"Mm-hmm." she meekly said, her face flushed.

"Good." he said as he put her back upright.

"Zatanna?" asked Teresa's sleepy voice as she trudged over to the door, seeing a bare-chested Peter and a flushed Zatanna, "Why are you practically naked, you weirdo."

"Oops. Got a little too hyperfocused I guess." said Peter, barely realizing he was still shirtless.

"Right." Teresa said, rolling her eyes, "Well go put one on. Zatanna's about to get a nosebleed."

"Teri!"

"You have allergies too, eh? I feel your pain." Peter, said nodding in understanding.

"So dense." mumbled Teresa, pulling Zatanna back into her room and closing the door.

Shrugging his shoulders, Peter returned to his room and tossed on a shirt before making his way out to the shed. Once inside, he quickly gathered the materials he would need to make the web shooters and the web fluid.

He had been smart enough to hide the web fluid from his parents all those years ago, but it had since expired so he would have to make new ones. It worked out though since he had ideas about how to improve the formula to make the webbing more resilient and last longer.

"Time to get to work."

~

"That took longer than expected." said Peter as he removed his goggles, using a spare towel to wipe away some sweat before inspecting his web shooters.

Initially, he planned for them to look like the first iteration of the web shooters that Peter made in the first Amazing Spider-Man movie, but as he worked on them, he changed his mind and went in a different direction. 

The resulting web shooters were two streamlined silver gauntlets with triggers set high so they would rest on his palms to prevent misfire, though he also made it so he would need to quickly double-tap it to fire. He made the cartridge mechanism function like a revolver, it holds six and rotates to the next one when empty. There were also six extra slots along the gauntlets as backup.

The improved web fluid is a shear-thinning liquid. When it comes into contact with air, the long-chain polymer knits and forms an extremely tough, flexible fiber with extraordinary adhesive properties. His original formula made the web fluid become powder after an hour, but his new formula made it last upwards of six hours and was not bulletproof but bullet-resistant.

Unlike the web shooters he made so many years ago which only had the basic function of shooting out a single, strong line of webbing, he had added two more functions; a more complex, spreading spray; and a thick blast of webbing. He would need to tap the trigger three times to switch between functions rapidly.

Naturally, the first function was for swinging and pulling things, the second was for a wide area of effect, things like catching debris or webbing multiple people, and the third was for single shots to be used as projectiles or precise webbing. 

"Let's test these puppies out." said Peter, strapping on the gauntlets.

He moved to stand in front of the ladder leading out of the bunker and aimed at the far end of the wall. 

THWIP

"Oh yeah." said Peter, smiling as he looked at the webbing attached to the end of the bunker, "Now the other functions."

He tested the other two functions, using the same wall for practice until there was no wall to be seen, only webbing.

"Looks like a Frostbite Spider is on the other side of this wall." he said, amusedly before looking down at the gauntlets, "Initial tests are exceptional. They're working as intended, but it's time to test them in the field."

GRUMBLE

"First some food."