Things had gone been quiet after we defeated Diamondback and Digitek. At least when it came to the Young Avengers fighting super villains. The Avengers had their hands full. Partly because every super villain they fought was out of our league or they got to the ones in our league before we did. Classes weren't too bad now that Kitty and I were talking again. Problem was that's all it was. We talked. We weren't dating. It was better than nothing but still, I kind of wanted Kitty back.

One day after gym class(last class of the day for me) I noticed Kitty talking to Rockslide. Normally I wouldn't think much of it but Kitty had told me just the other day that she thought he was a jerk so it caught my attention. She didn't look like she had anything against the guy to say the least. I tried not be completely obvious that I was waiting for them to finish talking so I grabbed a hold of Nori's(Surge) arm and figured I'd talk to her until Kitty was done talking to Rockslide. "Hey Nori..." I started diverting my vision away from Kitty and Rockslide for once.

"Yeah Jason?" she asked me.

"Do you... umm... I... umm..." I had no idea what to say. I should've planned this out better.

"What?" Nori asked sounding slightly aggitated.

I decided to go with the first thing that popped in my head, "Do you have the chemistry notes from yesterday? I... lost mine."

"Oh," Nori replied. "Yeah. Here you go," she handed me her notebook.

"Thanks," I took it and gave her a slight smile in the hopes that Kitty was watching. Nori left as Rockslide started to walk past us. I walked back over to Kitty.

"What was that about?" she asked me.

"What was what?" I returned the question.

"You know what I mean. What was with you and Nori?" she asked.

"I needed the chemistry notes," I replied.

"No you don't. I always end up borrowing your notes," Kitty pointed out.

"Yeah... well..." I was lost for words once again. "Why were you talking with Rockslide?"

"Does it matter?" she asked.

"Considering the last time he came up in conversation you said 'Ohmygod! He's such a jackass!' and just now you were all-" I didn't finish it because Kitty cut me off.

"All what? He started talking to me. What was I supposed to do, ignore him?" Kitty sat down on the table we were standing by.

"You were smiling,"I pointed out.

"I was faking it... He's an asshole. I hate talking to him," Kitty explained. "Wait... Were you jealous or something?"

"Of course not..." I lied.

"Right..." Kitty smiled. She pulled me closer to her and smiled and started to lean in to kiss me but instead she just smiled, "You're such a bad liar." She phased herself through me and walked out of the room after saying, "Talk to you later."

I stood there and a smiled a little bit. Kitty was cute that way. I was still kind of disapointed that we weren't dating anymore but I could still live with it. We were friends at least, and she must still have some sort of feelings for me from the looks of things.

About an hour later while I was doing homework in my room I heard a knock at the door. "Yo," I replied to the knock without looking away from my work.

"I'm not interrupting anything important, am I Jason?" Beast asked.

"No, not really," I got up and turned to face him. "What's up?"

"Well I've been conducting some experiments on your DNA and I'm starting to have a breakthrough. Granted, it's nowhere restoring your powers permanentlly but it's better now than it was when I first started it," Beast started explaining to me. He then showed me a glass vial with what I was guessing to be the current version of his formula in it, "Now at this point in my research this version of the serum should be able to restore your spider agility and spider sense temporarily. A few hours. Maybe even a few days."

"What about my other powers?" I asked.

"I tried restoring everything at once but that was the problem. I can restore them one at a time though. Making it last longer than a few hours however, that's where my problem lies. Now Jason, when you go out with the Young Avengers tonight, you are doing so, right?, I want you to use this and keep track of how long your powers stay."

"Got it. Thanks a lot, really. I'm gonna owe you big time when you finally find a way to bring back all of my powers for good," I thanked Beast as I took the formula and shook his hand.

-Later that night...-

I swung through the city for the first time in weeks and it felt amazing. Granted, I was using artificial webbing but really it was my agility that I needed to websling. I touched my feet to a flag pole and launched myself towards the ground.

It was quiet again. No major crimes. I stopped a car jacking, a purse snatching and that was really it. Then my spider-sense picked up something. A Sentinel. I didn't see it yet but I felt it. I swung five blocks over and into an alley where I found the Sentinel; it had cornered a mutant girl and looked ready to either kill or capture her. I kicked it in the head but it didn't do much other than hurt my foot because I didn't have superstrength.

"Mutant gene detected..." the Sentinel scanned me when I landed on the ground in front of the girl. "Subject Identity: Aracnor. Real Name: Unavalible. Threat Level: Moderate."

"Wow... I'm still a mutant to these things?" I asked no one.

"What?" the girl asked me.

"Hmm? Nothing. Story time can wait until after the beatdown," I replied. I needed to think on my feet, without my superstrength I couldn't just bash the thing to pieces like I wanted to. Instead I decided to pull of my jacket and jump onto the Sentinel's shoulder, I covered its face with my jacket and got back on the ground, I shot a load of webbing into the blasters in its hands. Hopefully this would make them backfire. The Sentinel managed to shake off my jacket and aimed one of its hands at me and the girl.

"Hold on," I told her.

"To what?" she asked. I didn't answer, I barely gave her enough time to ask when I grabbed and jumped out of the way. My plan worked, sort of. It backfired but enough still managed to get out and blast a hole into the ground. I needed a better plan.

"Ugh... let's try this then," I thought outloud as I lept off the ground and onto the rooftop. I had a new idea, sort of. I jumped onto its shoulder again, "You might want to steer clear of here for a bit. I'm gonna try toppling him over!"

"Right," the girl replied before running out of the ally.

I started swing around on its body trying to tie it with my web. I may not have had my super strength but my webbing was still strong. Hopefully it'd be enough. I kept swing until I'd wrapped it shoulders to feet. Then I ran to the edge of the alley to trying luring it towards me. It worked. It tried taking a step and got snagged on the web and fell to the ground with a loud thud. I walked over to it and shot more webbing into its eyes before I went to the end of the alley to pick up my jacket. While I was putting it on the girl whom I saved was walking towards me.

"Hey," I greeted her.

"Hey," she smiled back. "Umm... thanks. For saving me."

"No problem. All in day's work," I told her. She was cute. She was short, probably 5'2" and Asian. She had dark brown hair with blue streaks in it.

"I'm Miuby the way," she told me. I heard a bit of an accent in her voice.

"I'm..." I started. Do I say Aracnor or Jason?

"Aracnor. I've heard of you," she answered for me.

"Yeah... so you're a mutant too?" I tried to think of something to say. I probably looked like an idiot right now.

"Yeah, I can hear really good. Like miles away if I want to," she explained.

"Oh. That's pretty cool," I replied. I was starting to get my composure back, "You haven't heard of the Xaiver Institute for Higher Learning have you?"

"The mutant school? Yeah," she answered. "It's not really my type of thing, no offense. It isn't like my powers are anything I can't handle on my own."

"Yeah, I can understand that," I said. "If you umm.... needed someone to escort you home I could always do that, I'm having a slow night."

Smooth Jason. Smooth.

"Umm... yeah I guess so," she replied. "I live like 3 blocks down."

Okay, maybe this would work out. Then again what was "this"? This... this was me trying to get a date now that I thought about it. It isn't like I'm dating Kitty anymore.

The walk to her house was kind of awkward. For one, I had my agility and was walking of all things. Secondly we didn't say anything to each other. I didn't know what to say and neither did she. For all I knew she didn't even like me. Finally we got to her doorstep. "Thanks," she told me.

"No problem," I replied.

"I kinda feel like... idunno like I owe you a better thank you or something," Miu kind of looked down at the ground while she said this timidly.

"Oh..." I started. I guess she did like me a bit or something. "Well umm... being a superhero I can't really do that. But my friend can. He and I are a lot alike. If you didn't know any better you might think we're the same exact person." I tried hinting to her that I was reffering to my secret identity.

"Okay, I getcha," she answered showing me she understood. "Could you give me his cell number?"

"Yeah," I replied before giving it to her.

"Call you, I mean him, tonight," she winked at me before disappearing into her house. I started swinging back down to Time Square to look for something to do. While I was on my way there I spotted a red and blue blur out of the corner of my eye. Spider-Man!

I figured I might as well go talk to him for a bit, I didn't have any plans otherwise and if he was going to go fight a villain I could be back up. "Spidey!" I called after him, changing my direction.

"Aracnor, my young padawan," he greeted me after landing on a rooftop.

"Hey, you doing anything important?" I asked him.

"Nah. It's quiet tonight," he replied.

"I noticed. I ran into a Sentinel like 10 minutes ago but that's been the worst of my troubles tonight," I said.

Spider-Man sighed, "I'm not even a mutant and I hate those things."

"Yeah... I never realized how tough they were until I didn't have my stength to fight it with," I replied.

"Why? What happened?" Spidey asked.

"I lost my powers a while back. Beast is working on some formulas to restore them, and I'm using one right now but it's temporary and only gave me my agility and spider-sense back," I explained.

"That sucks. How'd you lose your powers?" he asked.

"Aliens," I replied.

"Yeesh..." Spidey said. "Well on the bright side they didn't probe you, did they?"

I chuckled, "Nah. On the bright side I haven't heard anything about the bastards since so hopefully they got what they want and they're heading to some other galaxy to screw around in."

"Well, that's one to look at it. So how long's this temporary power stuff supposed to last for?" Spidey asked changing the subject.

"Not sure exactly. I've been going for..." I unzipped the pocket inside my jacket and checked my cell phone. "...an hour and 46 minutes."

"Let's test how much longer it'll last for... how bout a race?" Spidey suggested.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Baxter Building and back here," he decided.

"Okay. I'm done." I accepted the challenge.

"Ready?" Spidey asked. I nodded. "Go!"

We both jumped off of the rooftop and started swinging towards the Baxter Building. We stayed pretty even for the beginning of the race. I figured he was probably waiting for me to pull ahead of him or something before he made a move. I decided to pull a different move on him. I dropped back and turned down an alley and started swinging as fast as I could, I knew a shortcut. It wasn't too much shorter though so I needed to be fast. When I emerged from the alley I was just barely ahead of Spider-Man.

I landed on the side of the Baxter Building and kicked off of it, Spider-Man however swung around it in one swift motion giving himself a lead over me. He took my shortcut too so that wasn't going to help me get ahead this time. When we re-emerged from the alley I knew I had to find a way to get ahead of Spidey because the finish line was seconds away. I swung up a bit high so I could kick off of a flagpole and we were nearly back to the rooftop we started from. I thought about it for a second and thought my forward momentum would be faster than swinging again. I hit the rooftop. So did Spidey. It was definately a tie, we both had spider-sense so I knew he felt it too.

"Nice job kid," Spidey congratulated me. "I haven't had fun like that in a while, you're pretty good."

"Thanks, you too," I told him. Then I felt my phone ringing. I pulled it out of my pocket and answered it, "Hello?"

"Hey, umm... is this Aracnor? I mean, Aracnor's friend?" the girl on the other line asked. I reconized the voice as Miu's.

"Yeah, yeah, that's me," I replied.

"So... umm..." Miu searched for the words to say. That's when I realized I had the same problem. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to ask her out?

"Yeah... umm..." I said for the sake of having words come out of my mouth.

"Ask her out!" Spidey coached me. I'd completely forgotten he was here with me. I nodded at him.

"...why'd Aracnor give me your number?" she asked.

"Because... well... he thought I should ask you out on a date or something," I finally forced myself to say.

"Really?" Miu asked retoriclly. "I guess that's a good enough way to say thank you. What did you have in mind?"

"We could..." I started then looked at Spidey.

"Dinner. Movie," he told me.

"Dinner and a movie," I repeated.

"Sounds like fun. Pick me up at 7," Miu accepted.

"Right. Okay," I replied.

"Bye."

"Bye."

"Man Jason, I didn't know we had that much in common. I thought I was watching a flashback of myself in high school or something," Spidey joked.

"Hey, I didn't do that bad, and she didn't know what to say either," I defended myself.

"Yes, she did. What you need to learn about girls is that they know more than they let on. They just want us guys to make the first move," he explained.

"Well I asked her didn't I?"

"True, I'll give you that much credit. Who is she anyway?"

"This girl I met tonight, Miu. She's this mutant with super-hearing that was getting attacked by the Sentinel I fought earlier, I saved her;" I answered.

"A little quick to give away your secret identity don't you think?" Spider-Man pointed out.

"She's a mutant, I'm a mutant... was a mutant. I don't think she cares that much that I'm using, used, whatever, my powers to fight crime. She says the only reason she's not at the X-Mansion already, other than she's not interested, is because her powers are just super-hearing, nothing spectacular like blowing stuff up with your mind. Plus I told her that this was my, and by that I mean Aracnor's, friend, me, who happens to be extremely similar to him, Aracnor," I explained.

"Mm-hmm, well be careful anyway. It sounds like you can trust her, but still, watch out;" Spidey explained. "Catch you on the flip side." Spidey backflipped off of the rooftop and swung off.