I don't own Spider-Man, that's my little disclaimer. I just own this little piece of continuity.
I hope you all enjoy this latest instalment of the story.
The Leopard from New York.
Peter breathed a sigh of relief under his breath as he walked through the door to the house he'd spent his whole life in. The journey back to Forest Hills had been incredibly tense for Peter; on the one hand, he was still trying to work out all that had happened to him, and he was still mystified.
On the bus, he had picked out things with his new eyesight, and he'd caught himself tracking the movement of a number of people or anything that really interested him. When the bus had passed a few dogs, Peter had felt hostile towards them but he had managed to catch himself before he could do anything suspicious.
He felt….strong, so incredibly strong. It was a good thing, under the circumstances, he had sat as far from Flash as he could; he didn't want to get into a fight with the jock because he was almost certain if he and Flash did come to blows, Peter was sure that the jock would find himself in hospital.
Somehow the thought of Flash being hurt appealed to Peter. It was strange, but for a guy who had been on the wrong side of a fight for most of his life, the thought of being able to seriously hurt Flash did appeal to him.
But truthfully, if anyone on the bus had caused him any problems, Peter would have lashed out. He was frightened. The Oscorp scientists must know by now their teleportation equipment had been accidentally used, he was also worried in case they checked their CCTV and spotted his face, worked out where he was, who he was.
His uncle's ready warm smile that had soothed his nerves over the years more times than he could count, particularly after he'd endured yet another miserable day at school. "What kept you, boyo?" Ben asked.
Peter smiled back, once more put at ease by his uncle. "Oh, a long bus journey," he replied before he said quickly. "Anyway, what's for dinner?"
"Meatloaf, with mashed potatoes, green beans, peas and gravy," Ben replied before he lowered his voice and spoke again in a whisper. "How was Mary Jane?"
Peter's smile faded, and his earlier bad mood returned at the mention of the girl he'd thought he'd fancied but now wanted nothing to do with. "I don't know and frankly I don't care."
Ben's conspiratorial smile disappeared like his nephews, replaced by fresh concern. "Why, what happened?" he demanded to know.
Peter sighed. "Flash crushed my glasses under his boot, and Mary Jane told him not to bother with me, calling me a geek and that I was not worth it," he said truthfully.
Ben's expression darkened, but Peter quickly stopped him, knowing that his uncle would probably get himself hurt if he went around to either the Thompsons or the Watsons. Personally, Peter didn't really want to dwell on the matter, and he said as much, "It doesn't matter anymore. I've spent most of the day thinking that maybe I should stop fantasising about something that's never going to come true."
Ben still didn't look happy, but he quickly changed the subject though the look in his eyes told Peter that the matter was not over. Peter wasn't surprised. For a long time both his aunt and uncle, the only family whom he had known since his parents had died, had tried very hard to make Peter come out of his shell, make friends and have a girlfriend. They had known Peter had a thing for Mary Jane Watson, who was their neighbour, and her aunt was one of Aunt May's dearest friends, and at first they had been thrilled that at last he had a thing for a girl, but it wasn't long before they realised their nephew was too shy to take the initiative.
A few years ago, they had hinted they might try to push him and Mary Jane together, but personally Peter didn't see that happening now.
He wanted nothing to do with the girl, not after what she had said today at the lab, and if his aunt or uncle tried anything over the next few months or even years, he would just find something else to do, so if his aunt set up a date between him and Mary Jane he would probably stand her up. It wasn't in his nature to be so nasty, but truthfully he didn't care one way or the other.
If she wanted to date brainless jocks or something else like that over the years, then she could. It was her right.
When the Parkers sat down for dinner, it was not long before May learnt what had happened. To say the look of horror and pity in her eyes didn't make Peter wish it was a dream would be an understatement.
If he was honest with himself, it was a relief he didn't have to try to impress anyone like her anymore. Now he could just focus on his life.
One good thing did come out of dinner. Well, two things. Firstly, it made him soothe his hunger, though he had needed to control himself; when he saw his meal he had lost control, and he had nearly torn the plate apart to eat all there was on the plate. It had taken a stunned Ben and May to point it out to him before he controlled himself, though it was difficult for him to regain his control of his new-found feeding habits.
The second and most important thing was how dinner put his mind off of his new-found self. When Peter had been younger, he had watched The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and he had watched as his character mutated into a human/fly hybrid. The dinner stopped him wondering if he was going to physically change until he became a human/leopard hybrid.
His mind was full of images of himself growing a leopards' tail before his skin broke off like it was the chrysalis of a butterfly cocoon, revealing a new kind of creature. One with a giant cat's head, a tail, clawed hands and feet with fur growing all over his body.
After dinner, he had stayed with his uncle and aunt for a while as they watched television. He grabbed his laptop from upstairs and he unlocked it and he began surfing the net for information about leopards in general.
When it was time for bed, Peter got undressed and checked himself over thoroughly, his mind awash with knowledge about the big cat, but he couldn't see any sign of further mutation. Fully aware leopards were highly agile and strong, Peter closed his eyes and he moved his body into position to perform a handstand. Peter had never been good at gymnastics. He had no actual strength to speak of. His reflexes were virtually non-existent, and whenever he'd tried to perform the simplest gymnastic movement, he usually found himself lying on the ground with his body sore.
But when Peter opened his eyes, he was surprised when he found that he wasn't just standing on his head, he was balancing himself on the footboard of his bed! A slow smile rapidly grew over Peters' face as he decided to experiment with his new-found agility and he shifted his grip so he was holding himself up on the footboard with only his index fingers on both hands!
Peter took deep breaths, fully expecting his new abilities to fail so then his fingers would collapse under the weight of his body and he would collapse on a painful journey to the floor, following a nasty gash from the bed. But nothing happened. Despite his fears, Peter was able to remain in his current position for a good few minutes before he leapt backwards, somehow he managed to land on the floor gently without making a sound. But he didn't remain in the same place for long before he performed a backflip that was flawless.
Awed by the experience he performed another backflip and received the same result as before, and not once did he make any noise that would have alerted his uncle and aunt something was going on in his bedroom, and the last thing he wanted was to cope with unwanted questions. As he got ready for bed, Peter walked past the mirror mounted to his bedroom wardrobe and he stopped and looked back when he saw something odd.
He walked in front of the mirror a few times before he was one-hundred percent sure.
His walk was different.
It was as though he was a hunter looking for his prey, but as he walked he could feel his body vibrate with energy, and though he didn't collapse his legs felt more limber, like they were made from rubber. Walking around the room, he found he had a new coordination. He also found that he moved slowly, much like a cat. Peter had seen cats walking around, hunting in the different gardens or around the streets. He had seen they moved slowly and deliberately and now it looked like he moved in the same way.
Peter walked in front of his mirror again before he performed a backflip, his eyes briefly but quickly scanning the floor of the bedroom so when he landed he deftly avoided the few books strewn on the floor. Well, he already knew he was more agile and far stronger than he had been earlier. His body was throbbing even now.
Getting into bed and turning off the light, he wondered what was going to happen in the morning. Wonder disappeared and was replaced with dread as his fears of The Fly and that something similar was around the corner for him returned. Lying on his back, Peter closed his eyes and tried to recall what exactly happened to Seth Brundle - sure, he knew it was a science-fiction horror movie, but from what he'd experienced especially after reading that computer screen he was now partly a leopard - and he remembered there were personality changes, a growing shift from humanity only for it to be replaced by animal instinct.
Seth had become arrogant, violent, he had tried to force Ronnie who'd been played by Geena Davis to undergo teleportation like himself because he had believed he had been purified by the process, unaware of the truth at the time. He had injured a man in an arm-wrestling match, causing a compound fracture.
When he had discovered what had happened, his fingernails falling off, he had learnt the truth. He had begun to look less and less human in appearance and he had lost more body parts (that bit where his ear had come off had been disgusting even if Peter had known it was special effects) before he'd started vomiting over food to break it down. Along the way Seth had begun to lose his human compassion and reason while his mind was driven by primitive impulses and instincts he couldn't control or understand before the last part of the film where Ronnie tore off that part of Seths' face, and then the fly appeared; the skin on Seths' legs tore off and the bones snapped forward while the rest of his skin broke away like a cocoon revealing a giant insect.
But it was not just The Fly which dealt with genetic fusion using teleportation. Peter had watched a TMNT episode where the turtles' friend April O Neil accidentally stepped onto a teleportation machine and her genetic structure was mixed with that of a cat. In a similar way to Seth, Aprils' body began to mutate, only in a less disgusting and gory manner. But April had undergone a similar mental transformation to Seth. She began lapping milk from a saucer placed on the floor, and she'd become more aggressive and outright hostile to that idiot Vernon, and her friend had noticed her behaviour. Over the course of the episode, she became less and less human and more and more like a cat.
Was something similar going to happen to him?
How much was 40% leopard DNA anyway? What sort of effect would it have on him? Would he begin to mutate, would he see his face transform like that guy in An American Werewolf in London? Would his mind begin to lose his human reasoning and would he become more and more like a leopard in temperament?
Would 40% be enough to do that to him?
Peter just wished he knew enough about the experiments carried out in those labs over at Oscorp. He also wondered what kind of work they'd done on that alien technology. His life could depend on it.
The next morning Peter woke up as normal, only today he felt that newfound strength was still present. As he got up, his nose and his other senses were assaulted. He could smell the musk on the bed, he could pick up on other smells around the room, and as he sat up slowly while remembering what had happened to him the day before and his fears from last night, Peter's eyes caught sight of a fly.
He followed the black dot as the bug flew around the room, but his eyes traced it's movements as it buzzed around his bedroom. Absently Peter shifted his position on the bed, and when he was ready, he leapt off of his bed much to his surprise, and he leapt across the room and squashed the fly between his hands.
Peter gasped at what he had just done, and he looked into the palm of his hand and he saw the squashed remains of the fly right there before he stood up straight, looking at the dead fly. What he had just done… it was so instinctive, so sudden and he had done it all without a thought.
Quickly Peter shook his head, his mind already making the decision to write a diary about the changes he was going through. Yes, a diary was just the thing he needed to do; it would help him organise his thoughts and by writing down and making notes about the changes to his personality and to his body, if there were any, he would be able to form a plan on what to do next.
He was just finished making up his mind when he heard his aunt calling from downstairs. "Peter! Are you up yet? It's nearly time for school!"
Peter smiled at the exasperation in his aunts' voice. She and Uncle Ben had become more used to his slowness over the last few years. "I'll be down in a few minutes!" he called down while he went to his wardrobe and selected some clothes for the day. In the end, he chose a simple dark blue long-sleeved button-up shirt and his usual jeans before putting on a pair of white socks. As he sat on the bed, he paused when he looked deeply at his toes.
There was some kind of….. of a slit in the centre of his toes, and he poked one of them experimentally as he examined it.
It wasn't a cut, and when he used his thumb and the index finger on his left hand to examine it more closely, Peter could see there wasn't any blood. It just looked almost natural, though he knew it wasn't. The slit was barely noticeable, the only reason he'd been able to see it was because he'd been looking closely.
"Peter!" Aunt May was getting impatient.
Realising he was wasting time since it was too early to do a more in-depth physical examination of himself, Peter hurried with the socks and rushed downstairs. When he got to the kitchen to grab his breakfast, he scoffed it down quickly while keeping an eye on the clock on the wall. The bus wouldn't be around for another ten minutes, so that gave him some time.
"Sorry, Aunt May," he apologised sincerely when he finished.
Aunt May smiled kindly at him. "It's okay dear," she said, "just keep an eye on the time in future, yeah?"
Peter smiled at the woman who had been the only mother figure in his life (he still had questions about what had happened to his parents, but his aunt and uncle were unusually tight-lipped about that subject, but he had always promised himself to learn more about them later on) and he carried on eating, keeping a tighter rein over himself than he had last night.
Remarkably he managed to reach the bus stop without any problems and the bus had not yet arrived yet since Mary Jane was just ahead of him. Peter sighed under his breath as he realised that he would need to stand close to her so then he didn't miss the bus. Again. He didn't particularly want to stand next to her after what she had said the day before at Oscorp, but Mary Jane never really spoke to him anyway so he didn't have to worry.
Mary Jane noticed him as he walked towards her, but she looked openly upset for some reason when he refused to stand near her, but close by so then he wouldn't be left behind.
Peter barely noticed. He had enough on his mind as it was. He didn't have time to think about what was on the girls' mind. He was curious about those weird slits on the soles of his toes. They were too natural in appearance to be just idle cuts, and they looked more like they were meant to hold something safe and secure…..
"Peter? Peter! Hello, can you hear me?"
Peter snapped out of his thoughts, and he groaned in annoyance when he realised that the bus had pulled up. Mary Jane was standing at the top right next to the driver, who was glaring down at where he was standing with contempt. Cursing the driver and his own stupidity, Peter walked onto the bus, ready to start yet another boring, miserable day at school. He liked learning, but he hated Midtown High.
He swore if he ever had children he would never send them to this dump.
Until next time.
A/N - I couldn't resist adding those bits about that TMNT episode "The Catwoman from Channel Six" and "The Fly" starring Jeff Goldblum. Those episodes, although fictional, will be all that Peter can think about as the weeks pass and he keeps an eye on himself to make sure he doesn't mutate further. But what he will do if he does, and what will happen if he doesn't transform into a human leopard, who can say?
