"Whoa check out all of this technology!" Peter exclaims and he and Ned run around the Stark facility the class was touring that day.
Peter adjusted his glasses and looked at the dials and he and Ned looked all giddy as they examined the generator.
"Boys are so easily amused." Betty tells the girl next to her.
"Yeah. Especially those dorks." MJ says and laughs with Betty.
"I don't know, they're also pretty cute." Betty says and smiles at Ned.
"Ned..." Peter says and taps Ned's shoulder. "Ned, Ned, Ned."
"What?" Ned asks Peter who was staring off into space.
"She-she's looking this way." Peter mutters and smiles at MJ and waves.
MJ looked up at the nerdy teen and gave him a small half smile and waved back.
"Oh God she noticed me Ned crap what do I do!" Peter exclaims.
"Relax dude it's not like she's coming over here or-oh wait never mind here she comes." Ned says and Peter yelps and dives behind his friend.
"Hey MJ and Betty." Ned greets the girls.
"Hey Ned." Betty says and smiles at him. "Where's Peter? Wasn't he just here a second ago?" She looks around.
"Found him." MJ says, looking behind Ned to see Peter.
Peter's face turns as red as MJ's hair and he stands up and gulps, adjusting his glasses and giving her a nervous smile.
"Hey MJ." Peter stutters.
"Hey Peter. Why were you hiding behind Ned?" She asks.
"Hiding?" Peter questions. "Hiding? I wasn't hiding I was just... trying to kill a spider on Ned's back." Peter says.
"Wait there's a spider on my back!" Ned exclaims and spins around in a circle. "Kill it Peter! Get it! I'm scared of spiders Ah!"
"Ouch!" Peter yells as Ned hits him in the head with his backpack in his panic and he falls over. "Watch what you're doing Ned!"
"Sorry buddy..." Ned says sheepishly.
He doesn't look at the person who's hand he grabs to help him stand back up. The person places her hand on his shoulder once he's standing and Peter blushes as he realizes how close he is to the red haired beauty that's captivated him for almost a year. And now they were holding hands!
"Are you okay?" She asks him in a concerned tone.
"I-I'm uh...okay." He squeaks.
"You sure?" Betty asks. "Your face is redder than a firetruck and you're sweating like a pig."
"Well you see Betty, pigs don't actually sweat so that statement is incorrect-" Ned starts but Betty cuts him off.
"It's just an expression Ned." She reminds him.
"You sure you're okay there Pete?" MJ asks him.
"Yeah I'm fine. Probably just allergies or something...I should get going." He says and detaches himself from MJ and runs off down the hall.
"Boys are so weird aren't they?" MJ asks Betty and she laughs.
"Yeah, pretty much. Especially around you MJ." Betty tells her and she rolls her eyes.
"Come on let's go outside to have lunch." MJ tells Betty. "See you later Ned." MJ says to him and waves goodbye to him.
Peter reached the end of the hallway outside the nuclear waste room and sighed. Little did he know a spider inside the air vent from the room noticed him and was now lowering itself on a silk thread down to him.
"Why am I such an idiot when it comes to love?" He asks himself. "I'm such a wimp, I can't even tell MJ that I like her. Not that she'd want to go out with me anyway..." Peter says, not noticing the spider slowly coming down near his hand on a string of silk. "I'm too weak to do anything aside from tinker with old dvd players and radios. If I can't even talk to a girl I like how am I supposed to talk to an employer to get a job, or collaborate with other scientists!" He leaned his head back on the wall and groans. "I should just face the facts. No matter what, I'll never be strong enough to be with MJ or become like Tony Stark."
The spider landed on his hand and Peter felt it. He noticed it and shrieked and then tried to hit it with his hand and in his panic he missed slightly, causing it to bite down on his hand. Peter yelped in pain and tossed off the spider and inspected the bite on his hand, wincing in pain.
"Shit that really hurt." He groans and sits down on the floor.
He opened up his backpack and decided to look around for a bandaid or something to wrap something on his hand.
"I hope that thing wasn't venomous." He says.
Meanwhile, a dragonfly flew through that same vent, having gotten itself trapped in there flying in through an opening from outside and was looking for it again. Fortunately it found the opening again and flew towards it, in view was a red haired girl and her best friend sitting on a picnic blanket eating sandwiches on the lawn of the facility.
"Why did we have to come on this field trip anyway?" MJ asks Betty as she takes a bite of her sandwich. "I mean we're not in any science classes right now so it's not like we're learning anything for class by coming here."
"Maybe it's to try to get us to branch out in our studies?" Betty suggests.
"Probably. Speaking of branching out I think I'm going to go and take a walk." MJ says and gets up. "I'll be back soon, I just want to stretch my legs a bit."
MJ sighed and wrapped her arms around herself as she walked across the grass.
"Betty was right, they are trying to get us to branch out." MJ says to herself. "Because those stuffy white guys in business suits don't see art as a real profession. They don't think acting, playing music or drawing is important because science is what sells now." She says and looks back at the building behind her and sighs. "Little do they know that without people like us, the world would have no color, no music, no movies, no paintings, no culture. I mean science is important and it's good that we have people that want to pursue it and help make the world a better place to live but along the way...people forget that progress isn't just about inventing some new gadget, it's about progressing our ideas in all fields. The arts are no different. I know my dad tells me I'll never make it as an actress. He's told me that so much I almost think I'm starting to believe him. But there's still a part of me that wishes, hopes, that one day I'll have the strength to prove them wrong, and help make the world better in my own way, by sharing my voice. All I need is someone to listen."
Her ears perk up to a buzzing noise and she looks to her left and doesn't see anything. but she feels something on her shoulder. She looks down and nearly screams when she sees that a dragonfly had landed on her shoulder. She quickly swatted it with her other hand to try to shake it off but just like the spider did to Peter, the dragonfly bit down on MJ's shoulder from the pressure of her hand.
"Ouch!" MJ exclaims and brushes the dragonfly instead and it flew off. "That was weird..." MJ says and looks down at the bite mark that was now on her shoulder. "I didn't know dragonflies bite people."
"MJ!" Betty calls out, running towards her. "They're calling us back to the bus we're going home! Hey why are you holding your shoulder like that? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just got a bug bite that's all." MJ reassures her friend. "I'll just put a little anti-venom on it just to be safe and I should be fine by tomorrow."
Later on that day Peter sat on his bed in the apartment he lived in with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben and undid the bandages on his hand.
"Wow, the bite's almost completely gone." Peter notes and shakes out his hand a bit. "And it doesn't hurt at all. Thank goodness. I spent all afternoon thinking it might be poisonous or something." Peter says and goes over to his desk to do his homework.
He takes his glasses out of their case and puts them on to read, except he realizes that he can't see through his glasses at all. Confused, he takes them off, rubs the lenses on his shirt a bit and then puts them back on, thinking that would correct them. But it didn't, things still looked strange through his glasses.
"Whoa. That's weird." Peter notes and puts his glasses down then decides to do a little test.
He sees the periodic table he has on his wall on the opposite side of the room and moves a little closer to it to see if he can read it. To his surprise, he can.
"Whoa! Do I not need my glasses anymore?" He asks and smiles a bit. "But that doesn't make any sense. I needed them to read my notes earlier today, so why do I not need them now?" Peter wonders and looks in the mirror. "Hey I look pretty good without my glasses on. I wonder if MJ might think so too..." He looks over at the window across from him and ponders this a little bit more. "She was so nice to me today...If only I was brave enough to actually say a coherent sentence to her." He complains and bangs his head against his bedroom wall, but to his surprise his head went through the wall!
Peter stared at the hole his skull just left in the wall. Fear was evident on his face as it paled.
"No way..." He mutters softly. "Aunt May's gonna kill me!" He squeaks and quickly takes a Star Wars poster off of his wall and puts it over the hole to cover it. "Hopefully she won't notice." Peter says and tries to reach up higher to attach the top of the poster to the wall.
Unfortunately it was a bit difficult to reach so he had no choice but to jump up and press his hands to the poster at the same time. He jumped up but never came back down. His hands had stuck to the wall and he was now dangling from it. His heart rate increased and he carefully removed one hand and found he was still sticking to the wall. He placed the other hand higher and hoisted himself up and was able to do so with ease. He started to crawl up the wall and onto the ceiling, then he removed his feet and hung from the ceiling by just his hands. He looked in his full length mirror and since his shirt was hiked up a bit from his arms being above his head, he noticed that he now had perfectly sculpted abs.
"Oh. My. God." He says. "I have a six pack."
Peter wasn't the only teen discovering he has newfound powers today though. Little did he know that his next door neighbor and crush was about to have her world turned upside down. Mary-Jane Watson, who was staying with her Aunt Anna who took care of her during the school year undid the dressing on the bite on her shoulder.
"Well would you look at that, it's practically gone now!" She happily notes and tosses out the band aid in the trash and goes over to her desk to do her homework. "And thank goodness too. That thing really hurt." She says. Then she felt a throbbing pain in her back and groaned. "Damn! Just when I thought I didn't have to take anymore Advil." She complains, then realizes the pain was most likely from her bra.
Sighing, she goes over to her bedroom window and closes the blinds.
"Don't want to give that cute little nerd next door a show by accident." She comments to herself and giggles a bit. "Although he does look like he could use some cheering up. He seems pretty sick. Every time I see him he gets all pale and looks like he's either going to wet himself or throw up. And he can never talk to me in a complete sentence." She smiles a little. "That is pretty cute though that he gets all nervous around me. If only I could find some way to talk to him without him getting all worked up..." She says to herself then takes off her shirt, then her bra. Instantly the pain subsided. "I knew it had to be this damn bra. It always pinches my back. I seriously need to get a new one."
Then she realized something. She felt like there were four new appendages attached to her back. She looked to her left and her eyes widened when she saw two clear flaps that resembled dragonfly wings. She looked to her right and saw that there were two there too. She covered her mouth to keep herself from screaming and worrying her Aunt Anna and decided to take some deep slow breaths.
"It's okay MJ." She assures herself. "This can't be what you think it is. Clearly you're just hallucinating. I mean there's no way that you could have just sprouted dragonfly wings overnight, that's not how puberty works." She says.
She takes a deep breath and tries moving them. To her surprise they flutter quickly. She gasped. She tried again, for a bit longer and found herself lifting off the ground as well.
"Okay these things are definitely real!" She wails and starts freaking out a bit. "It must have been from that dragonfly bite! It had to have been radioactive or something!" She deduces. "How am I going to hide my wings?" She wonders. "If only they would just disappear back into my body." She decides to try that theory.
She closes her eyes and wills her wings to fold in onto her. They obey and she feels them attach to her back and shoulders and then suddenly disappear. She opens her eyes and looks at her back and shoulders through her mirror. They were gone without a trace.
"Oh! Well that's lucky! I wonder if I got any other powers from this bug-bite?" MJ asks herself and looks around the room.
She notices her desk and decides to try lifting it with one hand. She gasped when she found she could do it with ease.
"Super strength! Awesome!" She exclaims and sets her desk back down as gently as possible.
She looks at a magazine cover she had and on it was Black Widow. She smiles at the picture.
"Maybe now with these powers I can be a hero like you." She tells the picture and looks out the window. "Look out Queens. There's a new heroine in town and her name is Mary-Jane Watson. But you can call her...Dragonfly." She declares.
Next-door Peter was admiring his poster of Iron Man on the wall.
"Now that I have powers, I can be a hero like you." Peter says. "But I'm not going to Iron Man. I'm going to be my own man. I'm going to be Spider-Man." He declares and looks out the window, admiring the same view of Queens that MJ was.
Little did they know that there was a villain overlooking Queens as well. A dangerous villain that had just successfully completed an evil experiment, attaching a venomous symbiote to a butterfly that was now flying around his lab. He laughed maniacally.
"Yes! Finally. I have been able to successfully bind it to a living creature!" The evil scientist says. "I can even control it with my mind!" He says and directs it to fly in a specific pattern around the room. "Yes! With this new creation, my akuma, I, Dr. Octopus shall use people's negative emotions to turn them into villains and take over the world!" He declares and looks out over Queens. "Now I just need to wait to find the perfect subject..."
A/N: Alright everyone! That's the first chapter! I hope you like it so far! So I've decided Dr. Octopus is going to be the "Hawkmoth" of this story but I can easily change that if you guys prefer it to be Green Goblin or something. All the villains will be in this story though so don't worry! Green Goblin will definitely still show up in this story! Anyway, please give me feedback if you like this story and would like me to continue!
