But first, a note.
My chapters are hopefully becoming shorter. I knocked off 2k last time, so I'm aiming for another!
See if you can catch my errors, because they're out there. Grammar, spelling, punctuation . . . count 'em off.
Also, I started this new thing last chapter but didn't talk about it: ~oOo~. To me, it looks like a octopus, but with only two tentacles. (Hmmmm . . . where'd I get that?) So that's my little division-thingie now.
Anyway . . .
Review if you're new, review if you're not! It's a foolproof plan!
~oOo~
Peggy took two hours to crack, like the world's strongest nutshell. At first, it was a lot of back and forth, a lot of:
Her: "We should go to the police."
Me: "No; I'm going to be a superhero."
Her: "Ha! You wish. No, you're not."
But, eventually, I was able to get Peggy to see reason. She told me that the Oscorp data had nothing on me as a person—she was fairly certain the hospital was able to keep all my information anonymous, which only strengthened my resolve. The hospital didn't know I had octopus DNA in me, Oscorp didn't know who I was—and none of the above knew I had powers at all. It was foolproof. I could go around dressed in a suit and as long as I had a mask, everybody else would be none the wiser. Maybe Oscorp would be scratching their heads at the coincidence, I had, after all, already decided I wanted an octopus-themed name, but they didn't have anything to go on, not even something as trivial as my gender. They wouldn't have anything to go on.
And Peggy, apparently, had worked in a fabrics store from the ages of sixteen to eighteen as an apprentice, and had admitted that it wouldn't be too hard to produce a Spandex suit made of dark purple if need be.
It was as if my fate had been written by the gods themselves, and was all falling into place one careful puzzle piece at a time. I couldn't let Peggy's stubbornness and morals stand in the way, not when I was so close to fulfilling my dream. And I think Peggy started to realize this, too, or at least she started to think that maybe I'm not as crazy as I sound.
As we begin to clean up the glass around the table—after we'd patched up her hand, of course—my favorite nurse began to frown. I'd given her a break from the debate we'd been having so we could clean up the mess, mostly because Spencer was due home any minute. She'd been quiet, mulling things over in her head. I'd been quiet, too—from experience, sometimes silence is key. She could convince herself better than I ever could, and talking might just deter her from that.
"You want to help people," she states suddenly, but it's not a question.
"I do," I reply, throwing a dust pan's worth of glass into the trash.
"But not in the traditional sense."
I shrug. "Depends on what the traditional sense is. Traditional has kinda gotten all screwed up in that sense in the past few years."
"Like . . . like me. Being a nurse. Or your brother, being a lawyer."
I nod vigorously. "Spencer calls you realistic superheroes. I'm going for just 'superhero'."
"And you're just trying to help. People. The world. Whoever."
"I am."
Peggy sighs, and it's a sigh filled with days-worth stress packed into it. I guess caring for me isn't as easy as Spencer makes it look. I'll have to get him a extra-cheesy card on his birthday or something to compensate.
"I think I'm going to regret this, but . . . I'll help you, Maeve," Peggy says, glancing at me through her dark lashes. "But only because I'm pretty sure you'd do it without me."
"Seriously?" I laugh. "Oh, thank God. I thought you were never going to come around and see reason."
She shakes her head. "I'm still not a hundred percent sure I have, to be honest with you. But whatever. Life's short, and all that."
I nod. "But if you say YOLO, the deal's off."
She laughs, tying a knot to the top of the garbage bag as she does.
After that, Spencer returns home—he stopped at the library on his way home, the nerd—and Peggy bid herself ado, leaving me with the promise of a suit matching Spider-Man's by the next week, and no explanation to Spencer as to why all that was left of our coffee table was a thin wire frame.
"What happened here?" he'd screeched.
Peggy blew me a kiss and complimented my scarf before slipping the door shut.
"Arm wrestling match got out of hand," I told him honestly. "But don't worry—I won."
Spencer sputtered and gaped like a fish, gesturing to the shell of a table with no words.
I, shamelessly, offered to pay for it, because in that moment, I don't think a hurricane could've stopped my mood. All my dreams and aspirations of becoming a superhero that had been evolving over the past four years suddenly just got bippity, boppity, booed into existence in one short conversation. If I had known it was so easy, I would've done it years ago. I couldn't have been more happy if someone told me the Beatles were getting back together, including the dead ones.
"Why are you in such a good mood?" Spencer demanded, handing over a smoothie.
I shrugged. I was going to have to get used to lying to him, I supposed, because there was no way he was going to know about this entire mess. Peggy had been hard enough to talk into it, and I've only known her for a few weeks. There was no way Spencer would ever agree to letting me go risk my life with some masked hero who swung around on webs and stopped criminals. Lying about it was going to be my only option if I wanted to continue. Maybe I'd join soccer or track or something to cover it up. Maybe tennis. Maybe golf. Oh, the possibilities.
Is it bad that the thought of lying to my brother only made me happier?
~oOo~
For the rest of the week, everything goes smoothly, if a bit anxiously. It's all just sitting, waiting, tapping and fidgeting and jiggling my leg up and down and staring off aimlessly during class because Home Economics and Algebra are far less interesting than anything related to Spider-Man. I was playing with different superhero names—as I'd decided I needed one—but so far, I'd come up with jack shit. I'd just been scribbling out OCTOPUS in big letters, sometimes cursive, sometimes calligraphy, but always mind-numbingly boring.
I was just wasting time, let's be honest.
How long did it take to make a full-body suit, anyway?
Oh, and imagine if something was wrong and I just had to wait even longer . . .
MJ, at the time, snapped the pencil out of my hand. "You're fidgeting," she commented. "Chill."
So, yes, a dull, tedious week. It was all work, work, work, to the point where I started wondering if begging Spencer to come back to school in the first place was really the best idea. In fact, the only fun I was having was in P.E., which had previously been one of my least favorite classes. (Okay, but who actually likes P.E.? Besides the boys who think they're going to make the Hall of Fame, I guess.) My super strength made doing literally anything easy as flexing. Making a half court shot? Easy. Hitting a homerun? Easier. Running a five-minute mile? Oh, man, give me a challenge! And whether it be the super strength itself or all the exercise I'd been doing the past week, I was getting skinnier, too. I'd already lost ten pounds, and likely it would've been more if I hadn't been gaining it back in muscle.
But the newfound fun in gym didn't extend to lunch, that was for sure. Everything had become rather dull in my friend group. My lunch table seemed to have collectively decided to take it easy and let me 'recover', which meant all strenuous activities—which, what had they originally had in mind? Bungee jumping?—were cut from the agenda. It was all relaxing conversations and pleasantries, like getting a little tutoring from Gwen or running lines with MJ, or Ned discussing anything not superhero-related, which was downright obnoxious. By Friday, I would've killed to go to the mall or listen and laugh to a debate between Ned, MJ, and Gwen. I hadn't even spoken to Peter about the whole Flash thing, which, while it wasn't on the top of my to-do list, it should've been.
So, in my spare time, even with my oh-so-busy schedule, I managed to sit down and take a minute to look up anything and everything about octopuses, just to see if I had any super-special powers coming down the road that hadn't popped up yet.
Turns out, all octopuses have poison of some sort, but only a select few have enough to hurt humans. Most octopuses have beaks, too—could my nose count as one? It was big enough, that was for sure—and no bones, either. I guess that doesn't help my whole hero look, since I now embody a spineless animal instead of something fearless.
They're also big-headed. Literally. Couldn't I have gotten a cooler animal? A lion? A tiger? I'd even take a turtle. Turtles are cool.
"Every octopus has three hearts, one meant to pump blood through its organs; the two others serve to pump blood through its gills. Octopus blood is also blue because it has a copper-based protein called hemocyanin,"I read aloud, rambling off from some animal protection website. There was a lot more people invested in octopuses than I thought.
"Hmmm." I was in my room at the time. It was Friday night, and I was supposedly studying for a math test. At least, that's what I led Spencer to believe.
I needed to test this out.
It took me a minute to find something sharp enough, but I eventually grabbed a safety pin that was holding a bra strap in place—not the one I was currently wearing, of course—and pricked my finger. Sure enough, there was a little spot of purple-colored blood on my finger. Did that mean there was enough hemocyanin in my blood to actually change the color of it? How did it even change? Now, while this in some realm of possibility made sense, I didn't have enough knowledge of genetics and DNA nor even enough information about what Oscorp did to me to prove the reason behind it.
I'd have to ask Peggy. Spencer might be able to give me a proper answer, but it was not like I could just ask him. We weren't even studying genetics this year. He'd be automatically suspicious.
But what I could do was test the rest of these fun-facts I'd found.
First on my list: the limits of my flexibility.
This one seemed easy enough, but it ended up being harder to actually execute than I thought. Obviously I could do the splits, and I could even go a little farther than that—I could almost spin my arm completely around if I tried hard enough. It was as if my joints were looser. But did this mean my bones were more . . . boneless? Oh, God, that didn't make sense in the slightest. But could they have lost some of the density, maybe? But that would make them more brittle, more likely to break, but maybe it'd be different since it was octopus DNA and there wasn't exactly a website with all the answers for all my questions. I could always go on Yahoo, but if there wasn't a website for it already, then it wasn't likely someone was out there that was willing to give up the answer.
Still, I decided to test it out, and the simple answer: no. Long answer: our apartment has a tiny balcony sidled right up to our next-door neighbor. She's got a small tomato garden growing, and a small wire rack to keep the vines upright. I'd gotten my fingers stuck in the rack before when I'd groomed them for her, back when money was so tight I was asking the people in our building for any sort of odd job they needed done.
I reached over the divider of our two buildings—if I needed to test if further, I could always stick my arm in the railing, I supposed. I hoped it didn't come to that, though, because if I got stuck, how was I supposed to explain that to Spencer? And if he couldn't get me out, how was I going to explain that to the firemen?
Slowly, I wiggled my fingers into the spaces. It was a tight fit, but I managed, and they it felt the same way coming out.
That's a hard no to a lower bone density.
Next up. Octopuses have small little suckers on the ends of their tentacles—which, I found, is technically inaccurate because octopuses don't have tentacles, they have arms, but whatever, we can't all be perfect—that can stick and grab to things since they don't have opposable thumbs. Or, for that matter, thumbs.
I placed Spencer's copy of War & Peace on my desk, then placed my hand on it without grabbing the sides.
Please stick, please stick, please stick, I begged. I needed some other superpower besides the basics. Every other guy had super strength and super flexibility. If I wanted something to set myself apart from the crowd, I needed a new gimmick. Something fresh.
War & Peace lifted clean off the desk, floating in the air by my fingertips.
Suddenly, there was a buzz on the intercom, and Spencer was calling me.
"Maeve? Peggy's here to see you!"
Oh, this day was just getting better and better! It hadn't even been a week, and I was already getting my suit, had discovered new powers, and could go see Spider-Man . . . tonight, if I wanted to!
I set the book down to go and tell Peggy the good news.
But when I did, the book remained on my fingertips, not even budging. It didn't come off, didn't even seem like it wanted to, for that matter.
"Come on," I muttered, pulling at it with my other hand. It didn't move an inch.
"Maeve!"
"Send her in!" I called back. I set the book on my chair and placed my foot on top, pulling hard, but it wasn't coming off, not even moving. It looked as if my skin had just grown onto the book.
So, what, I had to learn how to control it? What if I grabbed someone's hand and we were stuck together for the rest of our lives?
"Mae, you won't believe—what are you doing?"
For a second, I think Spencer's followed Peggy into the room, but when I glance up, (probably with that deer-in-headlights look, too) it's just Peg.
"I, um." I smile. "I have a new superpower."
"No, that's called super glue." Peggy rushes forward, tossing a big garbage bag she's been carrying onto my bed as she does. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" I cry defensively. "Look! It's a new superpower. Octopuses have those little suckers on their arms, and I wanted to see if I had them, too." I shake the book as proof. "I do."
"But . . . but that—that doesn't make any sense," Peggy replies. "Could DNA change your skin?"
"Aren't you the nurse? Shouldn't you know? Wouldn't you have to treat this if it was a disease?" I retort. "I don't know, Peg—just help me get it off!"
"All right, all right," she placates, and together, we're able to remove the book, releasing with a satisfying pop! that sends Peggy stumbling back a few steps.
I rub my hands together. They're not sticking anymore—I was really going to have to test that out before I started scaling walls and stuff. At least my brother's copy is okay. Thank God it was hardcover, or a cheesy birthday card might not cut it when his birthday comes around.
Peggy's rubbing the cover, staring at it. "Not even sticky," she mutters. "It doesn't make sense."
"Yeah, yeah," I wave her off. "That's old news. My blood's also purple now, but let's see the suit."
"Purple? But octopi blood is blue," Peggy replies, giving me a quizzical look. "Plus, it shouldn't even effect the color of your blood."
"You know that octopus blood is blue, but not that the plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi? Shameful, Peg. And you call yourself a nurse." I shake my head in disgust.
"Octopuses?"
"Yeah. I looked it up."
Peggy mouths the word obnoxiously. Octopuses. "Doesn't roll off the tongue as well, does it?"
"I guess not. Can I see my suit now?"
Peggy's face lights up. "Oh, you're going to love it. It was a little tricky, because there's no WikiHow on how to make a superhero costume for an actual superhero, but I managed." She grabs the bag, tearing it open like a Christmas present. She hands me a wadded-up ball of purple.
"An optional cape," she explains. "I wasn't sure."
A few seconds later, Peggy asks me what's so funny. I can't explain. I'm too busy trying not start wheezing from laughter. I can't even help the tears that escape.
Once I've calmed down, she hands me the full suit. It's a little lighter than the cape I'd rather burn than wear, but it's still a darkish purple. The suit has portions by the chest made of silver, and there's even stitchings of the same color, giving off accents around the knees and elbows and wrists.
I'm speechless. I promised myself I was going to love it no matter what, but . . .
"Do you suppose I should cut off the fingertips?" Peggy asks from behind me. "I'm not sure if it's what you're expecting, but—"
"I love it so much," I breathe. "Look at this—my very own superhero costume! How many people get to say that? Huh? I do! I . . ." I look back at the suit. It covers my head, too, similar to Spiderman's, with black patches by the eyes and silver around it. The black fabric is much thinner compared to the rest of the Spandex, and is probably easier to see through.
"I'm glad, Mae. The fabric around the eyes is special, too, I had to order it off of Amazon. It's some breathable, seeable thing . . . I can't remember the name, let me look it up . . ."
I stop her. "No, that's okay, I don't care. I've got to try it on!"
Peggy grins. "I'll give you a little privacy." She slips out seconds later, and I immediately toss the cape to the side. I'm not stupid. I've seen The Incredibles.
I've already begun to change before she's even gotten the door shut. It's tight, and the feet have some sort of formable padding in the bottom, behaving like real shoes. Damn, am I thankful for Peggy. This suit would be a shitshow without her.
Once I've changed, I call Peggy back in, and let her check me over.
"Hmm. Well, I'll definitely need to trim down the sides, and probably give the shoulders more room to breathe—do you want me to cut the fingertips off? That's an easy fix, if need be."
I flex my hands. "No, I think I'm good for now. Maybe the Spandex will . . . lessen the effects? Make it easier to do things?"
Peggy shrugs. She's gone into full-on nurse mode. "Your guess is as good as mine. Like the shoes?"
I wiggle my feet. "My toes feel a little exposed, but yes."
"I'll fix that, too." She steps back and nods. "I think we're good. It's functionable, at least."
I scoff. "'Functionable' means it just works. This is more than that. It's a godsend."
Peggy smiles. "I'm glad you like it."
"I do," I promise. "But there's only one way to make sure." I head over to my window. "Test run."
Peggy's smile falters. "Test run?"
"Yes. I'll go, explore the rooftops, maybe stop a few criminals . . ." I trail off. "Best-case scenario, I see Spider-Man and get to talk to him. If not, it'll be a little warm-up."
My nurse frowns. "Don't you think . . . well, aren't we going a little fast? Maybe you should wait a while, let me fix up the suit, do some more experiments, maybe some blood work . . ."
"Peggy." I take off the mask, which falls against my back like a hood when it's not on. I grab her hands. She didn't understand how much I needed to do this, how close I was. "Please?"
She's too easy. With a sad smile, she squeezes my hands back. "Fine. I have an idea I wanted to try anyway. But let me drive."
I'm immediately curious. I wasn't sure what my plan was going out the window, so whatever Peggy's thinking of has got to be better.
I slip my clothes on over the suit, and follow Peggy out.
Just before we leave, though, with a poor excuse to Spencer about going to get ice cream—Peggy turns back, a curious expression on her face.
"Did you pick a name yet?"
"Oh." I cringe. "I have. It's-it's pretty bad, though, and I'm definitely going to change it once I think of something better, I just haven't yet. There's not a lot of things that flow with 'octopus' per se . . ."
"Just tell me."
"Fine. I think . . . I think I'm going to be called Octogirl."
Peggy laughs at me all the way to the car.
~oOo~
Sorry if that was underwhelming. I felt I was going too fast, writing too much at once . . .
Did you know the average fiction book has anywhere between 60,000 words and 80,000? But when I see a story with over 50k on this site I'm like . . . eh . . . too much reading. It's crazy. Review!
To Lewot: you do talk a lot. But so do I. And thank you for being invested in my stories. Because of your investment, here's me explaining myself off your review:
-First off, dammit, you stole my idea. I was tossing around the notion of a montage-style thing with Mae learning all about octopuses, though the 'octopi' was my fault and my fault alone. (I looked it up just to fact-check you, and while you were right, the website I used called anybody who actually knew the correct usage a 'linguist know-it-all'. So. Ha.)
-The summary/title are a bit out of whack, but like most of my writing, it just needs a bit of editing first, a little TLC. It's not going to change much.
-Yes. Tylenol's still a thing, and they come with coupons. (Where the hell do you live?)
Nitpicks don't discourage me! Please don't think they do.
Anyway. Thanks, man. The help's more than appreciated.
