'The Loud House' and 'The Casagrandes' are owned by Nickelodeon and Spider-Man is owned jointly by Disney and Sony. With that said, Enjoy.

Chapter 6: Diagnosis

After explaining to her friends, this time in a much more coherent fashion, what exactly she had been through all morning, it was agreed by all that Nikki needed to be examined by somebody; the only question was by whom.

Naturally, the first candidate that came to the young blonde's mind was her family's physician, Dr. Deidesheimer. However, this notion was quickly struck down when Sid pointed out that this was clearly no ordinary illness and therefore no ordinary doctor would know what to do about it.

Sid suggested that they go to Alchemax and ask Dr. Pinkerton her help, but Ronnie Anne was quick to reject the idea; claiming that the famed scientist 'rubbed her the wrong way' during their fieldtrip and asserted that she was more likely to want to dissect Nikki than help her. Sid didn't take kindly to this defamation of her hero and the two argued for some time, but eventually they came to the consensus, albeit each for their own reasons, that Dr. Pinkerton was not who they should go to for help.

With conventional and unconventional means eliminated, it was time for the gang to get very unconventional. To that end, Ronnie Anne put in a call to her friend Lincoln Loud over in Michigan who in turn put them in touch with his younger sister, Lisa, who was apparently some kind of freaky whiz kid super genius. After the introductions were out of the way, and after Lisa made it annoyingly clear just how 'valuable' her time was, she agreed to lend them her expertise.

The first step was obtaining a sample of Nikki's blood for Lisa to examine. This was a relatively simple task for Ronnie Anne, having learned quite a bit about such things from having two parents in the medical profession. The hard part was procuring a syringe from her mother's medical bag with her knowledge, but the details of that little escapade are better left unsaid.

After extracting a blood sample from Nikki and rousing the young blonde back to consciousness, the poor girl just couldn't stand the sight of blood, it was time for Lisa to work her proverbial magic. To that end, the little genius dispatched one of her custom-made aerial drones; one equipped with a special cooling unit for transporting biologic samples. It took about ninety minutes for the drone to reach Great Lakes City and then another ninety minutes to make it back to Royal Woods once it had the vial. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon when Lisa finally finished her experiments and reported her findings to the gang via Ronnie Anne's laptop.

This was her conclusion.

"Yeah… I've got Jack Squat."

"What?" the six older kids all shouted in unison as they crowded around Ronnie Anne's desk.

"What do you mean you've got Jack Squat?" Nikki asked angrily. "How could you not find anything? I thought you were supposed to be a genius!"

"Apologies. Perhaps I should've worded that better." Lisa replied with a noticeable lisp, but otherwise seemed unfazed by the outburst. "It isn't so much that I didn't find anything. It's more that what I've found doesn't make any logical sense."

"What do you mean, Lisa?" Ronnie Anne asked as politely as she could manage. "And, please, try to use small words, okay?"

"Very well then." Lisa replied, adjusting her glasses before she continued. "On the surface, Nikki's blood sample contains no irregularities. At least none that would appear on a standard hematology analyzer. Fortunately for you, I always strive for perfection, so mine's been customized to be 27.2814456% more accurate than the standard models. Ergo, I was able to detect minute traces of an unknown substance coursing through your blood stream."

"W-W-What kind of substance?" Nikki asked nervously.

"At first I had no clue." The younger genius answered casually. "But after extensive comparative analysis, I was able to find an approximate match. It appears to be a variation of the neurotoxin belonging to the species Parasteatoda Tepidariorum. Street Name: the Common House Spider. Which on its own is relatively harmless to humans, however this particular variety appears to have been doused with high levels of ionizing radiation. Tell me, is your home adjacent to a nuclear power plant or atomic research facility by any chance?"

"Of course not!" the young blonde replied defensively. "I've never been near anything radioactive in my life, and the only spider I've ever been around is my pet tarantula and he never bit me. Nothing you're saying makes any sense at all!"

"Gasp! Yes it does." Sid spoke up, her eyes wide with sudden realization. "Don't you remember what Dr. Pinkerton said on our fieldtrip yesterday? She said her machine fires concentrated beams of radiation to force mutations. The same machine she showed us right before you got 'stung by a bee'."

"Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Just what are you trying to say?" Nikki asked nervously; already suspecting the answer but hoping to be wrong.

"I'm saying that the 'bee' must've really been a spider, and it must've been exposed to Dr. Pinkerton's mutation ray when it bit you. You were bitten by a radioactive spider!" Sid replied, sounding way too excited considering the circumstances.

Understandably, the young blonde suddenly felt very lightheaded and needed to sit down on Ronnie Anne's bed.

"Wait, did you say Dr. Pinkerton? As in Dr. Barbie Pinkerton?" Lisa asked; sounding surprised at first, before her demeanor turned both smug and bitter. "I should've known that self-righteous, egomaniacal hack had a hand in this. Who else could be this irresponsible with both radiation and arachnids?"

"YOU BITE YOUR TONGUE!" Sid exploded in defense of her idol; foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.

"Whoa. Easy there, Killer." Ronnie Anne jumped in to pull her BFF away from the screen. "So, Lisa, what have you got against Dr. Pinkerton?"

"You mean besides the fact that she's an overrated attention hog who makes small children cry? Uh… if you believe the rumors that is" the younger genius answered awkwardly before quickly regaining her composure. "Several months ago, I submitted an application for an internship at her so-called 'advanced research facility', but I immediately retracted it once I realized that Alchemax is nothing more than a monument to her massive and undeserved ego."

"Let me guess, they wouldn't let you join because of your age?" asked the young Latina knowingly.

"It's a stupid rule!"

"Hello~ Can we please focus on me for a second?" Nikki spoke up, having gained her second wind. "You're still not making any sense. If I really did have radioactive spider venom in my blood, it would kill me, not make me stick to things."

"I know it doesn't make sense. I told you that at the beginning." Lisa replied casually. "And as for your strange new adhesive properties, there's an explanation for that, but it makes even less sense."

The young genius paused for a moment to type something on her keyboard, then a few seconds later a smaller window appeared in the corner of her screen; depicting a 3D model of a DNA strand.

"This depicts an ordinary strand of deoxyribonucleic acid from a blood sample obtained from my older sister Leni." Lisa explained, before typing something again to make a second window appear in the opposite corner. "And this one represents a strand from the blood sample you sent me. You will note the difference."

Of course, Nikki did not see a difference between the two, and from the looks on their faces, none of her friends did either; not even Sid.

"Sigh. I should've known better." The little genius replied with mild exasperation before doing something with her keyboard to make the second window zoom in on a specific spot. "Do you see this gene right here? This should not exist."

"What do you mean it shouldn't exist?" Ronnie Anne asked confusedly. "It's there. We can all see it."

"Yes, but you shouldn't be seeing it. I've never seen nucleotides arranged like this before. Not in all my years as a scientist. Granted, I'm only five, but you know what I meant."

"No I don't." Nikki snapped at her. "What does any of this have to do with what's happening to me?"

"Well, if you'll stop interrupting me, I'll tell you." Lisa replied annoyedly. "Now, as far as I can tell, this abnormality has been with you all of your life; lying dormant within your DNA, virtually undetectable to anyone who wouldn't know what to look for. However, when the radioactive neurotoxin entered your bloodstream, this gene became active and somehow enabled your body to adapt in such a way that you could survive the experience rather than being killed by it. Your new adhesive properties appear to be a side effect of this adaptation."

"Okay, so what happens now? How do I fix this?" Nikki asked anxiously.

"Unfortunately, there may not be a way to fix this." The young genius replied bluntly. "This isn't a science fiction movie. Genetic mutations like this can't simply be reversed by some convenient plot device."

"Mutation?" the young blonde squeaked frantically.

"Apologies, poor choice of words." Lisa said, backpedaling a little bit. "My point is that I am quite possibly the smartest person any of you will ever meet, and I have no idea how to reverse what's happened to you or if such a thing is even possible."

"So I'm just stuck like this for the rest of my life?" Nikki asked, on the verge of a full-scale freak out. "That's not fair! I'm supposed to be a ballerina! Ballerinas aren't supposed to be sticky!"

"Now, now, there's no need for hysterics." The young genius said in an attempt to smooth things over. "Believe it or not, there is a bright side to this situation. I've run a few simulations based on the available data and I can say with 99.994458% certainty that your… transformation will not progress any further. So you shouldn't experience any noticeable physical abnormalities. Furthermore, in addition to your new adhesive properties, I hypothesize that your physical strength, agility and senses may have been greatly enhanced in order to allow your body to resist the radioactive neurotoxin. And as for those adhesive properties themselves, I speculate that you may be able to control them better given enough time and practice. All things considered, you've come out of this experience relatively unscathed."

Nikki supposed that Lisa had a point. She supposed she should be relieved that she had made it through this bizarre ordeal without dying or turning into some kind of horrifying freak of nature, and yet she didn't. Instead she just felt sick to her stomach. It didn't matter to her that she still looked the same, inside her body felt completely different; wrong even.

"Wait, so you're telling me that Nikki got bitten by a radioactive spider and now she has superpowers?" Ronnie Anne asked skeptically.

"That's a very specific interpretation of what I just said, but not completely inaccurate I suppose." Lisa replied casually.

"Yeah, but my point is that things like that don't happen in real life." The young Latina continued. "I mean, I know I'm only getting a C+ in biology, but none of this sounds scientifically possible."

"It isn't scientifically possible, and yet it happened." The young genius replied bluntly. "I can sympathize with your skepticism, Ronnie Anne. Naturally, I was disinclined to take my initial results at face value, so I rechecked my work six times before calling you back, but the results were always the same. The data doesn't lie. And while what happened to your friend is unbelievable, the truly perplexing part is how it happened."

"What do you mean?" Nikki asked confusedly. "We know how it happened, I was bitten by a radioactive spider."

"Precisely, you were bitten by a radioactive spider." Lisa repeated, her voice deathly serious. "You, Nikki, the one person, probably in the entire would, with the exact genetic anomaly necessary to survive such an ordeal. You, out of an entire room full of people, were bitten by a spider that was exposed to radioactive material in a laboratory that has never been open to the public except on the day you were there. Do you have any idea what the odds are of something like this happening without outside interference?"

Nikki shook her head silently.

"Well, to quote my older sister Lori, 'literally zero'."

Suddenly, a new wave of anxiety washed over the young blonde.

"Now, I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories or nonsense about divine intervention, however I'm not one to believe in coincidences either." Lisa explained calmly. "That being said, I wouldn't worry about anything right now. I'll reach out to some associates of mine and see if I can dig up anything on Dr. Pinkerton or Alchemax, but in the meantime just go about your business as usual. I'll keep you posted."

"Thanks a lot, Lisa. We really appreciate this." Ronnie Anne said gratefully.

"Don't mention it." The young genius replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have other projects to addend to. Good day."

With that said, Ronnie Anne's laptop screen went blank, and Nikki felt her stomach turn.

"Well, at least now we know what's wrong. That's good, right?" Casey said in a feeble attempt to sugarcoat the situation.

"Yeah, and at least we know you're not sick." Sameer added, following his lead.

"No, I'm not sick. I'm just a mutant!" the young blonde wailed miserably.

"What? No, you're not." Laird said reassuringly.

"I'm a freak!"

"You're not a freak." Ronnie Anne jumped in, once again taking the lead on things. "You're our friend, and just because you're… a little different now doesn't mean that's gonna change. We've got you, man. We've always got you."

As the young Latina put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, Nikki felt the knot in her stomach start to fade. She looked around and saw the supportive looks on her friends' faces and knew they were all in her corner.

"Sigh. Thanks guys." She said as her anxiety levels balanced out. "You're the best friends a girl could ask for."

And with that said, the six of them all joined together for the customary group hug.

"Okay, enough sappy stuff. Time to get down to business." Said Sid with her usual energy. "Our friend has been blessed with great power, and you all know what that means."

An awkward silence fell over the room.

"Actually, Sid, we don't." Ronnie Anne replied confusedly.

"Two words, people. Movie Franchise~"

End Notes:

Thank you all so much for reading and I'll see you in the next one.

Peace.