Yes, this one took a long time coming as well. I'm sorry! But I'll /try/ to make this one a bit longer, for your reading pleasure.
So here we go!
Connor entered the room, not
with the usual awe he's guilty of since his first meeting with Spiderman, but
rather with an air of calm. Matching
footsteps with the superhero, he entered the Training Chamber. Dimly lit, the Training Chamber had a
console on one side of the room, with a zoned off glass area, which roughly
resembled a squash court.
To Web's nose, the air was very
dusty, probably having been out-of-use for some time now. He brought his hand up to scratch his head,
when the enhanced-vision kicked in, and the whole room appeared bathed in light
to him. With another tap on the side of
his mask, his vision changed to infrared, and he turned to view the
multi-colored outline of Spiderman.
Peter Parker had instantly
approached the console when he had entered the room, tapping away at a blinding
speed. "Eureka!" he cried, looking
immediately apologetic once his voice had rebounded around the room, creating
echo upon echo. Clearing his throat, he
addressed the boy in the white outfit, who continued to tap the side of his
head, flipping through the various modes for his sight. To Spiderman though, it looked like Connor
was insane, since he believed the suit only had two vision modes.
"What in the blazes are you
doing?" Spiderman inquired, letting through some of the anger that welled up in
home from yesterday. Had Connor not
been wearing a mask, one would have been able to see his eyebrows rise up in
question. "Flipping through the
visions, of course. There isn't just
X-ray, there's also night vision, infra-red, magnification, a dimmer, and,
whoa, even a see through map thing. I
think that's it," he finished, dropping his hand to his side. "That's some pretty cool stuff. I mean, this suit is flexible /and/ it's
thin."
All the while, Spiderman stood
there, staring. In his mind, he
considered apologizing for his outbreak, and how much better Web's suit was
than his. Dismissing the topic though,
for fear of being embarrassed, he inquired, "So, which training mission do you
want to do this week? There's agility,
strength, defense, targeting, climbing and knowledge."
A whole week, Connor
thought. One whole week, probably 8
hours a day. That is one /really/ long
time. Realizing that he'd have to do all
of the exercises in the end, Connor shrugged, and chose the first one mentioned. Agility. "Just, walk into the chamber," Spiderman told his apprentice, as he
gestured towards the glass wall, "And I'll get the computer started." Connor, having been in his suit for about a
day now, felt that there was nothing that could stand in his way. No way could some program beat him. I mean, he thought, I have all these cool
things on this suit, so there's not a chance that this machine could bring me
to my knees. But that was where he was
wrong.
It all started off simple, but
by the end of the session, he was dying for water, air, and food. Not just dying, but /dying/. At the beginning, all he was required to do
was play a little game of tag with the hologram behind him. It was pretty easy, but slowly, the hologram
got faster and faster, until he was doing all he could to run around the
room. Spiderman was laughing his head
off at the shimmering robot chasing the boy in the white costume, and was glad
that Connor was so tired that he didn't notice his chuckling fit.
But tag was just a one hour warm
up. Superheroes play more than a little
game of tag in the real world. After a
quick water break and down time, Peter tapped a couple of keys and the walls of
the training room slid away, revealing another wall full of holes, vaguely resembling
a giant, concrete sponge. Baffled as to
what the next exercise was in store for him, Connor shrugged, grinned as though
the next one was going to be a cinch, and approached the new menace.
2 hours. It took him two hours to complete this
section, and after not even being half way through, he was perspiring like
there was no tomorrow and panting like a dog. Out of the walls came lasers, which, upon impact with his suit, created
a sharp prick at the point of contact. Like before, the session started off easy, but got harder and
harder. Beginning with a slow, steady
pulse of lasers going horizontally, it picked up to an onslaught of bright red
beams, darting from wall to wall. After
about 45 minutes exertion, Connor gave in and lay down on the floor, breathing
heavily, and Spiderman was forced to turn off the training program, and give
Connor another break until he was ready to continue again.
After the horizontal lasers came
the vertical ones, which required Web to cling to the ceiling, so he could tell
when a laser was coming at him. The
strength welded into his suit helped him here, but he still had to work hard in
order to dodge. While this training was
just as hard as the other one with the wall-to-wall lasers, Connor enjoyed this
one more by a long shot. It was simply
fantastic to be able to cling to the wall, to walk upside down, if not
requiring a mountain-load of flexibility, strength, and balance to keep
crawling in such a fashion. Not to
mention the confusion that came about when he went right side up again.
The next bit he had to finish
was almost like combat, but not quite. Sort
of like a combination of the previous two sub-sessions, Web had to dodge
attacks from various holograms of actual villains. The first one was simple, just a typical street 'bad guy' with a
gun, nothing that mattered because of his suit but he dodged as much as
possible for the sake of practice. However, following suit with the previous trials, the villains got more
and more difficult.
The second villain was Scorpion,
who wasn't too much of a challenge, since his fire rate was slow, but he was
accurate, and anticipated movements. He
kept Web on his toes, and required him to often climb upon the walls and
ceilings to create more spaces where he could dodge a blast. At an hour for each villain, he was pretty
tired, even though he was only two hours into the five left for the rest of the
day.
Coming third was Carnage, only
because his super strength could be ignored in this case. Carnage constantly hurled items at him with
blinding speed, and about half-way through, Connor was hit by a hologram for the
first time. Of course it wasn't lethal,
but Peter Parker set it to a level that hurt sufficiently enough for him to tap
into extra reserves of energy he didn't know he had. This third hour was cut short by 15 minutes to give Connor a
snack and a bit of a rest.
The one that followed was none
other than the infamous Hobgoblin, who kept throwing bombs all around the
place. Combined with his hover board,
the Hobgoblin kept tossing his pumpkins, practically carpet-bombing the
area. Web amazingly managed to dodge
the majority of the blasts by using his head. Parker noticed this, and smiled briefly. The boy's using his head, he thought, and it'll help him a great
deal if he happens to come out and actually fight /real/ people. After all, in the real world, to get hit
once spells just about death.
Langley's fifth and final
opponent was Dr. Octopus, whose arms stretched and shot out madly in different
directions each time, often forming a circle around the boy, not allowing him
to move in any possible direction without getting hit. After being struck multiple times, Web
started to pay attention to the tentacles reaching towards him rather than just
blindly running about. He noticed that Octopus
only had 8 tentacles, meaning that he could only cover so many directions. It required both mental and physical
exertion in order to not get hit, but in the end, Connor pulled it off, and was
rewarded with a meal and a rest. So
Connor went back to the lab, and took of his suit, and headed towards the
kitchen.
During their dinner, Parker
explained that he wouldn't be able to constantly monitor Connor's training, and
would have to patrol the streets of Manhattan, lest the villains get out of
hand. He also added that he would set
the computer on auto-train mode, and that should Connor be hurt during any
session, it would automatically detect the lack of movement in Connor and shut
itself down, and also notify Spiderman. Spiderman also lowered down the time in each session to 6 hours, with an
hour break between each sub-section and two less villains.
The information passed through
Web's mind, leaving nary more than a trace of what he said. Stumbling all the way to his room, Connor
slumped into his bed and upon feeling the warm blankets surrounding him and the
springy mattress underneath him, drifted off into his dreams in mere seconds.
And so the week passed, much
like the first day, with Connor waking up at a hazy 9:00, eating his much
needed breakfast, dressing up into his suit and flitting back and forth in the
Training Room. Madame Web made a good
decision in choosing Connor; he understood his responsibility and never tried
to find loopholes in order for him to escape practice. He learned fast, he remembered what he
learned, and so, each day seemed less and less grueling.
Spiderman only came back after
the training was over, but sometimes he popped by just to check on the
progress, not speaking all too often, but always intent and watching, like a
hawk over its prey, though not quite as malicious. Yet, there was one thing that always interested Connor when he
went back to the lab, and that was the canisters of webbing. As said earlier on, his talent was in
Science, and he was almost sure that he could think up some new kind of
webbing.
It came to him when he saw the shimmering,
hazy metal of Dr. Octopus' tentacles. It was remarkably simple, and yet, he was surprised he missed it. There was always a problem with a spider's
web. Connor had read that if a rope
spun of spider's web was attached to a flying jet fighter, the chances were
that anything other than the rope would break; the problem was that it was
flexible. Meaning that it wouldn't be
ideal for something like a suit, since though a bullet would have a hard time
penetrating it, the impact would still be felt. The material imbedded in his suit was beyond anything he could
decipher, so as a result, he invented a substitute of it, something that
Spiderman could use.
The logistics of it all were
difficult for even him to grasp, but in the end, it worked, because it all
somehow made sense to him. He used melted
titanium, that when mixed with a clotting solution, kept the metal from binding
with itself to form something inside an air-tight container. However, the solution also caused the
web-metal mixture to harden in moments upon contact with air. Mixed with the natural strength of the
webbing, the stuff was just about impenetrable. After several failures, Connor made a prototype and showed it to
Spiderman.
"How in the world did you make
this?" Spiderman asked, when he saw Connor shoot the webbing out and spin it
into various objects. First a simple
staff, then a shield, and then a small sculpture. "You can't make anything sharp though, which is a small
down-side," Web explained to the astounded Spiderman. "And the stuff is bullet-proof. I tried it out," he also added, with a proud grin on his face.
And so the first week ended, and
at the end, instead of dodging holograms, Web took on Spiderman. Though lacking the special additions of Web's
suit, Spiderman had the advantage of experience, but besides that, he was
pleased with the illogical progress Web had in his training. Nothing that Spiderman himself would have
gained in a week. Web lasted the whole
hour, and was only 'tagged' by Spiderman's webbing five times in that time.
"I'm impressed Connor, and
Madame Web was right when she asked me to take you as my apprentice. In order to add onto your newfound agility,
next week's lesson is going to be strength, though not the same kind of
strength that's already implanted into your suit. Even /that/ won't help you for this kind of strength. You can have Monday off though, we'll start
on Tuesday." With that Spiderman left,
leaving Web, still clinging to the walls of the training room, to think about
what could possibly come next.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for the delay in posting. I'll /try/ to be faster in getting stuff up,
but what with school and all always crimping on my time. About all the questions, Aphrodite Black,
I'm not letting Connor get bitten by a radioactive spider, only because it'd be
like copying Marvel comics, and I don't have enough money to deal with a
lawsuit :P Big B, I might have
that occur later on, though don't expect a big battle. Other stuff is in store. Mandy, I'm not going to write
that kind of story because I don't know enough of Black Cat. And Chris
McCracken, Connor is /my/ character. Yes, all mine. Bwahahaha!
Now, review, or I will be forced to take /longer/ to write
a /shorter/ chapter! *insert dramatic
music here*
