My apologies for how long it took. This chapter is much longer than last time, so hopefully that will make you happy!

Emma Laraliean – Glad you liked it! I hope this chapter is just as good!

Despair Faction – Sorry it was so short and hopefully I'll be able to sit down and write the next chapter sooner this time.

jjonajameson – Yeah, it is a different take. I just kinda wanted to see what could happen with some one other than Spider-girl who gets along so well with her dad and all.

Chocolate Starfish – Thanks for the encouragement!

You guys are great! And to the rest of you, please read AND review!

As the two boys tried pathetically to fight off Spider-man, the lone onlooker watched silently from her spot against the wall. She was attempting to draw as little attention to herself as possible and figure out some way to escape without being noticed. Suddenly, Nikki remembered Chemistry class yesterday. Though the embarrassing memory made her wince, she thought about how she had walked through the wall of the English room intentionally. Could she do that again?

Nikki cast a glance back at her savior. Now the poor guys were trying to run away, but Spider-man jumped in front of them and grabbed their shirt collars. Then he began leaping back and forth from wall to wall, carrying them up to a rooftop. Nikki's parents always spoke well of Spider-man, which contrasted sharply with everything she read in the paper and heard at school. Seeing what he did with his captives would prove to her once and for all if he was a true hero or not. However, Nikki decided that she didn't want to wait around and find out.

Taking a deep breath, Nicole Parker turned and plunged into the wall behind her. Everything instantly became suffocatingly dark for what seemed like forever. At last, she broke into a dimly lit room and hunched over, gasping in the musty air. There was something about not being able to breathe and lost in pitch blackness that Nikki found absolutely unnerving, although perhaps that wasn't entirely unreasonable.

It took the poor girl a minute to recover from the shock. Nikki finally stopped panting and scanned the room of the old abandoned warehouse until she spotted a door that led outside. Then she ran. Usually, Nikki was not a particularly good athlete. She passed gym class on the good graces of the teacher and rarely did anything very active unless she had to. But today Nikki didn't notice how fast she was running or even the direction. Her eyes were blinded by tears of anguish. Eventually she ran straight through the door of her house and up the steps to her room where she sank onto her bed, her head in her hands.

For a moment she just sat there, unmoving. Then Nikki slowly got to her feet and began pacing the room, assessing the situation aloud in hopes that hearing herself talk would give her some much needed inspiration.

"Let's see here. Yesterday, I got sick in school and ended up falling through the floor. So somehow I can walk through walls now and glow blue. Ok, that's not that bad. I can deal with it." She stopped at the side of her room with the window and paused a moment to gaze out at the street beyond. When she saw some one strolling along the sidewalk, Nikki suddenly ducked away and continued her long stride to the opposite end of her room.

"But then I get perfect vision, sticky fingers and – " Here she stopped for a moment and thought about the incident in the park. "– really good reflexes. I didn't get even a little tired when I ran home away from those boys. What's going on?" Nikki threw herself down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. "I wonder what Spider-man was doing over there anyway."

She got up again and walked over to stare at herself in the mirror. Nikki remembered again that she hadn't taken a shower that morning and yanked off her sweat shirt that she'd thrown on before dashing off to school. Maybe Nikki was a little calm for most girls, being able to stop and try to think things out even when she discovered that she could do something completely incredible. But things really started to get freaky when she realized she had apparently grown muscles overnight. Nikki also rarely swore, but she did now. Her usually petite body had been replaced by some crazy body builder's dream.

Slowly she dropped onto the bed, still gaping in amazement at herself in the mirror. Her mind went over all possible reasons for this, but only came up with one: the scalpel wound. Nikki studied her hand closely. All that she could see was a neat little half-circle scar. She flipped it over to examine her palm and could almost barely make out miniscule pointy hair-like objects sticking out of her fingers on both hands. They were probably too small to be seen by the normal human eye, but Nikki had stopped bothering to pretend anything about her was "normal" anymore.

The door slammed downstairs and she jumped to her feet, pulling the sweatshirt over her head quickly again to disguise her new found strength. In a few seconds, her bedroom door crashed open, as if thrown against the wall by an invisible force. A panting and wild eyed Peter Parker stood in the doorway.

"Dad?"

"What do you think is up with Mom and Dad?"

"I don't know, but it has something to do with Nikki. I think she got in trouble at school or something."

"Well she better not get grounded too badly or we won't be able to go to the Yankees game next week."

"Oh, Ben. Dad spent too much money on those tickets to just not go because Nikki has been made a prisoner of her room for the next five years." A light hearted laugh.

"Hey, maybe if Nikki can't go, I can bring a friend instead since we'll have an extra ticket!"

Nikki groaned and stared at the upside down door as she listened to her younger siblings sitting in Ben's room, discussing her probable fate. She was now lying on her bed with her head hanging off the end in boredom. For some reason, that position felt relaxing, even though before she would have complained of the blood rushing into her head. Ever since that rather frightening moment when her dad burst through her door, Nikki had been confined to this world of utter monotony, otherwise known as her room.

She could still picture him. Peter had looked kind of scary, like he wanted to kill something, or some one. When he saw his daughter standing there in front of him, stunned and totally innocent, Peter's face filled with relief. But even the relief couldn't block out the warning in his mind that something was going on. So he told her to stay where she was and left, closing the door behind him. However, his voice was more like a vicious snarl and Nikki cringed at how loud the door banged shut.

Apparently he called her mother, because Mary Jane arrived home early from the theater where she had been working with the young actresses all day. Nikki watched her car pull into the garage through the window, and it occurred to her for the first time that her dad never took the car to work. Ben and May arrived an hour later from school and were immediately directed up to Ben's room where they were forced to share in the depressive silence of the house.

Sometimes muffled voices drifted up the steps into Nikki's room from the kitchen. She could never make out a thing that her parents were saying, but it sounded serious. Just as she was about to get up and go downstairs, the door opened and her father's upside down face once more looked in at her.

Nikki scrambled off the bed and the world turned right side up again. "Hey," was all she said and all she got in return. Peter looked as though he seriously wanted to talk about something with her but was toying with his words and not sure where to begin. Nikki had recovered from his surprising entrance earlier that afternoon and was now feeling extremely annoyed with him, even more so because of the oncoming storm. She made no effort to make him feel more comfortable.

Finally Peter worked up the nerve to begin, still wondering if there even was a beginning point to all this. "Nikki, um, I know I haven't always been there for you but-"

"Haven't always been there for me?" Nikki cut in angrily. Peter tried to keep going, but she didn't give him a chance. "You've never been there for me! Let me think of where to start! Oh, I know: choir. You know my friend Maddie? Wait, you wouldn't know because you're never at home long enough to meet anyone." Nikki gritted her teeth in irritation and struggled to contain the rage that threatened to overwhelm her. Fifteen years of pent-up anger was suddenly coming out in a rush.

Peter continued to appear to take the berating coolly, arms crossed and leaning against the doorpost. He had expected as much for his behavior toward her earlier and obviously didn't realize he'd stepped into the danger zone. When her furious stare rested on her calm father, Nikki felt another spike of anger boiling up inside her. She was practically shouting now.

"Maddie's dad is a pilot so he's gone a lot. But he still manages to make it to all her choir concerts! I have two concerts a year and my dad teaches science at the university, but he still can't make it to either of them! And Maddie's family is rich too. Let's face it, Dad. We're not poor, but we're not exactly living in the lap of luxury either. I don't know where you are all the time, but I'm not going to keep pretending to believe that stupid lie that you're out 'on the job'! Why won't you just tell me the truth?" This last demand was more of a plea than anything, but it went unheeded.

Peter felt something flare up inside him momentarily and desperately attempted to draw the subject away from where it was inevitably headed. Even though that was what he had intended to talk about originally, his habitual guard flew up when he feared his secret might get out.

"Well, I don't see how bringing in a whole lot more money would help things. I mean, what would you do with it anyway?" His eyes scanned the room for a moment before settling on a shirt that hung off the doorknob to her closet and widened angrily. "Don't tell me you've worn that to school!"

A bit taken aback, Nikki glanced over at the spaghetti-strap tank top he was staring at so accusingly. Lots of her summer shirts were like that. Rolling her eyes, Nikki couldn't keep the growing disdain out of her now sarcastic voice. "Wow. Don't get too excited, but my dad actually looked around my room long enough to notice something I have in it. That's a first."

At that moment, Peter Parker could have smacked the girl that stood in front of him, glaring mockingly into his eyes. He knew she was taunting, daring him to touch her. Peter realized that Nikki seemed unusually confident this evening, as if she knew something he didn't. As though she thought she could actually defend herself against anything. If only she knew.

Peter brushed the thought aside and proceeded to administer some fatherly justice. "You go to your room right now, young lady. And don't you roll your eyes at me anymore!"

Nikki did it again, anyway, with great exaggeration. "In case you haven't noticed, Dad, I am in my room. And by the way, I'm not a young lady anymore." As an accent to her last remark, she slammed the door in his face. Peter let out a yelp and leaped back to avoid getting clobbered by a solid inch and a half of oak.

"Nikki!" he growled angrily, smacking one fist against the door before collapsing heavily against the wall behind him in despair. Now he was wondering how the situation had gotten so out of control. All he had wanted to do was protect her and even build a little bit of a father-daughter bond by telling her his precious secret. But it had turned into a shouting match, pushing her farther away and frightening his other two children.

"Peter?" a voice called timidly. With all the tumultuous emotions flooding through him, it took a minute to recognize the voice as his wife's. He slowly turned around to gaze into her concerned emerald eyes mournfully. The two stared silently at each other for a moment. Then MJ turned and tiptoed down the steps, her ever-present grace giving her the appearance of floating. Peter gave the door one last apologetic glance before following his wife into the kitchen just as the first raindrops began pounding the roof.

May and Ben sat forlornly on his bed as they watched the whole exchange play itself out. Ben stifled a sob and snuggled up close against his thirteen-year-old sister when it was over. She hugged him motherly to herself and let her pain-filled gaze drift to the open window in the room.

A soft night breeze had let itself in along with a sprinkling of rain, but neither made a move to close the window. The wind tousled May's wavy brown hair and barely tickled Ben's short tight red curls. They didn't know it yet, but that night, it would be the only thing to comfort them.

"MJ, listen!" Peter groaned in frustration, no longer aware of the fact that he had started walking quickly and agitatedly around the kitchen where they had barricaded themselves to talk in private, away from listening ears. "The way she talked to me, the way she looked at me, the way she acted…she knows, Mary Jane! I'm sure of it!"

Mary Jane sighed and got a far off look in her eyes. "Peter," she began slowly, awaiting an angry and shocked response to her suggestion. "Maybe, well, you know she's fifteen. Maybe it's time to tell her."

Peter stopped his caged animal imitation and slammed both his hands down on the table. "That's what I was trying to do today! Obviously it didn't work. Please answer this, MJ. How do you tell your daughter that you're Spider-man?"

Nikki jerked her head back out through the wall of the kitchen and ran upstairs, the tell-tale blue glow fading too quickly to be noticed.