The other day I was reading through some older chapters to double check info, and accidentally ended up reading through the rest of what I had because I'm still invested in it. I think that's pretty cool, to be so entertained by your own work that you go through it as if you weren't the one to write it.

Oh, and, happy early Colonial Treason Day to those who celebrate it. Be sure to get your pets all nice and comfortable in their safety spot, and remember not to accidentally contribute to the reason why humanity averages less than ten fingers per person.

Cindy smashed the racquetball once again, sending it flying in my direction. Without looking up from my book, I stepped to the side, my lips slightly twitching in annoyance at how my body still moved without my permission. Over and over she sent it at me, losing herself in the motions of aiming at a moving target. For the most part it was at my torso, but by virtue of not having the best skill with a racket of any type, sometimes the ball would fly by one of my limbs.

It was late October now, about two months since I was bitten. Cindy had yet to develop any powers (unless we counted her ever growing caffeine tolerance thanks to late nights for her studies and inside the lab) and according to her, the spider that had bitten both of us was still incredibly docile aside from eating; the scientists were outright getting ready to call it a failure in the coming weeks if nothing changed about it.

On my side of things, I had somehow managed to make my first web swinging lines. They weren't able to go as far as I expected or needed, only managing about two stories before I needed to adjust for drag/gravity/what-have-you, but so long as I kept high enough I could probably go for a swing around Queens. I'd also managed to start firing catching webs about the same distance (which had a different composition of black and white threads compared to swing lines), though it took me time between each shot.

Apparently my silk production wasn't exactly 'mature' enough yet, but being able to snipe and subsequently tag a soccer ball against a wall was pretty exciting. I couldn't exactly say I was ready for a fight, though; I hadn't quite figured out my upper limits of things, and securing junked metal for impromptu punching bags was surprisingly difficult, regardless of whether or not my hands could handle the force; as was the flip side of trying to punch as many cardboard boxes in a row without leaving more than a knuckle dent instead of accidentally tearing through them.

"Last round for the night, Pete."

"Kay~" I glanced up as she tossed the ball, ready to serve it like a traditional tennis ball. Once again my body forcibly moved me. Once again, my displeasure made itself subtly known.

My Spider Sense had also formed, apparently. It had started with a stray baseball during lunch, and once I realized what had happened (much to the astonishment of my friends), I'd convinced Cindy to take me to various places where she could freely chuck things at my direction. Tennis balls, baseballs, racquetballs; anything and everything we could think of. It had the bright side of helping her lose a few pounds she'd been complaining about as well as toning up her upper body, and I was slowly learning how to keep my body from jerking away whenever I wasn't fully aware of something, instead starting to get a handle on moving in my own direction. Not that it was exactly bad to subconsciously evade certain things, but if there was a pattern in my evasion that I wasn't aware about that a future enemy picked up on? Things might be bad then.

After another couple dozen swings, Cindy caught the ball with her racquet, angling it downward without any force to burn off as much momentum as possible before rolling it to her foot. With quiet pants, she sat down, arms resting on her knees. I joined her a moment later, idly moving my body through some stretches that she mirrored. "How's school been?"

"About the usual," she answered, crossing one arm over the other. "Some classmates that are depressingly useless with their work, some who are amazing and I love every time I have them, and some who are completely mediocre with everything."

"You still working with that one jerk that's always late with their share of the work?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Unfortunately. I'm half tempted to bring it up with our professors but I'm pretty sure they have diplomatic immunity of some kind."

"Yick." I made a face, moving my feet to her thighs and pulling her forward. "You can't make a request to not be partnered with her anymore?"

She paused at that, inching deeper a little bit more. "I probably could. Probably should." I let go of her arms as she started rising, spreading my own legs for her to do the same in return. "Probably better for my sanity, right?"

"Could mean you need less coffee every day." One side effect of the bite I didn't really expect? Enhanced flexibility. I was easily feeling like an above average gymnast with what I could pull off, when before the bite I was just a novice. "By the way, how's that camera coming along?"

"Rafferty said we can borrow her studio Thursday." The moment I rose back up, we spun around as one and pressed our backs together, linking up our arms and supporting each other (though mostly it was me supporting her) as we rose into a technical squat. There wasn't a real purpose for this one, it was just something fun. "You have the hard drives, right?"

"Cleaned them up over the weekend." I didn't especially like talking about dumpster diving, but you tended to notice a couple things when you went running. Sometimes people just decided to throw out perfectly salvageable tech instead of repairing them on their own, or donating it to places that could do the same. Cindy knew about my occasional hobby, but considering I was able to build her a laptop from various pieces of scrap whose casing looked like it was higher end stock (and functioned just as well), I don't think she exactly minded either.

"Cool. You practice with those fabrics yet?"

We lowered back to the ground for a couple moments before rising once again. "Not as much as I wish I did. My last client was getting a little nitpicky about my notes so I spent longer than I really wanted to on another draft." I chuckled. "At least he gave me another twenty for my work."

"The pre-modern medicine dude?"

I shook my head. "Nah, pre-modern dude was a saint. I'm probably gonna give him a discount if he ever asks for another project. This guy's asking for the culinary migration of the tomato and its regional effects on agricultural techniques, both private and commercial."

"Huh. What did his total come out to?"

"A little over a hundred twenty five," I answered.

"Considering how much effort you put into it, didn't even average out to minimum wage, right?"

I waited until we sat back down before shrugging. "In my defense, I took my time with the research. He gave me a deadline, so I milked it for all it was worth."

Cindy scoffed and grabbed the ball with a free hand before standing. "You and your physical books."

I raised my brows. "It's a perfectly tactile experience that computers and phones can't provide. You really can't tell me you haven't taken your time reading a book."

She nudged me as we exited the room, lowering her voice to be more mindful of the other people around us. "Yeah, but when I read physical copies, I read for fun. You're lucky you're getting paid to do that research, instead of being like me."

"Oh, wow, Cindy," I deadpanned, "having to do research and reports for both work and studies makes things a drag. How absolutely stunning."

She rolled her eyes and smacked my shoulder with the back of her hand. "What was that, Junior? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your perceived 'maturity'."

I snorted. "Hello, Madame Pot, have you seen Mister Kettle recently?"

"Shut up."

/ - /

The plugs clicked together audibly. A moment later, all the lights turned on, their humming becoming white noise that was easily ignored. "Everything look good, Cindy?"

She fiddled with the high speed camera a little before nodding. "We'll need to double check the focus and everything, but we should be fine."

Sometimes for camera work, it was an actual science. The exact hues of the lights you were using and how they combined; shutter speed, exposure time, focal length, it all came together to make the perfect picture. Sure, there was a lot you could do with editing, but the vast majority of things were all done between the hands.

"Move into position so I can check?"

I stood on the spot we marked with tape, moving my left arm to where we figured the camera would be focused on. "This good?"

After a few more adjustments she gave me a thumbs up. "Whenever you're ready, Pete."

I aimed loosely at Cindy's direction, keeping my hand relaxed. It was a study oft repeated throughout the years: reviewing footage of your performance, be it physical, performative, or otherwise, helped immensely in improving yourself. To that extent, Rafferty's camera was meant to help me figure out the minute details about my web shooting. My arms were defined enough that we'd easily be able to see changes in muscular tensing, and with enough examples, we could potentially see how different degrees of tensing modified the end result. "Firing in three, two, one." Webbing, for the purposes of swinging around, shot out of my wrist. I held the pose for just under a quarter of a second, about as long as I figured for my web to connect to the safety shield the studio had, before moving my hand to grab hold. I didn't do anything other than that, of course, but I still needed to build up the muscle memory of grabbing a web after firing one out.

"Alright, got it," Cindy said a moment later. "Review it now or later?"

"Later," I said, releasing the web line. It would dissolve in about three hours or so; first the black strands and then later the white. I didn't know the exact time frame of things, but if I fired out some webbing at the start of one of my visits to an abandoned construction site, they wouldn't be there by the time I left. "Let's get some basic shots first."

"Right."

"Basic capture web in three, two, one." It was a rougher tense than my swing webbing. Line webbing? Bah, I'd figure out naming conventions later. Whereas swing lines could be more of a smoother motion, firing out a capture web was like snapping. Flick my wrist down slightly and lightly thrust my arm forward in the same motion before letting myself relax. I had yet to figure out how to accurately 'capture' things from various distances, instead trying to focus on getting a capture shot in the first place, but the general premise was that a golf ball sized clump of webbing would spiral out of my spinnerets, eventually unfurling into what one might expect a web to look like and wrap around my target. The consistency of each web wasn't very consistent either. Sometimes the capture silk (especially the white strands) was about as thick as a few strands of hair, other times they were almost like spiralled threads of floss. Realistically speaking, if I were to use their current forms in actual combat, I'd probably have to fire out capture webbing from both hands to lock a target down. "Four more shots should probably be good, right?"

"Ideally at least ten, but we can try and get more later, probably after we scrub the cameras."

I smiled, getting ready for another shot. "What's this 'we' bit?"

Cindy rolled her eyes. "Fine. You scrub the cameras. Should be—" She fell silent as I started counting down, hand tensing slightly once I fired out the web as she pressed the button to record. "Should be enough time for you to build your webbing back up."

"I don't run out of it that quickly." I changed my stance so that my right arm was in front, double checking with her that my wrist was properly in focus. "Firing swing line in three, two, one." There really wasn't much of a sensation whenever I fired a web. I knew in the back of my head that there was something going on in my wrists, and maybe at the end of a training session my forearms felt lighter, but it was about the same as spitting. You didn't really notice the saliva building up and exiting your mouth; the sensations of building up the power to 'spit' was what held your attention more.

"Basic web capture, from right hand in three—"

"Hang on, need to change drives."

I nodded and relaxed my stance. High speed cameras burned through storage like tinder in a bonfire, hence why I brought so many hard drives. "Let me know when."

I shielded my eyes some as I watched Cindy work. As she labeled the hard drive and set it aside, it suddenly struck me what was going on. I was becoming Spider-Man. Maybe I wasn't going to have to deal with supervillains galore and world ending threats, but no matter how I currently felt about it, by doing this kind of research and experimentation, I was becoming Spider-Man. And my sister knew my secret. She was here, helping me figure things out. She'd probably help me get better after an awful fight where I'm bleeding all over. Probably pick me up if I got too injured to swing back home. "Hey, Cindy? Can we pause a moment?"

She looked up from the screen of the camera. "What's up?"

I hugged her tightly. Or as tight as I felt safe, anyway. Two months in and I was still learning my limits for average humans. "Thank you."

She laughed. "You're welcome?" Cindy patted my head with one hand, hugging me back with her other. "What brought this on?"

"Just feeling really appreciative of you right now. For everything. Before the bite, after the bite; you're a really awesome sister, you know that?"

"Yeah. I am." She kissed my head.

We stayed like that for a couple moments before I pulled away, rejuvenated. "Right. So right arm, capture web, right?"

"That's right."

Once I moved into position, I waited for her signal before resuming the experiment. My spinnerets as it turned out were perhaps a one in a trillion chance. Of all the different ways my body could have mutated, having spinnerets that functioned as variable pressure nozzles was perhaps the perfect case scenario. Potential alternatives included having spider-like hairs all over my body, having developed an extra set of eyes (we both carefully felt the back of my head for any such organs), and something we were both hesitant to discover: newly developed allergies that would put me more in line with arachnid biology.

"Have you accidentally spewed out any webbing in your day to day?" Cindy asked as I set the final touches for the sanitized camera footage.

"Not yet, no." In order to actually have replacement footage, we'd taken to having me throw various items without a shirt. There was also several shots, to Cindy's great amusement, where I had to take a soccer ball to the face and stomach. It was admittedly fairly difficult forcing myself to take the hits when my subconscious was screaming for me to dodge out of the way like a certain protagonist. "Apparently my spinnerets are specific enough that any variation in the gesture means no webs." I double checked my current section of work, compiling them together once I approved of its quality. "I don't like your silence," I remarked after several moments of far too loud quiet. "Its smug Aura is mocking me."

Cindy chuckled. "Boys are weird."

I shot her a baleful look, restraining myself from shooting back in kind. "Anyway. Footage is clear. Let's lock up and head home."

Cindy sat in her chair a little while longer, staring after me as I grabbed some things. "You ever think I did something awful by letting you hang out with some of my friends?" She asked once she joined me.

"I don't plan on living a life of crime, so no." I adjusted the straps of my bags, waiting for her to make herself comfortable before picking up the case containing the camera. "The real question is: do you ever get concerned knowing that together some of your friends can make one scary hacking group?"

Seriously. One of her friends majored in graphology, the study of handwriting, and from them I picked up various ways to imitate a writing style (as well as having trained myself to write differently with my left and right hands). Another worked in special effects and film editing and as practical jokes; together he and I had stitched together various shots of their friend group walking through places they'd never been. I was by no means an expert in the various things they studied, but when you're a young, impressionable kid with nothing to do because your caretakers are at work or on a date and you're stuck with your babysitter turned older sister while she's doing school work, you pick up a couple things here and there.

Cindy didn't answer until we loaded up Uncle Ben's car and were on the streets. "I don't think any of them would turn to a life of crime. They're all on the straight and narrow, I think."

"If it's all the same to you, how about we double check those lifestyles in a couple years? About 50% of people who get a degree don't use it for their work, and considering how specialized some of your friends are, I think it'd be really interesting—" I fell silent as I reflexively slammed my arm against the roof of the car, my entire body tensing. Cindy swore as she jerked to the right, narrowly missing the car that ran their red.

"You okay, Pete?" she asked as we crawled to the next light.

I let out a slow breath as I began to relax my muscles, more irritated at my body reacting so harshly than the near miss we just experienced. "Just the usual irritations."

"Right." We inched forward for a brief moment, a flash of annoyance crossing her face as she once again put on the brakes, this time much slower. A pair of police cars flew past us, and in my sideview mirror, I could see them turn after the car that we nearly swiped. "You know, I could probably go do something about that."

"Peter, no."

I chuckled as we began moving properly. "I'm not saying I will, Cindy. I can't even be all that consistent with any of my webbing yet, so imagine me actually trying to stop a moving death trap floating around three to four thousand pounds?" I could hear the frustration in her expression when I glanced at her.

"Peter, no getting involved with vigilante work," she repeated. "You start messing with criminals, you'll start coming home with actual injuries, and I have no desire to see that from you."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, Mom. I promise I won't go out doing vigilantism. Yet." I not-so-quietly added once we passed another light.

"Pete!"

Next chapter will be released July 23rd.