A/N: Alright, let's do this one more time...

Should I be starting another fanfic with all the others I keep doing? Let me answer that with this: I feel like having a little fun.

Issue Zero: Lucky Number 30

Welcome to Oscorp! the screen chirped. Norman Osborn welcomes the [Midtown High Class Trip] to these illustrious halls! In order to have a day pass, please fill out your name!

The average-sized teenager fiddled with his favorite pen as he looked at the screen. 'I could use a fake name. Could be fun. Dean, like that show Mom likes? Nah, maybe Wayne?' As he scratched at cheeks still puffy with baby fat, he sighed. 'I like my name, but the chance to be someone else could be fun… Ah well, never mind it.' Shrugging indifferently, he types out his name on the digital display: Sirius Moore.

The ID badge printed, a jaunty tune rang from the digital screen, and Sirius pasted the temporary pass onto his shirt. Stepping away from the kiosk, he saw his best pals waiting for him. "'Bout time, Dog Star," Gwen Stacy said as he approached, moving a few strands of her straw-blonde hair out of her face. "Having trouble with the machine?"

"Can you blame me?" Sirius gestured to the lobby around them. "We're in Oscorp! This place is, like, the building of the future!"

"A-actually, that's the Baxter Building," Peter pointed out, adjusting his glasses as he did so.

"Which I can attest Dad hates every time he hears it," Smiling with teeth that just screamed too perfect, Harry took the lead as the four began walking to rejoin the rest of their class. "So I try to mention it as often as I can." As the four laughed at the image of a red-faced Osborn, Sirius regarded his friends.

As they rolled into their Sophomore year together you couldn't have picked a more unusual group. Peter Parker was a chemistry wizard and had a head for numbers like you wouldn't believe. Gwen Stacy was hyper and rebellious, but somehow teachers just loved her. ("My secret is my glasses," Gwen told Sirius once. "They make me seem non-threatening.") Last of all was Harry Osborn, golden boy of Manhattan; he had money, prestige, and the most expensive everything, but he never made any of them feel poorer for it.

All three of these goofballs were Sirius' best friends – roped in midway through Freshman year – and even though they were childhood friends, they never made Sirius feel like a fourth wheel. ('Wait, that's not a thing. You need four wheels to move cars and stuff. You know what I mean, brain!')

"Move it, Geek Squad!" Sirius' thoughts were cut off as Pete went flying into him, nearly taking them both down, as Flash Thompson, sports star/resident jerk of Midtown rammed into the skinny teen. "You're in the way, Puny Parker!"

Gwen glared after the jock, her murderous glare bleeding through her bespectacled look. "Why you-!"

"N-no, it's okay, Gwen!" Pete fixed himself up even as Sirius helped him stand on his own feet again. "See? I'm A.O.K.!"

Gwen seemed barely mollified. "If I had five minutes alone with Flash-"

"He'd rip you in half," Harry pointed out. "He wouldn't even need all of five minutes to do it. He's bigger and he's stronger – there's no way you'd win."

"Well, he won't be forever," Gwen snorted. "He's just a high school has-been waiting to happen."

"But until then, he's the predator," Sirius sighed as they trudged on. "And we're the prey."

As the tour began, the class got a look at all the various innovations Oscorp was working on: miniature signal towers for improved Wi-Fi, security cameras with built-in face recognition, and even some organic adhesive that could clearly hold 1000 lbs. Pete tried to explain every invention to his friends, but only Gwen seemed to understand most of it. Harry seemed to struggle not to doze off, while Sirius just drew doodles in his sketchbook of Flash hanging by his underwear from the organic adhesive.

After half an hour of wandering around, and Flash subtly (read: not at all) bumping Pete every time he tried to take a picture for the school paper, the group found themselves in a new lab, covered with various stations that seemed to be focused on animals. As Sirius looked around the room at all the weird science stuff going on ('What is that one guy doing with the bats?'), a man in a lab coat came over. The whole class seemed interested in the new visitors, but that was probably because he only had one arm. "Ah, the Midtown class. Welcome to our Bio Lab Division. I'm-"

"Doctor Curt Conners!" Pete blurted out. Blushing at the outburst, he covered his mouth and looked down at his shoes.

Instead of chastising him, Conners laughed good-naturedly. "I seem to have a fan in the audience. Care to introduce yourself, young man?"

Sirius elbowed Pete, startling the brown-haired boy. Looking back up and toward Sirius, he mouthed, "Go for it," with Gwen and Harry sporting synchronized nods of approval.

"W-well…" Pete turned back to the front to look at the patient scientist. "I… I read your study on cross-gene splicing. How you explained sequence combination and the stabilization of amino acids when a host of a different species receives-"

"I know what's in my studies," Conners interrupted, studying Peter with a more focused look. "I asked for your name."

"O-oh!" Embarrassed further, the teen muttered, "P… Peter… Parker."

"Well, Peter Parker," Conners nodded, "I'm impressed you read my reports. Keep that interest and it'll take you far in this field." As Peter seemed to puff up a bit at the praise he so rarely received, Conners turned to the rest of the class. "As for all of you, I think you will find this room of great interest! As you can see around you, Oscorp is taking steps to improve not just technology, but the human body itself."

As he took them around the room, to each table and their corresponding scientist, he gave the kids quick explanations of what they were doing. Sirius' eyes glossed over as his mind could not even hold the basic information, and a quick glance to the side told him Harry was not much better. When they finally reached the end of the room, Sirius finally saw something interesting: a row of displays, each with a spider inside.

"Midtown students," Conners gestured to the weaselly-looking man next to the cages. "This is Dr. Miles Warren. Dr. Warren is studying enhanced arachnids, and the effects on their genetics."

"Spiders?" Gwen glanced at one of the cages, which seemed empty for a moment… until the little creature popped back into existence. Startled, she took a step back, before looking back at Conners. "Why spiders? Can't roaches survive nuclear fallout? Or ants? They have the whole hivemind and everything?"

"Astute question, miss," Warren said, though he looked far from pleased at the call out. "The truth of the matter is that spiders, I find, hold the true secret of gene success. They are superior in the sphere of influence. Hunters that can catch nearly any creature, with traps or webbing. Eyes that can see more than any human could possibly fathom. Traversal abilities that only few animals can mimic."

"Also, Pym Labs has already experimented with ants and roaches," Conners added with a teasing smirk. "Mr. Osborn hates to mimic others." That got a small laugh from the class, though Warren's face looked anything but jovial at the undercut. "Why don't you take a look at the various specimens here before we move on?"

As Conners took a step back, Warren following with some clear choice words on his mind, Sirius stepped up with the others to look at the cages. As the class spread out to gawk at the display, Gwen dragged Peter to a different part of it so he could take some pictures. They even took some goofy ones, with Gwen posing like she was introducing a new car on a game show. (Pete would deny it later, but he was grinning like a loon the whole time Gwen was modeling for the camera.)

That left Sirius and Harry to inspect their section of the exhibit. "Hey," Harry said, as he noticed one of their classmates, another blonde with a fair complexion writing furiously in her notebook as she looked at a particularly slow-moving spider. "Do we need to be taking notes or something for class? They aren't gonna quiz us or something about what we got a tour of, right?"

"I dunno," Sirius shrugged, before smirking as one of the 'super spiders' jumped onto the glass and made Flash jump back with a yelp that had a kid who resembled the studious blonde girl and a larger student with a very prominent stomach laughing at him. "So, your dad's just growing super spiders in Oscorp's basement. How'd you never know about this?"

"I dunno," Harry mimicked, earning a playful punch to the arm. "Hey, I mean it! It's not like Dad tells me the going ons of the business. He'd have to trust me for that."

"Incredible!" The blonde busybody finished her notations, as well as a quick doodle of the target spider. "Spiders are very resilient and adaptable! Any one of these 30 subjects could have endless applications for improving the human genome!"

"It is pretty impressive," a Black American kid with, strangely enough, curly black hair already graying around the ear lobes said, though he was not facing the case or girl. His attention seemed consumed by the door on the far side of the room marked AUTHORIZED PERSONEL ONLY. "29. If this is a public, all-access lab, why do they have restricted areas? Are their experiments so huge, they bleed into the…"

A large kid with a carefree smile lightly elbowed the distracted teen, which at his size nearly tipped his smaller peer over. "Reed, you're thinking out loud again."

"Hm? Sorry, Ben. Hadn't noticed." Not looking the least bit sorry, Reed looked back at the case of arachnids. "No, I was right before."

"Right about what?" the blonde girl asked, clearly put off by the correction.

"About your count, Susan. There are only 29 spiders in that case."

At this point, most of the class took notice of Reed's words. While Peter put his camera away, Gwen spoke up. "And here I thought the 'Mind of Midtown' didn't make mistakes. Check the lab labels, Reed. This display has 30 spiders in it."

"The display may hold 30 spiders," Reed said in that tone that was just shy of condescending, "but I only counted 29."

"Yeah, whatever," Flash snorted. "Ain't no way you counted all those bugs! There's like… a hundred of them jumping all over the place!"

"There are 29 'jumping all over the place,'" Reed corrected, speaking as if it's a fact he's not wrong. "You might be able to count better if you weren't behind Kenny as a shield."

"What'd you say, geek!?" Flash called out from behind the vast back of Kenny Kong, his currently bemused best friend. "I-I ain't scared of no b-bugs! I just… think I can see 'em better from here, is all!"

While Flash did not cower behind his teammate, Sirius did a quick headcount on the spiders behind the glass. "Um, yeah… I'm not sure if I'm counting right… but I am only counting 29."

"Maybe one of them was taken away for…" Gwen trailed off as she looked at Sirius in silent horror. In fact, Sirius noted, everyone suddenly looked at him like he was about to eat them. "Sirius… don't move."

"Hey, what's-" Sirius' question died as he felt a slight weight moving on his hand. Turning his head down very slightly, he looked at his hand… and quickly wished he hadn't. Sitting on the back of his hand was a slightly larger-than-average spider; it had a mostly black body with white sections on its legs and a white stripe down its thorax. A red number '30' was tattooed over the stripe, sticking out like blood on a marble floor. 'It looks like a skunk,' the frozen teen thought unconsciously.

From there, two things quickly happened; the first was Peter – the least athletic of any of them – moved first. If he was going to smack the spider off Sirius, run for help, or just run away would remain a mystery. The minute he moved, he tripped on thin air and fell into Sirius instead. The second thing: the lab spider, clearly startled by the 5-foot meat sack that had shaken his perch clamped on for its life… by sinking its fangs ('Oh, spiders have fangs? Learn something new-') into Sirius' hand!

Pain blossomed when Sirius was bitten, his body seizing as he hit the ground. He heard Peter screaming next to his ear – no, he was over Sirius, saying words he couldn't hear over the screaming. 'Who is doing all that screaming? I'm dying and somebody's screaming… wait. It's me, isn't it?' After what felt like hours of burning, paralyzing agony, Sirius' body just gave up consciousness. As his head lolled to the side, he saw his eight-legged attacker make for the exit, every student jumping out of the way… except Harry, who brought his designer sneaker down on the fleeing creature with a thick squelching noise.

"Oh my God!" Gwen said from what sounded like a mile away to the fading teen. "Somebody call 911!"

As Conners and Warren rushed through the crowd of students, Sirius couldn't help but smile morbidly to himself. 'Better call the morgue first. Pretty sure… I'm de…'

…

Wind brushed Sirius's face, pushing hair in his face. "Urgh… Mom, close the window. I'm trying to…" His eyes opened, and his sentence died on his lips as he looked around him. Instead of the floor of a high-end laboratory, an ambulance, or even a mortician's table, Sirius was floating in a vast space surrounded by blue streams of… something, shooting all around him. The streams went on forever in every direction – up, down, left, right, and directions Sirius didn't think there were names for. "What… the…"

A pulse went through Sirius' body. It was loud, deafening really, and shook him to the bone. It was only when the sound caught up with the feeling that he realized it was someone (something) speaking: Come.

With a yank that felt like something had latched onto his navel, the confused teen flew through the ethereal space in the blink of an eye. All around him, stars, planets, and galaxies flew past him. He was even able to wave his hand through a handful of stardust as zoomed through the nothingness. Finally, his trip ended; stopping suddenly, he found himself floating in front of… a giant green potato? At least, that what it resembled, with a bunch of roots sticking out of it, arching over, and planted into the ground.

You, the God of all root vegetables rumbled, Who are you?

On one hand, Sirius was scared and confused beyond any reasonable doubt! But, his mother had raised him to be polite, and he was mostly sure that counted even when talking to ginormous green gourds. "Um… I'm Sirius. Sirius Moore. Hi." He raised a ghostly hand and waved awkwardly; the Great Spud was unmoved and said nothing in reply. "This is… uh, a nice place you got here. Really roomy, lots of… space and all." The Great Unripe Pumpkin continued to stay silent. "I'm from Earth, so you know. It's nothing like this place, but it was okay… blue and… covered in air and trees. Uh, am I… dead or something?"

Kicking himself for how meek he sounded ('Stupid! Blue and covered in trees?'), Sirius was startled and nearly blown back by the creature's speech. Closer. And closer he did float, now a few inches from the floating island's ground, and a few feet from the large entity. For countless moments, the teen was regarded under unseen, ancient eyes. When he began to fidget, wishing he had his pencil in the afterlife, the titanic tater seemed to hum. You are not the one marked by the Totem. Yet, here you stand. Why have the fates put you on such a path of pain and turmoil?

The teen stopped digging under his fingernails at that statement. "Wait what was that about pain-?"

Suddenly, all around Sirius, golden lines stretched and connected together. The connected patterns looked vaguely like spider's webs, but more… majestic. Where they intersected, he saw faces of people, some he knew and many he did not. You are young, little Spider. Heed these words: your world is now wrapped in the Web of Life, you at its center. Your choices, your actions, will spell the future of your world. Be mindful the paths you walk. The Powers That Be do not make mistakes. If they chose you…

"Web? Center? Powers?" Sirius' head stirred in confusion. "I have no idea what you're saying! Also, how can I 'spell the future of the world,' or whatever, if I'm dead?"

You are in a trance, young Spider. But it is time to wake up.

Sirius brightened up at the idea of not being dead but paused as he finally heard what the talking tuber called him. "Wait, I'm not a-" Sirius' correction went ignored, as the grand root veggie seemed to push his spectral body, sending him flying fast enough that a corona surrounded him. His vision grew bright enough to blind before he once more felt nothing.

A/N: And thus begins the Orgins arc! Feel free to tell me what you think. Also, special mention goes to my fans on Fic (tion).live, where this story originated. Thanks for your support, True Believers!