Here we go.

It was interesting, to say the least, how I was slowly starting to rely less on my Spider Sense for where to aim my webs. I couldn't tell if it was solely because I was learning, if there was some kind of blending between my conscious and subconscious, or if utilizing said Sense was just becoming that instinctual. I glanced to the side as an orange shape flew higher than it should have. With a quick web zip, I pulled myself lower to the ground, the perfect height to catch it from a swing. A few quick zips from my free hand to let me bleed off momentum, and I landed on the top of the basketball court's fencing, looking around curiously for which group had almost lost their ball. When someone raised their hand I nodded and tossed the ball towards them, giving a two finger salute before zipping off to continue my 'patrol'.

Tomorrow was Christmas. Normally Aunt May would have sent us on a sizeable grocery run over the past couple days, but with that not being a possibility, the task had fallen to me, with Uncle Ben as my chauffeur. At any other point in time, maybe Cindy would have been the one to take charge of the shopping and cooking, but the bite was still affecting her. I'd dare say she was getting worse, but really that was just her giving up in a sense. She'd graduated from earbuds to a full headset, alongside basically always wearing a pair of sunglasses, and was generally dressed like she was sick. It really was a shame there wasn't anything I could do for her aside from making sure she was always stocked up on extra strength medication.

I hummed along to the Eurodance beat playing in my earbuds. My patrol today in Queen's commercial district was really more just getting some exercise in and general web swinging practice more than actively looking for crimes to stop. Not to say that I wasn't doing that either, but there was just a difference between aiming your webs at the tops of buildings instead of lower down, where your swings would let you be in easy shout from the streets.

I landed on the edge of a building with a tiny huff, crouching down so that I had four points of contact, becoming still as a statue as I let the breeze ruffle my clothes. Honestly, wearing these clothes instead of a full suit, I really did feel like a kid. It definitely made switching from civilian to hero as easy as changing out a few things, but it just felt so— plain. There was no flare, no presentation. Dressed like this, and while I didn't mind it being so, was basically saying that anyone could become Spider-Man. I stood up and slid my hands into my pant pockets, staring at the skyline of Manhattan.

For not the last time, the weight of everything started to settle around me. Aunt May, my and Cindy's bite, the fact that I was actually Spider-Man and that some names I recognized as future Villains were already around. I took a quick breath and let it out slowly. Nope, a breakdown could wait for later, be it as the problems fully arose or when I wasn't just trying to have a chill day. "Maybe I'll try doing some diving today," I muttered to myself, setting off once again.

/ - /

The bite was as much a blessing as it was a curse, though Cindy still felt it was more curse than blessing.

If she focused on something, and narrowed her eyes just the right way, the object of her attention became magnified. Though maybe magnified wasn't the right word. It was more akin to becoming higher quality than everything else around it. The writings on her page? She was able to see the spread of the graphite. A given area of her ceiling? Every bump and groove of the material as if it was no more than reading distance. The transition from heightened focus back to normal vision was a pain, but considering the past few days, what wasn't?

Cindy let out a slow breath and leaned back in her seat, involuntarily pursing her lip at the sound of her chair squeaking. The pages of one of her spare notebooks was littered with random formulas and equations— anything and everything that came to mind. Beside her, two pencils lay broken, shattered beyond any means of use from the flinches that sudden sounds incited. Four days since she was bitten; the aches and pains came and went without rhyme or reason. The usual sounds she came to expect from her home no longer caused problems, but sudden shouts or squeals from vehicles had her jerking to face the source. Having someone to focus on made things significantly easier, though she wasn't sure why that extra source of stimuli was a positive instead of compounding negative.

She sighed once more, reaching for her earbuds. MJ and Peter were downstairs, and she didn't fancy staying cooped up in her room for much longer. Seriously, how did Peter manage to do this all on his own?

Walking down the stairs was another issue. She had no reasons to run down them since the bite, and so she never had to risk leaving imprints of her hand on the railing, nor potentially damaging one of the steps, but it was still a fear in the back of her mind, as clear as any memory of the various pencils she'd shattered in her hand.

Cindy paused and narrowed her eyes at Peter's shirt. There was a logo on it of some indie band just a few years before either of their time, and the pattern was starting to fade with the years. The wear and tear was in line with his usual movements, fading the most around his stomach where he'd constantly be leaning up against tables, as well close to his shoulders where the straps of his bag would constantly be rubbing against him.

She blinked, letting the rest of the world return to focus. MJ was busy watching an episode of some trashy reality romance, and beside her, with her legs resting on his, Peter doodled away at something that looked suspiciously vigilante in origin. She settled on the arm rest next to him, lifting her sunglasses up with a finger to better look at what he was doing.

"Peter got irritated with some comments on the latest posts about Spiderman—"

"Hyphen," they both said at the same time.

MJ stared at them each in bewilderment.

"It's the way you pronounced it," Cindy answered. "You're saying it all as one word. You need a bit of enunciation on 'Man' so it doesn't come out as 'Men'."

Peter nodded, still not looking up from his piece. "Continue?"

MJ huffed, a stray bang shifting from the air. "So Spider. Man.—" neither of them said anything for the audible pause between the two words— "has been showing up a lot lately on socials, and the whole county is talking about anything and everything about him. The biggest topic these days is what kind of technology he uses for his webs, and Peter here," she wiggled a foot, "started being a mega nerd and started jotting down theories and designs on what Mister Red and Blue might be using for his web shooters."

"I'm leaving the webbing material open for interpretation at the moment, especially since there's evidence of two different mixtures being used, so right now I'm focusing on what kind of designs he might be hiding underneath his sleeves. They can't be too bulky because the videos he shows up in have his sleeves around the right size for him, and I can't imagine something with a lot of tubing going down his arms would work either."

Peter tilted his paper towards her, a handful of designs that looked more like concept art rather than raw theories scattered across it. "Aside from some of the patterns on his clothes that can charitably be called a spider, he doesn't really have anything going for his whole theme aside from the webs and crawling on walls. I imagine the spider theme comes from web shooters— which we never really see, and I believe that the extra tubing lines are what let him figure out the different compositions from wherever the fluid containers are."

He let out a tiny huff, one remarkably similar to the one that MJ gave. "He's honestly a bit of a genius though. Or at least, whoever's behind his webs. We have silly string as a proof of concept for fluid to solid, but whatever design is behind making something able to fly as far as they do alongside maintaining their tensile strength and general stickiness is actually insane. It must still be in the early stages though, either his production of the fluid or his stamina in general, because Spider-Man is only ever seen out and about for a couple of hours at a time." Peter moved his notebook back onto MJ's legs, turning the page before resuming work on a different design, this one detailing a single design complete with notes about fluid compression and something to do with nozzle sizes.

"You know, Pete, if it wasn't for how much you criticize him, I think you'd be Spider-Man's biggest fanboy."

"His technologies have an interesting premise, and the science behind it all is one giant puzzle," he answered MJ. "I won't talk about his practices or methods as a vigilante. You've heard me talk about that enough, plus he still seems new to all this."

Cindy snorted and moved to sit on the chair next to MJ, raising a brow at the younger woman.

MJ shrugged ambivalently.

She rolled her eyes, making sure to exaggerate the motion so that it could still be seen even with her sunglasses.

MJ for her part, sniffed in mock offense, planting her elbow on the armrest and propping up her head as she returned her attention back to the trashy pseudo-romance show.

"Got any ideas on the composition of his webs, though?"

"A few. Supposedly the police and some other alphabet soup groups have been trying to investigate his webbing, but they all dissipate after a couple hours, especially the white webs. The private sector probably has a better idea about it all, and there's been plenty of speculation from the public sector. Video hosting sites are honestly plagued with theory videos about his webbing, and I've had to cull my algorithm a crap ton to get back to my usual videos."

"Pete, have I ever mentioned how old you sound sometimes?" MJ said.

"Handful of times," he responded without looking away from his work. "Bit less these days. Probably because I'm getting closer to the ages I hung out with back then."

For not the last time, Cindy wondered if letting Peter hang out with all of her friends was a good thing or not.

/ - /

I stared at the designs spread out in front of me. I knew that theoretically I was supposed to be able to make some extremely streamlined and inconspicuous designs, but I only had mutterings of where I was supposed to start. It was easy enough to theorize a design for the release system. Dual buttons designed to curve into the palm to allow variance for web composition, tubing that curved around the wrist to the various canisters and containers for propulsion and fluid itself; annotations regarding design notes and whatnot.

The problem really was the web fluid itself. Doctor Garfield's revised formula was fine in a theoretical setting, but sourcing the chemicals and creation process was the issue. It had to be cheap and simple enough that one wouldn't need lab precision to produce everything; had to be non-viscous enough that it wouldn't clog any of the tubing without regular maintenance; the propulsion system had to be powerful enough that it could fire building height for meaningful amounts of swinging, but at the same time weak enough that a catastrophic failure wouldn't be lethal.

I huffed and crossed my arms. This was honestly beyond me. And there was no proper starting points, either. I needed a lab. I needed testing materials. I needed Doctor Garfield's research notes or even something to point me in the right direction. I needed— I turned toward my open door, Cindy pausing mid-knock.

"Pretty ballsy there, Pete."

I raised a brow, arms still crossed.

"I mean it." She crossed her arms in turn and leaned against the wall. "Talking about Spider-Man stuff right in front of MJ like that? I'm honestly amazed no one's checked out your wrists yet."

I waved a hand. "None of us are really like that. Plus, I've gotten enough scrapes before that no one bats an eye if I'm scratched up."

She walked over to me, loosely boxing me in as she looked over my design notes. "You need Oscorp tech," she said bluntly.

I stared up at her.

She waved a hand towards it all. "After the New Year, next time you come in, see if you can't borrow someone's credentials. There's already a gas powered propulsion system in the works for some space related tech, and if you look back a couple months ago, there was a few projects regarding liquid-solid transitioning for something similar to fantasy bio-foam for open wounds." She lowered her sunglasses, a bit of necessity with the house lights even in the middle of the night, and narrowed her eyes; less of a squint and more of a thoughtful focus. "3D print or do you think you can fabricate this stuff on your own?"

I leaned back in my chair. "Ideally self-fab. Higher quality stuff or more specialized things could probably get away with laboratory technology, but the bare minimum needs to be able to be made with household equipment." I leaned back farther, balancing my chair on its back legs for no other reason than I could. That really was the painful part. Web fluid able to be fired a sufficient range while still being able to be made from store bought materials. Tubing and nozzles couldn't be to machined tolerances, chemical composition of the fluid couldn't be things I had to distill or extract beyond a simple bunsen burner. I huffed and lowered myself back to a proper sitting position. "You doing okay?"

Cindy glanced toward me.

"I'm pretty sure I had all the benefits of puberty to thank for how easy my period was, but you don't really have that. You have to go through it all on your own without any extra hormones coursing through your body."

She stared at me, her face becoming blank.

I stared back. To anyone else, the silence might have been awkward. For us, it was a game of chicken. To date, I had two wins over her, and we had about as many total draws as we did wins. It was a dog barking in the distance (about two streets over; the old girl barked at just about anything that rustled against the fencing of her house) that broke the silence, Cindy turning to look back at my papers.

"It's getting better." A draw. A victory could only come if neither of us were interrupted by anything. "What kind of senses do you have enhanced?"

"Just hearing and touch. Pinpointing the source of things is pretty easy, and textures and temperatures of things are more—" I paused and tilted my head side to side, searching for the word. "They're more prominent. Softer things are more distinct, and things that are rougher can end up feeling more like sandpaper." I frowned. "Honestly I'm kind of glad I haven't had to work with sandpaper yet. Makes me feel like I might have to end up using gloves or something like when I do dishes."

"It's vision and hearing for me." She flopped down onto my bed, splaying her limbs out lazily. "Focusing on something makes it look like the stereotypical zoom and enhance from crime shows, and I'm able to really appreciate higher quality headsets now. If I had the singing voice for it, I could probably pitch match just about anything."

"Huh." I stared at her for a few moments. "You think it's because of our different DNA?"

She turned to look at me.

"We both got bit by the same spider, so that explains the similarities. Astronomical lottery of us not being horrifically mutated aside, is it because of our different DNA that's the cause for the changes manifesting differently?"

She turned to look back at my ceiling. "Could be." Methodically, Cindy raised an arm, curling in her middle and ring fingers. "I'm stealing your bed tonight."

I glanced at her pyjamas. "If I leave a drool stain on your pillow, I'm not apologizing."

"Ditto," she said simply, pulling one of my extra pillows to her stomach. "Turn off the light?"

"Yeah, yeah." I gathered all my papers up and set them aside before grabbing my sleepwear from the foot of my bed. "You already take your meds for the night?"

"Mm."

I sighed and kissed the tips of my middle and pointer fingers, pressing them against Cindy's forehead. "Jerk."

"Dumbass."

Next chapter will be released May 7th.