Peter Parker – full-time nephew, part-time student, part-time superhero, full-time boyfriend – was no longer sure if he was more Spider-Man or Man-Spider at this point.
An evolutionary drug – that was what he had bought(he refused to acknowledge the horrific amount) but it wasn't after taking it that he realized that he must've read the summarized version of the terms and conditions of the Trigger drug.
He heavily underestimated what a drug aptly named 'Trigger' could do, and also the scale at which evolution took place.
He had molted. Gods, he had shed his skin and had turned his room into one massive cocoon of webs. According to Gwen, he had been in a trance when he unleashed a spontaneous web bomb and then subsequently wrapped himself up in one.
It was pure luck that Aunt May never thought to check up on them for the whole day, and there was little Gwen could do if she did given that she was also stuck in his webs. She talked his ears off for that one more than anything else that happened.
He could shoot webs out of his hand now. Yeah, that was something that happened.
All those time spent tinkering with his webshooters and now he could do anything he needed his webshooters for – cluster webs, web bombs, extra sticky webs and everything – and not only were his biological webs magnitudes more stronger, more durable and more long lasting, he could also configure them somewhat. All he needed to was think what type of webs he wanted and his body took care of the rest.
Frankly speaking, he never knew it was even possible that webs could be that strong. That was how ridiculous his new webs were. He could wrap a falling building with it and it wouldn't even hit the stress or strain limit.
Webs aside, it looked like the drug took everything he already was and dialed it up to 10.
His new baseline was enhanced to the point that it might as well be his former upper limit. His sense of touch was so acute and amplified that he could read the shape of vibrations of his entire neighborhood if he focused enough, same with his sense of smell and the rest of his basic senses. He also now had night and heat vision. Trippy, but cool as hell.
His strength had risen considerably that he no longer had a frame for his upper limit. He could pick up cars before but now he could juggle them freely while blindfolded. He had gone to the docks at night and against every bright idea he had, he had lifted an inland standard cargo ship weighing over two dozen tons and while the weight had been there, he knew he could do even better.
Recalibrating his strength for everyday use had been a whole slew of problems on its own. Gwen had looked sympathetic when he couldn't return her hug in the morning because hormones, excitement and uncontrolled super strength was the kind of disaster J. J. Jameson would have plastered on Wednesday's front page.
Gwen had been majorly instrumental in helping him get a handle on his new evolution by sourcing out the abandoned warehouse he had retrofitted(who else was going to do it?) for their tests.
He caught a bullet with his hands. Bullets actually.
Back pedal a bit, the obvious culprit for this was none other than his trusty old partner, Mr. Tingles aka Spider Sense. His basic senses and reflexes had grown so high that all his spider sense did was piggyback off the new foundation to do what it always did, except that what it always did was not bordering on precognition. Now it did.
He could even read-feel the nature of the incoming danger moments before the action was taken, especially in close proximity. He could tell exactly where the bullets were going, almost see it in fact, and his hands had simply whipped out and plucked all four of them out of their travel path.
Any time his spider sense was pinged, it was like his other senses come together and try to and try to simulate a visual interpretation a second or two before the danger is enacted.
It was crazy. Gwen said as much, right before she emptied a clip in his direction. He caught those, had enough time in the split of a second to tell that her trigger finger wasn't fast enough for a rapid fire, and closed his eyes to catch the last two bullets.
He could even react to incoming danger even while sleeping .
Yeah, crazy.
Apart from that, he also had retractable fangs and claws that were strong enough to tear through steel. Sometimes his skin also hardened like a fleshly carapace to help absorb impacts that struck his body.
Also he suspected that he had some increased connections with spiders since it seemed that those little buggers were suddenly everywhere he went, even turning his room to their colony all the while keeping clear from Aunt May's notice.
They were still figuring things out so he was sure that he would understand what was happening soon.
Oh, he also had a paralytic venom in his fangs that he already swore he would never use. What would people say if Spider-Man started biting people? What would Jameson say?
'Masked Menace preys on the blood of innocent victims! Vampire, Ghoul or something equally monstrous?' – probably something like that, but a lot worse.
All these plus an accelerated regeneration factor gave him the kind of confidence he never knew he had. The hidden fear he had of the Green Goblin was gone and regardless of whatever the madman was doing in hiding, Spider-Man was waiting to put an end to his terror once and for all.
…. Now if only he could stop dreaming of glowing webs every other night.
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… .....
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Now the general consensus when it came to Peter Parker and how lucky he was… well it was divided— and that was putting it politely.
He should have known, and by knowing shouldn't have said it out loud how confident he felt about fighting the Green Goblin because it took less than 48 hours for the universe to fact check his statement.
It took seeing the Goblin once again with his new enhanced senses for him to confirm that the Goblin DID know who he was.
It should have been obvious that his spider sense would register the faithfulness of his secret identity and the soft hum of the tingling at the neck of his spine alerted him of that inconspicuous breach.
(He was now able to, at a low instinctual level, identify/interpret some of the calls of his spider sense. He had no idea how that worked but it was a nice little fun fact.)
"Hello there, Spider-Man~"
"Whoa, what the hell did you do to your voice? It's like there's three of you." He chuckled. "Big Mean Green down with a cold?"
That seemed to land squarely as he could see the genuine double take the Goblin did before zooming at him on his glider which he easily flipped over.
If it was anyone else he would have been sympathetic since he knew what a scratchy throat felt like, but this was the Goblin. A cold was the least he deserved for all the crimes he had done.
Even with his sprawling confidence, Peter could feel his heart beating fast at the thought of fighting his archnemesis— he hadn't decided that, everybody else did, even the Bugle.
He zipped over a billboard as he swung tightly to dodge the homing pumpkins on his tail. The Goblin dipped under the billboard in pursuit while the pumpkins went sideways.
He twisted upside down and swung with one of his legs stuck to a web giving him a clear focused vision of the pumpkins, which he then shot with spurts of webs that caused them to explode. He shot another web at the Goblin, who clearly didn't expect how fast his webs now were, and webbed up his face.
He yanked the web and plucked the Goblin from his glider and tagged a web bomb to the careening glider. The punch he invested into the Goblin's face failed as the man's unholy reaction brought both of his arms to divest the blow.
The Goblin grabbed him as they entered a freefall and tried headbutting him but he easily avoided it – his senses working on overtime and trying their best to read the anomaly in front of him – and crawled over him to the Goblin's raging indignation and kicked off him to swing away.
His webs snapped midswing but it was the glider in fire that caught his mild surprise. "Huh. Didn't know it could do that."
He perched sideways on a building and watched as the Goblin slowly rose up on his glider. That thing was really annoying.
"That thing is really annoying." He grumbled.
"You," the Goblin started slowly and once again welcomed Peter's ears(?) to that strange reverberation in his voice. "You've changed. Good~"
Something about the way he said it rubbed Peter wrong, but then again so did everything the man did.
Yup!
A quick shot snatched his sideways as the Goblin barely missed him with a surprise acceleration. His spider sense was starting to ring louder and he could almost smell something wafting over the Goblin's armor.
"Good." He flipped away from the building at, again, another sudden burst of speed and a more steady voice. "I wouldn't want you to die this soon. Keep crawling, SPIDER MAN."
It felt as if something had taken over the Goblin he knew and whatever it was, it was madness behind a mask.
He no longer hesitated and jumped in while the Goblin cackled and rushed at him.
He caught the Goblin's hand while the Goblin caught his as the glider took them on a rollercoaster flight.
"You've gotten stronger too… good." The reverberations were barely there as the Goblin slowly pushed his hand away while he held his in place.
"It's a spider thing. You… you wouldn't get it." He shot another web at the Goblin who simply tilted his head to dodge, and acting on instinct(and the tingles), he used both hand locks as leverage and lifted off the border to and kicked the Goblin in the chest and sent him flying off his glider for the second time.
His strength had grown so high that even against the Goblin he was slowly lifting the cap and checking out how much he could handle. So far he had gone double his previous high bar, which was not a good sign.
The glider was spinning haphazardly as it tried to shake him off as it returned to its owner but it barely fazed him. It released a puff of sleeping gas, and while Peter doubted it affecting him due to his increased resistances, his mask easily blocked it out.
Next the glider caught on fire which his suit once again ignored, but seeing the pattern, he clawed his fingers and lanced his arm straight through the glider. He jumped off the glider but not before splashing it with a few web bombs.
He dived down towards the Goblin who was running up the side of a building before jumping off with thrusters flaring under his boots.
"SPIDERMAN!"
"It's Spider-Man!"
The air exploded and the surrounding windows shattered as they collided. Their blows came down and across with increasing punishment until they both crashed into the ground, but even that did not stop their fight.
As they fought, Peter's senses rang and focused on the Green Goblin and his glowing eyes. He was growing more sinister as they fought, increasingly so after they landed on the ground.
The Goblin's posture was now hunched but his punches were growing more painful. Stronger too, yes, but even more painful than the blows had any right to be.
Then he noticed the Goblin's breathing, the snarling and the croaking of the armor as it slowly shifted to accommodate an increasing mass. The haze around the Goblin, a depiction of his enhanced spider senses, he could feel were connected to the fleeing and screaming civilians. No, it was draining something from them.
Emotions. He was getting slowly used to getting a feel from them now that his senses were what they were. He still couldn't read complicated or blended emotions, but strong ones? Negative strong ones? Those he could tell easily.
And right now, the fog of fear and hate, even the small stream of pain, were flowing into the Goblin.
"You're feeding on their pain." He said slowly as the realization settled.
"I'm devouring it!" He laughed maniacally.
His brain quickly slid in the new facts into his past experiences. The bombs, the kidnappings, the loud laughs every time he was present, broadcasting Spider-Man's defeat – everything was fear mongering.
"You're not afraid." The Goblin said as the laugh wore off.
The newspapers, the public outcry, the whispers – the Goblin had turned the city into a festering ground for negative emotions that he was steadily supplementing. A man—a monster that fed off the dark side of the emotional spectrum, and enhanced himself with it, and if Peter was right, could magnify its effect on people.
"Ever been to a Halloween party?" Peter's mouth supplied automatically.
His glider was gone. This was hands down his best chance to stop the Goblin.
The moment the thought settled, Peter swung at him but was caught by the Goblin who reacted just as quick only for his torso to contort and drive a backheel straight to the side of the Goblin's face that lifted him off the ground.
There had to be some kind of limit to it, right? Range perhaps?
He webbed up two poles, drew the webs taut and catapulted himself legs first into the torso of the airborne Goblin, sending him flying higher.
Another web swing catapulted him again and this time he webbed up the Goblin and spun so fast that the Goblin shot into the distance the moment he let go.
Another fun fact: With his new webs he could travel four times his previous distance in half the time.
The city turned into a blur below them as Peter denied the Goblin any balance as he swung and hit him like a yoyo towards the nearest nonpopulated part of the city he could remember.
Fighting the Goblin like this, only now did he realize just how much that drug had changed him. Between his natural durability, his suit, his hardening skin and the tiny Impact Dial he had somehow managed to fit in – he was shrugging off a huge amount of every blow he received.
The speed, the reflexes, the enhanced senses that bordered on precognition and the sheer bulwark of force he constantly regulated – it was spectacular.
He felt like he had become the ultimate version of the Spider-Man he used to be.
There.
An old abandoned estate that was being swallowed by the small forest behind it. He clenched his fist and struck the cracked armor of the Goblin with a loud boom that sent him tearing into the ground below like a bullet.
He wasn't done as webs sprawled over the Goblin and held him in place. Two strings of webs latched the ground on both sides of the Goblin, and reminiscent of a red blur, Peter shot off his slingshot and dug both feet into the Goblin that the concrete below them cracked widely.
He ignored the wheezing man below him and forcefully ripped the cracked helmet off his head only for him to stumble backwards as a strong wave of nausea hit him the moment he saw the smiling bleeding face of the man under the Goblin mask.
"No…." He gasped in horror while Norman Osborn, Harry's father, laughed between painful coughs.
"H-hello….kurgh…. Peter. Surprise!.... Hehehe," those eyes only showed a steeping madness. "Fancy meeting you here—hahahahah!"
The laugh was just as mad, taking in unmistakable delight at Peter's horror.
"Skipping school now, are we? What will your poor Aunt May say? Hehehe. What about you little girlfriend?"
Peter tore him out of the webs and held him up by his neck. "If you dare come near—"
"What will you do?" Norman cut him off, a mocking bloody smile on his face. "Kill me? You don't have the spine to do what's necessary to keep them safe. Safe from me."
In his anger, he didn't know when he used Norman to tear through two walls and smash him into the third, hand held threateningly tight against the mad man's neck.
"You'll… let me… go.." Norman croaked out. "I'll… tell everyone… identity…. Then… come… for them."
"Your choice…. Peter." The laugh was what scared Peter the most and, unbidden, the nightmares he'd suffered from the Goblin's fear toxin came back with an intense clarity.
The vivid images of everyone he's ever known and cared about in multiple horrific states, each one progressively worse than the last – all showing the depth of the Green Goblin's depravity.
Peter almost forgot how to breathe as the wave of despair threatened to drown him.
"I wonder how they'll scream. Better than you, that's for sure." Norman's voice licked against his ears. "There's nothing you can do, Peter Parker."
At that moment his senses screamed so loud that they stabbed straight through his fears and even before the haze disappeared, he heard it. Something whirring silently behind him.
The Goblin's glider. It was already behind him.
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A/N: I'm a coward, I know. I really don't know which ending to go for. The canon ending(Tobey) or Peter stopping the glider last second. Obviously the second is the Spider-Man choice, if he has the power to, but that also brings the problem of a loose suped-up Goblin. I'll make my choice by the next Peter chapter, I hope.
The floor is yours.
I still haven't seen Brand New Day and I'm hating every moment of it, especially since my mates are so eager to spoil. This week for sure.
(Also, this chapter takes place right before the little alien squabble that happened in the last few chapters.)