Chapter 111 - 111

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….

"I'm not afraid of them, if that's what you're asking," she shrugged. "Why?"

"Well... I suddenly needed a very specific spider..."

Does it take a long time to find one specific person in a multi-million city? In theory, yes. In reality, not so much. Especially if you know who you need, and you have an experienced telepath friend with a massive mental amplifier in the basement.

I didn't even have to persuade Charles; it was enough to say that I knew the name of a potential mutant but needed to verify it. In short, the whole thing took an hour, forty minutes of which were spent on conversations and clarifications.

Cerebro located Peter Parker, who had lost his parents and was living with Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York.

However, according to Xavier, he registered as a completely ordinary human with no mutant abilities. Which was for the best, as far as I was concerned.

We then gathered additional information about his school, his grade, his biography, and so on.

Afterward, Yuriko and I drove civilly to Peter's house, located in Queens, and I conducted a little breaking and entering.

The uncle wasn't home in the middle of the workday, but I got a look at the aunt and the "patient" himself.

And, expectedly, recognized them. Compared to the Avengers movies, both were noticeably younger. It was more pronounced on the scrawny eight-year-old kid, but the "slightly over thirty" aunt currently looked to be in her early twenties.

However, I didn't actually need Parker or his relatives, given the capabilities of the Soul Forge, it was simpler for me to grab a couple of hairs from his hairbrush, which I did, after which I quietly and peacefully left the private property.

With the new materials in hand, we returned to the laboratory and continued to work. More precisely, I worked, and Yuriko, like a good assistant and generally kind girl, brought me sandwiches, cookies, coffee, and, of course, cocoa. But back to work and the genome of Spider-Dude.

My theory was elegant and wonderful, but a couple of things didn't fit into it. Two things, to be precise.

First, the highly publicized "Spider-Sense." I don't recall spiders being capable of going full Jedi, in the sense of precognitive danger detection for their own bodies.

The option of banal sensitivity to the slightest vibrations, which is characteristic of spiders, unfortunately didn't hold up here, simply because it didn't explain even half of the "magical" properties attributed to Spider-Man's "Spider-Sense," regardless of which universe variation we take.

And factor number two, the progression of his mutation, leaning heavily toward the animalistic side in most universes where his story was explored more or less fully, was frankly baffling to me.

Why did it happen? What was the cause? Can mutations evolve? Yes, obviously they can, but working at the mutant school, I had so far observed only two variants: developing control and increasing power output.

Both were the result of the kids growing up and training. Meaning, it fit perfectly into the natural development of the organism.

But growing fur and sprouting extra limbs, that's crossing a line, as certain dwarves used to say while digging their tunnels.

But I decided to start from the baseline, the innate. Take a "clean" sample of Peter, activate his mutation, and see who he is in life, meaning, without the spider problem.

The result was... strange. It almost guaranteed an answer to my first question, but it was still strange.

Peter's native mutation was of the psionic type, leaning towards tactile telekinesis and extrasensory perception of the surrounding world.

No physics, no nervous system upgrades, pure psionics, and a rather truncated version at that.

And this was weird.

A "stimulus" cannot radically alter the fundamental nature of the innate X-gene.

If the gene implies physical enhancement, then by introducing hedgehog genes, you'll simply get a reconfiguration of the body based on the hedgehog template, complete with growing quills and utilizing certain genetic "architectural solutions," like a very flexible spine, keen sense of smell, and omnivory.

But if the innate mutation is pure psionics, then you could add dinosaur bones to it, it will have little effect on the final physical parameters, except perhaps decoratively, you'll cover yourself in scales, your teeth will change shape, but the core basis will remain psionic.

But Spider-Man was quite the beefcake. He didn't tear steel with his bare hands, of course, but he more than left dents in concrete with his fist. But Parker had nowhere to get such strength from. At all.

I had to conduct new experiments, this time with spiders, a-a-and... I continued to understand absolutely nothing.

Maybe my Parker was somehow wrong? We shouldn't forget that an evolutionary leap and forced evolution, turning a normal homo into a mutant, is usually triggered by an extreme situation.

If the "talent" doesn't open on its own, it means it's still raw, and a generation or two or three is needed to refine it. Like, for example, in Rogue's case.

Yes, even if the X-gene was a "spiritual platform," it didn't mean it couldn't develop through crossbreeding, solidifying a successful hereditary configuration in the offspring.

Could it be that the local Peter simply didn't inherit the genetics that his more famous alter-ego did, and inherited from his parents only a portion of the baseline genome supposed to be Spider-Man's?

Simply put, he genuinely didn't develop any super strength, agility, nervous system upgrades, and other perks, like the wall-busting ribs for which the original, who left dents with his body on a good half of New York's buildings, was particularly famous.

No matter how I twisted the radiation, I could only induce webbing production and hairy palms. Okay, I'm kidding, the latter was easy to do, but the former gave me trouble. But jokes aside, the questions remained...

My musings were interrupted by a test tube slipping from my hands, containing a sample of Parker's blood mutated along spider lines, just as I was about to put it in the stasis box with the rest of the used samples.

The test tube cheerfully clinked against the floor tile, shattering into shards of glass and leaving a red stain next to my boot.

Heaving a heavy sigh, I looked around for a rag, but only found a napkin from under some buns on a plate.

There was nothing to be done, gathering the scarlet liquid with telekinesis felt like too much effort, so I took the available "tool" and bent down to wipe the spot.

My thoughts were already occupied with something completely different, so the subsequent events caught me off guard.

The moment the napkin touched the blood, a bright black-and-white bubble of light flared under my fingers, however strange that combination might sound.

The flash hit my eyes, and my hand fell through somewhere below the floor, pulling me along with considerable inertia.

I only had time to mentally grunt and jerk my other hand toward Gungnir before I collapsed into a literal circular portal that unfurled under my feet in an instant, along the edges of which black-and-white bubbles continued to flash.

A sensation of flight, during which various incomprehensible cobwebs, skyscrapers, and other rubbish flickered at the edges of my vision, and...

Smack!

I landed nose-first on something hard.

"T-that... was sudden," I had to state, trying to blink my eyes clear.

Something devilish was going on with that last task, during the transit, my senses seemed to have gone mad.

While my vision more or less perceived a kaleidoscope of phantasmagoric images, my perception of magic, the universe around me, even basic spatial awareness, all these senses felt as if they had been shoved into a pot, covered with a lid, and worked over with a jackhammer.

These weren't physical sensations, in the sense that my body didn't feel a stressful shock that would make me want to throw up, but I definitely earned sensory shock with a loss of orientation.

Because of this, even simply leaning on my hands and raising myself off the ground didn't happen right away.

…

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