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The changes in Miles’ life were never steady.
Rarely did he ever find himself gifted with the opportunity to adjust slowly, to deliberate on a choice, or to predict what was about to happen.
Change was the sudden stab of a spider’s fangs, the thrill of electricity in his veins, the freezing rush of air sweeping past as he leapt from the Chrysler building, the blinding light of an explosion.
It was, then, not very surprising that this change came in another moment of rushing, heart-stopping adrenaline.
One minute, the fight was pure familiarity, his venom singing forth from his hands and tearing into his enemies; the next, it was something much different. Something much more powerful.
Miles felt something click, and then the air around him was awash in the brilliant blue of his revelation.
The remaining thugs were thrown aside in a wide radius, knocked unconscious in an instant. Miles paused, hands falling back to his sides as the blue faded. He lifted one hand to his lenses, staring in wonder at the jagged streaks of cyan light sinking back into his skin.
“Whoa.”
He glanced up, eyes wide as he met his mentor’s gaze. Pete seemed almost hesitant to come closer, lingering a few feet away.
“I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“Me neither,” Miles breathed. “It’s...why was it blue?”
“I think it was more than just a color change,” Peter indicated their fallen enemies. “You nearly sent them through the walls.”
Miles pulled his hands in closer, glancing back down at them with a different feeling growing in his chest.
“I didn’t...mean to.”
“Hey, don’t worry.” Pete was suddenly at his side, laying a confident hand on his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
Miles glanced up at him, dropping his hands. He nodded, feeling a hint of relief.
“Ok. Yeah. Definitely not the weirdest thing to happen, right?”
“Not by a long shot.”
Two weeks and some very thorough testing later, the final, relieving determination was that his powers were simply evolving further.
(The singed state of Pete’s suit after sparring indicated they might need to evolve their suit designs right along with it. Miles swore he would never delete the picture he had snapped of Peter’s expression as his mentor realized what his enhanced bioelectricity had done to his hair.)
For Peter, change was often something slow.
It was long hours trying to find the right layout of his latest gadget. It was the way MJ’s glances had subtly softened after high school graduation. It was little differences in the lab that were so easily overlooked, but had spelled out the truth all along. It was the slow, agonizing sound of a dying breath.
Like the others, this change took time, too.
“I...don’t think I could do it.” he said quietly, staring distantly over the murky water below.
MJ took a long sip of her coffee, swinging her legs a little bit in the open air below. The hint of warmth in the spring weather made taking a coffee break on top of the Brooklyn bridge surprisingly pleasant.
“You don’t think you could, or don’t think you should?”
Peter worried his lower lip between his teeth. “I could. Maybe. Or maybe I would just screw it up, end up making another monster.”
“You won’t.”
He glanced over at her. “How do you know?”
“Because,” she said, turning to face him more fully. “There’s nothing in you that wants to use it selfishly. You would only use it for all the right reasons. Pretty incorruptible if you ask me.”
Peter blinked, swallowing past the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat.
“That’s...wow.”
“Wait, did I finally just figure out how to render you speechless?” she smirked, and he could see an affectionate light in her eyes.
“Something like that,” he said as he leaned in.
That night, Peter gathered up the many stacks of salvaged notes and blueprints from Octavius Labs, splaying them out as neatly as possible on his meager desk space.
He spent a minute just staring at them. Remembering.
Then, he sighed, stretched his fingers out, and set to work.
“What’re you working on?” Miles asked a few weeks later, one leg in his apartment and the other out as he sat precariously on the windowsill.
“Nothing much,” Peter shrugged, pushing aside a careful sketch as he searched for a different blueprint. “Just a side project.”
“Doesn’t look like a side project,” Miles said from where he had suddenly appeared right next to him, grabbing hold of the paper.
Peter bit back a curse. The kid had an unnatural talent for managing to sneak up on him.
“It’s not done,” he said, making an attempt to pull the sketch out of Miles’ hands.
“It’s...arms,” Miles ignored him, tracing over the depiction of the four additional limbs with a fascinated look. “Like an actual spider; eight of them.”
Peter sighed. “Yeah. I’m...working on getting the neural interface to work.”
“Oh, right.” Miles glanced at him, expression unreadable. Peter felt his stomach do an uneasy twist.
“You could’ve told me, you know,” the teenager told him as he placed the sheet back on his desk.
“Well, I know it’s—”
“I could’ve helped with the robotics in the limbs!” Miles crossed his arms, mimicking a pout before grinning.
Peter nearly slumped in relief.
“I’m happy to go over it with you?” he offered. “You’re welcome to double check me. I came up with something pretty different from the last ones.”
Miles grinned brightly. “Yeah, man, that’d be great!”
They spent the next few hours poring over messy notes and schematics, pausing to argue over more efficient builds.
(In the end, it turned out Miles had him beat in at least two areas of design efficiency. Apparently robotics club taught you a thing or two.)
Peter found himself smiling through the process, some of the severity of the burden on his shoulders lifted by Miles’ company.
He wasn’t completely alone in figuring this out.
Two months later, he ran a hand over the back of his neck, the slight scar from the tiny chip he had inserted the day before already taken care of by his healing factor. He felt a mix of both trepidation and excitement.
Getting the chip in seemed easy in comparison to facing the inevitable of actually trying the arms out.
The design was significantly less invasive than last time, narrowed down to an unnoticeable implant that worked more like a wireless function than a port. (He was pretty sure Miles had coined it “Bluetooth arms” at some point.) Of course, there still had to be some form of connection with the brain, but this time, there wasn’t any chance of the interface controlling him instead of vice versa.
Peter grabbed his phone, hesitating a second before clicking on the contact.
“I’ve gotten the chip in place,” he said as soon as Miles picked up the call, staring at the completed arms laid out on the table. “Just figured I’d let you know I’m about to try it out. You know, in case I...go crazy. Or something.”
He hadn’t told MJ he was doing it today. Every single simulation of the design had run flawlessly, with no indication of the issues with the last build.
Still. He didn’t want her here if he couldn’t handle it.
“Wait five minutes,” Miles said immediately.
“Uh, why?”
“Because I’m gonna be there when you test it.”
Peter paused, a protest building in his throat. Then, he realized that it...wasn’t a bad idea.
“Alright.”
Miles appeared at his window a moment later, pulling his mask off and glancing from him to the arms he was now maneuvering onto his back.
(He had plans to look into a less awkward and more mobile design. Maybe something involving nanotech? Regardless, he just needed to see if this setup would even work.)
“You absolutely sure it’s ready?”
“As sure as I’m gonna be,” Peter replied, glancing at the thin metal arms now mounted behind him like a seriously unwieldy backpack.
He took a nervous breath.
“I’m right here to help, Pete,” Miles reminded him.
Right.
He gave his younger friend a smile and a nod, then pressed one of the tiny buttons concealed under the arms.
For a second, it felt like nothing had happened.
Peter frowned slightly—then couldn’t help but flinch as the arms snapped to life, curling from lifeless pieces of metal to stand as part of him.
“Whoa.” Miles breathed, and Peter glanced over at him, his own grin a little less awed and a bit more nervous.
That was me, he realized sadly as Miles took a step closer.
“Hang on, give me a sec to get used to it,” he said, because, yeah: suddenly having four additional limbs to control felt weird.
His brain was adjusting to it slowly. Peter tested bending each limb individually, then the top two, then the bottom two.
“I...I think my brain knows that they’re...not real,” he spoke his thoughts aloud. “Otto always seemed to feel like they were part of him. These just feel like...a machine. Not part of me.”
“But you still can control them?” Miles asked, fascinated.
“Yeah.” Peter gestured for him to clear some space, then whipped the arms forward with him as he tried out a simple attack maneuver.
“That is so awesome,” Miles beamed. “Hey, you don’t happen to have a spare chip around, do you? ‘Cause I wouldn’t mind—”
“No,” Peter replied firmly, jabbing one authoritative spider-limb in his direction. “Not until you’re much, much older. And I’ve had plenty of time to make sure this isn’t secretly killing me.”
Miles slumped in defeat, but perked up again as a thought occurred to him.
“So... if this does work out... Does that mean you’ve pretty much invented the ideal prosthetic?”
“Yeah. It does.” Peter turned away, reading through the data that had begun to feed in on his laptop.
No sign of anything awry. The arms didn’t seem interested in trying to alter his brain functions.
“That’s kind of an underwhelming response to solving an astronomically huge problem.” Miles raised a brow.
Peter gave a dry chuckle. “Maybe. I guess it was always the goal; what Otto and I always wanted.”
“I think he’d be proud of you.”
Peter glanced back at him, feeling a wave of several conflicting emotions wash over him.
“I hope so.” he said quietly.
New York’s dark underbelly wasn’t ready for them.
They had both been more than capable of holding their ground before, of course. But now?
Now, they were a force to be reckoned with.
Miles allowed his instincts to guide him as his venom flashed from orange to blue, weaving between his adversaries with a more practiced, confident air.
He didn’t even have to look behind him to see the thug Pete had just tossed toward him, moving to include the new target in the burst of energy he unleashed a second later.
It hadn’t taken Peter very long to get good with those additional limbs. Like, really good.
Miles stood from the crouch he had fallen into, ignoring the four spasming goons crashing unconscious to the ground around him. He watched his mentor push aside two gang members with his metal arms, while taking down a third one in a complicated twisting maneuver.
Peter righted himself, tossing a web-bomb and trapping one, then shooting a web-line at the other, making the guy stumble forward. Instinctively, Miles darted forward, mimicking the motion on the guy’s legs.
They twisted their wrists in synchrony, slamming the thug down into the pavement.
For a split second, their eyes met under the masks. Judging by the way Peter’s lenses narrowed, he was grinning.
Miles returned the gesture, before the two of them turned, back to back as more gang members filed in from either side of the alley.
“Ready for round two?” Peter asked.
Miles’ venom flared through his veins, his hands beginning to spark a fiery combination of orange and blue. The light from his hands mixed with the faint blue glow from Peter’s mechanical arms behind him, the metal limbs curling towards the goons in a clear challenge.
“Like you had to ask.”
They lunged into the fight, ready to take on anything—
—and blissfully unaware of the gleaming eyes watching on from the shadows.