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Spider powers. Behind this phrase, there hid an entire world, and Gwen was its classic, almost exemplary, representative. There was no side electrokinesis or adaptive camouflage in her. There were no absurd twenty tons of lifting capacity, which were attributed to some Spider versions from other realities, though, if she gathered all of her strength, she definitely could lift a car. And she had no organic webbing. Instead, in her head, like a flash of insight, a couple of days after the bite, an elegant chemical formula was born. In itself, this was an anomaly, one that hinted at something greater than a simple mutation.
The physical test results lined up on the monitor as neat graphs, and the numbers inspired scientific awe. Her speed, her reflexes, and her endurance exceeded the peak indicators of an Olympic champion several times over. Her strength was, at a minimum, an order of magnitude greater. A tissue analysis showed an increased density in her skin and in her muscle fibers. And her regeneration, if I believed Gwen's words, and we naturally didn't test it on her, healed bruises and cuts in hours, and it healed serious wounds in days. It wasn't at Wolverine's level, but it was still impressive.
After the basic biometrics, I proceeded to the most interesting part. I proceeded to the genetic analysis. For any other scientist, this would be the culminating stage, but for me, it was just an intermediate one. I already knew that the root of her powers lay deeper, but my curiosity demanded that it be satisfied. And it was rewarded. In the so-called "junk," the non-coding part of Gwen's DNA, I discovered an anomaly. It was an elegant, almost alien in its complexity, sequence. It resembled a retrovirus that had been embedded in the genome. But its structure and the volume of information that it had encoded had no analogues in any nature that we knew of.
An ordinary scientist would call this a "Retroviral Meta-Genomic Marker." He would declare it to be the source of her powers, and he would stop there, unable to explain its operating principle. This meant that, for a conditional Peter, it would be a "black box." It would be an anomaly that violated all of the laws of biology. And precisely here, when the traditional science hit a wall, my real work began.
I was distracted from my thoughts about the upcoming metaphysical immersion by Gwen's voice. She was observing me, and in her gaze, I could read a concern.
"John... can I ask you a personal question?" she began, carefully. "What's your plan for Peter? And why are you dragging out his enhancement? It's just..." she hesitated for a moment, choosing her words, "my sense, in these moments... it vibrates slightly."
"Oh, really?" I leaned back in the chair, tearing myself away from the microscope. Her words were an important confirmation. "This is interesting. It means that everything is truly serious. In brief, Gwen, I want to endow Peter with exactly the same spider powers that you have."
She froze.
"This... is even possible? And..." she asked the most obvious and the most delicate question, "why him, and not you?"
"Whether or not it's possible, I'm hoping to find out in the next hour. As for me... Tell me, does your sense react in any way to this thought? To the thought of me having spider powers?"
Gwen listened to herself, and she shook her head negatively.
"No. There's silence. But what does this have to do with it?"
"This is my working hypothesis." I sighed, sharing a part of my considerations with her. "I'm supposing that spider powers are not so much genetics, as they are magic. And that only the 'chosen' are capable of mastering them. I, alas, don't belong to their number."
"But how do you know all of this? And how do you know that Peter is one of the chosen? We've only known each other for nothing."
"I think that you've already understood that I'm not so simple." I chuckled. "And that I'm capable of perceiving the world at a level that is inaccessible to an ordinary person."
I closed my eyes for a moment, sending a thin, spiritual impulse outward. I sent out my sonar. My consciousness expanded for a fraction of a second, encompassing the building. It was empty. Only Peter was there, and he was absorbed in his work in the neighboring laboratory.
"Argh, again!" Gwen winced, instinctively rubbing her temples. "It's like someone is scraping on my nerves."
"Precisely." I opened my eyes. "From this comes most of my knowledge and my theories. Metaphysics, magic, the spirit... call it what you want. The point is, right now, the most important stage of your examination begins, and I need your maximum concentration."
I was hoping that this vague answer would calm her down and divert any suspicions about my true nature. However, she most likely wouldn't care, anyway. After all, she didn't know the original John Thompson.
In any case, science had hit a wall. That meant that it was time to turn into the alley where its insane, but far more powerful, sister dwells.
Classically, I decided to start with Strange Science.
The first thing that I noted, as I immersed myself in the analysis at the Strange Science level, was the volume of Gwen's spiritual energy. It was slightly lower than Clint Barton's, which once again confirmed Hawkeye's uniqueness, but the girl definitely belonged to the elite category. However, the matter wasn't in the quantity. The matter was in the quality. Her spiritual power felt... different. It wasn't static, like it was in most people. It constantly, and barely noticeably, vibrated. It was like a string that was stretched to its very limit, and it was connected to something that was huge, invisible, and infinitely distant.
I focused my spiritual perception on the meta-genomic marker in her DNA, and I saw a confirmation of my theory. On the spiritual plane, this formation shone with a soft, otherworldly light. This wasn't just a set of molecules. It wasn't just a genetic code. This was an anchor. It was a spiritual antenna. It was a singularity point, where her soul and her body connected with an external, immaterial source.
It was already possible to draw certain conclusions, but I didn't rush. Ahead of me was the main test. It was Essence Smith.
Purely for scientific purposes, and to feel her fundamental nature, I touched a bare section of her forearm. And I practically immediately jerked my hand back, as if I had been burned by ice.
Gwen's Essence... at its foundation, it was human, without a doubt. But this foundation was thoroughly permeated with shining threads of something else. It was something ancient. It was something all-encompassing. I felt, not just energy, but pure concepts. There was connection. There was fate. There was the web. There was the eternal dance of the hunter and the prey. And, over all of this, there was an unbreakable pillar of responsibility. This wasn't a pact with one specific entity, like Kraven's had been. This was a direct connection to a gigantic, living network.
But, precisely because this network was alive, I jerked my hand back. At the moment when my consciousness touched her essence, I felt a responding impulse. Fortunately, there was no hostility in it. There was an awareness in it. It was as if a giant, slumbering mind, one that was galaxy-sized, for one infinite instant, half-opened an eye and looked directly at me. My intrusion, my research, had been noticed by something that was immeasurably greater.
Now, the conclusions weren't just possible. They crashed down on me like an avalanche, and I didn't like them.
The DNA marker is not the source of the power. It's not even an antenna, in the usual sense of the word. This is a resonance key. It is a unique, network address that allows Gwen's soul to tune itself to a specific frequency in the metaphysical web and to gain access to it. Her abilities themselves, her speed, her strength, her sense, are merely "applications," or data packages, that "stream" from this network into our reality through her body.
The result was stunning and frightening.
Gwen is a "Spider Totem." She is a living avatar that is connected to the multiversal concept that is known as the Web of Life and Destiny. Her unique DNA is not the source. It is a biological interface. It is the "hardware" that is capable of establishing and maintaining a connection with this cosmic network. Her cheat, the spider sense, is not just a heightened reflex. It is a short-term connection to the Web's own foreshadowing threads, one that allows her to glimpse a fraction of a second into the future.
And now, the main question was this. With such inputs, how could I endow Peter Parker with these same abilities?
Yes, the fact that he is a worthy vessel hadn't gone anywhere. But my initial, utterly naive plan, to carefully "transplant" a part of the spider essence from Gwen to Peter, now looked like an attempt to steal a spoon from God's personal service. This wouldn't just be noticed. This would be perceived as an act of aggression against the conceptual network itself. And that entity, which was slumbering at its center, would be unlikely to leave this without its attention.
But, if I thought about it hard, there was another path. It was an elegant and devilishly simple one. I could go in reverse.
I wouldn't try to transplant a part of Gwen's essence into Peter. Instead, I would weave it into an ideal, but mortal, carrier. I would weave it into an ordinary laboratory spider. I would conduct the finest spiritual-genetic modification, turning the insect into a living, self-guided syringe with an ideal spider serum. And then, it would be a matter of technique. I would arrange an "accident." I would stage the moment when this spider found itself in the right place, at the right time, and it bit Peter Parker.
For any outside observer, and even for Peter himself, this would look like a natural, random event. The mechanism of gaining the power, which would be the bite of a radioactive, or in our case, metaphysically charged, spider, would fully correspond to the classic path of a Spider Totem's becoming. He would think that he had simply gotten lucky. In reality, though, it would be a completely artificial, staged process, where I would be acting as a demiurge. I would literally be playing the role of Fate. This would be an act of "intelligent design," disguised as a natural chaos. In theory, even the universal Web of Life and Destiny shouldn't reject such an elegant deception.
But, in this world, there would be two Spiders.
And this fundamental, metaphysical anomaly could not remain without consequences. From the scraps of my knowledge and the information that I had read from Gwen, I could confidently state that the Web, as a rule, allocates one Totem per universe. The appearance of a second one would inevitably create an interference. I imagined how their spider senses would start to malfunction. They would turn from a gift into a curse. There would be false signals. There would be a deafening silence at critical moments. There would be a constant, mental screech from the mutual interference. They would become two radio stations that were trying to broadcast on one overcrowded frequency.
From this problem, the second one naturally flowed. The power channel that had been allocated to this universe was limited. The appearance of a second Totem would lead to this flow being divided. Both Gwen and Peter would become weakened versions of themselves. They would be shadows of who they could have been, individually.
But there was a third, and most important, problem. It was the elephant in the china shop that was impossible to ignore. Two Totems on one thread of fate would shine in the multiversal Web like a supernova. And to this light, those who hunted it would immediately fly.
I didn't know all of the details about the Inheritors, but the mere hypothetical existence of them chilled my blood. But even without them, there were other forces. There were the Guardians. There were the other Spider Totems who monitored the network's stability. There was the same Madame Web, or Miguel O'Hara from the year 2099. They would record this glaring violation, and they might appear here to "correct" the error. And their correction methods would be unlikely to prove to be painless for us.
Being an anomaly means voluntarily hanging a target on your back. This was precisely why I had refused this power for myself. I understood that, with desire and with a certain amount of cunning, I could embed it in myself. But the price was too high.
And here, when I had mentally reached a dead end, sorting through the risks, it dawned on me.
I had been asking the wrong questions all of this time.
I had been thinking about how to endow Peter with the power without waking the leviathan. But what if I didn't hide from the leviathan? What if I made it work for us?
What is the meaning of the Web of Destiny? Who created it? Why, in the overwhelming majority of realities, does precisely Peter Parker become Spider-Man? There are many questions, and there are zero answers. But even these questions are enough to formulate the key idea. Peter Parker is the ideal vessel. He is so perfect and so predisposed that the Web's very first cause cannot ignore him. And with this... yes, with this, I could work.
I don't know who, or what, stands at the Web's origins. But, in the Marvel world, everything has a first cause, and, often, it has a sentient embodiment. It was precisely to this embodiment that I needed to reach. No, not reach. That was too crude.
I needed to create an ideal, resonating signal for Peter. I needed to tune his soul, his essence, so that it would sound in unison with the Web itself. I needed to do it so that the creator of this grandiose system would pay attention to him. And would grant him the power. Not as an accident. But as a destiny.
So, it turned out that I didn't need to try to hack the system. I needed to make it work for us?
For this, I obviously needed to go on a different path. I wouldn't transplant an essence. I wouldn't arrange a random event. I would simply work with Peter's spiritual imprint itself. I would tune and calibrate his soul so that it would begin to perfectly resonate with the Web's frequency. It would turn into a perfect, vacant form for a Spider Totem. But simply waiting until they noticed him... this could take forever. That meant that I needed an amplification. I needed, not just a device, but an entire room that would act as a giant, metaphysical antenna, one that was tuned to the same frequency. It would multiply the signal that was emanating from Peter's prepared soul many times over. And then, I would place him at the very center of the resonant focus, and I would present the ideal vessel to the Web's creator.
As a result, we wouldn't get an anomaly. We would get a sanctioned, planned addition. We would get a personal blessing from the source.
Oh, yes. This would be the most elegant and daring job interview in the Multiverse's history. The main thing was that the backwave didn't cover me, myself.
I had decided on the plan. Now, the matter that remained was small. I had to bring Peter up to speed. And here was the snag. The process of tuning the soul, even if he meditated for five hours daily, would take no less than a month. For me, this was a long time. For him, it would possibly seem like an adequate timeframe. The main thing was that he didn't break down and inject himself with the super-lizard serum in a fit of impatience.
But I couldn't act otherwise. If I gave him the fate of a half-lizard, a pseudo-superhero on steroids, and all of this just so that the capricious Web would ultimately kill him for not matching the role that it itself wasn't rushing to hand to him? No. This world needed Spider-Man. Not a "Perfect" one. An absolute one. It needed one that was blessed by the spider Chthon itself.
While Gwen and I were secluded, and while we were definitely not being watched, it was worth preparing the instrument. I would prepare a spiritual tuning fork.
I descended to the laboratory on the third floor, and I didn't just grow, but I constructed, at an atomic level, an ideal, defect-free crystal from the purest quartz. It was a perfect resonator. Then, I touched Gwen again, and, with a jeweler's precision, and by using the Essence Smith skill, I created a perfect, but non-living, imprint of her Spider Essence. It was pure information about the resonant frequency of the Web of Life and Destiny.
By using the Reishi compression techniques, I literally impressed this spiritual imprint into the very soul of the crystalline lattice. Now, the crystal, both physically and metaphysically, vibrated at the needed frequency.
All that remained was to create a housing for it. I created a small medallion from my Iron Blood. It would serve, not only as a protection, but also as an insulator. Into it, I integrated the simplest spiritual power source. I programmed it to absorb and to feed into the crystal a constant, minimal flow of the bearer's Reiryoku. This meant Peter's. This would make the crystal passively and continuously vibrate on the spiritual plane, creating, around Peter, a reference field of the Spider Totem's frequency.
[Artifact "Spiritual-Resonant Medallion" created. Complexity: Normal. Received +250 OP!]
An artifact in the form of a medallion. It contains a quartz crystal into which a spiritual imprint-frequency of a Spider Totem has been impressed. When it is worn, it slowly and passively harmonizes the bearer's soul with the cosmic frequency of the Web of Life and Destiny, preparing them for becoming an avatar.
"Done. Now, I need to explain this to Peter." I exhaled, feeling a light dizziness. I looked at Gwen, and then I looked at the clock. Outside, the dusk was already thickening. "Can you stay for another couple of hours?"
"Yes." She nodded, looking attentively at the medallion in my hand. "But, regarding your plan... will it definitely succeed? My sense... it's reacting strangely right now."
"Is it a danger?"
"No..." She frowned, trying to find the words. "It's more of a sensation of ripples on the surface of a bottomless ocean. It's a premonition of something that is... huge and undefined."
"That's amusing." I chuckled. "It means that this Web isn't so omniscient, if it can't predict the outcome. Actually, this is a good sign. It means that we're already creating waves. From the all-seeing eye of the spider-godling, Peter definitely can't hide now."
I approached the laboratory intercom, which was connected to the entire building system, and I called Peter, asking him to come up to us for an important conversation.
"I'll be there in a couple of minutes." His energetic voice sounded.
Well, then. All that remained was to wait. The door to a new reality for Peter Parker was about to open. And I held, in my hands, the metaphorical handle to this door.
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