A connected thread (Spider-Man X enby OC)

Chapter 7: A Drastic Reinvention

I wake up early and follow the same routine I follow everyday, but when I was about to leave through the window, I stopped to look at our suit in the mirror, and realised that I needed to completely reinvent my look. Sure, I've made it as far as this simply imitating Spidey, but the fact that Pete only vaguely knew who I was didn't sit right with me. I know I shouldn't be bothered by it, but I'm beginning to want to be recognised for all of the hard work that I do.

"Hey buddy, do you think we need a new look?" I ask Arachnid.

"Honestly yeah, We've been thinking about it, and We think that you need to inject some individuality into your suit."

"Well, what do you suggest?"

"Do you trust Us?"

"Absolutely, go ahead." I say as Arachnid covers my eyes and I can hear him shifting around me, it feels similar to being submerged in water, I enjoy the peaceful feeling of motion all around me until I start to see light slowly peeking through gaps in Arachnid as he settles into place.

My vision slowly returns to me and I notice that the eyes of the suit are a different shape, a cross. I then look in the mirror and see that my jacket has been incorporated into the suit, and has been covered in a spiderweb pattern with studded shoulder pads. The lower half of my face is now completely exposed along with my hair, which is a deep purple. I'm also wearing shoes now, a pair of black studded trainers, adorned with the same webbing pattern over the white toe caps. Finally, to complete the look, my gloves have a series of spikes in a triangular pattern going from my knuckles to my wrists.

"Arachnid, this is incredible, you've made me look like some kind of Spider-Punk." I say, chuckling. "In fact now that I think about it, this is almost my exact style, how did you get this so perfect?" I ask Arachnid.

"It gets better." I hear arachnid respond. "Pull the mask up."

As I do the mask turns itself into my beanie, leaving behind the eyes as a pair of glasses in the same shape with a yellow-orange tint. The webbing pattern and the studs disappear from both the jacket and the shoes as the suit itself turn back into my standard T-shirt and jeans. "Awesome, you've streamlined the suit-up too!" I exclaim, with the widest smile on my face.

"We've been thinking about this after your conversation with Peter last night, we picked up that you wanted to tell Peter, but were afraid of putting him in danger, and this way he might put two and two together himself."

We decide to take this new suit out for a test drive, swinging all the way to the empire state and catching a glimpse of Spidey when we get there, we decide to catch up to him and launch towards him, knowing the best way to cement this new look as Arachnid if for people to see us next to Spider-Man.

Admittedly, I liked, and still like, the name Spider-Punk, but that name would go against the whole 'I need to make myself distinct from Spider-Man' thing, maybe now it's its something I can revisit, since we're a team now.

"Boo." We say, appearing above Spidey, giggling because we could see him immediately tense up, nearly missing the next building he was aiming for. "So, how's your day gone so far?" We ask, "You just wake up, or have you been at it for a while already?"

Spidey almost doesn't know how to react, probably taking a second to register who he's talking to.

"Whoa, Arachnid. Nice threads. You make those yourself?" Spidey seems genuinely pleased with the new suit, but that might just be because he's glad we've stopped imitating him.

"You could say that." We replied, not wanting to give away the whole alien symbiote thing.

"It looks awesome, very punk rock. Don't tell me you've done this just to impress me."

We can feel the smug look on his face from behind the mask, but choose not to rise to it. "If that's your idea of flirting, you need to up your game." We reply, pushing the joke back on to him, "But I'm flattered either way."

"Ha. You wish. Are you sure you're not the one flirting?" Spidey jabs back, refusing to lose the command of the situation, "They do say imitation is the highest form of flattery."

"If that were the case, I wouldn't have upgraded the suit, Web-head."

We would have loved to continue this conversation, or argument, we weren't sure exactly what it was, but We felt a large seismic wave when we landed and knew it could only mean one thing, Rhino's on a rampage.

For the record, Geomancy is awesome, and super useful for web-swinging, so now that Spidey knows about my magic I can incorporate it into my traversal style.

And your Pyromancy too

Stop interrupting me when I'm telling my story. Anyway,

"Hitochi" We almost lose our grip until we realise that Arachnid is the one talking, obviously recognising the threat as well "If we're going to fight Rhino, now is a good time to test out the now combat features we've worked into the suit."

'Wait, you did what?' I asked Arachnid in my mind, 'And why are you just telling us now?'

'We thought that all of the low level encounters we dealt with did not call for the new features we have implemented. This, however, does call for the net-shot webbing we've incorporated into your gloves, as well as the anchor-shot webbing on your shoulders and shoes.'

"Spidey, Rhino's back to his usual tricks again, do you think this is one for both of us or do you want us to handle it?" Spidey seemed a little confused, but we can't help the speech pattern when we talk, and he figures it out anyway.

"Do you mind? I'm kinda late for something and need to clock out, if you catch my drift?"

"No prob Spider, We'll have this sorted in no time." We say as we swing off towards the source of the shockwaves we felt, ready to see everything that this new suit can do, and how this suit can handle our geomancy. We still aren't using our pyromancy, because we don't know how much heat Arachnid can take without burning out.