***PETER***
I'm almost jealous of Deadpool because he's got such a beautiful lady to call his beloved. Almost - because let's face it, until proven otherwise, Gwen's the fairest of them all. Not this Vanessa chick, not Skye, not even Snow White, or so the mirror, mirror on the wall would have us believe.
"'Copycat?'" asks Bucky, his eyebrows rising with curiosity.
"I've got a little power of my own," Vanessa says brightly. "Anyone want me to copy their face? Don't worry, I'll give it back when I'm done," she laughs. She scans the crowd gathered around Deadpool and his tablet, and settles on - is it me or Gwen she's looking at? "You, with the adorable brown eyes," she says - yes, it's got to be me. "That'll make it easier for me to copy you, 'cause we have that much in common, at least."
"So that's where she gets the name from," Stark mutters somewhere behind me.
Vanessa cracks a smile, which then stays on her face even as her features change. Her nose gets longer, her eyebrows get thicker and more prominent, her cheeks lose a little layer of fat, and stubble rises on her now-stronger jawline. As promised, she's become a clone of me.
"Whoa," Gwen says, blinking rapidly as she looks from me to...well, Other Me.
"Holy shit," I say.
"I only did the face, though," says Vanessa - whose voice remains her own at first. However, as she speaks, her throat quivers just a bit. An Adam's apple grows to match mine, and her voice changes accordingly, falling into a masculine register. "I can do an all-out full-body shift," she says in a voice nearly indistinguishable from my own (other than a hint of Canadian in her accent - she says "all-out" a tad bit more like "all-oat"), "but when it comes with gender-bending, I tend not to want to keep a full form for very long. It's 'cause my brain can't change with the rest of me, and it just knows that I'm not supposed to have a cock and balls." Shifting back to her original face, she chuckles at her own joke, then says, "Don't worry, I'm not trying to make fun of transgender people or anything. Wade's bi - but I'm sure you're already aware of that by now - so you won't find me badmouthing any segment of the LGBT community anytime soon."
I raise my eyebrow at her boyfriend - and, like a delayed reaction from the mirror, she does the same two seconds later. "Your girlfriend, DP," I say.
"Of course you'd get it," Deadpool laughs. "That's why we love you so much, Petey." He turns around to gaze fondly at Vanessa. "Both of us, actually. We've been huge, huge fans of yours for, like, forever."
"Haha, thanks." I laugh nervously, as I usually do when someone gushes about me and I'm not in costume.
"And fans of Gwen's," Vanessa says, turning to look at Gwen instead. "Don't forget that, Wade." She smiles at the crowd at large. "I haven't forgotten any of you," she adds before addressing them all by name. She and her guy seem to be big fans of Bucky's as well - why does that not surprise me? What does surprise me, though, is how much Deadpool's into Captain America. "Want me to prove it?" Vanessa asks, turning her camera (or tablet, whatever she's using to talk to us) around to show a wall decorated with adorably bad crayon art of Rogers slinging his shield and decapitating Dark Elves and Hydra agents right and left.
"Very, um, sanguine," Rogers says, laughing as nervously as I did just now, if not more so.
"Are you kidding?" Stark cries. "They're friggin' awesome!"
"'The blood is the life,'" Deadpool quotes in an uncannily accurate Bela Lugosi impression.
Rogers peers more closely at the tablet's screen. "What does that one say?" he asks. "The one in the center of the top row?"
YOU ARE READING
Deadpool Syndrome - Spider Soulmates
Hayran KurguPeter Parker's no longer the only one who's been bitten by a genetically-engineered spider. Norman Osborn has improved his formula and used not only himself, but also Harry and Gwen, as guinea pigs. And they're far from the last test subjects Norman...
