It took them a second to realize what I’d done. Then they had to verify I wasn’t wearing web-shooters. Then they gaped again despite themselves, staring at me.

“Different aspects of the Spider-Totems have different powers,” I informed them. “Cindy’s superior warning sense, web-shooting, and pheromonal abilities mean that she isn’t as strong as you or Peter, Gwen, nor does she have the same insight you and Peter do into biochemistry. My bioelectric powers mean I didn’t come with an auto-danger sense originally, nor the ability to shoot webs, and I’m around as strong as Cindy proportionately, but I’ve also got a much stronger anti-poison kit than either of you do.

“There ya go. Spider-powers.” Completely bland of face, stealing all their glee for figuring it out, doubting themselves, and then revealing it to show they were right.

Yeah, I was laughing inside, but why not? It was more fun this way!

“You-you DEVELOPED the power to shoot webs?” blurted out Gwen Stacey, seizing on that detail.

“Yes. It’s a secondary power you develop if you train your Totemic powers,” I confirmed blandly.

“But, but why don’t you ever use them?” Cindy demanded, staring at me in disbelief.

I just gave her a lazy eye. “If it wasn’t for the fact that you finagled up a doohickey and stumbled onto the fact we share exactly one key biometric reading, would you or anybody else actually think I’m a Spider-Totem user?” I asked her, extremely calmly.

Cindy hesitated, thinking about that. “Uh, no?...” she finally admitted, and Gwen had to nod with her. “You do a really good job of covering it up,” she said hesitantly, and Gwen nodded again quickly.

“Thank you. I try very hard not to show off the fact I’m a Spider-Totem, because it would be bloody obvious. Also.” I reached up, pulled up the back of my shirt, and turned around. “Meet my Patron.” I pointed a thumb at my back, and the honking obvious Tattoo there.

“Ohmigod. I think it’s looking at me!” Gwen blurted out, staring at it. Cindy swallowed despite herself.

I dropped my shirt back down carelessly, straightened it with some Attract tugs. “It very well could be. Aspects can be rivals as well as allies.” I folded my hands over my stomach, and regarded the pair of them. “You two also don’t know that we’ve some natural enemies. Wasp-Totems in particular consider us deadly enemies. They don’t have many followers here, but in South America and Africa, they are well-represented.

“They’ve probably heard there are three of you here and are just wondering how they should go after you. They’ll get here eventually.”

The two of them looked at one another. “Should we, like, get prepared for that?” Cindy asked urgently. “That sounds dangerous...”

“It is. It’s the whole reason I’ve been pushing you two and Peter to work on your webbing stuff. Webbing is how spiders kill wasps. On open ground, wasps murder spiders.”

They swallowed as they stared at me. I stared back, dangerously calm. “Why do I get the feeling my cool spider-powers come with a lot of backstory I didn’t think they had?” Cindy moaned.

“Hey, everybody gets powers when bitten by radioactive spiders. It’s just the way of things. Has nothing to do with transcendent entities in the Underweb, manipulating time, fate, and the cosmic forces across the multiverse in a delicate balance, nope nope.” They both winced. “You DO remember me telling you that your powers had a magical base, not a pscience base, right?” I reminded them, and they both winced again. “You don’t have a Core. You have a direct line feed to the Underweb. It’s where your powers are from, and you can develop other ways to use that energy than just enhanced physical ability.” Green-white voltage sparked between my fingers. “This is basically supercharging your cells with electricity. Same with my healing factor.”

“We can develop other powers?!” Gwen blurted out, delighted at finding this out.

I rolled my eyes at her. “You don’t even know all your own powers, and you’re looking for something flashy. Right.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“What powers don’t I know?” she protested, also a little alarmed.

“Well, you and Peter are both ‘hunting spider’ aspects. It’s why you have no webs of your own, but more raw physical ability than Cindy and I. But you never use your tremblesense, you never command spiders, and you never manifest your stingers.” I tilted my head and stared at her confused face.

“I wah?” she managed to say. “Tremblesense? Command spiders? Stingers?” She looked at her hands, then touched her mouth in horror.

“Magic, remember? Just like Cindy doesn’t actually have big swollen glands in her fingers for projecting webs or on her stomach, nor do I.” I waved my fingers at her.

“But... stingers?” Gwen protested.

“How do hunting spiders kill? They stick to their foe, and then they punch in with their pedipalps and inject venom.” I lifted my fists and made plunging motions with them. “Obviously that’s not going to be your mouth, have you seen the size of some of their fangs? They come out of your arms.”

She gawked at her arms again. “How?”

“I’ma guess that you pretend there’s a big spike inside your forearms, you start pushing from the elbow up as you hold your hands appropriately, and out it comes.”

“That’s ridiculous, there’s nothing inside my – Holy Shit!” Gwen’s yelp of alarm overrode the hiss as the two curving great fang-like stingers emerged from her wrists through the palms of her hands. Cindy promptly jumped onto the wall in alarm.

I sat there, watching, completely unmoved by Gwen as she waved around nearly two feet of gleaming ivory death-fang on her hands, starting to panic at the sight.

“How do I get rid of them? How do I get rid of them?!” she screamed, clanging them together and trying to shake them off her hands.

“Well, first, you have to calm down,” I offered, watching her expressionlessly.

“I am calm! I AM CALM!” she shouted, trying not to move and poke anything with the things, and failing utterly.

“Yep.” I eyed my nails critically, buffed them on my blouse, eyed them again. “Calm as a lake in the moonlight.”

Cindy sniffed, making a knowing face as Gwen started calming down rather quickly, her hyperventilating stopping as she began to breathe more easily.

“Uh, oh.” Gwen wavered on her feet for a second, arms still upraised, curving fangs coming from them. “Uh, sorry, this is just totally freaking me out...”

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved it off. “Just line up your hands, and pretend there’s a muscle inside your forearms. Pull them back in.”

“I... But...” she started to protest, and I went back to examining my nails again. Cindy carefully came off the wall and took her seat back.

“Right. Line up my wrists, and just sort of pull back and – whoa!” The stingers slid back inside her hands like they’d never been there, leaving no sign on her skin or in her arms that they had existed.

“Freaky!” Cindy smiled slightly.

“And probably poisonous if you stick something with them,” I offered, gesturing her to the seat she reclaimed gingerly. “Other than that, they are sharp, pointed, and made of force, so they can probably block weapons and other attacks for you remarkably easily without breaking.

“Makes for a nice surprise in certain situations, no?”

Gwen had to admit they did. She saw Cindy’s knowing smirk, and had to ask, “What?”

“She’s got the pheromonal powers. She used them to calm you down. That’s a lot more control than I have.”

Gwen stared at me again, sniffing despite herself. “Now that’s freaky,” she accused me, despite herself.

“I use it to keep the boys away, not draw them in. It is remarkable how much clearer in the head they are when they don’t stare at my tits all the time.”

“Well, they still do, when they think you aren’t looking,” Gwen had to blurt out.

“Well, sure, they’re totally worth the staring, it’s just rude to do it to my face,” I sniffed back, which got both of them giggling despite themselves.

“We want you to teach us the sticky-fu!” Cindy blurted out abruptly, as if it had been waiting to explode.

“I’d have to teach Peter it too, to be fair. You share your little sticky-reversal toy with him yet?” I asked.

“Uh, we were planning on using it to impress you so we could get into the Baxter Building...” Cindy admitted.

“And me cracking Peter’s formula,” Gwen agreed. “Although I cheated. I found his stash and where he makes the stuff, wrote down the ingredients and so had something to go on...”

“If it’s organically related to spiders, bugs, silk, poison, and similar stuff, you’ll have an intuition for it that’s spot on. Climb aboard, I’m happy to work with you. Even got a project for you,” I told her.

“Really?” She perked right up.

“A new type of silk for textiles. Luxury level for clothing. If it happens to be almost bulletproof and tear-proof, that’s a plus.”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “Oh. I might have to get a lot of samples to start working on that. There are so many different kinds of silk, even among the spiders...”

“I know!” Cindy and I said together. We looked at one another, raised four fingers on each of our hands, and just nodded at one another.

“Still not sure what the primary use of the left little finger is,” Cindy muttered, wriggling her left hand.

“Soft containment sacks for stuff. Spider eggs, I think.”

“Yeah, it is the fluffiest weave,” she agreed after a minute. “What about the right side?” She wriggled that finger too.

“Waterproof density, it has the tightest weave. Either shelter or holding water or air if you monoline it, otherwise it just creates clusters for the web.”

“Huh.”

Gwen looked back and forth between us. “Freaks!” she accused us grandly.

“Damn right.” Green-white volts popped between my thumbs. “I’m not a Dynamo for nothing!”

My secret was safe, they’d learned they could do more with their powers, and life was going on.

Oh, and they were going to work in the Baxter Building.