Frank Castle

For the past few days, you'd been dealing with a series of brutal headaches. At first, they were just annoying, but they quickly became a problem. They made you sloppy whenever you were out fighting crime, and that wasn't something you could afford.

Then things got even weirder.

One morning, organic webs suddenly shot from your wrists, making your web-shooters practically useless. On top of that, your spider-sense had become far stronger than normal. Every sound in the city felt amplified. Sirens blocks away, conversations through apartment walls, car horns several streets over. Your senses were constantly overloaded, and the endless stimulation only made the headaches worse.

At first, you had no idea what was happening. When you asked your AI companion, E.V., for answers, she ran several scans before explaining that your body was undergoing a biological mutation connected to your arachnid-enhanced genetics. According to her, dormant traits were awakening, bringing out increasingly animalistic and feral instincts.

At first it just made you irritable. Then it started making you aggressive.

It got so bad that during a fight with a criminal one night, you nearly killed a police officer who had gotten caught in the middle of the confrontation. If your senses hadn't snapped you back to reality at the last second, you weren't sure what would've happened. That scared you.

Desperate for answers, you consulted Bruce Banner at Empire State University. After running tests and studying the mutation, Bruce helped you understand what was happening and taught you how to create a device capable of regulating the genetic changes. Back at your apartment, you spent hours at your workbench building a custom biological inhibitor chip. Its purpose was simple: suppress the mutation and keep the increasingly aggressive instincts under control. And for a while, it actually worked. The headaches became manageable. Your thoughts felt clear again. The constant aggression faded. Your human and arachnid genetics seemed to settle into balance.

About a week ago, you'd told your unlikely ally Frank Castle about the whole situation. The former vigilante had listened to your explanation before immediately dismissing it.

"Kid, that sounds like complete crap," he'd said. "You're telling me you're going through some kinda spider version of puberty?"

You hadn't found it very funny at the time.

Tonight, though, Frank was about to find out just how wrong he was.

Late that night, you sat in the attic office above your apartment, repairing one of your web-shooters beneath the glow of a desk lamp.

Then a sudden spike of pain shot through your skull.

"Ah..." You winced and lowered your tools.

The headache hit hard enough to blur your vision for a second. Groaning, you rubbed your temple.

"E.V., I'm getting another headache..." You frowned. "That's weird. The chip should've stopped this."

Instinctively, your hand reached behind your neck. You carefully removed the inhibitor chip and examined it between your fingers. The indicator light was still glowing green. No errors. No damage. Nothing wrong.

Then the pain exploded.

"NGH!"

Your body immediately seized up. The headache intensified tenfold as a burning sensation spread through your entire body. You nearly dropped the chip.

"Alert. Arachnid DNA activity increasing."

E.V.'s calm mechanical voice echoed through the room.

"Alert. Mutation levels rising."

"No..."

You stumbled away from your chair. Your legs barely carried you three steps before they gave out completely. You crashed onto the floor. Every muscle in your body felt like it was being stretched apart.

"Alert. Arachnid DNA mutating."

"E-E.V...!"

You slammed a fist against the floor.

"Help me!"

"I apologize, Peter. I am unable to provide physical assistance."

"You're really picking the worst time to remind me of that..."

Another wave of agony tore through you before E.V. could respond. Something inside your mouth shifted. Cracked. Moved. Your eyes widened in horror. You felt around with your tongue and immediately regretted it.

"Oh God..."

Something was growing.

Mandibles.

You could feel them forcing their way out.

Panic slammed into you. Breathing heavily, you lunged for your phone on the desk. Your shaking fingers knocked it onto the floor.

"No, no, no..."

You scrambled after it, finally grabbing it and furiously dialing the one person who came to mind. Frank.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

Finally, the line connected.

"Yeah?"

"FRANK!"

The shout came out half scream, half sob.

"I need you here right now!"

There was a brief silence.

"Kid?" Frank's voice immediately changed. "What happened?"

"S-Something's happening to me. I don't know what it is. Please..."

Another violent surge of pain ripped through your body.

"Please just get over here!"

A scream escaped your throat as several loud cracks echoed through the room. The line went dead. Frank stared at the phone for a moment. For Peter Parker to sound terrified? That wasn't normal. Without wasting another second, he grabbed his gear, headed for his truck, and drove straight across the city.

A short time later, Frank reached the apartment building. Instead of bothering with the front entrance, he climbed up to the rooftop and moved toward the attic office. A faint webline hung from the window frame. The window itself was wide open.

Frank climbed through without hesitation, rifle in hand.

"Kid?" He scanned the room. "I'm here."

Then he stopped. The entire office was covered in webbing. Walls. Ceiling. Furniture. Transparent strands stretched across nearly every surface like some giant insect nest. For the first time in a long while, Frank genuinely didn't know what he was looking at. He followed the sound of rustling deeper into the room until he reached a dark corner. And froze. Curled against the wall was what used to be Peter.

The creature was trembling violently. Soft sobs escaped from it. Dark fur covered its body. Multiple black eyes reflected the room's dim lighting. Sharp mandibles protruded from its mouth, twitching nervously. Two additional pairs of arms extended from its sides, ending in clawed hands that dug into the floor. It looked less like Spider-Man and more like something from a nightmare.

For several seconds, Frank just stared. Then he slowly lowered his rifle.

"Jesus Christ..." His voice was unusually quiet.

"I owe you an apology, kid."

The transformed Peter looked up, terrified tears visible in several of his eyes. Frank shook his head.

"When I said this was some spider-puberty nonsense..."

He let out a humorless chuckle.

"I wasn't expectin' you to turn into a damn spider."

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