But… It’s me! The real Spider-Man!

Speaking of a slack-jawed mercenary. Today's incident at the container depot showed me clearly what I'm worth in a fight with a trained soldier. Yes, I have some, considerable experience, for that matter, as well as an instinctive understanding of what, how, and when to do in a fight. But in a fast-moving fight, when it counts in the blink of an eye, it's not much use; I just don't have time to analyze and think through my actions.

"Wilson," I called her; for some reason I didn't want to use the mercenary's official nickname. Maybe it's because I'm used to associating this alias with another person," I ask you for a favor?"

"Just like that? - The mercenary looked at me. "But I'm not ready, wait a minute, I need to brush my teeth and powder my pu..."

"Wilson," I raised my voice to interrupt her ramblings, "I'd like to take some combat lessons from you."

She froze with a slice of pizza in her mouth, and Deadpool stared at me. I could feel the distrust in the look in her masked eyes.

"Really?" After overcoming her initial surprise, she asked. "Hey, Blob, did you hear what I heard, or are those voices in my head again? Did that kid just say he wants to learn how to fight? Does that even happen?"

"Well, Captain America was a guy," Bobby said, not even thinking of taking offense at the Blob.

The girl herself was busy installing the equipment. She did indeed take her duties as a scientist's assistant very diligently.

But she seriously couldn't think of any other male fighters besides Steve Rogers? There's still men's boxing and wrestling, after all!

"Parker? Do you really want me to be your trainer?" The mercenary interjects.

"Yeah, I definitely do," I assure her, and add a little sweet flattery, "you're one of the best."

"I can't argue with that," the woman agrees, but then adds, "but I'm not very good at teaching kids... no offense, but that's the way it is."

"Have you tried it?" I wondered.

"Well, I had my own company once, like a mercenary agency... I see you're serious," she finishes doomfully, interrupting her own excuses. "Okay, you're the boss, but don't expect me to make you Captain America in a couple of days."

"I'm a fast learner," I smirked. It's a phrase I'm already making a habit of.

Since my direct presence was not required at this stage of the serum preparation, after giving instructions to my newly minted assistant, I went with Deadpool to the ground floor of the house. By the way, the instructions were:"Sit still, look at the monitor, and don't touch anything." But either Bobby didn't realize how insignificant her role was at the moment, or she was willing to put up with it to prove her usefulness.

The mercenary had a private gym on the first floor. Nothing too fancy: a punching bag and a couple of workout implements like a wheel and a horizontal bar.

"Well, just so you don't have any illusions, let's start with the best part," the mercenary said, chewing on the last slice of pizza. "Usually they train the newbies first... you know, like we did: you push the ground in the morning, then you do the cross, then you do the kicking, then the strength training again, then squats with a chair instead of resting. But we're not in the army; you don't want to kill time, you want to learn how to fight. And you can build up abs by yourself, if you don't deflate right away. So come on, hit me."

Deadpool licked the rest of the pizza off her fingers, lowered her mask, and waved her hands invitingly.

"Courage," she encouraged me, "this isn't a ballet school for stretching and warming up. In addition, you have the flexibility is already at the level."

How observant. But she's right, the Eternity Serum gave me a good springboard. Although I'm not sure it's a good idea to neglect my warm up. I'll trust my new mentor for now, though; I hope she knows what she's doing.

I accept the mercenary's invitation and launch my first attack. Naturally, my blows are easily deflected to the side, at first Deadpool doesn't hit back.

"Okay, one more," she says in between.

Finally, apparently appreciating my talents, the mercenary responds by intercepting my arm and knocking me over on my ass with a powerful thrust.

"The punch is not so good," she says, surprisingly refraining from jokes and quips, "but you move well: legs, torso... did you work out?"

Well, yes, that kind of sport. I've been jumping on spider webs and having regular run-ins with some freak show, and that was in a different body. I don't say it out loud, of course, but I shrug indefinitely. The less you explain, the less you have to lie.

That's when Deadpool attacks me herself. I realize she's not even working half-heartedly, but that's just as uncomfortable as getting a painful slap. I try to dodge and block some of the blows, but it's no good. I don't have the strength, agility, or skill, and even if I manage to intercept the mercenary's arm, I am quickly brought down from heaven to earth. After a couple of minutes at this rate, my whole body hurts, but Deadpool has no intention of stopping.

"Interesting," Wilson hummed, and then he switched to grappling and clinching.

Here I sometimes manage to slip out of her grasp, but not for long. A couple of times I even began to think that I saw a chance to hold back, but the woman quickly shattered all illusions. She just looks to see what I can show in the situation, gives me a little space to maneuver, and then takes everything in her hands... or feet: the last time she wrapped her legs around my neck, locked my arm against her abs, and pulled the trapped limb toward her, making me howl in pain.

"Remember this trick, Parker," the mercenary suddenly decided to give me my first lesson, "this way you can disable even a much stronger and larger opponent. It will come in handy if you decide to fight a fifth-grader."

Well, here we go, though, I saw it coming. Even decent people, when they start training newcomers, are not stingy with such painful comparisons for pride, let alone Deadpool. Admittedly, I was expecting much worse.

Finally, she lets go of me and leaps deftly to her feet. I can only roll back to the side, moaning in pain in my arm.

"What's wrong with you?" she suddenly asks. "You're almost nil at punching technique, but at close range and in the parterre you never lost it, not even for a second. And your attempts to fight back weren't so bad either... might have worked if I'd been paralyzed from the mouth and below... though no, you know, the mouth is the strongest part of me."

While Deadpool was summing up the test aloud, I somehow came to my senses and got to my feet. I could feel every muscle in my body, I think. I didn't even think it was possible to exert my body like that in five minutes. So much for warming up.

"I don't doubt it," I reply, gasping for air.

"So, don't you want to explain yourself, to make it easier for your wise teacher?"

"Don't ask unnecessary questions if you don't want to hear a lie in return," I say, out of breath enough to say such a long phrase.

"Fair enough," the mercenary agrees. "Well... then let's start with the fact that you need to put a punch in it."

And in the end: she broke my wrist! Not a woman, a fucking terminator! She really did it by accident, just showing me how to twist the wrist of an opponent armed with a knife. It hurt, but it was bearable. I had broken a lot of things in my life. Being able to endure pain was more of a psychological skill than a physical one.

I didn't even swear much, in vain, I was glad that the training was over, because there was no strength left at all. I showed up in the lab with my wrist twisted at an unnatural angle, and Bobby volunteered to help me with the treatment.

I refused. It wasn't that I wouldn't trust an alien symbiote to mess with my body. No, my injury was the perfect way to test the effects of the drug combination. It's not so much a test as a demonstration, though. After all, I hadn't added anything new to the formulas, and the first test subjects were already Connors and Stans.

Nevertheless, I encountered striking opposition from Bobby and, surprisingly, Wilson. Both had volunteered for the test.

"All right! - I got their attention. "Wilson, you already have regeneration, so you're no use to a test subject! Bobby, are you saying that if something goes wrong, the symbiote will back you up?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying."

"Well, then there's no problem. If I messed up, which I don't believe I did, then Venom can back me up just the same."

"Uh, no," the girl objected uncertainly. "Venom already knows me well, and you're an unknown object to her. It's not like she'll be able to figure it all out and fix it fast. That's what she said!"

"Oh, God!" I rolled my eyes. "Well, go ahead, let's spend the extra portion of the limited resource on reassurance. I'll stand here with a broken arm."

So we did. And, of course, everything went without complications. We had no expensive medical equipment, but we had a symbiote. That's what monitored the changes in the girl's body.

The first thing the serum did was activate ability to regenerate. To test its effect, Bobby shook her hand and made a shallow cut, which immediately healed. Five minutes later she noticed the dramatic increase in muscle strength, the symbiote confirming that the transformation process had begun. After about an hour and a half, the external effects became apparent: the serum transformed Bobby into a human-lizard hybrid on a genetic level, literally rewriting her DNA. If this had happened to an ordinary human, it would have taken a long time for the effects to manifest, but thanks to the powerful regeneration, the girl's body began to change before her eyes. The scales showed up the fastest exactly where the recent cut had been. Her nervous system and brain were also altered, threatening to turn her into an entirely different creature in the near future.

This was the end of the story. A second injection was injected into the girl's arm. The antiserum, aimed at eliminating the side effects, made Bobby human again on a genetic level within two minutes. Quite quickly the explosive regeneration restored the girl's human appearance. Unfortunately, I was never able to figure out how to maintain the ability to regenerate after returning to a human body structure. Within a few more minutes, Bobbi was back to being a normal human being.

There were changes, though. Venom informed me that in the process of reverse rebuilding, regeneration doesn't just recreate the girl's body in its original form. No, it brings it to a perfect physical state, as if the girl had grown up in greenhouse conditions, moreover, the regeneration process almost rolled back the improvements made to the host by the symbiote.

Connors was silent about that. It's a legitimate possibility, though. My... no, my and Karen's invention is capable of curing a person in a couple of hours not only of wounds, but also of a significant portion of acquired diseases. Remove scars, repair broken teeth... oh yeah - that's obvious! If a lost arm grows back, so does everything else - these are just special cases of the general rule. Too bad cancer can't be cured that way, which means Wilson's serum won't help.

"Damn, boy, I'm beginning to believe that you really can cure me of cancer," Wilson says quietly, looking at the cheerful host of the symbiote.

"That's it," I say. "With your permission, I will finally cure my arm."

Though my frustration was mostly contrived. I had originally planned to inject myself with the antiserum immediately after I recovered my arm, which meant that I would not have learned about all of its properties. As a result, we waited another hour and a half to inject me with the second part of the drug.

But I experienced firsthand the sensations of a global restructuring of the body. Not very pleasant, I tell you. The whole body, every muscle is itching during the growth of new cells, and the dying of the old ones, on the contrary, is accompanied by painful sensations. Separately, I should mention the state of euphoria and false omnipotence, caused, I suspect, by the changes that had begun in my brain. It was at this point that I decided to end my experiments and injected myself with the antiserum, starting the reverse process.

Naturally, I did not stand idly by all this time. In an hour and a half I was able to make a few more improvements to my web-shooters, adding the ability to use the stun gun one-handed, and making a couple of spare cartridges. I also made an injector for a combination drug in the form of a hoop on my forearm. Ideally, it should be connected to a biometric scanner and made fully automatic...

I didn't get home again until the morning. For the second day in a row I did not want to miss school and ignore my girlfriend, so I did not go to bed and until morning was engaged in cleaning and removing traces of any suspicious activity in my apartment. This decision was also facilitated by my complete lack of sleepiness - the result of my recent use of the drug, I suppose. It was while I was doing this that the phone rang. In what seemed to me to be a somewhat uncertain voice, Mary Jane asked what I was doing today.

I was at first confused, then looked at the phone screen, only to be surprised to realize that today was an official day off.

With a smirk, I answered MJ:

"Dating you."

Because it wasn't pretty: I'd skipped out of their rehearsals twice in a row without my girlfriend.