In The Webs We Weave

Chapter Four

Dressed in their spider-suits, Peter and Paige stand in the building site that sits above Paige's old subway station home. Paige roots around the built site looking for something. Peter stands idly by as he waits for some kind of instruction -or at least to be clued into what is it Paige is doing.

'God...! One of them had of escaped!' Paige huffs out in frustration; she throws a nearby sledge hammer across the site and sighs.

'What are we-' Paige turns to glare at peter '-What are you looking for?'

'I'm looking for any of my bugs, surely one of them made its way out, I mean it's been months and they filled in the hole.' Paige slumps to the ground and gestures over to where the hole used to be where tony came crashing through to save Peter.

'You know we could use the bug remote you gave me.' Peter suggests. Paige's eyes widen at the idea that Peter kept the piece of junk she made for him.

'Did you bring it with you?' Paige says excitedly.

'I- uh, no... I made a new one, mark II so to speak.' Peter says after a little hesitation. Paige might not like you tinkering with her invention. Paige's face doesn't stutter from excitement and for a moment Peter can't tell if she's going to hit him or hug him.

'Ok let's see if that works then.' Paige says trying to hide her slight disapproval of Peter's tinkering.

Peter shows Paige a small rectangle on his forearm. The now red remote has five buttons on the face, each with small symbols; Flies; moths; spiders; beetles and ants.

Peter presses the 'spider button' both teens hear the sound but are not affected by it.

'Oh- what how did you reduce the reverb?' Paige asks astounded at Peter's feat in fixing something she couldn't in the original.

'I used a copper alloy instead of just copper wires, and now with less reverb, it doesn't affect us.' Peter shrugs, both ignoring the hundred or so spiders surrounding their feet.

'Marshmallow!' Paige shrieks as she moves through the carpet of arachnids and picks up a particularly large spider. 'Of course you made it out!' Paige snuggles the spider, or at least as best one can snuggles a massive black tarantula.

'Oh, I remember you; you're the tarantula who crawled all over me.' Peter says with slight un-amusement, but holds his hand out to the spider that is all too eager to crawl on to Peters arm.

'Marshmallow has been with me since I was in the adoption agency when I was 5, and he's a goliath bird eater, the biggest kind of tarantula.' Paige says with fondness for the spider.

Peter and Paige swing over to Central Park after Marshmallow makes himself at home atop Peter's head, much to peters dismay.

The two web heads scrounge around the Central Park tree tops looking for the best Praying mantis they can find. The two take a break and sit on a large bow of a willow over hanging a small pond. A few passersby to gawk or chat with the two web slingers, the two answering the question of 'what you two doing' with 'just hanging' which gets a few laughs.

'Uh, um Paige I don't know if you already knew this but, um, i was wondering if you would come to my birthday party this Friday.' Paige turns to Peter but he continues, 'It'll just be a few people out for like dinner, you know?'

'Yes, Peter I would love to go to dinner with you.' Paige says with a cute smile.

'Yeah- Yeah but not like a date or anything, there- there'll be others there too.' Peter internally kicks himself for stuttering, he's not ten, he shouldn't be stuttering.