Electrify - Volume 1 Chapter 2

Strangely enough, Peter was so starved for friend that he readily approached me after the first encounter and began to talk all about how the new scientific paper explained the properties of the higgs boson and other sub atomic particles. Seriously, the boy was probably more qualified than a few of the teachers here. Yet, the constant rejection of his intelligence and made him a social cripple. Well, i was not better off by any means but I was not Maxwell to begin with. These teenage problem were just that, teenage problems and I’ve been through that before and they didn’t affect me a tiny bit.. Okay, maybe just a tiny bit, but not more.

“So, Peter what are you up to now a days.” I asked him. We were currently in the cafeteria and I was in no mood for a Peter level science lecture. Though any other time I simply speed up my mind to keep up the information he spews out. Hehe hax.

“There was this project but it’s nothing really.” He simply wiped it off.

“oh that sounds interesting.” I prompted him and he looked slightly conflicted.

“Well, I am making a pressure hardening protein with high tension.” He said quietly. If I was anyone else he would have gotten away with that too. So, spiderman is born.

“whatever, so you wanna come to my house. We could play a few games.” I said but what I really wanted to was to let him use my gym to test him out.

“I am really busy with this. I am sorry Max, maybe in a next few days.” Peter answered looking sad and all.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” waved it off and continued my lunch. What miffed me was that my abilities don’t really translate to scientific genius.

Peter on the other hand was a genius of epic proportions but all I had was a good memory but the ideas and creativity was lacking. Maybe I should read a few books on just that. Sighing, I went back to class. Finally, I headed to the library for the books, on ideas, productivity, creativity, thinking and i even found A sun tzu book, the art of war. Even a few of memory techniques. Damn, this week was just an information dump on my brains. Sighing, I finally headed home.

The books were truly a brilliant idea, and now, I could say with finality that I was not a creative person. F.u.c.k, that realization was a punch in the gut I did not need. Well, this was still an improvement and that count for something dammit.

The next day, I found Peter with a girl. A really good looking red head. Although, I guessed her identity, Peter soon cleared any doubts soon enough.

“Mary Jane Watson. She is my neighbor.” Peter said excitedly.

“Hey there.” I said shaking her hand.

“You must be Max. Peter mention you a bunch of times.” she said with a smile.

“All good things I hope.” I replied.

“ye..”

“Hey, Peter get over here.” Flash yelled out with a laugh.

“Stereotype goon patrol is here.” I said with a sigh.

“whoa, Peter who is this.” Flash stopped as he checked out MJ. “Hey, I could give you a tour of the place.” He offered.

“No thanks, I will stick with my friend here.” MJ said with my smile.

“Hey, you new here?” a girl called out and lo behold, it was Liz Allen.

“Yeah.” MJ replied with a smile.

“Well, what can I say, those are damn good shoes.” Liz said as she complimented MJ.

“Yeah, it the new line of…” I tuned them out at that point and turned to look at Peter. He looked as lost as i was.

“Let me ask them.” MJ turned around and looked at us. “hey, you won’t mind if I looked around with Liz for while.”

“Sure, MJ.” Peter immediately replied as MJ was taken away by the, ummmm, Liz gang? Yeah let’s go with that.

Peter looked sad but collected in a weird way.

“It’s fine man. She found a group she connects with.” I said.

“yeah. Yeah.” he answered all absent-mindedly.

“Hey, it’s just a girl. We will find others along the way.” I said and slapped his back.

“Ow, what the hell man.” Peter yelled out.

“Stop moping around.” I said and walked to the classroom.

A few day later, Peter was back to his old self with a little bit of talking to. He was even giddy because he had completed his project. In the mean while, I too had improved. My reaction time was perfect and I had even figured out a way minimize my powerloss. I could now activate and deactivate my super reflex almost instantaneously. Which meant that if anything touched me even a slightest bit, I could move out of the way before it could do any damage. It was no spider sense but it was up there.

The next day, I headed to Low east town and found a super sketchy alley, which was filled with thugs and all. I walked down there and as expected, I was surrounded. The big guy even pulled out a knife.

“All your stuff now.” He yelled out and waved his knife at me. I looked at him and smiled though he could not see it due to the dust mask I was wearing under my hoddie. I called a bit of lighting to speed my self up and simply plucked out the knife out of his hand. I threw the knife aside and punched all of then in the stomach. Though, I was not at my full speed they looked like they were moving slowly. I lowered my power even further and still beat these idiots with a problem. I sighed and stripped them all off their money and drugs. I kept the money which was nearly 2000 dollars and burned the drugs away with a bit of lightning. I found another group of idiots after searching for nearly 3 hours but these guys were bit too much. On the account of how I had to dodge a bullet, I would say that I might have bitten off too much. The bullet dodge costed me nearly all my power and it still grazed my hoody. I used the remaining power to immediately shock the gun man and swiftly knocked them all out. These idiots had nearly 5000 dollars on them and nearly half a kilogram of coke. Though the leader was the one with all the money. I sighed and relieved them off all the valuables.

I recharged at a nearby lowerline and headed back home. On the train though, I think I saw Peter slam into a wall but he was out of sight before I could get a closer look. Damn, that looked bad. I sighed and shook my head. There was a lesson in there somewhere but I was not getting it.

“sweet, where were you. These gentle said that you applied for a scholarship at some school.” Mom said and rushed me to the living room.

I entered the room and immediately felt a brush of energy in my brain which I immediately flushed out with electricity. My gaze fell on the large man first. Mutton chops, feral look, if I failed to recognize this legend then I would need to immediately kill myself to absolve from this embarrassment. The fan boy in me was jumping up and down while the other part of was all blaring alarms. Appropriate reaction, for having the Wolverine in my living room I guess.

“Maxwell, come take a seat.” Another voice said and I knew who this was. “My name is Professor Xavier. These are my fellow professors and my student.” Xavier looked at Logan and Ororo and finally at Scott.

“Hello, Professor, I would introduce myself but that would be redundant it would seem.” I said with a chuckle and sent a bit more power to protect my mind.

“we are here to offer you a place at our school.” Xavier said with a smile.

“Professor, I am happy where I am, trust me.” I said.

“there are certain abilities we could help you develop and get used to.” Xavier pushed.

“No, professor. But I thank you for your offer. Mom, could you make some tea please.” I said and she nodded getting up.

“Now, bub. You need to trained properly before you hurt someone or yourself.” Logan said as he demonstrated by showing me his claws and retracing them.

“I know what I am capable of.” I said as I used lightning to write out ‘I have it handled’ before pulling the current into myself.

“Maxwell, we have an entire school filled with people like you. We can help you if let us.” xavier said with a sigh.

“Professor, I will not abuse these abilities of mine. Trust me on that front.” I said and stood up got really close to Logan. He was wearing an armor of some sort beneath his clothes. “Although, I would really appreciate if could get me some of get armors.” I said and took my seat.

“Maxwell, that is both irresponsible and dangerous.” xavier said with a bit of worry creeping into his voice.

“I dodged a few bullet a while back, I believe that is good enough.” I replied.

“Fine, but remember we are not any different.” Xavier said and rubbed his temples.

“professor.” Ororo said in alarm.

“Don’t worry. I too believe that Maxwell will be extremely careful.” xavier said and smiled at my mom who came and handed everyone some delicious tea.

“take care Maxwell.” Xavier said as he left the house.

“Come to the school some time.” Scott said as he looked at me for a second longer.

“Sweety what was that about?” Mom asked sitting down.

“They wanted me to join their school somewhere upstate.” I replied.

“Oh. Well Sweety. Take care I need to go to work.” she said and promptly left the house.

If Charles is here, Magneto would not be too far behind. I thought and headed to the bas.e.m.e.nt for some exercise. I began weight training as well and tried to shadow box without making myself too embarrassed for it. Now, all that was left was to wait for that skinny tight spandex or leather suit from Charles. F.u.c.k. I was in not wearing that shit. I do have seven thousand dollars and this is America soooo.

A few hours later, I was in back in New York in a bas.e.m.e.nt somewhere staring down an illegal gun supplier.

“Kid, if you can’t pay up.” he chocked his gun and fired at the barrel behind me.

“Old man, if you don’t have the goods, you would hope that I was dead.” I said in the fakest black accent ever. I could almost feel the racism.

He nodded at a man and he bought out a roll of cloth along with a few metal plates.

“this Kevlar nano weave is reinforced with titanium and carbon bano tubes. The is a titanium alloy, safe up 50 cals. Fire resistant, current resistant, cold what ever all that shit. Only one in the market, got it straight of a shield operation. 40,000 dollars.” he said with a face splitting grin and nodded at his gun men.

“wire or cash?” I asked as I stood up.

“Cash.” the man said and told his goon to pack the stuff up.

I channeled almost all my reserves into speed and punched the man in his gut. I turned around kicked another one in the arm and pulled out all the clips from all the guns. Soon, the five of them went down. I relieved them of all their cash which was surprisingly only 10k. I checked out thier stash where more 3 men were stationed and zapped them unconscious. I looked around to find all the weapons from RPGs to tiny hand guns. There was no way I was able to destroy all this so I did the next best thing. Tied a whole bunch of hand grenades to a long rope, piled all the shit on those and blew that from a distance. The explosion took out a part of the building and the goons were still unconscious. I smiled and grabbed the bag of goodies and fled the scene.

I got on a train and finally let go of that last bit of power and felt what could only be discribed as a full body cramp. I took some power from the train itself for a bit of recovery but for the rest of the ride, I was sore as hell. After about half an hour of pain, I found a powerline and drained it completely. Sighing in relief, I quickly made my way home, but not before changing my clothes a whole bunch of times.

Now, I have the material for some armor and no idea how to make it. Youtube it is. The next couple of day, I spent figuring out how to stitch a bullet proof clothes. Damn, I needed a specialized sewing machine. I ordered that from Amazon, apparenty that is pretty much legal. Now, I was trying to make a suit out of a normal cloth as a test run. It came out looking like a prop from bad horror movie so I had to burn it to get rid of my shame.

That was pretty much all my routine for about half a month. Hang out with Peter, try to make my suit, exercise and study. No time for anything else. The books from the library were extremely helpful, my memory got way better and my thinking was much more streamlined which helped me a bit with my creativity problem.

“Hey, Pete. What up?” I asked.

“Nothing, it’s just that MJ act differently when we are alone.” Peter sighed. “I should really move on.”

“That’s exaclty what I was telling you from the start.”i hit on the back of his head, he tried to move out but I used a bit of speed and hit him anyway. “None, of that kung fu shit with me.” I laughed and Peter grumbled.

This few weeks I was pushing Peter to really apply himself and gain a few confident points. Well, it was a slow progress but it was there. Now, when ever he nerded out, he did it openly but he was embarrassed afterwards. Teacher were proud and i was a bit proud as well. That day when I was beating the crap out of a few distributors I saw Pete swing by and boy was he enjoying it. He was wearing a blue and red hoddy with a pair of goggles. Though, he was a bit clumsy with the swinging, the spider powers more than made up for it. While, I was distracted by the super teen, two thugs sneaked up on me and tried to stab me. I turned around and immediately punched the nearest one in the throat and was about to do the same to the other one when a web pulled him aside.

“No sneaking up, unless under a cardboard box.” Peter said quickly glued him to a wall.

“pressure hardening protein with tension.” I said and watched him freeze up. I got a few drugs and a thousand dollar out of these idiot why Peter was stand like a statue. I pocketed the money and I was about to destroy the drugs when he spoke up.

“You can’t take those.” Peter said as he held up his hand.

“I know.” I said and zapped the drugs into oblivion. “Meet me at my house in an hour.” I said and walked away.

A train ride and a jog later I was at my house and Peter was standing there looking at me.

“Hey, there Pete.” I said with a chuckle. “swingin around the block.” I laughed.

“Max, how did know?” Peter asked with a serious face.

“Let’s go in Pete.” I said and led him into the house. “Mom, I bought a friend over.” I yelled out.

“Oh dear.” Mom yelled out and rushed to greet us both. “oh, you must be Peter. Max has mentioned you a lot.”

“Hello, ma’am, how are you?” Peter asked as he shook my mom’s hand.

“Mom, we will be in my room if you need us.” I said and pulled Peter up in a hurry before he got caught and force fed cookies.

“So, I guess you have questions.” I said taking a seat and Peter sat on my bed.

“How long did you know?” Peter asked.

“Since, the day we talked. Well, not the exact details but I could sense that you had a different energy level than everyone else.” I smiled and formed an electric arc between my fingers. “I confirmed it the moment you spoke, today.”

“Damn, that was stupid.” Peter said and sighed. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I know. I am in the same situation as you are.” I said. We both nodded and got stuck in a awkward conversation block.

“So, electric powers?” He forced out.

“Yeah. Did you really smash into a building a few weeks ago?” I asked and he blushed.

“No.” he said looking away.

“We need better disguises and I have just the stuff.” I said and pulled out a piece of fabric and handed it to him. “It’s a Kevlar nano..”

“weave with titanium fibers and carbon nano tubes imbedded into it. Wow, where did you get it?” Peter asked excited over the new possibilities.

“Robbed a bunch of illegal gun smugglers.” I said with a shrug.

“Robbed? MAX? How? Why would do that?” Peter looked at me and opened his mouth again. “You also took money from those thugs.”

“Yeah, they were gonna sell it to criminals or buy some drug from the money to sell. Atleast this way they can do less harm.” I said with a shrug.

“but we’re superheroes. We can’t do stuff like that.” Peter argued.

“we beat up criminals on street. We are criminals as well.” I said rubbing my temples. “Peter, look I know that you don’t like this but the cops don’t have enough manpower to keep up the peace. We do it in their place but we are vigilantes without support. When the cops see us, they fire at us just the same as any other criminal. We need to protect ourselves, to keep doing good.”

“Yeah, I know. I had a run in with a cop the other day and he fired at me like 5 times before I got away.” Peter said. “But you destroyed the evidence as well, the drugs would have landed those guys in prison. Next time maybe not do that.”

“Oh, sorry.” I said rubbing my head. I had not put that through in my head.

“Do you even have the right stuff to stitch this up.” He asked.

“yes. I was making a few trial suits as well.” I said and we headed to the bas.e.m.e.nt and the suit were hidden in a secret compartment behind a loose Wal tile. Peter picked up the suits and checked them for mistakes. “Damn. These are good.”

“Yeah, I went through nearly 5000 dollars worth of cloth to get these right.” I said and pulled out the kelvar roll. Peter’s eyes widened and he looked at at the armor plates as well before whistling.

“We could make nearly 10 suits out of these.” He said and looked at me.

“yeah. You can help me with the designs as well.”

Then we both needed out till I convinced Peter then he needed to wear superior spiderman’s costume and i went ahead with a black tron design with blue streaks and round tron style full helmet. Every part of my was covered with either armor or plating. It looked badass on paper atleast. Peter added a few copped coils and bottom of my feet and a few nubs for me to absorb electricity. We both got our designs finalized and jumped right onto production. It took us nearly a week to assemble the the suits with all the colors and highlight but it was time well spent. Peter even made us both a tiny voice modulators, he did want anyone to recognize his voice at all.

We were both in New York showing off our suits when an explosion occurred near the Madison Square. We both rushed there. I saw the Baxter building top floor was on fire. I used my gliding abilities and ran up the wall.

“You help people out here, I will check out that.” I yelled out and zipped away.

The top floor looked like a sci-fi horror movie, there were wires everywhere, arcs of lightning flying by. In the centre of the room were five pods and they were all malfunctioning. I rushed up there and looked into the pods but they were all empty. WTF, where are they? I looked around but there was not a soul on the entire floor. I went back to the pods to look for some clues, i seriously did not want to witness the death of the first family of marvel.

BOOM.

Another explosion took place above me or around me, I’m not so sure but I felt a wave of energy hit me with the force of bus and pushed me to my knees. I looked around to see all the clouds of energy seep into me with a fraction of a few seconds. Suddenly, it felt like I had run a triathlon and I lost my balance. I had to lay down for a full 10 minutes before the crippling vertigo was gone and I forced myself to stand again. The pods were now filled, I tried to force open one but it was no use.

The pods all opened at once and a man rushed up to them and screamed like a little bitch before running away. Soon, a team of people in hazmat suits came and began to help them, while a few tried to approach me. I had Peter pull me away and hauled to an empty roof top.

“Max, what happened?” Peter screamed out loud and removed my helmet.

“Shock me.” I groaned out.

I had told Peter about my ability to absorb lightning and speed up my recovery. Although he seemed sceptical at first, a bit of demonstration convinced him otherwise. He scrambled out of my sight and returned after 5 minutes with two cables almost as thick as my arm and jammed them against me. I felt the energy pour into me in droves and my body drank it up hungrily. After about 5 minutes the power stopped and the pain subsided as well. I sat up and looked around, Peter was standing faraway from me.

I looked at my hands and found that they were glowing blue and the vein pattern was much more prominent. I concentrated and put all my focus on retracting my powers. I took me nearly 15 minutes before all of it was tucked away. Peter, came near me and threw a stone at me. It bounced of my head and I gave him the Wtf look.

“Hey, you were zapping all over the place.” he said and helped me up.

“wHat happened to me?” I asked.

“first nothing happened, but then you float exorcist style and were covered with electricity, then stray arcs were going all over the place, several nearby transformer blew and then you fell down and woke up.” he recapped quickly.

“screw it, let’s go home.” I said and we took the stairs. I got a hoodie from a nearby store and we took a cab to my house.

I said something about a headache to my mom and went to sleep. I woke up feeling panicked as if I had a nightmare but all I could remember was a giant pool of electricity and how I was immersed in it. I looked outside the window and saw that it was morning already.

I sat on my bed and closed my eyes, I felt so full of power. It was like feeling a bit bloated after a large meal. I tried to move some of it around my body but it was hard because, the total amount was to high for me to draw such a miniscule amount. I kept on trying untill I could draw just a sliver out and sent it to my fingers. It sparked all over but it felt like the current was still too high. Sighing, I got out and took a shower. Mom, was humming a tune while cooking up some bacon.

“Hey, mom. What is up?” I asked.

“nothing, I’m just going out on a date today.” she said with a smile.

“Sure, just be careful.” I said and ate my food. I got a feeling however that my warning was not taken seriously, sigh, being a teen sucks.

I got to school and met up with Pete. He was reading some book on strategy.

“Hey, you should totally read Art of war.” I suggested.

“hey, Max. Shouldn’t you be resting.” he said with a frown.

“No, I feel alright, but my control has gone to shit.” he looked worried as I said that. “don’t worry just need a bit more practice.” I waved my hand.

“that was a big fiasco, Baxter foundation lost many people today.” Peter sighed.

“what? They died?” I said with alarm.

“what? No. Many scientists quit and reporters say that they will be heading to OsCorp or Stark industries.” Peter said.

“Yeah, top floor of a building blowing up is not good for PR.” I laughed. Peter on the other hand was distracted. “What is up with you?”

“Baxter building put up a lot of positions for interns. I was thinking if I should go. I mean, I could use the money and help out aunt May.” Peter said.

“do you want to work there?” I asked.

“Yes, absolutely. Imagine the things I could learn.” Peter said with a shine in his eyes.

“Then go.” I said slapping his head. He scratched the pars where I hit and nodded. I spotted Flash’s goons coming to us and pointed Pete in their direction. We both smiled an ran away like champions. Hehe.

That day, I got home early and went straight to the train yard and began to train control all over again. It was exhausting mentally but I was helping me immensely. I needed to train much harder because I didn’t want to kill a thug accidentally, it was something the real electro had done and it had began a chain of inescapable events which lead him to the life of crime. I didn’t want that for myself, ever. I trained till I fell to the ground gasping for air. Strangely, I felt that my power were recovering much faster. This was new, previously I had to wait for almost half a day for my reserves to recharge but now it felt like I could be recharged in about 3 hours or so.

I went back home and took a bath. I was browsing the new when I found something very peculiar. There was going to be a summit about the Mutants lead by Senator Kelly. There was also an article about how Iron man’s birthday party was trashed by himself. There were also a few report about a vigilante in Hell Kitchen but no one had seen him or heard of him. Another piece of new that had caught my eyes was, Hammer industries were announcing a super armor of they own and they claimed it was going to be ‘dashing’. Bit on the nose but what do i know. There were also a few reports about me and Pete. They had not gotten a picture of me but there were tons of pictures of Peter swinging all over the place. JJ Jameson had real rage boner against Peter for some reason. He blamed all the cities problem on him and poor Peter had to rant all the time because of that retard. Thing were slow and that usually meant a shit storm was coming.