Baxter Building.
"Are you okay, Peter?" Cortana asked, watching him with visible concern.
"Yes, yes, absolutely," he said. "It is just May. She is.... very strange."
"That is a rude thing to say," Cortana replied, 'Because she really is a bitch,'
"Ahem. But I agree. 'That she's a bitch for trying to get you out of my lad-. What the hell! Why the hell do I think this?'
Her stamina is inhuman, even though she's human through and through. I cannot imagine what she would be like if she were to be enhanced."
"Oh, by The One," he said, and shuddered at a thought that was simultaneously terrifying and extremely exciting.
He shook his head clearing his mind from the perverted thoughts, returned his attention to the workbench, and smiled at what was there.
Portia had mutated during the stabilization period. She moved differently now, with a calmer and more calculating quality, nothing like the complete savage she had been when he first brought her in.
Cortana materialized beside him.
"Congratulations, Peter," she said, and the happiness in her voice was genuine in the way that things Cortana felt were always genuine.
"Thank you," he said, and smiled at her with the kind of warmth he showed to very few people in either of his lives. "You were a great help in this."
She smiled broadly, because she liked being praised and did not pretend otherwise. "And to think I had originally planned to make you similar to JARVIS in case things did not go the way I hoped."
"Ewww," Cortana said. "Who would want to be in the same category as that primate."
--------
"Ouch."
"What is it, JARVIS?" Tony Stark asked, looking up from the suit he was working on.
"I believe my intelligence has just been insulted, sir," JARVIS replied.
"Haha! Who would dare?" Tony said, with the magnanimity of someone who has never genuinely considered that anyone could. "You are the most sophisticated AI currently in existence. Nobody comes close, given that I built you personally."
--------
He had been waiting for this moment for quite some time.
The spider's safety and success tests had been completed, and after various minor adjustments, including adding Daredevil's DNA, he had allowed her to calm down and stabilize.
For a while the spider had been neglected, due to training sessions with Colleen and the dates he had started scheduling after each training victory, along with his time with Mary Jane and Gwen.
And Missy.
He and Missy had been going on dates with a frequency that made him genuinely happy, though what had really absorbed a considerable portion of his available mental bandwidth were the passionate sessions with May.
They were both behaving like people who had discovered something new and were not yet ready to be moderate about it.
But it was not only physical.
The dates they took outside Queens, with the holographic patches changing his appearance, had produced some of the best evenings he had experienced in either life.
He still remembered the look on both Missy's and May's faces when he showed them the car for the first time.
After the Maggia terrorist attack, things in New York had gone quiet in a way that he found more troubling than the noise.
The crime rate had dropped significantly. Most people would call that good news. He called it the calm before the storm.
Norman Osborn had been in hiding.
Spending less time in his office. More time at the mansion.
The last time Norman had personally worked on anything, the record showed it was the super soldier serum recreation, and the assistant scientist who had been helping him with the experiment had died under circumstances that were described as mysterious by everyone who had not already concluded what had actually happened.
Peter had a very bad feeling about that accident, which was why he had been accelerating the experiment and all associated analyses at a pace that would have been unsustainable without the intelligence enhancements.
"I hope this works out," he said. "If it does not, I would rather take a thousand beatings from Eel than be killed by Osborn. Better to get beaten up and improve early in the career than lose everything in the final confrontation with the boss."
"After today," Cortana said, presenting a holographic data screen, "I do not think you can be taken down so easily. I do not think many people can defeat you after today."
"Haha." He shook his head. "You would be surprised, Cortana, at what is out there. But that is not the point right now. Before we begin, there are a few other things to handle."
"What things?"
"A new suit. Some rather peculiar weaponry. A few other items."
"You want to create a suit right now?"
"Yes, but this suit is not for me. It is for someone else. Will you help me?"
"I will always help you," she said. "Do not doubt that."
"Good. I will show you what I have planned for it and you handle the production while I work on something else."
"Show me."
She smiled, and he showed her the plans.
In several areas she offered her opinion, which he did not ignore.
He implemented her suggestions in the final design.
While she handled the suit fabrication, he focused on the weaponry and several accompanying instruments.
The suit itself did not take long to produce. Neither did the weapons.
What consumed the most time was the object intended to give the suit's future owner something to hold onto in difficult moments.
When he began creating it, Cortana watched and was surprised by what he produced.
When everything was ready, he packed it into a large old black suitcase and fitted the case with a concealed security system configurable by the future owner.
He removed his lab coat, left the laboratory, and took the elevator down, accessing the police database during the ride to confirm the delivery address.
....
"Everything is ready," he said, tapping the side of his glasses twice to bring up the HUD and Cortana's interface. "Will you come with me, beautiful?"
"Always," she said. "To the ends of reality if necessary."
"That is why you are my perfect girl." He crossed the lobby and went to his car. "This trip should not take more than fifteen minutes. We can return to the experiment quickly."
"Excellent."
"No time to waste."
BurRUUUN. BurRUUUN.
"I love that sound," he said, released the brake, and pulled out of the garage.