"Peter, do you want a ride?"
Captain George Stacy looked at Peter, a smile on his face that was warm yet tinged with a hint of parental wariness.
He genuinely admired Peter—kind, upright, and brilliant. But the increasingly "vague" relationship between his daughter and the boy gave him a bit of a knot in his stomach.
The "cabbage" he'd raised for eighteen years couldn't be carried off by a "pig" quite so easily! At least wait until she's twenty!
"No thanks, Uncle George. Dr. Connors recommended a few biology texts, and I'm planning to head to the library to check them all out at once. I don't want to make you go out of your way."
After smoothing things over with George and saying goodbye to Gwen, Peter hailed a taxi and headed straight for Midtown High.
Relying on his reputation as the school's top student, Peter easily bypassed the security guard with a lie about a teacher asking him to retrieve study materials. He slipped into the empty chemistry lab undetected.
Cold moonlight filtered through the windows, casting mottled shadows on the floor. Peter flipped the switch, and the lab was instantly flooded with sterile, pale light.
He carefully withdrew the emerald-green lizard gene extract from his pocket, holding it like a peerless treasure.
Then, moving with the fluidity of someone who had rehearsed this a thousand times, he began gathering the catalysts.
Various chemicals were pulled from the cabinets and lined up on the workbench. This was his private stage. No audience, no applause—only the impending, bone-deep transformation.
He poured the extract into a beaker and, with a precision measured in milligrams, added the catalysts.
Glug... bubble... glug...
The liquid began to boil violently. Its color shifted from emerald to a heart-stopping dark green, laced with eerie streaks of blood-red. A pungent smell of brine and chemicals filled the air. Peter held his breath, his focus absolute.
Finally, the liquid settled into a thick, ominous dark green serum. The Lizard Serum was complete!
Peter let out a long breath and drew the serum into a syringe. He stared at the alien green fluid, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The Peter Parker of the "normal" universe was a Spider-Man chosen by fate. But he... he would crown himself!
Without a second's hesitation, he rolled up his sleeve, exposing a thin arm. He pressed the needle against his vein.
"Come on!"
He plunged the needle in and pushed the plunger, sending the entire vial into his bloodstream. My fate is mine to command!
Cold. That was the first sensation. A bone-chilling frost spread through his veins, threatening to freeze his blood solid. Peter's body jerked, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
But the cold lasted less than a second. The next moment, the volcano erupted.
An unimaginable heat, like raging lava, tore through his vessels, ravenously consuming every cell. It wasn't a fusion; it was a conquest.
Peter felt a terrifying presence staring at him from within—the lizard DNA was trying to devour his soul and "resurrect" itself in his shell.
In Queens, Gwen had just stepped off the police cruiser when her heart suddenly thudded like a war drum. An inexplicable sense of dread washed over her—the feeling that she was about to lose something precious.
A tingling alarm, like an electric current, buzzed in her brain. Goosebumps erupted on her arms.
Spider-Sense! Or as she called it, a "Gwen-shiver."
Seeing no one around, Gwen instinctively leaped onto the wall of her house, her hands and feet sticking firmly.
The wall-crawling ability that had been finicky all weekend was suddenly perfectly reliable. She scrambled onto the roof and looked at the gap between her house and the next—a distance of nearly fifteen meters.
"It's okay, Gwen. You can do this!"
She didn't know why she was taking this risk; she was simply following a primal instinct. She pulled her hood over her head and leaped! She landed on the opposite roof with the grace of a gymnast—silent and perfect.
"Whoa..." She glanced back at the gap no human should be able to cross, her confidence surging.
She began to race across the city's skyline like a parkour pro. Even without web-shooters, her speed surpassed the cars racing on the streets below.
Her destination: Midtown High.
"AAAGH!"
In the lab, Peter could no longer suppress the agony. He let out a strangled roar.
Pain. A pain beyond the limits of human imagination. He felt himself being torn apart and stitched back together over and over.
He collapsed to the floor, convulsing. His skin turned a sickly green, and sharp, mucous-covered scales began to burst through his flesh.
The nails on his hands and feet lengthened into terrifying talons. His spine buckled and protruded with sickening cracks. His entire frame was expanding and warping at a visible rate.
Bestiality. Endless waves of violence, bloodlust, and the desire for destruction crashed against his sanity. His pupils contracted into the icy vertical slits of a reptile. He wanted to tear everything apart. He wanted the world to tremble beneath his claws.
The countdown to the birth of the Lizard King had begun.
However, just as Peter's consciousness was about to be swallowed by the darkness...
Whirr!
A soft, warm white light erupted from within him. It rippled outward like a wave, enveloping his entire body.
The Noble Horse: HARM NOT MY MASTER!
The bestial instinct that could break even a will of steel met the white light and melted like snow in a furnace.
The gentle magic healed his warping body, layer by layer. Before this irresistible power, even the deepest predatory instincts of the genome had to retreat until they were completely purged.
"Hah... hah..."
Peter gasped for air, the madness clearing from his eyes. He was saved.
But the Horse Talisman wasn't finished. It had expelled the "abnormal" influence of the lizard mind, but it was now moving to stabilize the "benefit."