[center][img=http://i1090.photobucket.com/albums/i374/bensundeitestutho/raptor-man_zps06c95bcc.png][/center]
[center][b]Zac Wilson[/b] | [b]Kelly Brown[/b] | [b]Aubrey Adkins (Dreamverse)[/b][/center]
[center][b]August: 5 Months Before Concurrent Posts[/b][/center]
Zac was not sure what he expected Aubrey to look like outside of her costume and in civilian clothes, but he was sure of one thing: he didn’t expect what he saw. It was almost like that moment when you assumed that Samus Aran from Metroid is a guy, but were proven wrong when it was revealed that he’s actually a she, and she’s not bad looking either. Aubrey seemed as if she had been pulled directly out of a comic book, but her few anatomical impossibilities did not trouble Zac’s mind as much as another problem, namely, how was he going to save face with Kelly. He really cared about her, but he did not know how to overcome his fears so that they might get their relationship back to where it was before all this chaos happened.

“Um, Aubrey, how did ‘alternate’ me get over our fear of wasps, since Kelly kind of looks like one?” Zac asked as the two of them started heading toward his parent’s house.

Aubrey was taken by surprise by the question, quickly reacting on her feet. “Well, I actually think he never did get over those pesky wasps.” Zac sighed, not getting the response he hoped for, some advice on how to get past his fears. Aubrey noticed his body language and quickly tried to qualify her statement. “Well, the Zac I knew did not really need to get over that fear because on the first mission with him and Kelly, Kelly fell into a vat of the serum that gave you your powers with one of the villainesses we were trying to stop. When she appeared on the surface, we discovered that they swapped powers, so Kelly didn’t look like the wasp-human hybrid anymore.”

Even Aubrey’s addition to her statement did not give Zac what wanted, just like her original statement, but at least he could say he tried to find out whether or not his alternate self was more successful than himself. “So, did you get your powers from the serum?”

“Actually, I woke up one day realizing I had powers. They started to manifest themselves during high school.”

“It must have been really awkward being a teenage girl with the lower body of a spider. Talk about something that would cause drama.”

“These actually weren’t my original abilities. Instead, I could...” Aubrey started, but she cut herself short. She knew that her old powers were quite technical in nature and therefore might go over Zac’s head. “Do you know who the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four and who Claire Bennett from the Heroes Television Series is?” Zac nodded, quickly interjecting that he has seen the Fantastic Four movies. “Well, if you put both their powers together, you would have gotten me! The way I got my current was when some villains attempted to do a weird body swap with the superhero team of which I was a member, no doubt to try to debauch our names. Fortunately, my healing factor didn’t cooperate with their plans, only causing a power swap. The only bad thing is that my healing factor is giving me troubles retrieving my old powers, so I am stuck like this until my friends can figure out a solution”.

“Does EVERYONE in your universe continually switch powers, because so far it looks that way?”

After hearing this response, Aubrey abruptly halted, considering what Zac had just said. “You know what, I think that it’s just Kelly and me. Besides the cases I have already mentioned, I think both of us had gone by two other aliases with different powers”.

Zac did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Furthermore, he did not want to hear her explanation because it was not helping him with his one problem: reconciling with Kelly. So he just dropped the subject and they just silently walked the rest of the way back to his house. Once they reached the driveway, Zac turned to Aubrey to make sure that they both knew the game plan on how they would get into the house.

“Now just follow my lead. We need to keep our stories straight if my folks are home”.

Zac rang the doorbell. Once his mother slammed up the door, steam pouring out of her ears, he knew he as in trouble.

“Zachary Bernard Wilson. Where the [explicit] have you been.”

Zac tried to speak, but the threatening presence of his mother completely paralyzed his tongue. Aubrey, however, was quick on her feet and came to Zac’s rescue.

“Don’t be so angry, Mrs. Wilson. Zac was only acting like a responsible boyfriend. While they were out in the woods yesterday, Kelly was sprayed with some hydroxyl acid. Zac remembered that Albany State College has the facilities to treat exposure to this acidic compound, so he went and found me. I just came up just to see how Kelly looked and determine whether she needed to come down to Albany for treatment.”

“Is this true, Zachary?”

Zac just nodded his head. 

“How bad are the burns from this hydroxyl acid?”

“Oh, hydroxyl acid can cause 3rd degree burns in the right situations.”

“No wonder Kelly has had her room locked. The closest she allowed us to get to her was when we would place a new glass of water in front of her door. She must be so terrified!”

“Well, that’s why we came.”

Mrs. Wilson moved out of the doorway, allowing both Aubrey and Zac to enter into the house. As Zac started toward Kelly’s room, he was surprised to see his dad reclining in his favorite chair with an ice pack resting on his wound. Zac thought he had died, but obviously he had not.

“Don’t mind your mother. She is just concerned, that’s all. When your husband gets badly injured and your son goes missing, what do you expect?” Zac just nodded, trying to get to Kelly’s room as quickly as possible. “Also son, when you get back to college, you can brag that your father killed off the last of the dinosaurs! It wasn’t some crazy meteorite!” All Zac could do at that statement is laugh. He knew that his could always take something as serious as what happened to Zac’s dad and turn it into a joke.

Once Zac got past his parents, he finally reached Kelly’s door. Just as Mrs. Wilson said it would be, the door was locked.

“Come on, Kelly. Open up.”

“Go away.”

“Please let me help you, Kelly. I can’t help you if the door is locked”. After Zac pleaded with his girlfriend, Zac and Aubrey heard the door unlock. They both walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind them. On the guestroom bed, Kelly was lying down on the bed, covering her body with the sheets. Once they got close to Kelly, they noticed that her body was drenched with sweat. Red patches had also started to appear on her skin, showing the effects of the imperfect serum that ran through her veins. Beside the bed, there was a small trashcan; the bag within it was already stained with blood.

“Is this a joke Zac?” Kelly cried from under the sheets, “Not only did you leave me behind, but know you have another girl! When I woke up yesterday, I couldn’t find you anywhere. And while looking for you, your parents got home from the hospital. Your mom and dad would have seen the abomination I am if I had not got back into this room and barricaded myself in.” However, when Kelly got a better look at Zac, she was shocked to see that his tail had miraculously disappeared, as it seemed to her. Her anger filled her tongue with venomous words. “And it seems like you fixed your problem. Don’t worry. I understand. You were just acting like a good boyfriend, fixing your own problems while you left your girlfriend at home, coughing her lungs out.”

“This isn’t want it looks like” Zac claimed, trying to convince his girlfriend.

“Then what is it?”

Aubrey and Zac glanced at once another, unsure how to proceed on telling Kelly what had happened since Zac blacked out that morning. “Well, I have been out of college for more than two years,” Aubrey said, and then she showed Kelly her left hand, revealing a ring. “I also would never cheat on my husband”.

“Anyways, she sort of understands you plight.”

“How?” Kelly asked, skeptical of what her boyfriend was saying.

“Well, she usually has four pairs of spider legs and a giant spider abdomen where her lower body is.” Zac replied. “I actually haven’t seen her upper body while in her “spider” form because she was covered head to toe. You wouldn’t happen to have claws and fangs, eight eyes, and bristly hair?” Aubrey thought a moment about her response; her reply could either strength or harm Zac’s argument. Knowing that she had to tell the truth, she shook her head, signaling a “no” as her answer.

Kelly did not know whether to believe Zac or not; she wanted to trust him, but due to what had happened over the last day, a seed of doubt still filled her heart. “Whatever.”

“Kelly, we want to help you. But we can’t help you if you don’t allow us.” Zac pleaded, hoping his girlfriend would budge.

“You say that, but do you really mean it? Why don’t you come over here and say it to me while you wrap your arms around me? See! You already cringe at the thought of holding me! Why should I believe you?” Zac knew she was right; he knew that he had to do something to gain her trust. Therefore, he took a seat beside Kelly on the bed and wrapped his arms around her waist, right above her second pair of arms. Zac, with his eyes clamped shut, pressed his lips against hers. And when he opened his eyes back up, his body shaking partly out of relief that he had made a stride towards getting over his fears, partly out of shock that he actually did it, saw that Kelly’s face was glowing red.

“Zac, could you hold back my hair?” Zac was quite confused at such a weird request after kissing one’s boyfriend. However, he soon found out about what she was talking. She reached down and seized the trashcan beside her bed. While Zac thought she was about to puke, but it was actually more like coughing up blood than puking it out. After her coughing fit had stopped, she rinsed her mouth with a glass of water she had on her nightstand, following this by wiping her lips of with a paper towel.

“Why is this happening to me?” She cried, clinging to her boyfriend with both sets of arms, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.

“It’s the serum that gave you your powers.” Aubrey said, “Since it is unstable, your body is attempting to reject it. However, if we can replace it with a stable version, then your condition should stop degrading.”

“Then why don’t we do a blood transfusion?” Zac responded, “I can donate my blood because it already has the stable serum in it!”

“That would work in theory, but I do not think we have enough time to collect enough blood form you to dilute the old serum.” Aubrey paused for a second, thinking through an idea that just hit her. “However, if she receives a blood transfusion from me, my healing factor, if exposed to enough of the stable serum, should attempt to correct the bad serum. Furthermore, my healing factor in my blood should also heal all the damage that the old formula has done to Kelly.”

“But I thought that your powers came to you naturally, so you wouldn’t have the serum in your system.”

 “Actually, the person who originally had these spider powers had the perfected serum in her bloodstream. When the power swap happened, the serum transferred over into me, along with her powers. Also, I think we will need somewhere more private than your parent’s house, Zac. It would be extremely awkward if they walk in on Wasp-Girl receiving a blood transfusion from Spider-Woman.”

“We can go to our apartment in Albany. It’ll take time to get down there, but it will give us all the privacy we need.”

“But how are we going to get out of here without Zac’s parents knowing my physical deformities?” Kelly pointed out.

“Just follow my lead.” Aubrey said with a grin, using Zac’s own words against him. Zac wrapped Kelly in the bed sheets and swung her over his shoulder. Aubrey grabbed the trashcan, just in case Kelly would need it for the road trip down to Albany.

“How is she?” Zac’s mother inquired.

“Kelly needs to come to Albany so that she might be treated as quickly as possible for her burns from the exposure to hydroxyl acid.”

“I am so sorry for you, Kelly,” Mrs. Wilson said, “I wish you could have had a better summer break while visiting us.”

“Maybe next summer, Mrs. Wilson.” Kelly replied, waving under the sheets to Zac’s mother. She had to concentrate extra hard so that she would not accidentally wave one of her other hands, revealing what she truly looked like beneath the sheets. After they discarded the bloody trash bag and replaced it with a fresh one, Kelly, Zac, and Aubrey piled into Zac car, ready to head south to Albany.

“Could I ask you guys one thing? Did you really just tell Zac’s parents that I got burned from being exposed to water?”