"And last but not least, you, Cindy." Clark looked at the Asian girl who was still struggling with her webbing.
Cindy pointed at herself.
"Me too? I have to test strength and speed and all that?"
"Uh..." Clark thought for a moment, then looked at the webs she could naturally produce. "Actually... we should probably focus on your webbing and your passive abilities."
"Passive?" All three of them looked confused. The term meant nothing to them.
Clark stared at these honor-roll kids in disbelief. Did none of them play games? World of Warcraft was huge right now and these people had somehow missed all of it?
"It means the stuff your body does automatically without you having to think about it," Clark explained. "Also, try not to spend every day going home and just reading. Play a game once in a while."
Then he looked at all three of them.
"You're all doing this together. Be careful, because if this hits you, it's going to hurt for days."
Clark grinned wickedly as he bent down and picked up a few small metal nuts from the floor.
He weighed one in his hand, preparing to test their spider-sense.
The others still were not ready when he flicked the first one out with a snap.
Whoosh!
The nut shot forward at high speed, aimed at Peter first, mostly to teach him a lesson for inviting Felicia the other day.
The sound of it tearing through the air terrified all three of them. Their bodies moved before their minds caught up, their spider-sense screaming in warning.
None of them understood what it was yet, but that primal dread, that instinctive sense of danger, was enough. Their bodies reacted on their own.
They dodged, barely avoiding a hit that would have hurt like hell even with their new bodies.
"Big brother!" Peter yelped. He was obviously scared. If that thing had hit him, it would have hurt.
"Hahahaha! You're begging for mercy and already calling me big brother?" Clark looked downright demonic for a second, like his eyes were glowing red and he was really out for blood.
In reality, it just sounded worse than it was.
He was mostly scaring them.
After dodging Clark's attack, the three of them all let out a shaky breath.
Then they looked behind them and saw the nut embedded in the wall.
"Wow... I actually dodged it," Peter said, still rattled.
"But we're not done yet~" Clark said cheerfully, flicking out three more nuts, one for each of them.
Their spider-sense kept saving them, forcing their bodies to bend and twist into impossible positions to get out of the way.
Seeing that, Clark kept going, maintaining just enough force to trigger the danger sense without actually hurting them.
Then Cindy's fingers snapped forward, and webbing shot out to catch one of the flying nuts midair.
After training for a while, she had already gained the beginnings of control over that power.
Clark was very satisfied with all three of them after this first session.
By the end of the test, none of them were afraid of their abilities anymore, and all of them had started to realize that Clark, the one leading their training, was definitely not normal either.
The three of them gathered off to the side, chatting nonstop about their powers and how they might develop them further.
They kept training all the way until sunset, right about when it was time to think about dinner.
Peter, watching Cindy shoot webs, could not help feeling a little jealous. Out of the three of them, he was the physically strongest, but who would not want an extra power?
Especially web-shooting.
That was objectively cool.
"Looks like my mutation didn't include the web-shooting package," Peter said, rubbing his chin as his super-genius brain started spinning at full speed. "But that's okay. If biology won't do it naturally, I can make up for it with engineering and chemistry. I just need to synthesize a polymer with extreme tensile strength and adhesiveness, then build a high-pressure delivery device..."
Watching Peter slip into full mad scientist mode, Clark knew that Spider-Man's classic gear, the web-shooters, was about to be born.
The four of them sat on the steel framework and looked out at the city glowing under the evening sky.
But even in that beauty, the constant noise of police sirens never stopped.
Gwen listened to them and could not help feeling uneasy. Her father was in charge of the whole city now, and every day he worked himself to the bone trying to keep New York safe.
"Clark," Gwen asked, sitting beside him, "now that we have this kind of power... shouldn't we do something?"
Clark said nothing for a while.
He had possessed this kind of power for a long time, and still he had not chosen to change the world.
It was not because Ben and May had raised him poorly.
It was because Clark did not believe he truly had the heart of Superman.
He was not worthy of that name.
He could not do it.
Somewhere deep inside, there was always a part of him that wanted to use this power to rule the world, to impose order the way Injustice Superman had.
Maybe not to that same extreme.
But power corrupted.
It always did.
Anyone completely untouched by that corruption would be more terrifying than he was.
Seeing Clark's silence, Gwen understood enough.
Otherwise, why had no world-famous superhero appeared after all these years?
Gwen stood up. She could not accept doing nothing. Her father went to the front lines every day, and she wanted to help carry some of that weight.
"Shouldn't we... maybe go out on the streets and do something?" she asked. "Fight crime? Like those masked vigilantes in all the stories?"
Peter and Cindy turned too. They wanted the same thing. They wanted to do something. Change something.
"You three," Clark said, looking at the students who had only just begun to understand their powers, "do you even understand what's out there right now? Just because you have power doesn't mean you should go get yourselves killed."
He looked at all three of them.
"This world is much darker and more dangerous than most people know. There are high-tech gangs, professional killers who won't blink before they murder someone, and the worst of all aren't even them. The worst are the politicians who look away from everything, and the wealthy people who help all of this thrive. I'm not saying this to crush your spirit."
Clark fixed them with a hard stare.
"Until you can control your powers one hundred percent, and until you have enough experience and judgment to know right from wrong in the real world, nobody is going out onto the streets to play hero. Remember this: your first responsibility is to protect yourselves and protect your families. If your recklessness exposes who you are, your parents and your friends become targets."
Clark's words hit them like a bucket of cold water, extinguishing the feverish excitement that had come with gaining powers.
The three of them fell silent, then nodded.
They understood.
And they knew this was Clark trying to protect them, trying to keep them from throwing their lives away.
"I understand, big brother," Peter said. He finally understood why Clark, who was obviously different, never went out into the streets to fight criminals.
Clark looked at the three of them nodding like they had fully absorbed every word and let out a quiet sigh.
He knew perfectly well that hot blood and youthful recklessness could not really be stopped.
All he could do was lay the groundwork in their minds and then quietly help them when things got difficult.
"All right. It's getting late. Everybody head home, find your parents, and go eat dinner."
Clark climbed down from the steel framework, still keeping up the act of being just a normal person.