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/-\
The sky above New York boiled in sickly green and purple hues, a chaotic canvas torn apart by the clashing of science and sorcery. Lightning danced like cracking whips across the skyline. Buildings trembled. Reality itself groaned under the weight of what Victor Von Doom had become.
Peter Parker Spider-Man, Avenger, protector of Queens was bleeding, broken, and half-conscious atop the cratered remains of the Baxter Building. His mask was shredded. One eye lens dangled uselessly. He blinked through blood as Doom rose into the air, the fragments of a corrupted cosmic cube swirling around his gauntlets.
"You never knew your place, insect," Doom growled, voice layered with power that echoed through dimensions.
Peter coughed. A rib was definitely broken. Maybe two. "Still better than wearing that tin can and monologuing every ten seconds."
Doom's eyes glowed. "You joke at the edge of annihilation?"
"Gotta go out on brand." Peter struggled to his feet, barely. "Besides… I've got a job to do."
And he did. Even as the air ripped apart around them, even as his senses screamed from the cosmic pressure building in the cube's fractured remnants, he knew what had to be done. One chance. One choice.
He launched forward, webbing the remnants of the cube and yanking it downward as hard as he could. Doom's blast struck him square in the chest.
A white-hot explosion swallowed everything.
The world ended in silence.
Peter woke choking on ash.
Gasping, hacking, he clawed at the ground beneath him a surface too wet, too filthy, too cold to be any place he knew. He rolled onto his side, coughing hard, only for the metallic taste of blood to fill his mouth.
He forced his eyes open.
This wasn't New York.
Above him loomed a sky of polluted grey, dim and starless. The distant echo of sirens bled through the fog, accompanied by the low hum of neon signage somewhere far off. The ground was damp concrete. Garbage rattled in the wind. The smell god, the smell was rot, gasoline, and desperation.
It was a city but not his.
His spider-sense fired like a strobe in his skull.
Wherever this was, it didn't like him.
Peter staggered to his feet. He looked down. His suit was torn, scorched at the seams. The red and blue had faded, tinged with an almost blackened sheen. His gloves were missing, fingers scraped raw. His web-shooters sparked weakly at his wrists.
He touched his chest. No hole. No wounds.
Nothing.
I died.
He looked around again, squinting at flickering signage across the street. A rusted bus stop. A graffitied wall. A cracked billboard overhead that read, "Vote Dent for DA."
Peter's blood ran cold.
"…No way."
Another siren. Closer this time. And a scream.
He turned sharply. Three blocks down, a woman was being pulled into an alley by two figures. Her purse hit the ground with a smack. Her shout was cut off.
Instinct took over.
Peter ran.
His muscles screamed in protest, but his reflexes hadn't dulled. He scaled the alley wall with practiced ease, dropping down behind the two attackers just as one drew a blade. No time for banter. He lashed out, disarming one with a swift kick and webbing the other to a dumpster before he could blink.
Except the web didn't fire.
Click. Click.
Nothing.
"…Seriously?"
The man lunged.
Peter ducked low, swept his leg, and sent him sprawling into garbage bags. The woman scrambled to her feet and ran, barely managing a shaken "Thank you!" as she vanished into the streetlight's halo.
Peter stared at his wrists.
No webs? No organic shooters? Did the cube… change me?
Behind him, the would-be mugger moaned. Peter zipped him up in trash netting using a piece of rebar. Primitive, but functional. His heart was still racing.
He sat on the edge of a fire escape and tried to breathe.
The city was Gotham.
He confirmed it within the hour after lifting a discarded Gotham Gazette from a trash can and reading the words: "Wayne Foundation Hosts Charity for Arkham Victims."
That, and the skyline. Stark, gothic. Massive gargoyles perched on towers that loomed like monuments to suffering. It was a city that felt like it never knew sunlight.
"Gotham…" Peter whispered. "DC Universe."
He wasn't sure how he knew. But somehow, fragments of memories trickled in the kind of thing you picked up in his old world's fiction. Heroes like Superman. Wonder Woman. Batman. Icons. Gods. Fiction made flesh.
Peter leaned against the alley wall and exhaled.
"Why am I here?"
He made his way deeper into the city, avoiding police, cameras, and crowds. His instincts were sharper here his reflexes twitchier. It felt like this universe didn't trust him, like every atom was slightly out of sync.
That night, he slept under the skeletal ruins of a burned theater. No dreams. Just the faint echo of Doom's voice, and the unbearable silence that followed.
Three days later, he found the rooftop.
It had rained sheets of cold water that turned every rooftop into a trap. Peter stood on the edge of a building overlooking Crime Alley, heart thudding against his ribs.
The shadows behind him shifted.
He felt it before he saw it an absence of presence, a predator's stillness.
"You're not from here."
The voice was deep. Sharp. Commanding.
Peter didn't turn. "I figured you'd show up sooner or later."
Batman stepped out from the shadows, cape rippling slightly. Rain beaded off the armor. The white lenses of the cowl glowed faintly in the dark.
Peter turned his head slightly. "Nice theatrics. Got any advice for someone who woke up in your city after dying in another universe?"
Batman said nothing at first. Then: "Explain."
Peter hesitated. "…I died. I remember that much. I fought a man who called himself Doom. The sky exploded. I was gone. And then I woke up here. Same body. Mostly."
He raised a hand.
Batman's gaze flicked to the jagged web-patterns on the suit. "You're leaking quantum radiation."
"…Okay, well that's new."
"I've scanned the city twice since your arrival. You're bleeding energy signatures I haven't seen since the last multiversal incursion."
Peter frowned. "Multiversal what-now?"
Batman took a slow step forward. "You shouldn't exist in this universe. But you do."
Peter raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, I didn't ask for this. I didn't come to conquer or whatever. I just want to understand why I'm here."
Batman studied him for a long moment.
"I don't trust anomalies."
"Same. But I also don't think you're the kind of guy who kills strangers without a conversation first."
A beat of silence. The rain stopped.
Batman tapped a device on his wrist. A drone descended silently behind him, scanning Peter in a grid of flickering blue light.
Then, just as suddenly, it powered down.
"You're unstable. But not hostile," Batman said. "You need containment and answers. I can offer both."
Peter hesitated. "And if I say no?"
"I'll give you a ten-minute head start."
Peter sighed. "Great. Just like home."
He followed Batman off the roof.
Not because he had to. But because he wanted to know. About the world. About why the multiverse brought him here. About why his powers were changing. And maybe just maybe what he was meant to become in a universe where the rules had changed.
As they disappeared into the shadows of Gotham, the wind shifted behind them.
A shape watched from a crumbling church tower, eyes glowing green, claws flexing. Something old. Something hungry.
Something that remembered the multiverse breaking once before.
And this time, it had found the spider early.
/-\
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
" https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/ "
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.