Chapter Text
“Please stop freaking out”
Step two, as Macey found out, was to find herself webbed to a wall.
In their defence, they had been gentle about it. With quick deft movements that belied lots of practise in the manoeuvre.
But the problem was it was still being stuck dangling above the ground.
“You need to take a breath, please, please try breathing”
Granted it was all of a foot, but it was enough for the weight of her to sag against the strings and she felt the way it tightened with every breath. It squeezed her chest and made her feel restricted and it was still an alleyway and they were still strangers and she may have been hyperventilating and gasping more than she should of.
“I’m really sorry about this. Were not going to hurt you, we just want to ask some questions. Honest. See? …” and the smaller one, the one that had gotten her webbed up in the first place pulled back on his hoody he had stolen out of a charity bin. Trying to smile and be reassuring and not the shadowy figure he had first appeared as.
Holy uncanny valley batman!
He wasn’t like spot, he wasn’t animated. But neither was he live action. An unfortunate blend of the two that met somewhere just off the side of normal. High fidelity graphics did not look right when compared to the real world it was trying to mimic.
“Help! I just made it worse”
“Naze sore ga umaku iku to omoimashita ka?” Supaidāman was perched on a dumpster lid, fiddling with a small red and blue figurine in his hands and pretending to make it clap with his fingers. Leaving the entirety of this to his counterpart.
“Come on, you know this is the first major assignment like this boss has given me. I really can’t screw this up” spider-man of the game verse (had to be the ps5. Far too much resolution) was looking at him with pleading eyes. Supaidāman huffed, groaned and proceeded to toss the toy at him as he slipped off in one fluid movement. All the grace of a gymnast.
He squared up in front of Macey. Macey tried shrinking back into the brickwork hoping it would swallow her whole. It wasn’t obliging.
They waited a bit, enough time that her breathing stopped being that choppy sort and into something a little more regular and her head stopped spinning.
He held up his wrist band, it wasn’t just some fancy looking watch thing, it was actually some sort of miniature screen highlighted in orange. Tapping at it brought it to life, projecting a small 3d image to hover above it in a pixelated matrix.
It was a close up of Spot, half flipped and captured forever in the inglorious moment of the Mall fight.
“I, what? I don’t” This was high tech stuff. Like really high tech, the sort that was written about in blade runner or cyberpunk genres. Her mind was still jumpy from being in an alleyway and essentially interrogated but it was trying to puzzle this out.
A game Spider-man, and an 80’s spiderman were using tech years in advance even for her world. Trying to locate a movie-verse villain. What even was that?
“We know that you’re helping him” Spider junior said and the little image rewound itself. The orange pixels scrambling and assembling and scrambling again as they played out the ghost of the exchange from his angle. Of her moonwalking back from where she intercepted him in front of the retail store.
Stopping to play briefly.
“ ..i gotta go find my friend” it was tinny, having a staticky overly but definitely her.
There weren’t any chance at denial and she wasn’t good enough at lying to sell ‘the identical twin’ angle that popped into her head.
“The guy crash-lands in my apartment, I’m helping him out” which was essentially true.
“Some strange faceless guy turns up and you help him instead of calling the cops?”
“Well what were the police going to do?” if they had even turned up (even though she had gone straight for that option).
“Huh” Spider man smaller seem to ponder that “New York really is the same everywhere” only to be lightly jabbed by Spider-man senior.
“Ow! Okay so your obviously seeing that were not exactly from here and neither is he. He’s dangerous, very very dangerous”
“How?” So far the greatest danger was to himself.
“It’s..actually kind of complicated. We’re not really supposed to talk about it?” and that annoyed her a bit, the idea of keeping her in the dark when she was in this.
“Anything to do with having your own merchandise in your hand?”
Both looked quickly down to the action figure he was holding. Spider-man gamer immediately pressed it back to his partner, trying to hide it.
“That’s not me, hardly looks like me”
“An alternative universe you?”
Dead silence.
“So you are obviously informed of some things” he allowed. “But not everything. Or you would be helping us here”
“Your not exactly selling it here” leaning back as far as the webs would allow. It wasn’t far, they had some leeway to them. It allowed her to breath (sharp and shallow) but it didn’t allow any movement. The webs were cold, it kept tripping the back part of her brain that screamed ‘caught caught caught’ and wanted to get away. Keeping that part down was a challenge, but one she was starting to get to grips with over the past day and a half.
“Right well..err” the kid began to pace, rubbing at his neck with nerves. “We’ll start over. Beginning, yea. Ahem. Hi, im Peter Parker” and he held out his hand as if to shake, because manners were a hard thing to break. Macey looked at his hand deadpanned.
“Right..sorry just..”
“ Yamashiro Takuya” chimed in the other. There was a slip of a smile, the grin of someone who was getting far too much out of this. She’d seen that look on her older siblings, a sort of fondness and ‘I need popcorn’ rolled in one.
There was an expectant pause.
“and you are?”
“I’m not giving you my name” She hadn’t given it to spot either. She still had some sense of stranger danger to go off, she liked having that illusion. Anonymity was its own protection and it’s all she had.
“Moving on. See there’s this whole other word right? Lots of other worlds. And we, that is him and me and a few others we try to keep everything safe? “ He kept giving her glances to see if she was following this. Macey’s not sure what expression she was making but it seem to encourage him. “And sometimes things end up where they shouldn’t. So it’s our job to put them back”
As far as explanations go, it wasn’t a bad one. And it sounded like the truth, lining up with what she had gleaned so far. But it sounded like there was a whole lot more not being said as well.
“So your trans-dimensional border patrol. Great. What has that got to do with it?” because last she checked, People weren’t dried fish getting smuggled through.
“That’s not, were not..are we?” Peter turned to Yamashiro who shrugged.
“Never thought of it like that, but in any case, people being where they shouldn’t is a bad thing. Catastrophically bad. World ending bad”
Surely they were joking. The most damage Spot had done was to her ceramics (And her nerves).
“Okay so it’s hard to explain and I’m not very good at it...” His partner made a noise in his throat in disagreement. “Oh come on, we have to say something here or we’ll get nowhere”
“Jōshi wa shiawase ni naranaidarou”
“It’l be fine. I’ll give the abridged version” Peter turned back to Macey “So things being where they shouldn’t tends to cause the stability of the dimension its in to go under strain. Something about the matter not being in synch. But it’s got nowhere to go, so it causes a sort of…space..time..allergic reaction?”
Glitcing. He was trying to talk about glitching from the first film.
Which now that Macey thought about it was indeed very alarming.
She remembered the way the city scapes had fragmented on screen and had thought it actually quite stunning. Full marks to the animation team, ten out of ten. But now faced with that being here…
“So the world is trying to, what, sneeze you out?” It was worth it alone to see the two grimace at the description. “Why isn’t it happening to you two then?”
“It’s actually really cool, see…” He got elbowed again “Cannot tell you”
Yamashiro shook his head gravely.
“Well you don’t have to worry then. Spot’s trying to leave” which should be safe enough of a thing to say. They both were heroes, and Spot was genuinely trying to get out so really the two goals aligned here and this whole thing was just unnecessary.
Except the look that the two exchanged suggested otherwise. Like this was new information and something was slotting into place.
“So you’re saying he can’t”
Macey was not liking the way this was turning.
Peter and Yamashiro looked exited, immediately shuffling a few meters down the alley and turning their backs to her which, rude, but also did well to hide the way they started fiddling with their high-tech wristwatch. It did NOT hide the way it lit up the brickwork nor did it hide the new voice that suddenly sounded.
“What have you found out” The voice was smooth and older. Definitely their ‘boss’ mentioned before. Were they honestly not expecting her to realise they were making a call?
“We’ve figured out why our scans haven’t been picking up anything. He’s not jamming it, he hasn’t been using any portals” the first began, so eager that he all but tripped over his words and giving no thought to volume.
“Kare wa jimoto no hitobito ni tasukete moratta” Macey couldn’t understand him, but he sounded just as giddy.
“I don’t think he can use them. He wouldn’t of risked going out like that if he could, he’d have been there and gone”
“This is good” the new voice began “This is good news. If he can be contained now it will stop a lot of future problems. This is the best chance for it”
The two were delighted by the admission, the older ruffling Peters hair as he beamed.
“I’ll send through some others to help…”
The smile immediately flipped.
“Oh no no, no we have it handled. Completely under control”
“Are you sure?” it wasn’t a doubtful tone, it didn’t sound challenging. More like getting confirmation.
“Yea, the guy’s a pushover. besides this worlds weird. Every time a portal opens here it fries the surrounding grid. Big give-away”
“Alright. Keep us posted”
The light dimmed.
“I think that went well, do you think that went well?”
Yamashiro got him in a headlock, showing so via noogying. The two staggered around in their celebration of Peters successful mission thus far, absolutely forgetting that Macey was a spectator still.
“Containment?” that was a very unfriendly sort of word. One that did not-at all- sound like ‘relocation’.
How certain was she that these two, or their boss, were actual good guys? Mirror verses were a thing, though usually they had the grace to show it by giving the characters moustaches as a tell.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds” Peter (possibly evil-verse peter) tried. Macey wasn’t buying it. She had already said too much in just mentioning the very benign (and only slightly illegal) plan Spot had of wanting out as well. She wasn’t about to send them directly TOO him too.
Unfortunately, Mecha spider-man had other ideas.
“Excuse me?! Get out of my, hey that’s my wallet!”
With deft fingers the man patted down her jacket before fishing out the offending piece. Slipping out the license and handing it to his junior.
“Were just borrowing this for a second”
“Give that back!”
“Oh wow, that’s your full name”
Macey gave a wordless screech, fingers twitching but unable to wrench loose. Spider-man’s eyes boggled as they read the address.
“That’s right next to where we first arrived. This could have been solved ages ago”
“Shikashi, watashitachi wa kore o mitsukemashita” holding up the figurine.
“That’s true” Peter allowed offhand.
There had to be a translation or subtitle feature on that watch of his because Macey was completely lost. She understood pretty quick though when Peter pulled the facemask out from his hoodie pocket (just as weirdly uncanny as his real face) and palmed her license.
“What are you doing! You can’t just leave me like this!”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be back to let you down. Or if not…it’ll unstick in about two hours” and proceeded to somehow run up the wall like it was a god damn bouncy castle. Macey was left speechless, watching in awe as he crested the roof lip and flipped over.
“Kono tame ni mata modotte kimasu ” Yamashiro placed the figuring in her bereft pocket and gave her a pat on the head before following the other with far less finesse. The worst part was he wasn’t being condescending, the guy seemed genuine.
“What the hell?!” she wasn’t even a little sorry that the two were on a wild goose chase. Sure, saying Spot crashed at her place would suggest he was, well, crashing at her place but there was no reason to think they’d still be there.
Won’t they feel stupid when they turn up to a trashed apartment.
And then they’ll come right back she reminded herself. There was a moment as she weighed her options, before hollering loudly.
*******************
It took a good fifteen minutes of yelling before anyone chanced looking down to where she was. And another ten to convince them there weren’t any cameras and this wasn’t a prank video. By the time she had gotten de-webbed and back to her feet the internal clock she had judging for the duo’s return was fast ticking away.
How fast was web swinging anyway? If they were trying to not be spotted it’ll slow them down, but how many people in New York actually looked up?
She booked it back to the Night Club, taking several turns and ducking into shops just in case and hoping it was effective of anyone was tailing her (it always seem to work in movies).
By the time she burst through the back entrance to the Scream Corner she wasn’t running anymore. It was more of a hobbled skip, and she wasn’t getting many words out.
God damn cardio
“Oh wow, you actually returned” echoed from the mass that had assembled around the central stage. Toaster 2.0 had gotten bigger in her absence, becoming a mass of cables and wires braided together to form several long arms that all pointed to the centre stage. A singular ‘x’ had been marked in red tape.Spot was taking no chances of this failing, Go big AND go home being the motto of the day.
“Whats with you?” his blank face poked out to scan her gasping form.
“Mugged. Spider-Man”
Something very heavy dropped.
“What?”
Macey explained it in short choppy words, arms flying about as if trying to add the details and miming the whole escapade. Somehow Spot seem to follow along. Must have been use to late night science rants back when he was employed.
“So there’s two of them”
“Yes” she gave rough gestures to their height, as if that would help somehow.
“And they’re both looking for me”
“Yes” she nodded.
“HA, I knew it. I KNEW I’d be worth more than a villain of the week. This is perfect!”
“What, no, why?” But spot had stopped paying attention to her, rambling to himself in excitement. No, validation.
“Spot, wrong thing to focus on!”
“What else is there? You said there’s a group of them, and they view me as a threat”
“How about the part where they’re trying to cage you before you can actually do anything?”
“You lead them away though. Which, nice thinking by the way. You sure you’ve never done anything like this before?”
“no” Macey replied, high and strangled. She had NEVER done anything like this before, she did not like doing anything like this, before or after. She hadn’t even done anything, they had assumed and ran off because their world ran off comic book plot contrivance. “How is this real?”
“You worry too much. It’s going to be fine. I mean, it’s not MY spider-man but it’s still something”
“Why do you even care so much about fighting a child?” Macey asked. Because those screenshots were still fresh in her memory and it still bothered her.
“Woah, what do you mean child? I don..im not THAT sort of villain. I have standards thankyou”
“Spider-man is a kid though”
“What? No he’s not” He immediately denied. Standing up straighter as if affronted by the very notion. “He’s young sure, but the first Spider-Man wouldn’t just throw a kid into…I mean he died and then the new one turned up after…”
Oh Macey realised. He has no idea. Because the first spider-man, the original one had died and been an adult. Wo had a long career with prestigious villains that made headlines and figurine sales. For a moment she thought of it, really thought what that would have been like, the notoriety and the importance such a thing would have been.
And then a NEW spider-man hits the scene immediately after. Blank slate, new chance for a shakeup of the roster. The timing alone would of suggested some sort of mentorship or passing of the mantle, and Spider-man was a good guy, and good guys didn’t endanger children. Why would anyone look more into it? How could they when spider-man kept on a mask?
“Just because he’s small, and he keeps changing his voice which is fooling no one, and he makes all these jokes! All these snide little funny quips like the whole thing is a game to him!”
Whatever tangent spot was on, he wasn’t stopping. “Never takes it seriously, I mean I was there robbing the place and he just grabbed a snack to watch. Did NOT care. Not even any acknowledgement of what he did to me. Of what he caused nearly a year ago. Just crashes into my workplace…” he obviously had a lot to get off his chest and Macey was there, watching him pace and devolve into another rant. Which wasn’t as scary as the last one, maybe because she knew him a bit better this time, or maybe because she actually had some context now.
“…him and his spiderman buddy in the sweatpants. And then they arrest my boss!”
“Who, kingpin?”
“No, I never worked for that mobster” which was a relief to hear “I worked with Doctor Octavius. She worked for kingpin” the relief was short lived.
“I don’t know if the law differentiates between…”
“OH, my workplace. You know what he did? He blew it up! Without any concern for any of the workers. Do you think unemployment benefits cover you when the person who’s names on the checks is going through the courts? It doesn’t.”
“A, that…must be very difficult…”
“And I can’t get another job because half my resume is tied up under confidentiality thanks to being under investigation. You know it took six years working there? A six year gap doesn’t look good when you have nothing to show for it. Especially in the sciences. If your name gets associated with one little incident it gets blacklisted. Apparently it’s a ‘liability’” and here he made finger quotations as he spoke the word
“when you have a history of possible villain associations”
“..but you are a villain”
“No! I mean, YES. But I wasn’t then”
“You really dislike this guy”
“All my troubles started because of him. He made me into this! And you know what he does?”
Macey got the feeling she was going to find out. At length.
“He starts texting in the middle of our fight. My first one. I had it all planned. Had a speech and everything, but no. Just takes out his phone. In the MIDDLE. So inconsiderate. And he keeps texting eve when I asked him and…oh god he is a teenager”
The realisation of all the small bits and pieces added up finally and stopped him in his tracks.
“He can’t even grow a moustache” Macey added. Just to be helpful. Just because.
It was like watching a blue screen crash right in front of her. Spot just…stopped working. Frozen in that moment of dawning horror. Trying to compute this new world shift.
For the first few seconds Macey felt glee, because maybe, just maybe, she HAD done something to change things and that made her conscience clear. Stopped a villain, crisis averted. No dead children today thankyou.
But then Spot just…didn’t move at all, and that glee quickly faded.
Because she realised, this was important to him. Because he had been dealt a shitty hand and his focus on this was what kept him going.
Granted it was really the wrong sort of focus, and she wasn’t a therapist here but this sure sounded like bad coping methods, but it still didn’t feel good to think she had a hand in destroying that.
“I think..” she began slowly, mind scrabbling to try and fix this somehow. Without making it start right back on the evil train. “..i think you’ve been focusing a little too much on your opponent. You know? And that’s not good….for you” she clarified quickly, but it seem to be working. Spots head twitched into her direction. Like a blank mannequin. Staring.
She tried her best to keep going. “You should probably be focusing on yourself? You know? The sort of person…ah, villain….” How did life coaches do this? “..you want to be known as. Regardless of who your going up against. You know? Like..you don’t ..need others...to define you?”.
As far as motivational speeches go, she could do a lot worse than a bad rendition of ‘strong independent villain who doesn’t need a hero’.
“Well that was terrible”
Macey’s face burned scarlet.
“and you just don’t get it. He made me, I made him. The parallels alone, and it’s just some kid?!”
“Yea well, you got two others gunning for you as well now.”
“it’s just not the same”
Talking didn’t help, so Macey fell back to the one that always seem to work with her siblings when they were younger. Bribing.
“here?”
She offered him the figurine. He took it between two fingers, holding it carefully like it would bite.
“And how is this suppose to help?”
“I might of…kind of…taken it accidentally from those two…”
“You stole this? You stole Spider-man’s own merchandise from him?”
“technically” in the sense that it had been given with the intent of returning for it, only to have her gone. “There’s ones of spider-mans villains too” she added, which did, at least, make him seem less glum.
“The backpack on it is a little slapped on” he finally gave, looking at it this way and that under scrutiny.
Backpack?
There on the spider-figurine was a small metallic attachment. A half capsule pod that thrummed a steady orange beat every few seconds. The same orange of those watches.
Even staring strait at it, it took Macey a few seconds to realise what it was.
“It’s a god damn tracker”
*******************
“Put it in the other socket, the OTHER sock..to your left!” Spot hollered from across the room as he tried tightening something with a wrench.
“Alright, in! What next”
“Look for wires. Red to red, green to green. Your not colourblind are you?”
“no” was the short reply as she pulled back the casing and started digging through the metal innards.
With no idea on how long it would be before the Spider-Men descended and having no possible way of shipping any of this out, the two of them had decided on a mad sprint for the end goal. Meaning Macey was getting a crash course in Science building.
The bulk of it had been completed, it was simply laying down the connecting wires and leads to allow power to flow through it without, in Spots words, causing it to shorten out and possibly sparking a miniature black hole. She assumed he was exaggerating. She really hoped he was.
Grabbing the pair of dishwashing gloves she knows they kept behind the counter to prevent getting zapped, Macey had been drafted as Spots additional hands while he worked on stabilising the centre focus.
It wasn’t going as terrible as she thought it would.
Red to red, green to green “What are the yellow ones for?”
“Forget the yellows, they’re not important.” Quickly followed by “how did I not SEE it, he’s only ever around after school hours” he had rushed through the denial phase at least.
“If it’s any consolation, Most spider-men start in high school”
“How do the teachers not realise?!”
Because the American education system cared less for attendance so much as it cared about grades. As a naturally born genius, it wouldn’t be hard to game the system in spider-mans favour, which did raise the question of in the world of vigilantes and impressionable kids if there was a system in place to catch them before they dropped off the slippery slope. Were there checklists the teachers looked out for? An entire court system that now had to deal with this new branch of cultural existence? How hard was it to stop this stuff when superheroes were no longer regaled the same way one would Santa. Instead of mentioning all this Macey went with the far more neutral “Done, next?”
“Okay, almost finished. I’ve had to skip the usual safeguards I’d otherwise put in. As long as the powers flowing this should function. See that switch?” he pointed to a large toggle switch that had been bolted onto the bar.
“Why is it stuck down?”
“If this gets windy you don’t want the only thing able to turn it off flying about”
Which made a logical sort of sense, though how windy was now on the forefront of her mind.
“When I get into position, you flip it”
Flip the switch. Then that was it, the whole near two days of bizarre chaos over with.
Just to be safe Macey made sure she kept the bar between her and the Toaster, ready to duck down at the first sign of this going the way of the first.
Spot stepped onto the stage, positioning right into place where the x was. “Well I can honestly say this has been an experience”
“Same” Macey agreed. The words ‘an unpleasant one’ were very much implied.
Spot raised a hand, bringing it down in a lazy sort of gun point gesture. “Now”
The switch flipped. And nothing happened. Not a spark, not a hum.
“Oh come on, now what?”
“Shit, the breakers! They turned it all off when they shut down the place. Hold on, I’ll go flip them”
And she ran for the back where the electrical cupboard was stored, cursing the oversight.
The building was old despite its renovations to ‘trendy night spot’ so the power box was a metal cupboard who’s door was half hanging from it’s hinge and a padlock that had been snapped and fallen off.
That’s odd, she thought as she flipped the breakers to get it all going. The padlock looked new.
There was a ‘thwip’ noise. Her hand impacted to the door with a reverberation she felt in her bones.
“Shit!”
She looked from her webbed hand to the ceiling where it had come from. Blank white eyes stared back eerily in the gloom. Perched upside-down in a boney gate as he crawled along arms akimbo like some nightmare from the exorcist.
“And stay there this time”
Spider-Man headed right past her for the main floor. Where spot was unaware.
Shit shit shit!
She tried pulling, holding back with all her weight. The door gave before the webbing did sending her sprawling to the ground. Lugging the metal still attached she scrambled to get to the room. To give a warning or witness or something. To encourage them to talk it through maybe?
Hopefully the machine had activated and she’d arrive to an empty room with the action having taken place out of view.
She stumbled into the nightclub proper and saw that yes, the machine was now on. It hummed and glowed faintly. The catwalk lights had all come on throwing around a roving coloured strobing effect, and the fog machines in the corners she hadn’t even realised were there were slowly fogging the space up.
She also saw Spot had been webbed where he stood, half cocooned with only a single arm and his head still visible.
All of the seven emitters he had painstakingly arranged had been gummed up with webbing, making the ends glow in an ominous way but also stopping them in its tracks.
Spider-Man was just putting the finishing touched on this as the second one was standing nearby. His wrist already up and glowing with a pixelated mirage.
She had been gone not even a minute and the two had rolled through and stopped it dead.
Damn.A tiny part, that small inner child of her raised on movies was disappointed to have missed it.
“Seriously? Stay put already” Finishing with his task, Spider-man shot a lazy web in her direction. She saw it coming this time. Fast enough to flinch and bring her hands up on instinct. The web clanged against the metal still fixed to her hand.
“You serious?” he fired off a second, then a third. Macey had retreated behind the bar and kept her makeshift shield up, yelping with each hit.
“Stop stop stop, I don’t wanna fight”
“Then put your hands down”
“Then stop shooting at me!”
“Naze sore o shinpai suru nodesu ka?” Yamashiro asked him, puzzled as he paused in his typing.
“Can’t have a minion running around, it’s sloppy work and you know what the boss thinks of that”
Minion?! They thought she was working for him? It was with him, she was working with him. For her own interests.
“I think there’s been a misudersta…” Spider-man fired a shot at Spots face to silence him. Spot flinched, then somehow looked perturbed. “And what was that going to do?”
“Sorry usually that works”
“Not accepted, also, how old are you?” Spider-man stopped in his firing at Macey long enough to look alarmed.
“What? why are you asking that?”
“You sound young”
“Ahem, that’s…” he pitched his voice down an octave “that’s none of your business. Hey Takuya how’s that coms call going?”
The answer came in a sudden eruption of pixels that assembled next to Supaidāman, assembling into the full figure of a bathrobe wearing mess of a human being. There were crumbs on his chin and he hadn’t shaved.
“Peter b? where’s the boss?”
“Big guy had to get pulled away for a bit so I’m monitoring the help. Oh hey you got the guy”
The pixels must of had some serious high tech sensors going of they could project the surroundings like that. Let alone create a projection life sized and moving.
The orange Peter leaned closer to look Spot over. “Huh, you’re the one that has the head all in a tizzy. Don’t look like much”
“Rude! I’ll have you know that I am a serious threat”
“Really?” he gave a quick glance, up and down at his cocooned form. “I bet”
Spot couldn’t show expressions, his skin didn’t change one bit from its parch white tone, but if they could he would no doubt be going red in the face.
“Its!..I…it’s been an off couple of days!”
“All right all right” holding his hands out and backing off, Peter the older stepped back to stand next to Peter the younger “You did good”
“In an official way good? Your not just saying that?”
“nah, successful mission. We’ll send through coordinates safe to portal from” gesturing to something on his side of the call.
Spider-Man gamer gave a little ‘yes’ and pumped his fist, Yamashiro a quick thumbs up. Which is about when he noticed the figurine webbed up in Spots cocoon.
“ that is mine” spoken clearly and pointedly in English as he reached out to pluck it.
Spot had been seething, at the way Peter hadn’t been taking him serious. At the way the other two dismissed him out of hand. At being webbed up so easily no doubt. His voice crackled and verbed as he hissed. “Just like before, No respect” and swiped back with the one hand still loose . It passed harmlessly through Peter b, the cloud of pixels dispersing and reforming with a small buzz.
But that hadn’t been the target.
Yamashiro was.
He seized the wrist as Yamashiro had reached close. Or more precisely, white boney fingers wrapped around the glowing watch. For a moment everyone looked taken aback. “You don’t get to underestimate me” he tapped the screen, having watched and having realised exactly where to press.
The watch beeped.
“oh no” dreaded words from Peter Lebowski.
Several things happened then in quick succession. Rapid enough that Macey had trouble keeping up with it.
A portal formed, tearing into existence with a howling staticky buzz she could feel in her teeth, retro fusion colours swirling and stabilising into something that hurt her eyes and made everything loose around it float.
Immediately everything else, the lights the fog machines, the toaster itself cut. The power in this world not able to handle whatever output this thing was giving and shortening out.
For a moment, a singular point in time everything was still. The snapshot of the scene seared into Macey’s brain. A calm before the storm. Lit up in dayglow orange.
“oh that’s not good”
The toaster groaned, wires no longer humming starting to slowly vibrate and shake. All the loose debris floating from the portal starting to drift. Drawn into the centre of the machine.
All three spider people straitened as one, like a livewire had shot through them. Some immediate danger they could sense.
No fail safe
Peter B disappeared mid sentence, about to shout something before the call cut whilst the other two leaped to get away from the centre.
The centre where Spot was starting to spasm and twitch.
It was difficult to see exactly what was going on. With the only light emitting from the portal everything was cast in dark shadows. She could see it though, because it contrasted starkly against Spots bleached skin. The size of a dime, a slash in the air across his abdomen. It sucked in all light.
It was sucking in everything else around it, including Spot.
Spot who was wrapped up and couldn’t move.
“Oh god”
She was watching someone get ripped apart. His body jerked, bending. Limbs spasming as he was drawn in. Somehow glitching as he went, two arms became three, became one, an inverse echo of himself splitting then reforming. The entire time inky black oozed up like a stain across his skin.
The spiders did, to their credit, try and do something. But any thread they shot at him immediately diverted into the void that was sucking everything in.
“That’s not working!” Thy tried to go for the beam he was affixed to, pulling down on the part that had not yet caught in the gravitational well. It twisted with a groan and somehow crunched down on itself, compacting as it drew in to the void that had now grown to the size of a dinner plate.
“That’s not either!”
Maceys hair was whipping about her. Even behind the bar she could feel a tugging. Growing more and more insistent, trying to draw her in and plastering her to the bars side. Loose bottles falling from the shelf then zipping towards the hole, grazing her arms. Splintering against the beams, the shards liquifying as they bent and sucked in. She would have been screaming but didn’t have the breath to make a sound, snatched up and pulled in with everything else.
Spot was still half out of the hole, his torso and head, jerking around as it ate him away. There was a moment where it looked like he was seeing her. His faceless visage staring back as the black warped across like a Rorschach inkblot settling into place. Widening then shrinking as an iris would. Then he was gone. Eaten by the hole as the suction tapered off, the void resealing itself and leaving bent and broken machinery in it’s wake.
“Oh my fucking god” it was barely a whisper as she was gasping to draw in air. Head ringing. She couldn’t think.
“s..stay there please” Even spider-man sounded shaken. Any bravo in his tone gone as he gestures for her to remain behind the bar. Giving continual glances to the machine. Like it would start back up again.
Supaidāman was jabbing at his watch in increasing annoyance. Banging at it to try and get a reception. The portal spluttered.
“Aftershock!” It was the only warning given.
In the pinprick centre where the void had been there was an explosion of nothingness. Holes scattered outwards like shrapnel. Whipping out too fast to react to and taking out chunks of matter as they passed. Leaving tracks of emptiness behind them. Floor, walls. Ceiling.
Macey barely saw it as the largest came strait at her slumped over form. Swallowing her and half the bar alongside it.
There one moment then gone in a flash.
Emptiness. Darkness. A weightless drop as the pressure changed and making her stomach lurch.
She could have been spinning, there was no way to tell.
Her lungs seize on nothingness. No air. Before sight and sound and feeling against her skin returned in a prickling wave.
Macey landed hard, spat out along side bits of wood and countertop. Skidding along the pitch black tar of a road that had surprising bounce to it.
She gasped, choked, eyes watering up on instinct as she looked about at where she now was.
Everything, absolutely everything was a riot of colours and shapes that should not exist. Characters waking in a rubber hose gait that did a doubletake on seeing her form.
oh hell
Somehow, Macey had been dropped into Toon Town.
All Translations curtesy of Google. Apologies for the inaccuracies:
- Naze sore ga umaku iku to omoimashita ka? - Why did you think that would work?
- Jōshi wa shiawase ni naranaidarou – The boss won’t be happy
- Kare wa jimoto no hitobito ni tasukete moratta – He was helped by locals
- Shikashi, watashitachi wa kore o mitsukemashita – but we found this
- Kono tame ni mata modotte kimasu – I will be back for this
- Naze sore o shinpai suru nodesu ka? – Why worry about that?