Chapter Text
Dust. That’s all there was for a moment. All he could feel, smell, see, taste even. It was weird that someone could do that to another person with the snap of a finger. But the weirdness of the situation was the least of Peter’s problems. Because in about ten seconds, there was no more dust, not within his reach at least. He seemed to be floating in something very very cold. As soon as he opened his eyes it burned and all he could see was a sickeningly bright shade of green and a few rising air bubbles here and there. Air bubbles? So he was underwater. Peter suddenly became aware of the viscous liquid filling his lungs and began to rapidly swim upward.
If he closed his eyes he could remember being dropped in the lake the year before and just barely surviving because of Tony (well, kind of Tony) swooping in at the last minute. But Tony wasn’t there. Peter wasn’t sure where he was, but his spider senses told him that there was absolutely nothing familiar in swinging distance.
When the teenage boy broke surface, he flailed around wildly for a handhold or a raft. What he found was rough concrete that scraped his knees as he got up. Good enough. Peter rolled out onto his back before realizing that there was still green goo in his system. He rolled over, got on his hands and knees, and forced it all out back the way it came in. There were tears in his eyes by the time he was coughing up the last of it.
Peter stood up and took note of his surroundings. All he saw was a whole lotta warehouse. Seemingly abandoned, run-down, and falling apart in some places. He looked down and saw that his suit had fallen apart piece by piece. At the broken edges, he could see the wiring and nanotechnology sparking up. He winced. Stupid green stuff, short-circuiting my suit… He surveyed the room. Partially hidden by a blue tarp, he could see a short row of shelves. He felt a slight shove in his mind, pushing him in the direction of the single pop of color on the premises.
On the shelves were a few duffle bags that looked like they’d been placed there recently. Recently enough that there was none of the dust that was covering the rest of the surfaces in the room. Dust… Peter shook his head and began rooting through the bags. Most of them were filled with different types of guns that he was very careful not to touch. In one of them though was a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. That would work. He quickly changed into the clothes and headed towards the nearest staircase.
Peter didn’t stop until he got to the roof. The air was cold and caused him to shiver, yes, but being up so high with the wind on his face and the skyline within view would have to be worth the cold. The only problem was that he didn’t recognize the skyline he was looking out at. In fact, he didn’t recognize anything. Trying to stay calm, Peter inched toward the edge of the roof, looking out at the streets. They looked sinister, no more sinister than the streets he would patrol at night, but definitely a different kind of sinister altogether. He zeroed in on a newsstand on the sidewalk below and aimed his web shooters at one of the papers on display, bringing it up to read. The Gotham Gazette. He’d never heard of that one. In fact, Peter wasn’t even sure he’d heard of Gotham City. He read on about someone called “Batman” and “Robin” taking down a human trafficking ring. The paper listed a few more unknown vigilantes before Peter ultimately gave up on understanding who the hell these people were.
He looked down at the webbing, still connected to the newspaper, and suddenly realized that he wasn’t wearing his web shooters. Those as well had been short-circuited, so he threw them into the vat of green stuff with the rest of his suit (Better to not leave it lying around for anyone to find). The teenage boy traced the webs on the paper back to his own wrist. “Ugh… gross.”
Subconsciously, he disconnected the webbing and left the paper on the gravelly rooftop beside him. “Okay, I’m in a city I’ve never heard of, reading about superheroes and vigilantes that I’m pretty sure didn’t exist a few days ago…” He whispered to himself, momentarily forgetting that the AI built into his suit was not listening. “Maybe… maybe I’m in some weird alternate dimension, or…” He stopped, his eyes widened. The multiverse theory. He’d always thought there was some truth to the theory that there was an infinite number of possible alternate realities. And he knew that there was no way in sweet hell that even Thanos could have snapped half the universe out of existence. Not even that glorified raisin would be that evil. (Not to mention the theory of conservation of mass, but Peter was still well on his way to mastering physics to get too into that).
So he sent everyone to a different universe. There were an infinite number of them, surely they could all handle one extra person. It almost seemed humane, if one didn’t take into account the lives ruined that were still in the victimized universe. The loved ones grieving, the world systems changing, the unrest and chaos.
Naturally, thinking about it made Peter want to fix it. All of it. But of course, fixing the multiverse was quite the task for a fifteen-year-old boy who couldn’t remember the last time he ate or slept. He would have to take care of the basics first. Pyramid of Needs and all that shit.
Peter Parker’s needs were simple. First, a shit ton of calories. That was easy. There had been some loose change and a few quarters here and there in all of the duffle bags, enough to get him a decent seven-eleven meal. At least as decent as a meal from seven-eleven could get. He walked along rooftops until he found a convenience store and swung down into the alleyway next to it. In the convenience store, he grabbed a bag of chips and a sandwich. The food would hold him over long enough to get to the second item: Find out more about the world he had just been dropped into. Peter began browsing the magazine section, looking at the various headlines.
Justice League Refuses To Cooperate With US Government. “We [The Justice League] cannot be bought and we will not be used,” Wonder Woman says.
Central City Still Dealing With Meta Outbreak: Is The Scarlet Speedster The Solution Or Part Of The Problem? STAR Labs Yet To Comment.
Peter picked up the magazine and placed it on the counter, waiting for the cashier to acknowledge him. “Hey, uh, I have kind of a dumb question.”
“What do you want, kid?”
“What’s a meta?” The teenager was met with a look of dumbfounding. “I kinda live under a rock, I guess.”
The man behind the counter sighed, then answered, “A metahuman is someone with superpowers.” Oh shit, that’s me. “They gotta be human though, so Superman doesn’t count. Pretty sure he’s an alien.”
So this Superman guy is an alien. Noted. “Right, of course. Uh, thanks.”
“Word of advice,” The man said. “Don’t go talking about metas in public again. Not in this city.”
“Uh… why not?”
“Far as I know, they all end up in Arkham, via Batman and the bird squad.”
“Bird squad?”
“The robins?”
“There’s more than one?” God, this place is already giving me a headache.
“Yeah, no one really questions it anymore.” He said, shaking his head. “You really are from outta town, huh?”
Peter sighed. “I guess you could say that.”