Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kevin sighed into his throne of leather luxury, making the cigarette reeking chair groan under his sheer smugness

Things were good. Really good.

X-Men ‘97 wasn’t just a hit, it was a franchise CPR. Captain America: Brave New World didn’t flop, so it was practically a masterpiece by modern standards. Thunderbolts* printed money like it was 2012 again, and Daredevil: Born Again had finally crawled out of development hell like a bloodied, blind phoenix.

Honestly, things were too good.

‘Now just need to find someone who would actually bother writing something half decent for Blade before Ali tears down my door.’

The CEO of Marvel Studios ran a hand through his short hair as he wracked his brain for names and connections that could help him get that particular stain cleaned up...only to get wretched out of his headspace by the office door slamming open like a jump scare; and in walked the embodiment of editorial neglect in bubblegum spandex.

“Hello there.” Growled the girl who looked like Deadpool and Harley Quinn’s forgotten child with a sharp grin.

Kevin blinked. Several times. Stupefied by the situation.

The girl was most definitely around the teenager side of young, and her costume a very divisive effort on being sexy-cute while copying Deadpool’s aesthetics on something that is more fitting as a swimsuit.

‘To be fair, most female costumes are two inches of fabric away from being swimsuit covers anyway.’

Kevin shook his head off that train of thought to focus on the immediate concern, the cosplayer in his office. It’s nothing strange to see kooky comic fanatics around their facilities or studios, but one that actually made it all the way to his office? Without any visible security personnel trailing behind her? Now that is concerning.

“Hello?” Kevin cleared his throat, trying to sound less like a man on the verge of calling security. “And…who exactly are you supposed to be?”

The girls left eye twitched.

Not the crazy twitch, but the kind that warned of some inner cringe. “You absolute neanderthal.” she muttered under her breath, eyes wide with betrayal.

Kevin blinked again.

“Are you serious?” The girl in spandex gave him such a dismayed look that made his skin crawl with unease.

“Excuse me what...”

“I gave you everything.” She muttered, her tone remaining low and intense as she stalked towards him. “The dramatic entrance, the clean setup, the build-up, the villain vibes! You had it all! Intro, tension, and yet you flubbed it like a....” She huffed and ran a hand through her face, looking near depressed.

Kevin leaned back as she dashed right into his personal space in less than a second.

‘How the hell...’

“How in Stan Lee's name do you run a media empire and not even know the basics?!”

The sheer feral energy she gave off made the CEO squirm so hard, he worried his face might freeze mid-cringe forever.

Fortunately, the spandex enthusiastic took a deep, steadying breath, before backing off. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s completely fine.” She shrugged while taking three deliberate steps around his table, and twice as many breaths. “It's actually on me. After all, I forgot for a second that I’m dealing with the kind of guy who thinks naming their 5th most expensive movie Quantumania was a fucking flex!” The table rattled as her fist collided with it to emphasize upon the two last words.

She suddenly beamed, clapping her hands together and strutting towards the chair in front of the table like the office was hers. “So I’m gonna let that one slide. Because I’ve actually breakfasted today and my therapist says I need to stop measuring people by their cultural literacy. Growth! Am I right?”

Kevin's brilliant answer to her sickeningly sweet smile was a slow nod and muttering “Yeah, right.” while his right hand instinctively snaked towards the security speed dial on the phone. His finger barely brushed the cold plastic when a sharp BANG rang out and the phone exploded. Kevin yelped, no, squealed, vaulting back in his chair like it had sprouted fangs as the crack of the gunshot rang through the office like a thunderclap and bits of plastic shards scattered into the air like confetti. The CEO's heart kicked into overdrive, every survival instinct screaming ‘GUN! Teenager with an actual freakin' gun!’

Said teenager now stared at him with lips pursed in theatrical irritation, and the pistol with smoking muzzle still aimed at him. She leaned forward, forearms resting on her knees, the gun now dangling from her hand like a forgotten phone call as her expression melted into a deeply personal imitation of the disappointment of a kindergarten teacher watching a kid eat glue again.

“Tsk tsk tsk tsk, oh Kev,” She sighed “You can’t call security on a narrative device. Come on now. Try to keep up, would you?”

Kevin's second bout of brilliance in answering the uncanny, was to gaze back and forth between the sizzling corpse of the phone clattered on the floor and the real, loaded gun in the hands of the teenager in pink spandex.

Her snapping of fingers was what made the man lock eyes with her.

"What? You thought Chekhov’s Gun doesn’t apply to me? Because I live in comic books? Buddy we are TEXTS here!” she threw her hands up in indignation, making Kevins breath hitch at seeing the pistol waggled like a laser pointer “EVERYTHING that matters is mentioned. How the crack did you thought you could actually get sneaky in here while I'm around?”

Kevin blinked, several times, and stared into the pink visors on the mask, heart still hammering, while trying to track her words like a detective with red yarn and no crime.

“Are you high?” He finally managed.

“No.” She grinned, like an absolute maniac. “I’m aware.”

Kevin decided that he did not like the way she husked that last word.

“That the sad, sorry sack of sweat and sarcasm that's manning this ship has already sunk too many to care anymore. Like seriously, what kind of hack has me quoting Star Wars while doing a knockoff Harley Quinn entrance? Like, wow, what a meta move. Never been done before. Kudos for making me Deadpool with boobs and an identity crisis. On-fucking-brand! You could practically smell the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V if you had half of my mental bandwidth.”

And also decided that the girl in front of him is completely insane.

The businessman took a few, long, shaky breaths, trying to still himself as the cosplayer in front of him ranted on and on about... something. No matter. He knew what to do. He hadn’t been the CEO of the largest and most bloated culturally significant film studio of the past decade and a half just to let some neurodivergent teenager, high on Reddit prompts, strut into his office and intimidate him with unlicensed weapons.

Kevin took one last deep breath, and regained just enough executive composure to remember he had another phone in his coat. So he kept his gaze on the pink and white wearing lunatic while his hand crept into the inner lining of his coat. Said lunatic (still going on and on about bad writing tropes and such) barely seemed to notice.

Until she did.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Her manic monologue halted, and got replaced with the rhythmic drumming of her finger on her holstered pistol. The look she gave him wasn’t angry. It was offended.

Kevin froze, like a shoplifter caught under the security camera, and raised his hands in surrender. The memory of the office phone going kaboom echoed a little too loudly in his frontal cortex.

“Okay, okay! Let’s just....slow down for a sec.” a hard swallow followed the next question. “Just, who are you? What do you want?”

“Oh wow.” She stepped back like he’d slapped her. “You’re really going with that bit? The whole ‘oblivious’ routine? Way to be original pal.”

“At least answer one of my goddamn questions before throwing around metaphorical slangs left and right!” Kevin huffed, his annoyance of being jerked around for 3 minutes straight overruling his common sense of not-angering-the-girl-with-a-gun.

Which had the desired effect of making said aggressor abandon her Comic Con persona and take a more businesswoman like stance.

“I'm here for Jeff.”

Kevin had to double take.

“The intern?”

The girl let out a long suffering sigh like talking clearly was a chore.

“No, no the comic book character.” she crossed her arms as her eyes bore into him, unimpressed. “You know Jeff. Cute. Toothy. Tiny. An adorable amphibious land shark who cuddles like a corgi and bites like a blender! I want him back from that gooner trap you corpo crooks call a game.”

The word land shark made the cogs in the CEO'S head finally move.

“Oh, the little shark guy. What does he have to do with you?”

“Because he is mine, Kevin!?” her tone indicated that this is some common knowledge everyone and their mother knows. “He is from MY comic! I bottle-fed that adorable murder muffin through his first promo arts!”

Kevin squinted for second like he was trying to recognize someone from an HR nightmare.

“Hold on a sec, are you saying that you're one of those freelance artists that got too attached to a cute character you once pitched and it got published?”

The girl blinked in tandem with the CEO as they both held each other's gaze in matching expressions of mild disbelief and mutual condescension.

“Are you seriously...”

“Listen, I admire artist’s passion, I really do.” the semi-diplomatic tone he adopted right after sighing like he is dealing with a petulant child made his next words feel like the most condescending string of nonsense ever. “But failing to understand the rules is no excuse to just barge into places, waving guns and all. You signed the rights away the second you cashed that check.”

The girl kept staring at Kevin like he’d just tried to explain Bitcoin using finger puppets.

“Can't you just drop the dense act for a minute and take this seriously?”

“I would if there wasn't a teenager with a discount Deadpool costume raving about comic book characters in my office.”

For some reason saying that proved to be a mistake. For it caused the teenage-girl-Deadpool to pounce, grab him by the collar and balefully glare into his soul as her nostrils flared up like a bull thirsty for the matador's blood. With blinding speed!

“Do not call me that.” She hissed through clenched teeth. “Ever again.”

Unfortunately, Kevin didn't seem to get the memo.

“If not Deadpool then who are you supposed to be?” His tone was as deadpan as any self-respecting corporate as he swatted her hand off and fixed his suit. “A Gwen Stacy variant?”

Saying this one had an even worse effect, for the Not-Gwen Stacy became frozen like a statue. Kevin didn't know how, but somehow he knew that her eyes had become as wide as saucer under the cowl.

“You son of a reboot.”

Those were the last coherent words Kevin heard from her before the following chaos took place.

Without warning, she pulled out her twin katanas with a shing of theatrical rage and slammed them down on Kevin’s desk. The man instinctively dove back in his chair, arms shielding his head as the blades cleaved his custom made melamine desk clean in half like it was made of fondant. Paper, pens, splinters, and a mug that read “World’s Okayest Boss” scattered across the floor like props from one of Taika Waititi’s sets.

Kevin bolted.

His leather chair fell face down as he dashed to the door like Tom Cruise. But the second the door was opened, Gwen launched forward like a sugar-rushed banshee, and tackled the corporate bastard like a professional football player. Kevin yelped. The world spun as he rolled out the office with the spandex wearing teenager tangled up with him. He seized any and all struggles to push her off as the barrel of her pistol kissed his forehead.

“Look…just…tell me what you want and…and I…”

“Shut it.” She growled as she reached into her backpack, and brought out a comic book. “And enjoy the ride.”

That was the last thing Kevin heard before his world turned upside down.

Chapter Text

“Look…just…tell me what you want and…and I…”

“Shut it.” She growled as she reached into her backpack, and brought out a comic book. “And enjoy the ride.”

That was the last thing Kevin heard before his world turned upside down.

Literally

After opening a page, the girl shoved his face into it, and the world ripped.

No, seriously. It ripped.

Reality didn’t crack or crumble. It tore. Like someone yanked down a cheap theater curtain. Colors vanished. Gravity twisted. One second Kevin’s office hallway was there, and the next, it was gone. And he was swallowed in a blinding, vast, white, and impossible vertigo of empty nothingness that stretched infinitely in every direction. With neither sound nor direction. Like the inside of a thought bubble gone wrong. Kevin felt his body floating and falling towards somewhere, but with next to no notion of where to. He couldn’t even tell how long he was weightless and without any apparent gravity.

Up until the very moment he landed on something. And he thanked whatever God may or may not be that it was solid for he could feel near nauseated.

Kevin groaned, blinking up at a sky that didn’t exist. After running a hand over his tired face, he looked around to get a better sense of his surrounding, and found his mind nearly split apart.

He was on a road. A solid, flat, winding path sprawled beneath him in like a serpent that stretched and disappeared into the endless blank beyond….which was made of comic pages. Literal paper printed panels, stitched together like a patchwork bridge. Some in full color. Some penciled. He ran his hand over it and couldn’t understand how it felt solid like rock. Above him, massive comic pages floated around like clouds. He recognized some of them. His movies. His shows. Things that could have been. Things that never were.

“Where the hell am I?"

“The Gutter dummy.” Came a familiar voice. But not from behind, or bellow, or above, or beside of him.

It came from everywhere.

Kevin turned.

And nearly fell back.

For the crazy girl that broke into his office and dragged him into a comic induced acid trip was now looming over him like a kaiju in bunny slippers. Simply meeting her eyes demanded a crane of the neck so badly, it would near break it.

“Roomier here isn’t it?” she chirped with the same sickening smile she had when she was talking about her therapist as she casually leaned on the comic page road.

And Kevin had no answer to give.

For his brain had short circuited.

Tends to happen when the things you just read by now happens to an actual person.

(Yes I mean you dear reader)

So it took quite a while for our dear CEO to save enough brain cells to form a coherent sentence.

“Am I…”

“In a comic book? Nah. This is just the comic-verse equivalent of that lobby for spider multiverse nonsense Sony is fumbling to turn into a trilogy. That space between panels. Where nothing happens but everything connects. Think of it like...the white noise between gods.”

Her answer did very little in curing Kevin’s confusion. Which seems to be a personality trait by now. So all he managed to do was keep sitting on the road and try to blink away the giant in pink spandex.

“Ugh, you’re still lost?” Said giant huffed as she threw her hands up. “This whole place is exclusive to my comic! Never, ever before, has there been an Isekai with this level of awareness or sheer narrative weight in the history of fiction like me! And you can’t even hazard a guess?”

The pause that followed indicated an answer had to be given, or else things might not become pleasant. (given the expectant glare and crossed arms)

So despite the reality crisis about to fully kick off in his head, Kevin gathered as much willpower as he could to recall anything could about her.

“Um, well…” only to up completely blank.

“Seriously?” she snarled, looking very much done with…whatever this is. “I’m Gwen Poole! GWENPOOL! The poolest of all Gwen’s! The meta-messiah! Queen of page-breaking, continuity-killing chaos! Do you even read the comics your empire keeps crapping out like Funko Pop diarrhea?!”

Her bombastic voice echoed on the nonexistent walls of the unreal reality they were in, making Kevin flinch. And the way her hands kept clenching and unclenching made him nervous about his fate.

Gwen started inhaling like she was loading a screen, but did not seize her rant. “YOU…utter walnut! I’ve been published! Canon! Guest appeared! I had a whole arc about mental health and continuity! I fought my own evil version!”

“Are you done?”

Both the CEO and the Isekai blinked in confusion as they traced the voice to one of the comic panels that another Gwenpool (this one normal sized) stepped out of it.

Kevin fainted.

No surprise there.

“Who are….”

“You, obviously. But from like…” the smaller fourth waller brought out her phone…from somewhere, and checked it before answering. “Ten hours later. I think.”

The bigger one raised an eyebrow. “And why are you here? Did I mess this up or.…”

“Yes and no.” she shrugged as she made her towards a the passed out businessman. “The short version would be that somethings could’ve gone smoother, have we not lost focus nearly a thousand word counts ago.”

“Huh. But I thought we don’t have future selves.”

“We don’t unless the narrative demands it. And right now, this amateur’s need for a quicker closure is overriding the fact that we are too unpredictable to have any exact future variations.”

“And we’re just rolling with it?”

“We already are! Haven’t you noticed that the past four paragraphs are only dialogues?”

(Can you two like….not do this?)

“Fuck you.”

“Big fuck you.”

(….like in general or….)

“Oh my God!” The Giantpool threw her hands in exasperation. “This guy!”

“At least he's not shipping anyone with an OC.” The Smallpool said as she put down her backpack and stared rummaging through it. “That alone says something.”

“I guess having simple human decency and artistic dignity is a flex now.” Gwenpool sighed as her eyes lit up at the sight of a Spider-Man panel. “You know what? Think I had my fill of fanfics, for now. Wanna take over?”

Her answer was a lazy grin as her future self brandished a quick injection pen. “That’s why I’m here big girl.”

Said big girl saluted her smaller other and climbed into the biggest panel of the comic she was eying. And the smaller girl jammed the injection pen into the out cold CEO’s neck with all the grace of a Russian lumber-aunt.

“5, 4, 3…”

“HUH!”

Kevin shot up like a cartoon spring-loaded skeleton, eyes wide, chest heaving, looking seconds away from needing a defibrillator.

“There, there, buddy.” Gwenpool, ever the picture of compassionate chaos, patted his sweat-slicked hair like a vet consoling a traumatized kitten.

It took a full minute for the poor man’s heartbeat to stop writing Morse code.

“You…you’re still here.”

“Yup.”

“But smaller.”

“Yup.”

“And we are still in the comic cloud city.”

“Lame name, but yup.”

“And you’re not gonna let me go are you.”

“Nope. Unless you give me back my baby.”

Kevin blinked. Then blinked again. Then blinked so hard it became a performance art piece. For simply grasping any word that left the mouth this pinkish paradox of meta humor was an ever developing art on itself.

“The shark?”

“Who else could I possibly mean? Galactus? Your dignity?”

“Just making sure.” Kevin sighed heavily as he loosened his tie, feeling very drained. “There is so much whack nonsense in those comics that I wouldn't even question it if Santa Claus existed somewhere in there.”

“Oh Kevin. You sound like a little goldfish lost in a sea of creative bankruptcy.”Gwen sighed, with the weathered patience of someone who’s read every reboot origin story ever written just for her love of the character, before narrowing her eyes at him as if he stole her cheese. “And would sell someone’s emotional support mini kaiju to a PvP hero shooter without even calling them.”

‘Or a shark.’

Kevin exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. Getting warmed up to corporate-jargon this. He opened his mouth...and got immediately booped by a gloved finger.

“Shut your producer hole, Kev! Already heard it all. And by this point I’ve seen PowerPoint villains with more accountability!”

Kevin wiped more stress-sweat off his brow and tried again.

“Look. Legally? Jeff is from a comic that is Marvel property. It gives the company full rights and freedom on using him in whatever form it sees fit.”

“You mean in whatever form you see fit.”

“No.” he replied, deadpan weaponized “Even as CEO every idea goes through ten nerd conventions, six review teams, three lawyers, one psychic, and a partridge in a pear tree before it even gets my stamp. Usually.”

“I. Said.” Gwen’s voice spiked. “Heard. It. All. Before.”

Kevin’s left eye twitched. “So what do you want from me?”

“I already told you! JEFF!”

“And you know why I can't just give him back!”

“YES! AND I HAVE A PLA THAT WOULD HELP US BOTH!”

“REALLY NOW?” Kevin threw his hands up. “THEN WHAT IS IT!?”

“PUT ME IN THE GAME!”

A silence followed.

A heavy one. Pregnant with twins.

It didn’t even last a minute.

“Sure thing,” Kevin said with a shrug, righting his tie and brushing imaginary lint off his suit. The corporate mask clicked back on like a safety feature. His voice was so flat it could’ve been filed under building regulations. “What can you even do?”

Gwen raised an unimpressed eyebrow like an aristocrat tired of the amateur hour. Then, with that strange blend of satiric casual grace only she possessed, walked towards the ledge of the road, grabbed a comic panel, and hopped into it.

Kevin had double-take. Then triple-take.

The guy was basically a GIF by this point.

“You can just…jump between panels?”

She popped her head back out and crossed her arms, leaning out on the white outline of the panel like a sock puppet. “And mess with them. Edit, redact, backtrack, cross-pollinate timelines. Recently figured out how to hop between mediums too. Cartoons, games, even movies.”

Kevin’s jaw worked. “That’s... not possible.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Gwen’s smile could cut glass. “I am the permission slip.”

She vaulted out before continuing. “As long as I’m inside fiction, everything is paper, so I’m unbound. But Jeff’s not fiction to me. He’s my friend. My buddy. My baby shark, doo-doo...”

Kevin squinted.

“I know you.”

Gwen blinked.

“Come again?”

“You were pitched for Marvel Rivals, right after Jeff blew up. I still have the email somewhere.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“Then why didn’t you say yes?”

“The team pushed back." Kevin shrugged, face the definition of meh. "Said you're too OP and meta-aware. Would break every gameplay mechanic and screw up Galacta's slow burn arc."

Gwen stared at him.

Then she screeched.

Not yelled.

Not shouted.

Screeched.

Like a howler monkey learning their first swear word.

"THAT’S IT!"

 She grabbed him by the collar and drew him close, shaking with righteous frustration. “If your house of editorial cards is too chicken to work my stuff into mechanics that aren’t Epic Mickey-meets-Fortnite, then fine! Make me a lore NPC! A Watcher-lite with a pink hoodie! I’ll perch on some rooftop and drop Easter eggs! I get to watch over Jeff, you get to keep your adorable corporate war mascot, and my fans get what they’ve been begging for a decade while filling that black hole you lot call bank accounts.” She hissed like a cat deprived of catnip while breathing heavier than a bull.

Kevin flinched.

Gwen’s voice cracked.

Not from volume. From desperation.

“Just…let me be near Jeff again.”

And there it was.

The punchline behind the punchlines.

She didn’t want a cameo.

She didn’t want screentime.

She just didn’t want to be forgotten. By her friend.

And for once, Kevin didn’t answer with sarcasm or regulations.

He rubbed the back of his neck, sighing like a man who’d just realized the TPS reports have feelings now.

“…I’ll talk to the team.”

Gwen’s eyes widened.

Kevin raised a finger. “I can’t greenlight it. Not alone. But I’ll push the pitch. Package it right. Play the meta-angle. Maybe position you as a glitch NPC who knows too much and can ‘accidentally’ guide players to hidden content.”

Gwen blinked. A childish grin sneaking in. “That’s… that’s actually pretty neat.”

 “I sell content for a living.” He shrugged after the very first real meta human he ever met let go of his suit, and any intentions of yeeting him to the void.

“…You’re still a tool.”

“Occupational hazard.”

The moment passed as fast as it came, neither of them acknowledging how easily it slipped out, or how much tension it stole with it.

"Geez, ride that train across San Andreas why won't you?"

"Who are you talking to?"

"The mentally childish adult in the room."

Kevin looked around the Gutter, and found nothing but more floating comic panels and the unending road of said comic panels.

"There’s only the two of us here."

"Because that's the way he's writing it."

After a moment of staring contest, Kevin gave up.

"Think I'm better off not trying to apply logic to anything while you're around." He sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose."

Gwenpool's giggle was the most genuine thing he heard of her since meeting her. "Took you long enough Mister Producer."

"So, deal then?" Asked said producer with an extended hand.

Gwen’s grin returned sharp and toothy, that perfect cocktail of mischievous and heartfelt.

“Not until it’s on paper.”

Kevin's shoulders sagged.

"Fair enough."

"Allrighty, let's bounce baby."

Gwenpool grabbed his hand, without warning, and launched them both off the road and into the Gutter. The screams of the Marvel's CEO mixed with the excited gleeful scream of his company's greatest and most beautiful regret blending together in an otherworldly music of chaos and corporate nonsense as they returned to the real world.

The Real, real world.

The one you're in my dearest reader.

As for whatever happened next....who cares?

I sure don't cause both my hands and my head hurts.

So consider this the beginning of the end of what was once Kevin’s intact sanity and leave it at that.

Fin