Chapter Text
The screen is black at first. Then, with some muffled shuffling, the camera turns to a slim figure in long sleeves and a slim fitted man. Despite the obviously poor equipment, the video is clear enough to make out the black, web-like patterns cascading across the mask. Where his eyes are, there are large, moving white screens.
Bruce leans forward in his chair. There’s a stern expression on his face as he takes the video apart visually. Young, is the first thing he observes about the masked man.
“uhm, hello everyone,” A modulated voice resounds through the cave speakers. Bruce’s lips purse then. The boy obviously doesn’t want to be found if he’s hiding his identity so carefully. This pipelines into a clamour of questions inside his head. What is he hiding. And, more importantly, Who is he hiding from.
“It is not abnormal for youtubers to conceal their identities, Master Bruce,” Alfred interjects monotonously, “Many fear the public eye.”
Bruce notes it mentally, then returns his attention to the video.
“It’s my first video here, so be kind please.”
He pulls the camera forward until its facing a long, rickety table that’s patchy with mold. Bruce’s brows knit together and he immediately taps the space bar to pause the recording.
Draped over the table is undeniably a super suit. Now, villain or not, its dangerous for a civilian to be in possession of an advanced piece of tech like this, especially when its in a dingy abandoned warehouse. With a sigh, he unpauses the video.
“This here is my suit,” Masked man reveals. Bruce can’t see it, but he can tell there’s a smile hiding behind his mask. Pride begins to roll from the spider themed hero-or-not as he explains the details of the suit.
“It’s a little torn up from my most recent… We’ll just say mission-” Bruce Easily picks up on the sombre tone. “-but that’s what we’re here for, Yes, this is pe – err, Spider-man’s episode one: fixing my suit!”
Spider man. Its catchy.
“spelled with a hyphen, by the way, Spider, hyphen, man; the hyphen is very important.”
Bruce fights back a smile. ‘Spider-man, then,’ he thinks fondly to himself. Honestly, he thinks ‘A little torn up’ is quite possibly the biggest understatement of the year. It’s ripped in some places, burnt, and overall completely wrecked.
This is what puts Bruce on edge the most. Who was angry enough to tear him up like this?
The rest of the video turns into a montage of him melding wiring into the interior and gluing the spandex back together. Bruce also notices that the tools hes using are worn and possibly home made. Some of it is quite literally taped to together.
After some time, Spider-man says goodbye to his audience – Literally, as in he waves bye – and ends the recording.
Bruce leans back into his chair. Alfred comes up beside him and rests a hand on the back of the chair.
“He reminds me of young master Tim,” the butler remarks fondly.
“Character can be deceiving,” Bruce replies.
He spends the next minute compartmentalising Spider-man’s identity – or lack, thereof. He’d first heard of the peculiar persona through Barbara. At first, she dismissed it as some role play series, but after trying – and failing – to find any details about the uploader, she concluded that there was a very real possibility that the youtube channel isn’t satirical in the slightest. This spider-man could be a legitimate, underground hero-or-not that had somehow been operating without anyone’s knowledge.
Bruce couldn’t really tell who the man was because before this video, Spider-man didn’t actually exist anywhere on the internet. In short, he was an enigma. A possible threat.
Then again, “why would a hero – or villain – want internet exposure?” Bruce thought aloud.
Alfred squeezes the chair, “perhaps he is only a teenager interested in the heroism world, perhaps the suit is not even his.”
“Then the suit must be seized,” Bruce reiterates, “We can’t rule out an underground villain.”
“I would suggest you allow master Timothy a chance to investigate, like calls to like, after all.”
“He’s already on it, same results as Barbara.”
Alfred hums curiously, “a smart boy behind that mask; evading miss Barbara and master Tim.”
“Hn,” Bruce agrees. Because the boy was evading him as well.
That doesn’t sit well for anyone.
The presence of a new entity, an unknown entity, makes him feel insecure. But insecure in that he isn’t sure how safe they all were until they could properly test him in battle. Either way, there is hardly anything he can do until the boy uploads again.
So, for now, Bruce creates a file on the bat-computer, titles it spider-man and leaves it completely empty… save for the singular youtube video, that is.
.
.
.
Peter punches the air when his subscriber counts goes up. A big, beautiful bold ‘1’ sitting pretty next to his profile picture which he’s made an awkward selfie of him in his mask. For a short, sweet moment, all he feels is pride.
Then, the cool library air-con hits him and he’s back to reality.
Err, not his reality. An alternate reality. With aliens and superheros just like his. Only, there’s no Spider-man or Peter Parker. Neither is there an avengers nor S.H.I.E.L.D initiative. He does however, discover that he is in a city called Gotham, which is New jersey. Home to the ‘Bats.’ Which he’s gathered are some sort of vigilante or mafia group. He can’t really tell, as the only intel of them on the internet are blurry pictures or articles that don’t corroborate with each other.
Amusingly, he thinks this universe’s Batman is a lot like his universe’s Nick Fury.
Regardless of how interested he is in these vigilantes, he quickly learns that this city isn’t fair to enhanced individuals – metas, as they say here. Meta human trafficking rings were a big thing here in Gotham. Actually, all crime was a big thing in Gotham. Better yet, Gotham was the capital of crime here in America.
If that wasn’t Parker luck in action, he didn’t know what was. Because yes, thank you so much doctor strange for dropping Peter in the worst possible place.
Peter shakes his head, putting the thoughts out of his mind. Instead, he touches up his channel, watches unproductively for the sub count to come up (it doesn’t), and logs out of the website. He puts his efforts towards learning as much as he can about this new universe.
Checking the small timestamp at the bottom corner of the screen, Peter notes that its been almost a whole two days since he arrived. Obviously he hasn’t slept but he finds that the discovery of alternate universes is ultimately more important to him than sleep. So he works. He works and works. Because he knows if he stops working, he’ll start thinking again.
And he hates to.
May.
He subconsciously snaps his pen in half.
“Ah, crap,” he mutters to himself, trying to clean up the steadily flowing liquid. He picks up the two halves of plastic, grimacing, and heads over to the bin. After depositing the mess he goes to the help desk to ask if they provide spare pens.
The lady at the desk, a nice lady named Barbara, smiles as he approaches, “whats up, kid?”
‘I’m 17,’ he thinks to himself, but hes not going to correct the woman when she’s being so kind. “Would you guys maybe have spare pens, and uh, a napkin, maybe?” he asks abashedly, gesturing to his now blue hands.
She laughs at the sight before tossing him a pen from behind the desk. He catches it effortlessly. “Nice catch.”
“Thanks – for the pen, and the uhm compliment.”
“No worries kid,”
‘17,’ Peter repeats mentally. Before Peter turns away, Barbara calls out to him again.
“You’ve been here a while, we offer free breakfast for students before 10 but I think I have some leftover sandwiches in the fridge if you’re still hungry?”
Peter awkwardly shuffles his feet, “I’ve only been here an hour, miss.”
“An hour?” Barbara repeats and Peter’s sense can feel the suspicion. “Ah, I must have missed you coming in, well, the sandwiches are still up for grabs if you’re keen.”
“Yes” he realises how quickly he says it after its been said and quickly covers it up with a cough, “Sorry, yes thank you.” Because God is he hungry. No kidding. His enhanced metabolism would probably let him actually eat the horse.
She smiles at him, “sure thing kid.” Only when she disappears into the staff room does he notice another odd thing.
There, look, look!
His spider sense tingles at his nape. His gaze drifts towards the tiny crack in the door. There’s another door in the staffroom.
Lower, lower!
He looks downwards and catches the glow of blue screens illuminating the space under the door.
Peter’s brows furrow together. Before he knows it, hes shuffled forward till his fore arms are brushing against the desk. If he focuses he can hear anything within a mile. He knows because he used to catch Clint tumbling around in the vents at stark tower.
Very faintly, he catches the sound of an older, gruff voice.
‘Signal, Signal?”
Peter’s mind sparks into a million questions. Signal, he knew, was the only day time bat-themed vigilante currently active. Then again, the voice could be literally talking about a signal.
The door cracked open again and Barbara wheeled out, a plastic wrapped sandwich sitting on her lap.
“Here ya go, kid.”
Peter takes the sandwich with a nod. He tries not to feel skeptecisim – or curiousity – because truth be told, he has more important things to be thinking about (like a food source, for one), but he really cant help it. He is after all a vigilante in his own universe -
His own universe
- so odd things naturally interest him.
“Kid?”
Peter coughs awkwardly, “sorry, thanks for the sandwich.”
Peter finds himself back at his computer, staring blankly at his notepad.
His own universe
“Shut up, peter” He mutters to himself, dragging a hand across his face. But he’s so, so tired. He fights himself, tries to redirect his thoughts to the suit sitting back at the abandoned ware house. “Just one problem at a time.” The reassurance comes easily to him. He heard it from May. Living in queens wasn’t so easy financially. Aunt may was raising him alone and mid town was no community school.
She always told herself, ‘just one problem at a time,’ when she didn’t think Peter could hear her.
But he always could.
He can hear anything within a mile.
The sound of her heart slowing.
The sound of her breathing stopping.
The sound of-
“Just one problem at a time,” he repeats again. The tears threaten to fall, but he doesn’t let them.
He works. And he works. He puts pen to paper and jots down all the steps he needs to follow to survive Gotham because he’s not Spider-man if he just sits there wallowing in self pity.
He stays there till it gets dark outside and people are starting to file out of the library. On the first page of his little notebook is somewhat of a to-do list, with food and shelter at the very top. He’s crossed off shelter for now, but makes ‘housing’ another option a little lower on the list. His abandoned warehouse is perfect for now, being anonymous for him to film. But, despite his arachnid theme, he doesn’t like the critters hiding in every corner of the building. The next page is occupied with a queue of items to research. The pages following are just obscure facts hes discovered.
Of course, at the very top of the queue, he’s written BATMAN, along with a scribble of a bat right next to it.
A little grin pulls at his cheeks. He feels like a detective with all these notes down.
With a sigh, he shuts the notebook and stuffs it into the backpack he’d taken from the lost and found.
Before he leaves, he makes sure to wave bye to Barbara and thank her once more for the sandwich.