Chapter Text
The portal closed behind him with a wet, vile sound.
Peter Parker fell to his knees on an unfamiliar rooftop. His Spider-Suit was smoking on his left shoulder, and his spider-sense was buzzing at the back of his neck like a fire alarm searching for an invisible fire. He stayed there for a few seconds, breathing heavily and feeling the cold, rough asphalt against his palms.
—All right, Peter. Stay calm,— he told himself, trying to sound convinced. —You’ve traveled between dimensions before. A couple of multiverse mishaps won’t kill anyone you can handle this.—
He looked up. And he knew, in that very instant, that this universe was in a league of its own.
The city stretched out before him like an open wound. The buildings were Gothic spires scratching at a leaden sky, so dense and gray that it looked like a concrete ceiling about to collapse. No stars, no moon. Just a filthy orange glow seeping up from the ground, as if the sewers were ablaze and no one had bothered to call the fire department.
—What dimension did you send me to, Stephen?— he muttered, standing up carefully.
Doctor Strange had been ridiculously drastic: “The spell broke, Parker. The universes are overlapping. I need you to go to a stable place while I repair the fabric of reality.”
“Stable?” Peter had asked.
“Stable enough. Try to survive out there.”
And then: the shove, the portal, and a hard landing in a run-down building. He found himself in a city that seemed to be in the throes of a depression; even the birds looked emaciated. Wait a minute… was that a bat over there?
Peter wrinkled his nose beneath his mask. A thick stench hit him all at once. It wasn’t just the classic New York smog—that mix of stale rain and car exhaust. It was something else… something pungent that went straight to his primitive brain. It smelled like a forest after a storm, like wet leather, like fertile soil. And at the same time, like sweet flowers and warm milk.
—Did someone dump a truckload of Victorian perfumes around here?— he muttered, shaking his head. The clash of scents was so overwhelming that he seriously considered plugging his nose with toilet paper.
He peered over the edge of the rooftop. Below, people walked briskly, their shoulders hunched and their faces hidden beneath hoods and umbrellas. No one looked at anyone else. No one smiled.
—This definitely isn’t New York,— he whispered. —This is… the dark side of New York? The New York that doesn’t know soap? Please, let it not be New Jersey. Anything but New Jersey.
And then, his spider-like vision picked up on the details.
Each person gave off a different “scent.” Some walked with a firm stride and their chins held high, exuding such a dense aroma of oak and black pepper that Peter could smell it from the fifth floor. The crowd parted in their path almost instinctively.
Others smelled milder, like lavender and honey. They kept their eyes downcast, walked cautiously, and, every now and then, someone would place a hand on their shoulder in a strangely territorial gesture.
The rest simply smelled… normal. Like mild soap and cheap detergent.
Peter scratched his chin through the fabric of his suit.
—This is really weird,— he mused aloud. —It’s as if… everyone has pheromones on steroids? Do they have some massive genetic deformity, or does the air in this city contain a chemical that destroyed their sweat glands?—
His nerdy brain began spinning theories at a thousand miles an hour:
—In the sixteenth century, people used overpowering perfumes to mask the stench of the bubonic plague. Could it be that the drainage system here is so terrible that everyone bathes in cologne to keep from passing out? What a concept for a city...—
His nervous laughter died away abruptly as he watched two men emerge from a bar. One smelled overwhelmingly of pine and storm; the other, of apple and cinnamon. The first grabbed the second by the back of the neck with a possessive firmness that made the hairs on Peter’s arms stand on end. To his surprise, the apple-scented guy didn’t fight back: he tilted his head, exposed his neck, and sighed with absolute docility.
Peter blinked behind his white glasses.
—What… the hell did I just see?— he asked into the air. —Was that a canine dominance display? Do people here role-play as wolves in the middle of the street?—
He rubbed his face.
—Great. Fantastic. Stephen has sent me to a dimension where everyone smells really bad. I wish I’d brought some scented deodorant instead of just seven cereal bars, a few cans of food, and some water.—
He stood up and stretched his arms. His spider-sense was still buzzing in the background—not because of an imminent attack, but as a subtle warning: ‘The rules are different here, Peter. Very different.’
—I’m not going to survive,— he said melodramatically. —I’m going to be the first Spider-Man casualty in history, defeated by a city that smells like an enchanted forest and a bakery.—
Without a second thought, he let himself fall into the void, feeling the icy wind on his face, and landed with the grace of a cat in a shadowy alley.
Time to put into practice the basic survival guide he’d learned from the Avengers: shelter, water, and food. He already had two of those in his backpack; all he needed now was to find an abandoned hideout before the “festival of smells” gave him a migraine.