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“Strange, stop!” Peter cried urgently, holding a placating hand out toward the Sorcerer Supreme. “Can we please just talk about this?”
Strange sighed, the sound heavy with the weight of too many lifetimes of hard choices. He shook his head. “Parker, don’t you realize that in the multiverse there are an infinite number of people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man?” He gestured at the Macchina di Kadavus clutched in the young man’s hand. “And if that spell gets loose, they’re all coming here.”
He had dragged Peter into the Mirror Dimension after the kid had stupidly seized the artifact containing the corrupted spell, not wanting to send the displaced villains back to their own universes where death waited for them. A quiet, reluctant part of Strange admired the boy’s stubborn idealism, the refusal to accept that some people were simply doomed.
But cold logic won. Their fates were already written, and he would not gamble this entire universe on a teenager’s guilt.
“Look, I know, I get it,” Peter shot back, “but we can’t just send them home to die!” The spell that had ripped them from their worlds had been his, and that made them his responsibility. Villains, yes, killers, even—but Peter still couldn’t stomach the idea of condemning anyone to a fixed, final end. Not even them.
“It’s their fate,” Strange said, voice flat and final. “You can’t change that any more than you can change who they are.”
“But what if we could?” Peter pressed. “What if we could change their fate?”
Oh, kid, Strange thought, a weary ache settling behind his ribs. He thrust both arms outward, bending the Mirror Dimension itself to his will. Reality twisted, folding and stretching like living glass.
“W-Whoa—what’re you doing?” Peter gasped as the world around him warped into impossible angles. He spun and tried to run. “I’m not giving you the—whoa!” The Mirror Dimension curled in on itself. As gravity tilted, Peter lost his footing and tripped. Strange opened a sling ring portal beneath Peter’s feet, and the boy dropped through it with a startled yell. A second portal snapped open directly above the first, trapping him in an endless loop of freefall.
The Cloak of Levitation surged forward in a blur of crimson and latched onto the Macchina di Kadavus, wrenching it from Peter’s grip. Thinking fast, Peter fired a web at the cloak, anchoring himself to the fabric and jerking to a halt mid-plunge. “Give me that back!” he snapped, kicking at the sentient garment.
Strange had had enough. He lashed out a whip of pure mystic energy, snaring the Cloak and yanking hard. Peter refused to release his hold. The two of them engaged in a furious tug-of-war while the webs still tethering Peter to the twin portals pulled taut. The portals drifted closer…until they kissed.
BOOM!
A violent explosion of residual spell energy erupted outward. The shockwave hurled both combatants across the fractured landscape of the Mirror Dimension.
Strange recovered first, he and the Cloak streaking after the tumbling Macchina, while Peter managed to land himself on a floating piece of earth. As he scrambled upright and looked around, realization struck like a lightning bolt.
“Wait a minute—is that an Archimedean spiral?” he whispered to himself. The pieces clicked into place instantly. “The Mirror Dimension is just geometry? You’re great at geometry, you can do geometry!”
He launched himself into the air, calculations racing through his mind faster than speech. “Square the radius, divide by pi…plot points along the curve!” Web after web shot from his wrists, anchoring to drifting boulders and pulling them into an invisible trap.
“It’s over, Parker,” Strange called to the young man, the Macchina resting securely in his hands, the Cloak returned to his shoulders. He knew the kid would hate him for what came next, but the greater good demanded it. “I’ll come pick you up when it’s done.”
Just as Strange opened up a portal back to the real world, Peter’s voice rang out.
“Hey, Strange! You know what’s cooler than magic?”
Strange paused and looked up. Multiple strands radiated outward, coiled around floating rocks that now orbited the sorcerer. Before Strange could react, he cried out as the webs snapped tight, binding his arms, legs, and torso, stretching him into a helpless eagle position.
“Math!” Peter finished, dropping upside down on his line.
“Don’t do this,” Strange warned as Peter took the Macchina back—only for the boy to then snatch his sling ring off his finger. “…Ow.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but…” Peter flipped through the portal and looked back. “I have to try.”
Strange narrowed his eyes. Bound and ringless did not mean helpless. He reached for the ambient energy of the dimension, letting the immense power channel deep into his bones. “You’re right, Parker—math is cool,” he growled as orange light crackled around him. “And the geometry of this realm answers to me.”
Shit, shit, shit, Peter thought frantically on the other side of the vanishing portal. He hadn’t expected Strange to still have an exit strategy. Think, Parker, think! He stood no chance if the Sorcerer Supreme decided to stop holding back.
Then an idea surfaced. Years ago, when Mr. Stark had first taken him under his wing and given him his upgraded suit, Tony had also installed something he called a Power Pacification Device into the web-shooters. Stark had been typically vague about the details, only saying that it was designed to harmlessly incapacitate powered individuals.
Peter had never needed it before—but today felt like a good day to find out whether the old man had been exaggerating.
He clicked the secondary trigger on his web-shooter. This better work.
Instead of webbing, a swarm of tiny mechanical spiders erupted from his wrist and streaked toward Strange. “Whoa!” Peter blurted, genuinely startled by the volume of the payload. The micro-robots slammed into Strange’s chest in a dense cloud. The orange energy around the sorcerer sputtered and died as his concentration shattered.
Peter didn’t wait to see the results. The moment the portal sealed, he was gone, leaving Strange alone with the consequences.
“…Really?” Strange said flatly into the empty air. “He shoots spiders at me and leaves? Stupid ki—”
The rest of the sentence vanished in a sharp, involuntary gasp as the spiders began to move.
They slipped beneath the high collar of his robes, under the edges of his sleeves, between the layers of fabric that usually protected him from the world. Tiny metal legs skittered across bare skin with deliberate, exploratory purpose. Strange grunted and gave an experimental squirm against the steel-strong webs. The sensation was…ticklish.
Intensely, embarrassingly ticklish.
A flush crept up the back of his neck. He had never told a living soul, of course, but Stephen Strange had always been a lot little sensitive.
Not that it had ever mattered before. The Sorcerer Supreme did not get tickled.
His eye twitched. “Is that the best you got, Parker? Tickles?” He forced a scoff. He was the man chosen by the Ancient One. He had stared down Dormammu in the Dark Dimension and forced the god-like entity itself to bargain. He was not about to be undone by a bunch of children’s toys—
A yelp tore out of him as several of the spiders found the soft hollows of his underarms and began to work. Dozens of minute legs danced and prodded and scribbled across the hypersensitive skin of his pits with merciless precision. This was no random scatter—the devices were hunting. They were mapping every vulnerable zone and focusing fire.
“Ah—haha—no—!” Strange’s voice cracked into a short, startled laugh before he clamped his mouth shut again. The spiders only intensified, swirling in tight circles under each arm, legs flickering so fast they felt like continuous vibrating brushes. He jerked hard against the webs, shoulders rolling, trying to crush the little machines between his arms and sides. The webbing held him wide open. Another helpless giggle burst free. “Hahahah! Stop that—hahaha!”
Cold sweat broke across his neck as more of the swarm flowed downward. He had been half-joking when he accused them of intentional tickling. If that truly was their programming…he was screwed.
A second wave reached his ribs and began to dig in. Tiny legs slipped between the bones, tapping and stroking in rapid, unpredictable patterns. Strange clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. The flush on his face deepened into a full burn. Then one particularly determined spider found the exact spot just below his left armpit where rib met soft flesh and began a relentless, rhythmic skittering. Laughter exploded out of him again, louder this time.
“HAHAHAHA! No, not there—hahahaha!” His head tipped back, throat working as the sound poured out in sharp bursts. “Parker, you little—hahahahaha!”
The spiders kept going lower. They traced the sensitive lines of his sides, explored the plane of his stomach, drifted across the tops of his thighs, each new path dragging fresh peals of laughter from him. When they reached the crease where hip met thigh he let out a high, undignified squeal that melted straight into helpless cackling. “AHAHAHA! Get off!”
Then they vanished into the tops of his boots and discovered the soles of his feet. The first light, scribbling contact across his arches made his entire body jerk.
He held the laughter back for exactly five more seconds.
Then it detonated.
“HAHAHAHA!” He thrashed hard against the webs, muscles straining, trying desperately to yank his arms down to protect his most vulnerable spots. The webbing did not yield a single millimeter. He remained stretched open, completely exposed, every sensitive inch available for the swarm’s unyielding attention.
No.
No.
This was not happening.
He was not hanging suspended in the Mirror Dimension with no sling ring and no way home, being systematically tickle-tortured by a cloud of mechanical spiders.
Absolutely not.
Unfortunately for Stephen Strange, it absolutely was.
The spiders never paused. Being machines, they required no rest, no mercy, no sense of fairness. They returned to spots the moment he twitched away and layered stimulation until the nerves themselves began to overload. His head whipped from side to side, sweat flying in fine droplets. A few of the tiny robots climbed up his neck and found the soft places behind his ears while others slipped inside the shell of each ear and began a maddening, skittering jig that made his vision white out at the edges.
“PAHAHAHAHARKERHER!” he roared, voice cracking, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. The laughter rolled on and on, broken only by gasping attempts to breathe. “IHIHIHI’M GOHOHOING TO KIHIHIHILL YOHOHOHOU!”
When he got out of this, that little shit was going to pay. Strange had been going easy on him, carefully limiting the force of his spells so he wouldn’t truly harm the boy.
That restraint was over.
A fresh scream of pure laughter tore free as the spiders discovered the slots between his toes and began to claw and stroke with exquisite precision. He tried frantically to curl his toes inside his boots but the robots, undeterred, simply climbed onto the tops of his feet and continued without missing a beat.
Worse followed. The swarm found places he never even knew were ticklish: the backs of his knees, the long dip of his spine, the insides of his elbows, even the palms of his hands. Every new discovery dragged another wave of wild, uncontrolled laughter out of him. His chest heaved so hard the webs creaked. His eyes bulged. The overstimulation was turning his thoughts into white noise, the ticklish agony unbearable. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams.
“ENOHOHOHOUGH OF THIHIHIHIHIS! STAHAHAHAHAP!”
Behind him the Cloak of Levitation writhed and strained, its fabric edges twitching in frantic attempts to reach the spiders and swat them away. It was as thoroughly bound as its master, forced to listen helplessly while Strange’s laughter fractured into higher, more desperate sounds that echoed across the Mirror Dimension.
Time blurred.
After the first hour, the spiders shifted tactics, working in coordinated waves. One group would focus entirely on his underarms for long, unbroken minutes, driving him into continuous shrieking laughter until he sobbed. Then they would suddenly abandon the pits and flood across his ribs and stomach instead, forcing a completely different pitch of helpless giggles from him.
Later they discovered that slowly tracing along the soles of his feet produced longer, more broken laughter than the rapid scribbling. They settled into a cruel rhythm: light, circling strokes across the arches until he was hiccuping with laughter, then sudden, rapid clawing between the toes that made him throw his head back and howl. “I CAHAHAHAN’T BREHEHEHEHEATHE!”
By the fifth hour his laughter had become constant, rising and falling but never fully ceasing. The spiders rotated through every known weak spot in endless cycles, and with each return to a previously tortured area, every last shred of his dignity was stripped away, leaving only fresh, desperate peals.
“I’M DYHIHIHIHIHING!”
Twelve hours.
Strange had been trapped here, suspended high above the Mirror Dimension recreation of the Grand Canyon, for twelve whole hours.
His laughter had long since collapsed into strangled, broken wheezing. His voice was shredded, reduced to hoarse gasps and the occasional cracked sob of pure sensory overload. Every inch of skin was flushed and hypersensitive. He trembled violently, his body pushed far past its limits. Tears and sweat had mixed into a sheen across his face and his hair hung in damp, disheveled strands. A thin trail of drool slipped from the corner of his open mouth and soaked into the collar of his robes.
Still, the spiders continued. They glided over sweat-slicked skin without pause, without pity, performing the single function they had been programmed to execute. Even now, weak little bursts of laughter still escaped him whenever a particularly thorough cluster of legs found a lingering sensitive spot. “Hah…hahaha…no…”
Strange barely registered the moment the webbing began to dissolve, the built-in fail-safe finally activating after a long countdown. The Cloak, however, noticed immediately. With a sharp tug it tore free of the last strands, then wrapped itself tightly around its master. Fabric edges darted beneath clothing, batting and sweeping until every last mechanical spider had been knocked away or crushed.
Only when the final robot fell silent did the Cloak ease its grip, cradling Strange carefully in midair. He hung limp in its embrace, chest rising and falling in shallow, shuddering pants while his mind slowly clawed its way back toward coherent thought. It took a full ten minutes before a single clear sentence managed to form.
“…I’m going to kill him,” he croaked, the words raw and almost unrecognizable. “The kid is dead.”