Taken Away
Aunt May and I explore the small market below at ground level. Dirt streets wind between technicolor buildings that look more like old, metal totes built for giants, stacked on top of each other and haphazardly designed in chrome metal and painted neon borders. It's crowded with all kinds of people - aliens, humans, aliens that look like humans, and creatures that are probably just other kinds of aliens.
Coming from earth, it's a little overwhelming, and I don't protest when Aunt May nervously links her arm through mine, as if we're about to start humming Jolly Holiday as we peruse the open-air booths and tents crammed into the smokey alleys.
Whatever the smoke is coming from, it smells delicious. Like some sort of thai food - the good kind.
"Do you smell that?" Aunt May inhales deeply.
"I was just thinking it reminds me of getting dinner at SriPraPhai with Uncle Ben…"
"Maybe we should… get lunch," Aunt May grins. "While we wait." She is feeling brave enough - or maybe just hungry enough - to unlink her arm and duck into one of the wide, bright alleys, booths and tents crammed on either side with smoke wafting from beneath and colorful canvases and all types of people speaking in languages I don't understand. Some of them are just sounds, like chirps and barks and whistles.
"Hello," she says excitedly to one of the patrons, a tall male that looks like a seahorse in a suit, with two arms on each side of his body instead of fins. "What are you selling?"
The seahorse opens his mouth and lets out a shrill sound that sounds like a cat yowling underwater. I swear bubbles might pop out of his mouth at any moment.
"Oh, um," Aunt May takes a step back awkwardly. "I'm… I'm sorry…?"
The seahorse waves her further down the line, letting out another gurgle, and points.
"That… that way?" asks Aunt May weakly.
The seahorse nods, then screams. "SHREEEEE-LUBUBUBBULLEL…"
"Thank you so much," I say, unnecessarily loudly, pushing Aunt May further down the path.
"He seemed nice," she whispered hesitantly.
"We are way out of our league," I giggle. "Squeeeee lubba-lubba…"
"You stop that right now." Aunt May smacks my arm away and purposefully holds her head up higher when she approaches the next tent.
A woman that looks similar to Gamora works over a small outdoor stove. She is the same species; a Zen-Whoberis, a green-skinned alien wearing a dark purple robe with silver tattoos on her cheeks.
"Travelers," she purrs when she sees us. "You've come all the way to my tent! Those of us who don't get a place near the front suffer loss of customers. Customers stop too soon, alas, too soon." She wipes her hands clean on a towel and grabs two bowls. "What will you have?"
"We… we don't know what's good," Aunt May admits. "We're new."
"Ah," the woman sets aside the bowls. "Nothing rich, nothing too rich. Midgardian accents. You would like some familiarity, yes? Try this bread. I've created replicas of dumplees."
She takes two breaded… dumplings… and places them on a plate, holding them out to us.
"How much?" Aunt May asks.
"No, no, samples. You like them, I'll sell you more."
Aunt May accepts the plate. I take one dumpling and she takes the other, and she bites into it right away, but I hesitate.
My brain is wildly racking with everything that could go wrong. What if certain alien species prefer to serve food at, like, a thousand degrees? Like we take a bite and our tongue melts right out and our jaw disintegrates? And their DNA can handle it and we can't? What if their version of flour is actually dust from their version of cocaine? What if they use something they call salt, but for us, it's actually crystallized space-snails? How do we know?
Aunt May breaks into a huge smile. "This is very good," she says, giving me an odd look. "I like it. But why… why are you…" She replaces the half-eaten dumpling on the place, and then touches her forehead, at if checking for a fever. "Funny, I feel full. Like I couldn't eat another thing… ever."
"Um, okay, you're making me nervous," I quickly put my dumpling back on the plate, and then I take the plate out of May's hand and hand it back to the woman.
The Zen-Whoberis only considers me with a critical expression. "You don't like my food?" she asks, crisply.
"What's in it?" I ask, fighting to keep the rising pitch out of my voice.
Aunt May stands there, suddenly blank and sullen, like a child who forgot the letters during a spelling bee. "What time is it?" she asks. "We… we should go. We don't want to be late." She gives the alleyway a confused look. "Where are we going again? Why are we here?"
"What did you put in this?" I demand, my sense of polite control flitting away. I slam the plate back onto her table beside the stove. "Why is she talking like this?"
The Zen-Whoberis turns away, laughing lightly. "I forget," she sighs. "You Midgardians are so easily susceptible."
"Aunt May, we're leaving, NOW," I grab Aunt May's elbow and start to push her back into the crowd.
"Stay," whispers the Zen.
Aunt May's feet seem to root to the ground, so suddenly that I nearly knock us both over.
"Aunt May!" I say loudly, my panic overriding sense. I circle around till I'm in front of her, waving my hands over her empty expression. Her eyes are glazed over and staring at nothing, as if she'd gone suddenly blind. "AUNT MAY! LOOK AT ME!"
"She can't hear you or see you," the Zen calls to me, without even looking at us. "Sometimes our food will have that effect on people. Terribly sorry."
"Aunt May, stop this, come on," I exclaim. She doesn't answer, and she can't move.
I try to tug at her, then grab her and push hard.
"Ouch, you're hurting me," Aunt May says in a monotone. But there's no indication she knows that she is speaking, or that she knows she's speaking to me at all.
"Sorry, Aunt May, but we need to leave!" I say loudly. I finally wrap my arms around her and try to lift her into the 's like grabbing a small tree, deeply grown. I can't even lift her, like she's standing in solidifying cement. I can't move her unless I break both her legs - whatever is happening - whatever this is - she's trapped.
"Can someone help us?" I shout. "Help me - please - she's stuck - she's…" I pause, and feel horror writhing through my veins.
The entire alleyway market has gone dead silent. Not a single alien comes forward to respond to my cry, because not one of them are here to buy food like we were.
Somehow, they are all in this together. The entire crowd. Every alien, every strange garb and robe, every colorful mask. They all stand quietly, with expectant regard, watching the exchange. Some of them smiling.
My skin feels clammy, hot and icy both.
"What is this?" I ask.
No answer. They all watch me, their eyes trained on me, then Aunt May, and then the Zen.
"This will all go a lot faster if you have one little bite," the Zen urges, her white smile sickeningly wide. "Or we can do this the hard way."
"Bring on the hard way," I snarl. I grab Aunt May's arm protectively, forgetting for a moment my super-strength.
"You're hurting me, little boy," Aunt May says, thin and static.
My heart gives a painful lurch of fear. "May. You… you know who I am, don't you?"
She doesn't meet my eyes.
"It's me, Peter. Can't you hear me?"
She stares over my shoulder at nothing, lids heavy, pupils unfocused.
"What the HELL did you do?" I launch at the Zen's table. "What did you GIVE to her?" I shove the stove off the table, and it breaks into pieces on the ground, spilling hot coals and tiny flames out into the dirt.
The Zen backs away from me, not entirely afraid, but rather, self-perserving and annoyed at having to be. "Strangers think they're so high and mighty," she growls at me, baring her white teeth. "Greedy Midgardians, snatching up our grub, big mouths, big tongues, lashing and gnashing…" she pulls a long knife from her belt. "Fat Midgardians always hungry and never smart enough to tell themselves NO."
I activate my webshooter, thrusting out my hand. The web jettisons across the table, sticks to the blade, and yanks it out of her hand and right back to me.
I catch the handle in my fist, and point the knife in her direction. "Fix what you did to Aunt May, and I won't kill you."
Suddenly silent audience of market-dwellers are no longer bystanding in blissful passiveness. Erupting in a demonic cacaphony of cheers and jeers, every single one of them rush at us at the same time, arms extended. They launch themselves at me like a tidal wave of limbs and screams and grasping hands, knocking me to the ground before I can fully leap out of the way - which my spider-senses try to warn me to do, but with no clear direction. Leaping out of the way from the people behind pushes me into the ones in front, and the sides, and some even dropping onto all fours and grabbing onto my ankles. There's hundreds of languages and voices and shouting all at once, and I feel like I'm drowning in the world's worst mosh pit.
They're the same to Aunt May, only she doesn't struggle at all. In the onslaught of the mob, someone points something like a remote at her, and she collapses like a limp noodle into the arms of the Seahorse.
I'm ripping, tearing, growling and twisting every which way, punching and fighting my way out, pushing people over and jumping onto their fallen bodies to leap over the head of the next one.
There's so many of them all at once that it takes me far too long to get a wrist above the crowd, shoot a stream of web to the topmost corner of the building, and zip-line myself out. Twisting in midair, I land with my back slammed against the wall, one hand plastered to the metal behind me to keep me perched in place.
I sent another stream of web into the crowd, perfectly encasing Aunt May in a sort of small handprint-shaped cocoon. I start to pull back, but the crowd leaps onto the web, sticking themselves to it, weighing it down like a clothesline between the apartments in Brooklyn with too many sweatshirts hanging on it.
"Get off!" I scream. "Assholes!" I pull my arm back, and Aunt May's yellow sweater flies into the air. I clench my fists and leap off the building again, not caring who I hurt, punching and grabbing and throwing people out of my way. I manage to even get the Searhorse by the throat, squeezing just hard enough to make him afraid as I shove him backwards away from Aunt May's limp form, now sliding to the ground like she's passing out but not quite there yet.
My arms snake around her, clenching her tightly to my chest, and I throw my arm out for a second attempt, the web thwips into open air -
I feel a sudden jab of pain as something small and metal sticks to the side of my neck just under my ear. My hand automatically goes to the source, feeling something hard and coin-sized clamped into my skin.
Within a hot second of blinding, flashing shocks, a buzz of electrocution runs through my entire body, and May, and anyone still trying to grab at us and hold us back from the web. Several aliens fall back with groans and exclamations of anger.
Lightning bolts crackle with animated, sizzling energy all up and down my arms, like getting tazed only ten times worse - knocking me flat out onto the ground, stiffening and loosening up my joints in horrible spasms, and Aunt May collapses right along side of me. Her body jerks around on the ground with electrical pulses, completely limp and mouth slack.
"M-M-May," I cry. My body tightens with another bout of electricity, and I scream through clenched teeth, my back arching and bending me high into the air and then slamming me back on the ground. "May. It's going to be okay. I'll get… you…"
I can't finish my sentence. Darkness encroaches on the edges of my vision, bleeding out the corners in black swarms. I focus on Aunt May's unconscious face, pressed into the dirt ground.
I whisper, "I'll… get you…"
Blackness, oppressive and complete.
Home.
...
Review Replies
LoonyLovegood1981 - LOL I didn't even think about that, apparently I am! Yay for the end of the world?! XD I guess it makes sense when I want to write about Peter Parker in space, it makes sense to give him a really big reason to NOT be living and spidering in New York anymore - like - maybe New York isn't there anymore? Solid observation, that cracks me up. I think maybe a LOT of the MCU is canon in this - except for a few things, like, some of the events of Ragnarok are screwed up, and the Grandmaster doesn't die, and maybe the events in Infinity War didn't happen. I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to see Endgame before committing ;) Thank you so much for your review! Hope you enjoy!
Tightpants182 - I'm definitely gonna go pretty dark for this one. I don't think any darker than Down Came the Rain or Avenge the Departed, but we'll see. I know the way I'm translating the "pig pen" for Sen's enchanted parents in the animated film, for this Sakaarian version, is gonna go HELLA dark. I want Sakaar to have a sort of nightmarish, dreamlike quality about it, just like the movie, so that at times it will feel beautiful and interesting, and other times it will feel positively horrific. Thanks so much for your reviews! I'm glad you're enjoying!