Blue reached the window first, firing another webline at the sill and pulling it up in one quick jerk from above. He waited for a second until he was positive the people in the window across the alley weren't there, then crawled down the wall and through the egress. Drake came next, hopping to the sill before clambering onto the bed beneath it, followed by a limping Teresa. Scarlet and Lucky slipped through, in that order, as Honeybee sat on the roof above until the space was empty enough for her wings.
She was just closing the window behind her when Ollie ran into the room. She looked distressed, which is good because it's like being hysterical without the panic. In a time like this no one would have blamed her for being hysterical. In a time like this no one would have blamed anyone for being hysterical.
"Are you guys alright?" she asked, as Teresa pulled her mask off and sat in the chair at Specs' desk. "I saw what happened, it was on the news!"
"We're okay," said Scarlet, pushing sweat-matted hair out of her face.
"More or less," Drake amended tiredly.
"More or less."
Ollie looked slowly from face to masked face. Not all of them stared back. Her gaze finally settled on Teresa, who was staring into space as one might after a long, stressful day at work. "You don't look okay."
"Give her a gold star," Teresa mumbled. "(I call first dibs on the shower.)"
"Where's Specs?"
If a silence followed this query, it was because most of them hadn't noticed the absence at all. Lucky cleared his throat. "He stayed behind to help Search and Rescue. Seemed to take this pretty hard."
"The more I know about him," Scarlet said absently, "the more worried I get. Oh, so his parents are alive, but are never there for him. Oh, he's covered in scars. Oh, he doesn't sleep much, and when he does he wakes up screaming. Oh, so he fights on a hurt leg and broken ribs. From last night, remember? He tried not to bring it up, but you saw how he was kinda limping. Oh, so he takes collateral damage personally, and gets snippy when someone tries to make light of it. I dunno, is anyone else getting the feeling that he's kind of…damaged?" She looked at Lucky, then at Drake, who was nearby. "Or is it just me?"
"Who was trying to make light of that?" Ollie asked, appalled.
Blue jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Honeybee, whose wings had vanished and was now peeling off her domino mask. She looked at him, then at Ollie's glare. "Teresa said something funny!" she said defensively. "She was yelling at Drake about the 'Terry' thing! All I did was—okay, can we go out into the living room? This is a small bedroom. I'm getting claustrophobic."
Wordlessly, Ollie led the group through the door. On his way out, Lucky said "Actually, wait a second," and ducked into the bathroom. Because of this, he was the last one into the main room, and he carried a box of cotton balls under his arm. He tossed the box towards Honeybee, but it was intercepted by her swarm of bees and delivered gently into her hands.
"…What do you want me to do with this?" she asked, looking at it.
"Smear a few with that healing honey of yours and pass them around. As long as you have that and it makes no goddamn sense, you might as well put it to some use."
As Honeybee pulled off her gloves and began giving individual cotton balls a coating of honey, Drake slumped into his seat by the windows and looked at her curiously. "What healing honey?"
"She can secrete honey from her hands," Lucky said, shrugging as she handed him one of them. "It seems to accelerate the repair of damaged tissue it's applied to." He rubbed the cotton ball across the scrape down his leg. "Saved our bacon earlier, when Scarlet and I needed to patch up after getting caught in a gang war. Could you hand me another, please?"
Ollie sat up. "What's that about a gang war?" she asked.
Scarlet took a deep breath. "Well, we ran into this universe's Black Cat—"
Teresa seized up, her face taking on a "deer-in-the-headlights" expression.
"…You okay, Teresa?" Scarlet asked.
She had gone bone-white, staring at Scarlet as her breath hitched and shuddered like a car engine that wouldn't start. She sat down shakily, clasping her hands between her knees as she looked away.
"…Hey, it's okay," Drake said finally, beginning to put a hand on her shoulder and stopping halfway through. "You don't have to talk about it. Just calm down."
She tried, her breath catching and slowing, and nodded. "Thanks," she gasped. "I—the Black Cat of my world—I don't. I really, really don't want to talk about it." She looked up, giving Drake a small smile. "Thanks." She glanced back at Scarlet, now looking somewhat embarrassed. "…What were you saying?"
Scarlet stared for a few more seconds, as though waiting to see for sure if she was alright. "Well," she continued finally, "we ran into her, she gave us a bit of info on the gangs in the neighborhood, and then we got caught up in a bit of a turf war between two of them. I swear it was like something out of The Warriors. Long story short, Lucky and I barely made out with our lives."
"Jeez," Ollie breathed. "…And was the other fight part of that? I only saw the end of it, when the channel interrupted the show for the news."
"No," Drake said. "Terry and I got there first. They said they were looking for Specs, but then—well, that happened." He sighed, rubbing a sore spot with a cotton ball.
Teresa rolled her eyes at the nickname and then turned to Scarlet. "You and Lucky looked like you knew what those robots were," she said bluntly.
"That's because we've seen something similar back home," Lucky replied. "They're called Decepticons."
A long, pregnant silence settled over the room. Blue's eyebrows rose steadily.
"You're saying you have Transformers?" Drake finally asked.
Lucky nodded.
Drake leaned back sharply, as though not sure whether to be impressed or annoyed. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Your universe sounds so much cooler than mine."
Ollie quickly perked up. "Does your universe have a GI Joe?"
"We decided to call the individual worlds 'iterations,' by the way. But yeah, we do. I think ours is on the third generation—there was the Adventure Team from World War II and Korea up through Vietnam, and then the first GI Joe to bear the name was back in the '70s and early '80s. You want to get Uncle Ben going, just ask him about those days—"
"Your Uncle Ben's still alive?" Blue asked.
Lucky nodded.
Blue took a deep breath, attempting to process this. "And, um, how—how is he?"
"He's…fine." The two Peter Parkers exchanged long stares, one full of regret and the other cautiously curious. "He's a little frustrated about being laid off, but he's—why? Did something happen to your Uncle Ben?"
Blue nodded, looking down mournfully. "Now I see why Specs called you 'Lucky'," he muttered.
Honeybee, in the middle of prepping another cotton ball, leaned forward suddenly, looking between the two. "I just realized something!" she exclaimed. "You're both versions of Peter Parker! And Specs is too!"
"Really?" Scarlet replied flatly. "Good observation."
"And—and when I talked to my version of Spiderman before I became a superhero—"
"It's Spider-Man," Lucky interrupted, a sinking in his stomach, "there's a little pause—"
"He got really, really sad when he mentioned someone he lost…" Honeybee put her hand to her chin as Blue slowly looked up, alarm in his eyes. "…Is it possible that he's a Peter Parker too?"
Lucky and Blue locked eyes, both immediately understanding what to do. "No," said Blue loudly.
"It could just as easily be Drake," Lucky said, gesturing hastily towards him. "Or—or a male version of Teresa."
"Yeah! And P-Peter Parker is, you know, a nerd! I hope. I'd hate there to be an iteration where he's a jock."
"A sample size of three is too small to know anything for sure," Lucky stammered. He glanced at Ollie, sitting right next to him, and hissed "Help!" through his teeth.
Ollie, whose eyes were wide as saucers, coughed. "What else've you got, Lucky? Do you have X-Men in your universe?"
"Yeah! Yes, we do," said Lucky, relaxing. "Scarlet and I haven't gotten to working with them yet, but that may change depending on what weirdness goes on in the future."
Ollie was practically bouncing.
"What else?"
"There's an outfit called MASK," Scarlet said, counting off on her fingers. "They used to be a big thing in the '80s, but they recently made a comeback—by working alongside the X-Men, oddly enough. There's another outfit called the Central Organization of Police Specialists- unoriginal acronym, but I didn't name it. They arrived in New York after the Green Goblin was arrested and one of OsCorp's plans was revealed. And then there's some group called Earth Corps out on the West Coast, but I don't know too much about them."
"Anything else? Does your universe have the Avengers or the Fantastic Four?"
Lucky bit his lip.
"Yeah, we've got both. I think. Avengers…I know we've got them. Fantastic Four…that's Reed Richards' group, isn't it?"
"Is in my universe." Ollie snarked.
"Iteration."
"Whatever."
"Wait, you've got a Fantastic Four but no Doctor Doom?" Blue asked.
"Look, Scarlet and I are kinda new to this whole superhero thing," Lucky said irritably. "For all I know, there is a Doctor Doom, but he's not yet shown his face."
"He's the dictator of Latveria!"
"My major's science, not social studies."
Teresa raised her hand.
"What've you got that's…well, of interest to normal people? What's the music scene like?"
"A lot like the '80s, believe it or not."
"Lemme guess—your universe has a Jem and the Holograms and a Misfits." Blue groaned.
"How'd you know?"
"Picked up on the trend of '80s cartoons being real things in your universe's present day." He folded his arms, taking a deep breath. "You got Medieval Scottish gargoyles running around the Big Apple at night, too?"
"That's a '90s cartoon, Blue," Drake replied.
"Same difference."
"We do, actually," Lucky said. Blue gestured towards him, giving Drake an exaggerated look.
It was Honeybee's turn to ask questions. "What else is there?!"
"Um, cybernetics, magic (apparently), megacorps—"
"Okay, it's official. Lucky and Scarlet's universe is probably cooler than all of ours. Except Ollie's." Drake groaned.
"Whatever. I'm gonna go take my shower now," Teresa said. She stood stiffly, hissed and flinched, and clutched her leg. "Ah. Honeybee, could you maybe pass me another cotton ball? Thanks."
Please—
The enormous chunk of concrete, piled high with rubble, shifted.
One, two, three, PLEASE—
The ground beneath Specs' feet cracked from the strain he was putting on it. His knees were almost to the ground. The concrete shifted a little more. The segment of the lip he was holding broke off in his hand, and he shifted his grip so fast there wasn't even a blur.
Crouched as he was, his hands under the lip of the concrete at the bottom of a mountain of rubble the size of a semitruck, he clenched his jaw until his teeth ached and squeezed his eyes shut so tightly tears formed. His arms trembled under the strain, his hands had long ago started bleeding, and the ground was cracking under him, but the concrete slowly, agonizingly inched upward.
All at once, it jumped three feet upwards, and he gasped from the sudden shift and desperately changed his grip to keep it suspended over his head. "Brace it!" he yelled through his teeth. "BRACE IT!"
The two firemen behind him rushed forward, each holding a two-foot cylinder with large, square ends and a hydraulic tube leading back to a large machine on wheels. They held the cylinders vertically in the gap Specs had given them, and the machine roared to life, extending them like telescopes until both ends pressed hard into the concrete above them and the ground below.
Specs dropped his arms, gasping. His shirt was soaked with sweat; his eyepieces thoroughly scratched; the thin black fabric that had been the fingers and palms of his gloves was long gone. He dropped his head, managing to steady his breath as he stared into the darkness he had just opened up.
"You're sure there's someone in there?" said the fireman at his left.
Specs nodded, though hesitantly. "Pretty sure," he said breathlessly, his lips tripping over themselves. "Felt something moving. Can't now, that thing's on—" he gestured backwards at the machine that powered the hydraulic braces, which had groaned and audibly shifted gears when the braces had taken the rubble's full weight "—but there was something. I think. Flashlight?"
The fireman on the left handed him a small, bright yellow flashlight with a wrist strap. Specs took it, clicking it on, and the beam from its diodes lit up the space before him with a bright, slightly harsh light. He pulled his mask up to his nose and took the flashlight between his teeth, shifting onto all fours and crawling inside like a spider.
"Why are we working with that mutant?" muttered the fireman on the right.
"He's not a mutant and you know it. His DNA was changed with a virus or some shit. That's what he told the news when they asked him."
"Well, of course he's not gonna tell them he's a mutant. But even if he's not, look at this shit!" He gestured around him, at the rubble piled high on all sides, at the flaming gas pipe sticking up nearby and spewing black smoke into the air, at the three ambulances in the street, doors open and medics working frantically, at the body bags. "This is only getting worse! The kid's been running around New York in his pajamas for a year like he goddamn owns the place, and everywhere he goes he brings death and—and chaos!" His arms dropped, and he looked down at the concrete being jacked up next to them. "Fucking Marvels, man. Does he really think helping us here makes up for all this?"
"No," called a small, slightly distressed voice from beneath. It was barely loud enough to hear. "I don't. And they're not pajamas."
Specs put the flashlight back between his teeth, crawling a few feet more. He felt his mind becoming frayed at the edges as desperation clawed at his heart. The vibration of the engine through the ground was uncomfortable, making him constantly shift his hands and feet even when still, but he was sure he had felt something move almost exactly beneath him. He maneuvered the flashlight to point at the rubble beneath him, punched his way through the carpeted laminate and and bamboo that had once made up a floor, and began to shift through the broken structures beneath it.
Please…please be alive…
It was slow work, relatively speaking. He managed to dig ten feet in half as many minutes, although much of that consisted of shifting aside beams and crushed furniture. He was becoming increasingly frenzied as he went—if he had gotten this close, the ripples of movement should have become noticeable even over the vibration of the engine—and he felt blisters forming on his hands as he worked. He reached a concrete barrier, his fists slammed into and cracks jumped through it, and as it started to give something above him shifted violently down—
—The ceiling gave way, and the water began to flood in like a tsunami—he could barely stand, let alone run; the waters of the East River swept him up and submerged him instantly—he held a flask tight to his chest, as the current tried to rip it from him he could feel the casing crack—he was drowning; he hadn't needed to swim in years and now water was spilling into his lungs as he frantically tried to kick for a surface that wasn't there—he was going to die, he was trapped in a collapsing tunnel and no one would find his body—no—no—AUNT MAY—
Specs screamed, frantically kicking and flailing at the edges of the tunnel that surrounded him, as the tingling in the back of his head spasmed and spiked. He screamed again, but then the flashlight that had fallen from his mouth blasted white light into his eyes and he was back in the rubble of a collapsed apartment, looking for survivors he knew he wouldn't find.
His heart was still pounding like he had sprinted a marathon, his chest was tight and his breathing wouldn't slow down, and he frantically blasted through the last of the concrete and fell out into a shallow chamber.
He scooped up the flashlight in trembling fingers, shining it around at his surroundings. A fallen support beam had apparently served as a kind of roof a few feet above him, keeping further rubble from falling in and crushing any occupants. It smelled terrible. The human body voids its bladder and bowels upon death, and now the stench of urine and feces mixed with that of blood and sweat and Specs almost threw up in response. He wasn't a stranger to it, though, and his heart sank as he looked around with the flashlight. Nothing, nothing—blood. Specs raised the flashlight hesitantly, knowing what he'd find, and felt his heart take another blow.
A body, half-buried in the wall of the small pocket, coated in dust and with broken rebar punching through its torso in three separate places. Blood soaked its shirt and lips, and the eyes were open, frozen in a stare of terror and pure pain. Specs' breath hitched, and it wasn't from the smell. Slowly, he inched forward and grabbed the nearest blood-covered rebar with both hands, easily straightening it. Doing the same with the other two, he grabbed the body by the arm and began to wrench it out of the heap.
So occupied was he with making sure the chamber didn't cave in as he pulled the body out of its wall, tacking rubble in place with webbing every time it began to slip, that it wasn't until he was done that he looked down at the corpse, realizing something. Hesitantly, uncomfortably, he set his hands on its forehead. It was cold. It had been dead for at least twenty minutes.
He looked up. …So what was moving?
Stepping over the body with more than a bit of trepidation, he grabbed the edge of the rubble he had tacked up and pushed it upwards. It inched up as he gritted his teeth against the strain, and the tingling in his head spiked several times as he felt something within the mass shifting dramatically. Peering into the hole, he closed his eyes suddenly as the light from the flashlight in his mouth glared off of something green. Specs cracked his eyes open as a webline snagged the scrap and pulled it towards him until he could scoop it into his hand. The edges were rough in his hand, and as he turned it towards him he could see a fragment of his own reflection, distorted and colored green.
It was a piece of metal, although the type of metal was completely alien to him. An oddly-sized piece, with edges suggesting it had been painstakingly torn away from a larger mass. The fact that it could easily fit in the hand suggested to him that one of his counterparts had been doing the tearing. He furrowed his brow beneath the mask as he looked up, thinking…
"OH SLAG! THEY'RE INSIDE WAZZPINATOR!"
He looked back down at the piece. The bee robot...? Shifting onto all fours, he shined the flashlight into the hole he had found the fragment in, looking for the pieces of the droid that had fallen. There were none. And furthermore…
That rubble did not fall that way, he realized as he looked at the way it was heaped and crumpled against itself. Something shifted it, so where's—no.
Three minutes later, Specs crawled out from under the concrete, dragging the cold corpse behind him and dropping it as he shifted back into a bipedal stance. The green fragment still in his hand, he took a few quick, blank steps forward, staring at nothing and ignoring the exclamations of "Jesus!" and "Is this guy all you found?" from behind him. He raised a hand and finger to himself, thinking. Turning halfway around, he mentally traced the path he had taken through the rubble until he looked up in the direction the shifted section had been in. One foot started to move in that direction.
"Hey! You just gonna leave a dead guy at our feet for us to deal with?! What the hell are you doing?"
He looked back at the pair of firemen sharply, then to the path he was starting to take. His mouth opened silently as he took a few more shifty, awkward steps away. "I…this takes precedence!" He broke into a kind of backwards trot, his words coming with more difficulty and his heart rising into his throat. "Can you—get the body out of the way, over to the g-guys in charge of that! I-I'm sorry!" He turned and broke into a jog for a few steps before bouncing over a thirty-foot obstacle in his way and out of sight.
"I told you," said the second fireman flatly. "Just running off. He does not care."
No. Please, no. Specs slowed as he looked at the edge of the disaster zone, and how a small line of rubble trailed away from the edge of the heaps. He bent down and swiped his bare fingers across the ground, and when they came back up the tips were streaked with a substance he didn't recognize but brought to mind various mechanical fluids. No, no, no. Breaking into an eighty-mile-an-hour jog, he crossed the street and followed the trail into a dead-end alleyway before skidding to a stop at a large hole in the ground where he might expect there to be a sewer access point.
He stared down at it in utter horror for what seemed like an eternity before dropping down into it. His feet hit the sewer floor with a wet smack, and he stood up from his crouch and looked around the junction he found himself in. Five different tunnels branched away from this spot, and the water along the sewer floor had destroyed any trail they may have had. Almost frantically he pressed his fingertips into the floor, only to jerk them away as a subway roared by maybe a hundred feet away.
They're gone, Parker.
He stood again, turning to look at each tunnel in turn before raising both arms and beginning to fire weblines. They splattered against the walls, reaching far into the tunnels and extending his range a hundred fold, and by the time he was done probably thirty weblines were gathered in his hands and he connected them all tightly together above him with a few web shots.
They are long gone. You let them get away.
Specs pulled himself into the center of the makeshift spider web, fingers curling around multiple lines at once as he closed his eyes and felt along them. Some months ago it occurred to him that this must be how Matt saw the world all the time, but now the thought was far from his mind as his brow furrowed and he tried to understand the sensations. Footsteps from above, a toilet flushing, the horn of a careless cabbie, rats scurrying and scratching at the walls, a basketball hitting the ground again and again and again—
But no giant robots, and no evil you. You're alone down here.
Desperate, his breath heaving, he shifted his grip, pulling the weblines so tight they stretched dramatically and he could feel his own heartbeat echoing back from the nearest anchors. He opened his now-wild eyes, looking around desperately as if it would help—searching for something, anything—
Nothing. Slowly, his fingers uncurled and his head drooped, the weblines twanging slightly as he released them. He shifted from his crouched position to sitting with his legs crossed, his elbows on his knees. His vision blurred; he pushed his eyepieces up, rubbing his eyes through the mask, before gently plucking one webline like a guitar string. He sighed through his nose, his heart heavy in his stomach, as he looked up at the light shining through the hole.
No time to feel sorry for himself. Specs felt his features harden under the mask and he took a deep, throaty breath, making a sound like "Hurm." He shifted back into a crouch, one foot on the center of the web, and jumped.
"Well, here we are," Blackarachnia snarked, eyeing a large abandoned warehouse in the Narrows. "Home sweet home for the time being." On her back were the various pieces of Waspinator.
"This started out as being such a good day for Wazzpinator! Then stupid organics tag-teamed Wazzpinator and caused him to fall apart! Wazzpinator want to re-negotiate contract!" Waspinator's head complained.
"Shut up!" Arachnolord snapped. He turned his attention to Tarantulas and Blackarachnia. "You two know more about putting this whiner back together than me." He started towards the warehouse restroom, rolling his arm and clutching the wound midway up his bicep. "Meantime, I've got to work on patching up my own wounds."
In the warehouse bathroom, Arachnolord gingerly looked over his wounds. An enormous, purpling bruise across his leg, several small gashes and bruises across his upper body, a long cut across his chest and a similar one on his cheek.
She is going to pay, he thought, examining this last one. He shed the upper portion of his costume, revealing a collection of thick black hairs that dotted his skin in between the natural human hair, and reached for a wall-mounted first aid kit, ripping its cover off the hinges. It was surprisingly well-equipped, and he dug out a bottle of morphine sulfate and injected a dose into his brachial artery. Then he turned his attention to a rather significant wound—an embedded glass shard in his upper left arm. A souvenir from the building's collapse. He sterilized a scalpel and set of tweezers with rubbing alcohol. Once all the prep work was done, he began operating on himself.
To an outside observer, Arachnolord's movements were almost mechanical, as if he were a flesh-and-blood robot. If such a thing were possible, he came off as more of a machine than the trio of Transformers in the main portion of the warehouse.
"Okay, I can hear you doing self-surgery," Blackarachnia said from outside the door. "Maybe we should find you a street doctor for the next time you get busted up."
"I didn't know you cared," Arachnolord called back.
"I don't. It's just that you can more easily blend in than us."
Arachnolord gave an inhuman hiss at his cohort, and then returned to his work.
Steam from the shower had fogged over the bathroom mirror, despite the fan whirring above her. Teresa wiped off the mirror and pushed a soaked lock of purple hair out of the way to examine the spot on her temple where Arachnolord had smashed her head into a counter. The honey had healed the wound admirably, but the regenerated flesh was still tender to the touch. She frowned at it for another moment before ducking down the cupboard under the sink and pulling out a fresh towel.
She had just finished drying herself off when she realized something. Freezing in place, she sighed and tapped on the door before opening it a crack. "Guys?" she called, blushing slightly.
There was a pause outside, before Scarlet's voice answered, "Yeah?"
"I don't have any spare clothes," Teresa said embarrassedly. "Could somebody grab me something?"
"Oh! Sure, just a second!" Scarlet called back, and there was a pause while Teresa leaned against the counter and whistled to herself awkwardly. After a few minutes, Scarlet knocked on the door, and Teresa cracked it open a little more, covering herself with the towel.
"Here," Scarlet said, handing her some underwear, jeans, and a white sweater. "I think Specs' mom is bigger than you, but you'll have to make it work for now."
"Thanks," Teresa said, and several minutes later, she was leaning against the wall of the main room, the sweater baggy on her frame and the legs of the jeans rolled up several turns to end at her ankles.
"This actually brings up a good point," Lucky noted. "When Specs gets back, we're going to need to talk about getting spare street clothes."
"And the costumes," Drake added. "Someone's going to need to patch these up. We've got no idea as to where those four psychos currently are, but I want us to be ready if they pop back up."
Lucky raised his hand.
"Aunt May and Uncle Ben taught me how to sew- said it was a good skill for anyone to have."
"I can sew too—wait, your Ben taught you how to sew?" Blue asked, with genuine curiosity in his voice. "Where'd he pick that up?"
Lucky shrugged. "Said he learned it from a guy named Carl Greer when they were in the old GI Joe."
"Was this Greer guy a medic or something?" Ollie asked.
"Again, from what I've heard, he was a medic or something. Does your iteration of GI Joe have a Carl Greer?"
Ollie bit down on her lip.
"I think they may have had one at some point, but from what I've heard, I think he was killed in action before I got there."
"Funny…from what Uncle Ben's told me, the Greer in my iteration's with the current GI Joe. Must be pushing sixty or something by now." Lucky replied.
Just then, there was a rumbling noise.
"Sorry- that was me! I haven't had anything to eat all day!" Scarlet said.
Teresa adjusted her sweater again.
"Can anyone here cook?"
Lucky raised his hand.
"I've been living on my own for a few months. I learned to cook by necessity…especially thanks to my old roommate Harry Osborne. He couldn't cook to save his life, and I didn't want to go into debt ordering takeout on a regular basis."
Teresa smiled.
"Okay, so let's review. We got our asses handed to us by Spider-Man at the seawall today, and then our usual hangout got closed down because of a turf war that another Spider-Man got involved in. I say we find them and give 'em a taste of brass!" a punk said, brandishing a pair of knuckledusters.
Just then, the trio of punks saw a man walk out of a warehouse, with evidence of freshly patched-up wounds.
"What's wrong with this picture? A guy with a body hair problem walks out of a street clinic in his skivvies." one of the others piped up.
He whistled at the stranger.
"Nice day for a walk, huh?"
"Yeah. Nice day for a walk." came the reply.
"Wash day tomorrow! Nothing clean, right?"
"Yeah. Nothing clean."
The lead punk turned to his cohorts.
"This guy's a couple cans short of a six-pack!"
"Your clothes. Fork 'em over." the stranger demanded
The lead punk flipped off the mysterious man and was punched into a wall for his troubles.
"Fuck you, asshole!" one of the other two yelled.
Arachnolord smirked.
"What? They don't have The Terminator here?" he snarked.
The remaining two punks barely had any time to react before Arachnolord made his move. One of them pulled out a knife and got his neck snapped, while the sole survivor got punched into a wall as he tried to flee. Once it was over, Arachnolord looked over the dead and unconscious lowlifes and proceeded to strip them of various garments. From the dead one, he took a pair of combat boots and leather pants. From the second unconscious one, a T-shirt for some band called "Catharsis" and a pair of sunglasses. And from the leader, he took a black leather jacket.
He turned and faced a mirror lying in a nearby alleyway and looked himself over.
"Looking good, Palmer. Nobody'll ever suspect you're that evil Spider-Man. Not even that little brat who beat you." he said to himself.
"Okay, so if your iteration has a GI Joe, does it also have a Cobra?" Ollie asked.
Lucky looked up from the pot of boiling water.
"Yeah. It does. Mind passing me that box of spaghetti?"
Ollie did so.
"So, what're they like?"
"It's…weird. Whenever they're not up to some big plan, they seem pretty competent. But when they aim big, their schemes are pretty out there and tend to fail."
Ollie nodded.
"So, is your Cobra Commander a snake man from an ancient civilization or something?"
Lucky blinked.
"I…don't think so. Then again, I've only had one run-in with my iteration's Cobra, and most what I know about them come from what I've seen on the news. But if you're asking me if I've run into any of the big names, I've gone up against the Baroness and Destro and managed to get away. Hopefully, I won't run into those two again."
"Um, Scarlet? Mind if I ask how and Lucky got your powers?" Teresa asked.
"We got bitten by a genetically engineered spider during a tour of an OsCorp research facility."
"Well, that puts us at…seven people who got our powers from being bitten by a spider. You, me, Drake, Lucky, probably Specs and Blue, and that Arachnolord psycho."
"And I got stung by a radioactive queen bee." Honeybee piped up.
Teresa blinked.
"I'd ask how that worked, but seeing as how the bulk of us got our powers from something similar, I'll shut my trap."
"What about Ollie? Did she get bitten—"
"She's a mutant." Drake replied.
Honeybee nodded, satisfied with this explanation.
Notes From Courier:
-The Central Organization of Police Specialists is the eponymous organization of the late 1980s cartoon series "COPS".
-Catharsis is a Russian heavy metal band.
-Carl Greer is Doc from GI Joe. In Earth-H, he was on the original GI Joe team alongside Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy, Joe Colton Junior, Marie Danvers, Ben Parker, Nathaniel Summers, and Wade Wilson. Of those, Hawk, Colton, and Doc are on the current GI Joe roster. As for the rest, Danvers and Parker ended up going back into civilian life, Summers got killed by Miles Mayhem from "MASK", and Wilson's kicking around as Deadpool. In the Misfits universe, he's presumably dead thanks to events in the Devil's Due run of the GI Joe comic.
-Earth Corps are the main protagonists of the '80s cartoon "Inhumanoids". Their Earth-H versions are pretty much the same as the original cartoon, with the exceptions of Marcus "Bombardier" Fischer and Elizabeth "Sabre Jet" Walker (both OCs, but the latter is a reworking of a character from the original show.)
Notes From Brackets:
-The virus mentioned by that fireman is the Oz virus. A very early-phase version, used to hybridize a collection of common house spiders with traits from five or six other species. Looks like it's transmittable to humans. Oops.
-Specs mentioned "Matt" in this chapter, as in Murdock. Spider-Man and Daredevil are pretty good friends in Earth-61610, although not nearly as close as Specs would like.
-Specs' grunt of "Hurm" is borrowed, of course, from Rorschach of Watchmen.
