Part 4 - Resurgence

Chapter 62 - Deep Fake

Miles didn't know what to do. From his current vantage point on top of the Empire State Building, he could see possibly hundreds of 'Jolly Dodgers'. Maybe it was pointless, trying to fight the Empire; nobody was willing to step up. He couldn't do it single-handedly, at least directly. So maybe that was the solution: not fighting in massive battles. Instead he had to do what he was best at. In that case he had better get going. He stood up and leapt off the side, letting himself tumble for a moment as he wondered if he still had what it takes to be Spiderman. As the ground drew closer and closer, he twisted a little and fired a web at a wall, swinging sharply round a corner. People looked up at him. Even from high up, Miles could see smiles spreading on their faces as they recognised their old hero, or some version. So Spiderman still brought hope to the hearts of everyone; that was enough for now. He spotted trouble down below: a car being hijacked with the driver held at gun point. Miles dropped in, catching the hijacker by surprise by webbing their hand holding the gun. The thief's eyes opened wide and they began to run, only to be stopped by another web to the foot that sent them tumbling face-first onto the pavement. A couple more web shots finished the job, pinning them down. The driver gave Miles a single look before putting the pedal to the metal and tearing away with squealing tires. Nobody nearby seemed to care all that much.

Three days passed, all of which Miles spent dealing with crime. By the end of the third, people were beginning to take a little more notice of him. He would occasionally get a small round of applause before the bystanders returned to their daily routines. The streets of New York were filthy with criminals, so there was no shortage of work. However, one matter still pressed heavily in Miles' mind: the Vikings of Berk were still starving. He had to help them somehow, but how could he kill Godzilla? Not even an army could stop the King of the Monsters, but someone had to before Hiccup, Astrid and their people died out. He decided it was time to talk to Teresa again; she seemed to know a lot about all sorts of things, and it seemed like her sort of area of expertise. Peter rolled his eyes at Miles, but handed him a hundred dollars.

"Consider it pocket money for keeping the neighbourhood tidy."

"Thanks man. I'll pay you back some day."

"Try not to get killed before you can."

"No promises."

"That's what worries me."

Just like the last time, Miles had to watch another fight with Teresa in before he was allowed to see her. This fight went much quicker than the last one: her three opponents were dead in less than a minute thanks to her projection. The security guard let Miles into the room behind the bars. Teresa was tying another straw knot, sitting on a quite comfortable looking chair facing the the entrance. She glanced up with little care, but she seemed to become interested when she saw who it was.

"So, what made you want to come back to me after all I said?" She asked.

"Why would I not come back? You're a friend."

"I don't know. I called your wife a bitch among other things, I crushed your dream of fighting the Empire."

"True, but you're also the only friend I have right now who isn't so much of a wreck it makes me want to slit my wrists."

"Oh...well that makes sense. So, what do you want to talk about?"

"One thing in particular but you could probably use some proper conversation."

"It'd certainly be a nice change to being hit on, yes. Want to hear a story?"

"Sure."

"The day after you were here, Gwen dropped by."

"Really? Did you try and kill her?"

"No. That would be suicide. Sure, I could kick the shit out of her, against popular belief. But then I'd be shot and fed to the crocodiles."

"What do you mean 'against popular belief'?"

"I could have killed her five years ago. Not an alliance of Venom, Peter, some dragons, none of them came close. But me...if I hadn't hesitated, she would be dead. I knocked her clean out."

"What stopped you from pulling the trigger?"

"A sense that she's the lesser of two evils, on reflection. If I had killed her it would just be the Emperor in power, and he's literally Satan. Anyway, back to my story."

"What did you two talk about?"

"She was concerned me and you might get too close and she'd have some competition."

"Really?"

"Yep. I told her to go fuck herself, she said she has better things to do with her time."

"Wait a minute..."

"No, I don't like you in that way, Miles, and never will. I'm not the sort for settling down."

"That's a relief."

There was an awkward silence before Teresa spoke again.

"I've been giving some thought to your idea of fighting the Empire. I hear you've been doing Peter's job?"

"Yeah."

"That makes you the only active spider person. The rest are all under house arrest for 'disturbing the system'. Keep fighting the good fight, maybe you'll inspire the rest."

"That's my plan, although it's not making much difference to the Empire."

"Actually it is. Everything has its weakness, and it's always the foundations. The Empire is built on hatred, and you're fighting hatred. But if that's not enough, you can always do some raids on convoys. They're easy to find. Just look for a long line of road closures. If the sidewalks are closed as well then it's a volatile cargo."

"Where do you get all this information from?"

"You don't think my only power is creating projections, do you? I can access the internet through my head, although it's about as exhausting as taking an exam on the Flat Earth Society. You kill your brain thinking about how the people could possibly come up with such bullshit that you have to sleep for a week afterwards."

"That's an...interesting comparison."

"Whatever. My point is take out some convoys. But be careful of volatile material transports. The symbol you want to look out for is this:"

Teresa traced a circle in the dust, inside which she created a point and two lines coming out from the centre.

"That symbol means neutronium. It will be transported in a stable state, but if you destabilise and detonate it, you and the rest of the world are done. A teaspoon of the stuff can flatten the surface of the Earth sixteen times over, depending on its current radioactivity. Think of what a truck load could do."

"I'm...not sure that's such a good idea."

"Maybe not."

There was a little more silence before Miles spoke again:

"About that thing I came here to talk about."

"Yes?"

"I went to 6119, that place called Berk with the dragons and Vikings."

"They're stuck in a fractured world."

"That's only half of their problems. The other half is Godzilla. I think the Empire dragged him through to that dimension for population control. Godzilla controls the dragons, the dragons control nature. The Vikings aren't techy enough to not have to bend to nature's will."

"Arguably nobody is. Did you see the Big G?"

"Yes. Massive, black, scaly, spiky mess. His breath stinks of fish."

Teresa raised a finger.

"I'm going to stop you right there and break some unexpected news to you. How much of a fan are you of the Godzilla trilogy?"

"Not much, I just recognise him from images."

"Well, what you have just described is not Godzilla."

"Really? It looked like him."

"Looks can be deceiving. No, that's not Godzilla. I can tell you because of three things: firstly, Godzilla does not eat fish. Do you know how many calories he would have to consume a day to survive?"

"No idea."

"Two million."

"That's...not gonna come from fish."

"Exactly. Godzilla is a nuclear reactor with legs. He lives off radiation, found now only in vast enough quantities at the bottom of the ocean. So, that's my first reason."

"I knew you'd be the right person for this."

"Number two: Godzilla is an apex predator, an Alpha. He is called the King of the Monsters for a reason. The affairs of us Homo Sapiens are none of his concern. His only reason for leaving the ocean is if he feels threatened, so finding him would be hard enough. He would rather die than take orders from anyone, including Gwen and Lucifer. To be honest, that could be exploited somehow in a fight. If you make Godzilla see the Empire as a threat, he will fight it, but I'll leave that to you."

"I'm sure I can work something out."

"And my final reason: Godzilla is just too big to be transported between dimensions."

"Really? What about ships like Sanctuary II, Thanos' ship? That thing is literally kilometres long."

"Perhaps, but transporting biomass is more complex than an inanimate object. You have to set all bodily functions back in motion. Godzilla is just too big to restart his functions. And that's if you can get a hundred-thousand tons of biological material through to another dimension in the first place."

"What about Gwen's portals?"

"The Vikings would have noticed that, and it would be practically impossible to coax Godzilla through one"

"So, how do I kill Fakezilla?"

"One of two options, both of which are gonna be quite difficult to pull off. Since it's a fake, it may be electronic in which case you could use an electromagnetic pulse. On the other hand, it may be biological, constructed from gene splicing or something like that; bio-engineering is not my area of expertise. If it's living, you'll need a biothermic warhead."

"A what?"

"Makes sense you wouldn't know what they are. They're a type of missile that creates an explosion which only destroys carbon based life forms. Don't get caught in the blast or you'll take yourself out as well."

"Where would I get one? And how would I make an electromagnetic pulse?"

"You could do both with a Phantom jet. They're in service all over the Empire nowadays. You'd just have to break into an air force base and steal it which is the difficult part."

"I'll figure it out."

"Good luck."

"I should probably get going, then."

"Sounds wise. Don't die."

"I'll try."

Locating an air force base was easy; La Guardia had been re-purposed and was filled to the brim with the hyper-advanced combat aircraft known as Phantoms. Miles was crouching down on a skyscraper back in Peter's home dimension. The base was probably heavily guarded, but that didn't matter since he could turn invisible. The only thing which might get him were thermal sensors, or the missiles that would surely come his way as soon as a jet took-off without permission. Low chance of success, high chance of death...what was he waiting for? If this didn't kill him, Gwen probably would. He leapt off the building, swinging through the streets until he came to his destination. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he disappeared from sight and clambered over fence, being careful not to cut himself on the barbed wire. The nearest jet was less than fifty metres away and seemed to be preparing to depart. Maybe he could sneak aboard and hijack it once it was airborne? It would spare him the problem of missiles, at least for long enough to jump the aircraft to 6119. He crept aboard as the pilots were doing their final checks. Finally, they took their seats and began chatting with the air traffic controllers as the aircraft's VTOL engines rumbled into action. The machine lurched into the sky and set off for wherever it was headed.

A few minutes into the flight, when the pilots had stopped talking to the controller and were just chatting to themselves, Miles snuck into the cockpit, still invisible. The pilots were completely unaware of him until he appeared.

"Just so you know, this isn't personal."

He knocked them out cold and dragged their limp bodies into the cabin before taking one of the seats.

"OK...dimensional warp controls..."

He looked at the hundreds of switches above his head and found a section marked as 'temporal'. The switches had completely meaningless labels such as 'WMS' and 'JK'. He sighed and began flicking them randomly. He found two nobs, each with two layers, labelled 'TJD Sel.', which changed a number above them, presumably the jump destination. He set it to 6119 and went back to flicking switches. Finally, he came to the only meaningful button labelled 'Jump'.

"How helpful..."

"Auto-pilot." The aircraft suddenly said in a scarily calm voice.

A button, at the top of the main console in front of him, began flashing, and another lit up. The constant one was labelled 'Mast. Caut.' while its flashing friend was labelled 'Auto'.

"Oh boy..."

Miles pressed it; 'Mast. Caut.' switched off and the jump button illuminated. However, at the same time, a buzzing sound started, although it stopped after a few seconds. He gave the yoke, as he believed it was called, a little nudge; the aircraft responded by slightly lowering a wing. Happy that everything was under control, Miles pressed jump again on the overhead panel.

"Temporal jump drive charging. Charge complete. Three, two, one. Engage."

The aircraft lurched sickeningly and was engulfed in colours that ran from its nose to tail.

Miles recognised Berk below as the aircraft stopped shaking.

"Jump completed. Warning! Temporal destination is current dimension."

The spider sighed.

"Of course it is you stupid machine."

Now he had a difficult task: he had to figure out how to fire an electromagnetic pulse and a biothermic weapon. There was a handy trigger on the yoke, but when he pressed it, a stream of bullets erupted from the nose. He looked at the switched again and located a section on the overhead panel titled 'Weapons'. But just like the dimensional controls, the switches and buttons were labelled meaninglessly. After some fiddling, he found another nob that selected a weapon slot. As he turned it, the screen on the main console changed to show a diagram of the aircraft, highlighting in green the selected slot. Miles was confident 'EMP' actually meant electromagnetic pulse in this circumstance, so twisted the nob to point to that. Now he had to find Fakezilla.

The King of the Deep Fakes wasn't hard to find; as soon as Miles brought the Phantom low enough, it burst out of the ocean and tried to snap it up. He circled round as it reared up to its full height and let out its signature roar, before receiving some sort of shockwave to the face. The wave rattled over with no effect. Miles sighed, trying his best to guide the tricky aircraft away from the target until he could find the biothermic weapons. He hoped they weren't bombs or he'd probably miss by a mile and wipe out Berk. It would certainly deal with their starvation, but wasn't his type of solution. However, it seemed he was luck as the biothermic weapons seemed to be heat seeking missiles. He brought the Phantom back around and pressed the fire button.

"Biothermic warhead jettisoned. Auto-pilot engaged."

The yoke locked itself in its resting position and the aircraft turned away sharply, pulling at least a few Gs. Miles looked out the back to see what these missiles could do. They struck Fakezilla square in the chest. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen before an orange bubble burst out. Everything living that it touched turned to dust; Fakezilla began to crumble, letting out a last roar before becoming nothing but a mess on the water. Now came another tricky part for Miles: he had to land this machine without crashing and dying. He'd figure it out somehow.

"Did you hear about Protozilla?"

Gwen shook her head, choosing to keep on eating instead of looking Lucifer in the eyes.

"Your Miles blew it up with some weapon from 9578."

"So what? Protozilla was a waste of resources."

"No. It kept 6119 in line, which is important since that chief is Dragonborn and could shout a person to death."

"There's better ways to keep a village of dragon riders in line than to starve them to death."

"This was also an open act of defiance against the Empire."

"He was just doing what he does best: help people. It doesn't mean he's going start a revolution."

"That was what he discussed with Chelsea and Melbourne. Talking of them, he went and spoke to Chelsea again. She told him how to destroy Protozilla."

Gwen felt something burning deep inside her.

"And?"

"I hadn't realised you went and spoke to Chelsea yourself. At that time you were supposed to be taking care of the rumours about the Scarlet King."

"I'll do it later."

"You had better."

Crossovers in this Chapter

- Godzilla
- How to Train Your Dragon
- Lucifer
- Skyrim