Hello friends!
Welcome to the second chapter of Spider-Verse: Life We Never Had.
Hope you enjoy and on to the review.
girani4: I know, I know... I get distracted way too quick...
Now story time.
Aiden felt himself speeding forward in a howl of glitching energy, a swirl of webbed colors as he was pulled magnetically onward and then...
He slammed into the roof of a church with a heavy thud, knocking the wind out of him.
"...Please..." he thought, picking himself off the ground, holding his side, "Just let me be dead..." as he heard voices from blow.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Parker." a voice said, "That thing you gave me, that key I think I really messed it up."
Spider-Man peaked over the side of the roof to see a young boy wearing a cheap Spider-Man costume, but this one had red and blue colors.
"I wanna do what you asked. I really do. But I'm sorry. I'm not sure I'm the guy." the boy said softly before a grave were many flowers were laid, "I can't do this without you."
Aiden felt a tingle in the back of his head, not dissimilar to his Spider Sense when he looked at the boy, "Your... like me?" he mumbled, "I thought I was the only one..." just as the boy knocked someone out with what looked like an electric blast.
"What did I do to him!?" the boy said, looking from the knocked out man to his own hands.
Dropping down from the roof of the church, Spider-Man landed down in the snow next to the kid. "No idea, kid." he said.
"S-Spider-Man!?" the boy said surprised feeling that same Spider Sense sensation as Aiden had felt earlier, "You're like me?"
"I thought I was the only one. Got a lot going through your head, I'm sure." Spider-Man said to the younger boy, "You're gonna be fine. I can help you but first we need to..."
It was only then that he noticed the man who the boy had knocked out, wearing shabby clothes had a red and blue Spider Suit under it. But what surprised him the most was who it was.
"Peter?" Spider-Man said confused upon seeing the much older version of his best friend.
"You know him?" the boy said.
"Sort of." Spider-Man said, kneeling down next to his unconscious friend, "Is there a place where we can sort this mess out?"
The older Peter Parker was webbed up against a training bag hanging from the ceiling inside the spacious apartment of the boys uncle.
"I think we should introduce ourselves." Spider-Man said, removing his mask and holding out his right hand, "I am..."
"Aiden Arclight!?" the boy said surprised, pulling his own mask down, "Your Spider-Man?"
"You know me?" he said confused.
"Of course I do!" the boy said, "Your the CEO of Arclight Industries, your the invincible Iron Man, leader of the Avengers."
"...I'm Iron Man? Okay." Aiden said, "Well, where I'm from. I'm Spider-Man. So who are you?"
"Oh, sorry Mr. Arclight." the boy said, shaking his hand, "I'm Miles Morales."
"Nice to meet you Miles." he said, "Just call me Aiden."
It was at that moment that with a groan, Peter returned to the world of the living. Aiden and Miles put their masks back on, turned to him.
"I got some questions." Miles said trying make his voice sound deep, "Why do you look like Peter Parker?"
"Because I am Peter Parker." Peter said trying to get lose from his bindings, "This is tougher than my webs."
"Then why aren't you dead? And why is your hair different?" Miles said, pointing to him, "Why are you older? And why is your body a different shape?"
"...I'm pretty sure you just called me fat." Peter said, looking at Miles, "You don't look so hot either, kid. Most superheroes don't wear their own merch. Now the guy next to you, he looks like a Spider-Man."
"Thank you, my best friend made it." Aiden said propping up a arm as he held his chin, "Are you from another dimension? Like a parallel universe where things are like this universe but different? And you're Spider-Man in that universe? But somehow traveled to this universe, but you don't know how?"
"Sounds about right." Peter said, "That was really just a guess?"
"No. A simple deduction." Aiden said, "It's simple Quantum physics."
"This is amazing!" Miles said looking at Aiden, "You can teach me like Peter said he would. Before he died..."
"I guess." Aiden said with a shrug, "At least until..." before it happened.
He dropped to the floor as his entire body began to glitch out, it felt as if every nerve end of him was set on fire. It seemed he wasn't the only one affected, as Peter seemed to have glitched out as well.
"F-Fuck..." Aiden painfully groaned as he felt Miles help him back up.
"Hey, are you okay?" Miles said, helping him over to sit on the couch.
"Did you not hear me painfully groan 'fuck'?" Aiden said as Peter tried to turn around on the training bag in their direction, "I don't think my atoms are okay with being forced into the wrong dimension."
"The Green Goblin's got a supercollider." Miles explained, "He's tryin' to kill me."
"Where's the collider?" Peter said.
"Brooklyn." Miles said, "Under Oscorp Tower."
"Of course it's Norman Oscorp... Well Oscorp Tower is where we are going." Aiden said and with a groan, he stood up from the couch, "When it runs again, we'll jump in... and get back to home."
"You can't let them run it." Miles said with a slight panic, "I'm supposed to destroy it so it never runs again or everyone's gonna die."
"'Or everyone's gonna die'. That is what they always say." Peter said from the punching bag, finally managing to turn around, "But there's always a little bit of time before everybody dies and that's when I do my best work."
"Aren't you gonna need this?" Miles said, showing a some sort of USB-like device.
"Oh, you have a goober." Peter said as the punching bag was still slowly rotating him
"He called it an override key." Miles said.
"There's always a bypass key, a virus key, a who-cares key." Peter said with a roll of his eyes, "I can never remember, so I always call it a goober."
"Your definitely not the Peter I know, he would love examining this." Aiden said, taking the goober from Miles, "We can use this to get home, after that Miles can... Did you break this?" when he noticed that it was broken.
"No, it broke." Miles said quickly, "I don't remember what happened."
"See, this is why I never had kids." Peter said, swinging from the training bag, still trying to free himself.
"Can't we make another one?" Miles said as Aiden studied the broken goober.
"I guess. We have to re-steal what your Peter stole from Oscorp to make another one of these." Aiden said, pocketing the broken Goober, "We will need to plan, and I think better with food."
"What about teaching me about being Spider-Man?" Miles said.
"I'll teach you on the go." Aiden said, gesturing to follow him as they walked to the front door, "Best way to learn being a Spider is on the job."
"Hey!" Peter shouted, "Aren't you forgetting someone?"
"Oh, right." Aiden said as if he had honestly forgotten him.
Aiden, Peter and Miles were sitting in a booth at a burger restaurant, the food their ordered had arrived and Peter bites into his burger.
"I love this burger, it's so delicious." he said with his mouth full of bun, meat, tomatoes and sauce, "One of the best burgers I've ever had. In my universe, this place closed six years ago. I don't know why."
"It seems Mick's is still a burger joint here, must be a dimensional thing." Aiden said eating his fries, "Even in this dimension they still have the best fries of the city."
"You got any Spider-Man tips you can tell me now?" Miles said.
"Yeah, I got plenty." Peter said suddenly, "Disinfect the mask. You're going to want to use baby powder in the suit, heavy on the joints. You don't want any chafing, right?"
"It's not untrue. Also stay away from any black alien goop." Aiden said leaning into his seat, "Listen, Miles. Tips on being Spider-Man, there is not much I can teach you. It's a leap of faith. That's all it is."
The trio took a bus towards the Oscorp test facility, a private technological campus in Hudson Valley.
"So how do we retrace Peter's steps?" Miles said.
"That's a good question." Peter said stroking his chin, "What would I do if I were me?"
"First, we infiltrate the lab." Aiden said taking charge, "Then we find the head scientist's computer, download the important stuff."
"That lady with the bike is the head scientist." Miles said, showing a picture of her on his phone, "I saw her in this documentary."
"Good point, Miles. We should locate her office." he said with an approving nod, "Then we hack the computer, download the important stuff. If we're pressed for time, we take the desktop and decode it somewhere else."
Crawling in a air vent, the trio crawled through until they arrived at the grid just above the office of the head scientist. Though not only did they spot the head scientist, there was also what Aiden assumed was this dimensions Norman Osborn.
"Goblin..." Aiden whispered in a deep angry growl.
"Mr. Osborn! Look at this data." the head scientist said unlocking her computer, "I know you can't really understand it, but these are really good numbers."
"And I got the password." Peter said, memorizing the keystrokes. Getting a thumbs up from Aiden.
"Mr. Osborn, if we fire again this week there could be a black hole under Brooklyn. You see this? And this?" she said gesturing to the schematics on her screen, "This is multiple dimensions beginning to crash into each other. What this means is there could be a rupture in the space-time continuum."
"This is pretty standard Spider-Man stakes." Peter muttered, "You get used to it."
"He's not wrong." Aiden admitted, "How much you wanna bet he's going to say, 'You've got twenty-four hours'?"
"You've got twenty-four hours." Osborn said as both he and the head scientist left the office.
"Ooh. That's bad." Miles said shaking his head, "Actually, everything she said was bad."
"You understood that?" Aiden said as he opened the grid, "Impressive."
The Spider trio dropped from the vent one by one, and at once Aiden and Peter walked to the nearby desktop.
"Let's see what we got." Peter said he took a seat and began to type as Aiden looked over his shoulder.
"Miles, your on look out... Miles?" Aiden said, he glanced up but did not saw the young boy anywhere, "Miles? Spider-Boy? Where did he go?"
"Teenagers." Peter said, shaking his head, "Just the worst."
"I'm right here." Miles said, his voice coming out of nowhere.
"Where?" Peter said, looking around just as confused as Aiden, "I can't see you."
"I'm right in front of you." the voice of Miles came from Aiden's right side, "Can Spider-Man turn invisible?"
"Not in my universe." Peter said, returning his attention to his task.
"You guys don't have extra powers?" Miles said surprised.
"Well... I'm rich." Aiden said, reaching out until his finger touched something, followed by a painful yelp from Miles.
"You just poked me in my eye!" Miles yelled painfully as he began visible again.
"This is fascinating." Aiden said as he studied Miles, "Perhaps its some sort of fight or flight reflex."
They hear a noise outside the office, and immediately Miles turns invisible again.
"Everyone hide!" Aiden said quietly as he jumped up and stuck to the ceiling.
"Almost done." Peter said but the door to the office slid open and the head scientist walked in.
"Spider-Man?" she said confused.
"Oh, hey." Peter said, standing up trying to put the charm on, "Didn't see you there."
"I'm kind of freaking out right now." she said as she walked up to Peter, "You're supposed to be dead."
"Surprise!" he said as she pulled up his mask, "Okay. That's a no. No, we don't like that."
"This is fascinating. An entirely different Peter Parker." she said as she began to study him, "Little bit of a gut, perhaps from dimensional warping."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Peter said, distracting her as Miles try to hack the computer, "I was way flatter before I warped."
"Spider-Boy!" Aiden whispered from the still invisible boy as Peter was pushed into a chair which bind his arms, legs and head to it, "Just take the desktop and get out of here, I'll help Peter."
"Just complete cellular decay. I've never seen anything like this." the head scientist said, taking a spit swap to take a DNA sample from Peter and put it under a microscope, "And obviously you've been glitching."
After studying it she turned around to look back at Peter, "If you stay in this dimension too long, your body's going to disintegrate." she said standing across from him, "Do you know how painful that would be, Peter Parker?"
"I don't know." he said.
"You can't imagine." she said, "And I, for one, can't wait to watch."
The invisible Miles was almost out of the door and Aiden was almost ready to intervene but both of them froze.
"What did you say your name was?" Peter said.
"Dr. Olivia Octavius." she said dropping her lab coat to reveal a skin tight spy suit and her mechanical octopus tentacles emerge, one of which shoots out and grabs Peter by the throat.
"Can I assume that your friends call you Doc Ock?" Peter groaned.
"My friends actually call me Liv." Doc Ock said, "My enemies call me Doc Ock."
Aiden launched himself off the ceiling, kicking Doc Ock in the face and launching her through one of the glass walls.
"You can't be Doc Ock! Your hot! Okay, that's maybe too strong of a word. But your pretty good looking." Aiden shouted, quickly turning around and ripping the bindings apart to free Peter from the chair, "Time for plan G."
The trio rushed out of the office, running through the white halls as they try to put as much distance between them and Doc Ock as Miles had become visible again, who was clutching the desktop against his chest.
"Don't you mean plan B?" Peter said.
"No, we tried plan B a long time ago." Aiden said, "I had to skip over plan C due to technical difficulties."
"What about plan D?" Peter said.
"Plan D was that surprise kick to Doc Ock's face." Aiden said shaking his head, "Should have anticipated Doc Ock after that one time I fought Monster Ock."
"What about plan E?" Miles said.
"I'm hoping not to use it." he said as they turned a corner and through a door, "Peter dies in plan E."
The trio enter the Oscorp cafeteria, which around this time of day was full of scientists enjoying their lunch and break time.
"This would be a good time to turn invisible." Peter said to Miles, who only nodded, "Okay, not going to turn invisible."
They began to walk forward, trying to act as casually as possible as more and more scientist began to look in their direction.
"Selecting a bagel." Peter whispered as he looked over the bagel's as they walked past them on a table, "Act super normal."
"Spider-Man?" one of the scientist said.
"You know, that's funny." Peter said, gesturing with his bagel, "I get that a lot."
"Hey." Miles said, deepening his voice.
Aiden gave a simple nod before all the scientist stood up from their tables and drew rather considerable sized guns at them. The Spider trio made a run for it as the sound of lasers being fire and people shouting echoed behind them.
"Get back here!"
"Where do you think you're going?"
"He took a bagel!"
Bursting through the door, which led to a balcony overlooking the rural area while Peter took the desktop from Miles.
"Alright, time to swing." Peter said, taking off one of his webshooters and throwing it to Miles, "Just like Aiden taught you."
"When did he teach me that?" he said.
"Pretty sure I didn't." Aiden said, jumping up and shooting a web.
"It's a little joke for team building." Peter said, throwing Miles up and over the balcony after Aiden as he shot a web himself.
Aiden sticks to the side of a tree to see where the others where, Peter had been swinging close behind him but Miles, instead of using the webshooter to swing like them, he was running over the ground.
"Spider-Boy!" Aiden shouted, "What are you doing down there?"
"I run better than I swing!" Miles shouted back
"You got to swing or they'll catch you!" Aiden shouted when he noticed tentacles of Doc Ock cut through the trees, "Peter! Help Miles!"
Jumping off the tree, Aiden slingshots himself towards Doc Ock, kicking her back, swerving around her tentacles.
"Another Spider." Doc Ock said with a manic grin, raising to her full height, "With a little fight in him, that I like."
"If you like a little fight, you're going to love me." Aiden said, jumping forward to evade a tentacle and closes the distance to pummel the female Doc Ock with a series of punches.
Doc Ock managed counter and fling him against the side of a tree. Quickly recovering, Aiden backflips out of the attack of another tentacle. The fight carries its momentum as Doc Ock chases Aiden down, planting a firm strike in the Spider's midsection that she follows up with a knee strike.
Though Aiden attempts to go on the offensive, Doc Ock catches his kick and pins him against the tree, but the fight swings more in Aiden's favor once he got help from an unexpected corner.
Two her tentacles where stuck to a tree by a surprise shot of web, Aiden shields himself from an oncoming strike and catches Doc Ocks tentacles in a hold and into a tree. Shooting web at them as well to make it stick.
Doc Ock was distracted, giving the person who helped him take the opportunity to sling herself forward, landing a powerful kick to her head, finally putting the good doctor out of the fight.
Landing on a branch, Aiden saw that he had gotten help from another Spider, this time it was a Spider-Woman. Her suit was black, with a white top and webbing pattern on the inside of her wide hood.
Getting away from Doc Ock and the scientists, Aiden and the newcomer landed on a nearby tree where Peter and Miles where waiting for him.
"Miles, you okay? What about you Peter?" Aiden said immediately and the two gave him a nod, "What about the hard drive?"
"Yeah, it should be good." Peter said before nodding to the newcomer, "Who's that?"
"She helped me out against Doc Ock." Aiden said gesturing to the woman who was a head shorter than him, "She's like us."
"How many more Spider-People are there?" Miles said surprised.
"Save it for Comic-Con." Peter said.
The woman lowered her hood and removing her mask. Aiden's eyes widen in shock when he saw who was standing next to him as her blond hair fell around her head.
"Hey, guys." Gwen Stacy said, "I'm from another dimension. I mean, another-another dimension."
"Gwanda?" Miles said surprised.
"It's Gwen..." Aiden said softly, his voice cracking for a moment.
"Oh, you know her." Peter said surprised, "Very cool."
And that's it, second chapter, hope you enjoy.
Many thanks to everyone who read, review, favorite or follows this story, you beauties.
If you enjoy my work, don't forget to leave a review and I hope you'll have a fantastic day and I'll see you ladies and gents next time.