Hi, guys! I'm back with a new story. I know I said that a Spiders and Soldiers Part 2 was coming, but I want to add some finishing touches before I release the first few chapters. I already have a couple of good chapters written for this one.
I'm super excited to share this with you! Let me know what you think.
MJ
"I love you." I said as tears were trickling down my face.
"I love-"
I cut him off.
"Tell me when you get back."
He pulled me into what might be our final kiss.
But deep down, I knew it wouldn't be the end.
We would find each other again.
It would be alright. It would be alright….
I opened my eyes.
New York City gleamed in the morning sun.
I looked around at my surroundings. I was a little freaked out at first.
I was in Liberty Island.
The Statue was intact, but some big accident had happened.
The Captain America shield that had taken them months to install had now been ripped off Lady Liberty's arm and was now laying on the ground.
I was standing at the viewing deck.
What happened here?
Someone called my name.
My heart beat faster. It was him. He was coming back.
I turned around and quickly forgot the hopeful feeling.
Ned was a few feet away from me. That was a relief.
I didn't want to be at the Statue of Liberty with no memory of how I got there by myself.
"Ned. What are you doing here?" I asked.
He looked around at the debris and scaffolding shambles.
"I have no idea. What about you?"
I shook my head. "I've got nothing."
But I knew that wasn't true. There was something- some reason that I was here on this island.
Suddenly, a man using a red cape to fly descended in front of us.
Weirdly enough, I wasn't surprised at all.
"Strange." I said.
For some reason, I knew his name.
"Michelle Jones." He nodded.
"What…happened?" Ned asked him.
We were standing in an almost-wrecked Statue of Liberty with no memory of why it was almost wrecked. Might as well ask the wizard dude.
Strange glanced up at the sky.
"I was hoping that you would have some answers."
Ned shook his head cluelessly.
"I don't know."
He looked at me and Strange.
"I mean, I remember you and Strange, and the Sanctum and….wait, hold on."
He pulled a two-fingered ring from his pocket and handed it to Doctor Strange.
It was a magical ring to create portals. I didn't know how I knew that, but I just did.
"I think this belongs to you."
He looked at Ned in surprise.
"Where did you get this?"
Ned paused. "I think I took it from you. No, wait. That can't be right."
He looked at me.
"Do you remember?"
I shook my head.
Strange sighed impatiently.
"The three of us are here at Liberty Island with no memory of how we've gotten here. It must be some kind of memory wipe spell."
"Did you cast it?" Ned asked.
"It's safe to say that I did."
Strange glanced up at the sky again.
"But for what reason, I have no idea."
Ned and Strange went back and forth, trying to figure out why the spell was cast and how we even knew him.
I tried to focus, but their conversation was drained out in my brain.
The wind whipped through my hair as I screamed.
I clung to his masked head for dear life.
"MJ, I'm really sorry, but I can't see anything with your hands on my face!" he shouted.
"Sorry!"
I pulled my hands off his mask.
Now that he could see where he was going, he shot another web at a building and swung us away from the electronic billboards.
"Spider-Man."
"What?" they both said at the same time.
"I don't know. But all this has something to do with Spider-Man."
Just saying it made me sure that Spider-Man was involved in this.
I knew about Spider-Man. He was a crime-fighting vigilante who had been running around New York for a couple of years now.
He was controversial because he wore a mask and nobody knew his real identity.
Some people liked that he helped the neighborhood, but other people thought he was hiding something.
The media was mixed. The politicians tried to avoid the subject.
And the police didn't like that he was doing their job, but they were just as baffled as everyone else.
He worked mostly in New York, Tony Stark was rumored to have some kind of connection to him and he had been seen working with the pro-Sokovia Accords Avengers at one point, but that was about all the information we had when it came to who he was.
As I went through these facts in my head, something about all of it felt wrong.
Not that it wasn't the truth, but there was a much bigger picture.
The sounds of helicopter blades tore me out of my thoughts.
There were now five or six helicopters surrounding the island.
Great. The police. Obviously, they would show up at the worst possible time.
Doctor Strange opened a portal with a sling ring.
"It's best we don't have a run-in with the authorities. We'll discuss this in the Sanctum."
And with that, we stepped through the portal before the New York PD could even land.
Talking in the Sanctum did nothing but bring back frazzled memories of being there and doing something important.
Ned and I went back to our homes.
Apparently, we had been gone for almost twenty-four hours.
I tried to explain to my Dad how I couldn't explain where I had been for an entire day, but he wouldn't hear any of it and he grounded me for an entire two weeks.
What had happened in those twenty-four hours?
Once I was allowed to get on the internet again, I did some research, starting with Spider-Man.
It turns out, the day before we were on Liberty Island, there were all these new villains springing up. Some people were saying that they were from different universes.
Later that night, Spider-Man broadcasted a video, luring the bad guys to the Statue of Liberty.
Doctor Strange, Ned and I all had these fragmented memories.
There were five super-powered criminals that had disappeared as quickly as they appeared. There were rumors about a multiverse.
And to top it all off, I was at the wreckage site where Spider-Man had probably fought off the villains and won because they were nowhere to be seen while Spider-Man was still swinging around.
But we had no idea how the three of us were involved.
Doctor Strange's best guess was that something bad had happened that brought the mechanical octopus, the goblin, the electric guy, Sandman, and the big lizard into our universe.
And for some reason, casting a memory spell had saved the day.
A few weeks later, I was laying in bed, scrolling through videos of Spider-Man.
It was a little sketchy that he wore a mask, but he seemed to be doing good.
He kept crime levels down and he stopped really bad accidents.
Why did people like J. Jonah Jameson give him such a hard time?
My Dad called from the other room.
"Michelle, lights out!"
I cringed. There was no point in telling him that I went by MJ.
"Okay. Just a second!"
"Not just a second. Now!"
I sighed and turned off my nightstand lamp with my phone still in my hand.
I stared at the dark screen.
I felt like I should be calling someone.
But I had just spoken with Ned about an hour ago.
I kept in touch with other friends at school and on social media.
Doctor Strange promised to contact us if he got any new information, but he hadn't responded to any of my texts.
All the same, I felt like I should be calling a certain person.
Like that person was out there, feeling lost and alone and a phone call would really help them.
But there was nothing that I could do about this feeling.
So I set my phone down on my nightstand and stared up at my ceiling, waiting to fall asleep.
I fingered the broken, black Dahlia necklace that I liked to wear.
I didn't mind that it was broken, but how did it get that way?
Just like all the questions I had in the past few weeks, I had no answer.
I drifted off to sleep feeling frustrated.
This blank memory was like a complex equation where I had all the variables and numbers, but no solution.
I felt frustrated for a long time.
Even when Ned eventually gave up on figuring out what had happened on Liberty Island.
Even when the strange boy started coming to the bakery that I worked at.
Even when I started having dreams of a mystery figure.
For the longest time, I had no answers, no explanations, nothing.
Just dreams and flashbacks and more dreams.