It wouldn't even be hard.
Peter stares and stares into the reflective storefront window of a shop with a sign he cannot read, hands in his pockets and holding onto his pants for dear life. He had abandoned the notion of finding a new pair of shoes to replace his torn and tattered ones when each one he found was both only for his left and usually full of some odorous liquid that he swears could hospitalize the Hulk.
Now, he walked the streets of the city—Musutafu, he had come to learn it was called—barefoot, penniless, and bereft of any recourse in these trying times. His only tools now were some pamphlets he found in a garbage bin, an English book on simple Japanese phrases he'd found in the very same bin, and his web-shooters that remained at half capacity since his battle with the shoulder-charging man.
In the nine days since that battle, he has made absolutely no progress in finding a way home. If anything, he has taken steps backwards. Mild paranoia forces him to stay as in the shadows during the day as possible so that he can wait to skulk around in the wee hours of the night, well past the times anyone of sound mind might dare step foot outside. His body aches from the hunger and fatigue, and he's taken to sleeping in a jury-rigged corrugated steel tent made from spare parts he found on a beach.
The persistent fear of his story being perceived as the manic ramblings of a half-starved child grows with each passing day. Further observation of this new world doesn't necessarily help either, given the apparent overabundance of what are essentially super-celebrities who seemed much too preoccupied with how impressive they looked in public photo shoots than listening to something as ridiculous as Peter's case.
He leans forward and presses his forehead against the shop window, staring longingly at the little menu sign with photographs of delicious meals he'd never had before, mocking him with their mouth watering beauty.
It wouldn't be hard at all.
Peter's stomach rumbles, his tired eyes close, and he suffers through a waking dream of taking a bite of those over-salted eggs. The corners of his eyes brim with tears. Groaning, Peter leaps up and onto a blade sign, clambering up the building and to the rooftops much slower than he'd like to.
I'm such a colossal moron. Look at me, running away from the police like some moron! I should've just let'em catch me! Screw getting thrown in a padded cell, at least I wouldn't go hungry!
Hopping from rooftop to rooftop, Peter navigates towards a location he'd come to rely on for some comfort in these trying times. Just northways there was a small overpass situated over a river and a steep hill. For whatever reason, around midnight every night, something or someone deposited a few dozen packages of snack foods there. Like a small box of them was knocked over, all strewn about randomly. But, as far as he could tell, nothing was around that would indicate anyone was doing it on purpose or specifically for him. It was just the most reliably consistent thing in his life right now.
Peter would call it a lucky break, but subsisting off snack cakes and chips wasn't doing him very well. Whatever the spider that bit him did to his body allowed him to hold up better than most people, he assumed, but the severe lack of protein and healthy food choices was beginning to wear on his body and mind. That, and having to only use public bathrooms after dark for days.
Eventually arriving at his destination, he's joyful to find all the snacks dropped in the exact same spot as yesterday. Had he the patience and time to stop and observe whatever it was that was leaving them there he might satisfy his curiosity, but he can't exactly afford to loiter under a busy bridge at night without calling attention to himself. So, rather than sticking around, he collects the anonymous delivery of dinner for the night and sets off back to his hovel.
Said hovel was constructed in the most tight and secluded area of a large park he could find without any CCTV setup, which took significantly longer than he would have hoped. There were blankets he collected from some trash bags and washed in the river, then later dried on an electrical pylon near the outskirts of the city; some steel panels he collected from the garbage-ridden beach for structure, and that was just about all aside from everything he arrived with.
He wasn't exactly opposed to sticking to rooftops, but he doesn't want to run the risk of being spotted by a passing hero. Of which, as far as he could tell, there were very many. Too many. In his stealthy daytime expeditions he caught sight of what could be almost a hundred different heroes, sometimes battling some unusual criminal or another. A few of those times he had half a mind to step in, but it mercifully never came to that.
His days now are spent snacking, sleeping, and trying to strategize. Keyword being: trying. The plan at the forefront of his mind is sneaking onto a plane to the States and finding someone he's sure can help him, but it hasn't exactly been easy finding an airport, much less flight schedules. The negligible amount of Japanese he's picked up from the book he found has done very little good in that regard.
"At least I can ask where the bathroom is," Peter quips to a nonexistent audience. Something he'd been doing more often in the last two days. "And the library. Can never forget to ask where I can find a load of books I obviously can't read. Seriously, why even add that one?"
Flipping to the next page of one of the dozen pamphlets he gathered, he sees yet another colorful illustration of that smiling hero with the v-shaped bangs standing next to some landmark he presumed was in the city. Thus far, he's observed that this world has a thing for superheroes. Admiration to an almost unhealthy degree. Where singers and movie stars were the celebrities of Peter's world, this one honors its champions of justice with fanfare and product placement.
It made him think of the heroes of his own world—if he could really even call them that half the time. They weren't all bad, but the Avengers were so far off the record that they might as well have been a nonentity. When aliens and superpowered terrorists started showing up around two years ago, so did they. As if someone planned for all of it.
The only two with any media presence were Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, the latter of whom only showed up to make speeches and vaguely report what operations the Avengers were taking part in to the public. Sure, there were fan made t-shirts and blogs dedicated to tracking their movements, but they weren't exactly making the rounds at the Oscars or the focus of any particular gossip.
The same sort of went for the X-Men but for very, very different reasons. Reasons that make Peter wince as he remembers some of the things he's heard from his very own classmates; insults and accusations levied upon innocent people for no real reason at all. The terrible crimes against mutantkind he's seen and heard on the news, some more gruesome than others.
Seeing all sorts of mutant, or mutant-like citizens walking around in broad daylight is more than a little jarring. But also comforting, in a way. It instills a bit of hope in Peter for his own world and the progress they might be capable of making, given time.
The last super-team that came to mind was the Fantastic Four, whom Spider-Man had unapologetically antagonized in the second week of his own time as a superhero. The memory makes Peter go a little red in the face. Busting into their laboratory to impress them with his powers and then asking for a job certainly wasn't the best idea, but he certainly felt it was at the time.
It's actually quite relevant given the mistake he made a few days ago by retaliating against both the police force and that wooden hero. Fortunately, if they did make any disparaging posts about him on whatever social media platform is most dominant in this world, it wouldn't be as insulting as Johnny Storm's. The desire to sock that blond brat in the face was one of the many things that gave Peter motivation to seek out a way home.
He wondered if anything changed since he'd died. Surely the death of Spider-Man would garner a bit of media attention, but it wasn't like he could expect the whole world to change at the drop of a hat. But then again, it already had once before.
Peter would have to figure it out himself when he gets back. Because he will get back. He just has to.
Shiroma Kichiro was having a terrible week.
Sure, most weeks were some kind of terrible in this line of work. You slum it out in the small-time jobs for a while before going for a big one. But then, wouldn't you know it, a hero comes out of the woodwork to thwart your scheme. It isn't always a problem, see—if you get guys like Mad Mercury or Eel Boy, you might get off a bit easier. Hell, if you're smart, you can get'em good and make an escape while they're too distracted getting their hair ready for the inevitable photoshoot for the tabloids.
But Kichiro wasn't a pushover, see. His quirk, Shoulder Charge, was formidable. Not the strongest or flashiest, but it got him work from unsavory individuals who needed the muscle. Plus, the reputation he'd gained by racking up enough successful low-profile criminal work was enough to garner the attention of better paying employers.
So far, he had gotten the slip on Rock Lock, made a fool of Vectoro and had a close call with Beauty Ghoul that ended with the hero being sent to the emergency room. His was a win streak that he felt, at the time, could go on forever. And he's certain it would have, had Cube King not informed him over comms that Kamui Woods was on his way to their location after they tripped the alarm system at the museum.
So Kichiro hurriedly sprinted off before the heroes could make contact. Which seemed like the best idea at the time. Now, it wasn't like he could go invisible; even he has to admit he's difficult to miss. But the further away from the heroes he got and the more havoc he could cause to distract both them and the authorities by endangering the civilian populace would have gone a long way.
But then that insolent, diminutive, loud-mouthed child who didn't even speak the language swooped in and ruined everything. That wiley brat with the terrible costume and the grating voice who would get what was coming to him one day. Not only would he pay for the public humiliation and the ruination of Kichiro's reputation, but also for the concussion. Especially for the concussion.
That would be for later, however. Because now, packed like a sardine in the back of a prisoner transport truck, all he has to worry about is how long his sentence is going to be.
"You'd best get comfortable, pinky," says the officer sitting across from him. "I hear the cells at Kumamoto are almost as bad as Tartarus. You heard of Tartarus?"
"Yup," Kichiro replies, terse, restraining the urge to wring the man's neck.
"Then you know that's the one the real villains get locked up in. Kumamoto's the one for small fries like yourself." The officer chuckles, leaning back in his seat.
Kichiro grumbles, but says nothing in return. He'd never been a fan of the police, but he'd much rather not exacerbate things by strangling an officer. The less he misbehaved, the better the chance he'll get time on parole and be back in business. And Kichiro will be back in business. He just has to.
Then, suddenly, a great force slams into the transport truck. It sends Kichiro and the officer tumbling onto the walls and ceiling as the vehicle hurtles down the street, the muffled sound of civilians screaming in terror growing louder around them. Inside, Kichiro struggles to get his bearings. Within seconds, a terrible banging starts as something attempts to breach the back door of the truck.
The doors pop open, steel twisting against the power of the man on the other side. The man who Kichiro abandoned to save his own skin. Outside the truck stands Cube King, dressed in a pale orange jumpsuit with broken shackles wrapped around his wrists. In his palm, an arsenal of deadly cubes, the air sizzling around each with un
Kichiro gulps, pitifully scrambling over the body of the officer. He stops, panicked, and checks the officer's pulse. Unconscious, but his breathing was faint. "S-So you escaped. That—That's great! We can go after those heroes and finish the job, yeah?"
A low chortle is Cube King's only response, confirming Kichiro's suspicions. Cube King's eyes glow a brilliant teal under his yellow domino mask. In an instant, the cubes in his hand gyrate and coalesce into a single, jittering cube brimming with power.
"This ain't another team-up, Mad Charger," says the Cube King, reeling his arm back. "This… Is constitution."
Kichiro furrows his brow. "Think the word you were looking for was retri—"
"Whatever." The Cube King wraps his fist around the shrinking cube, rays of violet light bleeding through his fingers. Kichiro readies himself for the battle to come.
"Who steals garbage?"
Trudging through the trash in the darkest hours before the sun came up, sloven sarcastic Spider-Man grumbles and grimaces at today's new predicament. He had thought this beach was meant to be some sort of city dump! Ecologically unfriendly as leaving garbage at the seaside may be, he felt it was the perfect place to find and store materials for renovating his ramshackle hut if the need arose, as well as find anything that might be of use. Peter knew he stored an old rice cooker there the night prior, but for the life of him he could not find it.
"Seriously, who? Who in their right mind would come around here and think: 'ooh, lovely rusty toaster! I'll be taking this!' I mean, you know, besides me. I have an excuse." Hopping atop an old washing machine, he scouts the area from above. It certainly was emptier than when he first found it, but he didn't think someone was deliberately picking it apart so much as the city was making sure it didn't overflow into the sea. "I'm a vagrant. A scrappy ragamuffin trying to make it in the big city. You know what? I should put up a sign here. Call it my territory. Lay off, other homeless people, this' Spider-Beach! And all you maritime malefactors beware, 'cause Spidey's expanding his purview!"
No audience, no civilians to look on in awe or confusion. Just the garbage, the stars, and the waves creeping further up the shoreline. Sighing, Peter springs off the machinery and back onto the sand.
"I'm losing it," said Peter. "I'm losing my mind. Like, completely going insane. And I don't even know what I'm gonna freakin' do about it!" Jerking his head up, he just manages to bite back a scream. It might relieve some of the frustration, but he couldn't afford to have anyone see him. Peter doesn't even really know why that is; it isn't like he has ever been particular about his appearance. Though his hair was unwashed and a little bit overgrown, and his choice of attire ranged between shirts found behind seedy looking places and his costume—which had taken on an awful smell—he couldn't chalk his shame up to any of that.
No, it wasn't because he was ashamed of how he looked or how he smelled. It was because he was ashamed of how much he'd failed.
Peter had spent the better part of the last few months of his life racking his brain for solutions to impossible problems. He's battled monsters, magicians and multimillionaire sociopaths in his short time as a superhero. Enemies that took him to the sewers and to the skies. And, strange as it was to admit, he'd gotten good at it. Spider-Man was making a name for himself as a threat in the criminal underworld and in the strange little community of burgeoning superheroes that was becoming more familiar with every titanic team-up.
So Peter was dropped into a world that wasn't his own, and he'd find a solution like he always did. Swinging around with the childish notion that this was another problem to solve. That the pieces would be put in place before him and he'd just have to put it all together.
He'd been warned about this sort of thing. People older, wiser than him told Peter that none of this was a game. They told him he might one day find himself faced with a problem that truly was impossible. Perhaps they were right, and this was it.
I died, he thinks. It's still uncomfortable admitting that. I failed and I'm still failing. Maybe this was supposed to be a second chance and I just… I blew it. Whole universe throws me a bone and I still can't do anything with it. I should just…
Spider-Sense, rapping on the door of Spider-Man's mind with deadly imperatives. It urges him to face eastward where, in some distant city street obscured by towering buildings, he spots something terrifying. Or rather, something that would be terrifying if he weren't so utterly confused.
A great translucent shockwave which seemed to stretch out and distend to a point, holding still in the air like a glass dome. It towered over some of the surrounding buildings, pulsating with ineffable power. His hearing catches the dissonant din of screams and shattered glass under the sonorous electric hum that seemed to make even the water at the shore ripple and splash in response. As he stares in shock, it swells upward into an oblong dome, the hum growing louder and louder before it… disappears. The residual heat makes the light refract and the air ripple.
Though it may be gone, his Spider-Sense still tingles at the back of his head. The danger persists, which can only mean that anyone nearby is still in a great deal of trouble. At the same time, something other than Spider-Sense tells him not to intervene. Tells him that the heroes of this world are more than prepared to handle it, and that he's much better off staying out of trouble.
But Spider-Man, as is his wont, takes to the rooftops and hurries towards the danger yet again. He'd say it was against his better judgement to do so, but then again it always was.
He's there in minutes, following the building cacophony of explosions and cries of mortal terror. The sound of police vehicle sirens grows closer, the cars screeching to a halt just on the edge of the chaos. Down below, surrounded by half-melted steel and rubble crushed to fine powder, Spider-Man spots one familiar face—the criminal with the pink skin, now dressed in a prison uniform, bleeding on the ground like a sieve before another man in a slightly different uniform. The latter of whom looked a little worse for wear, but in far better shape than the shoulder-charging villain.
They're saying something; what that is, Peter can't tell at all. No one's asking where the library is, so he's entirely at a loss. But he thinks he hears something about a bathroom.
Whatever they were saying didn't matter much to him right now. The only salient details he had to gather now were what the circumstances were and who he should try to punch first. Which, from where he was watching, seemed like it would have to be the one that was winning. The pink gentleman with the shoulder pads certainly wasn't capable of causing this much damage, unless Peter had lucked out in their last encounter.
Spider-Sense nudges at his mind, the hairs on his arms standing straight and his heartbeat growing just the tiniest bit louder. In the palm of the masked man's hand, something fascinating was happening before Spider-Man's very eyes.
Sparkling multicolor particles of light appeared from thin air around the man's hand, gravitating towards the center of his palm and coalescing into a single white point that grew brighter by the second. Eventually, with an electric whirr and a peculiar energy about it that Peter could feel even from high atop the building, it formed a cube. Small, dense-looking; colors danced on each surface like lurid nebulae.
The man's slender fingers wrap around the newly formed cube, and Spider-Man's sixth sense picks up in intensity.
Well, if no one else is gonna do anything about it. Seriously, where the heck're other superheroes when you need one to swoop down and save the day for you.
Choosing to take action, he leaps from the rooftop, moving with a speed such that he clears a majority of the distance with the assistance of gravity, but markedly slower than he usually is. There's less force generated in his leap, the muscles in his legs screaming in protest from the amount of pressure placed on them so suddenly. But still, he's just quick enough.
"Ooh, looks shiny!" yells Spider-Man, catching the attention of villains and officers arriving on the scene alike. While in freefall, he reaches a hand out and fires a web towards the villain's hand, precisely aiming for the colorful cube in his grip that he assumes the man was using to cause all this trouble. His aim is true, and the webline seizes the cube before the man's hand can close. Spider-Man skillfully swings it through the air, catching it in his hand and staring down both men with a look they couldn't read behind his mask. "How much for it? I just gotta have one."
The man who made the cube yells, looking and sounding more terrified than most of the criminals Spider-Man has ever apprehended. Then, frighteningly, the warm cube in Spider-Man's hand grows hotter, yet hotter, until the hero is forced to drop it. From the cube there came a low whistle like a teapot overheating. All is still for a moment, both villains and officers alike shocked to silence.
Spider-Sense blares like never before. Peter doesn't even have time to yell before the blast hits, tearing the already well-worn layer of old clothing off his body as though it were made of air and leaving him in nothing but his costume yet again. His proximity to it doesn't help his case, but he's just barely able to stand against it with his strength and adhesive. But that can only get him so far.
He's flung right through the window of a shop, slamming head first into a cash register in a moment that makes Peter wish he were just a bit less sturdy so that the impact might knock him out cold. But he lays there, conscious and aware of his surroundings, wondering just what to do next.
Disorientation, tinnitus, nausea, and likely some kind of internal bleeding if his chest getting more numb by the second was anything to go by. It's all enough to justify staying still, but Spider-Man finds that he can still get to his feet and, well, that should be quite enough.
The road erupts into chaos; chunks of stone and steel are levered out of the ground and jutting from it like jagged stalagmites. Officers that were once calmly evacuating civilians to make way for any heroes that might arrive were now just as in need of help as those they were trying to save.
As the dust settles, the Cube King breaks through the cloud of dust, looking a great deal more haggard than before, but still very much standing. Nearby, tossed around and battered by the cube's blast, Kichiro struggles to move.
"Stupid freakin' kid," Kichiro groans. "Dead, stupid… Cube I… C'mon, man," With half-lidded pleading eyes, he raises his head to look the Cube King in the eye.
"Shouldn't have walked out on us." Limping towards his prey like a half-dead lion, the Cube King grips his arm and in his palm struggles to form another cube. "No brat to save ya'... Nothin' to distract me." The lights come together into a single point, forming another deadly cube. It glows dangerously, and the Cube King shakily closes his fist around it. "Nothin' to stop me." Raising his fist towards Kichiro, he prepares to open his palm and unleash the untold power of his cube.
But then, a web wraps around his arm, jerking it upward just as the energy is released into a thin, focused beam of vibrant, concentrated heat. It shoots into the sky as a shaft of light, bisecting the skyline at the golden hour of the morning, visible within dozens of miles of this solitary street. The Cube King has little time to react before the masked boy is on him, moving too erratically for him to track. A swift haymaker, an acrobatic twist and leap that seemed impossible in the state the boy was in, and the Cube King was at a loss for what to do.
Kichiro knows that the little guy's slower than he was before, both from experience and inference, but he can't help but be impressed. Though every blow lacked that explosive power he had displayed before, and the Cube King could take more than enough punishment, still he pushed on.
The kid says something in that cheery tone of his that made Kichiro grind his teeth, but the man can't help but feel relieved in the moment.
Kichiro smiles, unbidden, as the kid lands a kick square in Cube King's ribs, sending the career criminal tumbling to the ground in a heap. The kid in the mask stands before his opponent, breathing labored, shoulders slack, one of the lenses of his mask having disappeared entirely. And under that mask it's just a pale, gaunt-looking brown-eyed boy barely holding himself together.
"S-Stupid," the Cube King says, hand held to his aching chest, "friggin'... Kid." Slowly retracting his hand from his chest he reveals in his hand another glowing cube. The villain doesn't bother to close his fist, sitting still and daring the boy-hero to move as the seconds tick by.
The kid in the mask stands stock still for a second, understanding washing over him in one brief, anxious instant. Kichiro almost expects him to run. To flee for the hills, leaving both men to die in the blast. It wasn't something he'd put past a majority of employed heroes nowadays, really.
Kichiro would never have expected him to b-line towards Cube King with renewed ardor, kicking the man in the head and catching the steadily warming cube in his hand. There's a moment—barely a second, really—that he seems to bargain with himself. Weigh his options, consider each and every possibility from that second on, knowing how little time he had to do so.
The kid grips the cube tight, closing his palm around it and firing a line of that webbing with his free hand towards a building. Leaping over the streets, he moves with all the speed, agility, and power behind that scrawny frame of his that he could muster and slings it as high as he can into the open air.
He throws the cube as hard and high as he can, firing globs of webbing at it in some feeble attempt to curb the force of the blast before it could happen. But there was nothing he could do, and Kichiro watches helplessly as the cube detonates. The sight of it against the early morning sky is almost beautiful. It might have given him pause, let him bask in its awe-inspiring light, but there's a boy falling faster and faster by the second that doesn't look conscious enough to save himself.
So all Kichiro can do, with his broken body and newfound remorse for the kid who ruined his career, is look on and hope for a hero.
"I'm thinking he was manipulating the Higgs field. Like he was sort of, I dunno, giving mass to molecules in the air and recycling them into those 'lil cube things. From the air, or his own body, or just the whole universe. It's like he was breaking the rules—totally ignoring gauge bosons to weaponize force carriers. My particle physics is a little rusty so, honestly, not a lot of this makes sense to me yet. If I can do some reading, maybe… "
"Peter?"
"Yeah?"
"We're late for Chem."
Peter stares back into the expectant green eyes of Mary Jane, befuddled. It's only then that his surroundings register; the bleacher beneath him where they always sat, the sounds of the soccer team's constant nattering that they often used as background noise to cover up their talks of Spider-Man's superheroics.
"Well gee MJ, I didn't know you liked class so much." Peter smiles sardonically, leaning toward her with a cheeky look in his eye. "Newfound interest in the wonderful world of science?"
"No, just that Buffet's kind of been on everyone's case lately," Mary replies, "and you can't afford to be absent so often."
"Why can't I? I've got an A."
"All he does is complain when you're not in. And then Liz comes to me about it because she's a total… Y'know." Mary Jane stands, swinging her rucksack over her shoulder.
"Yeah, I know. But I have an A."
"You always have an A."
"Not true. There was that one time last I got a B on my report card 'cuz I was lab partners with Kong and he did that totally gross thing with the frog that we were supposed to—"
"Peter."
Peter remains seated, refusing to follow. He furrows his brow in thought, looking down at the grass of the field and finding it the wrong shade of green. Had someone replaced it?
"Peter, we've got to go." Mary Jane dips her head down to look at him, accustomed to his stubbornness. It worried her, and in truth it worried everyone. His head had been in the clouds so very much lately, both figuratively and often literally. It would be good for him to stay on the ground just a little bit more often.
But she knew that all he wanted to do was swing away into the sunset, leaving everything behind. And he knew that, too. Peter's always known.
So maybe this was exactly what he wanted.
"You've got to get up, Peter. You have to go."
Maybe. Just maybe.
"I don't want to. I don't."
"Get up, Peter!" Mary says, more assertive this time, the sound of her voice muting the rest of the world.
"I can't."
"Peter," Mary says, and she speaks with a thousand voices.
He angles his head up towards her and finds he's not looking at her face at all. It's not anyone in particular. He's looking at Ben and May and Harry and the man in the black coat with the yellow eyes all at once, and they're all looking at him, expecting something. Anything.
The world falls away, light and color drained from it all. And in the end there's just him. Peter Parker. Standing for nothing and for no one.
"Peter."
If there was anything in the world Peter hated the most, it was waking up in places he didn't recognize. No one could really blame him given how things typically went afterward.
He cracks his eyes open slowly, greeted by a gray-dotted white panel ceiling and too-bright light. His other senses kick in one by one; the feeling of pressed bedsheets under him, the soft electric whirr of machinery. There's a window to his left with the curtains drawn, suffusing the room with harsh sunlight. To his right, a black screen with a remote at the table where he supposes food was meant to be placed.
It takes Peter an extra second to notice there's an I.V. drip in his arm and bandages all over him. He dares worry about the hospital bill.
Thoughtlessly, he draws one hand out from under the sheets and reaches for the remote, conscious enough to recognize and ascertain which buttons meant what. There's no pain in his movements, he notices, but he certainly feels tired. Too tired to even monologue about it.
Peter pushes on the little red power button, bringing the hospital television set to life. On the screen are words he can barely make out and the same images of gaudily dressed superheroes. He presses the little arrow pointing down to switch to another channel, only to see yet more heroes in different, equally colorful costumes doing equally incredible or increasingly asinine things. Whether they were posing with puppies, chatting it up with multi-headed talk show hosts or even hosting what he could only describe as game shows from Hell, a concerning amount of them were doing things that were decidedly not contributing to saving anyone at all.
It did bring a small, weak smile to his face to imagine the likes of Wolverine, who he had only met once and found to be uniquely unpleasant, sitting across from an overeager talk show host discussing his morning routine.
A few more channels go by, all mostly the same thing barring a few dire-looking news broadcasts and the odd kids cartoon, he finds something close to interesting: a nature channel. And though he can't understand the commentary, he certainly does enjoy jellyfish b-roll. It gave him an opportunity to distract himself by naming each one that popped up on screen.
"Bloody-belly… Box… Think that's a Mauve?" Peter quietly rasps, blowing a stray tuft of hair from in front of his eye. May would have cut it by now. It was beginning to reach his shoulders and he wasn't sure how he felt about the look, mostly because he hasn't had the chance to look in a proper mirror.
Eventually, after a few minutes of lounging, a young nurse arrives. She jumps in a bit at the sight of him, likely used to his unconscious self, and Peter wonders just how long he must have been out. She's curt and earnest; Peter's able to make out 'sorry' in what few words she says, and he doesn't really know for what. Whether it was a lapse in memory or she didn't know, it seems to process only after she looks back into a confused face with glazed over eyes that he barely understood a lick of it.
At that, she regards him with a courteous bow and exits the room. Moments later, she returns with an older doctor who, despite an inability to communicate, manages to get Peter to comply with all of her tests; checking his pulse, removing the now-useless gauze covering his chest, and generally poking and prodding at him to make sure everything was in order. Soon, she and the young nurse exit again, leaving Peter to wonder just what would happen next.
About half an hour goes by and he no longer has to: the cat-headed police officer from the day he arrived pushes through the door and into the room with all the dignified grace he had when Peter first met him.
"Hello, it is nice to see you again," the cat-cop says, fluent and affable. "We were concerned for a minute there. You seem to have made an exceptional recovery. The doctors say you're in better health than most patients coming from the condition you were in."
"That's… Good," Peter hedges, not making eye contact both from shame for his past actions and his own personal comfort. He didn't want to seem prejudiced, but staring into gigantic cat eyes was mildly unsettling. "I feel good. Can you… Can you tell them thank you?"
The cat-cop's expression remains unchanged. "I will be sure to do so as soon as we're done here." Pulling up a chair, the officer calmly, almost carefully, takes a seat. "I would be remiss not to formally introduce myself. My name is Sansa Tamakwa, I'm a police officer here in Musutafu, as you know."
"I… Yeah, I know."
Tamakawa is silent for a moment, and Peter knows well enough he's choosing his next words carefully. This wasn't the first time Peter's been grilled by people like him. And though he recognizes no ill intent in the cat-man's approach, there's still something to the process that sets Peter's teeth on edge.
Finally, the officer continues, "I would like to ask you some questions, young man. Now, we are not being recorded, and I won't be writing any of this down—this is a conversation between us. Be as candid as you are comfortable with."
"Okay," Peter replies, tone clipped and almost defensive. He doesn't mean to be so obvious, but he's far too out of it to have any real choice.
"Alright. Firstly, what is your name?"
"Peter. Peter Parker."
"And where are you from?"
Now, Peter didn't very much like this question. His answer hinged on the assumption New York existed in this world, something he wasn't entirely sure of given what's already so radically different about it. There's a brief pause, before he realizes he's left no other choice. Sighing, he says, "New York."
"The city?"
Relief washes over him and he miraculously musters up the self-control to hide it. "Yeah. I'm from… I'm from Queens."
"I've never been, what is it like?"
"It's nice."
"And what brings you to Musutafu? It is quite far from Queens, as I'm sure you know." Tamakawa's half-hearted attempt at humor is almost pleasant, but Peter knows he can't get too comfortable.
"I ran away," Peter says, "from the city, I mean. Stowed away on a plane. I didn't really have anywhere to go so I came… Here."
While no stranger to lying, Peter certainly hasn't ever had to lie this severely. With Aunt May, it was always about speaking in half-truths and vaguenesses and allowing her expectations of him to fill in the blanks. This was far more difficult than that could ever be, and he's doing it to an unexpectedly well-adjusted police officer to boot. The concern that he might be checked into some kind of psychiatric institution if he jumped the gun and said he was a living yet dead kid from another dimension remains clearer than anything else in his mind right this second.
Everything he said needed to be purposeful, but believable.
It would only be a matter of time before he found a way home, but it had to be at the right time. And, more pressingly, he needed to find the right person. For as much as he found Tamakawa agreeable thus far, he understands that the officer serves the orders of a government monolith. Not altogether incidentally, Peter wasn't really partial to cops either. Being a genetic freak turned vigilante on his world wasn't conducive to a good relationship with the legal system.
"How long have you been here? And what about your family?"
"Since you… Since you last saw me, I guess. And my family are… They're gone." Peter isn't sure why, but the volume of his voice raises a few octaves when he says it. "They're all… I don't really have anyone. I haven't for… I don't know. Or anywhere. So I just—I came here. I'm sorry."
"What are you apologizing for?" Tamakawa questions, concern and remorse in his lilt.
"I dunno. I don't really know. All the trouble, I guess."
Another pause. The cat-cop continues, "You saved lives, young man. Three nights ago, Cube King perpetrated the mass prison break while seeking revenge against his associate." Leaning forward, Tamakawa looks Peter straight in the eye to further communicate the seriousness of his words. "While the majority of on-duty heroes were occupied with the bulk of the escaped prisoners, he managed to evade them. Had you not arrived, he might have been able to kill Mad Charger and caused more trouble for the police force, likely costing civilian lives in the process."
"I… It was still illegal, like you said. I probably shouldn't have stuck my neck in it in the first place. "
"Be that as it may, your interference with the Mad Charger's escape and the Cube King's attack led to the incarceration of both. Twice you have been there when no one else could be. On behalf of the citizens of Musutafu and the police force, I can only extend my gratitude."
Peter, silent and wide-eyed, realizes can't think of the last time anyone's ever thanked him. Or at least thanked him sincerely enough for him to have felt like he did a good thing. Like he did the right thing. There's a brief catharsis that follows Tamakawa's words, settling into Peter's bones and galvanizing his heart.
But even still, he can't quite help but let something slip. After another brief silence, Peter lets out a weak chuckle. Tamakawa tilts his head, noticeably confused.
"Oh, sorry," Peter chortled. "It's just…Cube King?"
"I don't follow."
"It's a funny name."
"I suppose."
Peter smiles, mostly amused by how absolutely unamused the officer was. He'd say it was a cat thing, but he didn't want to offend the man now that he seems to have built a rapport. But now that he thinks about it, he doesn't really know what constitutes as offensive in this weird, wacky world of mutants and supermen. He's surprised he's even gotten this far in the way of basic communication.
"Uhm, so, what are you guys going to…Do with me?"
"To my knowledge, there's no specific protocol for incidents like this," Tamakawa replies succinctly. "While I believe what you have told me, we would have to run checks before we decide how to proceed. Whether or not we would have to have you deported or…" The cat-headed man trails off, tilting his head towards the ceiling in a small gesture of contemplation Peter catches. "Well, as I said, it will be some time."
"Time's all I've got," Peter lies, sinking into his bed just a bit more.
Tamakawa nods, standing from his seat. "I will ask them to send you something to eat. The nurses said you were malnourished when you came in."
"Thank you."
"Whatever comes up, I will be here to let you know. For now, I have to take my leave. I wish you a nice evening." Concluding with a perfunctory bow, the cat-cop walks out of the room with the same dignity with which he'd entered. Not very knowledgeable on cats or their behavior, Peter couldn't decide whether or not that his attitude could be attributed to his occupation or animal instincts. The latter seemed more likely.
Once he's out, Peter sighs, angling his head to face the window. The city's still the same: undisturbed as of now, almost peaceful as cities tend to look when you're high enough. Hiding so many secrets in the streets below, behind every window and layer of brick and concrete. Some, he reckons, are horrific. This may be a world of wonders, but what little he's seen tells him that there must be something quite awful beneath the surface, lurking in the dark places just out of sight. After all, there always is.
Robbie would have had something profound to say about it. Something sensational. Something that would make for an eye-catching headline.
Peter can only drift back to sleep and think that maybe—just maybe—things will turn out alright in the end.
End.
A/N: Edits made since posting: added a linebreak where there should've been one, added this very author's note, and took the chapter title out of the chapter itself. Anyways, chapter 3 is underway n' we're throwing ideas back n' forth at a decent pace. Finals season and all—wish us luck. Next chapter may or may not be a bit expository, but trying to get the ball rolling is the goal for right now.
Thanks.
