AN: so, this is my first fic! i'm determined to complete this story. based on the MCU and The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals by Team Starkid. can probably be read even if you haven't watched TGWDLM, but i highly recommend you watch it if you haven't already. it's up on youtube to watch for free! please enjoy and review!

—

Peter Parker was not having a good day. Sure, it wasn't as bad as the day he was crushed by a literal building, but if it got any worse, it would definitely be up there on the list.

That morning, Aunt May had started yet another small fire on the stovetop—

"Peter, sweetie, get the extinguisher!"

"Coming, May!"

"Oh god. Yeah, pancakes were definitely not a good idea. Just stick to cereal for now, okay?"

"Okay—crap, I have a test first period, I'm gonna be late!"

"Peter, you have to eat—"

"I'm about to fail this class, May!"

—and, yeah, going to school on an empty stomach probably wasn't the best decision. Ned didn't have any snacks on him, but he did offer Peter a peppermint, which...was not a good idea, either...

"Thanks, dude—"

"Peter, are you okay...Peter, why did you spit out the peppermint I just gave you?"

"...what the fuck was that?"

"What? I didn't do anything to it!"

"How the hell can you eat that? It tastes like garbage and sadness."

"I dunno. Just tastes minty to me."

"This is a disgrace. A betrayal. God has forsaken me."

Lesson learned, though. Spiders and peppermint do not mix well.

Later that day, Peter was forced to put up with Flash's usual bullshit—

"Hey, Parker! Saw you digging through the dumpsters for food scraps earlier, no wonder you smell like trash!"

—which, honestly, wasn't the worst part of his day. Again, it was his usual bullshit. As always, MJ was there to defend his honor—

"Fuck off, Flash. Nobody cares what you have to say. And you've used that insult before. Not only are you stupid, you're also unoriginal."

—and, no, of course Peter didn't find that attractive, he just thought it was awesome of MJ to stand up for him like that, and he also thought she looked beautiful when she roasted Flash. Yeah, no repressed crush there.

After school, Peter began his usual patrol. At first, not much was different from what he normally went through. A couple of back alley robberies, cat in a tree, creepy stalker, helping an elderly man with his groceries...

And then the singing started.

Peter had been swinging through Queens after KAREN reported a building fire nearby. Not common, but definitely not something he'd never dealt with before. He could just see the smoke rising in the distance, and he was about to head over, when a loud scream suddenly reached his ears.

"Shit. KAREN, what's the situation on the fire?" Peter asked hurriedly, debating if he could handle both conflicts.

"Firefighters have arrived on the scene. The spread seems to be slowing, and reports say the topmost floors are already clear," his AI replied.

"Good. Hopefully this won't take too long," he muttered. Swinging over to the source of the scream, Peter found himself looking down on an almost-empty sidewalk. Standing there were two figures. One, a woman, was leaning over the other, a man, who was laying on the ground, curled up on his side. And while the woman looked completely calm, man seemed to be in extreme pain. he was coughing, hacking his lungs out, and there was something coming out of his mouth. Something that looked an awful lot like blood, though Peter could tell, even from his distance, that something was very, very wrong.

Peter leaped down onto the sidewalk, approaching the woman. As he drew closer, she looked up at him. The look in her eyes made him feel...uneasy. Almost as if he was staring into nothing.

"Ma'am? Is...is everything alright?" he asked nervously. Behind her, the man was still coughing, though he was growing weaker. The woman stood up straight, and now that he was closer, Peter was able to get a better look at her eyes.

And they were fucking blue.

They weren't like normal blue eyes, though. Normal blue eyes, at least as far as Peter had seen in his lifetime, weren't a glowing neon hue like the woman's in front of him.

Yeah, there was definitely some freaky shit going on.

'It can't possibly get any worse, though. Right?' Peter said to himself.

The woman stared at him blankly, and then a wide smile spread across her face. And then she started singing.

"The itsy-bitsy spider..."

Ok. Yeah. It just got worse.

"...went up the water spout..."

Her voice was smooth and syrupy, like she was professionally trained. And Peter wouldn't have thought it was that strange, if it weren't for the fact that the sweet, soothing melody coming out of her mouth didn't match the crazed glint in her eyes.

"...down came the rain..."

The woman walked toward him, with slow, jerky movements. Behind her, the man on the ground went completely silent, and Peter could now see that the blood he had been coughing out was blue. He didn't have much time to dwell on it, though, because the woman was getting closer, and she looked fucking terrifying. Was he dreaming? Because this didn't feel real, and it definitely felt like something out of a nightmare.

"...and washed the spider out!"

His spidey-sense, which had been tingling at the back of his mind, suddenly skyrocketed, and Peter leaped away just as the woman lunged at him. Her hands grasped at the air where his neck had been, and she quickly turned to face him again. Peter shot out his webs, aiming for her ankles. The woman stumbled as she found herself anchored to the sidewalk. She glared at Peter, her silky voice turning into a growl.

"Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain, but the itsy-bitsy spider will only fall again!"

Peter didn't like this version of the nursery rhyme.

Suddenly, the woman tore her feet through the webbing, jumping at him a second time. Out of the corner of his eye, another movement caught Peter's attention. He gasped in horror as the man from before rose shakily to his feet, his eyes gaining the same eerie glow as the woman's.

"What the hell?"

Peter's two opponents had matching grins, and they advanced on him. Their movements were quick and synchronized, and he realized, horrified, that they weren't synchronized in the way that Black Widow and Hawkeye would fight in sync with each other. These two were synchronized in the sense that they were being controlled. Their movements were too perfect, too intricately matched, and, thinking back to everything he learned from sci-fi and horror movies, Peter couldn't help but think of the dreadful implications of it all.

They weren't just choreographed. They were puppets, pawns of a bigger, badder force.

And if he was reading the situation correctly, that woman had infected the man with whatever was making them hostile and good at singing.

This situation really was getting worse by the second.

"The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout,

Down came the rain and washed the spider out..."

The singing zombies, as Peter decided to call them, lashed out, grabbing at his arms. He swung away before they could latch onto him. And he could hear their harmony ringing in the air as he left.

—

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

"Peter, your heart rate is unusually high."

Peter glared at the skyline. "KAREN, there are singing zombies, and I panicked and left without doing anything. They're probably spreading the infection to the rest of the city right now!"

KAREN helpfully brought up images on his display. "It seems that you are correct, Peter. Reports of violence and outbursts of song and dance are trending on social media."

Peter groaned into his hands. "Not helping, KAREN."

"Would you like me to contact Mr. Stark? Your stress levels are increasing rapidly."

"You know what?" he sighed. "That would be great."

"Contacting Mr. Stark."

Within seconds, the call was picked up. "Hey, Spider-kid," Tony said. "What's shaking?"

"First of all, never say that ever again. Second, have you looked at the news recently?"

"Nope. Been busy with a new prototype since...last night? I think? Told FRIDAY to mute everything. Except you, obviously."

"Right." Peter could hear the music blasting on the other end of the call. Tony had clearly been on another work binge. "You should probably check the news. Like, right now."

"Alrighty, kiddo, whatever you say. Fri, bring up the top headlines."

It was silent for a few moments, and then Peter heard a loud sigh from his mentor.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Peter shook his head. "Nope. Ran into a few of them earlier, scared the crap out of me."

"And you let them go?" Tony deadpanned.

"I didn't just let them go!" Peter protested. "I swear, the guy died. And then came back to life. They're practically zombies, Mr. Stark!"

"...Okay, yeah, that sounds pretty fucked up. I didn't think theater kids could get any worse, but here we are. You think they're some sort of hive mind?"

Peter shrugged. "I mean, probably. They're movements looked too perfect, like a choreographed dance number. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something controlling them all."

"A central brain." There was a tapping sound, probably Tony absentmindedly fidgeting with a tool. "Destroy the brain, the whole hive falls. Problem is, social media says it didn't start in New York. FRIDAY, check for the earliest reports of this singing zombie situation."

"October 29th, Boss," Peter heard the AI reply. "A Tweet from user @alicefromwonderland. 'guys i'm trapped in the choir room. deb is singing, she's scaring me. fuck, i'm going to die here, aren't i?' It roughly matches what is being described in today's news. The location tag says it was tweeted from Hatchetfield, a small town on an island in Lake Erie."

"Michigan?" Tony muttered. "Any reports of weird shit happening there?"

"October 28th, a small meteor landed in the town. It hit the Starlight Theater, but nothing else was destroyed in the crash."

"Huh. That was over a week ago. What about social media activity in Hatchetfield? Anything change after the crash?"

"Social media activity from Hatchetfield residents decreased since the 29th," FRIDAY confirmed. "The last few posts seem to be related to the 'singing zombies.' It seems as though some residents managed to escape the infection, though. A few accounts of Hatchetfield citizens have been updated as recently as forty minutes ago, from different locations."

"Looks like we've found the brain," Peter commented. "Did the infection start from the meteor?"

Tony groaned. "Great, more freaky space shit? That meteor is probably the center of it all."

"Didn't know the aliens enjoyed musical theatre so much."

"Quit the cheek, Parker. You up for a field trip?"

Peter perked up. "Really? I was expecting you to just send a missile into that theatre. Blow it up remotely."

"Nah, that's much too boring for my taste. Besides, I wanna make sure we destroy it properly, being there in person will help with that. And it couldn't hurt to have backup. What do you say, kid?"

"I've got your back, Mr. Stark. Want me to meet you at the tower?"

"Yeah, that would be great," Tony replied. "We'll leave on the jet right away. Keep your guard up, don't engage with any of the zombies on your way here."

"Aye aye, sir."

—

"This isn't the creepiest thing I've seen today, but it's definitely up there," Peter said as they entered the theater.

When they first arrived in Hatchetfield, Peter and Tony did not encounter a horde of musical zombies like they expected. Instead, the island was completely empty, not a soul to be seen.

"Right," Tony replied. "Haven't seen a town this barren since Rose Hill. A story for another time," he added, seeing Peter's questioning glance.

Their conversation slowed to a halt as they traversed the destroyed building. Soon enough, they began nearing the center of the wreckage.

And Peter realized that something was off.

"You okay, kid?" Tony asked, turning around when he realized Peter had stopped. "Is your tingle going off?"

Peter shook his head, his eyes narrowing. "No. Actually, it's not going off at all. Hasn't since we left the city..." He trailed off into silence.

"So, what? Doesn't that mean it's safe?"

He shook his head. "We were expecting this mission to be dangerous, but nothing has happened. My spidey-sense would be going off like crazy, but it's not. It's completely silent."

Tony's eyes widened in realization. "Shit. Something is wrong, then?"

Peter nodded. "Definitely."

His mentor looked up, toward the center of the theater. "FRIDAY, are you sensing anything weird nearby? Nothing extraterrestrial?"

A beat, and then Peter heard her response. "Nothing, Boss."

They shared a look, and Tony led the way towards the meteor.

Only, when they climbed over the rubble, they were met with a collapsed stage with a huge dent in the middle of it. The wood was scorched, like it had once been lit aflame, and above them, the hole in the ceiling revealed the glittering night sky. And perhaps Peter would've paused to appreciate the stars, if it weren't for the fact that there was a very big problem.

The meteor was nowhere to be seen.

Peter and Tony spoke in unison.

"Well, fuck."

-

AN: yes, there are hatchetfield survivors in this AU. just wanted to give myself room if, in the future, i decide to introduce other tgwdlm (and MAYBE black friday) characters.