Earth-H
"Black Cat to Buttons. Come in, Buttons."
"This is Buttons. What's the scoop?"
"Just finished my work with the alarms and security systems. They'll be out for the next 5 to 10 minutes."
"Good to know."
Black Cat turned off her walkie-talkie and removed the covering to an air vent leading into the jewelry store.
Easiest 250k I ever made, she thought as she slipped into the vent.
A man dressed in a red trenchcoat and fedora stood on a nearby street corner and checked his watch. A minute and a half had passed since he had gotten the status report from his cohort, and he was growing impatient.
If that broad doesn't speed things up, I'll—
Just then, his walkie-talkie went off.
"Olly olly oxen free." a woman's voice proclaimed.
The man picked up a violin case and proceeded towards the jewelry store.
A younger man sat on a nearby rooftop overlooking the jewelry store. He was dressed in a red-and-blue spandex unitard covered with a black web pattern. On his chest was a black stylized spider, while a red recolor of the same spider adorned the costume's back. A red mask with the same webbing pattern concealed his face.
Another slow night tonight. Can't blame the crooks for shying away these days, what with me, the NYPD getting backup from some outfit called Central Organization of Police Specialists- who comes up with names like that? Maybe it's time I hung up the Spider-Man duds—
Just then, he saw Black Cat opening the door of the jewelry store.
Speak of the devil.
"Impressive work, Cat! When we're through with this, maybe I'll put in a good word for you next time Big Boss does some hiring—"
Just then, the sound of police sirens began to fill the air.
"How the—"
"Damnit damnit damnit! I should have known that they'd have a silent alarm on a separate circuit!" Black Cat cursed.
Buttons smashed some display cases and stuffed the loot into his trenchcoat.
"Any ideas, O Great Cat Burglar?"
"Back door. Run."
"You don't need to tell me twice!"
The two crooks bolted out of the building and into a nearby alley.
"You think they'll look for us here?" Black Cat asked.
"Doubt it. Not enough room to drive anything in here, and unless their name's Cobra Cobretti, I'm pretty sure no cop would enter this alley on foot."
"Good thing I'm not a cop," a voice announced.
Black Cat grimaced.
"Way to go, Buttons. You jinxed us."
"How?"
As if on cue, a man in red-and-blue spandex descended from the shadows.
"Hey, Cat. Who's your new boyfriend?" he snarked.
"The name's Buttons McBoomBoom." the man in the trenchcoat replied.
"Who came up with that name? I'd hate to see the name 'Buttons' on my high school diploma—"
"Who the hell are you, ya spandex-wearing clown?"
"Who, me? I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Never heard of me? Well, there's a busker out in Central Park who's got this little tune—'Spider-Man, Spider-Man! Does whatever a spider can!'"
Buttons began to open his violin case.
"Well, Spider-Man, I've got a confession to make."
"What sort of confession?"
"I have this thing about bugs. Namely that—"
Buttons removed a Tommy gun from the case.
"I HATE THEM AND WISH THEY WERE ALL DEAD!"
Spider-Man leapt out of the way before a stream of bullets rushed through the spot where he had been previously standing.
"Who uses Tommy guns anymore?!" he sputtered.
"I like the old ways, bucko."
Black Cat smirked as she extended a set of cybernetic climbing claws from her fingertips.
"It's showtime, webhead!"
As if on cue, another person dropped in from the shadows. Their costume was an all-red version of Spider-Man's, albeit with an off-white web pattern and spider symbol.
"What the hell?!" Buttons shouted.
"It's her." Black Cat hissed.
"Who's 'her'?"
"The webhead's girlfriend- the Scarlet Spider."
Buttons began to undo his trenchcoat and dress shirt as Scarlet Spider approached.
"What are you going to do? Flash them to death?" Black Cat snarked.
"You could say that."
Before Cat could make a retort, she watched as a panel opened up on Buttons' chest, revealing a pair of light machine guns.
"Hey, bug-brains! Eat hot steel!"
Both Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider leapt out of the alley and onto opposite walls just before the guns fired.
"Any ideas, Tiger?" Scarlet Spider asked.
"I've got one. Buttons over there-"
"His name's 'Buttons'?"
"I'm pretty sure it's a nickname. Anyways, the way I see things, he can only really hit something with those guns in his torso is if they're directly in front of him-"
"Get him from the back and sides. Got it!"
"Come down and get stomped like the bugs you are!" Buttons bellowed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure moving around in the darkness.
"Come out, come out, wherever you-"
Before he could finish his statement, Buttons was sent sprawling across the pavement as Scarlet Spider leapt onto his back.
"Get off, Spider-B—"
Before Buttons could finish his statement, his mouth was suddenly covered up by a blast of webbing.
"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Spider-Man asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
Black Cat promptly turned and ran right into some waiting policemen.
"Well, that was fun." Spider-Man deadpanned as he and Scarlet Spider took a breather on a nearby rooftop.
"Tell me about it. A guy with machine guns in his chest- what organs did they have to take out to fit those?"
"Most of them. Must've been a field day in the operating room—'Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability, so pass me those LMGs.'"
"Peter!"
"You try coming up with a better explanation, MJ!"
The two broke out laughing when Peter felt a buzzing sensation over his right ear.
"Hello?"
"Web Central to Spider-Man. Come in, Spider-Man."
"I read you loud and clear, Gwen. So, what's the scoop?"
"There's some kind of portal above the Eyrie Building. You might want to check it out."
"The Eyrie Building? Blondie, you don't mean—"
"Ten bucks says it's got something to do with Xanatos. And don't call me Blondie."
Half an Hour Later
"Well, here we are. 2,000 feet up, and there's a weird purple portal right above our heads." Peter snarked.
"Well, at least nothing's coming out of it." Mary Jane replied.
Just then, Peter began to feel the portal drawing him in.
"What the—"
As the portal began to slowly drag him in, Peter dropped prone, hoping that his hands and feet would stick to the stone of the castle that now sat upon the Eyrie Building.
What's going on? he thought.
The portal began sucking him in much harder. The force was enough to dislodge the stones beneath his hands and feet, raising the hapless Peter into the air.
"Red! Save yourself!" he shouted.
Just then, he saw Mary Jane rise into the air, a line of webbing securing her to the stone of the castle.
"Tiger, you're the science expert! What's going on?"
"I've got no idea! But I'm fairly certain we'll be fine if we don't get sucked into that portal—"
The line of webbing snapped. Mary Jane flew backwards, knocking Peter off the cobblestones and sending them both spiraling through the portal.
Earth-61610: OsCorp
…PAAAARRRRRKEERRRR…
Spider-Man stumbled backwards, his breath coming in shudders. His head was screaming, like millions of needles were trying to push themselves out of the back of his skull. His legs gave out and he fell backwards, his entire body trembling as he could feel his pulse skyrocket. "Ah—" Movement pulled his attention backward, where he saw enormous spiders swarming down the walls. "Ah—"
The creature up above, the one staring at him, slowly moved a single leg to point at him. His eyes snapped back to it, just as a car-sized spider above the door leapt…
move
"AAAAAGHHH!" Spider-Man dove to the side, rolling as the spider and another violet bolt of light hit the catwalk simultaneously. As the catwalk buckled and tore away from the wall, Spider-Man screamed again, pushing away from the spider as it tried to attack him and jumping away into space. He flailed for a moment as he fell, but then he fired a webline at the nearest of the machines and zipped to it, sticking to it and trying to stop trembling.
Breathe. Breathe. Spider-Man stared upwards, watching the enormous spider—the one that had said his name, how did it know his name—as it shifted and skittered, more bolts of violet surging out from it and expanding the web. As the tingling seemed to well up in his head, jets of black billowed down from the bloom of light between the machines like drops of ink through water and solidified into spiders everywhere they landed.
Portal. How— He looked around wildly, his gaze passing right over a set of darkened, shattered windows before snapping back to them. He fired a webline at a point just below them and slingshotted himself across the gap.
Another spider immediately jumped for him, and he darted under it and punched it on the underside, knocking it off the wall and sending it tumbling. He watched it fall, tumbling end over end, legs flailing until it hit one of the cables of silk and clung to it. Then, in accordance, to the tingling, he dodged a spider's attack and ducked into the shattered window.
The lights were shattered; the only light in the control room he found himself in spilled in from the portal or emanated from the occasional cracked, web-covered computer screen. An enormous cobweb filled the room, with vaguely human-shaped cocoons scattered about it—but there was no spider, and the vent in the ceiling was open. Spider-Man leaned to the side to try to peer up the vent, but then turned to the control panel beneath the window and looked it over.
The screen was obscured by a patch of cobweb. Spider-Man pulled at it with his right hand, momentarily forgetting the injury he had taken to that shoulder, then reflexively clamped his other hand over the bleeding wound and hissed. Looking at the deep cut, he wiped some of the blood away with the back of his glove before gluing it shut with webbing. That done, he tore the cobweb away from the computer with his left hand, taking some of the metal of the console and a few particles of glass with it.
There was a noise from the vent—the ringing in his head made him abundantly aware of this. Cringing and glancing back at it, he returned as much of his attention to the console as he could and began analyzing the readout.
It looked remarkably like computer code; apparently the physicists who had designed this didn't care much for formatting. A list of commands on the left, a list of results indented beneath each, with the last several commands all bearing some version of fatal error. He furrowed his brow at this, before experimentally fiddling with a knob.
The screen immediately updated to show the slight increase in power he had apparently just sent to the Manipulator Arms, and the light from the test chamber flickered and flared.
Misfits Universe (Earth-11052A)
"Stupid Mass Device! Why? Won't? You? WORK?!"
Lance Alvers delivered a solid mule kick to the uncooperative teleportation device.
"Have you tried rebooting it?"
Lance turned and saw three young girls enter the room.
"The owner's manual says this is acceptable discipline, Trinity."
Just then, Lance realized what he had just said.
"Oh for the love of— Trinity, I'm not getting involved in whatever harebrained scheme you've got going this time!"
"Please?" the girls asked in unison.
"I am not up for it! Lifeline told me that—"
At that moment, Cover Girl entered the Mass Device's chamber.
"Okay, you bozos. Time to saddle up!"
"What is it this time? My old boss? COBRA? Doctor Doom?"
"None of the above. We've got an anomaly in the sky above the base, and Hawk wants to make sure nothing's coming out of it."
Fifteen Minutes Later
There was a violet vortex hanging in the sky over the Pit's training grounds. Beneath it were various members of the GI Joe team and the Misfits, a rag-tag bunch of former members of the Brotherhood of Mutants, Hector "Shipwreck" Delgado's four eldest children, the hacker known as Arcade, and a few other previously unaffiliated mutants.
"What is it, yo?"
"It's a portal, Toad. What does it look like to you?"
Todd Tolansky shot Lance a dirty look.
"What's it doing in our backyard? You think Magneto or COBRA opened it?"
"Doubtful. If it were either, something would've come through by now." Althea Delgado replied.
Behind the line of MPs sat the younger members of the Misfits. At present, they were playing poker.
"Royal flush!" Brittany called out.
"Better luck next time, Ollie!" Daria chirped.
Olivia Ossnick, or "Spyder" as she was called on official documents, grumbled as she handed a five-dollar bill to the Delgado triplets.
"What's going on behind the line?" she grumbled.
"Some kind of hole in time and space. They're trying to make sure nothing gets out."
Just then, Spyder felt herself being drawn to the violet portal. Some presence was calling her forward. She slunk through a hole in the MPs' line and soon found herself before the portal.
This is so freaky, she thought.
Just then, Lance noticed the little gray girl.
"Spyder! What are you doing there? Get back at once!"
Spyder snapped out of her trance, but it was too late. Before she could do anything about it, she was rising into the air.
"HELP!" she screamed.
Before anyone could do anything, Spyder vanished through the portal.
"No." Lance muttered as the portal closed.
Earth-61610, OsCorp
move
Spider-Man ducked, avoiding a black, oily cloud that solidified into a spider-thing the size of a large dog crouched on the console. It snarled and crawled forward a bit, reaching down two legs to grab him, but Spider-Man took a few frantic steps back and fired three web shots at it. He glanced at the vent now just above him, right in time to see a collection of eyes looming out of the darkness therein.
move
He didn't move; instead his hands jumped up and caught the spider as it leapt out of the vent and threw it at its sibling. The momentum carried them both out the window, but the larger one managed to stick a leg to the sill and keep itself from falling. As it crawled back in, Spider-Man flicked all the controls off, then on and off again, then brought his fists down onto the console and broke it nearly in two. The spider hopped onto the console, ready to jump again, and Spider-Man grabbed the edge of the console, tore it off the wall, and threw it across the room, spider and all.
YOU CANNOT STOP US...
Spider-Man's eye twitched behind the unmoving eyepiece of his mask. His entire body frozen in a cringe, he turned on his heel and looked up, out the window. The titanic spider had crawled several feet farther down, and, if possible, looked even bigger than it had before.
…THIS WORLD IS MINE.
Spider-Man broke his gaze with it, visibly shaking. He glanced at the sparking wires that the console had left behind, before he took a deep breath and hopped onto the windowsill. The enormous machines that extended into the chamber like arms from the ceiling terminated in metal, egg-shaped terminals, and they hummed and shook and bolts of lightning—not that violet bullshit; genuine, white arc lightning—occasionally jumped between them. As Spider-Man stared at them, another bolt of violet found the machine just above the nearest one, and a large spider crawled down the resultant cable and began building a web there.
Okay, Spider-Man thought, gathering his legs under him and leaping for the nearest machine. I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and assume I have to break those to stop the crazy train.
Earth-825
"You can run, but you can't hide!"
Teresa Alovi winced as she heard the Rhino's gloating.
"Yo, Spider-Bitch! Let's go!"
Before he could get any more insults out, Rhino's gaze was drawn to a rapidly moving figure darting through the warehouse.
"Bring it!" he sneered.
As if on cue, Teresa slammed her fist into the dimwitted chimera's face, stunning him.
"It's Star-Spider, not Spider-Bitch!"
Just then, a low cackling was heard.
"I don't know. 'Spider-Bitch' has a bit of a nice ring to it."
Teresa gawked as she saw a man in a yellow and black ensemble with a pair of metal gauntlets on his fists.
"Shocker." she spat.
"You know my name. Now if you can write it, you get a gold star." he patronizingly sneered.
"How'd you get out of jail?"
"Trade secret. Now, how about we have ourselves a rematch, 'kay?"
Teresa soared through the air as Shocker fired off his gauntlets.
"Stay still! I can't hit you if you don't stay—"
At that moment, he took a very hard blow to the back of the head.
"Anyone else going to show up?" Teresa asked to nobody in particular.
Suddenly, a violet portal opened up, and Teresa was promptly sucked in.
Earth-61610, OsCorp
The machine was vibrating uncomfortably beneath his hands when he hit it. He twitched and pulled both hands away, for a moment sticking there with only his feet, but then he felt the spider's legs tapping against the metal, ever closer. Swallowing, he jumped out a little and fired a webline just above where he had perched, swinging in a tight arc around the machine and going right over the spider.
It was the size of a car. Spider-Man crawled backwards from it a bit when he landed, and it jumped forward, landing just in front of him. Its fangs slammed down into the machine where he had been an instant before, but Spider-Man was still backpedaling. His hands moved so fast that there wasn't even a blur, and the spider's fangs, already stuck partway into the metal, were swiftly glued in place by twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen web shots.
"Now," gasped Spider-Man, pointing a trembling finger at it, "you just…just stay there…like the good little abomination you wish you were." With that, he jumped backwards, fired a webline at the arm, and swung out of sight.
Granted, he wasn't going very far. Spider-Man took one wide swing all the way around the machine, so as to have more room to work, and landed on the egg-shaped portion of the machine with a loud thump. The metal was hot under his hands and feet, causing him to shift them constantly, but he pulled a fist back and punched through the metal surface.
He pulled his hand out immediately, cursing at the heat and taking a handful of wires with it. Throwing them aside, he gripped the edges of the hole in the metal and pulled, tearing off a chunk of tungsten carbide and exposing the circuitry and ominous-looking elements beneath. Grabbing at the first thing he saw, he tore it away and just kept tearing.
The humming was becoming erratic, like the grinding of metal—the humming of the machine, that is, not of his head. That had progressed well beyond humming and into a loud, constant ringing sensation, sending his nerves jumping and continuously tugging his attention towards the big mommy spider. And now, as the sound of tearing webbing and a shriek of triumph reached his ears, towards the car-sized problem that was now coming towards him alarmingly fast.
The ringing was punctuated by that same high, sharp note of move, and Spider-Man jerked back as the spider grabbed at him with both pedipalps. He landed a punch on the side of its left chelicera, and dodged backwards a little, but his awkward position kept him from moving far and the claw of its right front leg tore across his chest. He gave a short scream of pain and clutched at the bleeding wound.
The spider clicked its fangs at him and went to bite him again while he was distracted. One fang managed to graze his shoulder before he grabbed at its cephalothorax and shoved it hastily into the hole in the machine he had created. The spider screamed and scrabbled with its front legs as he held his head there; he could smell the hair burning.
"And let this be a lesson to you!" he yelled, his voice high-pitched and panicky as the screeching began to peter out. "Always make sure your machinery's cooling systems are up to scratch! Especially if you're using it to invade another universe!" With that, he released the spider's head and shoved it away, foul-smelling smoke trailing behind as the spider scrambled backwards wildly. Spider-Man pulled a cartridge from the red strap around his waist and threw it hard into the hole.
The sparking of the torn wiring, made altogether worse by the struggling of the spider, melted the homemade stainless steel in only a few seconds, and the web fluid inside expanded upon exposure to oxygen at a speed that would put most explosions to shame. In an eighth of a second the entire egg-shaped machine was a mess of faintly golden artificial spider silk, and the machinery therein came to a forced halt. The humming died instantly, and he could smell the smoke of burning circuitry.
A high-pitched, deafening shriek of surprise from above pulled his gaze towards the mother; its pedipalps and frontmost legs were scrabbling at what looked like a ring of violet smoke, lit from within, that had buckled and was rapidly shrinking between her and Spider-Man. As the circle collapsed further, she screeched again, and as it passed in front of her abdomen Spider-Man breathed a sigh of relief as he realized he couldn't see her or the light behind her outside the ring. He turned back to the car-sized spider, which was now more than a little wary of him, and fired a web shot at it. The face of his right web-shooter was now glowing red, but he chuckled as the spider jumped backwards in alarm and fell off the machine. Taking a deep breath, he looked around as the walls of the test chamber slowly shrank around him and the other two pieces of machinery slowly grew closer to him. He glanced back up; the tattered violet portal was almost gone, but it seemed to have stalled. He furrowed his brow and glanced at the other two egg-shaped devices—he was close enough now to feel the humming of their inner workings through the air. Deciding to finish the job, Spider-Man pulled himself into a better position and jumped for the one on the right.
YOU ATTEMPT TO DEFY ME…?!
"WHOA!" yelled Spider-Man, as his intended target suddenly pulled a hundred feet away from him: With a growl of effort and a noise like someone was tearing apart space itself, the front legs of the titanic spider forced the portal back open even wider than it had been originally. Light flooded into the chamber as it distorted even further than before and bolts of violet exploded from the web above and began expanding it dramatically, and Spider-Man began to fall as the egg-shaped machine was forced away from where he had been aiming.
"Dick move!" he screamed hysterically up at her, firing the beginning of a webline with his right shooter before running out and switching to his left. "You hear me?! DICK! MOVE!" As the webline connected and his decent became a parabola, he scrambled up the line towards the machine.
YOU WILL BE A MEAL FOR MY NEWBORN, PARKER.
Earth-61045
"Chīsana kumo ga ushinawa rete imasu ka?" a voice asked, his native Brooklyn accent seeping into his Japanese.
Drake Carter gulped as he realized he had been caught.
"Ima kōfuku shi,-te wa, raibu anata o dekiru yō ni narimasu."
"Like I believe a word of that. You Wu-Tang posers've been after my head since we first crossed paths." Drake snapped.
"Point taken, Spider. But unlike most of my fellow Hand, I am reasonable. I'll cut you deal- you stay away from our operations, and we'll leave you alone. Wakaru?"
"No dice."
The Hand representative frowned.
"Send in the kill team." he muttered into his cellphone.
Drake ran for it as fast as his legs would carry him. He barely made it out of the alleyway when he saw the Hand's hitmen, dressed up in modern-day samurai armor.
"They couldn't send ordinary gangbangers, oh no! They had to call up a bunch of otaku hitmen, all dressed like it's a damn Comic-Con!"
Just then, the "samurai" drew their rifles. Drake barely got out of the way before a burst of automatic fire nearly hit him.
"Oh, they just had to be competent hitmen! Fantastic!"
Suddenly, a violet portal opened up in the sky, and Drake Carter went flying into it, leaving five very confused hitmen.
Earth-61610, OsCorp
Spider-Man didn't even slow down when he reached the machinery—sure, it was hot, but his head pounded with the ringing and a swarm of minute wisps of smoke were descending towards him like a carnivorous black snowstorm. Spider-Man put a fist through the shell and ripped out a piece of circuitboard—
movemovemovemoveMOVE
—He sprang up, rolled, dived upwards again, and turned to watch the swarm of baby spider-things begin to solidify exactly where he had been an instant before. Almost as one, and well before the last of them had landed, they crawled vaguely after him, tiny legs scrambling and fangs clicking. He scrambled farther up the arm, then fired a webline with his left hand and swung around it. Releasing the webline early, he kicked the egg-shaped terminal with all the strength he had. The shock of the kick jolted up his leg and rendered it numb, but with the sound of tearing metal and the smell of lightning the terminal tore almost halfway off the arm.
The swarm turned around and leapt at him; a wave of oily black spider-things fell towards him like a wall of fanged death. He crawled to the side and managed to avoid the bulk of them, but maybe a dozen landed on his right leg and bit down immediately.
"AGH!" Spider-Man almost fell off the machine. Hanging on with one hand, he flailed with his other and crushed two of the spiders. The others were out of his immediate reach, and he gasped in pain as they tore off tiny pieces of his flesh, ate them, and bit again and again. The outside of his right leg was stained with blood in under a second, and the rest of the swarm was coming for him at a speed that gave a sharp overtone to the tingling in his head. Spider-Man kicked out both legs as best as he could, releasing the machine and firing a webline, and managed to swing to the other side of the machine. It was a temporary solution, and at least they were out of sight for a few seconds. Spider-Man stuck to the shell with his feet and slapped at the creatures eating his leg. Only after the last of them was dead did he remember to breathe.
The egg-shaped terminal shifted and moved; Spider-Man's head snapped up and he peered over the top. A small number of baby spiders had bridged the he had made between the arm and the terminal with webbing and were mow trying to pull it shut. As the rest of the spiders swarmed over the terminal towards him, Spider-Man darted to the point where terminal met arm, put his arms on one and legs on the other, and pushed.
The metal tore away entirely; now the only thing holding the egg on was the webbing the babies were making and a few thick wires. Spider-Man checked his web-shooters. His right one was out, but his left, though it was glowing red, had maybe one more line in it. Spider-Man grabbed a piece of the egg's shell and tore it off, giving it a rough, serrated edge. The swarm was almost upon him, enough so to nip at his fingertips. Spider-Man leapt straight up over the egg, fired a webline at the very top of it, and swung down and drove his improvised knife through the webbing.
The egg began to fall; the wires that connected it to the arm held for a second before breaking. Spider-Man caught the bottom of the arm and stuck there as, swarm of babies and all, the egg-shaped terminal rolled in midair before it hit the ground hard enough to break in half.
Earth-91115
"Louie, we did it! 500k in gold and gemstones, and the cops didn't even catch us on our way out!"
"But Frank, what about—"
"The Spider-Man? I don't think we'll be seeing him anytime soon!"
As if on cue, a swarm of bees landed on the car's windshield.
"What the—"
"It's the Honeybee!"
"The which-what?"
Something landed on the roof of the car.
"Run, Frank! Run!" Louie called out.
The two crooks scrambled for the car door.
"Going somewhere?" a woman asked.
Frank and Louie looked up and saw a young black-haired woman wearing a yellow corset, black pants, yellow boots, and black gloves. A pair of human-sized bee wings sat on her back, and Frank could swear he saw a stinger protruding from her behind.
"Frank, it's the Honeybee! Do something!"
"My friends here told me that you robbed a jewelry store. Care to explain?" Honeybee announced.
"This isn't happening! This can't be happening!" Louie griped.
"It's a girl with a bunch of bees! We can take her!"
Frank drew a gun…only to recoil in pain and promptly drop it when he was stung in his gun hand by a bee.
"Do you feel the sting of justice, evildoers?"
"Why are you commanding bees?" Louie asked.
"I am the queen, and this city is my hive! I will protect it and its inhabitants with my life if nee—"
Before Honeybee could finish her speech, a violet portal opened up in the sky and sucked her in, bees and all.
Earth-61610, OsCorp
There was a shriek in frustration from on high. A third of the portal had buckled and collapsed, and the Mother caught the edge of it and pushed it back to where it had been. The edges of the portal were becoming ragged and they flickered ominously, but when she removed her back leg it stayed where it was, held there by strands of violet that refused to fade into web.
I HAVE HAD ENOUGH! Before it had been patient or neutral, but now the voice in his head sounded outright angry.
"Really?!" Spider-Man screamed back. "Me too! I'm so glad we've reached a consensus!"
Arcs of violet jumped to the final terminal and intermingled with the arcs of lightning already there. Spider-Man crawled into a decent position before jumping towards it. In midair, he swapped out the cartridge in his right shooter for a fresh one and hastily webbed shut his leg and chest, before firing a webline at the terminal and zipping towards it.
It happened too suddenly to do anything about: a pillar of smoke streaked down from above and collected into a spider the size of a minivan, exactly where he had been aiming. Spider-Man gasped and fired a webline ten feet above it, but it was too late. The spider grabbed him in its pedipalps, ripped him from his webline, and slammed him into the terminal hard enough to dent it.
Tungsten carbide is really, really hard. Spider-Man groaned in pain before his hands grabbed at the spider's pedipalps and pulled desperately, but they refused to move. Instead, the spider clicked its fangs, tightened its grip, and slammed him into its surface again. Spider-Man felt a few ribs crack.
The spider shrieked triumphantly as its fangs descended. Spider-Man caught them both and pushed as hard as he could, stopping them a few inches above his chest and forcing them back nearly a foot before the spider realized it hadn't successfully bitten him in half and began pushing back. They both trembled with effort for several seconds, and then the fangs began inching back towards Spider-Man, his breathing erratic and the sensation in his head like an air raid siren. Frantically, Spider-Man kicked at the spider-thing's underbelly twice with his good leg, and when it reflexively jerked back a little he released its left fang and punched it across the face. The spider-thing screeched at him, jerking a front leg across him as though mimicking his action, and his head jerked to the right, his temple burning like fire. He was conscious of something warm and wet on the side of his face, and that that side of his vision was ever so slightly lighter. He glanced downwards just in time to see one silvery-black eyepiece plummeting out of sight. Then the spider tightened its grip again and he coughed violently as his ribs cracked further. The spider's fangs were pushing ever closer to his chest.
In the reflection offered by the spider's eyes, he could see the slash mark the spider had made across his left temple. For a second, insanely, he was grateful that the wound stopped just short of his now-exposed eye. Then the ringing in his head pulled his attention skyward, and somehow, even with the spider's pedipalps crushing his chest, he managed to gasp.
The spider—the big one—the building-sized mother of all these monstrosities was dropping down the arm, towards the final terminal, where Spider-Man was now, her legs the thickness of tree trunks hooking on cable after silken cable and pulling her along with a horrifying speed. Spider-Man stared up at her for an instant, his eyes wide as saucers, before the grip on his ribs tightened still further and the stab of pain pulled his head down to look his assailant in the eyes. Desperately he yanked the fangs to the side, but the spider yanked them right back and pushed even harder. The edge of the fangs just barely caught on—
—the webbing he had used to bandage the earlier slash across his chest.
The plan appeared in his head, already fully formed. Glancing at the spider and back down again, he forced himself to take a deep breath despite the shooting pain, looked up at the descending monster, and stopped pushing the fangs back and started pushing them down.
The spider, surprised by the sudden lack of resistance, did nothing to stop the motion, and its fangs pierced the homemade steel cartridges strapped to either side of Spider-Man's waist.
The chemical reaction was immediate. Blobs of faintly golden artificial silk exploded from the broken cartridges and splattered across Spider-Man's sides and the spider's face. The spider jerked backwards, hissing in surprise, as webbing burst across its eyes and face, and Spider-Man immediately kicked it with all the force he still had. It scrabbled for a moment at the surface of the egg before falling off, still clawing at the webbing on its eyes before it vanished from sight.
Spider-Man, for his part, pulled his torso away from the egg, the sides of his costume instantly tearing off where the webbing had glued the fabric to the machine's shell. He turned to face the egg and punched a fist through the machine, his arm going all the way in—
NO!
move
He yanked his arm out as fast as he could and dove to the side, a fraction of an instant before the frontmost leg of the Mother scratched the surface of the egg exactly where he had been.
YOU WILL NOT TAKE THIS WORLD FROM ME!
Spider-Man, clinging as he was to the side of the terminal, dodged her enormous leg for a second time, flipping onto the top of it and pounding his fists into the surface. His ribs screamed at the motion.
MY WORLD HAS NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE. YOU THINK YOU IN YOUR SELFISHNESS ARE WORTHY TO DENY ME WHAT I DESERVE, PARKER?! I, WHO COULD TURN THE WAR INTO A BLESSING?! YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!
The screaming voice pounded against the inside of his ears, but he could barely discern it through the ringing in the back of his skull. Every breath he took was now a quiet, breathless scream as he pounded against the shell again.
move
It was like a whistle in a crowded room: not even close to the loudest thing there, but the high, sharp note cut through the pounding and the voice and his own terror and he rolled, sticking to the other side of the egg as an enormous leg passed through the point where he had been. The spider pulled its head back in a rage, rolled a little, and dove towards him fangs-first.
Spider-Man jumped straight up. The fangs tore through the shell of the egg, barely grazing the machinery inside, and Spider-Man ripped the nozzle off the one web-shooter with a cartridge and fired it downwards. Without the nozzle to restrict the amount of oxygen the web fluid could interact with, the cartridge was empty in three seconds, and the spider's fang was glued to the egg.
She tried not to move, conscious of what it would do. But then Spider-Man landed on her fang, then leapt at her face and punched her in her nearest eye. The membrane didn't break—his brow rose as it flexed, but held—but the small, sudden pain was sufficient to make her reflexively pull her head away, and take the terminal with it.
The portal buckled, slicing through the strands of violet; with a scream of outrage both in his head and out of it, the spider darted backwards, pushing her front legs against the edges of the portal as he managed by pure luck to land on one of the arms of the machine. NO! NO! PAARRKERR!
"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?!" he finally shrieked back as the portal started to collapse.
When the edge of the portal swept past the arm he was perched on, it sliced straight through it, and his eyes widened as it began to fall. Desperate, the spider stuck her front legs through the shrinking hole in space as the room began collapsing back into a size that made sense. And as Spider-Man detached from the arm and tumbled down through the air, he heard and felt her scream of pain.
I WILL RETU—
The violet light vanished; two spider legs hundreds of feet long and the thickness of tree trunks began to fall; and the ground accelerated towards a plummeting Spider-Man at an impossible speed.
Both web-shooters were empty. Any extras he may have once had were glued to the side of a machine in another universe entirely. Spider-Man flailed helplessly, screaming like a little girl as the ground literally came rushing up to meet him.
WHAM
Earth-112
Spider-Man sat on the roof of the Oscorp elevator, tapping on the roof-mounted LEDs out of boredom. Beneath him Captain Jean DeWolff stood steadfastly ignoring him, watching as the screen above the door slowly rose to 27. She looked down and began loading her Glock 22.
"Why didn't you do that earlier?" Spider-Man asked.
"I was busy," DeWolff said. The elevator doors opened.
Spider-Man crawled ahead of DeWolff, scavenging through the wreckage of wires, tables, and papers with various blueprints that made Peter's spider-sense lightly tingle. He noticed claw marks on the walls in places, and a few…webs?
They rounded a corner and found a room with light pouring out and into the open. A harsh violet light, its source inside the room seemed to make noises. DeWolff and Peter rounded the corner and were shocked at what they saw.
Two giant spiders, each about the size of a Volkswagen, and a giant one the size of a minivan. They hissed.
"DeWolff! Run!" Peter shouted.
DeWolff fired three shots from her firearm, which did little more than piss the creatures off even more. One tried to chase after her, but Peter intercepted, slamming his arm into it and webbing up the doorway, trapping himself in with them.
Peter noticed the violet light was like an amorphous field of opaque air. It seemed to tug on him, and he could hear yelling from the other side.
PAARRKERR! something screamed in his head. It seemed almost distant, but very, very angry.
The two spiders before him hissed, advancing menacingly. One lunged at him. Peter swung around it, landing on his abdomen and flipping it over his head. "I don't know what you are, but you are not welcome here!"
The largest spider clicked its fangs in a way that almost resembled laughter.
Peter stopped, realizing how crazy this was. A giant gravity-defying lens flare that was now practically ripping him off the floor, 11:00 p.m. on a school night, and three giant spiders which he was now almost certain could understand him. He stopped and said aloud, "Am I a drug addict or something?"
The nearest spider hissed dramatically and jumped at him from behind.
"Now I know what you're thinking," Peter said, ducking. "'There's three of us, we're immensely strong, and we've invaded your world. How can you hope to stop us?'" In answer to his own question, he paused, then flipped ono the ceiling and stuck his hand in the red beam there.
"Welcome to Oscorp. Nobody is here. You have twelve seconds to vacate the premises before you are atomized. Have a nice run."
Peter's spider-sense blared as five cannons charged. Even as he instinctively dove for the window, though, the portal flared and imploded, and his trajectory curved until he was hurtling right for it.
Earth-61610
The sound of a warning klaxon blared in his ears as he slowly blinked his eyes open. For a second he wondered why all he could see was dark grey, but then he realized that he was lying face-down, his forehead pressed into a metal floor. Slowly, he gathered his trembling hands and knees under him, pushing up onto them and leaving a small puddle of blood under where his left temple had been.
Spider-Man took a deep breath, then another. A headache was rolling through his head like a long note of thunder, and his stomach lurched. Then it lurched again; his right hand immediately pulled his mask up and he vomited three and a half cups worth of coffee onto the steel floor.
Once he was done puking, Spider-Man stayed on his hands and knees, shaking like a leaf and trying not to hyperventilate. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head furiously, before a single sob of lingering terror racked his frame and pure pain shot up his ribs.
In the midst of all this, he realized that there was still a humming sensation in the back of his head—faint, but there, and his mind immediately cleared a little when he forced himself to focus on it. Slowly he rolled himself over until he was sitting on the floor next to his black puddle of sick and looked up.
The chamber, now unaffected by temporal anomalies of any kind, was a mere twenty feet in diameter and maybe fifty feet tall at the most. He looked around as he slowly pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms about them. Two enormous black spider legs were piled on either side of him, and for a second he was certain the one on his left twitched. Taking a few more deep, gasping breaths, he looked away from them and his gaze landed on a red, web-patterned boot.
He slowly followed it upwards—past blue leggings, past a red and blue shirt, past a black spider symbol on the chest—until he was looking into the large, blank white eyepieces of a red mask that looked right back at him. As he stared at them, another person—a girl, outfitted in a red-webbed uniform that let her red hair flow free—joined the standing man and seemed to scan his injuries and comparatively shoddy costume. Spider-Man felt a movement behind him and turned to see four other people—a woman with a dark red and black costume resembling his own, another man in a virtually identical costume, a young girl with grey skin and hair, and a woman about his age outfitted in a yellow and black ensemble and surrounded by what looked from here to be bees.
Through the haze of what he strongly suspected was a concussion it occurred to him that they were all more muscular than he was. He was surprised to find himself slightly indignant at this.
"You okay?"
Spider-Man turned back to the man in red and blue, who had asked. He opened his mouth to speak, was at a total loss of words for a few seconds, and finally managed to echo the only clear thought in his head.
"…What…?"
Notes from Courier999
-Buttons McBoomBoom is a character from the late '80s Hasbro/DIC cartoon "C.O.P.S."
-The Eyrie Building is Xanatos's skyscraper from theGargoyles cartoon.
-Black Cat's mention of Cobra Cobretti is a reference to the 1986 Stallone urban action film "Cobra".
-Lance's "acceptable discipline" line is from The Real Ghostbusters episode "Don't Forget the Motor City".
Notes from Brackets002:
-Pretty much this entire opening was inspired by the video game Half-Life, especially the Test Chamberrrr and the humongous telepathic monster.
-The big mommy spider has a (nick?)name, which is a reference to a popular fantasy universe. A no-prize for who can guess what it is before someone mentions it.
Notes on relevant realities:
Earth-61610: Designed as roughly the opposite of the average comic-book universe, Earth-61610 is a relatively unfamiliar and alien world for much of the same reasons as our world is how it is. The discovery/creation of various supernatural phenomena ensured that the Scientific/Industrial Revolutions never really stopped, with a variety of consequences both good and bad. Nobody's quite sure which category superhumans (Marvels) fall into.
Earth-H: Basically a sort of modernized take on the shared universe consisting of the original GI Joe and Transformers cartoons, plus Jem and Inhumanoids (and C.O.P.S and M.A.S.K) but with the additional presence of Marvel characters and characters from Gargoyles.
Misfits Universe: X-Men: Evolution and GI Joe crossover. It's as insane as it sounds, but it's extremely well-written and very funny.
Earth-825: A Marvel Universe that draws heavily on the Amazing Spider-Man video games for inspiration. The largest difference is the identity and personal life of the protagonist, Teresa.
Earth-61045: A reimagining of the Marvel Universe starring original characters, focusing on characters with even less fortunate backgrounds than their canon counterparts.
Earth-91115: A lighter and softer take on Marvel, focusing on a Mary Jane Watson who acquired the powers of a queen bee and became the superhero Honeybee.
Earth-112: A darker and edgier take on Marvel, drawing lots of inspiration from the Nineties. Recently experienced some unrelated interdimensional shenanigans and is still recovering.