"No, no, no, no." Peter repeated frantically. How had they ended up here? In a stupid alien spaceship. In space. In his future. They had just been in school together!
He had just… Suddenly, it was there. Just popped up in his head. The only question that ever mattered. Was he alive? Was this real? Or just some crude version of the afterlife? Did anything matter at all?
"Peter?" Ned's fearful and timid voice again, which ripped him out of his worries.
"Yes?" he asked weakly. If he was indeed dead…
"Where are we?" Ned asked, afraid.
He wanted to reply 'I don't know!' just to make him shut up but he didn't feel like lying to his friend. He very well knew where they were.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to sort his thoughts but failed. There was… he didn't know…
"In the classroom earlier. In the corridor. What happened?" Had he been at school all the time?
Ned stared at him as if he was nuts. Was he seriously asking those questions right now? There were obviously more important things to tackle. Like where they were or how they got here.
And still, he had to know. It was the one most important question. He had to know what had happened, according to his friend.
"Ned?" He asked again, apparently getting his friend out of his confused stupor.
"You stormed out of the class. I was sent to check on you. You sat in the corridor and talked to yourself. Sounded as if…" he hesitated, seemingly realizing why he had asked. "You were terrified, trembled like a leave, cried. Never saw you like that." His voice had turned lower with every word.
"But that was it? I was there all the time?" he asked, fearful.
Ned frowned at that, looking at him worriedly. "Yes, of course. I would guess you had a mental breakdown or something like that."
A mental breakdown. Peter laughed weakly hearing that. If only it had been a mental breakdown. Or maybe it had been just that? "Yeah. No. Something like that." He repeated. "I'm alive, yes? We are okay? Besides being here, but…" he trailed off, turning silent. After some long moments, he looked at Ned again. "There was a light flash during the exam. Different from last time. I was on that alien planet on which we fought Thanos and I died. They all died." He whispered, feeling chills run along his spine at the memory. The tingling. Ash floating up. And then darkness. Only cold. Did death feel like that? Was there nothing afterward?
"You died?" Ned repeated, disbelieve dripping from his voice. Peter really couldn't scold him for that. If it was the other way around, he would most likely react the same way.
"Yes. I… I turned to ashes. There was this wind gust and then –"
From one moment to the other, Peter turned silent. They were on the alien spaceship which had kidnapped the doc, right?
"This, here, right now, is real?" he asked, looking at Ned again, his voice laced with worry and urgency.
"Yes." Ned said dryly. "One moment I try to calm you down and then we are here."
And then they were here. The second light. It had gotten them here?
Taking one last deep breath, Peter closed his eyes for a few moments.
Two options.
The first one, he was dead and had ended up in his own action heaven, imaging Ned as his companion by his side.
The second one, the one he wanted to be true, was that he was still alive. That he wasn't currently ash floating below an alien sky. No. He was alive. There had been one light flash which brought him onto Titan. He had died and returned to his body on Earth. A second light flash which had gotten them here. If this was how things had happened, the doc was imminent danger. They all were. If one died, they would end up right in front of Thanos, ready to die for real.
The thought, as simple as it was, made his thoughts come to a stop. They would be in front of Thanos. They weren't in front of Thanos. Accordingly, he had to be alive. This was real.
The doc might get killed.
Opening his eyes again, he looked at Ned. Calm and determined. They couldn't waste time. They had to hurry.
"Okay." For one last second, he was silent, wondering about what to say. Well, simply the truth. Ned knew all of it anyway. "Let's go. I'll explain things along the way. For starters, the only important thing is, that we have to hurry."
Seeing that Ned wanted to object, Peter turned away and hurried along the corridor which would lead to the doc. A moment later, he heard how Ned followed him.
"Where are we?" his friend asked again, but Peter didn't answer. Not yet. Instead, he pulled the sleeves of his hoodie up, checking on his web shooters. They were still there, securely wrapped around his wrists.
"You have your web shooters with you?" Ned asked surprised, stopping for a moment to look at him.
"Sure. With a light flash possible at every moment, I felt safer having them on me. I don't want to get killed by the next random alien which pops up in front of me. Seems to have paid off." He stated dryly, testing his shooters. Worked as usual.
"Do you have your suit on underneath?" his friend asked, oddly hopeful.
This time, Peter stopped, making a grimace. "No. We have sports later on and I can't change in front of everyone and"
Ned interrupted him. "Change in the bathroom prior to the start of the class." He pointed out dryly.
"Oh." For a moment, Peter felt dumbfounded. That obvious. Why hadn't he thought of that? Shaking his head, he moved on. No time to brood about his own stupidity.
"So, where are we?" Ned asked probably for the fifth time, moving along beside him.
"Well…" he paused, wondering how to phrase his words. Yet, he wasn't that big with speeches all along. "Actually, we are in the future. On an alien spaceship. Oh, don't look like that. There is only one alien here and I know where it is. The doc is captured by it. It's going to torture and kill the poor guy. Obviously, we can't let that happen. Cloak and Mister Stark" Ned seemed to dislike him calling him Tony "should be here too. We'll work something out. Worked last time too."
Yet, they couldn't blast a hole into the spaceship like last time. None of them had suits. Or at least he guessed that Tony didn't have a suit with him.