Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the fandoms included here.
"So… me and possibly other people from other universes got here because you botched up a spell?" Barry summed up, processing.
"Technically, he botched up my spell first, I tried to fix it, but once he interfered, it got out of hand" Strange said.
"Huh. Guess it doesn't take a speedster powered machine to blow up the multiverse." Barry muttered, confusing Strange and Peter.
"This isn't your first time travelling to another universe, Mr. Allen?" Peter asked.
"Please, call me 'Barry.' And to answer your question, I have some experience with travelling to other universes, though there were cases where I ended up in a different universe unintentionally." Barry said.
"How'd you find this place anyway?" Strange inquired.
"Ah." Barry said as he pulled out from his pocket what seemed like a metallic marble. "Gideon."
Suddenly, a transparent blue holographic head shone out from the marble.
"This seems like the source of interdimensional breach, though it has no traces of dark matter or Speed Force." Gideon said.
"Thanks. You think if I travel fast enough, I can get home?" Barry asked.
"In theory." Gideon confirmed before it turned off.
"Just like JARVIS." Peter realized. "An A.I."
Barry nodded. "She helps me in some… complicated cases. On my Earth, a particle accelerator exploded and the energy coming off it granted many people in my city powers most of them use to do bad things. I got superspeed and I'm one of the few doing what I can to protect my city from those people with powers. We call them 'metahumans.'"
"'Enhanced' is the term we use here." Peter said.
"Yeah. I was running and patrolling in my town, when suddenly, everything turned purple and next thing I knew, I ended up in the middle of Times Square. Gideon helped me trace the epicenter of the interdimensional anomaly to here." Barry said and Peter winced.
"Sorry about this. This is all my fault." Peter sighed.
"It was an accident, don't blame yourself, it's not like you got me here intentionally. I once did something similar before too. What matters now is that we're gonna figure out a way to fix this." Barry assured, speaking from experience as he held Peter by his shoulder.
Peter looked at Barry in the eye and noticing his kind smile, he nodded. "Thanks, I guess."
"We're gonna fix this somehow." Barry said before turning to Strange and Wong. "Sorry, Wong, Mr. Strange."
"Doctor Strange." Strange corrected.
"Ah. Like a real doctor or your superhero name?" Barry asked.
"Kind of both, actually." Peter said and Barry chuckled.
"My friend Cisco could come up with cooler superhero names." Barry muttered. "Do you have some spell that can send me back home?"
"As much as we'd like to help you, Barry, right now I think we should focus on bigger concerns." Wong said as he gestured his hand in a circular motion, showing a magical map of New York.
"What is it?" Peter asked.
"I'm afraid Barry is not the only visitor from another universe that has arrived here thanks to us." Strange said as across the city appeared some purple glowing cracks briefly.
"What are those?" Barry asked.
"If I'm right, it's the rifts in the multiverse we created because of the spell." Strange said.
"So you're saying that Barry's not the only one that might have gotten here from another universe?" Peter realized.
"And something tells me not every visitor here's gonna be as friendly as I am." Barry said, remembering when the Singularity had formed on his Earth and the Crisis.
"We need to find them and contain them and find a way to send them back before the damage they might do here becomes irreversible. No offense." Strange said, turning to Barry.
"None taken." Barry shrugged, though he had decided to keep to himself the whole fiasco with the Flashpoint and the Dominators.
"Wait, Strange, once we find these visitors, what exactly are we gonna do?" Peter asked.
"He's got a point. If you have a way to send everyone home, I don't think some of them are gonna come with us without a fight and even assuming we can beat them, how are we supposed to get them here?" Barry asked.
Strange gestured and suddenly, nanites forming Peter's Spider-Man suit flew to Strange's forearm, creating a bracer. Strange did a gesture across the bracer, decorating it with glowing carvings, when he fired some orange beam at Barry, who vanished in orange sparks.
"Hey, what'd you do to him?" Peter demanded.
"Hello? Where am I? Can someone let me out of here, please?" Barry's voice suddenly called out from downstairs.
Next thing Peter knew, a portal pulled him and Strange into the undercroft, where they saw Barry in some kind of a cell, him banging on an invisible magical wall. Strange approached the dial on a stone pedestal and turned, when the magical wall vanished and Barry stumbled forward before regaining his footing.
Strange then handed Peter the bracer before conjuring another and throwing it at Barry as it wrapped itself around his wrist.
"Whoa." Peter and Barry said in unison as they looked at the bracer on their wrists.
"One shot, send them here, move on." Strange summed up.
"Is he always this grumpy?" Barry inquired.
"He's been having a bad day today, which is kind of my fault." Peter said and Barry nodded. This place reminded him a bit of the Pipeline.
"Let's Scooby Doo this shit." Strange said.
New York
Sara was currently on one of the rooftops of New York, looking around for any clues for how she got her. Waverider was hidden and camouflaged and Gideon was on standby with security countermeasures in case someone would come across the timeship.
"There is no online record of the Queens, Lances, the Green Arrow or the Flash or any other of known heroes in this timeline, however, there is a record of a superhero group known as the Avengers. I believe this is not Earth-1, Miss Lance." Gideon said over the comms.
"And the Waverider can't travel through multiverse?" Sara inquired.
"The ship doesn't possess such capabilities." Gideon confirmed.
"I wish I had an extrapolator or Cisco with me right now." Sara grumbled.
"However, from the records I can gather here, there is a superhero group operating from New York calling themselves 'The Avengers.' They have a headquarters in a tower in Manhattan. Might I suggest start your investigation there?" Gideon asked, while Sara saw in the distance a tower with an 'A' symbol on top.
"Good idea. If nothing else, they could help me figure out what's going on." Sara said.
Sara spent the following hour jumping from one rooftop to another, while figuring out whether she should hitchhike a ride or take a bike, though she reminisced about the old times, when she would patrol the streets with Team Arrow. But then she stopped upon hearing the commotion and gunshots, getting a familiar feeling. Sara neared the edge of the rooftop and perched, looking down, the voices being familiar as she saw three figures at a police cruises, with two police officers lying on the ground, dead, though Sara's eyes narrowed, when the two people she saw looked very familiar to her. One of them was a dark-skinned man with a beard wearing a military jacket, looking like her father's deceased partner, Detective Hilton.
Then, there was a dark-haired woman in her late 30s and Sara's eyes widened in shock. She looked just like Talia al Ghul.
Then there was a blonde woman in black leather jacket.
"Well, I must say, New York police has heavier ordnance than Vancouver does." 'Hilton' said, loading the machine gun.
"Though I still wonder how we ended up here, Travis." The dark-haired woman said and Sara could already tell it wasn't Talia just by the lack of the accent most of the al Ghul family had. So, they had to be doppelgangers.
"Does it matter? Our revolution can begin anew here, without the Protector to stop us." The blonde woman laughed as the other two people joined in.
Sara took a breath. If she had any doubts before that she was on a parallel Earth, they were cleansed now. It didn't matter who these people were, Sara knew they had to be stopped. She jumped down from the rooftop and threw shurikens, disarming the blonde woman of her gun.
"I might not be a Protector, but I'm not a fan of revolution." Sara quipped.
"Well, look what we've got here." The blonde woman said with a whistle. "Nice bondage outfit. It'll be fun to try it, once I take it off your corpse."
"Take your shot." Sara quipped.
The blonde woman engaged Sara, who attacked with her batons, but the woman dodged and blocked with her arms before elbowing Sara in the face and kicking her back as she stumbled. Sara then realized she shouldn't underestimate these people. Even though their fighting style wasn't League of Assassins, it was clear they were highly skilled. Sara attacked again, but the woman dodged before Travis grabbed Sara by her arms and pinned her to the wall.
Sara tried to struggle out, but his grip was too strong.
"I don't know who you are, little girl, but you're in over your head." Travis sneered. Sara tried to kick Travis in the groin but he didn't even seem bothered.
"She's got fire. I like her." The blonde woman said.
"As much as I'd like to think you could be useful, we can't have witnesses here." The other woman said.
Sara was about to headbutt Travis and fight back, but she was beaten to it, when a new female voice called out to them.
"Let her go, Travis, and back off."
Sara, Travis and the other two women turned to a brunette woman in beige coat who was aiming a hi-tech gun at them.
"The Protector!" Travis snarled, him and the other two glaring.
Sara looked at the woman who was apparently called 'the Protector' as she looked at Travis and Talia's doppelganger briefly in surprise.
"Last time I saw you and Sonya, you were both dead. But it doesn't matter. I said, back off." The Protector said.
"Always have to play hero, even if you don't belong, right, Kiera?" Sonya challenged.
"I don't know how either one of us ended up here this time, but I won't let you twist this timeline either." Kiera said.
From the little that Sara could gather, it seemed that she came into an entirely different universe with doppelgangers. And two of the doppelgangers, one being her father's partner, and the other one the sister of her former lover, were apparently the enemies, while this Kiera, at the very least, was trying to stop them.
"Nobody has to get hurt. Just let the girl go." Kiera said, trying to reason with them.
"I have a better idea." Travis said, grabbing Sara in chokehold and pulling her hair, angling her head backward. "I'll snap her neck right in front of you. Another innocent life you couldn't save."
Seeing an opening, Sara pulled out a knife and stabbed Travis in the leg as he grunted, letting go, while she shoved him back.
"We don't have time for this." The blonde woman said.
"Another time, Protector." Travis said as he pulled out a flashbang grenade and dropped it on the ground.
"Get down!" Kiera cried, tackling Sara down, while the flashbang exploded.
Sara's ears rang as she clutched them, while she felt dazed, her vision blurry before she heard echoing and felt hands on her shoulders.
"…you alright?"
As Sara's vision cleared, she saw Kiera in front of her, looking at her worriedly.
"Are you alright?" Kiera repeated, when Sara's ears stopped ringing and she nodded. "I think you might have small concussion. Let's sit down."
They sat at a nearby pile of boxes.
"What's your name?" Kiera asked.
"Sara Lance." Sara said.
"Kiera Cameron." Kiera introduced herself as they shook hands before she scanned Sara's vitals with the HUD from her CMR chip in her brain. She could tell Sara was agitated by how her heartbeat was higher than normal. "Judging by how on edge you are, something tells me you're not from around here either, am I right?"
Sara nodded. "What are you? A time traveler?"
"Not exactly. I'm from year 2077, alongside with them." Kiera said, gesturing to the place where the trio had vanished. "Let's just say this isn't my first or second experience with being pulled unwillingly into a different place in time." Sara nodded. "Though I'm surprised to see Travis and Sonya here, because the last time I saw them, they were both dead, at least in my timeline. Which makes me wonder how did we get pulled here from different timelines entirely?"
"I think I might know the answer to that question." Sara said as Kiera looked at her intrigued. "This is gonna sound crazy… but I think we're on a different Earth. A parallel universe. Two of those people that you fended off, they look like two people I know where I'm from, only they are completely different persons from those guys."
"A parallel universe?" Kiera inquired, thinking as she looked around, fascinated. "So Alec was right. They exist. I wondered if it we could to travel into another, if time travel was possible."
Sara looked at her in surprise. "I'm surprised you're taking this well."
"When you see your past self get a bullet in her head and you find yourself still standing, not much can surprise you after that anymore." Kiera said and Sara couldn't tell if she was joking or not before realizing what Kiera had just said.
"Wait." Sara stopped. "Your past self? Like, you died in the past?" Kiera nodded. "If you died in the past, then how—"
"Am I still alive? Long story. Short version. Two theories of time travel. Changing the past has two possible consequences. Changing your timeline entirely from that point or creating an alternate timeline without affecting your own. My friend Alec would explain it better than I can." Kiera said and given how casually was Kiera explaining it, Sara could tell she had been through a lot as they got up and began walking down the street.
"Guess we didn't have to clean up that much of our mess." Sara muttered, remembering the shenanigans with the Legends. "Who are they? Serial killers?"
"Anarchists. Extremists. A part of a gang called 'Liber8.'" Kiera said. "But both Sonya and Travis are supposed to be dead and Garza, last time I saw her, she wasn't that person anymore. So either they were pulled here from a different timeline than the one I was…"
"Or maybe we all got pulled here from different points in time from different universes." Sara finished and Kiera nodded.
"How'd you end up here? Purple storm sucked you in too?" Kiera asked and Sara nodded. "We need to track them down. If the rest of their gang is here too, the whole city is in a lot of trouble."
"Any ideas?" Sara asked and Kiera sighed.
"They're not stupid. They'll keep their heads down for now. But once they pop up, dead bodies will follow." Kiera said as they both began thinking, trying to get to the bottom of this. "So, if what you're saying is true and we got dragged into whatever universe this is from our own from different points of time in our universes…"
"…it is possible that maybe we're not the only ones here from different universes." Sara said.
"That's a logical assumption. How do you figure?" Kiera asked before noticing that Sara had stopped at the electronics store and saw on TV a news bulletin about a red streak with a trail of lightning behind passing through downtown New York.
"There's only one guy I know who can do that." Sara smirked.
Peter continued swinging until he ended on Alexander Hamilton Bridge on top of a car, while the Flash appeared next to him.
"What is it?" Barry asked.
"Something's wrong." Peter said, his tingle going off in his head.
Barry was about to ask what exactly, but he got his answer, when he felt tremors shaking the road, cars falling into the cracks forming, while people began exiting their cars and running off in fear.
"Uh, ma'am?" Peter said, banging on the car roof. "You, uh, you should get out of the car!"
"Everybody get off the bridge!" Barry ordered.
The driver of the car on which Peter stood exited the car and ran off, but the woman was still inside.
"The door's locked! Hey!" The woman screamed.
The cars on the bridge wobbled, while cracks began forming in the road, some metallic tentacles with claws smashing through, with cars exploding and dust and smoke forming. They watched as from the smoke emerged a middle aged man wearing glasses and a trench coat with the metallic tentacles attached to some harness around his torso. The man then spotted Peter and smiled viciously at him.
"Hello, Peter."
So, now here's another fandom introduced, called 'Continuum', which is a Canadian sci-fi show that aired in 2012-2015 for four seasons. Personally, I enjoyed the show due to exploring a different concept of time travel than the classical one we know, though it also had some political and ideological conflicts that I found a bit repetitive and boring, but it wasn't as bad as Arrowverse pushing politcal agenda and LGBT, but after a point it just got tiring. I hope that those unfamiliar with the show won't mind that an underdog is going to get involved here, since there were some open-ended things in the show after its finale that I'd like to explore in this story.
Sonya and Travis, two of the antagonists of the show, are played by Lexa Doig and Roger Cross, who played Talia al Ghul and Detective Hilton in Arrow, hence Sara's reaction to the doppelgangers and you can expect a few more doppelganger reactions later on, LOL!
While Sara has been trained by the League of Assassins, I should note that Kiera and the antagonists of the show are from the future with extensive combat training, with Liber8 members being ex-military and Kiera being a futuristic law enforcement with some gadgets of her own, and the show had quite good fight choreography, so it figures that Sara would struggle a bit more with them, since they're obviously more skilled than average street thugs and they'd give even the likes of China White, Ben Turner and sucn a run for their money. Don't get me started on Diaz though, his fighting skills made no sense at all, with how easily he wiped the floor with Oliver and the Longbow Hunters excuse doesn't fly, since Diaz hadn't met them and Dante until 6x23 at least.
And the end introduces Alfred Molina's Doc Ock from Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
And a note, it is sad when you realize how Arrowverse tries to build up the suspense with Anti-Monitor being this multiversal Big Bad, which falls flat, terrible writing of Crisis of Infinite Earths notwithstanding, when Anti-Monitor tries to destroy the entire multiverse, yet Zoom in The Flash Season 2 almost did the same thing and all he needed was to charge up his machine, while Anti-Monitor executed a series of convoluted nonsensical plans to achieve this and in No Way Home a simple botched up spell was enough to break the multiversal barriers, which shows how lame Anti-Monitor is as a villain and it's hilarious some people claim on some forums like ComicVine or Reddit for example that Anti-Monitor could beat Thanos and then there's the fact that the way Anti-Monitor was defeated was so anticlimactic, might as well just sic Ant-Man on him, since he got beaten the same way Darren Cross did in the first Ant-Man movie, LOL! Don't get me started on Quantumania though.
Next chapter will introduce some more fandoms and characters.
So, what do you guys think?
Please review and let me know if you have been enjoying this so far.