"Attention, your cell has been compromised. Please remain inside while we work to fix it. Thank you."

Aaron Davis glanced first to his left, then to his right. Then back to his left, then once more to his right. Back. Forth. Then he decided to shake things up and look up.

Nothing changed.

"Well," he said as he looked at the world around him, for the first time NOT tinted orange, "I suppose I could just stay here, since you asked nicely."

He waited only a second more before he broke out into a run, racing along the path, ignoring the cries from the other captured figures that were in cells similar to his own.

"Let me out!" one guy with a green pumpkin instead of a head declared. "You, freeman! You will let me out! The Headless Goblin must ride again!"

"Yeah, maybe I would have if you hadn't called me 'freeman'. I mean, props on not dropping the N-Word, very progressive for someone dressed like a pilgrim but… nah."

"Come on man!" another man, this one dressed in an orange outfit with a black grid overlayed upon it, red vest, trunks, and boots the only thing breaking up the outfit. "We are supervillain brothers! We have to look out for each other."

Aaron though shook his head, coming to a stop. "Yeah, see… no. I'm not a supervillain. You know what supervillains attract? Heroes. And I have no urge to deal with Spider-Man again. I just want to get home!"

"…then why are you running?" the other man said. "They said that's where they are sending us."

"Uh huh, sure," Aaron said with a roll of his eyes. "And you really think they took your dog to a farm upstate where he could run and play?"

The man blinked at that. "Sparky?"

"Of for the love of…" Aaron turned around, holding his arms out wide as the other 'anomalies' cried out for him to let them out. Some begged, some pleaded, most threatened. "Listen, its been real but I'm going to find the ACTUAL way home!" With that he reached up and pulled his mask and hood over his face. "Been real!" And with that he held out his wrist, firing one of the capsules that was loaded in his gauntlet. Normally they just shot out purple smoke to hide his escape but he'd developed a few that would shoot out with enough strength to shatter windows. Had taken him some time and involved spending quite a bit of cash on one of the Black Widow's wrist mounted devices that she'd dropped during a mission, but he'd managed to make something that could break even his captors' windows. "We will totally remain friends after summer camp! I mean that!"

With the screams and curses of the still trapped villains echoing behind him Aaron leapt out into the evening air.

"Never going to get used to this," he muttered as he fell, gauntlets humming as he reached out and snagged onto the wall, digging his claws into the steel and slowing his descent. He looked about, tense and ready for a Spider to come swinging in to try and stop him.

Nothing.

No one came.

"Huh," he said as he finally landed on the street. "That was… surprisingly easy." He looked right and left and seeing no one on the sidewalk he pulled his mask off and began to whistle, trying to appear as calm as he could. "Nothing to see here," he said as he continued on. "Just someone out for a stroll. Another… uh… Spider! Yeah, another Spider. Just Spidering it up!" He smiled, trying to walk around like he had a stick up his ass and an undeserved sense of superiority.

He turned down a side street and suddenly found himself surrounded by people.

Not a single one of them suddenly began screaming and pointing at him.

It was actually working.

Aaron shook his head. "Darnedest thing," he muttered. "Of course considering that everyone around me is a cartoon character can't say it's the strangest thing I've ever encountered…" He paused to look over a rather attractive looking gal with hips that would make God stop and give praise only to frown when she quickly jaywalked across the street. "Okay then…"

"Not your fault," someone said to his right and he turned to see a man wearing a black leather jacket had slid up on him while he was checking out the goods. The figure was black with curly hair he kept short and a small tuff of hair on his chin. He was also a cartoon character, much like everyone else that Aaron had run into (which had caused him to stop commenting on it as they tended to look at him rather weirdly when he did so), though with more of an 'underground graffiti' vibe to him. Rounded lines rather than sharp edges, eye-popping colors. Exaggerated features that just barely managed to avoid coming off as a racist caricature. "We're all just worried that you are one of the Spiders that is going to freak out."

"Freak out?" Aaron said before quickly adding, "Nah. Not me. Why would I freak out on such a lovely evening?"

But that earned him a confused look from his new shadow. "You honestly don't know, do you?"

"Know what? That it's a lovely day. Or night. Lovely night."

"About the Society… how its falling apart-"

A woman screamed and Aaron tensed, assuming that it was because of him… only to realize that everyone was looking UP. He tilted his head to see two Spider-Men come swinging by, trading punches and kicks as they flew through the air. The crowd watched in utter terror only to calm down once the two combatants disappeared around a building.

"-right around our damn heads," the stranger said. "If you are going to pretend to be a Spider you should keep track of exactly what is going on."

"I'll keep that in mind," Aaron said only to feel the stranger grab his bicep and squeeze. "Oh, its like that now? We were having a nice conversation."

"I want to keep having it and you running off and finding one of those bastards who will throw you back into a cell without reading you your rights is going to keep me from having it. Now come on!"

The man tugged on his arm and Aaron, for a moment, debated fighting him before deciding he had no where else to be… might as well see what the stranger wanted. It might have been risky but Aaron had come to find in his life that taking risks tended to work out for him rather well. Half of his gear had come from him deciding to run towards the scenes of fights rather than running away from them like a sane and rational person. And the rest of his costume had come from him seeing a strange portal and figuring that it must lead to something good.

"Are you feeling okay?" the stranger asked. "Not glitching?"

"Glitching?" Aaron asked.

The stranger nodded, looking at him. "Feels like you just licked a wall socket and makes your entire body fritz like scrambled porn." Aaron's new 'friend' gave him a once over. "Nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

"Interesting," the stranger said. "I'd heard people like you were for some reason immune to glitching unlike the rest of us. How did you end up here, anyway?"

Aaron briefly considered lying to the stranger but in the end figured there was no real point in doing so. Its not like he had done it on purpose. "There was this big battle in New York. Spider-Man taking all these new villains. Some guy who could shoot electricity, a lizard man, giant sand person. You get the idea. So I see what is going on and figured with them fighting like that there was a possibility that someone would drop something I could snatch up. I get there just in time for a few portals to open up and I figure… meh, what the fuck?"

"You walked through a strange portal that you didn't know the source of?" the stranger asked, raising an eyebrow at that. "You could have died."

"Man, I walk through Harlem after the Knicks lose all the time and I haven't been killed. Strange portals aren't as dangerous at that!" He smirked at that though his companion didn't share him jovial mood. "Hey, I'm here now! Safe and sound. And I managed to get a bunch of cool tech out of it." He chuckled even as he reached down, making it look like he was adjusting his gauntlet when in reality he was turning up the charge on them. Just because he was bored didn't mean he was a fool… he'd noticed that his new 'friend' was leading him away from everyone. "Anyway, I begin looking around that place… did you know there was a villain there that looked like the guy from Wings? I mean hey, old show but I would catch that from time to time when there was nothing good on. Roy was a hoot." He chuckled even as he slipped his hand in his pocket to grab a smoke tablet. "So I am just minding my own business when this Liam Neeson looking fool shows up dressed like that Doctor Strange guy and creates another portal because he's looking for his Spider-Man and next thing I know I'm in some world that looks like Rock N' Rule." The stranger didn't say a word. "Kids today, not knowing the classics," Aaron complained. "Point is I'm not home. I look around, trying to figure out what to do next because now its two different worlds I need to leap back through, when some Spider-Man with a leather fetish shows up and captures me and well… now I'm here."

"Quite a story."

"Yeah… ain't done yet either," Aaron said, feeling power pulse through his gauntlet.

"Before you try and hit me I should warn you that your gauntlets won't work on me."

Aaron hid his surprise at that. "Oh? And why not?"

"Because my dad designed my suit."

"…aw hell," Aaron moaned. "I'm your dad in another universe?"

"A version of him," the stranger state with a cocky little smile that had Aaron's guts twisting into pretzel knots. He'd flashed that smile often enough just before he laid some knowledge on a fool. "You aren't as smart as him, of course… he wouldn't have gotten captured."

"Oh, is that how this is?" Aaron asked. "That why you grabbed me? Because you want to save a dumber version of your old man?" he was half tempted to still try and punch the stranger out.

"Nah," the stranger said. "Even if you weren't my dad I would have dragged you away before someone spotted you… didn't sit right, seeing you in that energy cell. Especially when I looked into you. You're a criminal, sure, but you've never killed anyone and you are just doing what you can to try and help your family."

Aaron wasn't for sure how he felt about the figure before him knowing so much about him.

Especially when it dawned on him that the man was most likely a Spider.

"Listen, Spider-Man," Aaron began, "I don't know-"

"Skitter."

"Huh?"

"I'm not Spider-Man. I'm Skitter. White boys that think its fun to beat up black folk? Those are Spider-Men. I'm Skitter, protector of Greenwood." Skitter shrugged. "Also go by Erik Davis, by the way."

Aaron frowned at that. "Erik?"

"What, you thought I'd be Aaron Jr?" He chuckled at that as he came up to a door and knocked on it in a particular rhythm that could only be a code. "I'm named after my Uncle."

"And that would be?" Aaron asked.

"Erik Killmonger."

"…who?" Aaron asked only for the door to open and a man in army fatigues to look at the two before nodding and motioning for the two of them to enter.

"Brothers and Sisters!" Skitter called out, throwing his arms out wide. "The Society's stronghold is falling and another one of our family has been saved!" he clapped Aaron on the shoulder, gesturing towards the large group of black faces that looked at Aaron… before going back to prepping their weapons. Because Aaron had been around alien tech enough to be able to tell when something was a weapon. "We are nearly ready to finally take control! To make those bigots in the Society pay for attacking-"

"Miles," Aaron whispered, moving past Skitter and staring at the mural on the wall of the boy he's seen walking past his cell. He hadn't been able to tell, thanks to the cell distorting things and tinting them orange, but now with nothing preventing him from truly looking at the boy's features, even blown up as they were, he could at once see his nephew in the cartoony features. Older, more mature, but he could see his nephew all the same. And that made Aaron think of how the Society had treated HIM. How they had attacked him, captured him, held him without trial, threatened him.

He took a step forward, Skitter placing a hand on his shoulder. Skitter… who could have been his son if he'd made some different choices.

It suddenly came crashing down on Aaron that the Spider Society wasn't filled with the overly colorful goofballs he'd considered them to be. They were far more dangerous.

They were a threat to his FAMILY.

"Whatever you are planning?" he said as he reached up and pulled his mask on. "I'm in."