And here we are, the finale to series three.
Secrets have been revealed.
Lives have been changed.
And now, as we approach the climatic end to series three and begin the final stretch of this long and audacious tale, know that, after this, nothing will ever be the same.
I present to you, the finale of series three: Annihilation!
Cindy welcomes the black-suited Spider-Man inside, the latter of whom is as quiet as a mouse. Cindy is clear in that she is expecting the rest of the Spider-Gang, and even All Might himself, to break through the walls to her base and try and destroy it completely. However, that's fine by her. She's has ways of countering all of them.
Nevertheless, she puts the entirety of the R&D centre on high alert before bringing Peter inside the main building, intent on showing him all that she has done.
Elsewhere, something quietly slips inside through a secret entrance.
Inside, Cindy gives an unnervingly quiet Peter a tour of her building, showing him all the artifacts that she has collected during her time in the Spider-Society and all the prizes and accomplishments that she has acquired since she'd taken the name of Adriana Soria. Truthfully, she never cared for any of them. All the accolades that she had been showered with over her years in office, both in celebration of her age in coming into politics to earning promotion after promotion, mostly through her own merits with a little bit of pheromonic charm along the way, are all worthless in her eyes when compared to her larger goals.
But having Peter here, just listening to her... that is what she considers to be the real prize.
Or at least, the first true prize.
They passed by Cindy's closest agents, that being Jessica, Kirishima, Tetsutetsu, and Twice. Peter looks at them, a million emotions writ across his face under his black mask. The four of them babble Cindy's praises, clearly still drunk on pheromones, and Peter can tell that they're currently past the point of reason against what their beloved leader is planning. He passes by them, still as quiet as ever.
Then, finally, they reach the centre of the building, Cindy's home away from home. A wide room filled with paintings, illustrations of all the visions that Cassandra Webb experienced before she died, made both by the mad oracle herself and by Cindy herself. It was a testament to insanity, a collage to the mental decline of the woman who saw the universe, as well as the girl that she'd showed it to.
Cindy begins to talk once more. She's seen the suffering of so many Peter Parkers, so many Spider-Men, all throughout the multiverse. The Spider-Verse, as she calls it. Every single iteration of Spider-Man that she has seen, none of them have ever been happy. All of them have suffered, been broken, shattered, left to ruins, by one hand or a billion. All of them have been left as empty, hollow shells of who they once were, all for ungrateful heathens that would never love or accept them.
It saddened Cindy so much to see those who wore the banner of the Spider-Man suffer needlessly. They gave up so much for the sake of others, only to be spat in the face by a world that hated them. They savaged themselves, all in the name of the power and responsibility that had been thrust upon them, and all it did was leave them hollow and miserable.
She wished to save them. She wished to rescue them from their power and responsibility and give them the happiness that they deserved.
And she would do it through not just the Infinity Stones, but also the gift of the Anti-Venom, for the Symbiote could not just destroy quirks, but all powers as well, from Mutants to Inhumans and so on.
With her gift, everyone across all of creation would lose their power and the responsibility that came with them.
And then, finally, they would be happy.
And she wants Peter at her side for it.
Cindy Moon is still convinced that she can convince Peter to join her side. It's why she allowed him into her base of operations so easily. She believes that they are destined to lead and rule a kingdom together, one made with their own hands. In her eyes, they are already wedded together as husband and bride, reality just hasn't caught up yet.
Cindy Moon is so assured of her victory, of her destined righteousness and moral certainty of her cause, that she would gladly invite Peter into her lair and show her all her gets to convince him to join them.
Instead, Peter finally speaks, and asks if the people that she is supposedly saving will have a choice in the matter.
Cindy is surprised by the argument, and simply says that they will be thankful for what she is giving them.
And that, Peter says, is why he has to stop her.
Suddenly, the power across the entire building begins to go out. Cindy looks around within the darkened room, surprised, and then blindsided as Peter launches a punch into her that sends her flying through a wall.
Cindy had been focused on the Spider-Gang as one of the biggest threats to her plans. She had made all sorts of contingencies to defeat Izuku and Ochako and Ben and even All Might himself if any of them tried to break into her base.
She had not accounted for Nezu, seeing as he used to own U.A. and knew the building inside and out.
And she certainly hadn't accounted for Hagakure, the former student of U.A., who had the perfect quirk to break into U.A. and, with Nezu's help, shut down power to the entire campus.
The defences around the old U.A. campus go down, and the Spider-Gang begins their assault, supported by an army of pro heroes at All Might's call. From Ryukyu to Gng Orca to even Hawks and Mirko and the other top ten heroes, hundreds of heroes begin to throw themselves at S.I.L.K.'s crippled defences, eager to put the villainous organisation down.
The battle begins as pro hero goes up against S.I.L.K. agent, and in the chaos Peter and Cindy go up against each other once more, and whilst Peter realises that he currently doesn't stand a chance against Cindy, he still calls her out for everything that she's done. She wears his symbol, his ideals, everything that he believes in, and she tarnishes them with her violence and madness. How dare she try to corrupt everything that he stands for. Does she truly believe that she will stand with her and her murderous madness?
Cindy says that he'll understand in time. Peter retorts that he already understands perfectly.
Then, Peter is able to grab Cindy's Infinity Gauntlet away from her, prompting a violent chase across the battlegrounds as the city around them transforms into a warzone.
In the battle, Izuku and Ochako duck down into the depths of the old U.A. campus to try and find their former classmate Bakugo, whilst Keemia stays up top to assist in sweeping away S.I.L.K.'s various forces. Within the broken laboratory, Izuku and Ochako find the various experiments that S.I.L.K. had been carrying out, from the human dissections to the Anti-Venom cloning to the attempts at controlling the Nomu to even the various other cloning projects, and they are sickened by all of them.
Then, they come across Bakugo, strapped down to a table and about to be opened by a still-pheromone-drunk Lady Octopus.
Izuku and Ochako immediately summon their Symbiotes to them, becoming Agent Anti-Venom and She-Venom and go to rescue their former classmate. Lady Octopus is able to defend herself from the two, but it isn't enough to stop the two from grabbing a wounded and terrified Bakugo from the slab that he was strapped to and preparing to take him to safety.
Elsewhere, Melissa Shield is trying to calm down an increasingly irate and unstable David Shield, still in his Lizard form, alongside Aunt May and Inko Midoriya in the Spider-Gang's underground bunker below the old F.E.A.S.T. grounds.
David's Lizard form has only been getting worse and worse on his mind, and now there's only so much longer for him before the Lizard takes over entirely and turns him into a savage beast, with no trace of the loving and well-meaning father that it came from. Aunt May and Inko try to comfort Melissa, asking her about the cure that she'd been making. However, it doesn't help her, as the cure itself is untested and might just accelerate the mutations and make things worse, meaning that there is very little that she can do now to try and stop her father's full transformation into the Lizard. All she can do now is try to keep him company as he fades away, much to her distress and despair.
But then, the door to the bunker is thrown open, and the masked face of Twice looks down at all of them.
Back at the warzone that has erupted in the S.I.L.K. R&D centre, All Might, decked out in his Villainbuster armour, is tossing around any S.I.L.K. agent or aligned pro hero that tries to pick a fight with him. He lets out a cry of approval at the efforts of those that fight alongside him, and the heroes at his call let out an equally powerful cry of support in return.
Then, he sees Spider-Man leaping out of the repurposed U.A. building, Infinity Gauntlet in hand and with Silk, Cindy Moon, in hot pursuit. All Might leaps in to protect Peter from Cindy, prompting a battle between the number one hero and the S.I.L.K. director.
As Peter tries to make his escape off the grounds and get the Infinity Gauntlet to safety, he is suddenly intercepted by Jessica, Kirishima, and Tetsutetsu, who demand that he hands the Inifnity Gauntlet over to them. Ben and Kaine arrive to oppose Jessica whilst Peter quickly avoids Kirishima and Tetsutetsu…
Only for him to be confronted by Twice and his hundreds of clones, forcing him into yet another deadly battle with an incredibly powerful artifact in his hands.
And then, during the battle, the Infinity Gauntlet slips from Peter's hands and lands on the ground, becoming free for anyone to grab.
When Twice grabs it, he and Kendo have a brief struggle for it. However, before Momo, in her black and gold Iron Spider suit, can swing by and take the Gauntlet, Twice accidently opens a portal in the air...
One which Kendo is pushed into, removing her from the battle entirely, much to Momo's horror before she can grab the Gauntlet away from Twice.
(But elsewhere, Kendo suddenly wakes up from a long sleep, looks up, and sees the supposedly deceased Cassandra Webb looking down at her, telling her that she has much to teach her.)
In the lab below, Carolyn is furious at the destruction of her work, but senses and stops the saboteur, Hagakure, before she can destroy the Nomu and cloned Anti-Venom samples right after she finished sabotaging the backup systems.
Carolyn smiles. Luckily, they've got a backup for the backups. In a way, after all.
She then decides that it is time that S.I.L.K. unleashed their secret weapon, and releases the Nomu from their containment, allowing them to be coated in the cloned Anti-Venom samples.
Elsewhere, Izuku and Ochako continue to drag the wounded Bakugo through the halls of the damaged campus building as they are fired upon by S.I.L.K. agents and aligned pro heroes, but are shocked to find that the power in the building is starting to come online. Hagakure and Nezu were supposed to have taken down the generators by now. Had she failed?
But then, they are attacked by two women who look familiar to them, whom Izuku and Ochako realise are parodies of the old Sinister Six group that have just been released from their stasis by Lady Octopus. One of them is a woman that Izuku recognises, a Scorpian mutant named Elaine Coll, who had been a pro hero before siding with S.I.L.K., and has allowed herself to be modified using the dead Scorpian's exoskeleton into Scorpia, Cindy's newest agent. The other is a woman whom wears the same costume as Electro and is using the same powers, Francine Fyre, who is actually a clone of the old Electro and is now calling herself Electro II.
Scorpia and Electro II attack Izuku and Ochako, with the latter of the two S.I.L.K. agents throwing her electrical powers into the building whilst she does so, acting as a walking power generator for the building and all the automatic defences in it. Izuku and Ochako try to prioritise taking her out, but are unable to get past Scorpia and are forced to continue their retreat, Bakugo in tow.
Outside, the struggle for the Infinity Gauntlet continues, with Momo grabbing it only to be intercepted by a small army of Spider-Slayers, which is then picked up by Jessica, only to be intercepted by Ben, whilst the Gauntlet then falls into Nejire's hands only for it to be flung out of her arms by Kirishima, and so on so forth.
Elsewhere, All Might and Silk continue to battle against each other, and the two are evenly matched with each other. Worse yet, All Might can feel his grip on One for All already fading with each passing moment. He's beginning to slow down, and Silk is tearing apart his Villainbuster armour with each blow.
They need to end this fight, and they need to end it soon.
So, he plants a hard punch into Cindy and sends her flying. Soon enough, the heroes begin to claim control over the situation, even with the R&D centre's reactivated defences. At the same time, Spider-Man is able to grab the Gauntlet once more, signalling the heroes' fortunes turning in their favour.
All Might points at Cindy, and orders her to stand down. The heroes have won, and her rule is over before it ever began. Her time is up. There is no longer any need for pointless bloodshed.
However, Cindy shoots that offer of surrender down. On the contrary, she's got all the cards currently in her favour, and gestures to the side.
It's an army of twice clones, bringing with them prisoners in the form of Melissa, May, Inko, and a nearly rabid Lizard.
Then, she tells Twice to do it, and one of the clones stabs Melissa in the arm with a knife.
The mutated David then lashes out at Twice, attempting to kill him for hurting his daughter, but the Twice clones instead lift him up and throw him into the lines of pro heroes.
And that is all that it takes for the last thread of sanity within David's mind to break, leaving nothing left but a rampaging monster.
The Lizard begins to go on a mindless rampage against the pro heroes, overpowering Hawks, Gang Orca, Ryukyu, and even Mirko and forcing All Might to fight back against him and try to talk him down. At the same time, Spider-Man abandons all thought and rushes to Aunt May and Inko's side, just as Izuku and Ochako burst out of the building with Bakugo in their hands and Scorpia in hot pursuit, only to find themselves unable to escape the warzone, even with Black Cat's help.
The three of them are scattered across the battlefield, leaving Bakugo all on his own.
Spider-Man rushes over Aunt May and Inko, only to be intercepted by Electro II and violently electrocuted. Meanwhile, All Might is still battling against the Lizard, trying to find some trace of one of his oldest friends in there, only to find that there is nothing left of David Shield within the Lizard's mind anymore.
Worse yet, the Lizard is beginning to overpower him. What's left of his Villainbuster armour is being shredded to pieces by this violent beast, and almost all his power has been sapped from him. Even the desperate intervention of Hatsume in her Ironheart armour is of no assistance as the Lizard uses its tail to swat her away.
Having no choice, All Might rears his hand back for one last punch, intent on putting David out of his misery and giving him the chance at peace that he has been neglected for so long-
Only for a bullet to fly into the Lizard's eye, going through to its brain and killing the monster, putting David Shield to rest.
And the person who pulled the trigger? A tearful, sobbing Melissa Shield with a bloody red arm, who had been separated from the other hostages in the chaos and had recognised that her father was finally gone for good. As such, she decided to grant him his peace and save him from this nightmare.
All Might doesn't even have time to try and process his old friend's death or to console Melissa before a sharp pain juts through his back. Cindy Moon had just thrust her sharpened fingers into his spine. With her other hand she reached out and broke the handgun that Melissa was holding, as well as her hand and tossing her to the side.
Pulling him out of his wrecked Villainbuster armour and throwing him to the ground, Cindy Moon looms over the wounded and half-shrunken All Might and smiles. All Might is the centre of all hero society. He is the pillar of the whole world, Atlas holding up the Earth. Everything has become centred around him, even now. Hell, there were even cults around the planet that have been formed in worship of him. He is the reason to live for so many people. He is their hope.
It's time for that hope to die.
From her back, she retrieves a vial. It is the Carnage Symbiote. The freshly lobotomised Carnage Symbiote, with all the powers of All for One but with none of the mind behind it thanks to the added edition of the Anti-Venom Symbiote.
Then, she reminds All Might that, in this universe, all Symbiotes are mutated fragments of One for All...
And he's still got embers of One for All inside of him.
She smiles.
It's time for an upgrade.
She breaks the vial and throws the Symbiote down at All Might, allowing it to enter into his wounds and mutate even further with the embers of One for All still inside him. All Might lets out a scream of pain as the Symbiote begins to overtake and merge with him, and Cindy leaves him behind. There's more important business for her to attend to.
Elsewhere, Spider-Man finally manages to break himself free of Electro II and rushes over to Aunt May and Inko's side, tossing aside all the Twice clones around them and reaching the two women.
However, Cindy gets to them first, grabbing the Infinity Gauntlet from his hands with a web line from her fingertip, and holds a bladed finger to Aunt May's neck, telling Peter to calm down.
Peter is forced to back off, and Cindy sighs, not removing her sharpened finger from May's neck. This wasn't supposed to go down like this. It was supposed to be really easy, and yet Peter seems to be exceptionally keen on trying to make things as difficult for himself as can be. Did he really wish to know pain so badly? Did he really want to suffer that badly?
Spider-Man tells Cindy to let May and Inko go. They've done nothing to her. Whatever she's trying to do, it goes against everything that he believes in. If Cindy truly wore his banner and believed in his ideals, then she should know that the right thing to do now is to stand down and surrender, to stop this madness in its tracks.
But Cindy refuses. Stop? This is too important to stop.
And speaking of which...
Nearby, All Might's transformation is complete, and he rises to his feet. Only he's not All Might anymore. He is a massive, hulking monster, his skin a pale white like a corpse, his hair long and sickly, his body shaped like an ancient set of armour for a king, and his chest was adorned with a blood-red spider symbol with a curled tail. In his hand he held a vile, blood-red blade, wriggling and writhing with the mass of Symbiote ooze, and across his face was a wide, wicked smile which showed all his newly sharpened and jagged teeth.
Cindy smiles. Her new pet project is complete. Now all it needs is a good name. All Might, All for One, All for Null...
She smiles, and decides on a name.
Knull.
She sic's her newest champion on the heroes.
Knull then goes on the attack, cutting down hero after hero and sending many others into a retreat. Immediately, the moral of the army of pro heroes is utterly shattered. All Might was the core of hero society. Everyone and everything was focused on and around him, especially now in the various crises that Japan has been forced to weather. So many people had put their faith and hope in him...
And now, he was lost, mutated and turned against them. All their hope quickly shattered, and many of the heroes immediately flee the battlefield. The remaining heroes are unable to do much of anything as Lady Octopus enters the fray, supported by the various Nomu under S.I.L.K.'s control, all of which are now bonded to the Anti-Venom clones. She sends the Anti-Venom Nomu after the heroes, and they begin to cleave through their ranks, grabbing and curing the likes of Hawks and Mirko and Ryukyu, destroying their quirks and infecting them, turning them into more Anti-Venom minions.
Peter is horrified by what he is seeing, and Cindy tells him that this is the future. This war that they are fighting right now, all the violence and the spilt blood, it is all symptomatic of the same disease that infects all who hold power. Greed, want, need, all of these things become the primary concerns of those who hold authority over others, so much that they either refuse to consider the responsibility that they have to others or simply neglected those responsibilities for the sake of power once more. It is an eternal cycle, this violence, and it is one that she intends to-
Suddenly, a blade goes through her chest, and she drops to the ground with a yell of pain. There were so many dangers on the battlefield around them that it had overloaded her spider senses, forcing her to ignore it just to avoid getting a migraine.
It's Bakugo, the sword that he had picked up off the ground now buried in Cindy's back.
Grabbing the Infinity Gauntlet from the prone woman, Bakugo screams out that they need to go, and tries to open up a portal like the Green Goblin had done ages ago, all the while Cindy is pulling out the sword from her body, her advanced healing beginning to pave over the wound. Grabbing May and Inko, Peter and Bakugo meet up with Black Cat, Ochako, Izuku, Hatsume, and Momo in the middle of the chaos, and Bakugo begins trying to summon a portal with the glove, unsure of how it works.
Then, someone grabs Peter from behind, and he wheels around and delivers a hard punch into them, thinking it to be another Twice clone.
But it's not. It's Twice himself.
Peter just killed him by accident.
Peter drops to the ground next to Twice's corpse, shocked and horrified by what he has just done, and Ochako has to drag him away from the fighting as Bakugo finally opens up the portal. Calling for everyone to make their way through to safety, Ochako, Izuku, Keemia, Black Cat, Peter, Hatsume, Momo, and May are the first people to slip through, but they see that Inko has been separated from them during the fighting. Bakugo moves to grab her-
But then he stops, a sharp pain going through his chest. He looks down, and sees a bloody hand with sharpened claws having punched through his chest.
Cindy Moon, a bloody circle in her chest, crushes his heart, and chides him for making him do that.
And Bakugo, with tears in his eyes and blood flowing from his mouth, tells Izuku that he's sorry and, to the screams of everyone in the portal, falls to the ground, dead.
The Infinity Gauntlet loses its connection to its dead host, and the portal closes around those still inside it...
…And Peter, Izuku, Ochako, Momo, Keemia, Hatsume, Black Cat, and May find themselves in the middle of a familiar city, surrounded by shocked onlookers as they look on in bewilderment.
They're in the middle of Times Square, New York.
And then, suddenly, they are met by Iron Man, in a black and gold armour set, Thor, Captain America, Red Hulk, and She-Hulk. The Avengers.
They tell Peter that he's been gone for a long time, and that they like his new suit.
Ochako asks Peter where are they.
Peter's response is quiet and in shock.
They're home.
His home.
His universe.
…Well, that's one hell of a way to finish things off, isn't it?
But anyway, here it is. The end of series three of A Spider's Hero Academia, and the beginning of the fourth and final season of this story. Our big bad has finally cemented themselves in the story, blood has been shed, lives have been lost, and now our heroes find themselves a whole 'nother universe away.
I told you that this wouldn't go the way that you think.
Regarding the ending to this chapter, this particular segment was inspired by season two of Amphibia, and it's a moment that I've been building towards throughout this entire story. From the start, I knew that I wanted to have a moment where Peter's friends in the MHA world find themselves in the Marvel universe and see all the differences that come with it. It is way too tempting for me not to do it.
But aside from that, what's going to happen now? Twice and Bakugo are dead, All Might's been turned into Knull (hands up to anyone who thought that that was going to be a thing?), hero society is on the verge of collapse, Silk is ascendant, the Spider-Gang has been scattered, the entirety of creation is now at stake, and our heroes, possibly the only people who can stop this, are an entire universe away...
Well, you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?