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MidReal Story
Web of Realities: City's Last Stand
Anonymous
May 11
Scenario:Peter parker spiderman joins miles morales spiderman
Create my version of this story
Gwen Stacy
athletic body, blue shirt, black pants
Miles Morales
slender, red and blue Spiderman costume
Peter Parker
tousled, athletic build, red and blue Spiderman suit
I was just a kid when I watched my first Spider-Man movie.
I remember sitting in the theater with my dad, eating popcorn and watching the screen with wide eyes.
I was so young that I didn’t even understand what was happening half the time, but I knew one thing for sure: I wanted to be Spider-Man.
I wanted to swing from buildings and save the day and kiss Mary Jane upside down in the rain.
I wanted to be a hero.
And then, when I was fifteen years old, I got bitten by a radioactive spider and my life changed forever.
It’s been two years since that day, and now I am Spider-Man.
Not the only one, but the best one.
The original one, you might say.
The one who saved New York City from being destroyed by a giant particle accelerator that opened up multiple dimensions and threatened to collapse reality as we know it.
The one who saved the day, and then lost everything anyway.
I’m not in my universe anymore.
The city is different, but familiar.
The air smells the same, and the sun feels just as bright on my face.
But when I turn a corner, I see a building that wasn’t there before, or a sign that’s written in a different language, and it all comes crashing back to me.
This city is not my city.
Not anymore.
I have to get back home.
I have to find a way, because I have people waiting for me there.
Mary Jane, and Aunt May, and all my friends at Horizon High.
I have to get home.
The first thing I do is swing through the city to get my bearings.
The second thing I do is go to Aunt May’s house, but it’s not her house anymore.
It’s someone else’s house now, and they look at me like they don’t know who I am, and that’s when I remember that in this universe, Aunt May died.
I couldn’t save her.
And when she died, part of me died with her.
I never even got to say goodbye.
The city is still recovering from the aftermath of the particle accelerator.
There’s a giant crater where it used to be, and Stark Tower looms over everything like a constant reminder of what we almost lost.
The mayor of New York City is Wilson Fisk, also known as Kingpin, a man who never met a criminal organization he didn’t want to join and who I fought countless times on my own Earth.
Under his leadership, the city is slowly coming back together, one piece at a time.
But it will never be the same again.
I’m walking down the street when I see them: three kids who can’t be more than ten years old, sitting on the steps of a building with homemade Spider-Man masks on their faces.
They’re watching me with wide eyes as I pass by, and then one of them says in a high-pitched voice, “Are you really Spider-Man?”
I glance behind me to see if they’re talking to someone else, but the sidewalk is empty.
It’s just me and them.
“Not today,” I say.
I try to keep my voice neutral and to walk away quickly before they recognize me.
I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to stay and take pictures with them either.
I need to stay under the radar for now, at least until I figure out how to get home.
Then maybe I can come back and take care of this place too.
But the kids jump up from the steps and run after me, and suddenly there are people walking out of nearby stores and taking pictures with their phones like they’re waiting for a celebrity to emerge from a hotel.
“Can we take a selfie?”
one of the girls asks.
She holds up her phone and smiles at me.
“Please?”
I look around at all the people watching us and then sigh.
Reluctantly, I take a step back and say, “Fine.”
I don’t want to be mean to kids.
The kids lead me to a makeshift memorial they’ve set up for the heroes who died saving the city from the particle accelerator.
It’s in Central Park, at the edge of the pond where old men play chess and families go boating on weekends.
There are candles and flowers, and pictures of the heroes who gave their lives to save this city.
There are so many faces that I don’t even recognize them all, but the kids are quick to point out the ones who died in their own universe.
“And that one is you,” one of the boys says, pointing at a mural that covers an entire wall.
The mural shows Spider-Men and Women from various universes, some wearing different costumes than I’m used to, others sporting different gadgets or weapons, but all of them fighting for the same cause.
The same cause I’ve been fighting for my whole life.
“Yeah,” I say.
“That’s me.”
They lead me over to a statue of Gwen Stacy in her Spider-Woman costume, and someone has left a bouquet of red roses at the base.
The kids tell me that she died fighting Kingpin’s goons, and they wanted to make sure she was remembered too.
Then we stand in front of a statue of Peter Parker, my namesake, who they tell me was the first Spider-Man in their universe, but not the last.
I stand there quietly for a moment, looking up at him with his mask pulled off and a somber expression on his face.
He saved the world, just like I did.
There are similar statues in my universe, set up in front of schools or in parks, but they’re more recent than this one.
They were made in memory of people who died while I was busy saving the world, and I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until I saw them that I realized how many people I’ve lost over the last few years.
How many people I couldn’t save.
I think about Aunt May, who died because of me, because she was trying to protect me from Kingpin’s goons.
She was a hero too, in her own way.
And I couldn’t save her.
I don’t know how I would have gone on without her if it weren’t for Miles Morales.
But that’s a different story, for a different time.
“Hey, you,” someone says, putting her hand on my arm.
I turn around to see a woman with short black hair and a microphone pinned to her chest.
She’s wearing a red jacket with the letters “WNYW” stitched into the pocket, which means she’s a news reporter for the local Fox affiliate station.
I take a step back, but she steps forward too, keeping her hand on my arm, like we’re old friends.
“Do you have a minute?”
I glance around to make sure no one else is watching us, then say, “Okay, but make it quick.”
I don’t want to attract any more attention than I already have, not when I’m in an alternate reality and everyone is already freaked out about what happened with the particle accelerator, or the villains who tried to destroy the city, or the heroes who saved the day at the last possible moment.
Betty Brant,” the reporter says, holding out her hand.
She has a strong grip, like she’s used to shaking hands with important people, or maybe just a lot of people over the course of her job.
“I work for WNYW,” she says again, as if I wouldn’t have remembered that part of the conversation from thirty seconds ago.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
I glance around again, but there’s no one else in this corner of the park.
Still, I keep my voice low as I say, “Questions about what?”
“The memorial,” Betty says.
“What does it mean to you?”
I look over at the statues again, thinking about all the people who died fighting to protect this city, this world, and everything they held dear.
“Heroes don’t do what we do for the recognition,” I say carefully.
“But I think it’s important to honor their memory in any way that we can, especially for those of us who didn’t know them.
Betty tilts her head in confusion, but I don’t elaborate.
Instead, I ask, “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Actually,” Betty says, glancing down at her phone, “I was just on my way to check out some reports of a new hero swinging into action in midtown, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming along for the ride.”
She holds up her phone and taps a few buttons, then shows me a picture of a young man with curly black hair, wearing a full-body red and black suit with a white spider on his chest.
“Is that so?”
I say with a smile, even as my heart pounds in my chest.
“Can you show me some footage?”
Betty tilts her phone toward me, revealing a live stream from her news station.
It’s from a helicopter, which is hovering above a crowd gathered around a skyscraper.
In the middle of the crowd, a figure swings into view—a red-and-black figure—and even from this distance, I can tell that he’s not as tall or as muscular as me.
He’s slender, with an athletic build, like he’s been working out like crazy for months.
“Looks like our mystery hero is none other than the one and only…”
Betty says as a lower-third graphic appears on the screen.
The chyron reads “Who Is Spider-Man?”
The footage cuts away to a group of talking heads—five reporters gathered around a conference table and talking over each other—and I can barely make out what they’re saying.
But I don’t need to hear it anyway.
I know exactly what they’re saying.
I’ve been through this before.
“They always want to know what my deal is with the new Spider-Man,” I say with a sigh.
“It’s like people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that there’s more than one of us.”
Betty looks at me with her eyebrows raised, waiting for more of an answer.
When she sees that she’s not going to get one, she presses her lips together and says, “So you do know him.”
I make a face.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t say you didn’t know him either,” Betty points out.
She has a point.
“I know him,” I confess with a smile.
“But we’re not friends or anything.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Betty says, and she taps the side of her nose, like she knows some big secret that she’s dying to share with the rest of the world.
“It’s just hard to keep these things straight, you know?
In a world with multiple Spider-People, sometimes you don’t know who you are or where you came from.” I shrug, like it’s no big deal, even though I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out those exact things for myself.
Betty rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t push me any further.
“And how do you feel about your fellow wall-crawler?”
I glance back at the screen, which is still showing the live footage of the new Spider-Man swinging through midtown, even as the talking heads argue about his identity.
I watch him swing for a moment, admiring his form, and then look away.
“I hope he knows what he’s getting himself into,” I say at last.
“Being a hero isn’t as glamorous as it looks on TV.”
Betty looks at me with her eyebrows raised again, but before she can ask me any more questions, a voice booms from behind us.
Betty rolls her eyes, like she’s used to being interrupted by her boss, and says, “Just talking to Spider-Man, Jonah.”
“Yeah, I heard,” J.
Jonah Jameson says.
He waddles over to us, his hands on his hips, and stares up at me with his mouth twisted in a scowl.
I have to remind myself that this is the same guy who was yelling at me on the air a few minutes ago.
“Great job, Betty,” he says, clapping her on the shoulder.
“You got Spider-Man to open up in a way that no one else could.
Who knew all it would take was a pretty girl with a microphone?”
“You flatter me, Jonah,” Betty says, rolling her eyes again.
She’s much better at dealing with Jameson than I am.
“Now if you’ll excuse us—”
“I was just telling Spider-Man about that new hero in midtown,” Betty says, pointing to the screen.
Jameson looks up at the footage and grunts.
“We’re on our way there right now.
We’ll let you know what we find.”
“Actually,” Jameson says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “I was thinking that maybe Spider-Man could go check it out for himself.”
I grin at him, although I’m pretty sure my eyes are saying something different.
“Sorry, Jonah, but I don’t have a press pass.”
“You don’t need one,” Jameson says, “because you’re not a reporter.
You’re a photographer.”
“I’m not a reporter, either,” Betty points out.
“Is there a point to this conversation?”
“Of course there’s a point to this conversation,” Jameson says, folding his arms over his chest and looking at me like I’m a naughty schoolboy who’s about to get a lecture.
“The point is that we have a new hero in town, and nobody knows who he is or what he’s doing, so somebody needs to go check it out, and since Spider-Man’s already there, it might as well be him.”
“But I don’t work for you,” I say, holding my hands up in surrender.
“I’m just a freelancer.
I don’t have any credentials.”
Jameson looks at me over the top of his glasses, and I realize I’ve made a huge mistake.
“You’re right, Spider-Man,” Jameson says with a smile.
“You don’t work for me…yet.
But I have a feeling you will soon enough, especially if you want some help getting home.”
My smile fades as I realize what he’s saying: if I want to know more about what happened in this world—and if I want any help getting back to my own reality—then I need to play by Jameson’s rules.
Or at least pretend to play by his rules so I can get what I need from him before disappearing into the shadows again.
“I’ll take the assignment,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I just hope it’s worth my while.”
Jameson stares at me for a long moment, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, and then slaps me on the shoulder so hard that it knocks the wind out of me.
“I knew you were the right person for the job,” he says, even as my eyes water from the pain.
“But remember: you’re not here to steal the spotlight from our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
You’re here to help him share it with another friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!
“It’s not a great sign when you come home covered in dust and dirt and smelling like a sewer.”
I turn away from the Spider-Man memorial and look at the group of people who are giving me strange looks.
“It means you’ve had an adventure!”
“It means you’ve had an adventure!”
I repeat myself—this time in a slightly louder voice—hoping to make my point.
But the people who are staring at me don’t seem to care about adventures of any sort.
They’re too busy listening to a priest give a sermon about quantum physics.
“The quantum realm is a place where miracles happen every day,” he says, waving his arms as if he expects to find some kind of divine power hiding in the air around him.
“And who are we to question the miracles of a higher power?”
The people in the crowd start to nod their heads in agreement, even though I think most of them are just happy that someone has finally given them a reason to believe that what happened here wasn’t all just some kind of cosmic fluke.
The priest continues to speak as I slip out through a break in the line and head back toward my motorcycle, which is parked at the end of an alleyway a few blocks away.
I take one last look at the memorial and shake my head sadly.
It’s one thing to say you want to go home.
It’s another thing entirely to realize just how hard it’s going to be to make it happen.
“Hey, Spider-Man!”
someone shouts from behind me.
I turn around and find three teenagers running toward me, their phones held out in front of them as they snap pictures and record video.
“Can we take a picture with you?”
The girl in the group nods her head so vigorously that I think she might give herself whiplash.
“You’re like, my favorite superhero ever!”
“Me too!”
the boy next to her says.
“You’re awesome in the game!
Are you working on a sequel?”
“I do my own stunts.” The girl elbows him in the ribs before turning back to me with a smile.
“I hope it was okay taking our picture.”
“Of course it was okay,” I say, grinning under my mask.
“Although I have to admit I’m a little surprised you recognized me.”
