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Peter watched the house burn, on his knees in the empty street. There was no one alive inside; he'd checked, and had the burns to show for it. Only the charred bodies of the elderly couple who had welcomed him when he'd ended up dropped in this dimension after Doom's latest attack on the Baxter Building had gone quite catastrophically wrong.
Two more people he hadn't been able to save. Two more people who had died because they had gotten involved with Peter Parker. Even here, on another world, that hateful pattern continued to haunt him.
Something black and oily stirred on the ground before him. He'd separated from the Symbiote (which had been freed from its captivity in Reed's lab during the commotion and immediately latched back onto him with what Peter could only describe as desperation) before diving into the burning building because of its vulnerability to fire; now it wanted to join back up.
Peter hesitated for a moment … then touched it, allowing the alien creature to run up his finger, his hand, his arm, and wrap him into its embrace, fusing with his flesh and infusing him with its alien might. The fatigue and pain faded away, but the changes to his body paled compared to the ones in his mind.
The grief and the guilt didn't go away. Not even the Symbiote could do that; as it turned out, Reed had erred on the side of caution when he'd advised separating them after Peter had found out the alien entity had taken his body for a ride while he was asleep. The feelings were merely pushed back for a time, leaving him cold and focused.
And he was going to need that focus, because the people who'd set the house on fire after killing the people inside were right behind him. He stood up, slowly, refusing to show any fear or nervousness, and turned to face them, their silhouettes backlit by the rest of the neighborhood, burning not because they'd aided and abetted him, but simply to keep any inconvenient witnesses from challenging the narrative they intended to weave about what took place here tonight.
The Seven. This world's most powerful team of metahumans, who had decided to punish him for refusing to play along with their monstrous charade of pretending to be superheroes while doing things even his rogues would have balked at on the regular. For refusing to take the money and keep his mouth shut; for insisting on actually helping people rather than do photo-ops with pre-arranged criminals, and not averting his gaze away from the exactions committed by other so-called heroes on random civilians for no other reason than because they wanted to.
For daring to try to bring the one among them with a conscience, Maeve, away from their toxic influence, only for them to kill her and blame him for her death, before going after his civilian associates with her brand new replacement pulled out from Vought's vast reserves of superpowered psychopaths. Because nobody could be allowed to mess with their image, their games, and their profit margins.
The emotional suppression of the Symbiote let Peter regard them coldly, analysing what he knew of each of their capabilities. In that moment, they weren't enemies, or even people; they were just a puzzle, an equation that had already been solved. All that was left was to show his work, but the end result? That, in Peter's mind, was already decided, and inevitable.
A-Train was the first to move. The speedster went for a punch at Spider-Man's face, moving at speeds no ordinary man could comprehend.
Peter's Spider-Sense blared a warning before A-Train had even started to move, and he caught the punch in his left hand, stopping A-Train dead in his tracks without even turning to look at him, the air shaking from the abrupt release of kinetic energy. Only then did he turn.
For a fraction of a second, Peter stared into A-Train's wide eyes, adrenalin slowing down his perception of time to grant him a fraction of what the speedster's own power allowed him to reach. The racing goggles he was wearing did nothing to hide his expression. Peter could see shock, fear, and underneath it all, buried behind the relentless pursuit of hedonism, shame and horror and guilt. Some part of the speedster knew what he was doing as a member of the Seven was wrong, and hated himself for being too weak to stop.
It would be a mercy to kill him, Spider-Man thought. But he wasn't feeling merciful today.
So he pivoted and punched A-Train in the face, carefully measuring the strength he used to knock him out without inflicting permanent damage. Maybe, just maybe, this would be enough to convince A-Train to turn his life around. Someone with his powers could do incredible good, if he only pushed himself to fully master his powers so that he could do more than just brief bursts of speed or 'marathons' that were nothing more than publicity stunts.
One down. Six left.
In any case, he was the only member of the Seven Peter would give a chance. The rest were all monsters who needed to be put down for the sake of everyone else on this planet. Even if he could somehow get past Vought's lawyers, who made the influence of the Kingpin back home look innocent by comparison, there was no jail which could hope to hold them. In this world, there was no Raft, no special prison designed to hold superhumans. They'd be out within the week and back to killing anyone who got in the way of their demented excess.
There was only one way to prevent them from doing what they'd done to the family whose home was burning behind him to someone else, and that was killing them. Someone like Reed Richards or Tony Stark might've been able to figure out a way to take away their powers, but Peter could not. And even if he could, they might regain them sometime later through the use of Compound V.
The cold presence of the Symbiote in his thoughts let him think such thoughts, even though he would normally recoil from them. But he'd known it would do that when he'd taken it back, so he wouldn't lie to himself and pretend the alien was warping him.
It was his choice. His decision. His responsibility.
The Deep charged Spider-Man next. He caught the man's right arm in a web-shot mid-swing and pulled, throwing him off-balance before jumping on his head, knocking him down. In the air, he dodged a couple of shots from Soldier Boy before webbing his gun and throwing it away.
In response, Soldier Boy threw his shield at him, in a pale mockery of Captain America's own combat style. Peter caught it without effort and shot another webline at the ground, using it to angle his jump back toward the military cosplayer. Soldier Boy punched the shield away when the Spider threw it back at him, but the distraction was enough for Peter to slam into his enemy's face feet first and slam him into the pavement.
Before he could do anything more to the WWII-era war criminal, his Spider-Sense buzzed, and he caught Translucent's fist without looking, webbing the invisible man in the face and dodging right out of the way of Black Noir's kick from behind, which hit Translucent instead. Black Noir's brief moment of hesitation after hitting his ally was enough for Peter to punch him in the back of the head, but he'd to pull his punch and jump back as Homelander threw his eye-lasers at him from above.
He needed to deal with that first. A pair of web-shots covered the Superman-knockoff's eyes, distracting him as he clawed at the material. It would only last for a few seconds, given the strength Homelander was capable of, but it would be enough. In the meantime, Peter dodged lightning bolts from Stormfront, hit the Nazi bitch with another pair of shots and, whipping the weblines, slammed her into the ground.
Spider-Sense. He moved back, sensing the displacement of the air through the Symbiote on his face as he dodged an invinsible attack, then struck. With a stomach-churning crunch, he broke Translucent's right arm before seizing him by the throat and lifting him up. Really, Translucent should have known better by now. With Peter's Spider-Sense making his invisibility useless, all he had left was his enhanced strength and durability, and Peter was a lot stronger than him – more than strong enough to bypass that durability. But then, Translucent had no real experience fighting someone else on his level, just like the rest of the Seven. They were all thugs, bullies with no real skill and the bare minimum of training required to look good on camera.
Meanwhile, Stormfront had gotten back up and looked ready to attack again, right on schedule. He webbed her to the chest, and predictably, she seized the opportunity to send a deadly electric charge through the material, unable to let the chance to kill him through his own web pass.
In the moment before the charge reached him, Peter wrapped his end of the line around Translucent's throat and threw him into the air. Without anywhere else for the charge to go, it passed through his skull, and reacted with whatever weird chemicals in his brain fluid allowed for his power to function, causing his head to detonate.
Two down. Five left.
Peter flicked his head, throwing away a bit of gore that had landed on his face, and glared at the Deep, who'd gotten back up from where he'd thrown him moments ago. Immediately, the supe turned and ran – but nobody was getting away tonight. Peter webbed his back and pivoted on his feet, spinning the Deep around before throwing him right at Stormfront – who didn't even bother trying to dodge, instead unleashing a lightning bolt to change his course and throwing him in the flames, with his nervous system wracked by the electricity.
Either he would burn to death in the flames, or he'd manage to drag himself out of the fire. Either way, he was out of the fight.
Three down. Four left.
The distraction of using her team-mate as a projectile was enough for Peter to hit Stormfront in the eyes with more web-fluid. As she reached out to try to tear it off, he took advantage of her blindness to wrap her up completely, and the cocoon fell to the ground just in time for Homelander to finish tearing off the webs on his own eyes.
Peter turned and stared up defiantly at Homelander for a couple of seconds, then threw a smoke grenade at his own feet. He'd made it some time after his arrival on this world, once he'd figured out that the Seven weren't real heroes. The smoke was heavy in zinc, which was the only thing capable of blocking Homelander's X-ray vision. Normally, he'd have used it to escape and get under cover, but this time, he remained inside the cloud.
If he'd read the sorry thing that passed for Homelander's character right – now. His Spider-Sense warned him of an incoming laser, and he picked up Stormfront's webbed-up body and held the Nazi right between him and Homelander's eye-lasers. She gargled in agony through the gag, the sound audible to someone with Homelander's super-hearing. But – again just as Spider-Man had anticipated – that only made Homelander intensify the attack, unaware that it was his own ally he was killing.
When the smoke cleared, Stormfront's eyes had burned away and her entire brain had boiled inside her skull. Without breaking eye contact with Homelander, Spider-Man dropped her corpse.
Four down. Three left.
For a moment, Homelander stared at what he had done, shocked. Then his expression darkened, and he plunged toward Spider-Man fist-first. Peter leapt out of the way and grabbed the supe's head, clinging to his back. Immediately, Homelander took off, trying to shake him off, but Peter's grip on his suit was too strong.
Homelander opened his mouth to scream. From this close, his superpowered voice would damage the Symbiote – not that the supe knew that – but that wasn't an issue. As Homelander breathed in, Peter literally seized the opening the far stronger and more resilient metahuman had provided him. At his mental request, the Symbiote produced a small blob of concentrated web-fluid which Peter threw into Homelander's mouth before letting go of the supe right as the blob erupted into web, filling Homelander's mouth, throat, and nasal cavities.
Peter landed on his feet right in front of Black Noir, who came at him with a pair of short curved knives. He effortlessly dodged the supe's strikes before webbing his feet to the ground and smacking him on the back and arm, breaking bone each time as he grabbed Black Noir into a hold that let him move back-to-back with the supe, shooting a short line of web as he did so, slightly altering its composition with a mental command to the Symbiote.
The webline wrapped itself around Black Noir's throat, and Peter pulled, until the string, which could withstand several tones of weight, snapped through suit, skin and bone. Black Noir's head fell one way, and the rest of him another.
It was a trick he'd figured out years ago, and which would have taken down the vast majority of his usual villains back home. Of course, he'd never have used it there, because superheroes weren't supposed to kill, and doing so would have made him a figure of fear to the very people he wanted to help and protect.
But here, on this miserable, twisted parody of his home dimension? Here, the rules were different. Here, much as it disgusted him, the masses would cheer the death of another metahuman as long as they were on 'the other team'.
Spider-Man hoped with all his heart that was the result of years of Vought's propaganda hammering its way into the brains of the common man. He really didn't want to think that such ugliness was something innate to the Humanity of this Earth, or worse, to Mankind as a whole, regardless of dimension.
Five down. Two left.
Nearby, Soldier Boy was looking at Stormfront's charred corpse. There was an expression of mourning on his face – which really said it all, didn't it? Soldier Boy had been deployed by the US during WWII, fighting against the Nazis in Europe, and yet he had not only worked with one, she seemed to be the member of the Seven he'd been closest to. No wonder the whole affair had been such a fiasco Vought had quietly swept it under the rug and hidden it from the general public for decades. Peter himself had only learned about it thanks to his investigation of Vought.
Soldier Boy charged straight at Peter. They clashed, once, and bounced off each other. Peter rolled to the side, Soldier Boy following suit. As he got up, Peter webbed his feet to the ground, then bound his arms with more of the same, blocking him in place. This left the supe with exactly one option if he didn't want Peter to tear into him while he was immobilized, and he took it immediately.
Soldier Boy started charging up his most powerful attack; an energy blast that, according to the intel Peter had gathered, had the yield of a small-scale nuclear device – except targeted in one direction, and with one very interesting additional property.
With a scream of release, Soldier Boy let loose his beam of energy, but compared to, say, Cyclops' optic blast, he might as well have mailed the attack in advance, and Peter was already moving out of the way. Instead, the beam struck Homelander, who'd crashed on the ground behind him and was trying to free himself from the web-fluid clogging up his mouth.
When the beam faded away, Peter was right behind Soldier Boy. He plunged his hand into the supe's back, fingers piercing through skin and muscle and bone, and tore out his heart, along with most of his spinal column, before slamming the supe's head into the pavement with enough strength to shatter his pretentious helmet and reduce his brain to slurry.
Perhaps Soldier Boy's regeneration would let him recover from that, but Peter doubted it. The superpowers of this Earth were, on average, a lot weaker than the ones from his original one – as shown by the fact he was taking apart the premier superhuman team on the planet all by himself, something he wouldn't have a hope in Hell of achieving in his homeworld, what with a literal Norse God and the Hulk being members.
Six down.
One left.
Homelander shook his head, dazed. The blast had burned away the web-fluid in his mouth, and he took a deep breath – then Peter moved, as fast as he was capable of, his feet leaving imprints into the pavement as he crossed the distance between them.
Soldier Boy's blast had, supposedly, the ability to deactivate the powers of supes caught in it. It didn't last long, and Peter didn't know how much it would affect someone like Homelander, who was at the top of power classification on this Earth. So he didn't hold back any of his strength as he punched the leader of the Seven in the head – and his head burst apart like a watermelon, while the rest of the corpse made an awkward backward flip with bleeding kinetic energy before it fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
Seven down.
None left.
It was done.
Peter let the Symbiote's emotional deadening go and fell back to his knees, allowing himself to feel the full weight of his grief, his anger, and even his guilt at what he'd just done. Right or wrong, he'd just killed five people – six, given that the Deep hadn't crawled out of the fire. What would Uncle Ben say?
… well. Probably that he was more worried about Peter than he was angry about the Seven. His uncle had been a deeply compassionate man, but even he had his limits, and he'd known there were times when you couldn't just turn the other cheek. Times when you needed to take a stand, for yourself and for others.
Maybe that was why he had been sent here, to this world that looked so much like a distorted reflection of his own. And even if it wasn't, even if his presence here was nothing more than some random cosmic coincidence …
… he would still do his best. In the end, he could do nothing else.
Spider-Man stood up, turned his back on the flames, and walked away.
There was work to be done, and nobody he could help by staying here.
Stan Edgar, CEO of Vought International, watched as the satellite imagery refreshed on the large screen that hung from the wall of the command room. It still showed the same thing: a random neighbourhood in New York burning, the heat playing havoc with their orbital sensors. Military technology could have seen clearly, but the satellites had been built by Vought, meaning profitability had been more important than technical excellence.
Stan had the feeling the universe was trying to teach him a lesson here, and he didn't care for it.
What was clear even through the blurry pictures, however, was that things had gone quite catastrophically wrong.
"Have we received confirmation that all communications have been cut off in that neighbourhood?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," one of the technicians answered, voice trembling with nerves. "Deadline is on it."
Well, at least one thing was going as planned tonight, Stan reflected. The last thing they needed was footage of tonight's fiasco getting on the news. That particular supe's abilities may be useless for combat, but he was damned convenient for situations like this. If not for him cleaning up after the messes other, more public supes left behind, they'd have been crucified by the court of public opinion and the government long ago.
He spent the next hour in that command room, watching as the clean-up crew reached the site and listed off the dead.
"We've recovered the bodies of six of the Seven," the officer on the ground reported. "No sign of A-Train."
Stan frowned and turned to one of the operators.
"Has he contacted us?" he asked.
"No, sir," the operator shook his head, puzzled. "He's not picking up his communicator either. I'm trying to locate it, but it doesn't show up. It looks like it got destroyed."
Dammit. They really should've gone ahead with that plan to implant a tracker into him. Without it, finding a speedster of his level who didn't want to be found was a fool's errand – he could be in Mexico one day and Toronto the next, even Moscow if he was really determined.
He turned back to the screen. "Can you confirm that Soldier Boy is dead?"
"Confirmed, sir." Despite the usual level of professionalism expected of the men who were hired as part of Vought's top security forces, the man sounded worried. Stan guessed he couldn't blame him, given the circumstances, but that would get into his file. "No sign of life whatsoever."
Stan clicked his tongue. Recovering Ben from that Russian prison where he'd been left to rot for decades had been expensive, and he'd hoped to recoup that investment with Soldier Boy's power-neutralizing capabilities.
"Inform me if anything change," he declared as he got up from his chair. "I have phone calls to make."
They'd lost the entire team. Clearly, they had underestimated Spider-Man, badly. Replacing the Seven would be difficult, but Homelander in particular had been a unique experiment. They had genetic samples they could use to create a potential successor, but their attempts at accelerated ageing had never ended well, and they were going to need an answer to Spider-Man now, not in twenty years.
If only they knew more about the spider-themed supe. He'd appeared out of nowhere one day, with skills and powers well above the average supe created by one of Vought's 'accidental' releases of Compound V, and refused to play ball when approached by representatives of the company. He didn't do interviews, didn't pose for the cameras, didn't participate in orchestrated crimes – he was, as far as Vought's investigators could tell, someone who actually practiced the superhero lifestyle that Vought's fiction division sold to the masses.
According to Stan's sources, the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the US and abroad believed Spider-Man to be either a secret Vought project to create a more 'sincere' kind of hero to attract a wider market, or someone who'd broken free of their control and was mocking them by playing the game of superheroing better than any of their supes. When they learned about the death of the Seven, they would re-evaluate their position – and they would learn about it, it was inevitable, and unlike the public, they were likely to figure out the actual truth rather than whatever story PR came up with. Probably something about Spider-Man having been a villain in disguise the entire time, and the Seven going out to confront him only to be struck down …
He walked into his office, turned the lights on, and froze. There, sitting at his desk, with no hint of how he'd broken in, was Spider-Man. Staring straight at Stan with those big, white, soulless eyes.
"Ah," he said. "Good evening, Spider-Man."
Silence.
"What you did tonight was very impressive, I admit. I didn't think anyone could take on the entire Seven at once. In truth, I didn't think anyone could take down Homelander by themselves, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry and sent the entire team … which I now see was a mistake, since you used Soldier Boy to kill him," he added ruefully. "But you're fighting an unbeatable foe. You know that, right? It's more powerful than Vought, or than Homelander ever was. More powerful than nature of life itself. It's profit and loss, supply and demand. The elegant flow of currency across the globe. We're just cogs in a great machine. And we all have our part to play."
Again, silence. Spider-Man didn't move one muscle. He merely kept staring at Stan.
"… Say something, dammit!" the CEO shouted, feeling his calm slipping for the first time in years. He'd been in the same room as Homelander, someone who could kill him with a snap of his fingers, and whose list of mental issues could fill a library, and kept his cool. But there was something about the silent stare of Spider-Man that unsettled even him – something wrong about that silence.
"Do you actually believe that?" the Spider finally said, in a voice that dripped with … not anger. Not disbelief. Something worse: contempt. It had been years since anyone had spoken to Stan like that, and even then, it had never made him feel as small as the supe managed. "Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night? I mean, I've met sociopaths before. Some of them were even lovely people, doing their best to rise above their nature. And I've met more than my fair share of crazy people, too. But that's the first time I hear something so stupid. So pathetic."
The supe moved, climbing over Stan's desk with unnatural fluidity, staying on all four as he advanced until his head was right before Stan's, only a few centimeters separating them. This close, Stan could tell that the black suit that covered him from head to toe wasn't fabric – it was alive somehow, pulsating in time with the Spider's heartbeat and anger.
"You created the Seven, Edgar," Spider-Man continued, raising a hand and tapping his index finger against Stan's chest with deliberate gentleness, even though Stan knew he could break his ribs as easily as snapping his fingers. "You created Homelander. You enabled his horrid behavior and that of all the other supes who go around doing awful things that you keep secret from the world because the truth would hurt your profits. You brought a fucking Nazi into the team and made her a celebrity, giving her a platform to spout her hateful rhetoric. You did this. There is no great system spanning the entire world; that's just a convenient fantasy so that you can put all of your crimes on something else and keep telling yourself you aren't to blame for what you do every day in this very office. There is no faceless machine driven by its own hungers, forcing the gears to turn whether they want to or not. There are only people, making choices, and either facing or running from the consequences of said choices. And you made the choices that led to what Vought and supes have become. When you became CEO, you inherited a broken machine, and instead of dismantling it and using its resources to make literally anything else, you turned it into something monstrous, all in the name of money and power."
"You chose this," he repeated, "you and everyone else in this company and beyond, who decided that your bank account was more important than your morals."
"If you're going to kill me, then get it over with," Stan said, trying to regain his composure.
Spider-Man chuckled. There was no humor in the sound.
"Oh, I'm not going to kill you, Stan. And you don't need to worry about me going after your daughter either," he added, and Stan's blood ran cold despite the reassurance – because he was the kind of man who couldn't think of any reason for Spider-Man to mention his estranged child other than to threaten him through her. "See, unlike all of your maniacs, I'm an actual superhero."
Stan didn't believe him. He couldn't believe him. The kind of man he was, the kind of man he had made himself into to climb the corporate ladder until he reached his current position by climbing over the bodies of so many people, couldn't believe in superheroes. And in the hole of that missing belief, fear poured in as Spider-Man continued to talk.
"I'm going to do something a lot worse. I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to rip Vought to pieces, expose all its dirty secrets, and dismantle its operations. I'm going to recruit those few supes who are worth a damn to help me do it, too. Maeve showed me that they exist, despite your best efforts."
The lower half of Spider-Man's mask split open. It wasn't a mask; it had never been a mask, Stan realized, terror growing as he gazed into a mouth with far too many pointy teeth, and a tongue that was far too long to belong to a human being.
"In the end," Spider-Man continued, his voice deep and guttural and sending every animal instinct in Stan's body screaming for him to run away from the predator before him, "you'll be left without money, without power, without leverage, without anything."
"What are you?" Stan managed to ask through the fear.
"The moral arc of the universe is long," said Spider-Man. His jaw closed, the skin over it sealing over and returning to the pretence of being a mask, and his voice returned to the lie of normality. "But it does tend toward Justice, in the end. And me? Here, in this world, I am Justice's hand, come to set the scales right after you and your ilk have pushed on them without counter for far too long. Goodbye, Edgar. We will meet again, at least one more time."
The lights flickered. When they returned, there was no sign that Spider-Man had ever been in the room with Stan, except for the pounding of his heart and the river of sweat running down his back.