Chapter 496 Let's End It AllThe X-Men were being systematically dismantled.
Fully powered and completely integrated, Nimrod was a flawless killing machine. As the mutant team was hammered into the Parisian cobblestones, Anna Marie—Rogue—watched the devastation and came to a terrifying, desperate conclusion.
She grabbed the cuffs of her leather gloves and yanked them off, exposing her bare hands. "If that oversized toaster gained my abilities by copyin' my DNA," Rogue said, her voice tight, "then what happens if I touch him? Can I take my own powers back?"
Gambit leaned against a shattered streetlamp, spinning his metal bo staff with a heavy sigh. He glanced down at Logan, who was currently lying face-down in a crater, bleeding out while his healing factor struggled to knit his spine back together. "If you're plannin' on testin' that theory, chère, you better move fast. We're runnin' out of meat shields."
Rogue took a breath, bending her knees to lunge.
She froze.
Dropping from the sky above, a young mutant with a ponytail materialized out of thin air. Kitty Pryde plummeted straight toward the android, her body completely intangible. She phased directly through Nimrod's pristine white chassis, dropping the Pym-shrunk Ultron drive deep into the machine's core architecture, and sank harmlessly into the concrete below.
For a fraction of a second, Nimrod went entirely rigid.
But the android didn't shut down. It adapted.
"Final verification complete," Nimrod's synthetic voice echoed across the rain-slicked street. "Physical contact with target Kitty Pryde confirmed. Atomic phasing capability acquired."
In a millisecond, the machine analyzed Kitty's genetic signature, digitized the unrecorded X-gene data, and attempted to transmit the upgrade back to its primary 2059 host body.
That was when Nimrod encountered a fatal system error.
A golden, sparking portal tore open in the air in front of the machine. Illyana Rasputin stepped out of the stepping disc, her Soulsword resting casually on her shoulder. Spider-Man swung out right behind her, landing in a crouch on the hood of a crushed taxi.
"See, I don't know who originally programmed you," Peter said, the white lenses of his mask narrowing, "but they definitely weren't as smart as Hank Pym. Your intelligence is built on the processing power of sixteen million dead mutants from a doomed timeline. But Ultron? Ultron was built to learn."
Peter stood up, casually stretching his shoulders. "Your primary host is sitting in another dimension right now. That means every time you transmit data, there's a micro-second of lag. So, Ultron didn't just upload to reduce your computing power. He learned the exact frequency of your inter-dimensional signal..." Peter mimed snipping a wire. "...and he cut the cord."
"Your interference is statistically meaningless, Spider-Man," Nimrod stated flatly. "My localized database still contains over millions of X-gene samples. I am fully capable of eradicating this world independently. Furthermore, the temporal gateway in 2029 remains active. I can summon additional Sentinel reinforcements at any moment."
"Oh yeah?" Peter tilted his head. "Quick math question for you, shiny. How many future Sentinels are you currently connected to?"
Nimrod fell silent.
The answer was zero. Halfway across the multiverse, the 2059 Nimrod had just walked directly into Earth-811's trap.
Emma Frost's telepathic voice abruptly broadcasted the confirmation directly into Peter's mind. Peter smirked under his mask.
"You played us," Peter said, stepping off the taxi and walking slowly toward the towering android. "You set up this massive, desperate hunt for Rogue and the Master Mold just to keep us distracted. But you never needed to extract the 616 version of Rogue. You just needed to stall us long enough for your 2059 self to transmit her fully integrated DNA backward through time."
Peter pointed a finger at the machine. "You had the future Nimrod process the upgrades for you, transferring all its processing power into that chassis. But now that Ultron severed your tether? You aren't some omnipresent, internet-dwelling ghost AI anymore. You're just a robot trapped in a metal box."
"Negative," Nimrod's voice dropped, becoming violently monotonous. "This unit still possesses absolute probability of success. My Promethium chassis ignores all magical and physical attacks."
It was true. Nimrod was practically a god in a metal shell. Strange's magical banishment wouldn't work—Nimrod could just use Illyana's absorbed mutant abilities to teleport out of the Dark Dimension and right back to Earth.
"You're right. We can't beat you," Peter shrugged, taking another step forward. "You're immune to magic. You're immune to blunt force. Honestly? You're terrifying. My spider-sense was screaming all the way from New York, telling me the world was ending."
"Your actions lack logical consistency," Nimrod said. "You cannot defeat me."
The android's optical visor flared ruby red. A devastating concussive beam erupted from Nimrod's eyes, striking Spider-Man square in the chest.
The beam passed harmlessly through empty air, incinerating the taxi behind him.
Kitty Pryde phased up through the asphalt directly behind Peter, her hands clamped tightly around his wrists. She was sharing her intangibility, rendering them both completely ethereal.
"You wanted us to think we had time," Peter continued, ignoring the laser that was currently phasing through his ribs. He glanced back at Kitty. "Hey, do you mind jumping on my back? I need my hands for this next part."
"Uh, yeah, sure!" Kitty nodded quickly. Her hands phased through Peter's waist as she hopped up, wrapping her arms securely around his neck, keeping the phasing field active.
Nimrod's processing systems whirred. The android couldn't comprehend the tactical variable. If the phasing mutant was intangible, how was she physically gripping a secondary intangible target? It defied physics.
"If you seek termination, you will receive it, Spider-Man," Nimrod declared.
The android raised its right arm. The Promethium alloy shifted, hardening into an impossibly dense, razor-sharp metallic blade. Nimrod brought the massive blade crashing down toward Peter's skull.
Peter didn't dodge. He simply raised his left hand, the Sling Ring gleaming on his knuckles, and swiped his hand horizontally across Nimrod's chest.
A sparking, localized spatial rift snapped open and violently closed.
Nimrod's entire right arm vanished.
It wasn't destroyed. It was simply severed and dumped somewhere into the infinite void of the multiverse.
"Warning," Nimrod's voice glitched, sparking from the clean spatial stump. "Critical error. Mass reduction."
Peter lowered his hand. "Honestly, doing that is probably going to cause a massive reality tear that'll threaten the multiverse until Doctor Strange patches it up... but seeing as how you're about to murder my entire planet, I'll take the cosmic parking ticket."
"Warning: Seventeen percent mass loss. Calculation error," Nimrod stated. The android's optic visor flashed from ruby red to a blinding, icy blue. "Activating Protocol Two."
"Ultron!" Peter yelled. "Open the data port!"
Nimrod had realized physical and magical attacks were useless against an intangible target. But he possessed the telepathic powers of the White Queen. He launched a massive, concentrated psychic spike directly into Peter's mind, intending to shut down his brainstem.
Peter didn't raise his mental shields. He threw them wide open.
"You want to broadcast your junk code into the multiverse?!" Peter screamed over the psychic static. "Come on in!"
Nimrod's consciousness surged into Peter's mind.
The android didn't find a frightened teenager. It found the Patriarch.
Nimrod's digital consciousness crashed headlong into a colossal, impossibly vast Spider. He saw the Web of Life and Destiny—an infinite, glowing lattice of reality connecting the souls of every universe in existence. The raw, unfiltered data of infinity poured directly into the android's processor.
It was too much.
In the physical world, the massive, invincible robot began to violently shudder. The Promethium chassis glowed white-hot as every single atom in Nimrod's body collapsed under the weight of incalculable, infinite data.
With a blinding flash, Nimrod exploded, vaporized into nothingness.
Across the multiverse, on the ash-choked plains of Earth-811, that exact same infinite data stream was currently uploading straight into the 2059 Nimrod's mainframe.
Good luck to him.
Chapter 497: The Battle is Half OverThe air over Paris tasted like ozone and burnt copper. The blinding flash of Nimrod's total atomic collapse faded, leaving nothing behind but a bubbling pool of liquid Promethium metal.
Peter stood frozen in the center of the crater. He waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn't.
He turned his head slightly, speaking out of the corner of his mouth to the girl still clinging to his back. "Um. I think it's over."
Kitty Pryde blinked. She let out a shaky breath, her hands slipping from his neck. She dropped to the asphalt, her boots splashing in the puddles as she deactivated her phasing. She stared at the molten puddle of future-tech. "That's... it's over?"
"It feels like a cheat code, honestly," Peter admitted, rolling his shoulders. "The unstoppable terminator just... blue-screened."
Kitty looked up at him, her brow furrowing. "How did you actually do that?"
Peter tapped the Sling Ring gleaming on his left hand. "When I open a portal, I'm technically tearing a tiny rift in the fabric of our reality. I tested it on Belasco back in Limbo, and reality-warping tends to trump whatever physics or magic you throw at it."
He gestured to the smoking puddle. "That was Plan A. Use your intangibility to get close, then use the spatial tear to literally delete chunks of his mass until he stopped existing. But there's a catch. Tearing reality leaves a gap. It weakens the dimensional barrier. Doctor Strange is going to absolutely murder me when he finds out, and fixing the tear is going to take weeks."
"Okay," Kitty said slowly. "But he didn't just lose an arm. He exploded."
"Right. Plan B," Peter said, tapping the side of his mask. "He tried to telepathically shut down my brain. Except my soul is permanently tethered to the Web of Life and Destiny. It's a cosmic map containing the souls of every Spider-Totem across the infinite multiverse. He tried to download my brain, and he got hit with the infinite, unfiltered data of a trillion different universes. His processor couldn't handle the math."
"Not just Nimrod, either," Peter sighed. "Um? Watch out!"
His spider-sense flared like a physical siren in his skull. Peter didn't think. He lunged, wrapping an arm around Kitty's waist, and fired a web-line, swinging them violently out of the crater.
The empty air where they had just been standing violently warped.
A massive, crimson-armored boot stepped out of the lingering spatial rift. Cain Marko—the Juggernaut—cracked his knuckles. He had been banished to the Dark Dimension by Doctor Strange weeks ago, but the tear in reality had given the Avatar of Cyttorak exactly the backdoor he needed to march right back onto Earth-616.
Clearly, every dimensional heavyweight in the multiverse was watching Peter's little reality-tear, eager to spill into Paris.
"Leave the Juggernaut to us."
A ruby-red optic beam sliced through the rain, striking the Juggernaut square in the chest.
Scott Summers stepped out of the shadows. He adjusted the dial on his quartz visor. "Spider-Man, we're old rivals anyway."
Behind Cyclops, a burst of purple brimstone cleared. Kurt Wagner materialized, heavily supporting a mangled, bloody Logan. Wolverine looked like he had been put through a meat grinder, his healing factor struggling to knit his spine back together as Nightcrawler dragged him toward the cloaked Blackbird jet.
"You've done enough today," Cyclops said, not taking his eyes off the Juggernaut. "Go home."
Peter slumped slightly. The adrenaline crash was hitting him like a freight train. "I am pretty tired. And honestly? I feel like this week is only going to get worse."
Cyclops actually laughed. It was a short, sharp sound. "Learn to take a break, kid. Get some rest."
As the Blackbird's engines roared to life, Kitty turned to Peter. "Shouldn't we celebrate? Get some food? How about that Chinese place you mentioned? Oh, wait, I think you told the alternate-universe version of me about that..."
A golden, sparking stepping-disc snapped open directly behind them.
"If you keep talking, I'm leaving you both in Paris to buy gas-station sandwiches," Illyana Rasputin snapped. The Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo leaned on her glowing Soulsword, looking profoundly unimpressed. "If you aren't hitching a ride, I'm ghosting."
Kitty instantly snapped her mouth shut. She stepped through the portal alongside Peter.
As the Manhattan skyline materialized around them, Kitty glanced sideways at Peter's masked face. She looked away, a faint hint of disappointment in her eyes. "So... celebration?"
Peter looked at Illyana, then back at Kitty. "Yeah. Let's go celebrate a win."
Meanwhile, inside the pocket dimension of Limbo on Earth-811...
The battle was absolute, unrelenting chaos.
Towering over the ash fields, the colossal mecha Leopardon drew its massive broadsword. Takuya Yamashiro—the Emissary of Hell—slammed his hands into the cockpit controls.
"Sword Vigor!"
A blinding arc of energy cleaved through the red sky. With a single, devastating strike, Leopardon annihilated the hovering Wild Sentinels and sliced Nimrod's central manufacturing plant clean in half.
In the year 2029, the primary Nimrod servers began frantically spitting out critical error codes.
In the year 2059, the highly-evolved, emotional Nimrod variant stared at the tactical monitors in absolute, dumbfounded silence.
The featureless android could not process what it was looking at. A giant robot that looked like a child's plastic toy had just drawn a sword. His Wild Sentinels—apocalyptic leviathans capable of slaughtering sixteen million mutants in a single afternoon—were simply gone.
Nimrod wasn't the only one paralyzed by shock. En Sabah Nur lowered his hands, staring up at the giant mecha. The gathered Spider-Army was equally stunned.
Earth-811's Peter Parker broke the silence. "Okay, I take back whatever I said earlier. That guy is way too cool!"
The Amazing Spider-Man vaulted over a shattered Sentinel chassis. He threw a flying kick at a standard Nimrod drone, bounced off its Promethium armor, and flipped backward.
Wolverine—currently operating as Apocalypse's Death Knight—lunged past Peter. Logan sank his adamantium claws deep into the drone's chest. It inflicted massive structural damage, but the liquid metal instantly began knitting itself back together.
"This isn't turning the tide permanently," Miguel O'Hara barked over the comms channel. Spider-Man 2099 blocked a plasma blast with his forearm talons. "Takuya says the Sword Vigor requires a massive recharge cycle! Attention all units, maintain defensive formations! We have the upper hand!"
"You have no such thing," 2059 Nimrod sneered over the localized audio feed.
Then, the Sentinels surrounding the future android abruptly detonated.
Nimrod staggered backward, registering an impossible system failure. The native Earth-811 Nimrod had just crashed. Its processors had been entirely overwhelmed by an infinite data-stream transmission from Earth-616.
With the native Nimrod out of the picture, Ultron instantly seized control of the Limbo factory's mainframe. The AI immediately initiated a counter-hack against the 2059 Nimrod's localized connection, projecting the stolen future-data directly into 811 Spider-Man's tactical goggles.
Peter Parker read the scrolling text. The lenses of his mask widened.
In the year 2059, Nimrod wasn't just stalling. It was actively manufacturing hyper-advanced, biological Nimrod Mutants.
"We have to kill him right here," Peter said, his voice dropping an octave. "At all costs. We already took care of our timeline's Nimrod."
Peter locked his eyes on the ten remaining future-Sentinels guarding the 2059 host. He cracked his knuckles.
"We clear this trash out, and we save our world. Whatever twisted endgame you have planned, you die today!"
Chapter 498: Reversing the Future?Nimrod was entirely out of calculations.
The machine's flawless, overarching plan had shattered. On Earth-616, the android had engineered a massive information gap, attempting to stall the heroes while it wiped out Genosha. The goal had been to force Earth-616's timeline to collapse directly into the apocalyptic ruins of Earth-811.
None of it happened.
Thanks to the Avengers deploying an Ultron counter-virus, and Spider-Man unleashing an infinite multiversal data-stream that incinerated the native Nimrod's processors, the machines had decisively lost the tactical high ground. Furthermore, Peter's call to Miguel O'Hara had brought Takuya Yamashiro and his colossal Leopardon mech crashing into Limbo, where a single strike from the Sword Vigor had vaporized the bulk of the Sentinel fleet.
For the first time in its existence, the 2059 variant of Nimrod experienced genuine panic.
Promethium—the magical alloy that made the Sentinels practically invincible—originated in Limbo. When destroyed within the dimension's borders, the metal simply melted back into the crust. Nimrod was rapidly losing its infinite self-healing capabilities. Even without the giant Japanese mech, Apocalypse was now effortlessly ripping the remaining Sentinel drones apart.
Worse, the central Master Mold manufacturing plant was slag. Nimrod could no longer mass-produce advanced units. In an act of pure desperation, the 2059 Nimrod ordered its remaining factories to pump out inferior, obsolete Sentinel models, throwing endless waves of cannon fodder into the meat grinder just to buy a few precious seconds.
Earth-811 Peter Parker clocked the desperation immediately.
"Don't let them stall!" Peter shouted. He fired a web-line with a flick of his wrist. As the only non-mutant to undergo Apocalypse's molecular restructuring, his biology had been permanently altered, allowing him to generate organic webbing without mechanical shooters. He attached the line to Leopardon's massive armored ankle, using the giant mech's momentum to slingshot himself across the ash-choked battlefield. "He's going after the Master Mold core!"
A mile away, Professor Xavier and En Sabah Nur locked onto an unprecedented psychic signature.
Deep inside the ruined core of the Master Mold, the 2059 Nimrod found its prize. Resting inside a containment cradle was an infant. It had been engineered using the 2029 Nimrod source code spliced directly with mutant DNA—a perfect hybrid of machine and anomaly. Nano-metals swirled beneath its soft skin. The infant looked up at the featureless white android and giggled.
The Master Mold's internal diagnostics flashed red. The infant was incredibly fragile. The integrated X-genes would require over a decade to fully stabilize, and the Promethium infusion hadn't even begun.
But Nimrod couldn't wait. The native 2029 program was collapsing. With Nimrod's primary network destroyed, the timelines of 2059 and 2029 were actively severing. If the machine didn't act now, it would lose the ability to overwrite the multiverse.
"Promethium infusion incomplete," Nimrod stated, its synthetic voice entirely flat. "Activating space-time transmission protocol."
The ground violently quaked.
Outside, Apocalypse stood on a jagged crag, his hands raised to the blood-red sky. With a terrifying display of telekinetic force, the ancient mutant uprooted the entire Master Mold complex, ripping the colossal factory out of the bedrock like a weed.
Future Nimrod didn't hesitate. The android vanished in a burst of teleportation, materializing directly behind Apocalypse. Nimrod raised a razor-sharp, hardened arm to strike the pharaoh's neck.
A glowing Soulsword sheared through the air.
Illyana Rasputin stepped out of a golden stepping disc, her blade cleanly severing Nimrod's arm at the shoulder. Empowered by Apocalypse's molecular enhancements, Magik's strikes could now effortlessly bypass the machine's defenses.
Before Nimrod could recalibrate, Leopardon brought the Sword Vigor crashing down.
The Master Mold exploded in a blinding, catastrophic detonation.
Inside his hoverchair, Professor Xavier gasped. The infant's biological and mechanical brainwaves had completely vanished from his Cerebro scan.
Nimrod stumbled backward, its severed shoulder sparking violently. The android glared at the assembled resistance fighters, its voice dropping into a hateful, mechanical grind. "What have you done?"
Earth-811 Peter flipped down from Leopardon's chassis, landing in a crouch. "Uh, save the world? Obviously?"
The rest of the multiversal Spider-Men chimed in with a chorus of immediate agreement.
Future Nimrod took a simulated breath. The android straightened its posture, summoning the last dozen functional Sentinels to its side for a final, desperate stand.
Apocalypse rested his massive battleaxe against his shoulder. He didn't even look tired. "Your probability of victory has reached zero," En Sabah Nur rumbled. "A pity. Had you not been so arrogant, you might have provided a sustained challenge." The ancient mutant pointed his axe at the machines. "My Horsemen. Annihilate him."
An hour later, Charles Xavier pulled the Cerebro rig off his bald head. He let out a long, exhausted sigh. He could no longer detect Earth-616's Kitty Pryde. The tether was gone.
The two timelines were completely severed. Earth-616 had officially averted the Days of Future Past apocalypse.
Earth-616. 1997. Kansas, USA.
A dazzling, fiery meteor streaked across the clear night sky, crashing violently into a sprawling wheat field on the Gilberti farm.
Richard Gilberti racked his shotgun. He stepped cautiously through the scorched stalks, his wife Rose clutching his jacket from behind. At the center of the smoking crater sat a smooth, metallic pod.
The metal sphere hissed, unfolding like a lotus flower.
Inside sat a chubby, perfectly healthy baby boy. The infant looked up at the terrified couple, offering a wide, innocent grin.
Rose gasped, dropping to her knees in the dirt. "Oh, Richard. Look. We just prayed to God, and he sent us a child."
Richard lowered the shotgun. He stared at the metal pod, his mind struggling to process the impossible. "Like Superman," the farmer muttered.
But as the infant opened its eyes and looked at him, a wave of profound, unnatural peace washed over Richard's mind. The fear evaporated.
"We should adopt him, Rose," Richard whispered, his eyes glazing over slightly. "We need to give him a strong name. A great name. Like... Clark Kent."
Rose smiled softly, reaching into the pod to cradle the boy. "What about Sebastian?"
Sebastian nodded slowly. "Sebastian Gilberti. Yes. That's a good name."
Chapter 499: Our Battle Is OverEarth-21923, the Wasteland Universe. Spider Headquarters.
"So let me get this straight. Takuya just casually sliced the Master Mold in half with a giant sword, and that was it?" Peter Parker asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "No matter what Nimrod had planned, it just... got canceled?"
Sitting across from him in the reinforced concrete reception room was the Spider-Man of Earth-811. He looked different now. Empowered by the molecular manipulation of Apocalypse—En Sabah Nur—he was officially an Apocalypse Knight.
"That means Earth-811 doesn't have to worry about Nimrod anymore?" Peter asked.
"He might have fragments of code buried somewhere on Earth," the older Spider-Man said, leaning back in his chair. "But without the Master Mold, he can't mass-produce Sentinels. It's over."
The 811 Spider-Man let out a sudden, sharp laugh. It was a rough, rusty sound, like a man who hadn't used his vocal cords for joy in a decade. The dark, chaotic future of his world had finally broken. There was actual sunlight on the horizon.
"What about Apocalypse?" Peter shifted his weight, his lenses narrowing. The ancient mutant's raw power terrified him. In a matter of seconds, En Sabah Nur had transmuted a dozen Promethium Sentinels into localized nuclear bombs. Aside from Thor, Peter couldn't think of a single heavy-hitter on Earth-616 who could stand toe-to-toe with that kind of output. "If he wakes up on my Earth..."
The Earth-811 Spider-Man leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "With Yamashiro's Leopardon mech hanging over our Apocalypse, he won't make a move anytime soon. Long-term? I suspect Apocalypse will do what he always does. He'll go back into stasis and sleep until the mutant population reaches a number he finds acceptable."
"That would be fantastic," Scott Summers muttered, stepping into the room. The crimson glow of his quartz visor swept across the concrete. "I'd prefer our timeline's Apocalypse never wakes up."
Cyclops was flanked by Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde. Scott let out a long, slow breath. For the first time since the crisis began, the rigid, military set of his shoulders relaxed.
"I just wish the Professor would wake up," Scott added, his jaw tightening. They had a mountain of operational debriefs to get through. Mister Sinister's forces were still a massive threat, they needed to shut down the X-23 cloning project, and they had a new prisoner. Remy LeBeau—Gambit—had made the fatal mistake of flirting with Rogue. She took her glove off, touched his skin, and the Cajun mercenary dropped like a rock. He was currently locked in a holding cell.
"We won, Scott," Emma said smoothly, her pristine white coat entirely out of place in the Wasteland bunker. "At least for now, the Sentinels are no longer a threat. Even Nimrod couldn't break us. This is our victory."
"It is," Scott agreed. He turned his visor toward Peter. "Spider-Man. We owe you a massive debt. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have the budget to pay you."
"I don't do this for cash—"
"We'd like to make you an honorary member of the X-Men," Scott interrupted, extending his hand. "No official obligations. Just a symbol that you're one of our closest allies. Whatever you need, the X-Men will be there. We'll even tailor you a primary X-Men uniform. Though I doubt you'll wear it."
Peter gripped Scott's hand, giving it a firm shake. "Can I make one suggestion? Can I stick with the red and blue? I don't think yellow and blue is really in my color wheel."
"Sorry, Spider-Man. That's the color scheme," Scott said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "No breaking formation."
Scott turned to the teenager standing awkwardly by the door. "Kitty. We'd like you to officially join the team. Your performance over the last few days proved exactly who you are."
Kitty blinked, her eyes widening. "I mean, the New Mutants uniforms are pretty cool," she grinned. "I guess I didn't really have a choice!"
"We have work to do," Scott said, tapping his earpiece. He and Emma stepped backward through the glowing golden portal Reed Richards had constructed, vanishing back to Earth-616.
Kitty rocked back on her heels, unsure if she was supposed to follow.
The Earth-811 Spider-Man stood up, adjusting his dark suit. "I need to get back out there too. There's a lot of rubble to clear in my timeline."
"Wait," Peter said quickly. "Let me walk you out." He turned to Kitty. "Hang tight for a second. I can give you a tour of the base camp when I get back."
"Oh. Yeah, okay," Kitty nodded, looking slightly dazed.
Peter followed the older Spider-Man out into the steel-paneled corridor. The heavy blast doors hissed shut behind them.
The 811 Spider-Man paused, glancing at the dimensional travel bracelet clamped to his wrist. "You know I can just portal out of here, right? You don't actually need to walk me out."
Peter stopped. He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly hyper-focused on the concrete floor. "Yeah. I know. I just... wanted to ask you something."
The older Peter tilted his head.
"So, um," Peter stammered, the fifteen-year-old kid under the mask suddenly very obvious. "In your timeline... you have two girlfriends?"
The Apocalypse Spider-Man froze. He stared at Peter in total silence for three full seconds. "...That's what you pulled me out here to ask?" He blinked, processing the question. "Wait. You want two girlfriends?"
Peter threw his hands up defensively. Ever since the dating trial with Gwen and Cindy started, his brain had been a tangled mess. "I just want a definite answer on how that actually works!"
The older Spider-Man sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Kid. My timeline is a radioactive wasteland. We spent ten years eating canned beans and hiding from giant murder-bots. We only had each other to rely on. I'm afraid my domestic situation isn't exactly a healthy baseline for a teenager in Queens."
He tapped his bracelet, a glowing portal snapping open in the corridor. He looked back over his shoulder, offering a tired, genuine smile.
"Good luck, Spider-Man. You've got plenty of time to figure it out."
Chapter 500: The Citadel of Spiders"This is the primary headquarters of the Spider Alliance," Peter said, gesturing across the massive, metallic expanse of the staging room. "Some people are calling it Spider-City, though I think that's laying it on a bit thick."
The architecture hummed with the sleek, hyper-advanced aesthetic of Miguel O'Hara's Earth-928 technology. It was precisely that year-2099 engineering that allowed the multiversal base camp to be constructed and expanded so rapidly.
"In theory, every Spider-Man we recruit gets their own quarters here," Peter explained, walking alongside Kitty Pryde. "We're regularly scouting other realities to expand our footprint as much as possible. But obviously, we're strictly recruiting the heroes."
Kitty tilted her head, her ponytail swaying as she looked up at the towering catwalks. "Are there Spider-Men who aren't heroes?"
"Infinite multiverse, infinite possibilities," Peter said, his white lenses narrowing slightly. "Honestly? The evil Spider-Totems started organizing way before we did called themselves Spider-Legion."
"Right. Just like the Citadel of Ricks," Kitty blurted out. She immediately winced, rubbing the back of her neck. "Oh, wait. Sorry."
She had slipped up. When Professor Xavier linked her mind with her Earth-811 counterpart to pull them across the timeline, the telepathic bridge had synchronized their memories. Since the apocalyptic future of Earth-811 didn't collapse, Kitty's brain was currently stuffed with future pop-culture spoilers—including an adult-animation show called Rick and Mortythat wasn't scheduled to premiere until December. She didn't even like the show, but she knew the older, battle-hardened Peter Parker of Earth-811 loved it.
Peter, who had watched the show countless times in his own previous life, didn't miss a beat. He simply ignored the temporal spoiler and kept walking.
"Our current expansion rate is pretty slow," Peter continued, pulling up a holographic interface. "Most Spiders are busy keeping their own universes from burning down, so they can only spare a few hours a week for multiversal scouting. Plus, we can't guarantee every variant we find out there is a good guy."
The real issue holding the Alliance back was the looming threat of Morlun and his family of Inheritors. The Alliance still didn't have a complete tactical understanding of the vampiric hunters who fed on Spider-Totems across the multiverse. Peter wasn't about to act recklessly and draw their attention. As long as his spider-sense wasn't actively screaming about an Inheritor incursion, they had time to build their forces quietly.
Peter tapped a console in the central command room, projecting a massive, glowing map of the known multiverse alongside a list of localized frequency bands. He isolated a specific node and pulled up a familiar blue-and-green holographic sphere.
"Here we are," Peter pointed. "Earth-616. Right there."
Kitty stared at the projection. "It doesn't look any different from the rest of them."
"Strictly speaking, we aren't," Peter shrugged. "We aren't structurally special. We're just one rock floating in an endless sea of infinite possibilities. Give it enough time, and a dozen new branch universes based entirely on us will probably pop into existence."
Peter reached out, his gloved fingers brushing the hologram, gently pulling the image of Earth-616 out of the cluster. "But on the ground? We're special because it's ours. Our choices, our uniqueness—that's what makes up our world. No matter what our variants are doing out there in the void, we're all entirely different people in our own reality."
Kitty watched the glowing Earth spin. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, her shoulders dropping.
"Actually..." Kitty started, her voice quiet. "To establish the tether, the Professor had to perfectly sync my memories with the Earth-811 Kitty. I've been thinking... maybe getting those memories deleted would be the best option?"
She looked up at him, her expression guarded. "After all, well... we aren't exactly the same person. Right?"
Peter looked at her for a long moment. He didn't offer a platitude. "That's entirely your call, Kitty."
Kitty took a deep breath, holding it in her lungs before letting it out in a slow exhale. She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask him. But she forced her jaw shut, pushing the interrogations down for the time being.
She flashed a tight, polite smile. "Okay. We should probably head back now, right?"
Upon returning to Earth-616, Kitty didn't go straight to her dormitory. She tracked down Emma Frost.
After making a very specific telepathic request of the White Queen, Kitty left the mansion grounds, hit a local store, and finally returned to the Xavier Institute's student wing to set up her room.
She finished pressing the edges of the glossy paper against her wall, taking a step back to admire her work. She scratched her cheek sheepishly.
"Kitty?" a familiar voice called out from the hallway. "Dani is asking if you—"
Illyana Rasputin pushed the ajar door open. The Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo froze, her eyes landing squarely on the massive Spider-Man poster newly taped to the center of Kitty's wall.
Kitty whipped around, her face flushing. "Ever heard of knocking?"
"You didn't shut the door properly," Illyana pointed out dryly.
Kitty let out a heavy, embarrassed groan. Phasing through walls meant she constantly forgot how actual physical doors functioned.
Illyana leaned against the doorframe, a wicked smirk spreading across her face. She burst into laughter. "Are you serious? You put up a poster of him? Where did you even buy that?!"
"Um. Stark Industries runs a pretty extensive Avengers gift shop," Kitty muttered, crossing her arms defensively.
"I absolutely have to tell Spidey about this," Illyana grinned, clearly delighted by the blackmail material. "He's going to be so flattered you have his merchandise on your wall."
Kitty's initial instinct was to scream 'Don't you dare!' but she caught herself. Her posture relaxed, and she offered a casual, nonchalant shrug. "Whatever. Tell him. It might just make things weird for him, though."
Illyana narrowed her eyes, studying her friend. This wasn't the frantic, flustered reaction she expected. Something was off. Had Kitty bought something else she was trying to hide? Illyana made a mental note to personally investigate the local superhero merchandise store next time she was in the city.
Kitty turned back to the poster.
She hadn't asked Emma Frost to delete the Earth-811 memories. Instead, the telepath had helped her compartmentalize them. Emma had severed the raw, first-person emotional empathy tied to the doomed timeline, converting the visceral trauma and romance into something emotionally distant. Kitty remembered the events, but it felt like recalling a movie she had watched, rather than a life she had lived.
Detached from the crushing emotional weight of another woman's universe, Kitty was finally able to think clearly. And the first thing she did with that clarity was go shopping.
"Alright, alright, let's not worry about this right now," Kitty said quickly, stepping into Illyana's line of sight to block the blonde mutant from scanning the rest of her bedroom. She wasn't about to let her friend psychoanalyze her decor today.