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Parahumans Series - WildbowSpider-Man - All Media TypesSpider-Man (Comicverse)Marvel (Comics)Marvel 616Marvel

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Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver & Peter ParkerPeter Parker/Mary Jane Watson

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Cross-Posted on FanFiction.NetCrossoverAction/Adventure

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English

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Published:2026-05-07Updated:2026-07-30Words:60,582Chapters:14/?Comments:255Kudos:390Bookmarks:136Hits:13,097

Tangled in a Stranger's Web

CHPrime

Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Peter

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

I've had a pretty strange life when I think about it.

I started off as Peter Parker, nebbish bookworm, picked on and ignored in high school without a friend in the world. Until one day, I was bitten by a radioactive spider and got superpowers.

My first instinct had been to use these new gifts for a quick buck, and boy did I ever. I became Spider-Man, the TV sensation raking in the dough. I was setting myself up for the high life, and din't care about any of the pricks who had ignored me.

That all changed when my uncle died. Because I couldn't be bothered to stop a thief.

After that brutal slap in the face, I knew I couldn't afford not to care anymore. I became a hero, even as I tried to keep my minuscule life from falling apart, stop villains who routinely tried to kill me for getting in their way or just because they were that kind of crazy, my psychotic employer who hated my superhero identity to a truly deranged degree, and help Aunt May stay afloat after Uncle Ben's death.

It wasn't easy. At times I wanted to quit, and I did once or twice. But I always came back, because it was the right thing to do.

But not without losing too many people. Kids I couldn't save. The girl I loved. My best friend, who turned psycho before we were finally able to be honest with each other as he died in my arms.

After a host of stupid, stupid decisions, I got through high school, and then college, and finally grad school mostly unscathed. Even with JJJ constantly trying to make me out to be the bad guy, I found a place among all the other heroes in New York City. I even had time to meet the love of my life, and then get lucky enough to marry her.

Suffice to say, after more than a decade of being a hero, I was pretty used to all the blindsides life could throw at me. More importantly, I was also friends with some jerk who was the brother-in-law to the smartest guy on earth (plus a few thousand other planets with technology beyond anything we hairless apes have ever managed) so I was pretty used to excess weirdness being thrown into my lap.

So when I told my new hosts that I had been thrown through a wormhole and landed in this parallel universe earth that was much like home but also different in every important way, I probably said it a bit too casually.

"An…alternate dimension." The pudgy blonde woman sitting behind the expensive desk repeated. From the way her fingers were twitching towards what could only be a hidden button, my answer had pissed her off. Then again, everything I said seemed to piss her off. I thought that was only a problem with Jonah.

Maybe she was his counterpart in this universe?

I shook my head. Apparently, whatever the bomber, who I now knew was named Bakuda, had been doing was only a smokescreen to break her boss out of prison. And he was a villain who was strong enough to operate in the open for the better part of a decade. Under the circumstances, I'd be pretty pissed at everything too.

"It's the truth, I swear. Do you have any experience with those?"

The man standing next to her, a frowny guy with blue armor and a beard—Armsmaster, if I remembered correctly—answered in the director's stead. "We have some contact with another reality. We call it Earth Aleph, and it has no records matching anything you are describing."

"Hmm. I think ours is called Earth-616. I don't usually deal with this sort of nonsense." I scratched the side of my mask, and could feel the threads thinning. I'd need to fix that, sooner or later. "And all I know is that I got eaten by some portal on my way home, and now I'm here for the foreseeable future unless one of my…"

Oh, that was an idea. "Do you have any scientists named Reed Richards? If he has a counterpart here, he's probably got a dozen PhDs from every field of physics. Maybe he knows something?"

"I'm afraid there are no records of a Doctor Reed Richards on this earth." The screen with the hologram woman named Dragon answered with some sort of Canadian accent. I couldn't tell you which region it was from, just that she was from up north. I personally blame Logan and Wade's lack of proper Canuck pronunciation for my ignorance.

In any case, there went the first option. "Tony Stark?"

"Not in any relevant field."

"Hank Pym?"

"No."

"Henry McCoy? Charles Xavier? Bruce Banner? Stephen Strange?"

"No."

Time for a long shot then. "...Victor von Doom? Goes by Doctor Doom? Rules over Latveria with an iron fist? Literally, thanks to his suit of armor?"

The director—Piggot—stared at me. Well, more intensely than she had been.

"Maybe M.O.D.O.K.? He's a weird giant floating head, runs an evil scientist cabal named A.I.M. that dresses all their minions up in beekeeper costumes?"

Piggot's eye twitched.

"There is no M.O.D.O.K., A.I.M., 'Doctor Doom', or any reference to a 'Latveria' in any document or historical text in our databases, Spider-Man."

No Latveria? Weird. Then which micronation bullied Symkaria in this world?

I briefly wondered if they were missing other countries on this earth. Or maybe it balanced out, and places like Wyoming and New Zealand really did exist here.

Piggot let out a long sigh. "In any case, the PRT would like to thank you for apprehending the dangerous fugitive Bakuda."

"Thanks, but I did tell you—"

"The Undersiders are villains, ones who recently robbed a bank and injured a number of our Wards. Whatever role they played was purely for selfish reasons." Armsmaster cut in.

I couldn't exactly argue with people who had dealt with them for months, and the kids had implied as much, but they didn't seem like the type of criminals who hurt innocent people.

…Alright, maybe that Tattletale kid. And Regent was unconscious the entire time. And I hadn't even seen this Hellhound they mentioned. Though Grue seemed—well, no, level-headed didn't mean he was a good egg.

But the bug girl…No, I hadn't been wrong about her. She wanted to do good. I knew that look, even behind a mask. I didn't regret letting their little group get away, at least not yet.

They were just stupid kids, like I had been. They deserved a chance to be better.

"In any event. You are unusual, but there is a procedure for cases like yours." Piggot said. "We have no way to send you…home, so for the time being, we would be happy to offer you a place to stay here in our barracks."

"And join the Protectorate, right?" Probably not. My Spider-Sense was reacting faintly. More faintly than it normally did around spooks like Fury, but that was still trouble I didn't need.

"That would be an option, if things progress smoothly." Armsmaster replied.

"Maybe…Do you mind if I think about that one for a day or two? It's a big decision, and I'd like to get the lay of the land first."

I had always liked to think of myself as a loner, even if that had always been a big fat lie with a hero community as tightly knit as New York's, and me teaming up with some new up-and-coming hero every week. Plus, I didn't know anything about this world or what the PRT really stood for. Was it like S.H.I.E.L.D., or was it one of those evil organizations that ruled from the shadows? I didn't want to commit to anything yet.

Piggot gave a curt nod. "That is your right. Do you plan to stay in Brockton Bay?"

"Might as well. I was spat out here instead of New York for a reason. I hope." I glanced over at Dragon. "Do you guys have any clue how this happened?"

"Unfortunately not. Your case is quite strange, even by our standards." Dragon answered.

"Preliminary study of Bakuda's ordinance reveals some…unusual bombs." Armsmaster said. "While none of them could open such a portal on their own, it is possible a combination of them might have been able to open a temporary wormhole." He paused. "You first appeared next to some of Bakuda's victims, correct?"

"Yeah." And what a welcome that had been. "I'll try and stay close. I wouldn't want to wander off in case my friends show up."

I could tell Piggot was biting her cheek. I did that sometimes when I didn't want to sigh. "Very well. We'll expect a call from you soon. In the meantime, my secretary will show you the paperwork you'll need in order to register."

I blinked. Not that anyone could see. "Register? With the government? For being a hero?"

"Yes. The PRT requires all heroes to fill out forms, even the independents." Piggot's glare didn't falter. "No exceptions."

…This was all sounding terribly familiar.

The PRT also asked me if I wanted to be part of their press release, but I declined. I was never one for them back home, usually too busy trying to catch whatever date the villain of the day interrupted, and I guess it carried over here. Plus, Piggot had just thrown a small mountain of papers at me and that always made me feel just a little spiteful.

I found myself in the PRT's cafeteria, having some clam chowder while I slowly whittled away at the forms. It wasn't too bad, all things considered. They didn't ask for my secret identity, and the paperwork was simple enough, if tedious. The 'extra-dimensional' subform doubled the packet length, but it was all manageable. Even reasonable. At times.

"Hey, new guy! Good work with Bakuda!"

I glanced up from a spoonful of cooling chowder to see two other heroes approaching me with cafeteria trays. One was a man in a red costume with a matching visor, and a woman with a contrasting blue suit with a computer circuit theme. "Thanks. Did you guys have any trouble disabling all her traps?"

"We're all alive, and no more explosions have been reported." The woman shrugged as the two sat down next to me. "Dragon is good at what she does."

Right, the hologram woman that I had been talking to. I guess she was an AI or something if she'd be able to disarm a bunch of nonsense tech while listening in on my crazy story? Figures, with the holographic face.

"Piggot's already buried you in paperwork? That woman is ruthless." The man chuckled before offering his hand. "Assault."

The woman followed suit. "Battery."

Ha, cute. "Spider-Man." I returned both their handshakes simultaneously, earning another smirk from Assault and a polite eye-roll from Battery.

"So you're from New York City too?" Assault began as he poked at his salad. I nodded. "Nice. I saw you swing in. Using your webs downtown must be a blast."

"There's nothing quite like throwing yourself off a twenty-story building to run up a fifty-story high-rise."

"Can't say I ever had the pleasure." Assault's thoughtful expression broke into a grin. "Though there was this one time I got chased all the way up and then down Empire State. That was a great afternoon."

"You and I have very different memories of that day." Battery snorted with a whiff of humor.

I laughed and raised my spoon. "So is the food still better in the City? Don't get me wrong, I love lukewarm cooking oil as much as the next guy, but there really is no substitute for New York grease."

Battery sighed wistfully. "That's the worst thing about being posted in Brockton, no good street food."

"A crying shame." Assault agreed, before leaning forward. "Anyway, is the paperwork tripping you up? I nearly ripped my hair out when I filled one of these things out for the first time."

"We're way less formal back home. There isn't a central hero organization, at least not like you guys have." I frowned through another spoonful of chowder. "Though I'm pretty sure the spooks have files on all of us. I think they write up everything we do."

"All the paperwork, and you don't have to see a page of it? Your world sounds better and better, man."

Battery glanced at the forms around me. "Looks like you're stuck on the ratings."

"They're telling me to report to testing for a proper test, but with the bombs…"

"Yeah, it'll take a while to set that up. For now, you should be fine with provisional estimates." Assault said casually. A bit too casually. "You've got a pretty standard strength and speed package, right? Plus that wall-clinging thing and the webs. Anything else?"

"That about covers it." Should I tell them about my Spider-Sense, or the fact that I couldn't make the webs all by myself? This was a pretty blatant attempt to pump me for more info on top of the paperwork…"Say, did the two frowny-pants upstairs put you up to this?"

Battery's lips pursed. Assault just shrugged. "Got it in one, my man." Still, he wasn't deterred. "You seem like you know how paranoid bosses can get, especially when someone starts talking about alternate dimensions."

"Eh. Fair enough." I decided to keep my Spider-Sense to myself. Assault and Battery seemed okay, but I still didn't know anything. For all I knew, they had already infected me with nanobots through the chowder. I probably shouldn't have sat down and eaten the first thing they shoved in front of me, but my Spider-Sense didn't go off, and there were worse ways to be filled with nanobots.

Still, I figured that I might as well use their expertise while they were here. "I'm pretty handy with machines back home, does that mean I count as one of these 'Tinkers'?"

What followed was a conversation about how powers worked on Earth Bet. Here, people started getting them around the time a mute, naked golden man appeared in the early 80s.

Maybe he was this world's version of Silver Surfer? But without Galactus. And Norrin was a chatterbox, which was another difference. An eloquent chatterbox, but he never stopped talking. This Scion guy had only ever said his name. And thirty years was a long time for a Galactus to show up after his herald arrived. But space was vast, and…

It was fine. No good would come from needlessly spreading panic. This universe seemed different enough that superficial similarities didn't mean anything.

Probably.

Focusing on more tangible things and the way Assault described it, all superhumans were Mutants, more or less born with the predisposition for powers. No radioactive potions or spectral alien magic either, just genetics and trauma. And even then, only so much genetics.

Even their superscientists, who were all like Forge because they didn't really understand what they were doing. They even handed me a gizmo Armsmaster had made to prove it, and they were right, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I could identify what each part did, but I couldn't understand why it could run as much voltage as it did, what the battery was made of, or what exact alloy the wiring was. It was bizarre, I could usually make some sense of stuff like this.

They were pretty weirded out by how powers worked back home too. "A radioactive spider bite? How the hell did that give you superpowers and not cancer?" "Magic and gods? That's just science you don't understand!"

But most surprising of all was their reaction to 616's geniuses. "Your Tinkertech can be reproduced?!" Battery exclaimed loudly.

"Uh. Yeah. It's all science and technology. As long as you have someone who can decipher the blueprint, anyone can make just about anything."

"Forget that, you've been to space?!" Assault cut in.

"Um. Yes?" I blinked. Not that they could see it. "Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong. That happened in the 60's on my Earth, was that—"

"No, we had them too." Assault cut in. "I mean you, personally. You've been to outer space?"

"Oh. Not often, but it's happened once or twice." There was that one time I had to stop Doc Ock's orbiting laser or whatever, that time I needed to team up with Doom, when Thanos got all the Infinity Gems, once or twice with the Avengers, and I guess Battleworld and finding Venom counted…I had probably forgotten a few other times that had happened…

…What did it say about my life that I could forget a bunch of times I went into space?

And now that I was thinking about this, did saving JJJJ when I was just starting out count? No, that wasn't even geosynchronous orbit, I could still breathe, and…

Oh. Right. My two new friends were still staring at me in shock.

"He says it like it's nothing." Assault threw his hands up. "Yeah guys, I've just been to space a couple dozen times, nothing you should care about!"

"I'm not saying that, I know I'm a lucky guy, but that's always someone else's hard work, and there is no one else available, it's not like I make a habit out of it!" I exclaimed.

"Lucky son of a bitch doesn't know—" Battery stopped suddenly to clear her throat after realizing she was talking out loud. "Sorry. What I meant to say was that you're…" Her shoulders sagged. "Lucky son of a bitch."

Normally, I would have laughed that off, but there was something in the way she said it that made me pause. Something in the way her jokey partner didn't say or do anything to egg her on after that obvious setup rubbed me wrong.

"...You say it like you don't have any astronauts." I tried. "It's been thirty years since powers and super-science first appeared, there's no way you haven't made huge leaps in space travel, right? You probably have a moon base and everything."

"We do not." Assault exhaled sharply. Like I had reopened an old wound. "The one Tinker who tried got his brain fried and turned into a psychopath."

I felt the tension in the air. It wasn't setting off my Spider-Sense, which had had an odd blip or two ever since coming to this building, but something more primal and obvious. "...Do I want to know about this?"

"To put it simply, Spider-Man…" Battery shared a glance with her partner. "We on Earth-Bet have heroes, and we have villains." Her posture was rigid. "But we also have monsters."

Our friendly chat took a turn for the worse after that.

After I finished the darker half of my orientation and dropped off my paperwork, I headed outside into the city proper. I know I'm spoiled by the New York skyline, but Brockton really was a dingy town, abandoned by time and economics. It made web-swinging a real pain, but at least it wasn't Houston…

The streets were cracked, with almost all the buildings stuck in the architectural dark age that was the 70s. And while NYC had plenty of crummy places once you got past the gentrification, the slums here carved their way across the entire city. Still, once I laid my head down…

…Oh crap, I didn't have anywhere to sleep.

I went through my bag that I had hidden before going after Bakuda. One set of slightly frumpy street clothes, check. My Fantastic Four brand phone, check. And a quick look revealed it still worked on this planet! I could kiss Reed for all the money he saved me on phone bills. Best Christmas gift ever.

I tried calling MJ, just to check if the portal was still open or if Reed put an interdimensional doodad in the phone that I forgot about. All I got was an unfamiliar answering machine.

After that was a bit of spare webbing, a tracer or three, and finally, buried beneath everything else…a thousand dollars. As luck would have it, I had been coming back from the bank when the magic whatsit swallowed me, so I wasn't totally broke. And if I knew anything about towns like this, renting a flophouse would be dirt cheap, so long as I didn't mind having my bag stolen.

…But this was money that was supposed to pay the exterminator. And if I was going to spend it all in an alternate dimension…

Oh man, MJ was going to kill me. Or at least pretend to, and make a pretty good headway.

I could have gone back to the PRT. They would give me room and board as long as I played hero with them. It would be the reasonable thing to do. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. My Spider-Sense never went off without a good reason…

…What did it say about my life that I thought that trying to make it in the slums was a better idea than sleeping in a government-funded fortress?

Okay, okay. I didn't want to seem too pathetic to my new hosts. I could find a hole in the wall and try to find a job that wouldn't ask too many questions for a day or two. I could get a few outside perspectives on the PRT and familiarize myself with the city.

After that, I would return with my head hung in shame and accept the sweet security of a government stipend while I waited for Reed or Doctor Strange to get a call from MJ and figure out where the hell I had disappeared to.

That sounded like an okay plan. It wouldn't work in the long run, and I was probably better off giving up immediately, but I had to do something to smooth down my conscience and paranoia.

Besides, even in a city as miserable as this one, NYC had long since taught me that connections were the only way to get your foot in the door. What were the chances that I'd run into the poor shmucks who had low enough standards to hire me off the street?

Notes:

I'll sometimes post a few joke excerpts on SpaceBattles, go there if you want to check them out.

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Chapter 1359 - 2