The blinding red flash of the Pym Particle arrow faded. The jagged mountain peak fell eerily silent, save for the howling of the wasteland wind.
Peter Parker's muscles screamed in protest as he pushed himself up from the cracked bedrock. The black symbiote surged over his shoulders, rapidly dissolving the sticky golden webbing Anansi had used to pin him down. Peter reached out, wrapping his gauntlet around the leather-wrapped hilt of Mjolnir. He lifted it effortlessly, sparks of blue lightning and golden bio-electricity dancing across the ancient Uru metal.
The Fantastic Four hovercar drifted over the ridge and set down in the dirt. Clint Barton hopped over the side chassis, his bow already lowered.
"What's the play, kid?" Clint grunted, his cybernetic eye whirring as it scanned the empty rock.
Peter shook his head, his breathing ragged inside the Iron Spider helmet. "He's not done. Pym Particles don't kill; they just buy you a few seconds. He'll bounce back from the Quantum Realm any second now. And Anansi was right about one thing... just because I found a loophole to punch him doesn't mean I'm his equal. I'm not Thor. I can't win a battle of attrition against a god."
"So what do we do?" Clint asked.
Before Peter could formulate a plan, a pinpoint of blinding red light expanded in the center of the crater. Anansi materialized out of thin air, his molecular structure rapidly scaling back up to full size. The God of Stories didn't look amused. He looked exhausted by their persistence.
Anansi didn't bother offering another monologue. He simply raised his wrist and flicked his fingers.
A thick strand of glowing, golden spider-silk shot forward, slapping directly against Clint's chest. The archer froze. His cybernetic eye instantly dimmed. His posture went completely slack, his bow slipping from his grip as his face settled into a vacant, blissed-out stare.
"Hey! Nobody glues Colonel Sanders but me!" Deadpool screamed, drawing a katana and charging forward.
Anansi sidestepped the blade and casually backhanded Wade across the jaw, simultaneously pressing a patch of golden webbing to his mask. Wade hit the dirt, instantly going limp, letting out a muffled, contented sigh.
Ashley vaulted out of the hovercar, racking the slide of her scavenged shotgun. A third golden thread tapped her dead in the center of her forehead. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed against the fender, a dopey, peaceful smile spreading across her face.
Anansi dusted off his woven robes. "They are so painfully simple, Patriarch. Their desires are shallow. Easily satisfied. I just handed them their perfect fantasies, and their minds surrendered to the narrative without a single fight."
The Spider God stepped slowly toward Peter. "But you? You are a walking paradox. I don't even know what lie to feed you. The only narrative that would pacify your soul is a perfect world. A world that doesn't need Spider-Man. That doesn't need the Avengers. But a world without heroes does not exist. And if I wove that specific lie for you..." Anansi gestured toward the hammer in Peter's hand. "...it would only affirm your pure heart, proving you worthy of Mjolnir."
Peter listened, his grip tightening on the hilt. The thunder rumbled overhead, responding to his rising pulse.
"Actually," Peter said, his voice cutting clearly through the wind. "Lifting this thing right now isn't exactly the ultimate purity test you think it is."
Anansi arched a brow. "Perhaps for you."
"No, I mean literally." Peter tapped the flat edge of the hammer. "When I grabbed it, I felt it. The residual magic. Thor's dying breath."
Anansi's polite smile faltered. "You mean to tell me..."
"Yep," Peter nodded. "Thor changed the password before he checked out. He relaxed the enchantment. Anyone willing to be a hero, anyone willing to protect this broken sandbox of a planet, can lift it. The problem is, for forty-five years, the only people who actually tried to pick it up were warlords and greedy scavengers. The good people were too broken to even try."
Peter lowered his stance, the Iron Spider servos whining. "And feeling that connection? It gave me a really good idea on exactly how to swat you."
Anansi laughed, a rich, booming sound that shook the dust from the rocks. "What absolute nonsense. You think swinging a dying god's mallet will end me?"
Peter didn't charge. He didn't swing at the god. Instead, he flipped Mjolnir in his grip, raised it high, and brought it crashing down directly into the bedrock beneath his own boots.
He didn't just hit the rock. He pushed his bio-electricity through the Uru metal, syncing it with his innate, Patriarch-level connection to the Web of Life and Destiny. Space itself shattered. A jagged, blinding white rift tore open in the fabric of reality.
At the exact same moment, the black symbiote violently erupted from Peter's back. Thick, muscular tendrils shot across the gap, wrapping tightly around Anansi's wrists and ankles.
Venom hauled backward, physically dragging the God of Stories toward the multiversal tear.
"What are you doing?!" Anansi snarled, digging his heels into the dirt, fighting the symbiote's immense, raw physical pull.
Peter jammed Mjolnir directly into the glowing spatial rift. "I was just doing some math!" Peter yelled over the roaring dimensional winds. "If this specific hammer lowered its standards enough for a Spider-Man to lift it, how many other Thor-Spiders exist across the infinite multiverse?!"
Anansi scoffs, struggling against the black sludge. "You intend to use the Web to summon variants who wield the hammer? You absolute fool! The statistical probability of a Spider-Totem claiming Mjolnir is infinitesimally rare! What will a few extra bolts of lightning accomplish?!"
"A few?!" Peter laughed, the sound echoing with raw cosmic power. "I guess liberal arts majors really suck at calculus!"
Peter gripped Mjolnir with both hands. He closed his eyes. He felt the Web of Fate vibrating across infinity. Miguel O'Hara and Anansi only used the Web to travel. Peter was the center of it. He resonated with it. He sent out a massive, localized ping across the infinite multiverse, searching specifically for every single Spider-Totem currently holding a Mjolnir.
"Don't you get it?!" Peter roared. "Even a fraction of infinity... even one ten-millionth of infinity... is still infinity!"
Anansi's dark eyes widened in pure, unadulterated terror. He realized the physics of what Peter was doing. If that infinite, concentrated cosmic energy missed him, the sheer kinetic blowback would shatter the entire planet.
The God of Stories panicked. He ripped frantically at the symbiote tendrils, but Venom held fast, refusing to let him retreat into an illusion. Desperate, Anansi fired a thick cable of golden silk from his wrist, anchoring it to the highest jagged peak of the mountain. He leveraged the line, stopping his slide toward the rift.
Snap.
Ashley Barton's eyes snapped open. She ripped herself out of the golden webbing. She lunged forward, her teeth bared, and physically bit clean through Anansi's golden anchor line.
The tension broke. Anansi lost his footing.
Venom violently yanked the god directly into Peter's striking range.
Peter pulled Mjolnir from the rift. The hammer was glowing with absolute, blinding white light. The combined, synchronized power of an infinite number of multiversal Thor-Spiders surged into the Uru metal.
Peter swung.
It was the exact same right hook he had used three times today. But this time, it didn't just break the sound barrier. It broke reality.
The infinite, pure white lightning struck Anansi square in the jaw. The impact didn't send the god flying. The sheer, concentrated cosmic energy passed through him, erupting from his back in a pillar of blinding light that pierced the atmosphere and shot directly into the cosmos at faster-than-light speed.
The light faded. The storm clouds instantly vanished.
Anansi collapsed to his knees. His dark skin was smoking, blistering with cosmic burns. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he hit the dirt, completely unconscious.
Peter exhales a long, shaky breath. He walked over to the fallen god. He gently placed Mjolnir directly on top of Anansi's chest, permanently pinning him to the ground.
Peter collapsed onto his back in the dirt, the Iron Spider armor hissing as it vented heat. He turned his head and looked over at Ashley. She was currently tugging on Mjolnir's handle with both hands, grunting with effort, trying to lift it off the god's chest. It didn't budge a millimeter.
"How did you wake up?" Peter asked, his voice entirely exhausted.
Ashley let go of the hammer, wiping sweat from her forehead. "I was having a great dream. I was the undisputed warlord of the entire wasteland. I had all the gangs bowing to me." She kicked the dirt, looking over at Clint, who was still snoring happily on the ground. "But my deadbeat dad was there. And he was cheering for me. He was proud."
Ashley crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. "Me being a ruthless crime boss, and my dad actually being happy about it? Those two things can't exist in the same reality. It broke the logic of the story."
Peter smiled weakly, letting his head fall back against the dirt. "One story can't satisfy two opposing truths. Good job, kid. You broke a god's lie."
PS: The idea of Thor's hammer relaxing its worthiness requirements isn't just something made up for this story! It's actual Marvel history! During the massive JLA/Avengers comic crossover event in 2003, Superman famously wielded Mjolnir to deliver the final blow against the villain Krona. Afterward, Superman couldn't lift it again. Thor explained that Odin briefly lifted the enchantment because the fate of two universes was at stake, allowing anyone with the raw physical strength and the will to save reality to wield it!
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