While Reed Richards excitedly babbled about spatial geometry and dimensional rifts on the Puerto Rican tarmac, thousands of years in the future, Kang the Conqueror was working tirelessly. Within the chronal walls of his empire, he spent decades compiling data, running simulations, and engineering a highly specific containment weapon. He had endless time to perfect his design.
For Peter Parker, exactly one second passed.
The air above the industrial lot violently shattered. With a concussive boom that cracked the asphalt, Kang the Conqueror materialized directly in front of the assembled heroes. The time-traveling warlord sat tall upon his hovering throne, his flamboyant purple-and-green armor gleaming in the afternoon sun. He wasn't just a persistent ghost anymore. He was an absolute nightmare.
Kang raised a heavily modified, bulky energy pistol. He aimed the wide barrel directly at Michael Korvac's chest.
"Avengers," Kang's electronically modulated voice boomed across the lot. "The Great Kang thanks you for your rudimentary contributions. However, the Great Kang has officially completed your mission. This localized emitter will mend the spatial rift caused by this anomaly. It will overwrite his frequency and seal the universe. Step back!"
Reed Richards' eyes went wide. He lunged forward, throwing his hands up. "Wait! Stop! We haven't verified the consequences of sealing a living rift from the outside! The feedback loop could be—!"
Kang ignored the scientist. He pulled the trigger.
A blinding pulse of heavy green chronal energy shot from the barrel.
THWIP. Peter didn't think. He fired a heavy web-line directly onto Korvac's gray hoodie. He ripped his arm backward, violently yanking the shivering man ten feet to the left. The green energy beam scorched the space where Korvac had just been standing, blasting a smoking, crystallized crater into the concrete.
Peter stepped securely in front of Korvac, planting his feet.
"First of all," Peter called out, pointing an accusing finger at the floating throne. "Why do you suddenly referring to yourself in the third person? It's incredibly weird. Second, did you actually legally change your name to 'The Great Kang,' or is that just a massive ego trip? Third, don't you ever get exhausted from monologuing like this every single day?"
"You are making a completely futile resistance, Spider-Man," Kang sneered, re-aiming the bulky pistol.
"And I'm getting really tired of you popping out of thin air to ruin my vacation, Kang," Peter shot back, his muscles coiling beneath the black suit.
Kang didn't offer a witty retort. A brilliant, emerald-green light suddenly flared from the center of his chest plate.
Adam Warlock gasped, his golden eyes widening in sheer, primal terror. "By the cosmos! It is the Time Stone!"
He has the Time Stone? Peter's brain stalled for a microsecond. Actually, that makes a terrifying amount of sense. Before Peter could even adjust his stance, Kang simply ceased to be. He didn't fly. He didn't run. The Time Stone folded the localized space around him, instantly teleporting the Conqueror directly behind Korvac.
Kang pressed the barrel of his pistol squarely between Korvac's shoulder blades. He fired.
The scenario Kang had meticulously simulated over decades of isolated research—the clean, localized erasure of the spatial rift—did not happen.
Instead, the kinetic impact of the containment beam struck the absolute limits of the Cosmic Cube's volatile threshold. Korvac didn't disappear. His physical body shattered.
A cataclysmic, blinding wave of pure, unfiltered cosmic energy erupted outward. The shockwave moved faster than sound, faster than light. It swallowed Kang instantly. It vaporized the asphalt. It rushed toward the Fantasticar, the Kree operative, the God of Thunder, and the teenagers.
Peter's Spider-Sense didn't just buzz; it felt like a white-hot spike driving straight through his brain.
He didn't have time to web Gwen Stacy out of the way. He didn't have time to push her. He only had time for one desperate, instinctive command.
Protect her! The Venom symbiote violently detached from Peter's skin. The black biomass lunged through the air, completely engulfing Gwen a millisecond before the blue cosmic fire washed over them all.
Then, absolute silence.
Everything vanished.
The smell of damp earth and crushed grass filled her nose.
Gwen gasped. Her eyes snapped open. She sat up violently, her hands grabbing at her own throat as she took in huge, desperate gulps of air.
"I... I'm still alive?" she stammered, her voice shaking.
She looked down at her hands. She wasn't wearing her jeans and Midtown High sweater. Her entire body was encased in a sleek, shifting, pitch-black material. It felt like a second skin. A massive, jagged white spider emblem stretched across her chest. It was the exact design she had sketched out in her notebook for her theoretical "Spider-Woman" concept. Except this suit wasn't spandex. It felt alive.
[OF COURSE YOU ARE ALIVE.] A deep, resonant, impossibly heavy voice vibrated directly inside her skull.
Gwen froze. She swallowed hard, looking around the empty expanse of green lawn. "Uh. Hi. You're Venom, right? Peter mentioned you."
[CORRECT.] Gwen pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, trying to stop the world from spinning. The memories hit her in fragmented flashes. The Arecibo tarmac. The purple time-traveler. The blinding blue explosion. Peter yelling something. The terrifying sensation of cold, liquid mass wrapping around her body right as the world ended.
Peter had given up his suit to shield her from the blast.
"Where is Peter?" Gwen asked, scrambling to her feet. "Is he okay?!"
[I DO NOT KNOW HIS EXACT COORDINATES,] the symbiote rumbled in her mind. [BUT HE IS ALIVE. I CAN FEEL THE ECHOS OF HIS BODY.]
Gwen let out a long, shaky breath of relief. She finally took a moment to look at her surroundings. She was standing in the middle of a massive, manicured park. The sprawling green lawns and tree lines looked incredibly familiar. It looked exactly like Central Park.
She took a few tentative steps. The black suit shifted flawlessly with her movements, making her feel incredibly light.
"Wow," Gwen murmured, looking past the tree line.
It was Central Park. But something was fundamentally wrong. She stared at the towering Manhattan skyline in the distance. The architecture was different. The skyline was dominated by two massive, identical rectangular monoliths stretching into the clouds.
The Twin Towers.
Gwen's blood ran cold. It's 2012. Those haven't been there for over a decade. "Hey! You! What do you think you're doing?!"
A gruff voice broke her concentration. An NYPD beat cop was jogging across the grass, pointing a nightstick directly at her black-suited figure.
Gwen didn't stick around to explain. She pivoted on her heel and bolted.
The moment she pushed off the grass, the sheer kinetic force launched her thirty feet into the air. The speed was absolutely terrifying. She landed on the paved park pathway and sprinted. The world blurred past her. She was easily pacing the yellow cabs driving down Central Park West.
She reached an intersection. A speeding delivery truck laid on its horn, barreling straight toward her.
Gwen didn't panic. A strange, instinctual hum vibrated at the base of her skull. She leaped upward, twisting her body in mid-air. She cleared the roof of the truck entirely. She extended her hands outward, slapping palms-first against the sheer glass exterior of a nearby office building.
She stuck.
Gwen hung sideways on the glass, her heart hammering against her ribs. She looked at her black-gloved hands clinging effortlessly to the smooth surface. She caught her own reflection in the window. The sleek black suit. The menacing white spider.
"Are these... are these Peter's powers?" Gwen whispered in awe.
[I AM A NEAR-PERFECT REPLICA OF HIS GENETIC TEMPLATE,] Venom supplied helpfully. [WE POSSESS HIS COMPLETE ARSENAL.]
"Cool," Gwen breathed. "But we really need to find him."
She fired a web-line from her wrist. It was incredibly clumsy. She swung awkwardly across the avenue, nearly clipping a streetlight, before dropping down onto a newsstand awning. She quickly snatched a newspaper from the rack, leaving a five-dollar bill webbed to the metal counter, and launched herself up to a nearby rooftop.
She landed heavily on the gravel roof, unfolding the stolen paper.
She scanned the skyline one more time. No gleaming Avengers Tower. No Baxter Building. But dominating the skyline, right where the Oscorp building usually sat, was a massive, stylized skyscraper plastered with a glowing neon sign: OSBORN TECHNOLOGY.
She looked down at the paper. It was a copy of the Daily Bugle.
The headline took up half the front page: SPIDER-MAN SAVES NEW YORK CITY!
Gwen quickly scanned the article.
In a stunning display of heroism last night, New York's resident wall-crawler completely dismantled the Vulture's criminal operation. Spider-Man prevented the deranged scientist from releasing a lethal neurotoxin into the upper atmosphere. Once again, our city's greatest protector proves his unwavering dedication to the people of New York. — Report by J. Jonah Jameson.
Gwen blinked. She read the byline again. J. Jonah Jameson had just written a glowing, positive puff-piece praising Spider-Man.
"What kind of completely ridiculous parallel universe is this?" Gwen muttered, dropping the paper onto the gravel. "Did the explosion throw us across the multiverse?"
She walked to the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the bustling streets of an alternate New York. If the Bugle was reporting on the Vulture, Spider-Man had clearly been operating in this universe for years.
Gwen pulled her black mask down over her face. She knew exactly what she had to do. Find this universe's Peter Parker. Because if there was one universal constant she completely believed in, it was that Peter Parker always found a way to fix things.