Venom's Red Power Form was an absolute nightmare of shifting, crimson muscle. The symbiote didn't just fight the Spider-Hulk; it systematically dismantled him.
By all standard logic, a gamma-irradiated Hulk enhanced with spider-totem abilities should have been an unstoppable, apocalyptic threat. But this specific Spider-Hulk possessed a fatal, deeply ironic biological flaw. The Hulk's raw, limitless power scaled directly with his anger. And this variant hadn't been angry in over a decade.
He had conquered his Earth. He had slaughtered his enemies, subjugated his reality, and sat on an uncontested throne for years. The endless, raging inferno that usually fueled a Hulk had burned down to a complacent, calculating ember. His intelligence had evolved, but his raw, brute-force ferocity had plummeted. He fought like a tactician, not a monster.
Against a fully unleashed Venom, recently supercharged by devouring the Grendel symbiote, a tactician didn't stand a chance.
Venom didn't give the green giant a single second to build up his rage. The crimson symbiote ducked under a slow, sweeping gamma-infused punch, burying a massive fist directly into Spider-Hulk's solar plexus. The impact shattered the asphalt beneath them. Venom followed up with a brutal, relentless flurry of strikes to the giant's jaw, moving with the terrifying, fluid speed of a natural apex predator.
Spider-Hulk's eyes rolled back into his head. His knees buckled. He hit the pavement with a seismic thud, knocked entirely unconscious before he could even process the humiliation.
The towering red monster let out a triumphant roar, then immediately began to shrink. The crimson sludge peeled back, folding into Peter Parker's skin until he stood over the fallen giant in his standard red-and-blue symbiote suit.
Peter didn't waste time. He knelt beside the unconscious behemoth and reached for the glowing spider ring clamped around the giant's middle finger. It hummed with a heavy, localized static, vibrating against his glove.
"So this is it," Peter muttered. "This is what kept Doctor Strange locked out of Earth-65."
Peter examined the ring. Trapped inside the glowing gemstone was a preserved, multi-eyed spider. It looked sickeningly similar to Carl King. A wave of profound disgust washed over Peter.
He closed his fist and squeezed.
The reinforced glass cracked. The ring shattered into a dozen pieces, the energy bursting outward in a sharp, blinding shockwave.
As the light flared, reality seemed to stutter. For a fraction of a second, the air ten feet above Peter shimmered, projecting a silent, ghostly apparition.
Sitting cross-legged, floating effortlessly in the air, was another Spider-Man. He wore the high-collared, mystical Cloak of Levitation, its red fabric woven with intricate golden web patterns. The Sorcerer Supreme of another reality and of Spider Legion Spider Gods.
The Dark Lord.
The projection didn't speak. He simply looked down at Peter, his masked eyes narrowing slightly in an expression that clearly conveyed a singular message: You won this round.
A gust of freezing wind swept through the ruined street. The projection vanished. Simultaneously, the unconscious body of the Spider-Hulk dissolved into fine, green ash, blowing away into the night sky.
Peter shook his head, clearing the residual static from his eardrums. He fired a web-line, launching himself out of the crater and onto the roof of an overturned delivery truck. He scanned the chaotic battlefield.
Thanks to 616-Gwen's ghost abilities, Peter's brain kept violently glitching. One second, he saw Earth-65 Gwen fighting alone. The next second, a second Gwen in a new black with red web spider suit materialized out of thin air, swinging a severed cybernetic scorpion tail like a baseball bat.
Peter fired a web-line directly at the back of the second Gwen's spider suit, yanking her out of the melee and pulling her up onto the overturned truck beside him.
"Hey!" 616-Gwen squawked, stumbling to keep her balance.
"Timeout," Peter demanded, holding his hands up. He looked her up and down, noting the effortless way she absorbed the kinetic momentum of the pull. "I have a very pressing question. Exactly when did you get your spider power?"
"Oh, about twenty minutes ago," 616-Gwen replied matter-of-factly, dusting off her shoulders. "I raided Cindy Moon's lab. Found a batch of spider-isotope serum."
Peter closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose beneath his mask. Of course she did.
His tactical mind spun. The spider-isotope serum was terrifying. It was a flawless, temporary super-soldier serum with absolutely zero biological side-effects. It was exactly the kind of black-market bioweapon the Military's Savage Force division would commit war crimes to acquire.
Mental note, Peter told himself. Do not, under any circumstances, allow Gwen to smuggle a vial of that stuff back to their earth.
"Okay, cool. Very responsible," Peter sighed, dropping his hand.
Gwen ignored his exasperation, pointing down at the street where Earth-65 Gwen and Harry Osborn were currently trading blows with Cindy Moon's titanium spider legs. "Are we going to sit up here all night, or are we going to help her finish the boss fight?"
"We stay put," Peter ordered firmly, crossing his arms. "I met a guy a while back. Miguel O'Hara. He explained the mechanics of multiversal integrity. Unauthorized, excessive interference in another Spider-Totem's timeline can trigger a cascading reality collapse. He called them 'Tether Snap' "
Gwen lowered her arm, frowning. "What exactly counts as 'excessive interference'?"
"You can change the background details of the plot," Peter explained, his tone dead serious. "But you absolutely cannot fight the protagonist's battles for them."
A sudden, sharp crackle of displaced ozone split the air behind them.
Peter's Spider-Sense didn't register a threat, merely a profound, heavy presence. He didn't turn around, already knowing who had just stepped through the jagged, hexagonal, orange portal.
Gwen spun around, her eyes widening.
Stepping out of the temporal tunnel was a hulking, massively muscular man. He stood well over six feet tall, clad in a highly advanced, dark blue and red suit that looked more like predatory armor than spandex. Razor-sharp talons extended from his fingertips, and a jagged, skull-like spider emblem stretched across his chest. He looked less like a friendly neighborhood hero and more like a highly lethal enforcer.
"Like many restricted universes, Earth-65 was shielded by a localized spatial barrier," Miguel O'Hara said, his gruff, synthesized voice cutting through the ambient sirens. "I monitored a massive spike in multiversal vibrational frequencies. I detected the perimeter collapse. I assumed you were involved, Parker."
Miguel stepped fully onto the truck, his red eyes glaring beneath his cowl. He looked at 616-Gwen, entirely unimpressed. "You brought an unauthorized civilian. You take her back yourself. I only programmed a single temporal-bracelet for your extraction."
"Keep your watch," Peter said casually, waving a hand. "I shattered the mystical ring anchoring the barrier. Doctor Strange has an open frequency to my location now. He can pull us back without your tech. But you're right. I'm stepping back."
"You made the correct decision," Miguel said, turning his head to observe the street fight below. "I detected reality teetering on the edge of a structural collapse. If you had engaged Dr. Moon directly, it might have fractured the timeline. This is Earth-65's narrative. Spider-Woman must complete her own trial to anchor her existence in the Web."
Gwen crossed her arms, looking Miguel up and down with blatant, pop-culture-fueled skepticism. "Peter, who is this guy? A dark-and-gritty Spider variant? The Blue Spider-Panther? Why is he glowing?"
Miguel slowly turned his head. He stared at Gwen with a look of such profound, exhausted disapproval that the temperature on the truck seemed to physically drop. He shifted his gaze to Peter, clearly conveying: Control your stray.
"Gwen, this is Miguel O'Hara," Peter introduced quickly. "Spider-Man of Earth-928. In his timeline, the year is 2099. He's the guy who helped me the first time I did my universe hopping adventure."
Peter's tone shifted, dropping the casual banter. "Miguel, we have a problem. There's a faction calling themselves the Spider-Legion. They are actively recruiting corrupt, homicidal Spider-Totems across the multiverse. I meet them 2 times now, first was War-Spider in Earth-21923 recruiting Ashley Barton, and when he failed, I meet with one of their heavy hitters Kwaku Anansi. And in this universe, I just met a Spider-Hulk variant "
Miguel's posture stiffened. The razor-talons on his fingertips flexed.
Previously, when Peter had floated the idea of establishing a cross-dimensional Spider-Alliance, Miguel had not yet started the project. He viewed the multiverse as a fragile ecosystem that required isolation, not collaboration. But the existence of an organized, militarized faction of rogue Totems changed the calculus entirely.
"What is their ultimate objective?" Miguel demanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl.
"According to Anansi, they are expanding their ranks to combat an even greater enemy,"