#711 itsv-peni parker

[ask-aurachnid]

Spider-Verse: Part I

Word Count: 2883 Warnings: N/A

Something weird is happening, which is interesting, because Frankie’s bar for what qualifies as weird is incredibly high. From radioactive spiders to animal themed villains, to half the universe turning to dust and temporal anomalies opening across the city, Frankie wouldn’t say they’ve seen it all, but they’ve definitely come close. Still, when a glowing portal opens on the ceiling of their apartment just minutes after their return from an exhausting fight with Green Goblin, it still manages to surprise them.

The gravity it creates is intense, and no amount of webbing shot at the floors and walls can stop it from pulling them in. They barely even manage to pull their mask back over their head before the portal closes, stealing their room from view. 

The feeling of being sucked through a portal is the most bizarre sensation Frankie has ever experienced. It’s like touching a live wire with the way their spider-sense screams. Their body contorts through space time like candy on a pulling machine. They can’t help but yell the whole way, their voice contorting along with their flesh and bones until their journey ends. 

Aurachnid flies, screaming, out of the portal too fast to do anything except slam, face first, into a massive LED billboard before falling to the ground. Ow. 

They take a moment to get air back in their lungs before they begin the process of pulling their bruised body off the cement. All the while, New Yorkers edge around them without sparing a glance. Typical. Once they’re finally upright, Frankie pauses to take in their surroundings. It looks like Times Square, but it feels like something is wrong with their eyes. There has to be. The colors are too saturated, the texture of everything is all wrong, and it gives the appearance of a lagging frame rate. Is that storefront colored with Ben Day dots as a paint job, or did I land inside a comic book?

“JUDOS, where am I?” Frankie asks. 

“Error: JUDOS Offline.”

Before they can get any more confused, a voice speaks from somewhere above them, far too young to be any deity Frankie knows of. 

“Apparently Peni’s formula wasn’t as exact as she thought.” 

Aurachnid looks up to see… Spider-Man? He doesn’t look quite like the Spider-Man Frankie used to know. His suit is mostly black but with red accents and a logo that look spray painted. Not to mention, he looks… cartoonish. His mask lenses are comically large and, instead of telescoping, the edges seem to shift with his expression. His proportions are fine at a glance, but as Frankie continues to look at him, they notice how his head seems a little large, and his wrist and ankles dramatically small. The strange frame rate also seems to apply to his movements as he hops down to stand in front of Frankie. 

As he touches down, Frankie’s spider-sense crawls up their spine and reverberates like mic feedback through their jaw. It’s only done that once before, when Frankie met Peter for the first time. 

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Gods only know why that is the first thing out of their mouth. “Where am I? Why do you look like Spider-Man but weird?”

Spider-Man(?) laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “This is probably a bit of a shock, but you’re in another dimension. Some universes have different appearances and physics than others. And I am Spider-Man, at least, the Spider-Man of this dimension. Nice to meet you.”

Another dimension? 

Aurachnid.exe has stopped responding. Restart? Y/N

“Yeah, I’ll integrate that into my belief system. They call me Aurachnid,” Frankie says, holding out a hand to shake. 

Spider-Man shakes their hand, tilting his head in a way that makes Frankie think that he might be younger than them. “Just Arachnid? No hyphenation? You would not believe how particular some spiders are about that.”

Frankie sighs, “No, not Arachnid. Aurachnid. With an A-U-R like ‘aura?’” 

Spider-Man looks confused.

“Never mind. Okay, so I’m in another dimension. How do I get back?”

“That… is a good question,” he says. “You aren’t who I was expecting to come through the portal.”

“That’s comforting,” Frankie deadpans. 

“I need to contact a friend. Hopefully, she should be able to send you back to where you belong.”

“Then lead the way, Spidey.”

That’s how Aurachnid ends up following a strange Spider-Man out of Manhattan and into Queens. Is it the smartest move? Probably not, but it’s not like Frankie has any other way to get home. So, following the weird, cartoon Spider-Man it is. 

⦰⦰

It becomes obvious to Frankie as they follow Spider-Man, that he probably hasn't been at this very long. At the very least, he doesn't have any sort of tricking background. His web slinging technique is stiff, and, once they get out of the Manhattan skyscrapers into the low brownstones of Queens, he loses a lot of forward momentum. Frankie, on the other hand, has no issue springing from one streetlamp to another, even without the aid of their webbing. 

Eventually, the both of them come to an unassuming house, if not for the incredible amount of red and blue Spider-Man memorabilia piled on the front steps. The black-clad Spider-Man knocks politely on the door before swinging it open. 

"Hey Mrs. Parker!" he calls out, stepping inside with familiarity despite him greeting the owner with an honorific. 

Honestly, Frankie had been wondering if his secret identity was someone they knew, but if “Mrs. Parker” is actually May Parker, then they can safely say that this spider is not Peter Parker. 

At the sound of her name, Mrs. Parker walks out of the kitchen, into the living room where Spider-Man and Aurachnid are standing, drying her hands with a floral dish towel. She’s a fair bit older than the May Parker that Frankie knew, but she has a kind face, and she smiles at Spider-Man before raising an eyebrow at the strange spider behind him.

“Hey, kiddo. I was going to ask you how school was, but it seems there’s something more important going on. Who’s this?”

Spider-Man’s mask makes a surprised expression as he turns to gesture at them. “This is Arachnid-with-an-A-U-R. We accidentally brought them to this dimension, so we were heading down to the lair to use the computer. I just wanted to say hi, first.”

Under the mask, Frankie rolls their eyes at the way Spider-Man introduces them. "It's a portmanteau. Arachnid and Aura. Anyway, it's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am," they say, reaching out to shake her hand.

"And so polite. You should keep this one around, kiddo," Mrs. Parker jokes with the boy. "Head on down to the lair. I'll bring down some cookies if you're both still around when they're done, but you should get Aurachnid home before they start glitching." 

"Before I start what?" Frankie asks, but Spider-Man starts pulling them out the back door instead of giving an answer. 

In the backyard is a small shed. If this is what Spider-Man meant by "lair," then Frankie is going to be so disappointed. 

Spider-Man grabs a key from somewhere and sticks it in the padlock hanging from the door. At which point, the backyard is flooded with red light as a giant spider logo appears on the door, and instead of swinging outwards, the doors retract into the walls revealing an empty chrome room the appropriate size for an simple shed. 

Spider-Man steps into the room and turns around to look back at Frankie, still standing in the grass. Frankie recognizes the body language from years of living in a city full of tall buildings. Their dads' apartment building has one and their current building has one (though they usually take the fire escape). Frankie knows an elevator when they see one. 

No fucking way. 

"There's no way Queens is zoned for this," Frankie comments, stepping inside. 

Spider-Man just laughs as the doors slide shut and the floor starts to descend. Just the floor.

"Oh, this is definitely an OSHA violation."

There's not even a railing, as the elevator descends out of the short shaft and into an impossibly open space. When Spider-Man said ‘lair’ he meant it. The space is at least three stories tall, with huge, raised platforms, and things suspended from the ceiling by web-like cabling. There’s a god damned Jeep, of all things, and a row of glass cases housing more than a dozen variant spider-suits. Almost everything in the space adheres to the red-blue color scheme, which is a little strange, since this Spider-Man is wearing black and red.

“Dude! What in Hades even is this place? I have two suits that I keep in a bin under my bed, and I can’t even drive, let alone afford a spider-mobile,” Frankie gapes. When they look back at Spider-Man, he’s taken off his mask. Underneath is a young, dark-skinned boy with a grin on his face, but his expression goes solemn before he responds. 

“It’s not actually mine. It all belonged to the previous Spider-Man, Peter Parker. He was killed about eight months ago. Kingpin was using a particle accelerator to try and bring back his wife and kid, but instead Goblin messed it up and brought a trapped of spider-people here. One of them was the one who was supposed to come through the portal, but instead we got you,” he explains with a shrug. “I’m Miles, by the way. Miles Morales.”

Figuring they’re definitely safe from prying eyes, Frankie takes off their own mask, shaking out their hair. “Nice to meet you, Miles. My name’s Frankie Stevens. Trust me, I know a thing or two about dead Peter Parkers.”

Miles raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

Frankie nods. “Yeah. It’s been about a year and a half for me. There was this… alien, I guess? He got his hands on a few artifacts from the creation of the universe, which when combined, allowed him to turn half of all sentient life into dust. He killed trillions, including Peter, May, and both of my dads. I had to get myself emancipated so I could stay in New York.”

“I’m sorry, that must have sucked.”

Frankie shrugs, “Yeah, but what can you do?”

The elevator comes to rest at the end of a narrow walkway connected to the biggest platform in the lair. On one side is the row of glass cases housing what Frankie now realizes are the late Spider-Man’s suits, and on the other side, is the weirdest computer that Frankie has ever seen. Actually, there’s no computer that Frankie can see, but there’s a huge swivel chair, a large array of keyboards and input devices, and a ridiculous monitor array. There’s roughly eight of them, which is already too many, each roughly the size of a standard flat-screen TV, but it’s hard to say, since most of them aren’t even squares. In fact, the central monitor is a hexagon, surrounded by smaller triangle and trapezoid monitors. It makes the engineer in Frankie want to tear their hair out. 

Miles, however, acts like it’s completely normal, pushing the chair aside so he can stand over the keyboard. The screens come to life, and Miles clicks a few things until a girl’s face takes up most of the screen. 

“Hey Peni!” Miles greets. “How are things on your end?”

Peni somehow looks even more bizarre than the weird visuals of this universe, with her impossibly large eyes and exaggerated proportions giving her the appearance of an anime character. She smiles when she sees Miles, but her expression quickly sours into a pout. 

“The good news is that neither of our realities are collapsing,” she answers. “But the device didn’t work at all. So now I’m practically starting from scratch.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Miles says, grabbing Frankie’s arm and pulling them in front of the monitors, presumably putting them in view of the camera. 

Frankie waves, awkwardly.

“This is Frankie, they came through the portal instead. So, I’d say you’re on the right track.”

Peni blinks in surprise a few times, before her eyes shift to focus on something else. She blows up a wad of bubble gum while she squints at whatever she’s studying. “Wait, I picked up an entirely different person? How did that happen?”

“I would also like to know that. Also, Mrs. Parker mentioned ‘glitching.’ Is that something I should be concerned about?”

“Hopefully not. Glitching is a specific form of cellular decay that affects people who travel outside of their own dimension,” Peni answers. “The formula I used which landed you where you are was supposed to fix that issue. Since glitching is caused when different realities’ atoms interact inside a single object or organism, making sure your atoms don’t change should be the key to preventing glitching. So, since you don’t have the same visual style of Miles, I think that part probably worked like it was supposed to. Though it might have been more complicated if you were from a dimension with different physics or one with a different number of dimensions.”

“Well, at least I have that going for me,” Frankie mutters. 

“Aha!” Peni cheers, seemingly finding something helpful. “I’ve got it! The formula I used for the device was meant to lock onto the strongest signal, in range, from someone with radioactive spider DNA. Since I was standing right next to it, I assumed that it would lock onto me, but according to these readings, I am far from the strongest signal. That honor goes to our new friend Frankie here. The coordinates they originated from were emitting a much stronger signal until after I activated the device. Now your current coordinates are releasing the same strength signal.”

“So, what does that mean?” Miles asks.

“It means that Frankie has the strongest signal by far in the nearby multiverse! With their help, mapping out the nearby web and finding the others would be a sinch! Just a few hours in each universe would be enough for me to get readings and begin deciphering the data within multiversal signatures, instead of just relying on strength. Frankie could act like barium in an x-ray machine, or a really clever signal relay!”

Frankie likes to think that they’re pretty smart. They got into NTSI. They graduated in the 90th percentile of their high school. They reverse engineered a passable version of Peter’s web fluid and they designed a much-improved version of his web-shooters. The point being, Frankie is intelligent, but honestly? They’re only grasping about half of what Peni is saying. 

Why them, specifically? If the multiverse is truly infinite, then there are infinite versions of Frankie. Why do none of them have a signal as strong as the one Frankie is apparently emitting? The whole thing is incredibly baffling.

“So, what do you say?” Miles asks, hopeful.

“I mean, I’m not against it,” Frankie says, “but I’m just curious what that would entail. I’ve got responsibilities in my own reality that I need to stay on top of.”

“You shouldn’t be missing from your own universe for more than a day, probably less. Hopefully, I’d be able to warn you about the portal opening ahead of time, and I’d definitely be able to send you back when I finish my readings. You’d just have to hang out in whatever universe I send you to in the meantime, and tell me what’s there, afterwards.”

“Ah, what the hell,” Frankie shrugs. “Sign me up. I’ll be your multiverse pinball or whatever. ‘Sounds like fun.”

Peni beams at them through the screen. “Ah, arigatōgozaimasu! With your help, we’ll find the others in no time!”

“No problem, I’m always happy to help,” they reply. “So, what now?”

“Well, I got plenty of readings from Mile’s universe last time I was there. Today was just supposed to test if the device worked, which it does. So, you don’t need to stay there any longer. I could send you home now, if you want.”

“Damn, I was kinda hoping to be here for Mrs. Parker’s cookies, but yeah, you should probably send me back. I have a lot of homework to do before fall break.” 

“Understood! Just a couple seconds to calibrate everything…” Peni trails off in concentration. “And here we go!”

Frankie pulls on their mask as an ominous, technicolor portal bubbles into existence a few feet away. Thankfully, this one lacks the extreme gravitational field of the first.

“See you around!” they say, giving a playful salute before letting themself fall backwards into the hole between realities. 

The feeling is just as strange as the first time, indescribable and intense, but surprisingly painless save for the screaming of their spider-sense. Their flesh and bones contort like Silly Putty, as they are pulled back towards their home dimension. And, after a few, incredibly anxious moments, the crisscrossing webs of the multiverse give way to an overcast New York skyline. 

Frankie tumbles, flailing, out of the portal, and there’s no time to right themself before they slam into the rooftop of their apartment building and flip ass over tea kettle. When they finally come to a real stop, they’re covered in bruises, and more than a little sore, but they’re back where they belong.