Chapter 128 - 128

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….

A thought, and it was done. My phantom drifted silently up toward the subterranean ceiling, completely untethered from the bounds of physical reality, and peered directly into the technological "holy of holies."

And... no. I was met with the agonizingly mundane sight of a perfectly standard, universal USB port.

Honestly, the villains of this dimension are offensively lazy.

To cut corners on a machine designed to tear apart the fabric of reality? It was a travesty of dramatic presentation.

Still, despite that glaring architectural disappointment, the physical construction of the collider's core was undeniably fascinating.

I easily had enough raw data to keep my mind delightfully occupied for the rest of the night. It was moments like these that made me lament the cruel, mortal limitation of a mere twenty-four-hour day.

But alas, there is no time for regrets. Better to dedicate the remainder of the evening to unraveling exactly how this absurd monstrosity functioned.

…

Morning, as any civilized being knows, requires a proper foundation.

Aunt May, proving herself a most formidable hostess, had laid out quite the spread, summoning our colorful little menagerie up from the bunker to gather around the kitchen table.

Together with Mary Jane, the two women bustlingly attended to us "dear guests."

There was a rich meat casserole, warm pastries, fresh salads, an undeniably herculean effort on their part.

Naturally, I simply had to participate in the domestic theatrics.

"Now then, Peni," I murmured, fixing the animated child with a look of the utmost, devastating seriousness. "I sense that your very soul desires these exquisite cookies and a mug of equally exquisite cocoa."

With a flourish, I withdrew a small hoard of chocolate chip cookies from the depths of my pocket dimension, simultaneously weaving a localized spell over a mug of water to transmute it into a rich, steaming chocolate drink.

I had previously deduced, through careful, unblinking observation of our interdimensional "guinea pigs" the night before, that consuming sustenance native to a foreign universe posed absolutely no threat to their localized biology.

A god must always verify his variables.

"I'm listening," the girl replied, narrowing her oversized, impossibly expressive eyes in deep suspicion.

She kept casting sideways glances at the treats, clearly trying to mentally calculate their non-standard dimensional metrics.

"Then come to the Dark Side," I offered, a wicked smirk playing at the corner of my mouth. "We have cookies."

"Loki." She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Thick, wavy blue lines of profound, cartoonish suffering practically manifested in the air around her head.

"Are you aware that meme is over a thousand years old? We literally study it in my school during ancient cultural history."

"Seriously?" I arched an aristocratic brow.

"Uh-huh," she confirmed flatly.

"Splendid!" I rejoiced, entirely unbothered by my sudden status as a historical artifact, and generously pushed the plate of treats toward her. "There you are, my dear. Eat up. Be nourished."

"You're creepy!" she declared, wrinkling her nose as a vibrant red, animated 'cross' of pure irritation throbbed against her temple. But her vocal outrage did absolutely nothing to stop her small hand from darting out to snatch the offered cookie.

"Perhaps," I conceded smoothly. "But you will still take a selfie with me, will you not?"

I pulled my own smartphone from my pocket dimension. It wasn't exactly a necessity for a deity, but during my tenure residing beneath the roof of Charles Xavier, I had decided it was prudent to acquire a mortal communication device, mostly for the convenience of terrorizing individuals located far beyond the reach of my phantoms. It proved remarkably useful.

"You even have to ask?!" Peni gasped, the irritation vanishing instantly as a literal yellow fire of enthusiasm ignited in her eyes.

She summoned a device of her own, a hyper-advanced piece of glass and metal that vaguely resembled a smartphone, and immediately began angling for the most flattering lighting, exploiting the fact that we were seated side-by-side.

Within moments, the infectious vanity spread, and everyone at the table was being subjected to the flash of a lens.

They even managed to capture a rather flattering shot of me, though some impertinent soul attempted to frame me with shadow-puppet horns.

"Hey! What did you do?!" Peni shrieked a moment later, scrolling through the collective gallery only to discover that, in the latest group photo, she was sporting a pair of highly realistic, furry cat ears.

"Me?" I replied, offering the serene, unblemished smile of an innocent angel while subtly ensuring my phone captured her furiously indignant little face.

"Who else?!" She bared her teeth at me, raising her tiny fists in a martial arts stance... only to seamlessly pose in front of me for another photo a mere second later.

Ah, mortal vanity. The selfie truly is the ultimate subjugator of free will.

"Gwen, would you care to join?" I offered graciously, nodding toward the blonde, or more accurately, toward the phantom black ears I was currently weaving into her hair.

"Don't even think about it!" she snapped, cutting me off with absolute authority. But the denial lacked venom; she already had her own smartphone in hand, and a bright flash caught both Peni and myself entirely off guard.

"Yeah, yeah. But you should probably tell us when we're actually going to go break the giant, super-secret machine hidden inside the clandestine, underground super-bunker," the anime girl rattled off, still buzzing with the hyperactive, sugar-fueled energy of her device.

"Hmm," the monochromatic Spider-Noir hummed in deep, gravelly contemplation. "I'm rolling that sentence around in my head, and I can't quite figure out if it has far too many uses of the word 'secret,' or simply a tragic lack of the word 'Nazi.'"

"Nah, buddy," Spider-Ham chimed in, leaning over his plate. "You gotta throw in a little 'classified' or 'covert' right at the end there. Then you've got yourself a front-page scoop."

"Sounds fine to me just the way it is," the older, infinitely more tired Peter Parker disagreed, slowly chewing his way through another mouthful of casserole. "Thank you, Aunt May. This is genuinely magnificent."

There was a profound, nostalgic peace resting upon the man's weathered face. The suffocating tension that had defined his earlier interactions with Mary Jane had entirely evaporated.

The inverse was true as well; the heavy, nervous grief had lifted from the young widow's shoulders. I knew they had spent the majority of the night speaking in hushed tones, and it was abundantly clear the conversation had been a vital balm for them both.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had confessed truths to one another that they had fiercely hidden away from their actual, respective partners. Some burdens are only meant to be shared with a ghost.

"Would you like seconds, Peter?" May offered warmly.

"Why wouldn't I…"

He cut himself off. The peaceful domesticity shattered in an instant. Peter went entirely rigid, a visceral, full-body flinch that was perfectly mirrored by the other Spiders around the table.

"We have guests," Gwen announced coldly. In a singular, fluid motion, she pulled her mask over her face.

The others followed suit without a second of hesitation. Even young Miles hastily dragged his crude, makeshift fabric over his head.

Not wishing to be the odd man out in a room full of paranoid arachnids, I elegantly abandoned my comfortable seat at the table.

Ding-dong!

The polite chime of the doorbell rang through the house.

A fraction of a second later, the flimsy wooden front door was violently obliterated... by a massive, serpentine tentacle. It was a bizarre, unsettling appendage, coated in a synthetic material that looked remarkably like translucent silicone.

"So cozy. Practically homey," a voice cooed.

Three more of the mechanical monstrosities slithered through the shattered doorway, anchoring themselves to the floor and walls.

They effortlessly hoisted a woman of perhaps fifty years into the foyer. She boasted an utterly chaotic mass of hair that stood on end, rather resembling the bulbous mantle of a squid, and hovered several feet above the hardwood, entirely suspended by her mechanical limbs.

"Doc Ock," Aunt May stated. Her voice was pure steel. Without looking, she grabbed Mary Jane by the arm and casually, but firmly, shoved the younger woman toward the back door and the safety of the bunker shaft.

I observed the intruder with intense academic curiosity. The good Doctor was clad in a rather fascinating jumpsuit, dotted with protruding cylindrical nodes that projected a durable, nearly transparent kinetic film completely enveloping her body and head. The technology felt remarkably familiar.

"There simply must be a droll observation to be made here," I mused aloud, leaning elegantly upon my cane.

"Something regarding a lonely, middle-aged woman spending her dark, solitary evenings in the company of four incredibly flexible, highly responsive friends..."

Olivia Octavius froze. Her eyes widened behind her goggles, her mouth opening and closing as she began to aggressively grasp for air in sheer, unadulterated outrage.

"Ewwwww!" Peni shrieked, her face twisting in utter revulsion. She turned and delivered a vicious, backhanded slap directly into my ribs. "Why would you say that?! Now I can't even look at them without wanting to throw up!"

But the theatrical entrance was far from over. As a furious, violent shade of crimson rapidly consumed Doctor Octavius's face, new actors decided it was time to join the stage.

"Not so fast, chicas," a deep, rumbling voice echoed from the rear of the house.

A towering behemoth of a man stepped into view, entirely blocking the path to the backyard. This was no classic street thug in a padded green suit.

The being before us was vastly more machine than flesh. His natural legs were entirely gone, replaced by heavy, heavily armored cybernetic joints.

A massive, metallic tail lashed behind him, and the crude steel plating surgically grafted directly into the flesh of his arms, torso, and skull heavily implied that whatever humanity he once possessed had been systematically stripped away.

Hot on his heels, stepping out from the shadows with a cold, dead-eyed glare, was a slightly smaller, but no less imposing, brute with ashen, corpse-gray skin, gripping a heavy pistol in each hand.

…

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