The cosmic arena was a mess of necrotic energy and divine wrath, and right in the middle of it Peter Parker was realizing that "friendly neighborhood" meant jack shit when your neighborhood was currently a multiversal battlefield getting its ass kicked.
"Get back!" He fired a web-grenade that exploded into reinforced polymers, pinning a Nova Corps soldier to floating debris. "Man, I really miss Rhino! At least he just charged straight and you could plan for that!"
He was losing and every muscle screamed it, dodged energy blasts from actual gods and cosmic weapons from things that looked like geometry textbooks having seizures, but he kept his ground because somewhere behind him, tucked in a pocket of safety he'd carved out with webs and prayer, was Jay's kid.
Peter Parker had a lot of flaws but backing down when a kid was on the line wasn't one of them.
"Ghost-Spider, left!"
Gwen Stacy vaulted over him, kicked a draugr square in the jaw and the thing's head snapped back with a crack that sounded wet and final. "I see them! But Pete, we're losing ground! Way too many!"
"I know, just keep—"
The battlefield went silent.
Screams cut off mid-scream, explosions stopped exploding, steel stopped clashing.
Air pressure dropped and Peter's ears popped, sinuses screamed as a wave of malevolent force slammed into them both like a truck made of pure spite.
Peter tumbled through air, corrected mid-spin because spider-sense was good for something, landed in a crouch his knees immediately regretted and looked up.
Oh no.
Mistress Love was on the ground and the cosmic abstract they'd been counting on, the unkillable fundamental force, was clutching a wound bleeding pink starlight. Her form flickered like a dying lightbulb.
Standing over her was something that made Peter's spider-sense jump from "danger" to "maybe just lie down and accept death."
Sire Hate.
Towering figure wreathed in grey and red energy and the air around him was hostile, not metaphorically but actual air particles seemed pissed about existing near him.
"Pathetic." His voice sounded like tectonic plates grinding together while filing for divorce. "You rely on affection? On connection? Let me show you the only truth this universe knows."
Sire Hate raised one hand and energy gathered there like concentrated hate, photons committing suicide rather than be near it.
"MOVE!" Peter shoved Gwen aside, took the glancing blow himself because that's what heroes did, and wow okay that hurt like hell.
Didn't just hurt his body, hurt his mind, and sudden irrational anger flooded through him, the kind where you wanted to punch walls and scream at traffic and blame everyone for everything. He shook it off, barely.
"We can't beat him!" Gwen landed beside him, voice tight. "Pete, he just took down a Cosmic Abstract! She's literally made of love and he just... what do we do?!"
Peter looked at Gwen, then at Mistress Love bleeding starlight and finally at the giant radiating hate so pure it had physical mass.
A desperate, stupid idea formed, the kind that either saved the day or got you killed, and Peter had built a career on not knowing which until too late.
"Gwen." He grabbed her hand. "This is it. The classic trope!"
"What are you—"
"Just trust me!" Peter struck the most dramatic pose he could while bleeding from three places and pointed at Sire Hate like calling him out for a playground fight. "You can't win, ugly! You forgot something! The one force in the universe stronger than hate!"
He squeezed Gwen's hand, pulled her closer with his hand around her waist.
"The power of LOVE!"
Even under her mask, Gwen had just turned fire truck red. "Pete, what—"
Sire Hate paused, actually paused as the entire battlefield went quiet.
From the floor, Mistress Love coughed and pink ichor splattered across arena stone. She looked up at Peter with complete bewilderment.
"Who..." She wheezed, glowing blood on her lips. "Who in the name of the One Above All told you that, naïve child?"
Peter blinked. "Uh, movies? Every song ever written? Basic storytelling? The power of love always wins, right? That's the whole thing!"
"That is a logical fallacy." Mistress Love sat up with effort so painful it looked like she shouldn't be sitting up and she spoke with a dead serious voice. "Child, you cannot hug Hate into submission. Love does not cancel Hate in direct confrontation. That is not how the cosmic axis works."
Peter and Gwen stared.
"It's not?" they said together.
"No! The only thing that can defeat a Hater..." Mistress Love coughed again, more pink blood sprayed out. "Is a Bigger Hater."
Peter's brain tried to process that and short-circuited. "I'm sorry, what?"
"To destroy Hate, you need someone whose capacity for pettiness, spite, and sheer loathing eclipses the entity itself." She trembled, form flickering worse. "Someone who hates so purely, so completely, that even the embodiment of hatred looks at them and thinks 'wow, that's excessive.' But alas..." She looked up at Sire Hate with resignation. "He is the embodiment. There is no bigger hater in the multiverse."
"Correct," Sire Hate boomed, and his voice carried satisfaction. "And now that we've established I'm unbeatable, you can perish quietly."
The entity moved, one second over Mistress Love and the next second in front of Peter, and he snatched Spider-Man by the collar, lifted him like he weighed nothing.
"Hey," Peter choked out, feet kicking uselessly. "Can we maybe talk? I know a great Thai place—"
"Silence."
Sire Hate threw him with a casual flick and Peter was airborne, flying across the arena with railgun force.
Wind tore at his mask and spider-sense screamed about the Celestial he was about to hit, about the impact that would turn him into paste.
'This is it,' Peter thought as everything went slow motion. 'Gonna end up as a stain on a space-god's boot. Sorry, Uncle Ben. Sorry, Aunt May. Really tried. Tell Gwen I—'
THWUMP.
He didn't hit the Celestial.
Hit something else, something firm and muscular that caught him mid-flight, like catching a football.
A familiar smell hit Peter first, cheap cigars and expensive cologne, the kind that cost too much and smelled like overcompensation.
"Gotcha, you wall-crawling menace!"
Peter's eyes snapped open.
Hovering in mid-air, held bridal-style by a man in red and white with a high collar that had opinions about fashion. Square jaw that could cut glass. Flat-top haircut from the sixties that was now just stubborn refusal to change. Mustache vibrating with barely contained authority and rage.
Peter's brain short-circuited.
"J-Jonah?!"
Jonah Jameson, the same newspaper publisher who yelled at him about photos, but this was Super-Jameson from the Manhattan Sentinel crisis, looked like someone took Omni-Man, aged him to middle management, fed him five espressos and a personal vendetta.
Hovering beside him, in a small red cape fluttering, was a pitbull.
"Bat?!" Peter's voice went up an octave.
"Don't call my dog, Spider! Only I can call him." Jameson's eyes flashed golden, power radiating in waves that made the air shimmer. He looked past Peter at the Celestial looming over them and sneered.
"Bat!" Jameson's voice boomed like a drill sergeant who'd found god and decided god needed discipline. "You remember those tin cans in New York? The ones that interrupted my smoke break?"
The pitbull's eyes narrowed with canine focus.
"This guy?" Jameson pointed at the Celestial with the dismissive gesture usually reserved for terrible interns. "Just a bigger, uglier mailbox! GET HIM!"
WOOF!
Bat's bark didn't sound like a dog, sounded like a jet engine starting up, if the jet was also angry and had teeth.
The bulldog launched forward like a furry golden missile with anger management issues, bypassed Peter and Jameson entirely, blur of muscle and excessive drool and that little red cape flapping like a war banner.
Hit the Celestial's ankle going full speed.
Jaws clamped down on cosmic armor forged in the heart of a planet, armor that'd withstood planetary explosions, that'd survived things that would make even Odin nervous.
CRUNCH.
The armor cracked.
The Celestial, existing since before most galaxies learned to spiral, actually stumbled and looked down at its ankle where a pitbull was treating it like the world's most aggressive chew toy.
[What... What is happening? This is not in the protocol.]
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