After all, the "Plot Armor" belonged to the original versions of these characters. It belonged to the unaltered timeline.
But with Lucas acting as a massive butterfly, violently flapping his wings and changing events left and right, who knew if they still possessed that Main Character status?
Originally, S.H.I.E.L.D. could have just sat back and relied on the guaranteed Plot Armor of the Avengers to solve all their problems. Now, they were left entirely to the whims of fate.
If Tony Stark and the others retained their narrative invincibility, Earth might just survive. But if they had lost that protection, the cascading consequences of Lucas's interference could completely obliterate this fragile world.
Therefore, receiving the magical diary, gaining foresight, and dealing with a transmigrator was a terrifying double-edged sword. Was it a blessing, or a curse? It was impossible to tell.
"There's something else that's been bothering me," Agent Hill suddenly spoke up. "According to Lucas's diary, the future 'Spider-Man,' Peter Parker, has an overwhelmingly massive fanbase in the universe outside the Fourth Wall. But based on the surveillance we've been running on him since we found him... it just doesn't add up."
Hill pulled up a digital file. "He's an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle. He's incredibly ordinary. He's slightly reclusive and socially awkward. Our psychological profilers predict his growth trajectory is completely fixed. Barring any massive external trauma, he'll grow up to be a quiet, introverted straight-A student. And he will likely continue to be relentlessly bullied. In fact, he's being bullied at school right now. How could someone like that possibly become a superhero? And how on earth does he command such massive real-world popularity?"
Everyone in the room was intimately familiar with Peter Parker's file. But this was the reality of living in America.
The rampant anti-intellectualism ingrained in the lower and middle classes was something outsiders simply couldn't comprehend.
In East Asian cultures, there was an absolute, almost religious reverence for education. The fierce academic competition drove their modern societal leap. A straight-A student over there was the pride of their family and the most respected kid in their class.
But in the United States? The general populace seemed to despise intellect more with each passing generation.
If a straight-A student lived in an American high school, they weren't worshipped; they were shoved into lockers. Decades of deliberate, systemic "dumbing down" of the public education system meant that climbing the social ladder through pure intellect was brutally difficult.
Not only did the elite capitalist class suppress them from above, but their own peers viciously dragged them down like crabs in a bucket.
You wouldn't get praised for getting perfect scores. You'd just be surrounded by bullies who resented you. The girl of your dreams wouldn't care about your GPA; she'd only be interested in the muscular, blonde captain of the football team. She would have zero interest in a scrawny nerd.
This was a country where a staggering percentage of the population genuinely believed the Earth was flat, that it was the center of the universe, and that it was literally created in seven days.
It was a societal issue no teacher could ever fix. A science teacher could spend all day explaining that the Sun was the center of the solar system, only for the kid to go home and have their parents tell them the teacher was a liar and that God placed Earth at the center of all creation.
You could easily imagine how fiercely anti-intellectual a society raised in that environment could become.
Out of an incredibly massive population, a shocking number of citizens were functionally illiterate. That was the reality of the nation.
So, in a society that fundamentally devalued quiet intellect, how could an introverted, ordinary, orphaned nerd earn the absolute adoration of millions?
Aside from being smart—which wasn't even considered a positive trait by his peers—what did he have?
"You mentioned barring any massive external trauma," Nick Fury noted. "That trauma is the 'accident' that turns him into Spider-Man. If we judge these superheroes by ordinary, mundane standards, we'll always be wrong. Look at Lucas."
Fury tapped his fingers on the table. "Our psychologists ran a full behavioral profile on Lucas based on his early diary entries. According to his baseline mental fortitude, he should have lived his entire life as an unambitious, completely average civilian. But after he gained those superpowers? His willpower, his decisiveness, his sheer ruthlessness... it skyrocketed. It's like looking at two completely different people. A person's mental strength dictates their experiences, but conversely, a person's experiences can fundamentally reforge their mind."
"Exactly. There's a famous saying: Failure is the mother of success," Hawkeye muttered dryly. "But my mother always told me that failure isn't the mother of success. Success is the mother of success. Only the confidence built from successive victories gives a person the mental strength to conquer the next obstacle. If a person spends their entire life drowning in failure, they'll never succeed."
"So, the real mystery is how he becomes Spider-Man," Fury concluded. "I previously managed to acquire Peter Parker's DNA, as well as a hair sample from Gwen Stacy—the future Spider-Woman. Our labs ran a full genetic sequencing."
Fury's eye darkened. "There are absolutely zero genetic commonalities between them. They share no bloodline connection going back at least twenty generations. Our initial theory—that they shared a common ancestor who possessed a dormant 'Spider-Gene'—is completely dead. Their DNA is entirely indistinguishable from baseline humanity. They are just ordinary people."
Within the Triskelion, there was a highly classified archive dedicated exclusively to Spider-Man and Spider-Woman. It required Level 10 clearance, meaning Nick Fury was the only person with access. It contained every scrap of data they had managed to gather on Peter and Gwen.
But no matter how deep they dug, they were just two ordinary kids. There were no X-Genes. There were no dormant mutant markers.
Therefore, the classic superhero trope Lucas often joked about in his diary—The rich rely on technology, the poor rely on mutation—didn't seem biologically possible here.
The foundational DNA required for a sudden mutation simply didn't exist. Furthermore, since Peter and Gwen shared no genetic relation, the odds of both of them simultaneously experiencing the exact same random biological mutation to become spider-themed heroes were astronomically impossible.
"Director, I think our entire approach might be flawed," Agent Coulson suddenly spoke up, his brow furrowed. "Since we have confirmed the existence of a magical 'Inner World,' why are we stubbornly trying to explain Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy through the lens of genetic science and biological mutation?"
Coulson looked around the room, an absurd but logical idea forming in his head. "What if it's connected to some kind of... Spider God? A demon, or a magical entity. Think about what Lucas wrote in his diary. He said the Ancient One has slaughtered enough extra-dimensional demons to wrap around the solar system."
Coulson leaned forward. "Is it really so impossible to believe that somewhere out there, among all those cosmic entities, there is a Spider God, a Spider Goddess, or some kind of mystic Weaver granting them power?"
Coulson had thrown the doors of logic wide open, introducing an entirely new, terrifying possibility.