The midday sun beat down mercilessly on Hammerfalls. Heat distortion rippled off the rusted corrugated roof of Tonya's Auto Repair Shop.
Because Peter Parker and Wade Wilson had crashed into this bleak timeline, the natural sequence of apocalyptic events had violently derailed. While Hawkeye and his dimensional bodyguards were busy wiping the Hulk Gang off the map, another predator had been stalking the desert.
Bullseye.
The Red Skull's former top assassin had discovered the slaughtered remains of the scavengers Clint had dropped earlier that morning. Bullseye had immediately tracked the archer's trail, arriving at the doorstep of Clint's ex-wife. Bullseye was dying. His body was failing him. His only remaining goal was to experience the absolute, visceral thrill of killing one last superhero before he kicked the bucket.
He stood perfectly still in the dusty driveway, the wind whipping his worn trench coat around his ankles. He waited.
The screen door of the repair shop creaked open. A young, mixed-race girl stepped out onto the porch. She wore grease-stained overalls, holding a heavy steel wrench at her side.
"Are you some kind of pervert?" Ashley Barton demanded, narrowing her eyes at the stranger. "Why are you just standing there staring at my house?"
"Relax, young lady," Bullseye rasped, offering a dry, cracked smile. "I'm just here to see your father."
A faint mechanical whir hummed beneath Bullseye's skull. His right eye was a fully integrated cybernetic prosthetic. A tactical HUD flickered across his retina, analyzing the girl's micro-expressions, heart rate, and pupil dilation. A built-in polygraph.
"Is he home?" Bullseye asked.
"This isn't his home," Ashley spat back, shifting her weight. "He only shows up here every few years when he officially runs out of ways to piss my mother off."
The crosshairs in Bullseye's prosthetic eye flashed green. The lie detector confirmed her statement. She was telling the truth.
Bullseye frowned. Disappointment washed over him. He reached into his coat and slowly drew a heavy, sharpened steel pitchfork. He twirled it effortlessly in his grip. If he couldn't kill Hawkeye today, he was perfectly fine playing a 'friendly' little game of target practice with the archer's daughter.
Before he could pull his arm back to throw, his cybernetic eye screamed.
A blaring red warning flashed across his vision. The built-in Geiger counter and energy sensors spiked off the charts. The air pressure in the driveway suddenly dropped.
A swirling, jagged vortex of red dimensional energy tore open the fabric of reality directly to his left. The smell of burning ozone flooded the desert.
A heavy, mechanized boot stepped out of the portal.
Bullseye didn't even have time to blink. A massive rotary machine gun, mounted to the shoulder of a heavily armored suit, spun to life with a deafening whine. A relentless torrent of heavy-caliber depleted uranium rounds shredded through Bullseye's torso. The assassin's body was instantly pulverized into a fine, red mist and a pile of unidentifiable meat.
Ashley dropped her wrench. She stared in absolute shock at the smoking remains on her lawn, then slowly looked up at the executioner.
The figure stood over seven feet tall. He wore a massive, heavily plated suit of power armor. The paint was chipped and scorched, but the color scheme was unmistakable: bold red and blue. Ashley had seen a faded, moth-eaten cloth suit exactly like that hidden in her attic. Spider-Man.
"I am War Spider," the mechanized voice boomed through external speakers. "I am a vanguard of the Spider Legion. We traverse the multiverse."
War Spider raised his heavy, gauntleted right hand. A thick, metallic ring rested on his middle finger. A bright, glowing red light emanated from the jewelry. Inside the transparent casing of the ring, a living, brightly colored spider twitched and crawled.
"Ashley Barton of Earth-21923," War Spider announced, lowering his weapon. "My measurement confirms you possess the absolute potential to break through your universe's pathetic moral constraints. You have the cruelty required to conquer this world. I officially invite you to join the Spider Legion."
"Stay the hell away from her!"
Clint Barton sprinted around the corner of the garage. He dropped to one knee, the string of his composite bow pulled instantly taut, an explosive arrow aimed directly at the armored giant's visor.
But Peter Parker was faster.
Spider-sense didn't just tingle; it detonated. A spike of pure, agonizing ice jammed itself into the base of Peter's skull. It was a multiversal warning system screaming at a volume he hadn't even felt when fighting the Wasteland Hulk.
Peter launched himself off the roof of the Spider-Buggy. The Iron Spider armor hummed, layered completely in the dark, writhing mass of the Venom symbiote. He cleared the distance in a fraction of a second, tucking his knees to his chest before violently extending his legs.
A flawless, hyper-kinetic dropkick slammed squarely into War Spider's chest plate.
The heavy armor buckled. War Spider flew backward, crashing through the wooden fence and skidding across the dirt.
War Spider scrambled to his feet, raising his rotary cannon. He paused. The glowing red ring on his finger violently pulsed, feeding multiversal identification data directly into his HUD.
"You are not the designated Spider-Totem of this timeline," War Spider's mechanical voice glitched with confusion. "And your bio-signature does not register with the Legion. How did you breach this universe?!"
"I've been wondering the exact same thing!" Peter yelled, sprinting forward. "Why did my Web of Fate tremor for this world? Why don't you start by telling me what the hell your Legion is?!"
Peter didn't wait for an answer. He threw a left hook, knocking the rotary cannon aside. At the exact same moment, Venom surged outward from Peter's chest. A thick, muscular black tendril formed a massive claw. It plunged directly into the center of War Spider's chest plate, violently gripping the glowing arc-reactor power source.
With a sickening crunch of tearing metal, Venom ripped the reactor clean out of the chassis.
Sparks showered the dirt. Deprived of his main power source, War Spider's suit powered down. The red and blue plating locked up. Desperate, War Spider raised his right hand. The glowing ring flashed. A red dimensional vortex tore open behind him, preparing to pull him to safety.
"Baby knife!"
A high-pitched scream echoed from the driveway. Deadpool skipped forward and threw an adamantium combat dagger with absolute, terrifying precision.
Thwack. The blade buried itself directly into the center of War Spider's helmet, piercing the reinforced glass and sinking deep into his forehead. War Spider stiffened, then collapsed backward into the dirt, dead. The red vortex sputtered and collapsed.
Clint slowly lowered his bow. Peter commanded the symbiote to retract, leaving only the sleek Iron Spider armor. They both turned to stare at Deadpool.
Wade dusted off his hands, entirely unapologetic. "What? Look at him! He's a guy from a super-powered evil cosmic legion, wearing a glowing magic ring, scouting the universe to recruit evil variants, and preparing to recite some creepy oath!" Wade pointed accusingly at the corpse. "It's comic book 101! You ALWAYS stab the guy with the glowing ring!"
Across the multiverse, on Earth-51821.
The central headquarters of the Spider Legion hovered in a dark, bruised cosmos.
The Legion was a multiverse-wide syndicate. They existed solely to track down unconventional, morally unbound Spider-Totems who refused to play the role of the suffering hero. They recruited variants who had actively chosen to conquer, subjugate, or destroy their respective timelines. To delay the inevitable war with the heroic Spider-Men of the multiverse, the Legion actively avoided recruiting anyone with a functioning moral compass.
But their operational security had just been breached.
When War Spider's heart stopped, his suit's black box automatically transmitted a data packet back to headquarters. The video feed bypassed the standard intelligence servers and was intercepted directly by the inner circle.
The Spider Gods.
These were the five founding totems who had successfully conquered their own realities single-handedly. They stood in a massive, obsidian chamber, watching the holographic replay of Peter Parker's dropkick.
"It appears there are other Spider-Men who have mastered the ability to traverse the multiverse unassisted," a deep, resonant voice echoed through the chamber.
The speaker sat on a throne of jagged black stone. He was a Peter Parker entirely consumed by a flowing, living cloak of pitch-black symbiote mass. In his timeline, he had slaughtered Knull, usurped the title of the Symbiote God, and assimilated his entire universe into a singular, venomous hive-mind.
"This breach was not achieved through Stark technology or external magical interference," the Symbiote God narrowed his white eyes at the hologram. "I felt the pure, unadulterated power of destiny radiating from him."
"The Web," a female voice agreed.
She hovered above the floor, wreathed in roaring, cosmic flames. She was Jean Grey. In her timeline, she had been bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter. When the Phoenix Force arrived on Earth, it bonded with her mutated spider-physiology, transforming her into the Dark Phoenix Spider.
The Gods turned their gazes upward. Suspended in the center of the dark chamber was a massive, glowing cosmic lantern. Inside the lantern writhed a terrifying, infinite mass of millions of spiders.
Carl King. The Thousand.
In one universe, Carl King had devoured his entire reality, converting every living organism into his spider-swarm. The Spider Gods despised King, but they recognized his raw power. They had trapped his collective consciousness inside the lantern, using his endless biomass to fuel their multiversal portal rings.
The concept for the Lantern Beast had been proposed by the Spider Servant—a Wade Wilson who had been bitten by the spider while seeking a cure for his cancer. He had gained spider-powers, a healing factor, and the horrific ability to transmit his mutations through bodily fluids, successfully unleashing a bio-hazard plague that conquered his Earth.
A heavy staff struck the obsidian floor.
"That boy in the armor."
The final Spider God stepped into the holographic light. He was a man of African descent, his muscles corded and thick. He wore deeply woven, traditional tribal garments, adorned with intricate, golden spider-silk patterns. He held a single, squirming Carl King spider between his fingers.
He was Anansi. The West African God of lies, stories, and the world's very first, primordial Spider-Totem.
Anansi crushed the spider in his palm. His dark eyes locked onto the frozen image of Peter Parker.
"That is the Patriarch," Anansi declared, his voice carrying the weight of ancient thunder. "He is the center of the Great Web."
Anansi turned toward the dimensional gate.
"I will bring him to us. Or I will end him."
PS: Okay, Web-Heads, let's collect the official oath of the Spider Legion! If you were an evil Spider-God handing out glowing multiversal rings to corrupted Spider-variants, what would your sinister Green Lantern-style oath be? Drop your best rhymes in the comments!
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