The second floor of Tonya's Auto Repair Shop smelled heavily of motor oil, stale sweat, and cheap Wasteland whiskey.
Logan had already vanished back into the desert, wanting absolutely nothing to do with whatever multiversal superhero nonsense was unfolding. That left Peter, Wade, Clint, and Ashley crammed into a cramped, dusty office above the garage, trying to process the absolute chaos of the last hour.
Clint stood by a rusted utility sink, running a stream of brown tap water over a bloody, metallic orb. After cleaning up the pulverized meat out in the driveway, Clint had identified the assassin as Bullseye. The archer casually polished Bullseye's salvaged cybernetic eye—a Deathlok-style optical prosthetic—against his worn shirt, rolling the tech thoughtfully between his calloused fingers.
Across the room, Peter was currently losing his mind.
"What were you actually thinking?!" Peter yelled, his voice cracking. He paced the small room, his Iron Spider boots clanking against the floorboards. "I ripped the arc reactor straight out of his chest! He was completely neutralized, Wade! We could have tied him to a chair and interrogated him!"
"You didn't call dibs!" Deadpool yelled back, throwing his hands up defensively. He was sitting backward on a folding chair, completely unbothered. "You never specified that the War Machine rip-off was on the 'Do Not Stab' list! I was protecting your precious multiversal granddaughter! For all I knew, that guy was a Skrull in a mech suit!"
Peter pressed his gauntleted hands to his temples. "If I wanted him dead, why would I have surgically dismantled his power source?! Does that look like lethal intent to you?!"
"You literally never kill anybody!" Wade argued, pointing a gloved finger at Peter's chest. "Even when you want to kill someone, you just hang them from a streetlamp with a sticky note! How am I supposed to know when you're saving a guy for questioning versus just being a total boy scout?!"
Peter squeezed his eyes shut. A dull, rhythmic throb pulsed at the base of his skull. His spider-sense hadn't deactivated. It was humming like a live electrical wire under his skin. The War Spider was dead, and its automated suit had already transmitted a signal back to its makers. The Legion knew they were here.
Sitting on a greasy cot in the corner, Ashley Barton aggressively rubbed her temples. She was a hardened Wasteland kid. Just yesterday, she had spent her afternoon breaking the nose of a local extortionist with a lug wrench. Today, the Red Skull's top assassin was a puddle of paste on her lawn, and her absentee father had brought two dimension-hopping lunatics into her bedroom.
She stared at the floor, chewing the inside of her cheek. Finally, she looked up at Clint. "Did that guy in the armor come for me?"
"Looks like it," Clint grunted, tossing the cybernetic eye into his pocket. "Sounds like you're the one drawing all the wrong kind of attention."
Ashley explained what little she had heard the War Spider say before Peter dropkicked him. The "Spider Legion." A legion of Spider-Totems dedicated to conquering universes.
"So," Peter muttered, his analytical brain churning. "If they receive the data from that dead suit... do they send an armada to retaliate, or do they cut their losses and—"
Peter's voice cut off instantly.
His knees buckled.
He slammed onto the wooden floorboards, his metal kneepads cracking the wood. A jagged spike of pure, blinding agony drove itself directly into the base of his skull. It wasn't a tingle. It was a siren.
The physical world dissolved for a fraction of a second. In his mind's eye, Peter didn't just feel the Web of Life and Destiny; he saw it. The glowing, infinite strands of cosmic silk were bowing violently downward. Something impossibly massive, impossibly heavy, was walking across the multiversal threads.
A sharp cry echoed from the corner. Ashley collapsed onto the cot, clutching her head, her body curling into a tight fetal position. Her connection to the Totem network was faint compared to Peter's, but the sheer proximity of the approaching force was deafening.
"Kid! Are you alright?!" Clint dropped his bow and rushed to his daughter's side.
"Spidey?" Wade tilted his head, poking Peter's shoulder armor. "You doing a bit, or are you having a stroke?"
Peter gritted his teeth. The Iron Spider servos whined as he forced himself to stand. The blinding pain slowly receded, leaving behind a cold, absolute certainty.
Something had arrived.
Peter didn't say a word. He bolted out the door, vaulted over the metal railing, and hit the dirt driveway. He sprinted toward the main street of Hammerfall.
The town was a twisted shrine to dead heroes. Faded comic book merchandise hung from the rusted shanties. In the dead center of the main intersection rested a massive impact crater. At the bottom sat Mjolnir, immovable and stained with dirt. A dozen emaciated scavengers knelt in a circle around the Uru metal, numbly praying to the hammer of a dead god.
Peter skidded to a halt at the edge of the crater. His Iron Spider mask was retracted, his bare face exposed to the blistering desert wind.
Clint, Wade, and Ashley rushed up behind him. They followed Peter's gaze.
They looked up at the sky.
High above the clouds, a singular point of blinding red light expanded. It stretched outward like a fractured pane of glass. The atmosphere literally tore open. A massive, bleeding scarlet scar ripped across the heavens.
Peter's spider-sense went completely, terrifyingly silent. The overload had pushed his danger-sense into total sensory deprivation.
Countless flickering afterimages bled from the red rift. Then, a single figure floated down from the cosmic wound.
As the man descended, glowing strands of golden spider-silk shot out from the edges of the portal, pulling the atmosphere tight, physically stitching the sky closed behind him.
He landed softly in the dirt, just a few feet away from Mjolnir. The praying scavengers scattered in absolute terror.
The man was of African descent, his posture radiating an ancient, suffocating authority. He wore the traditional, deeply woven garments of a West African tribe, but the fabric shimmered with microscopic, golden web patterns.
He didn't look at the scavengers. He locked his dark, fathomless eyes directly on Peter.
"I once challenged the Sky Father with a lie," the man spoke. His voice didn't echo, but it resonated perfectly in the chests of everyone present. "I brought the story of the gods down to the mortal realm. I made the world believe that I was the true face of the divine. Through deception, I drove the pantheon from my reality."
The man folded his hands behind his back. "I became the sole architect of my cosmos. I conquered my universe."
Peter's jaw tightened. The nano-particles of the Iron Spider suit surged upward, snapping over his face in a sleek, gold-tinted visor. The suit's internal database rapidly cross-referenced the multiversal mythological profiles Tony Stark had pre-loaded.
"You're Anansi," Peter stated, his voice digitized and cold through the external speakers. "The Ghanaian god of lies and stories."
Anansi smiled. It was a polite, chilling expression. He offered a slight, mocking bow.
"It is indeed I, Patriarch," Anansi said. "I have come to formally invite you to join our Spider Legion. You possess the intrinsic ability to freely traverse the Web of Life and Destiny. That is a skill we urgently require. In exchange, we offer you the absolute power to protect your universe, your timeline, and your family."
Anansi took a slow step forward. "Furthermore, we can offer you a secret. There is a family of monsters traversing the multiverse. The Inheritors. They hunt and consume Spider-Totems. The Legion is the only force capable of protecting you from them."
Peter stood his ground. "You conquer your own worlds. You wipe out your own pantheons. That's your recruitment pitch?"
"Is there something strange about asserting control, Patriarch?" Anansi asked smoothly.
Peter's analytical mind rapidly connected the dots. The Spider Legion was immensely powerful. If they were casually recruiting evil variants to build an army, they weren't just flexing their muscles. They were building a barricade.
"If you're building a legion, and you aren't actually afraid of these Inheritors..." Peter tilted his head, his golden lenses narrowing. "What are you preparing for? The Hive?"
Anansi's polite smile vanished.
A heavy, absolute silence fell over the crater. The God of Stories had no lie prepared for that.
"So it is the Hive," Peter whispered.
Anansi opened his mouth to speak.
He never got the chance.
A deafening screech of tearing metal ripped through the town. A massive, rusted steel I-beam tore itself out of the foundation of a nearby building. It flew through the air at supersonic speed and slammed directly into Anansi's chest, launching the god backward through a solid brick wall.
The ground shook. Every scrap of metal in Hammerfall—the cars, the corrugated roofs, the discarded weapons—groaned and lifted into the air.
A withered, emaciated old man floated down from the sky. He wore a faded, battered crimson helmet. Magnetic energy crackled violently around his trembling, liver-spotted hands.
Magneto glared at the rubble where the god had fallen.
"Get out of my territory!"
PS: Anansi is a massive figure in actual Marvel lore! He is the son of the Sky Father in Ashanti mythology and is recognized as the very first, primordial Spider-Totem. In the comics, Anansi first appeared in Spider-Man: Fairy Tales #2 (Earth-7082), a universe completely devoid of standard superheroes, populated entirely by mythological figures. The concept of a "God of Stories" is incredibly overpowered in the Marvel Universe (just ask Loki!), placing Anansi's power level roughly on par with Thor!