Chapter 191: First Meeting — Ethan Cross and Spider-Man 2099
Ethan went straight upstairs to look over his new acquisition from Gwen — the dimensional watch.
"So with this," he murmured to himself, turning it over, "I can go anywhere in the Spider-Verse. Including their headquarters."
There was something he'd been turning over for a while now, though. Why was he able to ignore the multiverse's rules entirely — to cross between universes freely, with none of the rejection effect every Spider-Man seemed to suffer from? The Spider-People flickered like bad reception any time they lingered too long outside their home universe. He never had.
And his Family who'd crossed over with him hadn't either. Why?
There was a second thing nagging at him, too. He'd saved Uncle Ben. By every rule the Spider-Society operated on, that should have collapsed the universe. It hadn't.
Am I actually one of those people who can rewrite fixed points? Timelines? Canon itself?
"System. Is this you?" he asked, silently.
No response.
Maybe it was something to do with Loki — the God of Stories, the broken Sacred Timeline, every life across every universe suddenly holding a little more room to deviate from its script.
He didn't have an answer. But he was fairly sure the system was involved somehow.
He let it go. Some things needed time to surface on their own. Right now what he actually needed was sleep.
He lay down, closed his eyes, and was out within minutes.
While he slept, the universe he currently occupied had quietly begun reconnecting itself to another.
Ethan woke a little later than usual the next morning. He came downstairs in a hurry and found Peter and the others already being lectured by a middle-aged man he'd never seen before.
Tall. Built. Wearing a skintight suit that radiated authority without trying particularly hard. Ethan knew instantly who this was.
Spider-Man 2099. The father figure of every Spider-Man in existence. Miguel O'Hara.
Miguel was mid-sentence, voice hard. "You shouldn't be in this universe at all. Your presence here puts the multiverse at risk. None of you even have a dimensional watch — so how did you get here in the first place?"
The three of them had nothing to say to that. Tobey-Peter looked like he was trying not to breathe too loudly. Harry, by contrast, was glaring at Miguel like he had a personal grudge against the concept of authority.
Ethan walked in.
"You must be Mr. O'Hara," he said, voice level and entirely unbothered. "But these are my people. You don't get to lecture them."
Something in the line landed with weight Miguel wasn't prepared for. He went still for a beat.
Tobey-Peter and Garfield-Peter both visibly relaxed the second they heard Ethan's voice.
Miguel stood up slowly, eyes fixed on Ethan's face. Something flickered there — recognition, almost. Like he'd seen this face somewhere before and couldn't place it.
"You're Ethan," he said. "The one who keeps rewriting canonical events."
Ethan smiled, thin and unimpressed. "What I do isn't yours to manage. And for the record — the universe didn't collapse. Don't assume your failures are everyone's failures."
Miguel knew exactly why he'd built the Society the way he had. He'd lost his own daughter. Then crossed into another universe where his counterpart had been murdered by criminals, and taken his place as that universe's father instead. That single act had been enough to unravel the web entirely and destroy that universe.
He'd built everything since around making sure nobody else made his mistake.
The two of them squared off, the air between them taut.
Miguel sent Gwen back to base to start a new assignment. Ethan told Garfield-Peter and Tobey-Peter to clear out.
Once it was just the two of them, Ethan sat down and started making tea.
"Want a cup?" he asked.
If Gwen or Tobey-Peter had walked back in right then, they'd have been baffled — these two had been one sentence away from a fight a minute ago, and now it was tea.
Ethan himself wasn't entirely sure what had just happened either. But he had a pretty good guess: Miguel's anger had been theater. He'd known it the moment they made eye contact, because the system had already pinged him.
「DING!」「Congratulations, Host! Miguel O'Hara has been added as a friend!」「Congratulations, Host! Miguel O'Hara's Friendship Level has risen to ★★!」
So no — Miguel wasn't actually angry. He'd just wanted the room cleared. Ethan went along with it, mostly out of curiosity about where this was going.
"Ethan," Miguel said, finally, settling into the chair across from him. "Thank you. For saving Uncle Ben. For saving that universe's Spider-Man, and not breaking it in the process. You're something different."
Before Ethan could respond, Miguel kept talking.
He explained it plainly: yes, he'd founded the Society to keep the multiverse from collapsing. Yes, he'd spent years personally enforcing the doctrine — punishing anyone who tried to fight fixed points, making himself the villain of the story if that's what it took to keep people from gambling with their own worlds.
But that wasn't the whole truth.
He'd also been waiting. Waiting for someone who actually could change things — someone for whom the rule didn't apply. He'd kept playing the cold, merciless enforcer specifically because, without that pressure, every Spider-Man under his roof would eventually try to save the person they loved, and every single attempt would end the same way his had.
He needed to hold the line until the exception showed up. He just hadn't known when, or who, or whether it would happen before the whole network destroyed itself trying.
That didn't mean he didn't understand the grief underneath it. It didn't mean he didn't want, more than anything, to break the rule himself.
And then Ethan arrived. Twice now, he'd broken canon. Twice, nothing had collapsed. The web had barely moved.
Miguel had known instantly what that meant.
"I've been waiting for you," he said quietly. "There was a prophecy — from a Sorcerer Supreme Spider-Man we used to have. He said someone like you would show up eventually."
Something in his posture eased as he said it. Like a weight he'd been carrying for years had finally, partially, lifted.
Ethan understood now. He genuinely was one of the rare existences who could rewrite Spider-Verse canon and walk away clean.
And he had his own use for that. Bringing the Spider-Society into his camp — formally, on his side — would be a serious asset if things ever escalated to the Kang situation Loki had warned him about.
Then Miguel's tone shifted, hardening back into something more businesslike.
"That said," he said, "even if you're probably the person we've been waiting for, I'm not handing you the entire Society on a hunch. I need to see what you can actually do."
Ethan opened his mouth to respond.
The entire universe shuddered.
He and Miguel exchanged one look.
Earth-1999999. The Brooklyn Bridge.
A long mechanical tentacle tore through the concrete face of the overpass, surfacing without warning. People scattered, screaming.
The thing moved with eerie purpose, sweeping through the air like it was searching for something specific.
A figure in a black jacket stepped into view on the bridge, unhurried.
He looked across the span at the Spider-Man standing on a parked car in a sleek nanotech suit, and called out, friendly as anything:
"Hey there, Peter."
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