Chapter 193: Ethan's Wager with Spider-Man 2099
While Peter was still trying to think his way out of a bad situation, the Green Goblin had run out of patience.
His eyes went wide, the green of his face stretching into something even more grotesque. He spread his arms like he meant to embrace the whole sky, then dove straight at Peter, cackling.
"No backup? Then die!"
The laugh rolled out across the night air, hollow and unhinged.
A bolt of green energy shot from his hands, the opening move — and the rest of the team took it as their cue.
Electro carved arcs of blue lightning through the air with his whip. Sandman conjured a churning wall of sand that threatened to swallow the entire bridge. Kraven sighted down his rifle and started putting rounds into the chaos. Doc Ock's tentacles surged forward in a brutal coordinated assault. The Lizard simply launched himself bodily at Peter. Vulture circled overhead, hunting for an opening.
In seconds, the Brooklyn Bridge had become a war zone — lightning, sand, gunfire, all tangled together into something out of a nightmare.
Peter scrambled, dodged, ducked, the nanotech suit absorbing what it could. But seven on one was seven on one, and the suit was already fraying at the seams, panels tearing away under the punishment, until —
A piece of his mask ripped loose.
Doc Ock froze, staring at the face underneath.
"You're not Peter," he said slowly. "Who are you?"
Everyone else stopped too. They all looked at the unfamiliar face under the half-torn mask and arrived at the same realization at the same moment: this wasn't their Peter Parker.
Peter, for his part, hadn't understood a word any of them had said this whole fight. He had no idea what was happening, no idea who any of them were.
He took the half-second of confusion and used it. He dove off the bridge and into the churning water below.
He needed distance. He needed to think. And he needed Strange.
Up on the bridge, the Six watched him go.
Sandman crossed his arms, annoyed. "Tch. Let him get away."
Vulture's voice carried sharp and thin from above. "Doesn't look like the Peter we know."
"He's still my quarry," Kraven said. "No prey has ever escaped me."
None of them put the pieces together. Simple men, simple instincts — it never occurred to any of them to ask why this Peter wasn't their Peter.
Only the Green Goblin — sharper than the rest, and always looking for an angle — felt something was off about the air itself. He narrowed his eyes at the spot where Peter had vanished, and a slow, delighted smile spread across his face.
"Looks like we've landed in a different universe," he said. "Let's make a mess of it."
He took off without waiting for the others.
The wrongness of this new world thrilled him. He wanted to leave his mark on it.
One by one, the rest peeled off the bridge, scattering across the city, each chasing their own version of chaos in a world that didn't belong to them.
Elsewhere, Ethan and Miguel had been mid-conversation when they both felt it at the same moment.
They looked at each other. Neither needed to say anything — they both knew the other had felt it too.
Miguel pulled up his watch and started parsing data. Ethan reached for Observation Haki and let it spread outward through the universe around them.
His expression shifted almost immediately. What he was sensing was strange — familiar shapes wearing unfamiliar textures. A Strange whose magic ran heavier and darker than the one he knew. A Wanda whose presence had a corrupted edge to it. A Tony who felt older, more worn down than the one back home. And underneath all of it, a scattering of villains he didn't recognize at all.
This is the movie universe. Has to be. But something didn't track. Tony's supposed to be dead by now, by the timeline I remember. Why am I picking up his signature at all? Unless this is a different branch — one where Tony never died.
Miguel got his answer first, fed through from Society headquarters.
"It's the bookworm and Strange," he said, voice flat with disgust. "Strange tried a memory spell and botched it. Tore open cross-dimensional rifts. Half the villains running loose right now came through one of those rifts. So did we, technically — the rift pulled us in along with everything else."
He was already turning to leave, already planning to round up every variant who didn't belong here and ship them back where they came from.
Ethan stopped him.
Miguel turned, frowning. "What — you're trying to stop me?"
He wasn't. Ethan had something else in mind entirely.
"Let's make a bet," Ethan said. "I'll put my two students on it — the two Peters. If they can handle the loose variants and keep this universe from collapsing, you owe me something in return: let them help with fixing canonical events in other Spider-Verse universes going forward. Mine and theirs both."
There were two things motivating this. One, Ethan wanted the three-Spider moment to actually happen properly, and letting the boys handle this would put them in exactly the right place for it. Two — longer-term — he was thinking about Family Points. If he could get a standing arrangement where his Peters helped other Spider-Men save their own Uncle Bens, that was friendship points on tap without him personally having to visit every universe in the multiverse himself.
Miguel hesitated. Of course he wanted those tragedies undone too — that had never been the question. The question was whether Ethan was someone he could actually trust to make that call.
While he was still weighing it, his watch buzzed.
"Gwen's lost the target. She and Miles have moved to Earth-50101."
"Damn it." Miguel swore under his breath. If Ethan was a complication, Miles was a catastrophe waiting to happen, full stop — that kid was always the bigger problem in his book.
He looked back at Ethan. "Fine. Deal. But if your students can't pull it off — you stop interfering with canonical events. Permanently. Understood?"
He stepped into a dimensional rift without waiting for a response and was gone.
Ethan watched the spot where he'd vanished, smiling slightly.
"I," he said to no one, "have literally never lost a bet."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you