sparkinyou | Uncle Aaron's Apartment - Tuesday Late Evening

Dragging an unconscious body across Queens to Brooklyn? Not exactly an easy thing to do. No is it easy being chased by cops but somehow Miles had managed. Not wanting to go home with a strange body and answer questions from Dad, Miles went instead to Aaron's apartment. Since Uncle Aaron was gone he'd at least have some privacy to try and figure all this out.

The person in question was definitely Peter but... different. He was older, had different hair and also was wearing sweatpants and mis-matched shoes. If Miles had learned anything in Fandom these last couple of weeks is that doppelgangers were real and could very possibly be evil. So? The new Peter that Miles had found was now tied up against a body bag with everything he could find in Uncle Aaron's apartment and was slowly turning around in lazy circles.

When the new Peter came to, he looked fairly groggy. Miles was standing there watching him as his eyelids started to flutter open.

"I have questions."

Peter blinked back and tilted his head at Miles. Once again the weird feeling he felt down in the subway came over him.

"You're like me."

Miles sighed. Okay. They established that again. "You're Peter Parker. Except older with different hair and... different body type."

"Pretty sure you just called me fat."

"No I didn't," Miles said feeling slightly guilty.

"Hey listen, you don't look so hot either kid. Most superheroes don't wear their own merch."

Miles looked down at his crappy costume and shrugged. Hey, at least he wasn't wearing sweatpants.

Anyway. Time for questions. "Are you from another dimension? Like a parallel universe where
things are like this universe but different? And you're Spider-Man in that universe?"

Peter gave Miles a look of surprise. "Really? You guessed that?"

"I go to a very bizarre high school," Miles explained. "Did you get here by buying a pass from a gnome or did you end up here through mysterious circumstances."

"Wait. What? Gnomes?!"

"Okay. So is the mysterious circumstances."

"Look, kid. I was in my apartment minding my own business when a portal opened up and sucked me over here."

"And the sweatpants?"

"... The portal ate my pants."

"Okay. That's weird."

"I'm from another dimension and you think that's weird?"

"Okay, one more question: Are you an evil doppelganger?"

"No!"

"Would you tell me if you were?"

"I just admitted that a portal ate my pants. How good a liar do you think I am?"

Miles sighed in relief. "This is amazing. You can teach me just like Peter said he would."

"Before he died?" Peter asked with a raised eyebrow as he spun around slowly against the body back

"Yeah, exactly."

Peter let out a snort of amusement/sarcasm as he slowly spun around again. "Yeah, alright."

Miles frowned. This particular Peter seemed a bit more cynical and unhelpful than the other one. "Look, I made a promise. To you... Or at least another version of you."

"Fine. Here’s lesson number one, kid. Don't watch the mouth. Watch the hands."

Suddenly, Peter's hands were free. Miles blinked and before he could do anything else, Peter had dropped kicked the body bag off it chain and knocked Miles to the floor and started heading towards the window.

"Hey! You can't just leave!"

"Trust me, kid. This will make you a better Spider-Man," Peter said crawling out the window... only to suddenly lose all muscle control and fall a story onto the fire escape below.

Miles poked his head over the fire escape to see what had happened. "Are you all right?"

"No I’m not," Peter grunted

"What’s going on with your body?"

I don’t think my atoms are real jazzed about being in the wrong dimension. Look, I’m not looking for a side gig as a Spider-Man coach. I got a lot going on in my dimension. Like a lot." Peter said as he slowly walked down the wall and started walking up another.

Miles frowned. What kind of Spider-Man was this guy? Maybe if he... "With great power-"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence!" Peter snapped as he reeled around to face Miles. "Don't do it! I'm sick of-"

He flinched again and this time various colors and forms morphed around Peter as he glitched again. "-it. Ugh. Want my advice? Go back to being a normal kid."

"I don't have a choice!" Miles pleaded. "Kingpin’s got a supercollider. He’s trying to kill me."

That stopped Peter in his tracks. He turned around to look at Miles. "Wait a second, what did you just say?"

"Kingpin’s trying to kill me."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Who cares about that? Where’s the collider?"

Was this guy for real? "Brooklyn. Under Fisk Tower."

And with that, Peter turned and started walking away. "Goodbye!"

"Wait. Where are you going?" Miles asked as he struggled to climb down the wall.

"When it runs again, I’ll just jump in and get back to my life." Peter said not evening bothering to look back at Miles.

Miles was flabbergasted "You can’t let them run it. I’m supposed to stop it before it runs again or everyone’s gonna die!"

Peter sighed. "Or everyone’s going to die. That is what they always say. But there’s always a little bit of time before everybody dies, and that’s when I do my best work.

Miles was getting desperate. "Aren’t you going to need this?" he asked producing the override key.

"Ah you have a goober. Give it," Peter demanded as he reached out for it.

Miles pulled it back. "Wait, no. Not so fast. He called it an override key.

Peter sighed. "There’s always a bypass key, a virus key, a who-cares key I can never remember so I just call it a goober." He held out his hand again. "Give it."

Miles shook his head. "I need it to destroy the collider."

"I need it to go home!" Peter replied in frustration.

Miles shoved the key in his mouth. "No! I’ll swallow it, don’t play with me!" Or at least that's what Miles tried to say. Hard to talk with a USB drive in your mouth.

"What?"

Miles opened his mouth to repeat himself when Peter, with expert timing and aim, used his webshooter to hit and pull the usb drive out of Miles' mouth and started walking away despite Miles' protests.

Peter Parker shook his head as he walked away, "Look kid, The collider created a portal that brought me here. And I have to go-"

Then Peter stopped, looking at the "goober." Miles winced. When he left off the building he must have-

"Did you break this?" asked incredulously.

"No, it... broke," Miles lied badly. "I don’t remember what happened."

Peter let out a long groan of frustration. "This is why I never had kids, this
is why I never did that."

"Can’t we make another one?" Miles suggested hopefully

"No, we can’t do anything," Peter said walking away again. This time directly up a wall like he was just strolling down the street. "Thanks to you I have to re-steal what your guy stole from Alchemax and make another one of these.

Miles scrambled after him though the whole sticking and not sticking thing was causing him to slow down. "Look," Miles pleaded. "If I don’t turn off the collider after you leave, everyone in this city, my parents, my uncle, and millions of others will die, and you’re just gonna go home and leave me here to figure this out for myself? You good with that, Spider-Man?"

"Yeah. I am," Peter said as he walked over the top of the building and disappeared from sight.

All hope left miles. Utterly defeated he sat down. On the wall. Was this getting less weird? Still... Everything was horrible and-

And that's when a weary Peter's head peered over the head of the building. "What are you doing?"

Miles groaned. "Making you feel guilty," he said sarcastically. "Is it working?"

Peter scoffed "How could it, no-- Look at me, does it look like it’s working? No
it’s.. no it’s... ohhhh..."

Peter's face scrunched up in frustration. Which was followed by a scream of frustration which he muffled into the arm of his coat. Finally Peter's shoulders slumped in defeat. As if someone had placed the weight of the world on his shoulders once again.