On the busy streets of New York City, life moved on as it always did. Citizens hurried along sidewalks, taxis honked, street vendors shouted their offers, and the constant hum of the metropolis filled the air. After the chaotic battle between Flint Marko, the Green Goblin, and Mysterio that had torn through several blocks, a fragile, momentary peace had settled over the city. People were trying to return to normal—checking their phones, grabbing coffee, arguing about traffic—unaware that the fragile calm was about to shatter once again.
High above, hidden by clouds and the glare of the midday sun, a swirling portal ripped open with a violent crackle of energy. Three figures were violently ejected from the rift, tumbling through the air like discarded ragdolls. All three were unconscious, bodies limp and battered from the brutal fight they had just escaped.
By some cosmic twist of fate, a sharp voice echoed inside the mind of the one still wearing the torn and bloodied Spider-Man suit. Jin's eyes snapped open behind the cracked white lenses. His mind was still reeling, desperately processing the whirlwind of events from the last few months—the experiments, the pain, the loss, the sudden reunion, and the desperate escape through the boom tube. But instinct took over before panic could set in.
Without wasting a second, he twisted mid-fall and fired strands of his new gray-metallic webbing. The webs wrapped around Delia and ACE, gently pulling them together into a protective bundle against his chest. Using his own body as a living cushion, he angled their descent toward a parked yellow taxi below.
The impact was brutal.
They slammed onto the roof of the car with a deafening crunch of metal. Jin felt his already fractured ribs and broken bones snap again under the force. Pain exploded through every nerve, white-hot and familiar. He had grown used to this kind of agony—one brutal beating after another—but this time it wasn't for some ungrateful civilian he would never see again. This time it was for his family. The thought gave him the strength to keep moving.
"My car?!" a middle-aged man in a cheap suit screamed, rushing forward from the sidewalk. His face turned red with rage as he stared at the massive dent and the three bodies sprawled across his vehicle. "Do you know how much it cost me to pay for this thing?!"
The man kept shouting, completely ignoring the fact that the figure in the damaged suit was bleeding heavily from multiple wounds—cuts across his arms, gashes on his torso, and dark red stains soaking through the torn fabric. Jin didn't respond. He forced his protesting body to move, muscles screaming with every inch. It had been years since he had pushed himself this hard while fully conscious. Slowly, painfully, he rose from the wreckage.
"You're just another idiot pretending to be Spider-Man!" the driver yelled, stepping closer and waving his arms wildly.
Jin's response was swift and silent. A single backhand strike sent the man stumbling backward several steps, not hard enough to seriously injure him, but enough to create space. Jin then slid off the crushed roof and dropped to the pavement. Even in his weakened state, he made sure to position his body as a shield, absorbing the final jolt of the fall so that neither Delia nor ACE would suffer any additional impact.
"New… York…" he rasped, voice hoarse and broken. Every breath hurt. Every step felt like walking on shattered glass, but he forced himself forward. With grim determination, he gathered both women into his arms—one small and light, the other tall and heavy with cybernetic enhancements. The difference in weight was glaring, yet to Jin it meant nothing. If he had to die one more time to keep them safe, he would do it without hesitation. They were his family now. His new responsibilities. The only things that still mattered in this broken multiverse.
"Hey, man… you okay?" a concerned teenager called out from across the street, phone already in hand as if ready to record or call for help. Jin didn't even glance in his direction. He simply kept walking slowly, each step deliberate and labored, carrying his precious cargo through the growing crowd of onlookers who stared in shock and confusion.
If he really was back in New York, there was only one place he could think to go right now—the Casino. The old familiar building where so many of his early battles and unlikely alliances had taken shape.
A block ahead, a man with a distinctive mustache stood smoking outside a massive, gaudy building. J. Jonah Jameson— the very man who had spent the early years of a certain spider's career hating him with every fiber of his being, printing headline after headline calling him a menace.
"Hm?" Jameson's eyes narrowed as the battered figure limped past him. For a moment he wanted to bark some sarcastic comment, but when the stranger paused briefly under a streetlight, Jameson caught sight of the cracked white lenses of the mask. No one knew that look better than he did. That weary, determined gaze belonged to only one person—the real Spider-Man. The one everyone believed was dead.
"Parker?" Jameson blurted out, dropping his cigar and rushing forward to offer support. He slipped an arm under Jin's shoulder, helping steady the much younger man as he took in the full extent of the damage—blood, torn suit, the two unconscious figures cradled carefully in his arms. "I'll call an ambulance right now. Who the hell are they? Weren't you dead? What is going on here?"
Jin's voice came out weak but urgent, each word forced through gritted teeth.
"Casino… Delia… Now…"
Jameson stopped mid-dial, staring at the broken hero in front of him. He let out a long, heavy sigh—the kind only a man who had seen too many impossible things could make—then nodded and made the call anyway, barking orders into the phone with his usual gruff authority.
Finally… the spider that this city once claimed as its own was back.
The streets of New York, which had enjoyed a brief moment of peace, would never be the same again.
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Possible new book; Hazbin Hotel, however I am Mahito