The sky screamed.
A million tons of rusted, mid-century S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier plummeted from the stratosphere, eclipsing the desert sun. It slammed directly into Anansi with the force of an extinction-level meteor.
The resulting shockwave flattened the remaining shanties of Hammerfalls. Red sand instantly superheated into jagged sheets of glass. A blinding cloud of pulverized bedrock and twisted steel bloomed into the atmosphere, violently pushing the storm clouds away.
Magneto hovered above the devastation, his hands trembling as he maintained the suffocating magnetic pressure.
Suddenly, a deafening crack echoed from the center of the wreckage.
The Helicarrier's hull bulged and tore open. Anansi shot out of the twisted steel like a bullet, entirely unbared, completely devoid of a single scratch. He moved faster than sound, closing the distance to Magneto in a fraction of a second.
Magneto's eyes widened. He reflexively condensed the surrounding magnetic fields, reinforcing his frail biology with a barrier of localized electromagnetism. Anansi slammed into him, but the old mutant held his ground. The kinetic force dispersed into the air, leaving Magneto physically unscathed.
But Anansi hadn't come to throw a punch.
The Spider God simply reached out and rested his palm gently against Magneto's wrinkled cheek.
The magnetic barrier meant nothing. Anansi was the God of Stories. He didn't break physical shields; he rewrote the narrative.
Magneto's vision swam. The irradiated desert vanished. In its place, he saw a pristine Hammerfalls. He saw the alien intruder lying dead in the dirt, its body pinned beneath a thousand iron swords. He had won. He had saved his people.
Then, the crowd parted. Two figures stepped forward.
Pietro and Wanda. They weren't ghosts anymore. Their eyes were warm. They were smiling at him.
The crushing, century-long weight of guilt evaporated from Max Eisenhardt's chest. The tension melted from his shoulders. His cloudy eyes softened, tears spilling over his eyelashes. A gentle, fragile smile broke across his weathered face.
"Wanda..." the old man whispered. "Pietro..."
Anansi smiled politely. Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he snapped the old man's neck.
The sickening crack echoed across the silent desert. Magneto, the undisputed ruler of the American Midwest, fell out of the sky like a broken doll, hitting the dirt with a heavy thud.
"Okay, look on the bright side," Clint Barton's raspy voice broke the silence. "At least half of America is technically safer now."
Ashley Barton spun around. She had been about to scream at her cowardly father for running away when the metal started flying, but the words died in her throat.
Clint stood in the dust. He had shed his heavy trench coat, revealing his classic, faded purple-and-black Avengers tactical suit. He didn't wear a mask. The left side of his face was smeared with fresh blood. Nestled deep inside his left eye socket, glowing with a cold, red mechanical light, was Bullseye's salvaged cybernetic eye.
"What?" Clint grunted, adjusting the strap of his quiver. "You didn't really think I was gonna fight a god completely blind, did you? Your stepdad did the operation in the garage. Ultron-8 has surprisingly steady hands for a bucket of bolts."
Clint hesitated. He reached out and rested a calloused hand on his daughter's shoulder. For the first time in her life, Ashley didn't swat it away. She just stared at the red optic lens whirring in his skull.
"Take your mother and your stepdad. Run, Ashley. Don't look back."
"What about you?" her voice trembled.
"Me?" Clint pulled his heavy composite bow from his back. Three full quivers of specialized arrows bristled over his shoulder. He knocked a vibranium-tipped shaft. "Don't worry about me, kid. I'm an Avenger."
Ashley swallowed hard. She turned and sprinted back toward the auto shop.
Clint stood his ground, watching the Spider God slowly descend from the sky. The tactical HUD inside his new prosthetic eye fed him a constant stream of measurement data. The energy readings were catastrophic. Anansi was registering on the exact same cosmic scale as Thor.
"This is absolute suicide," Clint muttered, pulling the bowstring taut.
"Alright," Anansi said, his feet touching the dirt in front of Peter. "Finally, the distractions are cleared. We can talk."
"Yay! Group hug!" Deadpool screamed, sprinting out from behind a rusted sedan. He charged Anansi with his arms wide open.
Anansi didn't even look at him. He casually flicked two fingers. A net of shimmering, golden spider-silk materialized out of thin air, slamming into Wade's chest and violently tossing him fifty yards backward into the dirt.
Wade rolled to a stop right next to Mjolnir. He groaned, shaking his head. "Oh, hey there, magic mallet! You wanna try lifting it again, Spidey? Oh, wait! You can't! Because you're a giant, brooding disappointment!"
Anansi moved.
He crossed the distance to Peter in a microsecond. Before the Iron Spider's automated defenses could trigger, before Venom could even surge out of the chassis to form a shield, Anansi grabbed the front of Peter's helmet. With a brutal yank, he ripped the gold-titanium faceplate clean off its hinges.
Anansi's hand clamped around Peter's jaw, lifting him slightly off his feet. The Spider God's dark eyes ignited with blinding, piercing white light.
"Let me read your story, Patriarch," Anansi whispered, his voice echoing directly inside Peter's mind. "Let me see the ink on your soul... ah. A very ordinary, predictable Spider-Man tale..."
"Let him go!" Clint roared.
The bowstring snapped. The explosive arrow sailed toward Anansi's temple at supersonic speed.
Anansi didn't break eye contact with Peter. He reached his free hand to the side, snatching a faded, plastic Captain America toy shield from a destroyed vendor's stall. He held it up. The arrow struck the cheap plastic and harmlessly deflected into the dirt. Anansi chuckled, thoroughly enjoying flipping through the pages of Peter Parker's life.
Then, Anansi froze. The white light in his eyes flickered.
"Wait," Anansi hissed, his expression twisting into absolute outrage. "Very good. Very clever. You dare to lie to me?!"
BOOM.
A shockwave of pure, crackling blue energy erupted from Peter's grip. Anansi was blasted violently backward, his feet leaving the ground as he crashed backward through three dilapidated buildings, kicking up a massive cloud of plaster and brick.
Clint lowered his bow, his cybernetic eye widening in shock.
Peter Parker stood in the center of the crater. His boots were planted firmly in the dirt. And in his right hand, gripped tightly by the leather strap, he held Mjolnir.
He hadn't failed to lift it earlier. He had chosen not to. He had lied to Wade. He had lied to the universe. And in doing so, he had successfully deceived the God of Lies.
Peter's natural, golden bio-electricity surged up his arm, violently intertwining with the ancient, crackling blue lightning of Asgard.
Peter raised Mjolnir high above his head and roared.
He unleashed his bio-electric current directly into the heavens. The atmospheric pressure instantly inverted. The clear desert sky blackened. Massive, bruised storm clouds violently spiraled into existence directly above Hammerfalls.
A localized lightning bolt, thicker than a redwood tree, struck Peter directly from the heavens.
The cosmic energy poured into his body. The Venom symbiote—an organism that instinctively despised high-voltage energy—somehow fed on the divine current, vibrating with a deep, purring resonance.
The Iron Spider armor began to physically warp under the magic. The sleek, scientific curves of Stark tech sharpened, transforming into heavy, segmented plates of Asgardian battle armor. The gold plating gleamed with archaic runes.
Peter stepped forward, electricity sparking from his lenses.
A mile away, Anansi pushed a fallen concrete pillar off his chest. He stood up, wiping a smear of golden blood from his lip. Instead of looking angry, the Spider God threw his head back and laughed. The sound boomed across the wasteland like thunder.
"Fascinating! Truly fascinating!" Anansi yelled, launching himself into the air, charging straight back toward Peter. "A mortal attempting to deceive the God of Lies? You are the very first to try it!"
"Really?" Peter quipped, his voice amplified by the storm. He spun Mjolnir by the leather strap, the hammer blurring into a circle of blue light. "I figured you'd have a line of guys waiting to brag about pulling one over on you!"
Peter hurled the hammer.
Mjolnir tore through the sound barrier. Anansi sidestepped with fluid, divine grace, letting the Uru metal sail harmlessly past his shoulder. The God of Stories grinned.
Then, he noticed the tight, vibrating line of spider-webbing attached directly to the hammer's hilt.
The taut web-line yanked Peter forward at supersonic speed. He flew directly in Mjolnir's wake. Venom surged down Peter's right arm, massively expanding his fist into a heavy, black, spiked boulder of symbiotic muscle.
"I'm guessing they didn't live long enough to brag!" Peter yelled.
THWACK.
The Venom-enhanced haymaker—packing the combined kinetic payload of a freight train and the ungodly momentum of a flying Uru hammer—slammed directly into Anansi's jaw.
The impact shattered the sound barrier a second time. Anansi was launched backward like a skipping stone, completely clearing the town limits.
Clint stared in stunned silence. Even his cybernetic eye struggled to process the sheer velocity of the hit.
Peter didn't wait. He triggered his thrusters and flew after the god.
Anansi shot across the barren desert for kilometers without hitting the ground. He finally slammed into the base of a jagged mountain range. The sheer force of his impact cracked the tectonic plate. A massive fissure ripped up the face of the mountain, shattering hundreds of meters of solid granite into tumbling boulders.
Above the peak, the spinning dark clouds followed Peter.
Peter hovered in the air. He raised Mjolnir, spinning it furiously above his head, and brought it down in a brutal, sweeping arc toward the rubble.
The sky tore open. Dozens of blinding, deafening lightning bolts rained down on the mountain, striking the exact spot where Anansi had fallen. The earth shook violently, the bedrock instantly turning to molten slag.
When the thunder finally subsided, Peter landed softly on the scorched earth, Mjolnir gripped tight in his fist.
The entire mountain base had been leveled.
Footsteps echoed through the smoke. Anansi walked out of the molten crater. He was dusting off his woven robes. He was completely, infuriatingly unharmed. He began to slowly clap his hands.
"I must admit, Patriarch, you genuinely surprise me," Anansi said casually, stepping over a pool of glowing lava. "How long have you carried the Totem? Six months? Eight? Your power exceeds almost every variant in the multiverse."
Anansi stopped ten feet away. His dark eyes gleamed.
"And as luck would have it," Anansi smiled, "I absolutely loathe dealing with men who only know how to punch."
The God of Stories clapped his hands together.
The desert vanished.
The molten rock beneath Peter's boots instantly cooled, smoothing out into perfectly paved asphalt. The jagged, ruined mountains twisted, shooting upward and transforming into towering skyscrapers of gleaming glass and steel. The smell of ozone was replaced by the distinct scent of exhaust fumes, hot pretzels, and autumn air.
Peter stumbled back, his eyes darting wildly.
It was Manhattan. 2012.
The day his Uncle Ben had taken him to the bank to deposit his savings. The day everything had gone wrong.