Chapter 119 - 119

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….

"Uh-huh," Peni confirmed, rubbing her tired right eye reflexively. Unlike me, the girl couldn't understand and comprehend everything, but she caught the general principle too.

"Oh, good news!" Spider-Noir rejoiced, tearing himself away from a card game with the Pig and MJ. Yes, while Peni and I were grinding our brains and staring at the monitor in permanent shock for a whole day, these characters were entertaining themselves with poker. They even dragged Mary Jane into it, the slackers.

"For this, we just need to reprogram this installation, then climb into it, and it will shoot you back home, locking onto your universe's signature."

"Like from a cannon? Sounds familiar! I remember this one time I was shoved into a giant cannon..." the Pig, whose name, by the way, was also Peter, only Porker, not Parker, drawled nostalgically.

"Moreover, the local Peter even wrote the necessary protocols for the current software; we just need to flash a boot drive..."

"A goober," the three Spiders said in unison.

"Folks?" I raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You see, my friend," Spider-Noir began, taking a sip of... wait, I distinctly remember we only had fruit punch, so how did he get something suspiciously resembling a mojito?

A black-and-white, pretentiously noir mojito?!

"There's always some shaped key, a piece of a Reich mosaic, a puzzle, or something similar. I presume I'm not the only one. For convenience, this recurring key to yet another secret had to be called something, and thus the term 'Goober' was born."

"That's how it is..." the girl sitting next to him confirmed.

"Ah, okay, understood," I have no further questions. "But, getting back to the topic, there is one small problem: according to the local Peter's calculations, this machine can easily spawn an analogue of a black hole in the center of the city. I double-checked his math, and overall he is right. There won't be instantaneous space collapse, true, but the safe operation time of the tear is from five to ten minutes at the absolute best. Meaning, in that time we must manage to do everything and under no circumstances let the Kingpin activate the device when we are not around, otherwise everyone is screwed."

"So, we have the blueprints, we know what to flash, now my friend and I will quickly solder the necessary thingy, and we can go!" the girl exclaimed enthusiastically, jumping to her feet... and infectiously yawned with a very large anime mouth.

"You've been on your feet for two days, at your age it's very unhealthy, so get some sleep first," I stated gently but firmly.

"Now I believe you were a teacher, you sound exactly like our homeroom teacher," she grumbled back discontentedly, dropping her shoulders in a martyred fashion, but didn't argue.

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. By the way, have you eaten anything at all? I wasn't really paying attention..." Trained by Laura, I habitually began to show care for a cute little girl, but I was unexpectedly interrupted.

The elevator platform began to descend slowly and Pretensiously, to which all the spiders pointed and in waltz tempo cosplayed Batman, instantly hiding in the shadows and retreating to the ceiling.

Why? For what? I don't know. But in Mary Jane's eyes, with whom we exchanged glances after such an acrobatics stunt, I saw that I wasn't the only one.

The reason, however, was quickly revealed, our breadwinner and simply a sweet old lady-dandelion brought three more individuals dressed in Spider suits. Apparently, ours just had their Spidey-sense triggered by the new guests.

The company was colorful and consisted of an unshaven man around thirty-five, of a fairly athletic build... rather, it used to be athletic, but now he had let himself go a bit and acquired a noticeable beer belly.

And for some reason, he was wearing sweatpants instead of the bottom half of the spider suit.

The second was some short black kid in a cheap red-and-blue webbed rag, bought, apparently, at the nearest souvenir shop.

But the third... Mmm, a beauty! Wavy golden hair down to her chin, blue eyes, full sensual lips, a damn cute face, and aged seventeen to nineteen.

A piercing barbell went through her right eyebrow, and her hair was cut in, in my opinion, not the most successful youth hairstyle, with the right side shaved, but it didn't spoil her at all.

And how the suit hugged her toned, trained legs... Eleven, no! Twelve spiders out of ten!

"M-Mary Jane?" the oldest of the guests froze, struck by lightning, as soon as he saw our company.

"P-Peter?" The redhead clearly began to pale, as if she met a dead man, although... oh, yeah... His mug really is similar to the one they spun on all channels yesterday, only there Peter was a blond, and here he has ordinary brown hair. And his eyes are brown, not blue like the local Parker's.

Actually, we also saw Noir Peter's face more than once during meals these past days, and he was also quite similar to the local Spidey, but he was a black-and-white, burning brunet, and generally more of a... fit "true Aryan from the thirties," meaning he could pass for a close relative of the local Spider-Man, but in no way a copy. Here, however...

"Right, before this awkward situation becomes even more awkward, let's designate something," I step forward, twirling my cane, to stand sort of in between, but nearby, and attract attention to myself.

"People from parallel universes can look almost identical, but at the same time have different character traits, worldviews, history, and so on. Therefore, Mary, this is not your deceased husband. And this," I addressed the man, "is not your... whoever she was that you clearly lost, judging by your looks."

"Yes... right... sorry..." the girl nodded. The man just looked away.

"Allow me to introduce myself," I addressed mainly the charming blonde, "Loki. At your service. May I know your... your names?"

"Stacy. Gwen Stacy," the spider-girl in the black-and-white suit with a couple of pink elements answered with an awkward smile.

She also wore teal ballet flats, and a hood was thrown back, clearly meant to be pulled over the mask.

Probably to hide the real volume of her hair, which just a mask pulled over the head like a stocking couldn't do.

"Nice to meet you, young lady," I didn't hesitate to lean over and kiss her hand.

The cutie got embarrassed, but the black kid standing next to her with the first stage of an afro hairstyle clearly got jealous.

But he also introduced himself, turning out to be Miles Morales. However, his name wasn't particularly interesting to me, unlike the fact that he was not another walking anomaly, like Gwen and Parker, but that could wait, so I turned to the ceiling.

"Guys, you're on!"

What followed was almost a carbon copy of the introduction I received. No, seriously, if I hadn't been here from the very beginning, I'd think it was all rehearsed and completely staged.

Again the Pathos from Spider-Noir, again Grendizer, and except that the Pig, languishing from idleness, decided to have fun with the newcomers and began to troll them intensely.

Starting from generating cartoon-Disney water dripping off himself for handshake attempts with words like, "I just washed my hands, so they're wet, I swear on my mom!"

And ending with dances, songs, and rhymes all in the same traditions of early Disney and "Looney Tunes," combined with a narrative about his journalistic activities looking for buried dogs.

No joke, that's how he phrased his main occupation: "I look for where the dog is buried."

…

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