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Something Big: Shawn Mendes
"Any theories on our current whereabouts?" Peter takes off his mask.
"If I did, I would've told you!" I also take off my mask.
"Um..." A tall almond skinned trails off before an old woman starts screaming.
"Hi. Hi!" Peter holds his hand up.
"Ma'am—okay." I sigh as I catch the pillow she has thrown at us.
"No, no, no. It's okay, it's okay. I'm a nice guy. We're good people." He nods and the woman runs off.
"Who the hell are you guys?" The tall almond skinned girl points at us.
"I could ask you two the same damn thing." I shoot back before tossing the pillow onto the couch.
"I'm Peter Parker." Peter says.
"That's not possible." The tall almost skinned girl shakes her head.
"I am Spider-Man...in my world. But then, yesterday, we were...we were just here. Wow." He whispers and I look around.
"String theory...multidimensional reality...and matter displacement." I nod to myself.
"All real?"
"Yeah." The tall almond skinned girl and her friend conform.
"Knew it!" Peter smiles.
"This has to be because of the spell." The tall almond skinned girl's friend whispers.
"I can hear you, you know?" I inform. "In fact, I can hear anything from more than thirty miles away."
"What?" The pair gape.
"There's a female Peter Parker?" The tall almond skinned girl's friend raises his eyebrows.
"Guess so." I nod. "But my name's not Peter Parker, obviously. It's Brianna Brady. And in my world...the people call me Ghost."
"Wow." He whispers. "I'm Ned. This is MJ." He holds out his hand.
"Hi." I nod while shaking it.
"Wait, the spell? Like magic spell?" Peter guesses.
"There's no spell." MJ tells him.
"No spell. No." Ned shakes his head.
"Magic's real here, too?" Peter keeps smiling.
"I mean-"
"Shut up, Ned." MJ cuts him off. "No, it's not real. Shut up."
"I mean...there's magicians and stuff, but there's no like-"
"Stop it. Stop. Prove it."
"Prove what?" Peter asks.
"That you're Peter Parker." MJ nods.
"I don't carry an ID with me, it kinda defeats the whole I'm a superhero thing."
"Exactly." I nod before MJ chucks a piece of bread at him.
"Why'd you do that?" Peter shrugs.
"I was trying to see if you had the tingle thing."
"I have the tingle thing, just not for bread." He inquires and I snicker before MJ picks up another piece of bread. "Can you not throw the...the bread again?"
"You're a deeply mistrusting person...and I respect it." I nod before Peter jumps, now sticking his hand to the ceiling.
"Crawl around." MJ says.
"Crawl around?"
"Yes!"
"No-"
"Yes, crawl around!"
"Why do I need to crawl around?"
"Cause it's not enough."
"This is plenty."
"No, it's not."
"Yes, it is." Peter nods.
"No, it's not." MJ goes on and I sigh before crossing my arms.
"It is."
"Nuh-uh."
"How do I stick to the ceiling?" Peter questions and
MJ throws another roll at him.
"Do it." MJ picks up another roll and Peter shakes his head.
"Ned?" The old woman steps back out before speaking a foreign language.
"Lola is asking if you can just get the cobweb, there." Ned says. "Since you're, like, up there?"
"Yeah." Peter places his mask in his mouth and crawls towards the cobweb before dusting it off the ceiling.
"Thank you." Lola grins and Peter drops to the floor, dusting himself off.
"We go..." He takes the mask out of his mouth. "We good?"
"You're Ghost in your world?" MJ turns to me.
"That's what the people call me." I nod before I swiftly catch the roll she was going got hit me with.
"Woah..." Ned trails off.
"My tingle is more heightened." I glance at Peter.
"What do you mean?" MJ asks.
"Hit me." Peter flails his arms out.
"You wanna die?" I scoff.
"You won't hurt me, you care about me too much."
"What gave you that idea?"
"Just hit me." Peter nods.
"Okay." I extend my arm out and shoot electrical webs at his chest, making Lola yell.
"Holy shit." Ned whispers and Peter groans.
"Fuck, you okay?" I grab Peter.
"Yeah. Told you that you wouldn't hurt me." Peter pats his chest.
"Don't hold your breath, Parker."
"You can shoot electricity from..." Ned looks at my hands.
"Yes. I can also consume radioactive energy. It makes me stronger. And I think the whole electricity part is the reason why my powers are better than his in every single way." I nod as I point my thumb at Peter.
"You wish." Peter tells me.
"I didn't have to." I fix my hood over my head.
"And I didn't have to go out of my way, fly all the way to Smallville and help you fight off that beast thing, now did I?"
"Out of your way?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Who was the one who went out of their way to help you back in New York before you supposedly went out of your way to help me fight off that...beast thing?" I cross my arms.
"I-"
"Oh, I'm also a cop." I take out my badge from my hoodie pocket and I show it to her and Ned.
"Woah." Ned whispers.
"Former captain of the GCPD, technically, but I gave the job to my partner, so, now it's just Detective Brady." I lower my badge. "So, we good?"
"Yeah." MJ nods. "For now."
"Appreciate the cooperation." I nod back. "Dammit." I sigh as I see the portal close.
"So...I opened the wrong portal to the wrong Peter Parker?" Ned questions. "And I also brought in a female one."
"Yeah. I guess you just keep doing it until you find the real one." MJ tells him.
"Ouch." Peter says.
"No offense."
"Okay." Ned nods.
"Okay. You got it." MJ assures.
"If there's another me, I might just give myself a lobotomy." I place my badge back into my hoodie pocket.
"Find Peter Parker." Ned holds his hands out in front of him and begins to make a portal.
"What's the thing on his hand?" Peter asks and MJ shushes him.
"Find Peter Parker. Find Peter Parker!" He conjures another portal behind him, leading to a rooftop overlooking the Empire State building. "Great, so it's just some random guy." He sighs before a man steps inside the house.
"Hello." The man waves. "Um...I hope it's okay, I just came through this, uh...it just closed."
"You're Peter?" MJ questions.
"Yeah." He nods.
"What?" Me and Peter gape.
"Peter...Parker. I-I've seen you two..." He looks at Lola and she winks at him. "Hi." He waves back. "Wait, he's...he's not your friend..." He looks at the other Peter.
"Okay, let's just decipher for sanity reasons. You're Parker." I point to the Peter I know. "And you're Peter. We clear?"
"Crystal." Peter nods.
Parker now shoots a web and Peter does the same and they both flip over it. Parker then lands on the table. Peter shoots another web towards and covers one of Parker's web shooters.
"Okay, you boys have your fun?" I question.
"There's a female us?" Peter looks at me and then at Parker.
"No, you dimwit." I walk over to him. "My name is Brianna Brady. I'm a detective at the GCPD and the people in my world call me Ghost." I hold out my hand.
"Nice to meet you, Brianna." He shakes my hand.
"Wait, so you're Spider-Man, too? Why didn't you just say that?" Ned asks.
"Uh, I don't go around generally advertising it. It kinda defeats the whole anonymous superhero thing."
"That's what we just said." Parker whispers.
"That's what they just said." MJ mutters before Lola speaks in a foreign language again.
"My Lola's asking if you could clean up the webs that you just shot." Ned says.
"Oh. Sorry, Lola." Parker frowns.
"Yes, of course." Peter nods.
"I'm going to bed." Lola turns to the stairs.
"Goodnight, Lola." Ned tells her.
"Goodnight...Ned's Lola." MJ calls out.
"This might seem kind of weird, but...I've been trying to find your friend ever since I got here. I just had this sense that...that he needs my help." Peter inquires.
"Our help." Parker looks at me.
"Yeah." I nod. "I've had this weird feeling even before me and Parker came through the portal."
"Wait, you two already know each other?" Peter looks at me and Parker.
"Yeah, we met about two years ago."
"Huh. Cool."
"I am cooler than him, I know." I grin.
"Are not." Parker tells me.
"Electricity comes out of me. I consume it."
"Really?" Peter gapes and I shoot an electrical web at Parker's chest, making him groan.
"Ow!" Parker holds his chest.
"I said not to hold your breath, didn't I?"
"That's cool." Peter grins.
"Thank you for the appreciation." I nod.
"I appreciate you." Parker tells me.
"I never said you didn't."
"I-"
"Okay." I web his mouth and Peter laughs. "Ned, MJ, care to inform us where your friend is so we can get him and the get the hell back to where we came?"
"Um, we don't know where he is." Ned says.
"And, um...honestly, right now, we're all he really has left." MJ adds.
"Well, is there some place, that he might go that has meaning to him? Like a...a place where he would go to just..." Peter trails off.
"Get away from everything?" Parker and I say.
"For me, it was the top of the Chrysler Building."
"Empire State. Better view."
"That is a sweet view." Peter nods. "What about you, Brianna? You have a place?"
"Uh, no." I shake my head. "MJ, think. Do you have any idea where he could be?"
"Yes. Yeah, I think I know exactly where that would be." MJ tells me.
"Then let's go get him."
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I crouch down on the roof as I watch MJ and Ned embrace the third Peter. My eyes start to water before I sense Peter and Parker landing on each side of me.
"Peter, there's...there's some people here...who..." MJ trails off as I use my super hearing.
"What?" The third Peter stands and looks at the three of us on the tower. "Hey. Wait, wait, whoa!" He exclaims and we jump down.
"Hey." I take off my mask. "It's okay." I now walk towards him. "It's okay." I whisper as I hug him. "It's gonna be alright. You're gonna be okay." I pull away before nodding at him.
"Sorry...about May." Peter holds up his hand.
"Yeah. Sorry. I got some understanding of..." Parker nods.
"No, please don't tell me that you know what I'm going through." The third Peter shake his head.
"Okay."
"She's gone...and it's all my fault. She died for nothing. So I'm gonna do what I should've done in the first place." He reaches for the box.
"Peter..." Peter trails off.
"Please, don't. You don't belong here. Either of you, so I'm sending you home. Those other guys are from your worlds, right? So you deal with it. If they die, if you kill them...that's on you. It's not my problem. I don't care anymore. I'm done." He pauses. "I'm really sorry that I dragged you into this." He looks at me. "But you have to go home now. Good luck." He reaches for the spell box, but MJ moves it away from him.
"My uncle Ben was killed. It was my fault." Peter
inquires.
"I lost...I lost Gwen." Parker cries and I thickly swallow before biting the inside of my cheek. "My, uh...she was my MJ. I couldn't save her. I'm never gonna be able to forgive myself for that. But I carried on. Tried to, uh...tried to keep going, tried to keep being the...that friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, because I know that's what she would have wanted. But...at some point, I just...I stopped pulling my punches. I got rageful. I got bitter. I just don't want you to end up like...like me."
"The night...Ben died, I hunted down the man who I thought did it. I wanted him dead. I got what I wanted. It didn't make it better. It took me a long time to...learn to get through that darkness."
"I wanna kill him. I wanna tear him apart. I can still hear her voice in my head..." The third Peter cries before glancing down at the ground. "Even after she was hurt, she said to me that we did the right thing. She told me that with great power..."
"Comes great responsibility."
"Wait, what? How do you know that?"
"Uncle Ben said it." Parker says.
"The day he died." Peter nods. "Maybe she didn't die for nothing, Peter."
"She didn't." I grip the third Peter's shoulders. "I don't know you, and you don't know me, I get it. But I want you to listen to me, okay? There will be dark days ahead of you. There will be days where you feel all alone. And that's when hope is needed most. No matter how buried it gets, or how lost you feel, you must hold on to hope. Keep it alive. You have to be greater than what you suffer. You need to become that hope. People need that. And even if we fail, what better way is there to live? And you will carry a piece of those you lost into everything that you do next, to remind you of who you are, and of who you're meant to be." I nod with teary eyes. "All the people that you've lost, they're a part of you now. They are the part of who you are. They made you who you are. And they're not gone." I shake my head.
"How can you know that?" The third Peter sniffles.
"Because they're here." I point to his chest. "And up here." I point to his temple. "They're with you every day." I whisper. "And one day, you will see them again."
"I will?"
"If you believe it." I nod.
"Do you?" He sniffles.
"Before my heart attack, no. But after it? I started to see things in a whole different light. And soon you will too. But trust me, that rage coursing through you will consume you and turn you into everything that you hate. And I don't want that to happen to you. None of us do. Because once you start...you won't be able to stop yourself. And it's dark. And you won't care enough to get yourself back into the light."
"She died in my arms." The third Peter sobs.
"I know." I whisper and he hugs me. "It's okay. It's gonna be alright. You're gonna be okay. We're here to help you." I squeeze him before pulling away. "But if you wanna do this, I need you to hold onto hope. Can you do that for me, P3?"
"Yeah. Okay." He croaks out. "I can do that."
"I know you can." I nod.
"P3?"
"That's Peter and Parker. Just to make it easier."
"That works." P3 nods. "Uh, I'm sorry, I never asked for your name."
"Brianna Brady." I hold out my hand.
"Hi." He shakes it with a faint grin.
"Now let us help you, okay?" I raise my eyebrows.
"Okay."
I did this before, I can do it again. We all can.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
🪐🌙✨🚀🌌☄️
NO WAY HOME HAS ENTERED!! i thought this was the perfect timeline for it since lois disappears for like a month on that train and then clark finds her. but for my story sake and how it's written, brianna's gonna find her way back to him. but what will she say? will she say those three words? will she tell him about her powers?
SEE YOU SOON
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