mobofair
patreon
Ending At Beginnings update
🕑 Added 2020-09-10 19:28:07 +0000 UTC“Okay, I’ve sent the drone,” Reed Richards said over the phone. “Now can you tell me why you want to scan your house guest for her universal resonance frequency?”
Peter shouldered the phone, keeping an eye on Gwen as Mary Jane went over her with scissors, comb, and clippers. One advantage of growing up poor—MJ was adept at giving haircuts. She’d long since seen the butchery Peter’s ‘affordable’ barbers made of his hair and stepped in herself to ensure he could be seen in public, without a mask.
Now she worked on sculpting Gwen’s blonde hair into something totally different: shaved down on the sides, styled into a sort of pompadour on the top. Peter thought it was called a Faux Hawk. He had to admit, it looked pretty good, and absolutely nothing like the Gwen he or anybody else was used to.
It also struck Peter as being a bit Sapphic; he wondered if that was wishful thinking on Mary Jane’s part. Not that he thought she was thinking of switching teams, but simply that it would be easier to deal with yet another ex-girlfriend from an alternate universe if boys were not a priority for her. Peter could sympathize. Bad enough having Felicia hanging around; imagine if Mary Jane had dated Matt Murdock. Or Johnny Storm. Or, Jesus, Wolverine.
“I’m having a few more issues with parallel universes,” he said into the phone. “And I thought it was high time I started getting a little genre savvy about this stuff. I don’t know if she’s evil or a vampire or what. Just because she looks like Gwen doesn’t mean I can trust her. Maybe knowing what universe she’s actually from will clarify things.”
“Wise policy,” Reed said. “Just try not to get too paranoid. The multiverse has fewer evil doppelgangers than you’d think.”
“All it takes is one.” Peter looked out the window, scanning for the sight of the drone Reed had sent. “Have you done the fly-by yet? I thought your drones were pretty much miniature Fantasticars.”
“That’s an oversimplification. But yes, they are quite fast. I’m receiving telemetry now. Hmmm…” Peter heard the sounds of clicking keys over the phone. As high-tech as Reed got, Peter doubted the guy would ever go for anything besides mechanical keyboards. “Alright. If these scans are accurate, she’s from Earth-66280. It did experience some cosmic upheaval lately. Does that check out with her story?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “She said her universe shifted—she basically ceased to exist.”
“Poor thing,” Reed said with sincere sympathy. “No wonder she’d rather stay here. Better to be a stranger in a strange land than face a gaggle of friends who can’t remember her.”
“Yeah, maybe. But hey, this Earth-66280… what can you tell me about it?”
“I haven’t written up a detailed dossier, seeing as how the multiverse is infinite and cataloguing infinity is, well, impossible.” Peter heard a sort of rubber band sound—he could only assume Reed was getting comfortable. “I could look up the Council of Reeds’ files, see if they had any in-depth information.”
“I’d settle for some bullet points.”
“Well, if I recall correctly…” (Peter was sure Reed did.) “Earth-66280 has an extremely traditionalist society. Arranged marriages are still very much a thing and women are raised to be extremely deferential to their elders and husbands, indeed all men. Single women of marriageable age, other than widows, are virtually unheard of. Almost all of them are married off upon turning eighteen, some of them to the same man. Friends, sisters, and sometimes mother and daughter will marry the same man so that they can enjoy sharing and being bred by the same individual. The Reed Richards of that universe was married to both Sue Storm and ‘Joanne’ Storm. Quite disconcerting.”
Peter’s jaw was hanging open. “What are you telling me—that this Gwen is some kind of sex slave who was meant to be part of a harem?”
“That’s a loaded way of thinking of it. You’re imagining her culture as a deviation from our norm rather than a norm in its own right. As I recall, Earth-66280 had no major suffrage movement. The women were quite well-treated and content with their arrangement. I imagine this Gwen would feel quite uncomfortable outside the family unit. Or seraglio, if you’d rather.”
“She doesn’t seem uncomfortable.” A thought occurred to Peter, sort of like a migraine coming on. “You don’t think… she’s latched onto me as some sort of… you know…”
“Who can say?” Reed replied jovially. “You’re asking me to take a surface level reading of their culture and figure out how one specific individual would react to extraordinary circumstances. Even a trained psychologist would find that a tall order, and as you might have gleamed from the team dynamic I often find myself in, I am no trained psychologist. Maybe I should get a degree one of these days…”
“Okay, but what happens if she leaves? She picks up a guy in a bar and decides she’s going to be his 1950s housewife?”
“Uhh… possibly? I suppose she’s in luck that you’re a married man and not apt to take advantage of her worldview.”
“Yeah. Lucky.”
“Please try and remember that her cultural viewpoint is valid, not something for you to ‘correct’ or ‘deprogram.’ Whatever philosophy she chooses to follow, it’s her choice, not something for you to prescribe for her.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with her?” Peter insisted.
“Try not to let her enter into any circumstances where someone unscrupulous might take advantage of her. Once she’s had some time to process our society, I think she’ll be much better equipped to decide for herself what circumstances she’d prefer.”
“Yeah, a cute blonde with a thing for being dominated. God, this city is going to chew her up and spit her out.”
“Peter, you’ve always struck me as an avuncular fellow—would you enjoy a pop culture reference that I believe would be well-suited to the occasion?”
Peter grinned wryly. Reed Richards making a quip; this he had to see. “Lay it on me.”
Reed cleared his throat. “…the special hell.”
Then he hung up.
What was that supposed to mean? It wasn’t like Peter was some kind of playboy. God, why had he ever told Johnny that his sister was cute—he should’ve known that would get back to the smartest man in the world.
“Hey, Peter, who you talkin’ to?”
Gwen. Peter stuffed his phone into his pocket as she approached him. “No one. Telephone psychic. Getting my palm read.”
“You can get your palm read over the phone?” Gwen asked.
He nodded. “It’s amazing what they can do with technology these days.”
“My Peter didn’t really believe in psychics, except for some of the X-Men.”
‘My Peter’. What in the hell did she mean by that? “Well, there are a lot of differences between here and where you’re from.”
Gwen smiled at him. “Not that many. I think you’ll like exactly what my Peter liked.”
Peter’s spine stiffened. “What’d he like?”
“My famous Beef Rendang. Picked up the recipe in Sumatratown. What say you give Mary Jane some more orgasms while I get dinner started?”
That sounded entirely too familiar a sentence to be coming out of Gwen Stacy’s mouth. “Thanks… I think maybe we’ll just talk about our day.”
“Okay then. But tell me if you need anything. I have to find some way to repay your hospitality. And if you’re anything like my Parkers, it’d be best if you left the housekeeping to me.”
‘My Parkers.’ Now it was ‘my Parkers.’ If Peter drank, he felt like this would be one of the times he needed a drink. Now he didn’t know what he needed. To punch Shocker in the face, maybe.
***
Colleen Wing watched the varnish on her toenails change color as it dried. Misty Knight filed the fingernails on her good hand. It was a slow day for the Daughters of the Dragon.
Misty was slightly slimmer, though Colleen couldn’t be called plump or even buxom, even her well-developed muscles not doing much to thicken her willowy frame. She was fair-haired, blue-eyed, angelic in her apparent delicacy, while Misty was dark-haired, lithe and trimly curved, with a dancer’s grace extending even to the Stark-made robotic arm she bore, surprisingly elegant for the punch it packed. Colleen with the straight nose and patrician features, Misty with a more prominent nose, wide brown eyes, understated dimples in her chin and cheeks. Both girls radiated demure sexuality, dominated by their toughness, their attitudes. They were fighters first, women second.
“I’m bored,” Misty said, apropos of nothing except it being a boring day.
“Call up Danny,” Colleen suggested. “See if he has anything for us.”
Misty’s lips screwed up in a scowl. “I’m not speaking to him right now.”
Colleen raised her head. She wasn’t normally a gossip, but on a boring day like this, the rumor mill was looking pretty good. “What’d he do?”
“It’s what he didn’t do,” Misty said.
Colleen focused on her pedicure again, bits of fluff separating her toes as the nail varnish dried and dried. She knew Misty well enough to know that was all Misty would say on the subject. She sighed.
“Why don’t you call up Luke?” Misty asked.
Colleen crinkled her nose. “Me and Luke aren’t like you and Danny.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
“I wasn’t implying anything.”
“I said you should call Danny, then you said I should call Luke. Implying Luke Cage is my Danny. And he isn’t.”
“That’s not an implication,” Misty insisted. “If you say I should call Danny and I say we should order a pizza, that doesn’t mean I think you’re boinking Papa John.”
Before Colleen could reply to that—and it was truly something that demanded a reply—Jessica Drew charged into the room. She wore her new Spider-Woman costume… up to a point. It had been grievously ripped, then patched together with Jess’s webbing. Misty and Colleen couldn’t help but notice how… strategic the webbing looked.
“Son of a bitching motherfucker piece of shit asshole—“ Jess spat in an endless litany.
“Uh, something we can help you with, Drew?” Misty asked.
Jess charged to the closet and threw it open, digging through the coats and jackets of the Daughters of the Dragon. “That old suit I gave you for safekeeping, in case my place got destroyed, I need it! I need my spare suit!”
“Yeah,” Colleen said, taking her feet down from where they were propped up on a chest in front of the couch. “It’s in there,” she indicated.
Jess hurled herself down in front of the chest and threw it open, pushing aside some of the more sensitive items of Colleen and Misty’s work to get to her spare suit, neatly folded for just such an occasion. She snatched it up and quickly looked it over for silverfish damage.
“Everything okay there, Jess?” Misty asked. “Need any help?”
“Oh no. I don’t need any help. Spider-Man’s gonna need help. I’m gonna kill him!”
Misty and Colleen exchanged a glance. “Any particular reason?” Colleen asked.
Jess clutched her costume to her chest, suddenly realizing how she must look. “I don’t want to talk about it. I need to change.” She stomped her way into the next room, swearing the whole way. “Big-dicked motherfucker… thinks just cuz I came… not even a lesbian, not even a bisexual, that fucking bitch!”
Misty and Colleen looked at each other again. “You think we should get in on this?” Misty asked.
Colleen reached down to check the paint on her toenails. It didn’t smudge. “I mean, if you’re not doing anything.”
***
Fortunately, the window in the Parker apartment was open when Jess swung in, so she only damaged the jamb a little as she bulldozed through. “Parker!”
Gwen sprang out of the kitchen, her normally cuddly appearance made even cuter by the apron she wore. She didn’t bother taking it off as she faced Jess. “Hey, Spider-Woman. I like your costume.”
Jess gritted her teeth harder than ever upon getting that compliment. “Where’s Parker?”
Gwen pursed her lips considering the question. “He and Mary Jane went out for a walk. Would you like me to call him on his cell?”
“Who the hell are you?” Jess demanded.
“Gwen,” the blonde replied, holding back her last name in case Jess had heard of this world’s Gwen Stacy. “And I suppose if you wanted me to know who you are, you wouldn’t be wearing a mask. That’s okay. I don’t think you’re rude.”
Jess stalked up to her. “Tell me where Parker is! Right now!”
Gwen seemed to get more genteel the angrier Jess got. “Why do you want him?”
“Why do I—I don’t want him! Who said I wanted him? I’m going to kick his ass!”
Gwen’s smile widened condescendingly. “Why would you want to do that? Peter’s such a wonderful man. He takes such good care of Mary Jane, and of me, not that I’m on the same level of Mary Jane, of course. She’s the mistress of the house, not me.”
“Yeah? Well, your wonderful man, he tied me up and he fucked me, over and over again. I came until I begged him to stop and he just kept—I kept—“ Jess’s cheeks flushed. “And that bitch Black Cat, she… she…” She snapped back to herself. “How would you like it if Peter did something like that to you?”
Gwen’s smile froze and her eyes became glassy. “Oh, it’s not my place to imagine such things for myself. He and Mary Jane are trying for a child. I’m sure Peter wouldn’t want to waste his precious sperm on someone like me…”
Jess jabbed her finger at Gwen in abject anger. “Look, I don’t give a shit what your story is, freak! Show me Peter Parker, right now!”
A. Give her what she really wants.
B. Show her Peter Parker
Comments
Shendude
Wow, that is a LOT of story.
