Peter Does Not Wish to be Part of your World
Peter
‘Select new race, Shy Guy Beach.’ Fangirl’s words are echoes by a hundred invisible voices. Shy Guy Beach, Shy Guy Beach, Shy Guy Beach… Peter’s vision blackens and the annoying music restarts.
When the darkness dissipates, their kart is lined up behind a new start line. Peter would love to book a holiday to this racecourse. It’s got it all: powdery golden sand, sparkling sea, demonic crabs, a pirate ship moored just offshore blasting cannon balls that explode on the race track, breezy palm trees…
Other contestants materialise behind them, including Harley Quinn. A banana skin is plastered to her forehead, but it doesn’t dampen the murderous gleam in her eyes. The stormtrooper in a stroller hasn’t returned, but Harley Quinn’s magical mushroom friend is revving his engine next to her. He catches Peter’s eye and sticks up his middle finger. Peter bangs his forehead on the boot. Could Harley Quinn not just give up trying to kill them already? How desperate is she to make the Villain in the Dark like her? He pictures them all stuck in some kind of eternal time loop like that really old movie Groundhog Day, doomed to an eternal power struggle like Tom and Jerry but with go-karts and bananas and high explosives (okay, so exactly like Tom and Jerry). He shudders at the thought.
The claxon sounds, and the karts push ahead, bashing past each other. Fangirl maintains 1st place, which would be exciting if the magical mushroom wasn’t in 2nd.
‘Don’t worry about her.’ Peter hopes his voice sounds reassuring instead of stressed and squeaky. ‘Just drive!’
Fangirl does drive: not along the racetrack, but into the ocean. The kart bobs along the surface like a speedboat. Peter wonders how that’s possible, but figures that if he’s on the back of a go-kart with Princess Leia being chased by a demon clown barbie from another world, marine engineering might not be the thing to dwell on. Clouds of sea-spray billow over the edge of the kart. Legolas shields his hair with his cloak.
Looking as confused as Peter feels, Harley swerves into the ocean anyway. Her bike gurgles in protest yet somehow stays afloat. The mushroom turns after her, but gets stuck behind a dancing crab. The far-off pirate ship unleashes another cannonball. It zooms over their heads, then crashes into the beach. The mushroom tries to turn as the cannonball glows red-hot, but the crab won’t budge. When the cannonball explodes, the mushroom is blasted ten metres into the air. Ouchie.
‘Where the hell are you taking us?’ Leia shouts over the engine.
Fangirl gestures towards the pirate ship. ‘I did warn you we might get exploded.’
Hermione groans like a hungover walrus (Peter has never actually met a hungover walrus, but he reckons that’s what they sound like) then vomits into the ocean. Leia lurches so far away from her that she’s practically sitting on Legolas’s lap.
Harley’s bike is cutting across the water way faster than their kart is. Peter mutters some words Aunt May wouldn’t like. If they don’t lose Harley now, they could lead her straight to Steven Spielberg, who could lead her straight to the Library too, who could lead the Villain in the Dark to it, which could lead to them seizing control of all fandom. Peter doesn’t like where all that leading leads.
She shakes the hand that’s stuck to the tray and wand again. This time, gold sparks fly out, and the waves form a spiral pattern around her. Harley grins like a kid in a candy store (or a near-adult Peter in a lego store). She shakes it again, yelling, ‘expelliarmus! Stupefy! Peskipiksi Pesternomi! Jelly-legs jinx!’ Whisps of coloured light spill out of the wand. The last spell blasts a crater into the ocean, and water surges into the air, splattering the kart. Legolas shrieks. Saltwater seeps through Peter’s mask and fills his mouth. He glances to Hermione, as the resident magic stick expert, but she’s a bit preoccupied vomiting on Arya’s shoulder. He pushes himself onto his feet, finding his balance like he was on a moving train, and stands upright on the boot. Just as Harley begins to shout ‘avada ked…’ Peter shoots a web from his wrist. It streaks through the air, and latches onto the tray. He pulls the thread back, and rips the tray (wand, sword et al.) right out of Harley’s hand.
Peter throws the Hermione the tray. Colour returns to her cheeks as she prises it out the sticky webbing. Hermione clambers to her feet, raises her wand, and roars, ‘immobulus!’
Harley glows with lilac light, then freezes. The bike’s wheels stop turning. Even the ocean near her stills, as if it were made of glass. Hermione flicks her wand, and the bike topples to one side, then sinks into the ocean.
‘You’re scary good at that,’ Peter tells her.
A smile flickers across Hermione’s face. ‘I know.’
Arya sighs. ‘And modest, too.’
A turtle is floating on a cloud through the sky towards them, muttering something about stupid Harley and stupid Library and stupid low pay. Peter doesn’t know how long it’ll take for Harley to return, but he doesn’t fancy sticking around long enough to find out.
The kart has almost reached the pirate ship. Cute ghosts in hats scurry across the deck pointing and squawking at them. Cannons fire. One of those bombs smacks into the water near them, glowing redder and redder. Peter remembers what happened to Harley’s magical mushroom friend.
‘We need the flag,’ Fangirl calls.
Peter webs the flag and tugs it towards him. It’s black with a white ghost head and two crossed swords – nothing very interesting – but sure enough, when he touches it his vision blurs. Everyone grabs the dark fabric. Just as the bomb explodes, the world dissolves into colour, and the whole kart is falling through turquoise and bronze and slate grey. Legolas grabs Peter’s hands to stop him from flying off the boot. Images flash around them, of hot pirates and scary-looking squid and a zombie monkey.
The kart is tumbling through a stormy sky, and Peter glimpses a similar pirate flag, then the kart crashes onto the deck of a ship. Wooden planks fly up from the impact. An unbelievably weird combination of pirates, zombie fish people and red-coated British soldiers like the ones in Hamilton all stop fighting each other and stare at the go-kart that just fell out the sky. They must all be used to weird stuff, because they quickly lose interest and return to trying to kill each other instead (which is fine by Peter). A storm is raging around them. Rain lashes against the sails.
The ship heaves to the side, and the kart skids along the deck, bulldozing over an octopus-headed man who snarls and hurls a sword at them, and a British soldier who shouts, ‘I do beg your pardon?’ with somehow more aggression. ‘Sorry, fish person,’ Peter yells, ‘not sorry, nasty British colonialist!’ A ragged pirate with an incredible hat does a stupid-looking run away from them. Legolas locks eyes with another pirate with golden hair almost as fabulous as his. Before Peter can figure out why, the kart crashes through the window of a cabin. Glass shards rain down on them. A telescope whacks Peter in the face. ‘A fork,’ Fangirl yells, ‘find a fork!’
Hermione shouts, ‘accio fork,’ and flicks her wand. Sure enough, one flies out the rubble towards them. Fangirl runs it through her hair like a comb, and her body flickers as if it were a projection. Everyone grabs hold of her. The octopus man is wading his way through the shrapnel, and stabs Peter in the heart, which would’ve been alarming if the sword didn’t pass through Peter’s chest like he was made of gas, and the octopus man’s face wasn’t distorted so much it looked like jelly worms mixed with knitting wool. The ship melts into cyan and pink.
‘Take a deep breath,’ Fangirl warns.
Peter opens his mouth to ask why, but his question is answered by the sea water that gushes down his throat. The kart is plunging through the ocean. A teenage mermaid with amazing hair is perched on a rock, brushing her hair with a fork and singing to a shoal of neon fish. A rotting shipwreck looms ominously behind her. Hermione speaks an incantation, her words garbled by the water. Giant bubbles surround each of their faces, shielding their noises and mouths with a pocket of oxygen.
Fangirl lands the kart on the seabed and drives along the sand towards the shipwreck. Why do they always have to head to the creepiest place possible? Just once, Peter would like to fall through one of these portals and find some friendly unicorns having a Taylor Swift-themed pyjama party on clouds made of candy floss. Fangirl waves at the mermaid, who seems too self-absorbed to notice the strange car full of heavily armed weirdos hurtling towards her. She sings to the fish about how boring they all are and how annoying it is that her father’s so rich and how much she wants to ditch her whole life for a guy she met two days ago who is kind of obviously grooming her. Peter is tempted to shout back another verse, like Humans suck and made the earth gross, you don’t want feet / really girl they’d think your tail is something to eat / there are worse problems to have than your dad being bougie / now stay away from men who’d turn your friends into sushi.
Snow White squeals with excitement, and tries to sing along, but her voice comes out as stream of bubbles. A family of turtles paddles towards her, and she strokes them as if they were kittens. Fangirl steers the kart through a gap in the shipwreck’s hull. The water is dark and murky. A shark swims out the filth and headbutts the kart. Everyone screams (because, like, common sense) but Fangirl grabs the shark’s tail. The scenery liquifies into streams of colour. Peter closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see any preview images of whatever hellhole they’ll end up in this time.
When everyone screams again, Peter figures it’s time to look. The kart falls through the sky, then lands on the surface of the ocean. A wall of water surges over them. Peter fills his lungs with the fresh air. No Harley. No 18th century colonialists. No sharks. Just a golden beach littered with sunbathers in 70s swimming costumes. A group of children mess about on a lilo, while a man in a deckchair observes them nervously. Peter sighs with relief and dangles his legs in the cool ocean.
‘Peter!’ Leia calls.
He spins round. A twenty-five foot long shark is bulldozing through the water towards him. He shrieks and clambers back onto the boot. The shark opens its jaws, revealing flecks of rotting flesh stuck to its jagged teeth, and bites the number plate clean off. Legolas digs his fingers into Peter’s arm and yanks him inside the kart. He rolls onto Leia’s lap.
Fangirl is squeezing the remote control so much that she looks constipated. The kart chugs steadily towards the beach, but the shark batters the side with its tale, knocking it from side to side. Peter bashes his head on Legolas’ quiver. Hermione reaches for her wand, then curses. In all the chaos, the wand has slipped between the car seats.
Swimming children scream and sprint onto the shore. Men fire rifles, but the bullets barely reach the water.
The shark’s head rises out the water and lands onto the boot, denting the metal. Legolas grabs his bow, and leaps over Peter onto the shark’s back. The shark roars and shakes, but Legolas’s feet stay planted on its neck. He shoots three arrows through its skull. Blood bubbles through its skin. Legolas slides onto the boot. The shark sinks beneath the surface, fizzling and staining the water red as if it were a bath bomb.
Legolas must’ve noticed how many eyes are fixed to him, because he grins and bows. ‘One more point to Legolas!’
Arya scoffs, ‘that still only counts as one,’ and rolls her eyes, but the intensity with which she watches Legolas gives away how impressed she really is.
Fangirl guides the kart onto the shore. The tyres dislodge chunks of sand. The sunbathers seem more interested in photographing the dead shark than they are in avoiding the renegade go-kart headed their way. (Guess that’s humanity for you.) Tucked behind a beach hut is a deck chair marked ‘DIRECTOR’. Fangirl squeals and steers into it. Instead of smashing the chair, the kart flickers, and they fall once more through the liquid colour between worlds.
This time, the kart lands on an actual road intended for actual cars. Sun blazes down on the street – but ‘street’ feels way too normal of a word considering that the parked cars are porches and Bentleys, the driveways are practically avenues in their own right, and the houses are the size of palaces. It’s like Peter’s stumbled onto the set of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. He crawls over Snow White’s legs and jumps onto the street. The tarmac feels like it’s moving beneath his feet, as if he were still racing across the waves. The last half hour loops round in his mind. Peter has no clue what to make of the memories. It’s like when you get something in your eye on a rollercoaster and miss something vital and kind of regret spending fifty dollars and fifty minutes queuing. Peter grips a lamppost to steady himself. His throat is hoarse from so much screaming. Bolted to a wooden gate is a sign that reads, 1515 Amalfi Drive. Trespassers, paparazzi, fanboys and door to door salesmen will be fed to Bruce the Shark. Scribbled underneath it in sharpie is, You too, Chris Pratt.
‘This has got to be it,’ Fangirl says, ‘nobody normal has automatic gates.’
Peter laughs that same maniacal giggle that Harley does. After everything they’ve dealt with in the last day – Deadpool, dinosaurs, stormtroopers, Fangirl, the world’s worst party, whatever the hell that go-kart race was – could they have finally made it to Steven Spielberg’s house? Peter is never this lucky. Like, of all the people in the world he got bitten by that weird spider, turned to dust, outlawed and nearly flattened by an elf falling out the sky. Surely the odds of all that happening to one guy is less than rolling, like, a dozen D2s in a row. Take this quest, for instance. So far they’ve been chased by a gun-wielding maniac woman, fangirls and go-karts. They’ve had to be rescued by a gun-wielding maniac woman, a Fangirl and a go-kart. But despite their constant screw-ups and total inability to stick to any of Deadpool’s instructions, they’ve ended up exactly where they’re meant to. Normally when loads of happy coincidences spring up like that it turns out to be part of some villain’s overly complicated evil plan (or an even more complicated plan for a scavenger hunt Ned’s set up for his birthday. Seriously, it took Peter three days and five Maccies trips.) Peter keeps waiting for a t-rex to jump out the hedge brandishing a baseball bat and shouting ‘surprise suckerz!’ Could something have actually gone right for once?
As if to answer his question, the gates swing open.