The apprentice spider

The first thing Peter takes in when he wakes up is the grogginess. Peter has never woken up with anything less than a clear head, especially since living on his own in a run down apartment that could probably collapse at any second.

He slowly moves his limbs into a sitting position. The metal cuffs around his wrists make it a particularly hard task.

He tries with all his strength to break them, but they just won’t budge. What are these things made out of, vibrainium?

The room he is in is dimly lit and painfully plain. There is a bed (which he is sitting on) in the far left corner from the bolted, iron door. There is a toilet across from the bed, and a small tv screen above the door.

Before he has time to process his thoughts, the door swings open and the same man from earlier walks in. Huh. Why hadn’t his spider sense warned him of the man coming, and why hadn’t he heard the footsteps as they made their way to the room.

The confusion must have been evident on his face, as the man began to speak,

“I have power dampeners all around this place”, Says the man.

“Ok, so obviously you know what you’re doing, but can we like…not? It’s the busy season for crime and I really don’t have time to deal with a new guy, so can you just like add your name to the villain waiting list and I’ll see if u can fit you in sometime next year”, Peter asks.

“Your jokes quickly begin to annoy me”

“They do seem to have that effect on bad guys”

The man stares at him with what Peter assumes is an unimpressed expression. The helmet makes it hard to tell, but after spending a lot of time with Mr Stark in his iron man helmet, Peter thinks that he has become quite adept at reading people without seeing their facial expressions.

“Why don’t you tell me your name, kid”. The way he said it, made it sound less like a question and more like a demand.

“Luke Skywalker”.

“Don’t lie to me, boy”

Suddenly Peter felt on fire as electricity courses through his entire body. The all encompassing pain is all he can feel as black splotches begin to plague his vision and his limbs lock up.

The pain lasts what felt like an eternity. When it finally subsides his throat is horse and he realizes that the electricity had come from his metal cuffs, and the black and orange man was holding a remote.

“You know, this really doesn’t make you look less villainy”. Peter pants. “You should hire someone to help with that, I know this great guy who works in PR he could totally-“

“Enough,”

The sheer sternness and confidence in his tone makes Peter abruptly cut himself off.

“I want you to tell me your real name,”

Peter opens his mouth to tell another lie, when he see the man’s finger hovering over the remote button. Not wanting to feel that pain again, he decides to go with the truth, it’s not like it matters anyway, he doesn’t even exist, the man can’t do anything with the information.

“Peter.” He mutters.

“Hm, alright”

Peter sees him lower the remote.

“I assume that’s not all you want so why don’t you just lay the whole villain end of the world speech on me.”

“I have no current interest in ending the world, what I want is for you to be my apprentice.”

Peter does a double take. What is with this dude? He kidnaps Spider-man so that he can have him as an apprentice? And he really thinks that Peter is just going to go along with it? Seriously, who is this guy?

“It’s gonna be a no from me. Really sorry you got your hopes up like that, better luck next time! Or not, you probably shouldn’t kidnap anymore people”.

“Unfortunately for you, the choice is out of your hands”. The man says smugly.

At Peter’s confused look the man turns on the tv, bringing up a picture of none other than Peters dad.

Except it’s not his dad. Peter has never seen this picture of his dad before. Richard Parker is smiling broadly at the camera next to a man with fiery red hair and brown freckles littered on his face.

They are standing right next to eachother and the red head seems to be kissing his dad on the cheek.

This can’t be his dad, Peter has seen every picture there is of his dad, Mr Stark had made sure off that the moment Peter asked if there were any he hadn’t seen. How could this man a a picture that not even Tony Stark himself couldn’t find?

“I have brought you to a different universe, in this universe Richard Parker is still alive, but he never had you. He is actually much younger than the version from your earth. He has a fiance and a dog and more siblings than you or I could count.”

Peters brain short circuits for a moment. Different universe? His first thought was to laugh, there is no way this guy was telling the truth, but then again, it definitely would not be the craziest thing to happen to him. If it is true, then Peter is a little more than an annoyed, he had thought he had put all that crap behind him? How did this man manage to travel through the multiverse? Is he another villain from either Peter 2 or 3’s universes?

And his dad is engaged? To a dude!? Peters not homophobic or anything, this is just a lot for him to take in. What about his mom? Does she exist here too?

Peter looks at the picture of his dad, so much younger than when Peter had known him. He must only be in his early twenties at most. The red head must be his dad’s fiancé.

He looks back at the man as he pulls a detonator from his pocket, it looks like a classic movie cliche with the big red button on the top.

“Earlier today, I injected nano-bots that work like bombs, into that head haired man in that picture, he is your father’s fiancé. If I touch this button, he dies in some of the most excruciating pain known to man as the nanites attack and explode inside of him, tell me Peter, do you want to be the reason that this version of your father has to loose the love of his life?” The man looks Peter dead in the eye, then swiftly turns to the door. “I’ll give you some time to think about it”.

And with that he walks out, locking the door shut behind him and leaving Peter all alone in the dimly lit room. When did it get so cold?

—

As Slade walks away from the door, he stashes the detonator in his pocket. It was easy enough to get the nanites into Wallace’s system. He should really be more cautious about the food he devours.

He brought the kid to one of his central city safe houses. Nobody was currently looking for the kid, but if anyone who has any idea who Richard Grayson is, see his face, that will change quickly.

It was also ideal in the fact that if Peter was giving off any multiversal energy, it would be chalked up to centrals city’s speedsters and their own multiversal shenanigans.

He won’t make the same mistakes as last time. He won’t let the kid out of his sight until he knows that the kid won’t dare disobey him. It doesn’t matter if he does so through fear for himself or fear for this version of his father’s lover, as long as he’s doing as he’s told, Slade doesn’t care.

Slade leaves the safe house with the gun and heads for the drop of location. He tried to scrub the gun on any evidence of use, but it seems the gun does save any of its uses to any kind of hard drive or cloud.

Slade hops on his motorbike and heads off.

He begins to slow down when the warehouse comes into view.

The plan is for Slade to leave the gun on the floor in the middle of the warehouse, right next to where his payment will be. He takes the money, they take the gun while never seeing one another.

Of course the money is in a small steel safe that has been placed in the middle of the room. The client had sent to code to Slade once he himself had sent a picture of the gun.

He makes his way to the safe and bends down to type in the code. It opens with a click and he swipes the money, replacing it with the gun.

And with that, he makes his way back to his bike and back to his apprentice.

—

As Peter lay on the most uncomfortable and thin mattress ever (and that was a lot coming from him considering his own mattress was something he had literally found in a dumpster) his mind was racing through all of his options. He had quickly discovered that escape was not one of them.

This helmet guy had thought of everything. There was no way out of this tiny room. His next option was to decline to do what this maniac wanted, but that would result in the death of this red haired dude that his dad from another universe was apparently dating.

That sentence might be the craziest thing Peter has ever thought. There were a lot of uncertainties in this situation. What is this guy was lying? The picture could be photoshopped, but it did look quite convincing.

This guy might have made up the whole story about kidnapping and bringing him to a different universe. But was Peter willing to risk a man’s life on a what-if?

Suddenly the door creaks open, and in walks the masked man himself. Peter should really try and get his name.

“What is your decision?”

“You know, I actually don’t know your name, I’ve just been calling you ‘orange fetish man’ in my head and while I think it’s an accurate description, it’s not really a name so…”

“My name is Deathstroke, but you will refer to me as master.”

Peter cringed at that. What a weird dude.

“Yeah, that’s weird I’m not doing that. Is it like first name Death, second name Stroke? Because I have to tell you mister Stroke, it really sounds like your parents didn’t love you as child, also your whole villain thing kind of contributes to that vibe-“

Peter was abruptly cut off with a harsh backhand to the cheek. His head whipped to the side so fast he could’ve sworn it had given him whiplash.

“Your jokes no longer amuse me, especially ones of this disrespectful nature,” Deathstroke said in an unforgiving tone.

“Personally, I think that ‘disrespectful’ is a subjective word and-“

Another, and more painful hit to the face cut Peter off yet again.

“Wow, that was-“

This time a kick the stomach sent Peter to the floor clutching his hands over the assaulted area.

“I didn’t even-,” Peter began to exclaim when he was kicked in the stomach again.

“That all you got nerd?” Peter spat.

He knew he was pushing this but he didn’t care. The man was angry, and the longer that went on, the longer he didn’t have to make a choice.

Unfortunately it seemed that Deathstroke had caught on to this. He took a step back and composed himself.

“I believe I came in here asking for an answer.”

“And I believe that you are a psycho, who likes to play dress up and kidnap people. Unoriginal if you ask me”

“I know what you’re doing, and if I don’t get an answer I might just have to off the ginger.”

His finger was dangerously close to the button that could end a man’s life.

“Yeah about that,” Peter knew he was treading in dangerous waters, “How do I know that you’re telling the truth? You have a lot riding on the fact that I’ll just blindly believe you.”

“I figured that might be an issue, and I am willing to provide sufficient evidence,” said Deathstroke as he clicked a button on his belt.

All of a sudden Peter felt pain surge through is body and his vision started to go black. He was out cold before he could even let out a scream of pain.

—

Gotham city, under Wayne manor, The Batcave.

“Nightwing, come look at this,” Says Red Robin from the batcomputer.

“What is it Tim?” Asks Nightwing as he walks over to his brother.

“I don’t really know,” Tim begins to explain, “it looks like a power surge of some kind in central city.”

“Isn’t that normal? You know with the flashes and the speed force and all that,” Questions Nightwing.

“Usually, but I don’t know, something about this just feels different.”

Nightwing looks at his little brother. He has bags under his eyes and only just came back from patrol less than an hour ago. He running off of nothing but zesti energy drinks and sheer force of will.

“It’s probably just one of the speedsters messing around with the speed force, most likely something we don’t want to get involved in unless absolutely necessary.”

Tim takes one last look at the screen, then looks back at Dick.

“You’re probably right, I think I’m gonna try get some sleep, night Dick.”

“Night, Tim,”

As Tim heads up the stairs Dick looks at the screen. ‘It’s probably nothing’ he tells himself as he shuts down the computer and heads off the bed himself.

He can always ask Wally about it tomorrow anyway.

By the time he wakes up the next morning he has completely forgotten about the night previous. He has lunch with his fiancé and heads back to Gotham for patrol without ever remembering to ask about what he had seen last night.