Canon event
Miguel just landed in a different universe.
He’s been out looking for Miles for a long time now, he has combed earth-1610’s New York from every single corner, and haven’t found a trace of the kid anywhere.
That’s when doubts about him even being in this earth rose and he started checking in on the others, Jess didn’t see anything, and Ben was out of commission.
It took them a while but they managed to find him, thankfully before he glitched out of existence given how he was without a watch, which also brought up the subject of none other than Gwen Stacy stealing it when asked about it.
He has no idea how and when Gwen had managed to get access to dimensional travel after he threw her back to her universe, but she apparently did, and he’s absolutely sure that she’s probably on her way to help Miles.
He couldn’t allow that.
Given how she had Ben’s watch on her, he had managed to track her down and all of her destinations so far, it seems like she made a few stops to other universes, concluding that she might have a team with her.
That’s something to be wary of.
He tracked their movements through dimensions until they made a stop somewhere.
Earth-42.
That’s when the realization struck and he cursed himself, of course Miles would be in earth-42 of all places, that’s the universe his spider was native to, his DNA was altered by that same spider.
Shock.
What a great geneticist he must be.
And that’s exactly why he is here right now, on a rooftop of an apartment building in earth-42, and this place was wrecked, probably the consequences of having no Spider-Man.
He sighed, checking over the scanners again to pinpoint where everyone was. He was surprised that the tracker wasn’t working, nothing showed up on the holographic screen, he checked over the entire multiverse and there was no track of them, great.
They either realized that they were being tracked and managed to disable it somehow or something happened to the watch.
Doesn’t matter, he’ll search this earth as well, maybe they weren’t very lucky with the search and Miles was hiding somewhere around here.
Few minutes into the search Lyla has alerted him of the tracker going back on, so whatever that trouble was, it was temporary, which is good, he has a finger on them again.
However he still needed to make sure there was no presence of Miles here before following them.
He needs to take all possibilities into account.
What he didn’t take into account though was his hearing picking up on someone landing right behind him with a soft thud, the person spoke before he could turn around.
“What is wrong with you?” The voice said, and Miguel turned around to their direction, face to face, only to be met with a very familiar yet different looking mask, “why are you blue?” They continued.
Miguel stared in silence.
“You’re not from here” he finally said.
“Neither are you” the person who he is assuming is his counterpart replied, which is crazy to think about, in most universes he has never met a counterpart of his, aside from the one that died, and that was because most of them weren’t even born yet.
Well… there is Miguel Stone, but he’d rather get captured and experimented on in Alchemax’s torture labs than acknowledge that shocker’s existence again, out of sight out of mind, let him be in denial.
He will admit though, defenestrating his Tyler was the greatest thing he ever read about a universe.
“So what’s with the blue suit?” Miguel’s counterpart finally spoke, finding the silence way too awkward, “you mixed it up in the laundry or something?”.
“It’s actually much cooler than just a suit-” he found himself saying before focusing again at the task at hand, “wait, what are you doing here, how are you here, this isn’t your dimension”.
“Got swallowed by a portal”
Miguel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “that tends to happen, listen I’ll call up on someone to come get you out of here, I have more pressing matters to deal with”. He said turning and giving his back to his counterpart, about to send a message through his gizmo, but a web was flung right at his arm, holding it back and away from his hand.
“What are you doing?” He asked, turning to look back at the new Miguel.
“Who said I want to leave?” His counterpart replied, “AARON NOW!” he suddenly shouted out of nowhere and Miguel’s mask shifted to show confusion, before his eyes widened upon seeing the electromagnetic waves heading their way.
He couldn’t think fast enough before he was yanked forward by his arm, Immediately feeling his variant’s foot colliding with his chest sending him reeling backwards, once he recovered he noticed that his watch had stopped working, full on turning completely off.
Looking back at his counterpart he saw two figures standing beside him now, they appeared to be this dimension’s prowlers.
“EMP bombs, cool right?” The shorter Prowler asked.
“What is this?” He snarled at them.
“Sorry man, but I can’t let you leave another man for dead just because of a theory”, his counterpart replied and Miguel grit his teeth at that.
Of course Miles Morales would somehow find a way to recruit another version of him to his team, a version that in some way managed to recruit both of the prowlers of this universe, who he assumes one of them is Aaron David based on the name his variant dropped earlier.
Which would conclude that the shorter Prowler must be this universe’s version of Miles himself, this is just great.
—-
The gang finally landed in earth-1610, Miles putting his whole trust that Miguel will hold his counterpart off as much as he could, although he’s a bit worried about the fact that they left him there with no watch.
It’s okay, once this whole thing is over they’ll go back for him, hopefully they’d find him, unless Miguel manages to send him home.
The bad Miguel not the good one, god the name situation is gonna be confusing, he’s just gonna call the good Miguel ‘Miggy’ for now, makes things easier.
As for now though, his attention is much more directed at the giant hole in the sky, looks like they arrived at the last second huh.
He found himself sprinting to his home, his real home this time, with the others not far behind him, once the house was in view he immediately webbed to it, slipping straight through the window and rushing outside of his room to meet his parents.
He immediately ran through his mother.
His mother who had brown eyes, not green, his real Mom.
“mom?”.
“Miles?”.
“MOM!”. he exclaimed with pure joy, immediately engulfing her in an embrace.
“Miles where have you been!?” His mom asked with worry visible in her voice, “we were so worried about you,you can’t just disappear for two days like that! Are you okay? You’re not hurt are you?” She started asking frantically grabbing Miles’s cheeks and checking him over like a worried mother who hasn’t seen her son for two days would.
“I’m okay!” He replied,”Is dad okay though?” He asked.
“Your dad? Obviously he’s not okay, we both have been worried sick about you!” She answered.
“No! I mean, is he okay? Physically? Nothing happened to him right?!”
“Miles what do you mean?”
“Please just answer the question!”
“He was okay the last time I saw him!” She finally answered and relief flooded his chest before it completely evaporated.
“Wait, where is he?” He inquired.
“Haven’t you seen everything going on outside? He’s trying to save as much people as possible out there”.
“Shit!” He cursed.
“Language!”
He pushed right past his mom, rushing to the door.
“Where are you going?!” His mother shouted in confusion.
“To save my father!” Was his response before putting the Spider-Man mask back on, he could hear his mother gasp in surprise and calling his name, but he webbed away anyways, he’ll explain all of this to her once he ensures everything goes back to normal and his dad survives all of this.
Spotting the others, he lands right next to them.
“Miles! How’s everything, is your dad okay?” Gwen asked.
“Mom is okay, but dad’s somewhere out there doing his job, we need to find him”.
Suddenly an echoing sound was heard.
“Where are you Spider-Man!?” The spot shouted into nothingness, the void in the sky getting bigger and everything going darker.
“And we’ll need to deal with him too”.
—-
“You know I was actually having a nice peaceful night before all of this!” Miguel swinging right at his hulk of a counterpart, seriously, when they were tossing his name around he really didn’t expect him to be this… intimidating, maybe he should hit the gym after this.
“The vulture was off my hash for once, the Thor-ites were minding their business, the public eye was no trouble too!, almost thought I could get away with a good night’s sleep” he ranted attempting to land a kick, but getting caught and thrown away, Miles coming to the rescue with a punch allowing him some time to stand up again, “but no! Instead I’m fighting your tall hash instead”
“And who’s fault is that!?” His counterpart shouted back.
“Yours!” He replied, “if you’d just stop being difficult-“ he shot a web and swung up to dodge the red laser looking webs that were sent his way, “-I’m not gonna blame a fifteen year old for my troubles, are you insane?”
“He’s the original anomaly!” His variant shouted jumping up at him with a punch he barely dodged.
“He’s a teenage kid trying to do everything he could to protect his family and getting antagonized for it!” He shouted back, webbing his counterpart’s feet to attempt and trip him over, didn’t really work, so he jumped out of the way of the red webs again, “sound familiar to you, O’hara?”.
Miguel gritted his teeth at that, that’s the worst thing about fighting a variant of yours, because nobody knows you better than you know yourself, his counterpart knows what buttons to strike and he hates it.
“Do not call me that!” He broke a TV antenna and threw it at him, “this is different!”
“Oh really now!?”
Miguel signaled for Aaron, and before his variant could turn around, he was suddenly punched with great force, Miguel jumped from where he was crouching and tried to web his counterpart to the ground.
“And calling him a mistake is different too? No context would make that okay to say to a kid!”
To his surprise the webs didn’t hold as big red blades extended from his variant’s suit and cut right through the webs, man he really needs to know where this guy got his suit, it would make so many things so much easier.
He sprung from the ground and managed to lay a kick on him pushing him off the rooftop entirely, his gliders managing to stop the fall, his counterpart following right after him.
“I’m looking at the big picture here!”.
“What about the little guy!?” He replied, “isn’t that our whole thing? Sticking up for the little guy? Or did you forget that after putting on that Tyler Stone hairdo of yours”, he snarled at him, his counterpart took off his mask when he attempted to bite him earlier in their fight, and he cringed at his hair, he really couldn’t understand why he’d ever think that was a good hairstyle, perhaps his Tyler had different hair, it is a possibility.
However this Miguel wasn’t too pleased with that comment.
“You do NOT compare me to that man” he spat, anger visible in his voice.
“I didn’t compare you to anything, you’re comparing yourself” he replied, they were standing face to face, both of them waiting for the other to move first, he can hear Aaron and Miles on top of the building, he had told them earlier to not interfere much unless it was needed or he called for it.
“Subconsciously, you don’t want to do this” he said, and it might’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back for his counterpart.
“Of course I don’t want to do this!” His variant suddenly exclaimed, “you think I just want to let people die!? You think I take pleasure in that?!”.
“From everything I heard about you, it almost sounds like you do”.
“Of course! Because that’s how things always go, Miguel O'hara is always the self centered bastard of everyone’s story!” he replied, his voice cracking mid sentence, “always doing what must be done and getting despised for it”.
They were at a standstill now, none of them making a single move, Miguel watching his bigger counterpart as he took his head into his hands for a second, and honestly, Miguel’s starting to feel a twinge of guilt, being able to sympathize it’s him because he really understands what he means on a deeper level than anyone else could.
After a time of silence, his variant spoke again.
“I lost a daughter…” he said, “I did something wrong in another universe, I broke a canon event, and I killed her, I killed millions of people, innocent people! And for what? Because I wanted to live a life I never had?”
Miguel was taken back by that confession, the only thing the others told him was that this Miguel has gone through a canon event, but they didn’t delve into any details about it.
“I don’t want Miles to go through that” he spoke again, “that is if he even survives the collapse of his own universe… and that would mean that I have failed another dimension, and I can’t do that, not again”.
It was back to silence, then Miguel took a few steps forward.
“Listen… I know what you mean, but you won’t be failing another universe trust me” he said, “the others explained a lot of canon events changing earlier, I mean, look at this universe, it was meant to have a spider-Man no?”
His variant nodded slowly.
“Then why is it not collapsing?” He said, “if miles was never meant to be Spider-Man like you said, then why is his universe still intact? Gwen’s dad quit from his job as captain, and her universe is still intact”.
“He did?”
“That’s what she told me” he answered, “listen, maybe your canon theory is true, and it may have truth to it, but I say that it’s more flexible if anything, I mean, who even died to make us Spider-Man? I don’t think Aaron or Mr Sims were that close to us to count as our “uncle Ben” or whatever heroic age Spider-Man said”.
“You mean Peter B?”.
“Doesn’t matter what his name is, what I’m saying here is that not every event needs to apply to every story, I mean, isn’t breaking from a written story literally what me and you did?” He asked.
“It’s a huge risk”.
“Getting caught by Alchemax and getting experimented on until you die or evaporate is also a huge risk, but that didn’t stop us from running around downtown and kicking some public eye hash”.
Miguel’s counterpart leaned back a little, considering everything, all the possibilities that could occur from his next decisions, then he sighed, hanging his head downwards in defeat.
“Okay, okay, we’ll risk it” he finally said, and Miguel’s shoulders slumped in relief.
“Oh thank god, I’m done with the emotional pep talk, this is not my line of expertise”.
“So, can you get me out of here now?” His variant said, pointing at his very much still offline watch.
“Oh right, these are EMP bombs effects,it’ll wear off in a bit”.
“Great”. His counterpart said sarcastically.
“You’re gonna have to tell me where and how you got your hands on that suit by the way”.
“Told you it was much cooler than just a suit”.