It CAN Get Weirder!

Whatever that machine was, it needed some #@^& shock absorbers.
Through the tiny window, Peter could see flashes of neon light and pockets of shadow, slashed through with bright white. The machine whirled, sending him against another wall and sending his teeth skittering in his jaw. He could practically hear the comical cartoon birds that were flying around his head as he tried--and failed miserably--to push himself into a standing position.
“Okay. Okay. Okay! Okaaaaay--” he inhaled and exhaled rapidly, which did nothing to actually calm his panic. “Come on, Pete, think. Think! Controls, controls…”
His eyes snapped open. “The screen! Right!”
He struck out with a burst of web fluid and pulled, but the machine pulled forward, flinging him against the wall with enough G-Force to make him squeal in pain. He shoved himself onto his back and peered at the far wall, stretching out a hand. No use. D@^& his tiny, adorable arms!
The machine careened again, and he groaned as he skidded to the left wall of what he’d decided to call the MurderCoffin 2000. Well, he was getting somewhere. Shouldn’t tech this futuristic have more controls? A better handle? Or even--
Oh, that was a thought.
“Heya, doll! Computer, I mean? Where are we going?”
For a moment, all he could hear was the roar of the multiverse outside, then a voice like a cat being mashed through a telephone receiver responded:
“Earth, multiverse--” Peter didn’t catch that part. “ONE Peter B. Parker, alias Spider-Man. This universe’s Doc Ock is out of commission.”
“Out of whatnow?” Peter asked, before the MurderCoffin took a death spiral and sent Peter facefirst into the ceiling.
The computer didn’t respond, and Peter groaned.
“Thanks a little, buddy. You and I are gonna be friends.”
That time, he really didn’t expect a response, and really, what the Computer said next wasn’t a response at all, but it did say something:
“ENTERING TIME-SPACE LOCALITY. BEGIN COMPATIBILITY MODIFICATION.”
“Amigo, pal, you have to start explaining things sometime!” Peter said. He rolled toward the screen, extending a hand, and managed to brush a finger across the surface. Then he was jerked back.
“NOW this is getting old!” Peter shouted, despite the fact that it had been getting old for the past however-many-minutes he’d been hurtling through the multiverse. He cocked an eyebrow when he stopped before hitting the wall, suspended in the center of the pod.
The porous lights circling the capsule exploded with vibrant green pinpoints, circling his porcine form like jade beetles. Some kind of science-magic probe? Probably.
“Something strange is afoot in the MurderCoffin, eh?” He called.
“ANALYSIS COMPLETE. MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL.”
“Hey, uhh, Murder C.? What the actual--”
The feeling was like having an anvil slammed onto your head, but from the inside, and at every imaginable angle. He yelped and bit his tongue as a feeling somewhere between pain and agony ricocheted through his limbs like a ping-pong ball (or, rather, 50 ping pong balls, all attached to hornet swarms and tubes of Icy Hot).
He was aware of being spun around, up, down, but only dimly, through a haze of absolute confusion. He pinned his ears back to his head and tried to throw himself out of the middle of the MurderCoffin only to find himself unable to even twitch his finger. His atoms were losing their minds. Did atoms have minds?
His own thoughts burst out in spidery-fireworks, like someone had released a stick of dynamite in his head (and, knowing Doc Ock, that might have been the case).
Heeeeey, what’d Doctor Octor put in this wacky multiversetimes device anyway? Flybrainium? Catamantium? Maybe it’s just full of beeeees. What’s up, Doc? Is this coffin full of beeeeeees? Did you get a good deal on it because there was a bee hive inside the warp core? A buncha bees just ready to beat the tar out of an unsuspecting pig? Where do bees go when they die? Bee heaven? Bird heaven? Wait, that’s birds and bees! Can’t have that on a Saturday morning funnytime cartoon! Hehe! Don’t listen to me, boys and girls! That’s a question to ask your mom and dad, or your dad and dad, or your mom and mom, alright? Don’t write into your local station to complain. The bees wouldn’t be jazzed about that. Oink oink! I’M GOING TO DIE.
All of the synapses in Peter’s brain decided to turn out the lights at once just as the pod jarred on something solid.
---
Something was moving around outside.
“Five more minutes, Ma, I don’t wanna go to school,” Peter groaned. He rolled to his side with no effort of his own as something rolled whatever he was locked in--oh right, that MurderCoffin--over. Outside, he could hear someone grunting with exertion, and he rolled directly onto his face to avoid the light. His snout didn’t get in his way, somehow. It was a minor relief in an otherwise terrible day.
“Don’t worry, buddy, we’re gonna get you the hell out of here,” the voice said.
The shock of the censor-less swear word was beaten only by the simultaneous shock of A) recognizing that slightly gruff, yet reassuring voice and B) hearing the door wrenched open as Hobo Peter B., as he’d so lovingly dubbed this particular universe’s Spider-Man, leaned into the pod.
Spider-Ham flipped himself onto his back and held up a hand, shielding his eyes from the sun. He heard PB whistle above him, and felt the tingle of his spider-senses reacting to the other, more human-y Petes.
“You’re like me,” PB breathed.
Peter Porker’s brow furrowed. “Of course I am! It’s me, as in the ONLY whimsical and wacky talking pig you know?”
There was a silence, and Peter finally met PB’s eyes.
“Woah,” he said, “Peter B., when did you learn to clean up so nice? Lookin’ sharp.”
It was true: PB had trimmed his beard so that the stubble was even and clean, and his skin no longer looked like a dermatologist’s sleep paralysis vision. Was this actually his PB? Maybe he’d fallen into a kinda-similar universe.
“What, Spider-Ham?” PB asked, confused.
“Ding ding di--” he coughed and wheezed. His chest felt odd. So did his whole body, really. He felt gawky and dazed.
PB laughed aloud. “No, no no. Come on, really, what universe are you from? What’s different there?” He peered at the pod, and rapped a hand against it. “And how did you make this?”
“I didn’t make it, and this IS me, Hobo Spider-Man!” Peter pushed himself up on his elbows.
“Ouch,” PB said, unimpressed. “So, what’s your universe’s, uh, thing?”
“I. Am. Spider. Ham.” It felt like repeating a lesson about grammar to a six year old. He kicked his legs--which, for some reason, felt gangly and disconnected--and tried to stand, only to collapse forward. PB put a steadying hand on his shoulder and started to help him out.
“Hey, woah, woah, woah. I got you. Look, dimensional warping is a weird thing. You’re probably delirious, for all I know. Let’s get you inside.”
Spider-Ham crossed his arms. He felt tall, and when he climbed out of the pod, he found that he really was a few heads taller, unless his memory was a little off. He went with the latter explanation and grumbled for a moment before launching into a rant:
“LOOK, PB. I don’t know if you need to get your weird little human eyes checked out by an ophthalmologist for humans--”
“We just call them ophthalmologists.” PB folded his arms.
“--but it IS me. I was there with lil’ Peni and that version of you that was all tall, grimdark and handsome and Gwen and Miles, and I beat the crap out of some bug guy who had very backwards ideas about cartoons, and I sat on Noir’s shoulders and I gave Miles my mallet when I left! It is ME, and you’re acting all whacko for no reason!”
For the second time since he’d started talking, PB was totally silent. Peter turned to find PB looking as though he’d just woken in the middle of the night to find that his home had been painted bright orange for no reason--or, to put it simply, generally distressed and baffled beyond measure.
“Ah, okay, I have my, uhh, phone here,” PB fumbled and reached into his well-concealed suit pocket, muttering useless jargon to himself. His eyes were wide beneath a furrowed brow. Peter Porker tapped his foot and put his hands on his hips as PB unlocked the phone, which had a picture of his ex-wife on the screen.
“Hey, how’s MJ doing, by the way?” Peter’s voice lost some of its irritated edge as he waited for PB to hand him the phone.
“We’re… working it out.” PB smiled, just for a moment, then his face dropped as he handed the phone to Peter.
It was open to the camera app. Porker brought it up, glaring at PB, and then stopped dead just as his eyes hit the camera.
There was a picture of a confused, brown-haired man on the screen. The man resembled PB just a bit, with a similar (though more upturned) nose, about the same pink-peach skin characteristic of a lot of “white” human-people, and brown eyes. Peter held the picture very still in his hands, wondering what to do.
Peter snorted through his nose. The picture snorted back.
“Whassah?” Peter tossed the phone away. PB swore and caught it with a web before it bounced on the concrete. Peter Porker barely noticed, feeling dread kicking up and down his spine like an overexcited salsa dancer.
He put a hand up to touch his head and reeled back. That was a five-fingered hand right there. Definitely five whole pokeroos. His arms were longer, and he fully slapped himself as he felt for a snout. Nope. Nose. A slightly upturned nose.
That “picture” had been PB’s open, front-facing IPhone camera.
“Woah, okay, calm down,” PB said, talking to himself as well as Peter Porker.
“CALM?!” Shouted Peter. It echoed. He whirled around to find that they were on the top of some sort of apartment building, high in the air. A flock of pigeons scattered from the place where his MurderCoffin had impacted.
“HOW am I supposed to be calm?!” Peter went on. He scrambled back, almost unbalancing. Taller. He felt like he was six #$@& feet tall, even though humans would think he was short for one of them: he only came up to PB’s chest.
“Okay, so clearly something insane happened to you! Okay, great, just the kind of stuff I need after EVERYTHING ELSE that’s been going on lately.” PB said.
“This isn’t my fault! I was trying to stop Doc Ock in my universe and I sorta fell into this MurderCoffin and WHAM! I’m apparently one of YOU GUYS, now!” Peter shouted, spinning in place.
“And what do you mean, everything else?” Peter went on, “I thought you said you and MJ were doing okay, working stuff out?”
“Yeah, we are!” PB snapped. “But there’s someone--someone I knew a while ago--and he’s been getting into a lot of shit with villains lately, because he’s a dumbass, and I’ve been having to help hide him!”
“Well, sorry, but I’m not too concerned about your irresponsible superhero pals right now! I AM SUPPOSED TO BE A PIG.” Peter said, falling onto his back in defeat.
PB leaned over him, looking guilty. “Okay. Okay. I’ll focus on you. There’s got to be a way to get you back to normal, and back where you belong. Right? I’m sure this will be fine. Now can we please just go inside my apartment, talk about this? I don’t have the energy to keep YELLING!”
“THEN WHY ARE YOU--”
Another face leaned over Peter, right next to PB.
“Heya, shnookums!” The stranger said.
PB jumped back and into a defensive stance, and Peter slid backward. The newcomer laughed.
“Wade! How did you get here?” PB said, lowering his arms.
“I smelled a plot brewing,” said “Wade,” who was seeming more familiar to Spider-Ham by the second.
“Yeah, there’s something brewing, alright! Something that smells a lot like… I can’t think of a good simile, but I’m SUPPOSED TO BE A PIG.” Peter said, jumping to his feet. The newcomer wore a red hoodie, and his face looked a bit like someone had kicked it with a poker-hot steel-toed boot a few dozen times ten years back, but he was smiling broadly.
“Oh, I know!” Wade said. “You’re Spider-Ham!”
Peter Porker’s brain paused to collect itself. He turned to PB.
“How… does this guy know who I am before you do?”
“One of his many talents,” PB visibly sagged. Wade laughed.
“Sweet of you to say,” he said, wrapping an arm around his hobo pal. He extended a hand to Peter. “I’m Wade. You can call me Deadpool.”
After a hesitant moment, Peter took the hand. He cringed. Shaking hands with five fingers felt wrong.
“Let’s check out that weird Pod People machine first,” Wade said, cracking his knuckles, “dibs on any and all laser guns found!”
Spider-Ham met PB’s eyes and was filled with the profound sense that this was his always-on-the-downside “buddy."