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They think he’s another Spider, at first. Other Miles, Prowler, has one flesh-and-blood hand on Miles’ shoulder, squeezing so tight his nails are digging into the bloody lines Miguel has carved through Miles’ suit, his gauntlet buried in the concrete under them to steady them. Prowler focuses on Miguel; Miles looks at the stranger and readies himself for another Spidey to fall in line at Miguel’s side.
He registers the bloody bat splashed across the man’s chest. Registers the gunshot.
Registers the expression on Miguel’s face. This, at least, is familiar.
Miguel’s Spidey-sense had not warned him of the attack. Miles tenses. Prowler does too, after he registers Miles going stiff half-tucked under his side as he is.
“An anomaly.” Miguel spits out after a heartbeat of silence, expression twisting again. Disdain, hatred deeper than any Miles has ever seen before.
“Bold shit for a vampire to say.” The man’s voice is modulated, stripped of identity but not tone with a heavy electronic slant.
There are people hiding behind the man. A woman in a filthy, torn up nightgown is holding a bat wrapped in barbed wire defensively over the man’s shoulder. There’s a handful of near-skeletal children and women behind her; she’s in better shape than them, but only slightly. There are broken handcuffs on her wrists.
Miles registers the smell of blood, then, and realizes they are surrounded by bodies.
“Can you kill him, Hood?” The woman asks. Her voice is raspy, rough. The man – Hood – snorts. Miguel snarls, and lunges.
Miles has held his own against Miguel for – days. They both have. Together, they’ve done more. They have not been running because it is Miguel alone hunting them; Miguel has numbers on his side in a way they cannot hope to match. Miguel is terrifying and dangerous and frightening, but he is manageable.
But Miles has yet to see him outclassed.
There is an ease with which the man moves; faster than he should for his size. Heavier than he should for his speed. Miguel’s claws don’t even touch him, and the man, Hood, redirects Miguel’s momentum away from the bystanders with an easy shrug of his shoulders that speaks to long practice.
Miguel prowls like a predator; this man moves like a monster.
Miguel’s quick to realize it too. He flicks his wrists and the blood-red threads of his web slash through the air –
Miles thinks he stops breathing.
Shattered web flutters uselessly to the ground. The man shoves his hands in his pockets. The glowing swords hanging in the air at either side of him rotate lazily. They are…sizzling. Kind of like light lightsabers might, he thinks, but only at the edges of the blade pointing at Miguel.
“Magic’s fucking real.” Prowler asks, voice flat.
“Unfortunately.” Miles breathes back.
“I am the Red Hood. You just tried to murder two children in front of me. I don’t know what rules you got in whatever fucked up little grave you crawled out of, vamp, but you’re on my turf now, and I’ve killed gods for less.”
Miguel’s wild-eyed when he looks at them. They both tense, ready for a right, and then Miguel sneers. Straightens out of his defensive hunch.
“Here will do as well as the prison.” He spits, and Miles’ stomach drops. He throws himself forward, Prowler at his side –
They’re not fast enough. Miguel doesn’t need to touch his watch to activate the portal.
Those blades flash forward. Not fast enough, either – they only get a finger.
Miles skids to a halt, and squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe.
Prowler swears and kicks the nearest thing. A table, judging by the resulting clatter.
His Spidey-senses still aren’t going off. Miles swallows past the terror and exhaustion and pain, opens his eyes, and looks at the Red Hood.
“Where’s the nearest lab?”
Prowler whirls to face him. The man’s face is hidden behind the smooth, vaguely contoured red of his helmet, but Miles knows he’s studying the two of them, blades winking out of existence without so much as a twitch from him.
The man tilts his head.
“I can do you one better.”
X
The Red Hood doesn’t leave until a small group of heavily armed men and women arrived to escort the bystanders – trafficking victims, he’d said bluntly when Miles had asked – to safety.
Miles is familiar with how gangs work; this Red Hood treats his people familiarly, calmly, and they do not so much as blink at the corpses littering the warehouse floor. His people are gentle, careful, with the victims.
It – strikes something in him. He listens intently to what little snatches of conversation he can overhear with his unenhanced senses; he hears brief mentions of product and competitors and turf, names said with the same weight as his own and movement patterns.
But he’s helping.
Spidey’s watching him, when Miles eventually looks away.
“What?” He asks, sharp. Capable or not, his other self is –
Sheltered. He’s proven himself capable and intelligent, proven he’s not as naive as he looks. But he’s still soft in ways that make Miles distinctly uncomfortable.
“I trust you.” Spidey says, all serious and solemn, and does not elaborate further. Miles pretends his hands aren’t shaking, and sneers. Turns back to the others, just in time to catch the Red Hood approaching them.
Miles doesn’t have any danger sense or any bullshit like that – but fuck does this man scream dangerous. The Red Hood reaches up and there’s a hiss, and then he’s pulling his helmet off.
He’s got a domino mask on under it. He’s also – not what Miles had expected. Scarred, fucked up with some weird little skunk stripe in his hair, but – young.
Only a few years older than them.
“Lab I’ll take you to is not mine. I have access to it, and it should be cleared out, but there will be a fight if anybody else wanders in while we’re there.”
“Doesn’t really sound like you have access to it.”
“I don’t get along with the rest of my – family.” There’s a sharp, bitter twist to his mouth when he speaks. Miles raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, but Spidey just nods.
“We’d have to break into a facility if we were home, too.” His other self points out, when Miles shoots him a look, and –
He wants to snipe back about all that self-righteous hero shit the kid’s got going on, but he knows exactly how petty that would sound, and –
He refuses to come off as lesser. This is a version of himself that has had damn near two extra years at Visions, two years extra education, extra privilege –
He supposes this is what having a sibling would be like, he thinks when he has to fight the impulse to wrap his fucking hands around his other self’s throat.
“What do we need to watch out for?” He asks instead. He can’t help how sharp his words come out, but he still doesn’t – he doesn’t trust this man. Not like Spidey seems to.
“Bats.”
X
Hood hauls them both onto the back of his motorcycle, and takes them roaring through a city so dark even the neon lights of billboards and signs seem faded and washed out. The place – is very gothic. Fits the same general kind of hardness present in all of Hood’s men.
Miles hates it. He wants to draw it. He especially wants to draw the cave they end up in.
“I thought you said you were taking us to a lab.” Prowler bites out sharply, but he still follows Hood up a set of steps to a large platform cluttered with equipment.
“It counts.” Hood says dismissively, and then starts dragging out a lump of dusty sheets. Miles helps, awkward and hesitant and cringing at the sharp scream of metal on stone. Hood waits until all the stuff he’s dragged out is out before yanking of the sheets, revealing a wide array of high-tech equipment Miles can barely comprehend.
“Is this – alien?”
“Are they not common where you’re from?” Hood asks idly, already flipping switches and pressing buttons and batting at holograms.
“Aliens are real.” Prowler says, deadpan. A little annoyed.
“Space cops too.”
“Peter was buddies with that cannibal guy, the one possessed by the little goo alien or whatever.” Miles recalls – maybe aliens aren’t so far-fetched after all. His attention is mostly captured by Hood, watching what he’s doing, taking note.
“Who the fuck is Peter?”
“Spider-man. My Spider-man. The one who died. Aunt May sent Venom to say hi to me when I started out. They stay out of Brooklynn except to check in on me.” It might not be super hero-ish of him to ignore the whole eating people thing, but it happens outside of Brooklyn, and Peter had let it happen, and Venom is the nice sort of scary and they only go after bad guys so –
Miles intends to keep the superhero-ing to the local level. He wants to, needs to, help people – but he knows what he can and cannot handle.
“The cannibal alien possessing a dude.”
“They’re married.”
“The cannibal alien possessing a dude is gay.”
“I think they use the term queer.” Miles says, voice dry, finally putting all his attention back on Prowler, and his other self makes a face at him. Miles responds in kind.
“You know who the vamp chasing you is?” Hood’s voice startles the both of them. He hadn’t said anything during their exchange, just listened.
“He’s not a vampire. He’s – another Spider-man. Like me.” Miles taps his own chest carefully, the torn symbol on his suit.
“I have never heard of a Spider-man before.”
The thought is – mind-blowing. Insane.
“You don’t have one here?”
“You mentioned Brooklyn, local I assume? No. We’ve got other legacy heroes.”
“All these fucking heroes.” Prowler mutters. Miles ignores him.
“That’s…wow. Um – we were all bit by a radioactive spider. Mutated our genes. Gave us powers. We’re all different though. Miguel went crazy before I got all the details, I assume we were all bit by different spiders. Miguel’s just got all the scary stuff. I was – I wasn’t supposed to be one, apparently. That’s why he’s pissed. Says I’m breaking the multiverse apart. My spider came from his dimension originally.” Miles jerks his limbs awkwardly towards Prowler. Pointing seems rude. Thumbs seem too…friendly. So instead his whole body kind of. Seizes.
Good one, Morales.
“You can fucking keep it. I don’t need no web bullshit.” Prowler is quick to say, shaking his head furiously. Miguel had – tried. To tempt him with it. Miles hadn’t meant to remind his other self of that exchange, but…
Hood throws his own head back and laughs.
“That motherfucker thinks you’re breaking the multiverse? Fucking please, god, this is why morons shouldn’t mess with other dimensions.”
“You think he’s wrong?” Prowler asks, before Miles can even think to formulate the question.
“Think? Kid – I know. The multiverse is an ecosystem. You shake it around, it’ll fix itself. Now, stopping it from just purging a timeline or two instead of shoving some asshole back into the right dimension – that can be a problem. But you’re not going to destroy it or anything just by existing.”
“How do you know?” Miles asks, whispers, squeezes his eyes shut to avoid looking at Hood or Prowler because this is –
“Interdimensional contact is fairly common. We’ve got whole towns of refugees from now-destroyed timelines and dimensions here. People come back from the dead, if they weren’t supposed to die in this dimension. We’ve got stable contact with a couple other branches – and have managed to effectively stonewall others.”
The silence following this admission is long and loud, stretches out like a grave between them.
“I can get you some of our notes.” Hood offers, voice – strangely gentle.
“’S not against the rules or some shit?”
“Oh it definitely is – but you’re kids. And at least this shit’s been peer reviewed.”
Miles makes a wounded sound, part laugh, part sob. Prowler jerks towards him, just a little.
Hood leaves them to collect themselves for a bit.
X
Miles believes this Hood – he handles the equipment with an old touch, muttering curses in an array of languages while he calibrates it to Spidey’s dimension.
“Do you – are you going to need help dealing with your not-vamp?” Hood eventually asks. Miles looks to Spidey – it’s his call. His world.
Miles’ deference turns to incredulity almost immediately, when Spidey draws his shoulders back and says, “Miguel lives.”
But Hood – doesn’t protest. Just studies the two of them, and then nods.
“Why are you – “ Miles cuts himself off, too sharp to hide his ire, but Hood just shrugs, a slow, lazy roll of his shoulders.
“Different worlds operate on different norms. I mean – I’ll kill if it comes down to it, but I’m skilled enough to not have to.”
And that strikes Miles dumb.
A matter of skill –
It’s harder to take someone alive than it is to take them dead. Miles knows that intimately. But to have it laid out so bluntly, so – not egotistically, but…
“We’ve got enhanced healing. Reflexes. Senses.” Spidey warns him. Hood shoots him a strange, lazy sort of smile. A predator’s smile, gone soft and indulgent to something small and cute.
“You ready?” Hood asks. He hands them both separate flash drives. They should either be compatible with their own dimension’s technology or easy enough to break into that they can manage it, he’d said.
Miles doesn’t like that he believes him.
“Let’s do this.” Spidey breathes. Miles rolls his eyes.
“’S go get your dad, moron.” He says, the words raw and jagged like cut glass. But – right, nonetheless.
Hood grins.
“We got a couple minutes before the rest of the assholes break in here. Let’s get going while the going’s good.” He says, and slaps a button. The largest of his bullshit sci-fi machines flares to life with a pretty blue-green glow and a chime.
Spidey goes first. Miles second; and Hood –
Hood takes up the rear.