Just then a man in a suit walked up to Wayne.
He was the current president of Empire State University.
“Mr.
Scott, you saw the emergency broadcast just now, right?”
The cool Black president sat down a little awkwardly on Wayne’s other side.
“Here’s the thing.
I’ve got a friend at the Daily Bugle who wants to interview you about Galactus.
If you’ve got a minute, I was thinking I could set something up?”
Galactus clearly wasn’t from Earth.
The only people who might know anything about him were the ones who regularly traveled the universe.
Right now that list on Earth was basically Thor and Superman.
The Avengers had already confirmed Thor was off-world, so every reporter on the planet was thinking of Superman.
They didn’t all rush him at once because it was pointless.
No one could make Superman stay if he didn’t want to.
Reporters had tried ambushing him at the university before.
Wayne just disappeared into thin air every time.
With the tech humanity currently had, if Superman didn’t feel like being found, they were completely out of luck.
Eventually the press gave up and accepted that the only real shot was to ask politely for an appointment and hope he felt like answering a few questions.
Wayne met the president’s eyes and gave an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, Mr.
President.
I don’t actually know much about Galactus either.”
“Alright.”
The president shrugged.
If the guy didn’t want to talk, there was nothing he could do.
He wasn’t about to push Superman just for a buddy’s sake.
He still needed that reputation to help recruit students next year.
Once the president left, Gwen leaned in, curious.
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“What’s the point?”
“They can’t do anything about it.
Sitting around waiting to die just breeds more crime.
Even if I told everyone not to worry and that we’d handle it, half of them wouldn’t believe me.
The only thing that would actually calm people down is dumping Galactus’s corpse in front of their faces right now.”
“Anything less and you’re just making them more scared for no reason.”
Gwen nodded slowly, thinking it over.
…
Evening light hit the Hudson River and broke into glittering patches of gold, like schools of leaping goldfish.
Unlike the Gwen from Universe-65, this world’s Gwen had a place in Manhattan, and it was a pretty nice one.
Wayne sat on the roof of her building, quietly watching the ships move along the river in the distance.
It didn’t take long before a white figure launched up from below, flipped once in the air with perfect form, and landed lightly beside him.
The suit was mostly black and white with pink accents, cut like a ballet outfit crossed with a spider-suit.
“Hey, Mr.
Superman.
What are you doing up here?”
Gwen was clearly trying to keep her voice steady.
Wayne turned to look at her.
“Nice suit, Gwen.”
She yanked the hood and mask off in pure disbelief.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Is it that hard?”
Gwen pressed her lips together, suddenly annoyed.
“…”
“Fine.
I’ve got X-ray vision.
You were disguised pretty well, though.”
That only made it worse.
Gwen’s hands flew up to cover her chest, face going bright red as she glared at him in flustered embarrassment.
She didn’t exactly hate the idea, but there was still an order to these things.
At the very least the guy was supposed to confess first, right?
“I only looked at your face.”
Wayne held up both hands like he was completely innocent.
While Gwen let out a quiet sigh of relief, a little disappointment crept in.
Did Wayne really have zero feelings for her?
Wayne caught the conflicted look on her face and pressed his lips together.
Troublesome, huh.
Luckily Gwen didn’t stay stuck on it for long.
She bounced right back, hopped up beside him, and spun around with both arms out.
“Well?
How is it?”
“How is what?”
“You saw it just now, right?
My powers!
I can help you now.
We can fight crime together, take down bad guys together, patrol New York together… Why aren’t you even a little surprised?”
“I noticed your genes shifting earlier.
It looked stable and benign, so I didn’t bother paying attention.”
“…”
Gwen pouted, clearly sulking.
She’d been looking forward to seeing some kind of shocked reaction out of him.
Wayne glanced at her, completely unfazed.
“I am curious how you got the powers, though.
You weren’t bitten by a mutated spider, were you?”
“A mutated spider?”
Gwen blinked.
“No.
When I was traveling I bought this wooden spider totem statue as a souvenir.
The night I got home I dreamed about a giant spider crawling on a web.
When I woke up the next morning, I had powers.”
“A spider totem statue?”
Wayne’s mind flicked through what he knew.
In the Marvel multiverse, every spider-powered person traced back to a spider totem somehow.
There were plenty of ways to get the package beyond a radioactive bite.
Spider-Man 2099 just rewrote his own genes.
There was also that whole Web of Life and Destiny the Spider-Goddess Neith supposedly wove.
None of it looked dangerous to Gwen, so he filed it away.
There was one group worth keeping an eye on, though: the Inheritors.
Family of totem-hunters.
He’d have to carve out some time later and wipe the whole bloodline.
“Wayne, let’s go on patrol.”
Gwen was already pacing along the outer wall, itching to move.
“My dad’s busy every single day.
Even in the middle of Manhattan there’s gotta be criminals running around.”
Wayne didn’t particularly feel like it, but Gwen fixed him with those big pleading eyes.
He stayed quiet for a second, then nodded and let the Bio-force field rewrite his clothes into the battle suit.
Truth was, if he wanted to he could erase every criminal on the planet in less than a second.
Looking at how excited Gwen was, he kept that thought to himself.
…
They spent the whole night covering most of Manhattan.
Ran into plenty of crime, but it was all small-time stuff—robberies, muggings.
Wayne let Gwen handle every one of them for practice.
Sometimes the crooks took one look at Superman standing nearby and just dropped their weapons on the spot.
Gwen didn’t mind.
First night out as a superhero, and she was doing it with Wayne.
That alone had her grinning the entire time.
Right now they were inside a supermarket.
A masked guy had a handgun pointed at the cashier, demanding all the cash.
The cashier’s eyes were locked on something behind the robber.
That weird stare made the guy’s spine prickle.
He turned around.
“Hey.”