Spider-Man, sporting a slight paunch, leaned against a nearby wall and slowly pushed himself to his feet.
He groaned with every movement, the pain in his back flaring up.
But this Spider-Man was no longer masked.
Instead, he looked like the most downtrodden of vagrants.
He wore a green overcoat and a pair of elastic-waist pants that looked painfully uncomfortable.
By any measure, he bore no resemblance to the Spider-Man anyone knew.
Spider-Man rubbed his forehead, trying to piece together what had happened to him.
A child had simply electrocuted him into unconsciousness.
Then, he’d been dragged along behind a New York light rail train, smashing into one object after another.
Worst of all, they had eventually fallen straight off the train.
If his body hadn’t been so resilient, he would have been hospitalized long ago after such a brutal ordeal.
The surrounding environment was completely unfamiliar, leaving Spider-Man utterly bewildered.
He had never seen this place before.
He looked up and saw the child who had put him through all that trouble—the first person he had met since arriving in this universe.
The child was a fanatical Batman enthusiast.
“Hey! I knew you’d come looking for me!” Peter was grinning now, completely ignoring the ache in his back.
He pointed at Wayne and laughed.
“You two know each other?” The kid felt like he’d stumbled into the headquarters of some secret organization.
Otherwise, how else could he run into two people who not only knew each other but also knew *him*?
“No,” Wayne replied.
“Yes!” Spider-Man countered.
They spoke in unison, yet their answers couldn’t have been more different.
And it was clear that Spider-Man was the one who was far more excited.
“What do you mean, ‘we don’t know each other’? I had your back yesterday, drawing all that fire! Now you’re just turning around and saying you don’t know me?”
Peter’s reaction to Wayne’s denial of their familiarity was visceral.
In his mind, they had shared a bond forged in a life-and-death struggle.
How could Wayne just dismiss it as if they were strangers?
Hearing Peter’s outburst, the kid’s gaze turned to Wayne with newfound interest.
But Wayne merely shot the child a sidelong glance. This story is hosted at g.com.
The boy immediately averted his gaze, pretending to be interested in something else.
To the half-grown kid, Wayne’s presence was clearly far more intimidating than Spider-Man’s.
“First of all, you’re the one who came looking for me. Second, I never forced you to follow me around.”
Spider-Man couldn’t fathom how Wayne could spout such bone-chilling words from a mouth at a perfectly normal body temperature.
“Are you saying I’m just a meddler? That there’s nothing between us? Do you have any idea how much words like that hurt a fragile spider’s heart?”
Peter himself wasn’t sure if he realized how off his own words sounded.
But Wayne’s mask, already carved into a grimace of deep-seated resentment, now seemed even more furious.
“Whoa~~”
The child looked as if he’d just heard some earth-shattering gossip.
He first turned his gaze to the homeless-looking Spider-Man below, then shifted his eyes toward—
Oh, no.
He didn’t dare.
Wayne could only lower his head and stare at his untied shoelaces.
He glanced at Spider-Man below, then fired his grappling hook and swung away.
What should have been a simple matter had been made utterly incomprehensible by Spider-Man’s words.
The more one tried to explain it, the more convoluted it became.
“So, between you two…”
The kid was clearly deeply confused and intrigued by what Peter had just said.
But Spider-Man wasn’t about to waste time on the kid’s questions.
His priority now was to catch up to that Bat.
That Bat might be the only one who could tell him how he’d ended up in this universe.
“Wait! Don’t go! I have questions!”
Seeing Spider-Man about to leave, the kid leaped from the fire escape.
This time, facing the boy head-on, Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense flared.
*He’s just like me,* Spider-Man thought, bewildered.
According to the theory of parallel universes, there should only be one Spider-Man per universe, just like in his own world.
And yet, earlier today, he had just attended a Spider-Man’s funeral.
And yet, here he was, meeting a child with such abilities in the middle of the night.
“Quantum theory is truly fascinating,” Spider-Man muttered to himself.
“What are you talking about?” the child asked curiously.
He needed to understand what was happening in this world.
And the guy in front of him, who looked like Spider-Man, was the answer to everything.
Of course, there was also that guy who looked just like Batman from the comic books.
“Why do you look so much like Peter Parker?”
“Because I *am* Peter Parker,” Spider-Man said, dusting himself off.
He didn’t want to waste any more time on useless chatter.
If he didn’t leave soon, he wouldn’t even be able to touch a single hair on that bat’s head.
“Then how are you not dead? Your hair is different. Why did you get old? And your build—why do you have a little belly?” The barrage of questions was enough to give the current Spider-Man a headache.
He really had no idea where this kid had come from.
So many questions…
Kids used to be so much easier to deal with.
“I know you’re calling me fat, but I’m not going to hold it against you right now. And you should know, superheroes never buy their own merchandise.”
By the time he finished speaking, Spider-Man was already on the wall, slowly crawling upward.
“So you’re from another dimension. Like a parallel universe—similar, but not the same? You’re the Spider-Man from there, and you ended up here without knowing why?”
In an instant, the kid had deduced exactly how this pot-bellied Spider-Man had arrived.
And as he spoke, the boy had already followed Peter up the wall without him even noticing.
“Yes! Exactly!”
Spider-Man, exasperated by the kid’s incessant questioning, turned back and spoke with absolute gravity.
“Right now, I need to find that Bat and figure out how I got here. In this universe, he might be the only one who knows.”
“And you,” Spider-Man said, turning to the kid, “are making me lose his trail this very instant!”
“But what if I know how you got here?” the boy exclaimed, his voice trembling with excitement.
Spider-Man stopped in his tracks and turned, staring in confusion at the child dressed in a cheap, knock-off Spider-Man costume.
“I was there when our universe’s Spider-Man died,” the boy continued.
“I know what brought you here.”
“What’s your name, kid?” Spider-Man asked, resuming his walk and gesturing for the boy to follow him up.
“Miles Morales.”
“Can you… can you teach me how to be a Spider-Man? Like Peter did?”
“We’ll talk about that after we find the Bat,” Spider-Man replied, stepping onto the rooftop.
In the distance, the dark silhouette of the Bat flickered against the skyline.