The Prowler was completely entangled in thick white webbing, his razor-sharp claws and energy-propelled boots rendered entirely useless.
He thrashed against the bindings, but Peter’s next words instantly froze him in place.
“Mr.
Aaron Davis,” Peter said smoothly, “have you ever considered what happens the day your secret identity is exposed?”
Beneath the mask, the Prowler’s breath hitched.
“You…
how could you possibly know?”
“Don’t forget, there is a Spider-Man in every corner of the multiverse, which means there is a Prowler, too.
Figuring out who is under that mask isn’t exactly rocket science.”
“I will never betray Mr.
Thomas!” the Prowler growled, fighting against the webbing.
“Mr.
Thomas?” Peter countered.
“What if I told you that in several alternate universes, you actually died at his hands?”
The Prowler’s eyes, barely visible beneath the heavy hood, flickered with uncertainty.
His unwavering trust in the crime boss was visibly cracking.
“And I have one last piece of news for you,” Peter added, his tone softening.
“Your nephew, Miles, is currently fighting the Green Goblin.
He is stepping up.
He is being a true hero.
And you?” Peter raised a hand, pointing across the cavern to where the young teenager was locked in a desperate battle.
The Prowler went rigid.
It was nothing short of a bolt from the blue.
The persuasion was over.
Peter raised his wrist, firing a web line to prepare for his next move.
Thomas was the most lethal threat on the battlefield, and there was no way Gwen could handle him alone.
As Peter prepared to launch himself into the air, he left the mercenary with one final thought.
“You don’t have much time left to make this right.
You really don’t want to see the disappointment in Miles’s eyes, do you?”
The Prowler closed his eyes in sheer anguish.
His heart was violently tearing itself apart.
He was terrified of his family discovering his dark double life, but the thought of his own nephew dying at the hands of Thomas was something he absolutely could not accept.
Maybe…
maybe Spider-Man was right.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to atone.
When the Prowler finally opened his eyes, the conflict and hesitation were entirely gone.
All that remained was a cold, resolute glare.
He was going to sever all ties with his dark past, accept whatever punishment he deserved, and start over.
“Hey!
Spider-Man!” the Prowler yelled.
“Come here!
I know a way to get you to Thomas right now!”
***
Meanwhile, Gwen’s situation had gone from bad to catastrophic.
Thomas’s massive, bulky physique was incredibly deceiving.
Fueled by monstrous muscular strength, his linear acceleration was terrifyingly fast.
Every punch and kick he threw landed with the swift, concussive force of an exploding bomb.
The sheer air pressure generated by his near-misses made it difficult for Gwen to even breathe.
She had absolutely no chance in a head-on fight.
Her only option was to rely on her Spider-Sense, using her agility to desperately weave and dodge around his devastating blows.
But Thomas was a seasoned killer.
As he began to memorize Gwen’s dodging patterns, it was only a matter of time before one of those massive fists connected.
Suddenly, a familiar, teasing voice echoed from above.
“Hey, hey, hey!
Little fat Thomas, isn’t beating up a little girl a bit out of character for a big shot like you?”
The taunt caused Thomas’s incoming punch to pause for just a fraction of a second.
Gwen seized the opening, executing a flawless backflip to put some distance between them.
Thomas whipped his head around, his eyes narrowing as he saw Peter crouching on the Prowler’s back, flying rapidly toward him.
The Prowler, who was supposed to be his loyal enforcer, was now acting as a makeshift hoverboard for his greatest enemy. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Thomas’s eyes widened, the whites filling with dense, bursting blood vessels until he looked like a rabid animal.
“Prowler!” Thomas roared, his voice shaking the cavern walls.
“How dare you betray me!”
Faced with the murderous wrath of his former boss, the Prowler simply offered a cold, humorless laugh.
“I didn’t have a choice before.
Now, I want to be a good guy.”
With that single act of defiance, the Prowler successfully catapulted himself to the absolute top of Thomas’s kill list, briefly surpassing even Spider-Man.
Reaching inside his tailored suit jacket, Thomas’s massive hand withdrew a sleek silver pistol, aiming it dead at the mercenary.
It was the exact same weapon that had killed the Prowler with a single shot in the original timeline.
The gun looked unremarkable, but its ability to pierce heavy tactical armor meant it was firing highly specialized, lethal munitions.
However, Peter was already a step ahead.
“Foul!
Foul!” Peter shouted.
“All concealed weapons are hereby confiscated.
Hand it over!”
Thwip!
A tight strand of webbing shot through the air, perfectly striking the barrel of the silver pistol and sealing it shut in a thick, sticky cocoon.
A split second later, Thomas pulled the trigger.
Boom!
A blinding flash of light and a shower of flying metal fragments erupted from his grip.
The pressure backfire turned the pistol into a makeshift fragmentation grenade right in Thomas’s right hand.
The metal shards, fueled by massive kinetic energy, instantly shredded the skin of his palm.
But Thomas’s terrifying physical conditioning was on full display.
His dense, steel-like muscle fibers clamped down, trapping the shrapnel and preventing the blast from causing any structural damage to his hand.
An explosion that would have easily blown off an ordinary man’s arm only left Thomas with superficial wounds.
“Hey, Spider-Man!” the Prowler called out.
“This is as far as I can take you.
I need to go help Miles!”
The Prowler abruptly shifted his jet boots, tossing Peter off his back before banking hard toward his nephew’s battlefield.
Peter sailed through the air in a perfect, graceful arc, landing smoothly right in front of Gwen.
“I will handle Thomas,” Peter said, not taking his eyes off the crime boss.
“You go back up Peni.”
Gwen looked at Peter’s steady stance, an unprecedented sense of security washing over her.
Having this Spider-Man watching her back felt incredibly reassuring.
“Be careful,” Gwen warned.
“The Thomas in this universe is ridiculously strong.”
Peter nodded, reaching his hand behind his back to subtly accept the override key that Gwen secretly slipped into his palm.
As Gwen swung away, a sinister, bloody grin spread across Thomas’s scarred face.
He clenched his right fist, forcefully popping the embedded metal fragments out of his muscle fibers.
They clattered harmlessly against the alloy floor.
“Little Spider, you are going to regret this,” Thomas growled.
“Trying to fight me one-on-one?
Didn’t you learn anything from the last guy who tried?”
“Thomas, I really hope you still have the energy to tell bad jokes when I am done beating you to a pulp,” Peter fired back.
The tension between them reached a breaking point, the air thick and volatile like a powder keg waiting for a spark.
And then, the countdown hit zero.
Buzz!
A colossal beam of blinding purple energy erupted from both ends of the particle collider.
The twin beams slammed into each other in the dead center of the ring, violently tearing open the fabric of reality and creating a massive, swirling void of dark purple space.
Fractured spatial rifts began to splinter across the void like shattered glass.
Objects from countless alternate multiverses were violently ripped from their realities and dragged into this one.
Skyscrapers, city streets, taxi cabs, subway trains—even a massive, rusted section of the Statue of Liberty came plummeting out of the anomaly.
“Now is the time!
This is the opening!” Peter’s heart pounded against his ribs.
He fired a web line, anchoring it to the facade of an alternate-universe building floating in the anti-gravity field above them, and catapulted himself straight toward the center of the dark purple void.
“Don’t even think about running!” Thomas roared.
His massive leg muscles bulged, completely shredding the fabric of his tailored trousers.
Boom!
The reinforced alloy floor caved in beneath him as Thomas launched his massive frame into the air, hurtling right after Peter.
Peter had barely touched down on the side of the floating skyscraper when Thomas slammed into him like a runaway freight train. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The impact sent a shockwave of shattered glass and pulverized concrete exploding into the air.
There was nowhere left to run.
A brutal, close-quarters brawl was inevitable.
The two traded devastating blows as they plummeted deeper toward the center of the multiversal storm.
Finally, they both crashed through the roof of a floating, displaced subway train, landing right in the eye of the swirling spatial rifts.
“Finally picked out a gravesite?” Thomas mocked, his massive chest heaving.
His veins bulged thickly against his skin, making him look like a terrifying, hairless version of the Hulk.
“Terrible taste.”
Peter simply shrugged, remaining uncharacteristically silent.
He knew exactly what was about to happen.
“Where is this?
How did we get here?”
A soft, ethereal voice drifted through the shattered train car.
Thomas froze.
He slowly turned his head, his eyes widening in absolute disbelief.
Standing in the floating debris were the shimmering, semi-transparent figures of a woman and a young boy.
“Vanessa!
Richard!” Thomas choked out.
“Don’t go!”
He instinctively reached out his massive hands, desperately trying to grab the glowing apparitions.
Because they were standing at the epicenter of the purple void, the timelines of the multiverse were bleeding together.
Thomas wasn’t looking at ghosts; he was looking at alternate versions of his deceased wife and son from another universe.
This was the entire reason he had built the collider in the first place—to rip them from their world and bring them to his.
The sight completely shattered his focus.
In his desperation, he entirely forgot about the superhero standing right behind him.
“Goodnight, Thomas!”
Peter didn’t hesitate.
He stepped in and delivered a devastating, full-power punch squarely to the crime boss’s jaw.
The sheer kinetic force of the blow snapped Thomas’s head back, slamming his brain violently against his skull and instantly plunging the massive titan into a deep, dark unconsciousness.
Crash!
Thomas collapsed to the floor, shaking the entire train car.
Breathing heavily, Peter wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.
Even though he was exhausted, he quickly went to work, cocooning the unconscious crime boss in an impenetrable layer of webbing until he looked like a giant, white bowling ball.
Hoisting Thomas over his shoulder, Peter leaped from the train car, expertly weaving his way through the floating debris field until he safely touched down back on the collider platform.
He casually tossed the webbed-up mobster onto the metal grating and tapped his earpiece, re-establishing a secure connection with his team.
“Status report,” Peter called out.
One by one, the voices of the alternate Spider-Men chimed in.
Every single supervillain had been neutralized.
It was the best news Peter had heard all night.
He looked up at the swirling purple vortex above him.
The chaotic rifts had finally stabilized, merging to form five distinct, glowing gateways leading back to their respective universes.
Peter took a deep breath.
“Alright guys, I have good news and bad news.
Which one do you want first?”
A chorus of exhausted voices echoed over the comms.
They all universally agreed: bad news first.
“Okay, looks like everyone is a pessimist today,” Peter chuckled.
“The bad news is that the multiverse portals are fully open and stable.”
A heavy silence fell over the channel.
To the rest of the team, stable portals meant Thomas’s machine had worked.
They thought the mission was a failure.
“But the good news,” Peter continued, his voice brightening, “is that you all get to go home right now.
Once you are through those portals, I am going to plug in the key, blow this collider to pieces, and seal the doors shut for good.”
As he spoke, Peter reached down and forcefully ripped away the damaged alloy plating covering the collider’s main terminal.
Beneath the sparking wires, the override USB port was finally exposed.
He pulled Gwen’s flash drive from his pocket, perfectly aligning it with the port.
Holding his finger over the drive, Peter smiled beneath his mask and offered his final farewell to the interdimensional team.
“My dear buddies…
ready to go home?”