Peter Parker was fighting a war of attrition against a god of time, and he had just made a startling discovery.
Kang the Conqueror couldn't fight.
Perhaps it was because he was a "future emperor," or maybe he relied too heavily on the invincible, reality-bending power of the Time Stone embedded in his chest. Whatever the reason, his hand-to-hand combat skills were practically non-existent. His fighting style was completely haphazard, relying entirely on the absurd specs of his thirty-first-century armor and the Time Stone to bail him out of his own mistakes.
Peter ducked a wild, telegraphed haymaker that would have easily decapitated a normal man.
"I've got to be honest with you, Kang," Peter panted, his chest heaving as he danced backward. "You are officially a worse hand-to-hand fighter than Tony Stark. And Tony essentially fights like a guy trying to aggressively operate a forklift."
"Just wait and die, Spider-Man!" Kang roared.
The Conqueror tapped his gauntlet, hyper-accelerating his own localized timeline. He rushed forward, unleashing a wild, unrestrained flurry of punches. "This thirty-first-century armor far exceeds your primitive imagination! Your so-called superpowers are utterly insignificant against my technological supremacy!"
"You can barely throw a straight jab! What are you talking about performance for?!"
Peter narrowly dodged a rapid punch by bending over backward, Matrix-style. He planted his hands on the ground, using his momentum to deliver a brutal, upward double-kick directly into Kang's faceplate.
The heavy impact tore the seams of Kang's high-tech visor. But before Peter could follow up, the Time Stone flared emerald green. In a fraction of a second, Kang reversed his own localized time, completely repairing the shattered armor.
It was an infuriating cycle. But Peter had noticed the fatal flaw: every single time Kang actively triggered the Time Stone, there was a microscopic delay. And in that delay, Peter could land two solid punches.
"Seriously, Kang! I still think you're only this angry because I smashed your floating recliner!" Peter yelled, throwing a sharp right hook.
Kang engaged his temporal dampeners, entering a state of bullet-time to dodge the attack with a highly contorted, awkward posture. He accelerated again, lunging forward. Peter simply let his Spider-Sense take the wheel, easily sidestepping the clumsy charge and burying his fist deep into Kang's chin.
"But I really don't think painting the chair purple was a good design choice anyway!" Peter quipped.
Kang's jaw shattered under the superhuman impact. He stumbled backward, grunting in pain, but the green light flared once more. His jaw snapped back into place instantly. Kang glared at the teenager with absolute, burning disdain.
"Your failure is mathematically inevitable, Spider-Man," Kang sneered, brushing a speck of dust off his purple pauldron. "You are flesh and blood. You will inevitably succumb to exhaustion. But the Great Kang will always rely on the mastery of time to remain in a state of absolute perfection. When your muscles finally tear and you collapse into the dirt, that will be the moment of my victory."
Peter was too exhausted to even fire back a witty retort. He was legitimately speechless.
"How novel," Peter finally wheezed, resting his hands on his knees. "A high-tech warlord from a thousand years in the future, wearing a suit worth more than the GDP of my entire planet, can't actually beat up a teenager from Queens. So his grand master plan is to just... wait until I need a nap." Peter shook his head. "I don't know how a major supervillain can be this much of a coward. Could you at least try to say something intimidating?"
Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the pocket universe spiked.
A localized spatial anomaly flared across Peter's retinas. A massive, jagged rift of blue light tore open the fabric of the psychic dimension.
Before Kang could even turn to look, two highly dramatic, theatrical battle cries echoed through the rift.
The cavalry had arrived.
Johnny Storm was the first through the breach. "FLAME ON!" he yelled, unleashing a massive, spiraling tornado of superheated fire that slammed directly into Kang's chest, throwing the Conqueror off balance.
Next came Peter Quill. Star-Lord kicked his rocket boots into maximum overdrive, charging out of the portal like a blazing comet. He had both of his elemental quad-blasters drawn, firing a relentless, blinding barrage of plasma bolts that hammered against Kang's deflector shields.
Bewildered by the sudden, overwhelming crossfire, Kang stumbled backward—right into the waiting arms of Groot. The towering Flora Colossus grabbed the time-traveler by the waist, lifted him high above his head, and brutally slammed him into the ground.
"Eat plasma, you purple weirdo!" Rocket Raccoon screamed, vaulting off Groot's shoulder and unloading a deafening barrage of heavy ordinance directly into the Conqueror's chest plate.
"Are you alright, Peter?"
Gwen Stacy materialized beside him, her sleek black symbiote suit shifting as she reached out to help support his weight. Cindy Moon landed on his other side, grabbing his opposite arm.
"I'm fine," Peter exhaled heavily, leaning gratefully against the two girls. "Just... a little tired. Turns out, fighting a guy with infinite continues is a real workout."
Peter, Gwen, and Cindy watched in deeply satisfied silence as the Fantastic Four and the Guardians of the Galaxy absolutely wailed on Kang the Conqueror. The self-proclaimed "emperor of time" was currently being used as a punching bag by the "primitives" he despised so much.
Adam Warlock floated gently out of the portal, his golden skin glowing as he approached the trio. He placed a warm hand on Peter's shoulder, transferring a small surge of restorative cosmic energy into the exhausted teenager's muscles.
"Wait," Peter said, looking around the chaotic battlefield. "Where are Thor, Mar-Vell, and Carol? Didn't you wake them up?"
"We do not possess a strong enough emotional connection to Mar-Vell or Major Danvers," Adam explained calmly. "Without knowing their deepest desires, we could not safely shatter their illusions. As for the Odinson... he did not enter the Soul Stone."
Peter blinked. "What? Why not?"
"The Stone automatically absorbed everyone in the blast radius who would have been killed by Korvac's explosion," Adam said matter-of-factly. "Thor is a god. The explosion would not have killed him. Therefore, he is still outside."
Peter pictured Thor standing entirely alone on a smoking tarmac in Puerto Rico, completely confused as to where his entire team had just vanished to. Peter couldn't help but chuckle. "Well, I just pray he doesn't smash the entire island looking for us."
Across the field, the beatdown was taking a turn. Kang, realizing his high-tech armor was failing against the combined, savage might of the assembled heroes, resorted to his favorite tactic: running away.
Spotting the spatial rift that the heroes had just torn open, Kang engaged his repulsors, broke free of Groot's grip, and dove headfirst into the portal.
"Are you kidding me?!" Johnny yelled, powering down his flames. "A time traveler from the future with a literal Infinity Stone, and he just runs away?! How lame is this guy?"
Johnny turned back to the group. "So, what's the call? Do we chase him?"
"We must," Reed Richards said, stepping up beside Peter. "If we cannot neutralize Kang, we will not be able to safely extract Michael Korvac and return him to his proper timeline."
Peter nodded in agreement. He stood up straight, feeling the strength returning to his limbs. He turned to Gwen. He didn't say anything; he just looked pointedly at the black, shifting biomass covering her body.
It's time to give Venom back.
Gwen bit her lip behind her mask. "Now? Can't it wait a little longer, Peter?" she pleaded, clasping her black-gloved hands together. "Please?"
"Gwen," Peter said gently but firmly. "You don't know how to fight. Not against someone like this."
"But it's still so dangerous out here," Gwen argued, her voice tight with worry. "I want to help."
Peter looked into the white lenses of her mask. He knew she was just terrified of losing him again. He let out a soft sigh and nodded, relenting for now.
"Fine. You keep the suit. But you stay on the backline. Do not engage Kang directly. Understood?"
Gwen nodded rapidly.
With the team fully assembled, Peter led the charge. They sprinted toward the glowing spatial rift, diving through the dimensional barrier in pursuit of the Conqueror.
The transition was instant. They were no longer in the golden fields of Adam's pocket dimension, nor were they in Peter's idealized version of Parker Industries.
They materialized inside a massive, sprawling, hyper-advanced military installation. The architecture was cold, angular, and glowing with sterile neon light. It looked completely alien, featuring technology far beyond anything currently built on Earth.
Gamora walked over to a nearby glowing console. She ran a green finger over the holographic text scrolling across the screen.
"These are Kree characters," Gamora announced, her eyes narrowing. She looked back at Peter and Star-Lord. "We just followed Kang right into Mar-Vell's pocket universe."