Gwen Stacy POV:
Gwen was trying very hard not to freak out.
No matter how many times she replayed it in her head, she just could not explain why she had attacked that masked guy. One second she had been watching. The next she had been trying to rearrange his ribcage.
The whole thing had started innocently enough.
At the time, Gwen had been crouched on the edge of a rooftop, watching traffic crawl through the streets below. Winter break wasn't over yet, and for once she had nowhere she needed to be.
She had been practicing with her powers and, for the first time, wasn't constantly terrified. She had kept worrying that she would mess something up and fall off the side of a building.
She probably should not have been smiling so much just from successfully dangling off the side of a building, but she was really starting to love her new abilities. Her life had become completely insane, yet hanging upside down with nothing but her feet, six stories above traffic, still made her grin.
Then, when she was about to start heading home, she saw someone running across the rooftops.
Curious, she decided to follow at a distance. Anyone running across rooftops in the middle of Manhattan was either trouble or in trouble.
After several blocks, the figure finally stopped at the edge of a building and looked down toward the street below.
She carefully got as close as she could without risking notice and decided it had to be a man, though his head was covered by a mask.
As she watched, he dropped down into the alley near the street and out of sight.
Quickly moving to the edge of the building to see what he was doing, something changed.
A sudden jolt shot through her and her stomach dropped so hard she nearly fell to her knees.
Gwen froze. Every muscle locked.
It felt as though someone had poured ice water directly into her veins.
Since getting her powers she had experienced odd moments. Little flashes of warning. Instincts that were somehow always right.
This was not that.
Every nerve in her body was suddenly screaming.
Something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Looking down, she saw a man get yanked into the alley.
As a muffled cry for help rose up from the alley, Gwen moved.
'What? Wait-' she thought, confused.
She hadn't jumped, or at least she didn't think she had. But one moment she was on the rooftop, and the next she was diving toward the alley below.
Before she reached the ground, the masked man broke the other man's neck with a loud snap.
When she landed, she was right next to the masked man. She tried to step back, but her body lunged forward instead.
'No! Stop!' she tried to scream, but no sound came out.
The man turned sharply and swung at her head.
She saw it coming. She tried to stop herself. And still her body moved on its own.
She ducked under the strike and before he could recover, her fist drove into his side. A loud, sickening crack echoed through the alley. Gwen could feel the cracking bones under her fist and felt sick to her stomach.
The man was thrown back by the blow and slammed against the opposite wall.
Only seconds had passed, but it felt like minutes.
She was still standing where she had punched him, staring down at her shaking hands as if they belonged to someone else.
'What just... Why? What is-'
A voice cut through her thoughts, "That punch would have caved-in a normal person's chest, blondie."
Her head snapped up.
He was still there, very much alive, and watching her.
The realization hit all at once.
He had just killed someone in front of her. She had attacked him. And now he knew exactly what she looked like.
Her breath caught and panic surged through her chest like a physical force.
Without thinking, she covered part of her face with her hand, turned, and ran.
The alley blurred behind her as she pushed herself, scrambling instinctively up the side of the building and climbing until the rooftop met her hands.
She didn't stop running until she got home.
Just thinking back on it now made the panic start to rise in her chest again.
'Is he going to come after me?' she thought, and her stomach tightened with anxiety.
'He knows what I look like.' then the thought snapped immediately to her father, 'What if he goes after Dad?'
Her father was the most important person in her life. She couldn't lose him. She couldn't let anything happen to him.
But another equally terrifying fear was haunting her, 'Why did I lose control of my body?' That one struck deeper than the rest. Something about what happened felt wrong in a way she could not shake.
'And what if he tells someone? What if he exposes my powers? My entire life could be ruined because of something I didn't have any control over.'
Gwen forced herself to stop. She inhaled sharply. Then again, slower this time. Her heartbeat did not fully settle, but it stopped racing long enough for her to think.
'Do I tell Dad?' she considered. The idea came carefully now, not in panic.
But she already saw how it would go: "Dad, I have spider powers. And I was at the scene of a homicide. And I attacked a masked vigilante. And he saw my face before I ran away."
She exhaled through her teeth, 'Yeah, that would not go well.'
No, she needed answers.
And she needed a suit. Something to hide her identity so this could not happen again.
Then she would find that masked man. Before he came for her, or her father.
And she would get her answers.
-----
Location: New York City
Date: December 31st, 1988
Mark POV:
The last few days had been slow as he started to recover from his injury.
His ribs still hurt, a lot. Not enough to stop him moving around but enough to remind him every time he twisted wrong or lifted his arm too high.
Spider-strength apparently hit harder than it looked.
For the last few days he had been largely out of commission. But unfortunately Mark did not have much he could do to pass the time.
The early internet was farther along in this world by this point then his was, largely thanks to people like Tony Stark and Reed Richards. Not that it made much difference to him since he did not have a computer.
He did not even get the newspaper.
So, desired or not, he gained a lot of time to think.
The strength, the agility, the wallcrawling. The first thought he had of the girl was spider powers. Though, only Peter was supposed to get bit by the spider that gave him his powers, or so Mark had thought.
He did not recognize the girl. Still, blonde hair and spider powers immediately made him think of Gwen Stacy. Not that it was a very logical conclusion, plenty of blonde girls existed in New York. Even so, Gwen was the only blonde from the Spider-Man corner of Marvel he knew of.
But where did she come from? There were supposed to be a lot of Spider-People eventually, but not here. Not now, this early in continuity.
Mark briefly wondered if she would be okay, considering how distressed she had been. After she left him laid out against a wall that is.
Well, whoever that girl was, the real problem was not the spider powers, it was what else he thought he knew that could be wrong.
'Is this even the main Earth-616 Marvel universe? Or some other version of it?' he thought to himself, his brow furrowed. The last thing he needed was to find himself in the Marvel Zombies world after all.
Mark could not help sighing, 'Maybe I should have just gone to DC. At least their continuity pretends to make sense.'
His deep knowledge of Marvel was limited, and the knowledge he did have mostly came from the movies and animated shows. In fact, he had probably absorbed most of it through cultural osmosis than from reading the comics, and he had never been the sort to follow every comic run anyway. There were simply too many, and he always seemed to have something better to do.
Now however, that felt like a terrible mistake.
Because suddenly details mattered, and he did not know them, not really.
'Well, my presence has already changed whatever the future had in store for this world regardless. Hopefully it has changed for the better.'
Then another thought struck him. Was there another version of himself, native to this universe, running around somewhere?
The idea was vaguely disturbing.
One Mark was already more than enough.
But he quickly dismissed the thought. There was no point worrying about hypothetical versions of himself when the very real version currently had cracked ribs and no answers.
Aside from existential questions, he had discovered something else that left him very conflicted.
While switching templates back and forth to practice Elvish and train with the Force to pass the time, he found a seemingly new, or at least previously unknown system feature.
When he opened the template page, Mark usually selected and equipped a template with little more than a thought. But when he was distracted for a moment after selecting one, an option to either equip or target appeared.
His eyes narrowed at the implications. Because every time he looked at it, the same thought returned, 'Does this mean I could target someone else with a template, thus giving them its power?'
The possibility sat there like a loaded weapon.
Simple, and terrifying.
On the one hand, it was reasonable that a system which gave him his powers could also be used to do the same for others.
On the other hand, giving out powers sounded like a terrible idea that could easily blowup in his face any number of ways.
Telling anyone about the system was the only thing he could think of that might be worse. And there was simply no way to know what the reaction would be. It may even draw the attention of powerful cosmic beings.
'Who could I trust with that?' he thought.
The answer that came back was immediate.
Nobody. At least, not yet.
Mark closed the page.
For now, the option changed nothing. The possibility existed, but he saw no reason to touch it. If circumstances changed in the future, he would deal with them then.
Until that day came, some doors were better left unopened.
---
After the last few days Mark wanted to just get out and see or do anything beyond the paint peeled walls of his temporary house, as he had started calling it. Anything was better than sitting on his uncomfortable couch/bed at that point.
Before leaving he collected his mask just in case, though he would be avoiding violence if possible. And he also added a small pouch with a few leaves of Kingsfoil to his everyday carry items.
He had not used all of them when he took a piece of the plant to try healing himself. He did not know how long the leave would stay good, but he was not going to waste them.
With everything ready, Mark stepped outside into the last day of the year.
He closed his eyes and took a moment to simply relax as he felt the life force of everything around himself.
His connection to the Force was stronger than ever and being connected to it was strangely comforting. At times it almost felt like having a friend at his side, quietly offering guidance when he needed it most. The Force never spoke, yet there were moments when it seemed to understand exactly what he needed.
Then as the moment passed, he headed into the heart of New York.
The city greeted him with cold air, noise, and motion. Cars crawled through crowded streets while thousands of people hurried about their lives, each wrapped up in concerns of their own.
His thoughts drifted to Sue.
Had meeting Susan Storm been chance, or had the Force guided him to exactly where he needed to be?
He had followed a current in the Force that day, a subtle pull that had led him through the city before crossing paths with her. It had never felt quite like directions. More like a gentle nudge toward something he might otherwise have missed.
Mark decided to see if he could find that feeling again.
He wandered without destination or urgency, keeping his senses open as he searched for it. He did not really know what he was doing. This was not any Force technique he knew of, but it felt like he would find something important if he continued.
Nothing.
The city flowed around him. Voices blended together. Traffic flowed through intersections. Life carried on.
*Boom*
An explosion echoed through the city.
People stopped and turned toward the sound. A column of smoke began rising several blocks away.
Mark instinctively looked in that direction. Something was happening. Fear rippled through the crowd, sharper and more immediate than the blast itself.
He took a step toward the smoke, and paused.
There it was.
A pull.
Small. Subtle.
And moving in the opposite direction.
Mark frowned.
The smoke continued to climb into the sky as people pointed, shouted, and hurried toward the commotion.
Then a red-and-blue figure swung overhead, crossing between buildings with practiced ease.
Spider-Man.
He was heading directly toward the danger.
Mark watched him disappear into the distance before looking down the opposite street.
The feeling remained. It was faint, easy to ignore and yet undeniably present.
For a moment he sensed something beneath it.
Not urgency or danger. It felt more like, importance. As though this moment was a crossroads, or a choice.
One path already had a hero.
The other did not.
A small smile briefly crossed his face. Then he turned away from the smoke, toward the other path.
---
He followed the feeling through the city for what felt like hours. By the time he stopped, darkness had settled over New York.
Mark looked up at the hotel in front of him. He stood near a side entrance, more than a little confused.
This was what the Force had led him to?
He stepped inside. The lobby appeared ordinary enough. Guests came and went, as staff worked behind the front desk. Nothing seemed out of place.
Yet the feeling remained.
Without quite knowing why, he bypassed the elevators and headed for the stairwell. The moment he stepped inside, something changed.
A sensation of urgency hit him sharply enough that he immediately broke into a run. The pull was fading as the moment began slipping away. He needed to hurry.
Up one flight. Then another.
The pull grew stronger again with every step. When he reached the right floor, it led him without hesitation to a single door.
He could feel two people inside. One presence felt muted and distant, as though buried beneath a heavy fog.
The other made Mark's skin crawl with their repulsive, hungry, lust. He already knew exactly what would be found inside and quickly slipped on his mask.
His jaw tight, the door lock opened with a soft click under a subtle push from the Force and Mark slipped in the door without a sound.
Inside he found a young woman laid down on a bed with a naked man over top her, kissing and pawing at her breasts. She was largely unresponsive, and had been stripped to nothing but her panties.
The woman's presence was the one he had felt beneath the fog. She was confused and either dead drunk or drugged.
The man was exactly what he had expected and Mark's disgust hardened into cold certainty.
The man, his naked ass facing Mark, just happened to be displaying the perfect target between his legs.
Without hesitation, he reached out and with a vicious smile, Force gripped the man's balls.
A strangled howl tore from the man's throat, as he jerked upright and tumbled backward off the bed.
The man hit the floor hard, curling onto a ball, and clutching his family jewels in agony.
After a moment the man looked around for the source of his pain.
When his eyes met the dark mask staring back at him, and the color drained from his face, as fear replaced confusion.
'Good.' thought Mark, and released the pressure.
Before the man could speak, he focused his will into a wave of Force energy and slammed it into the man's mind.
"You want to sit in the corner and wait silently." he commanded.
The man's resistance collapsed instantly. He stumbled to his feet and shuffled toward the far side of the room before lowering himself to the floor.
Silent.
Obedient.
Mark blinked. That had worked far better than he expected.
He had never attempted anything like that before. The command had simply felt right in the moment, and the Force had answered.
Perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
The man sat motionless, staring at nothing.
Mark had the distinct impression he would remain exactly where he was until told otherwise.
Under normal circumstances, that might have concerned him, but at the moment he found it difficult to care.
Only then did he turn his attention to the woman.
She was a truly remarkable beauty and could not have been much older than him. Yet it was her hair that caught his attention. Long white strands spilled across the bed, and a single name immediately came to mind.
Felicia Hardy.
The realization struck him at once.
Carefully, he pulled a blanket from the bed with the Force and draped it over her.
The moment the fabric settled around her shoulders, she grabbed at it with both hands and pulled it tightly around herself. Her fingers trembled as she clutched it against her chest, almost desperately.
"You are safe now," Mark said gently.
There was little sign that she understood him.
Her gaze wandered unfocused around the room before eventually settling on him. The smell of alcohol lingered on her breath, but something else was affecting her as well. The Force made that much clear.
Fear.
Confusion.
Shock.
Her emotions were tangled together in a chaotic knot.
Mark carefully sat beside her and helped her into a sitting position. She offered no resistance, but neither did she seem fully aware of what was happening. She appeared caught somewhere between understanding and helplessness.
For a few moments neither of them spoke.
The city continued beyond the hotel walls. Sirens echoed in the distance. Traffic rolled through the streets below. Life went on.
Yet somehow, out of millions of people in New York, the Force had led him here.
To this room.
To this moment.
To her.
Mark looked down at the frightened young woman wrapped in a blanket and wondered why.
The Force, as usual, offered no answers.
It never did.
Yet somehow he knew that following it had just changed both of their lives.