The bizarre absurdity of the situation wasn't lost on Joey.
A man who made his fortune managing the Spider-Man IP was now asking for Superman's licensing rights.
It was so ridiculous that Joey could barely keep a straight face.
"Hah. If I say no," Joey asked, "are you really going to stop?"
After taking a careful look at Kang's equipment, Joey had to admit that someone from the 40th century clearly hadn't wasted those centuries.
Compared to the Inheritors—who still behaved like medieval vampires—this Kang's technology was practically on the level of some godlike alien civilization.
Joey's attacks weren't enough to kill or restrain him quickly.
Likewise, if Kang wanted to escape, all he had to do was move a finger.
Both of them understood that.
That was why, despite having just exchanged punches with enough force to level buildings, they were still speaking so casually.
"Listen, I'm a busy man."
That wasn't an exaggeration.
Joey wished he could split his attention in half.
One eye was on Businessman Kang.
The other was watching Miguel O'Hara in the distance.
Miguel's universe had just been destroyed by Doctor Doom.
It didn't take a genius to guess why he was heading straight for Tony Stark.
If he had acted on impulse and decided to seek revenge against Tony—the past version of the man who would one day become Doom—the consequences for the future could be impossible to predict.
After all, when smart people did stupid things, the damage was often far worse than anything fools could accomplish.
"Then I won't keep you."
Businessman Kang had already secretly scanned Joey's complete physical appearance.
Whether Joey agreed or not, Kang fully intended to go home and use it.
Or, as he would put it, create a completely original new superhero icon.
Before doing that, however, he needed a name.
So Kang enthusiastically reached out and shook Joey's hand.
"I suppose we've become friends through combat. My name is Kang. At the moment, I'm a businessman. What's your name?"
"Superman."
"Ah, excellent name. Registering the trademark might be a little difficult, though."
Kang warmly patted Joey's hand.
The way he looked at him was less like a person and more like a living gold mine.
"But I'll figure that out. You're going to sell incredibly well."
Having settled on the future direction of Kang Corporation's newest intellectual property, Businessman Kang immediately became much friendlier.
The hostile attitude he'd shown earlier while trying to drag Spider-Punk back as a celebrity trainee had completely disappeared.
Of course, a wise man didn't stand beneath a collapsing wall.
The new IP had been acquired.
The old IP clearly wasn't recoverable.
That meant it was time to leave.
"Goodbye, Superman. The next time we meet, I'll make sure you get a share of the royalties!"
With that, Businessman Kang turned and prepared to leave.
Naturally, the promise about royalties was nothing more than a convenient fantasy.
A proper businessman didn't give money away after it had already entered his pocket.
There was no chance he intended to share even a single cent.
Besides, they would probably never meet again.
When Kang said 'goodbye,' what he really meant was 'goodbye forever.'
Risk management was an essential part of running a successful business.
And according to his professional assessment, this universe was already on the verge of collapse.
"Wait!"
A wave of temporal distortion swept across reality.
Then the Kang variant from Earth-138 vanished completely.
Only Joey remained behind, caught mid-sentence.
"What about all those plush toys of yours—"
The Spider-Punk dolls Kang had blasted across Manhattan earlier hadn't been collected.
After Kang disappeared, the toys immediately lost power.
The plush dolls that had been running around New York shouting revolutionary slogans suddenly froze.
Their round little bodies rolled across the ground and went completely still.
They looked undeniably adorable.
Provided, of course, that one ignored the fact that each of them was essentially a killing machine capable of punching an ordinary person to death.
"Seriously... why can't anything ever be simple?"
Still cursing as he flew, Joey mentally sent several colorful greetings to Kang and his entire family tree while racing toward Tony's house.
Now he had another cleanup job to deal with.
Recovering a city full of abandoned combat robots.
As for Kang's talk about reality being erased from history, Joey barely paid attention.
Who knew this world's future better than he did?
There was a Tony Stark who seemed destined to become Doctor Doom.
There were over a hundred Spider-Men holding what amounted to an interdimensional convention.
The future was practically sprinting toward disaster already.
Sometimes Joey genuinely wondered whether, after leaving his original universe, he had somehow become trapped inside some bizarre endless cycle of 'save the world before it explodes.'
Marvel universes really were absurdly difficult.
Was there not a single stable universe anywhere that wasn't constantly on the verge of destruction?
Still grumbling internally, Joey watched as Miguel O'Hara crawled through a gap in the underground parking garage and entered Tony's workshop.
Miguel's nano-spider suit concealed him from the security systems.
Clinging silently to the ceiling, he positioned himself only a single step away from Tony.
If Spider-Man 2099 made one more move—
Joey was prepared.
If Miguel moved even an inch closer, his heat vision would cross a thousand miles and deliver a very precise warning.
But at that moment, Miguel became completely still.
Miguel O'Hara had never considered himself a good-hearted person like Peter Parker.
When necessary, he had never been afraid to do whatever needed to be done.
When the person who destroyed your world, the people you loved, and your entire universe is standing right in front of you, would you kill him?
Almost every normal person's answer would be yes.
But what if he wouldn't do it until the future?
And what if, somehow, he had already done it?
Long before encountering the Inheritors, Spider-Man 2099 had already learned a great deal about parallel universes.
He knew that in nearly every universe, every Spider-Man only accepted the burden of responsibility after losing someone precious.
An event that inevitably occurs in every universe.
An event that could not be reversed.
Miguel called such phenomena canon events.
Altering those canon events destabilized the timeline of a universe and caused it to rapidly decay towards destruction.
And now, because of the multiverse, two timelines that should never have intersected had become entangled.
Together they had woven a paradoxical web called destiny.
Was this supposed to be his canon event?
In that moment, Miguel wished he wasn't Spider-Man.
He had fangs like a vampire.
A face that looked perpetually burdened by suffering.
No Spider-Sense.
No sense of humor.
And now, no home.
He had never truly resembled the classic Peter Parker version of Spider-Man.
The future version of the man below him had destroyed his universe.
Seeking revenge against that man was perfectly reasonable.
The talons on his spider gauntlets extended.
The nanobots in his suit finished charging.
As Miguel hesitated over whether to strike a killing blow, he desperately tried to convince himself of that fact.
He didn't know how long the hesitation lasted.
Until a voice from below shattered the battle raging inside his mind.
"So, are you planning to stay up there all night?"
Tony.
He had finished his research for the afternoon.
Even before Miguel had infiltrated the workshop, Tony had already completed a preliminary decryption of the Amazo Core.
Under his command overrides, the core flowed across the Iron Man armor like liquid metal, fundamentally restructuring Mark 11 at the molecular level and granting Tony the core capabilities of an Amazo robot.
"Your suit is made of countless nanobots. Brilliant design, by the way. I had the same idea years ago, but the technology wasn't there yet."
The moment Miguel had approached, the Amazo system had already analyzed the composition of his powers.
And now this newly activated system needed a test subject.
Tony looked up at the conflicted Spider-Man 2099.
The new Mark 12 armor rippled with a liquid metallic sheen.
At nanoscopic precision, it split apart and reassembled itself, transforming into a configuration identical to Miguel's own.
With the new armor augmenting him, the darkest part of Tony's personality seemed to surface.
"Want to test my new system and see if it works exactly like those robots?"
The last thread of restraint inside Miguel snapped.
He launched himself from the ceiling.
"Crap!"
He slammed into Tony, and the two crashed together.
Far away over Florida's Gulf Coast, Joey uttered exactly the same curse.
What the hell was Tony doing now?
This time, however, Joey wasn't in a hurry to intervene.
By integrating the Amazo system into his armor, Tony should have made himself effectively unbeatable in a direct confrontation.
BAM!
Contrary to Joey's expectations, Miguel's first punch ripped Tony's faceplate off.
The second knocked out one of Tony's front teeth.
As Miguel raised a third punch, a sharp pain suddenly pierced his mind.
For the first time, he realized that he had a form of Spider-Sense after all.
Unlike other Spider-Men, whose senses passively warned them of danger, Miguel could directly perceive the emotions and intentions of others.
The rage surging through him cooled instantly.
"Pathetic."
Miguel slowly stood and extended a hand towards the bloodied Iron Man.
"You hate yourself too."
The Iron Man who had learned that his future self would destroy an entire universe shared the same anguish as the Spider-Man whose universe had been destroyed.
"What kind of tragedy drama are you two performing now?!"
Joey burst through the window, showering the workshop with glass fragments.
His frustration wasn't because the two had suddenly tried to kill each other and then inexplicably started reconciling.
It was because someone else had just awakened.
The driver who had caused the Ultraman collision and had been dormant inside him for a long time.
Not because he had recovered much of his power.
But because he had sensed a familiar energy.
[I can feel the same cosmic energy that came from Zarab leaking through a spatial rift somewhere on Earth.]
[The magnitude of this power surpasses any living being I have ever encountered.]
[If I'm right, it belongs to the mysterious master behind Zarab.]
A short pause.
[Be careful.]
[He's coming.]