(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)
The mist was gone—but clarity brought no comfort.
Janna hovered midair, staff raised as she called out: "For tranquility!"
A fierce wind tore through the meadow, sweeping aside the remnants of fog and tossing the first wave of Voidlings against the trees. The sudden visibility only made things worse.
There were too many.
Lux gritted her teeth, tightening her grip on her staff as the others formed up behind her. "Circle up!" she shouted. "Keep Lulu safe!"
The girls shifted. Their clothing shimmered with radiant bursts as starlight ignited around them—each of them transforming in sync. Glittering uniforms. Magical mediums. The unmistakable glow of Guardians ready for battle.
They were officially in it now.
Lux led the first strike, sending a beam of light through one Voidling's center. The creature shattered—but another emerged behind it, larger and faster. Poppy's hammer knocked it back with a grunt of effort, but even she staggered slightly at the resistance.
"These guys feel tougher than usual," she muttered.
"Understatement of the week!" Jinx called out, already firing a volley of starfire bolts from Shiro and Kuro. The projectiles landed, but the Voidlings tanked through it like nothing happened. "Why aren't they going boom?!"
"They're... changed," Janna said quietly, floating down beside Lulu. "Infused with something unnatural."
Lux's heart skipped. Her beam had only singed the latest Voidling. Not pierced—singed. She was about to order a fallback when Lulu suddenly pointed upward.
"The new stars!"
A brilliant arc of light split the sky. Then another. Then five in total.
Ahri's team arrived in a flash of glory—Soraka descending like a glowing comet, Miss Fortune's pistols gleaming, Ezreal teleporting into position midair. Syndra hovered high above with her malevolent orbs in orbit, and Ahri touched down with casual grace that belied her power.
"Looks like we showed up just in time," Ahri called out, tails glowing behind her.
Lux stepped back, overwhelmed by their presence. Her team shifted as well—awed, relieved.
"Thank the First Star..." Janna whispered.
"Let's move," Miss Fortune said, not waiting for introductions. Her guns fired with a crack like thunder, obliterating two Voidlings clean through. Ezreal's gauntlet flashed bright blue as he blinked into position and unleashed a pulse of arcane energy that vaporized another.
They fought as one. Precise. Trained.
Ahri's team swept across the field, pushing back the tide of monsters. For a brief moment, it looked like they might turn the tide.
Until the ground shook again.
A tremor—no, a pulse. Like the heartbeat of something buried beneath the world.
Lux staggered. Jinx tripped mid-dash. Even Syndra halted midair.
Then the first rupture appeared. Cracks split the meadow. Voidlings poured through in even greater numbers—and this time, something was wrong.
Their color had changed.
No longer just void-green and black. They pulsed now with radiant purple. A deep, cosmic hue that shimmered with unearthly light, as if stars had bled into them.
"What is that?" Ezreal asked, brows furrowing as he tried to scan one.
Miss Fortune fired a shot straight into one's head.
It didn't flinch.
The bullet bounced.
Syndra hurled three of her spheres at another, and they shattered on impact without leaving a mark.
Soraka gasped softly, lowering her staff. "Something's empowering them... Something far beyond the Rift."
Janna's eyes narrowed. "A Dark Star? Or... a corrupted Guardian?"
They didn't know. They couldn't know.
But someone else did.
High above them, hidden among the trees and shadows, a black figure crouched low on a branch—watching, waiting.
Spider-Man.
Lux and her team thought Peter had run away. A civilian fleeing danger.
But he doesn't have such luxury when it involves Darks. Now, he was something else entirely—silent, hidden, tracking the real enemy.
He wasn't watching the battle.
He was hunting the source.
Peter's eyes glowed faintly beneath the mask, locked on the ripples in the air near the far edge of the forest. He could sense it—an unnatural pressure warping the story. Cosmic energy. Wrong in color, wrong in rhythm.
Not just any power.
He knew this signature.
"A Herald..." he whispered. "A Dark Herald."
A corrupted fragment of Galactus's will, injected into the narrative like a virus—its presence tainting everything, even the Voidlings. That explained the mutations, the raw power, the armor that shimmered with cosmic distortion.
He sighed under his breath, already dreading the answer to the question forming in his head.
"If they're being juiced by that thing... just how strong did it become?"
Heralds of Galactus were already universe-busters on a good day, even Multiversal in cases. Add a Dark's influence, and you got something far worse. Something that didn't play by anyone's rules.
Not the story's.
Not reality's.
Not even Galactus's.
Peter stood slowly on the branch, black symbiote flexing across his body like ink waking from a dream.
"Guess that's my cue."
Then he moved.
Not with a bang or a flash—just a whisper of displaced air, a silent distortion in the wind. Trees bent slightly as he vanished into the mist, a phantom cutting through shadow.
Below, the clearing had become chaos.
Lux swung her staff toward the nearest Voidling, but the beam only staggered it for a second. It lunged forward again—unyielding. Jinx backed up, panting, guns hissing with heat as Shiro and Kuro spat out exhausted bursts of energy.
"Why aren't they going down?!" Jinx shouted, voice cracking.
"Keep fighting!" Ahri called, though even her voice carried strain now. She danced between attacks, tails flicking with grace—but her orbs didn't explode like before. Her magic fizzled on contact.
Syndra hurled more spheres in a barrage of violet fury, only for them to bounce off one of the Voidlings harmlessly. "They're adapting," she muttered. "Something is changing them—"
Her words were cut short by a Voidling's shriek. One had gotten past their defenses, closing in on her and Miss Fortune from both sides.
Then—
CRACK.
A single sound, like metal rending through glass.
Syndra turned in time to see it.
A black blur surged past her. One Voidling was impaled midair, speared by a tendril of ink-black webbing that whipped it into the sky. The other lunged—only to be caught mid-pounce by a single outstretched hand.
The hand squeezed.
There was a wet, crunching snap, and the monster's body went limp, twitching.
The creature dropped with a thud—and standing behind it was a figure none of them recognized.
A man in black.
Jet-dark suit. Sleek. Muscular. Its surface shifted and flowed like living shadow. A spider emblem gleamed across his chest, fanged and silver, and his mask bore no mouth, no emotion—only piercing white eyes, now narrowed with eerie calm.
The entire battlefield paused.
"What the hell..." Miss Fortune whispered.
The figure didn't speak.
Instead, he moved.
Fast.
He was a blur. A storm in the shape of a man.
Tentacles burst from his arms—sharp, whip-like, coiling and slicing through multiple Voidlings in a single breath. He dropped low, swept a leg, launched himself upward into a brutal spinning kick that crushed a monster's face inward. Midair, he fired two web-like chains that latched onto Voidlings and slammed them into each other hard enough to break the ground.
"Is he—helping us?" Lux muttered, stunned.
"I don't know what he is," Janna said, hovering protectively near Lulu, who looked horrified.
"I love him," Syndra whispered before immediately catching herself, face tightening with disdain. "I mean—disgraceful brute."
But even her voice shook.
The man didn't stop. He was relentless. Calculated. Monstrous.
Web-chains slithered across the field, dragging Voidlings into the air and crushing them like flies. Some of the beasts tried to fly away—he leapt higher, above them, then came crashing down like a meteor, twisting in midair and driving one straight into the dirt.
His fighting style was feral—closer to a predator than a hero. But there was grace in it too. Strategy. Precision.
And beneath it all... rage.
This wasn't just battle.
It was punishment.
A Voidling powered by raw cosmic energy tried to blindside him. Too late. A tendril whipped around the monster's throat and yanked it forward into a brutal elbow that caved in its faceplate. Another tried to dive from above, but a black shield formed from hardened symbiote on his back, reflecting the strike. He spun, webbed its wing, and ripped it out of the air.
"He's..." Ezreal breathed. "He's not one of us, right?"
"No," Ahri said slowly, "But I think he's on our side."
"For now," Janna added.
And then they watched.
They watched as one man, a stranger in a living suit, tore through an army they could barely dent.
Missiles didn't work.
Beams did nothing.
But he?
He was winning.
The field was painted with the remains of Voidlings—slashed, shattered, melted. Their corrupted glow flickered and died like burned-out stars. And at the center of the devastation stood Spider-Man.
Still.
Breathing slow. Silent. Surrounded by twitching corpses.
He didn't turn to them.
Didn't speak.
He simply tilted his head—listening.
Sensing.
Silence lingered long after the last creature fell.
Only the crackle of dying energy, the wheeze of warped air, and the slow drip of void ichor onto shattered stone remained.
The black-suited stranger stood still at the epicenter of devastation—smoke curling from the ground around him, claws slowly retracting into his arms as the tendrils slithered back beneath the surface of his armor. The eight-legged emblem across his chest pulsed once with faint white light... then dimmed.
Not a word.
Not a movement.
Just... presence.
For a moment, no one dared speak.
Then:
"...What was that?" Lux finally breathed, gripping her staff tighter, her voice shaky but audible.
Ezreal lowered his gauntlet slightly. "He's not from around here," he muttered. "Or anywhere we know."
Ahri's eyes were narrowed, unreadable. Her lips parted like she might say something—but she didn't.
Poppy took a step forward, hammer still held tight at her side. "That guy... He fights like he's done it a thousand times. Like a machine. Or a monster." Her voice wasn't full of awe. Just wariness. And maybe a little bit of admiration.
"He was protecting us," Soraka said softly, her tone measured but wary. "But that aura... there was something else inside him."
Jinx snorted, exhaling heavily. "Well, I liked it. Did you see the way he gutted that freak with one swing? Pow!" She mimed a brutal takedown with her hand. "It was like watching a horror movie where the killer's the good guy. 10 out of 10."
"That... thing fights like a beast," Syndra said slowly, floating back down to the ground. Her usual smugness was absent—replaced by curiosity veiled behind suspicion. "But did you notice? Every hit, every move... was clean. He wasn't just lashing out. He knew exactly what he was doing."
She crossed her arms, dark orbs still faintly glowing behind her.
"He held back."
Lulu hadn't spoken at all.
She stood behind Janna, half-hiding, clutching Pix tightly against her chest.
Her face was pale. Eyes wide. Starlight in her hair dimmer than usual.
Janna knelt beside her, gently holding the girl's trembling shoulders. "It's alright," she whispered, brushing her hair behind her ear.
"I've never..." Lulu finally murmured. "I've never seen a hero fight like that..."
Janna's brows furrowed. "He's not like us."
"No," Ahri agreed, stepping closer, her tails twitching as her golden gaze remained locked on the dark figure ahead. "He's something else. Not a Dark Star. Not one of us either."
"He was silent the whole time," Lux said. "Didn't say a word. Just... acted."
Then her voice dropped, quieter.
"...But why was he here at all?"
The question hung over them.
No one answered it.
Not even him.
Spider-Man still hadn't turned around. His breathing steady. Calm. His posture straight.
Watching.
Sensing.
Waiting.
He didn't need to hear their questions.
He already knew what they were going to ask. And he wasn't ready to answer any of them.
Because his eyes were still locked on the darkened treeline.
Where the distortion pulsed again—subtle, but real.
The Herald was still out there.
Watching him back.
The air thickened.
Spider-Man didn't move, but the shift in his stance was immediate. Barely perceptible—shoulders tense, head slightly tilted, as if listening to a frequency only he could hear.
Then, he spoke. Quietly.
"...Come out."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It cut through the silence with unnatural clarity—like a whisper pressed against the soul.
The wind stopped.
Then it answered.
A sudden burst of pressure pushed outward from the treeline—like a held breath finally exhaled. Space shimmered. The air rippled. Light bent the wrong way, fracturing unnaturally.
Then—
FWOOM.
A column of flame erupted skyward—blue at the edges, white-hot in the center. Heat rolled across the field like a wave. The Star Guardians flinched, shielding their faces.
And from that inferno... he stepped out.
Hovering just above the scorched grass, flames trailing from his shoulders and heels like a comet's wake, was a man ablaze.
Hair of molten gold, body encased in cosmic flame. His skin shimmered like glass under a furnace. He radiated pressure—gravity bent around him. And yet, parts of him flickered and vanished—shimmering in and out of sight, as if reality struggled to contain him.
Invisible one moment. Blazing the next.
"Johnny Storm," Peter muttered under his breath. "Flame on."
The Human Torch.
But not the one from the different any dimension he's seen.
This version... was different.
Twisted.
His flames held a darker hue now—touched by something unnatural. Something viral. Something wrong.
His cosmic energy churned like a dying star, laced with violet-black cracks of Dark corruption. And layered under the familiar heat of the Power Cosmic was something else. Invisibility. Manipulation. Precision. A power he shouldn't have had.
Sue's powers.
He floated forward lazily, a trail of warped light twisting behind him.
"Well," Johnny smirked, arms crossed casually, "that little show you put on was cute. Very... angsty. Loved the tentacles."
Spider-Man tilted his head, unimpressed. "You always talk this much, or is that the corruption giving you extra sass?"
"Oh, I've always been charming," Johnny said, grinning. "You just never appreciated it."
His voice lowered, more menacing now.
"Still dressing in black, huh? Guess that torture really did a number on you."
The Star Guardians jolted.
Lux's face paled.
Torture?
Peter didn't answer.
Johnny laughed, and it wasn't friendly. "What's the matter, Pete? Cat got your tongue? Or is it the trauma?"
The words echoed.
But it was the next sentence that cracked the silence wide open.
"Still pretending to be normal, huh? Peter Parker... the Spider-Man."
A collective gasp rolled across the field like thunder.
Syndra's eyes went wide. "No..."
Lux's staff dropped a few inches. "Peter...?"
Janna's expression froze. "Wait. That's..."
Even Poppy's grip loosened on her hammer. "Peter Parker?!" she shouted. "That's him?!"
Ezreal blinked, genuinely taken aback. "No way."
Jinx looked between Peter and the others, eyebrows raised, then laughed like she was watching the best twist in a movie. "Of course it's him!"
Only Lulu didn't speak—too stunned to even react.
Spider-Man turned his head slowly toward them. No words. Just a look. White lenses narrowed, unreadable.
"Yup," Johnny went on, circling slowly, heat rippling around him like a second skin. "That's your guy. The 'civilian' you were trying to protect. Bit late for that now, huh?"
Lux stepped forward. "Peter—"
"I don't need backup," Spider-Man cut in coldly. "Not from you. Not from anyone."
Ahri's eyes sharpened. "You're strong. But alone—"
"I was holding back," Peter said, stepping forward, his voice lower now, distorted by the symbiote. "For your sake."
The Star Guardians flinched at the venom in his tone.
Peter didn't stop walking.
Neither did Johnny.
The distance between them vanished step by step—cosmic flame and dark armor on a collision course.
"I'll handle this freak," Spider-Man muttered. "You all just... stay back and look pretty."
Miss Fortune raised a brow. "Excuse me?"
Jinx grinned wide. "Okay now I love him."
Ahri bristled. "You don't know what you're dealing with—"
"Neither do you," Peter said, already crouching into a stance.
Johnny snorted. "Same old Peter. Always thinking he's the only one who can carry the weight."
"You're not even a Herald anymore," Peter replied. "You're a puppet. And I'm about to cut the strings."
The two stopped.
Inches apart.
Then—
BOOM.
Fists collided.
The shockwave tore across the mountain—cracking the ground, blasting trees into splinters, and sending both Star Guardian teams stumbling back.
The heavens shook.
And the real fight began.
The smoke hadn't cleared before they moved.
Johnny Storm's body surged forward, wreathed in blinding flame—silver and violet now, warped by the Power Cosmic and the corruption of a Dark. The air around him shimmered violently, reality distorting with every step he took. He blurred across the field, invisible for a moment, then reappeared behind Spider-Man with a heatwave so intense the grass turned to ash.
Spider-Man ducked.
The first blow missed his head by inches.
The second didn't.
A cosmic flame-augmented punch connected with Peter's shoulder, launching him like a cannonball through the treeline. Trees shattered. Rocks exploded. The mountain trembled again as Spider-Man crashed through a cliff face.
But—
CRACK.
The rock exploded outward.
Black webs hissed as they latched onto shattered boulders, yanking him forward like a slingshot. Peter reversed momentum in an instant, flipping through the air with a snarl as the symbiote reformed around his damaged armor.
He rocketed back into the sky.
Mid-spin, his arms flared. Tendrils launched outward like chained spears, but Johnny melted them mid-flight with a wave of his hand—burning through even symbiote-wrought plot armor.
"Too slow, Parker," Johnny taunted, hovering in the air now, body outlined in starlight and flame. "You always were."
Spider-Man didn't respond. His mask's eyes narrowed, and instead of speaking, he fired dozens of web-bolts—laced with magnetic polarity shifts—aimed around Johnny's position.
Johnny scoffed, weaving through them—
Only to feel the sky buckle around him.
THOOM.
Peter was already above him, having used the webs as cover—coming down feet-first, driving a symbiote-enhanced axe kick into Johnny's ribs.
WHAM.
Flames exploded from Johnny's side as he was sent hurtling downward, skipping across the terrain like a meteor—collapsing entire trees and hills with every impact.
The Star Guardians shielded themselves.
"Are they trying to kill each other?!" Ezreal shouted, shielding Lux with his gauntlet.
"No," Syndra muttered. "If they were, the mountain wouldn't be here anymore. They're still holding back."
Johnny recovered mid-roll, his body catching fire again. He slid to a stop, skidding through molten stone—then erupted forward.
The next impact came fast.
Their fists collided again midair—flame meeting shadow.
BOOOM.
A spherical blast erupted at the collision point, a shockwave dome that vaporized everything within twenty meters. Sound vanished.
The Star Guardians were forced back once more, scrambling for footing.
Above the chaos, Spider-Man twisted, wrapping a tendril around Johnny's leg and slamming him downward—but Johnny flickered and vanished in a burst of invisible light.
THWAM.
Johnny reappeared above him—slamming both hands into Peter's back with a flash of force fields and heat. A gravitational blast sent Peter careening downward like a meteor.
Spider-Man caught himself just before hitting the ground, crouching on impact, skidding through molten earth.
He raised his head slowly.
The eyes of his mask glinted, narrowed.
"Alright," Peter muttered to himself, flexing his fingers as the armor reshaped with a liquid hiss. "You wanna go cosmic freak mode?"
He cracked his neck.
"Let's go."
The ground beneath him cracked into a spiderweb of glowing veins.
Then he launched upward.
The sky shattered.
Peter erupted upward like a warhead, trailing black lightning and strands of symbiotic energy. His trajectory wasn't a straight line—it weaved, zigzagged, broke physics in small, humiliating ways. By the time Johnny spotted him mid-charge, it was already too late.
WHAM!
Peter collided into Johnny with a flying shoulder tackle—forceful enough to ignite another shockwave dome midair. The Herald spun violently, momentarily stunned by the sheer brute force.
Before Johnny could stabilize, Peter was on him—fist already cocked back.
CRACK!
The punch landed square on Johnny's cheek. Then another to the gut. Then a spinning elbow that dented his cosmic armor and sent a ripple through the air.
But Johnny twisted mid-flip, a faint shimmer snapping around him.
THOOM!
A hexagonal force field flared to life.
Invisible.
Until it wasn't.
Peter's next punch hit the barrier and rebounded with a screech of friction—his arm thrown back at a bad angle. The symbiote corrected instantly, but Johnny was already retaliating.
"Nice try."
FWWOOOOM.
A nova burst from Johnny's chest, engulfing Peter in cosmic fire laced with violet corruption. The flames didn't just burn—they devoured, consuming molecular cohesion. The ground below boiled.
From within the inferno—Peter screamed.
But not in pain.
In rage.
"IS THAT IT?!"
Something moved inside the flames. Crawling. Skittering. Then—launching.
Peter burst out of the supernova, armor charred, symbiote melting and repairing in real-time. A massive clawed gauntlet, formed from concentrated Narralith armor, cracked through Johnny's shield with raw kinetic fury.
Johnny blocked with both arms, but the impact drove him downward—through cloud layers, past the treetops, all the way back into the battlefield. He crashed like a comet, forming a fresh crater near the destroyed meadow.
The Star Guardians braced themselves again.
"Are they fighting or ending the world?!" Lux shouted over the roar.
"They're evenly matched," Janna murmured, wind curling around her. "No—they're escalating."
Lulu shook against her staff. "That... that thing came out of the sun."
Back in the crater, Johnny stood slowly—half his flames extinguished, his armor sparking. A deep bruise was forming along his jaw, visible even through the cosmic light.
"I forgot how annoying you were, Parker."
Spider-Man landed a short distance away, dragging a symbiote-forged blade behind him like a scythe. His armor was bubbling. Glitching. A bit unstable from exposure to cosmic radiation. But his posture was steady.
He didn't reply.
Instead, Peter circled slowly, webs subtly lacing the terrain, syncing with gravity pockets, waiting for Johnny to try another teleport move.
Johnny raised his hand—and for the first time—unleashed both his powers at once.
A spiral of flame wrapped around a focused cone of invisible energy—plasma and telekinetic force combined, ripping the air apart. The beam screamed forward, the color of starlight and black holes.
Peter didn't dodge.
He charged straight into it.
BWOOOOOOM.
The beam hit him dead center—and he pushed through it, every step carving craters, the symbiote armor reshaping to a shield, then wings, then a second layer of liquid mass.
The air cracked.
He reached Johnny and slammed a knee into his stomach—knocking the air out of him.
The beam faltered.
Peter brought both fists down like hammers.
THOOM.
The crater exploded.
Both were gone from sight—vanished beneath a storm of smoke and shattered earth.
For a moment, all was smoke and silence.
Then the crater pulsed—once, twice—and erupted with searing white flame.
Peter shot upward from the debris, symbiote scorched and bubbling across his chest. He gritted his teeth midair, twisting to land in a skid that tore a line through solid stone.
He barely had time to brace.
A streak of blinding blue fire rocketed from the hole, and then Johnny was there—reformed, reborn, wreathed in a new layer of incandescent energy. His body shimmered with a fusion of cosmic flame and refracted light, a halo of distortion rippling around his limbs. Where once there had been fire, now there was plasma. Controlled. Amplified.
His voice echoed, no longer just human:
"Phase Two. You asked for it, Spider."
Peter moved to intercept—but the world bent sideways.
Johnny flickered—literally vanished—and reappeared mid-air behind him, phasing in like a mirage. A massive wall of invisible force blasted outward, sending Peter flying through a half-demolished mountain ridge.
Peter flipped mid-flight, webbed onto a boulder, slingshotted back—
Only to be met by a wave of solar flares twisted into spiral form, each imbued with photon-hard light barriers.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Each hit cratered him deeper into the rock. The symbiote snarled and rippled, forming layers of armor and defense—but it wasn't enough. The heat was different now. It wasn't just temperature.
It was conceptual.
This was cosmic radiation redefined. Power Cosmic combined with Sue Storm's manipulation of forcefields, layered with Johnny's natural affinity for heat and plasma.
Peter's HUD blurred. His nerves screamed.
Then Johnny phased through the rock like a ghost and appeared above him, surrounded by dozens of small burning spheres—each one pulsing like a microstar.
"Try dodging this, bug boy."
The spheres detonated all at once.
A dome of radiant destruction swallowed the mountaintop.
The Star Guardians below shielded their eyes. A heatwave washed over them, and even Soraka's magic faltered for a moment under the sheer pressure.
Lux gasped. "Is he—?!"
"No," Ahri whispered, narrowing her eyes. "He's still in there."
And he was.
From within the core of the explosion, tendrils lashed out.
Peter roared, launching himself out of the smoke, molten liquid trailing behind him as the symbiote struggled to stabilize.
Johnny grinned. "There he is."
A quick twist of his hand—and a construct made of hardened light slammed Peter midair and launched him across the sky like a comet. He crashed through clouds, rebounded off a cliffside, then caught himself mid-spin on a webline.
Breathing hard.
Vision flickering.
"Okay... you got hands now," Peter muttered, jaw clenched.
Far across the sky, Johnny hovered like a living sun—his flames now blue-white, his body cloaked in gravitational lensing. Even space around him seemed to distort. His voice thundered through the wind:
"You're not the only one holding back, Spider-Man."
He extended both hands.
A solar flare cannon—the size of a city block—formed in an instant.
Peter's eyes narrowed behind the mask. "Oh, hell."
Then—
FIRE.
The beam screamed toward him like a wrathful god.
Peter moved—but not fast enough.
The solar flare cannon struck.
The blast swallowed the sky. The world ignited.
Star Guardians screamed as the impact wave flattened the entire ridgeline. A flash brighter than the sun burned across the horizon. Trees turned to ash. Stone liquefied.
For a breathless moment, there was no sound. Only a rising wall of dust and light and heat—so intense it blurred reality itself.
And then—
BOOM.
A dome of black webbing exploded outward.
Peter was still standing.
Barely.
One knee down. The other foot dug into the ground. One arm raised, encased in glowing, broken symbiote tendrils that had hardened into a shield. The rest of his body... steaming. Scarred. Suit struggling to regenerate.
But his eyes were locked ahead. Glowing bright. Not with rage.
With purpose.
"YOU WANNA GO FAST?!" He yelled. "LET'S GO FAST!"
From beneath his chest plate, the Core pulsed—soft at first, like a heartbeat.
Then faster.
The emblem on his chest—once silver—shifted into a burning orange hue, webbing splitting apart as circuitry restructured.
The Core activated.
Reality twitched.
Lightning danced across Peter's body, crackling with digital energy. Threads of code and light laced his limbs like the bones of cyberspace itself. The black suit turned iridescent—gleaming with outlines of circuit glyphs and meta-symbols of speed.
A thin pulse exploded outward—so fast the Star Guardians didn't see it.
They felt it.
A shift in time.
Syndra gasped. "What—what was—"
Peter vanished.
Johnny blinked. The flare in his hand dimmed.
Then his head snapped back—a blur hit him in the jaw at point-blank range.
Before the sound arrived, the second hit landed. Then a third. A fourth. Twenty.
All in less than a second.
The sky lit up.
Spider-Man reappeared midair behind Johnny, floating—coated in lightning and symbiote tendrils vibrating in place. His voice echoed from all directions, distorted and overlapping like a thousand echoes.
"I built this Core with the concept of speed..."
He disappeared.
Reappeared behind Johnny—kicked him down.
"...not from physics..."
Reappeared under Johnny—uppercut with a sonic boom that split the sky.
"...but from imagination."
Johnny was launched into the stratosphere—spinning, flaring uncontrollably as the Core's pulse began to warp the very concept of motion. The Speed Force wasn't just a power anymore.
It was a statement.
A command.
A metaphysical override on how movement was meant to work.
Peter blurred midair, reshaping the armor—wings splitting from his back in arcs of hex-coded light, legs glowing with streaks of red-orange thunder.
Then he vanished again.
BOOM.
Johnny crashed through a floating cliff.
BOOM.
Then another.
BOOM.
And another.
Every strike Peter landed came faster than the last—breaking reality in tiny flashes. Time bent around him like a hurricane of intention. The air peeled open. Each punch created afterimages that trailed like broken animation frames—he wasn't just fast anymore.
He was untouchable.
Uncatchable.
Unreal.
Johnny managed to stop himself midair—barely. His face singed, blood across his lip, armor cracked along his ribs.
But Peter was already there.
Floating.
Silent.
Lightning crackling.
"That Core... what is it?" Johnny spat.
Peter didn't answer.
But a voice—buried in his memories, long suppressed—almost echoed in his mind.
"We did it, Tigre! We created a new power source for your armor!"
But he didn't remember.
Chrona's voice flickered and faded.
He clenched his fists.
"Your turn to fall, flame-boy."
Johnny roared, igniting again—eyes flaring with raw Power Cosmic.
The two surged toward each other once more—
The sky screamed.
And then it shattered.
When Peter and Johnny collided, it wasn't just a punch—it was a collision of concepts. Speed versus flame. Symbiote versus cosmic. Willpower against rewritten destiny.
Reality cracked.
The mountain split beneath them. Thunder boomed from inside the clouds. The very frame rate of the universe staggered as both warriors blurred in and out of existence, their blows bending the laws of motion.
Peter vanished, reappeared behind Johnny with an elbow strike that folded the Herald midair. But Johnny reacted—spinning, cloaking himself in invisible light and firing a burst of forcefields like shrapnel. Peter took the hit, tanking through it, armor shifting into tendrils that bled glowing static.
They hit the ground in an instant.
Explosions rippled in every direction—black webs laced with lightning clashing against flares that distorted gravity. Each shockwave tore new scars into the land, reshaping it into something alien. Something... broken.
But Peter was still moving. Still adapting.
The Core burned brighter now—fused deeper with his thoughts, rewriting his instincts with every millisecond.
He was becoming speed itself.
Johnny screamed, rising again with a final eruption of Power Cosmic. A vortex of solar fire spun around him, invisible walls wrapping the blast into a nuclear implosion.
"YOU WON'T ERASE ME!" the Herald howled. His body lit up like a sun going supernova. "I AM THE FLAME THAT SURVIVES THE END!"
Peter didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
He whispered, calmly—
"No."
The Core at his chest split open—revealing a spiral of light and circuitry. From it, dozens of glowing tethers lashed outward and stabbed into the fabric of the narrative.
And reality obeyed.
He used his power's as a Guardian of Fiction to issue a command. His body surged with knowledge—of the page, the panel, the edit.
And the command was:
"Erase."
Johnny's powers flickered.
The flame... dimmed.
"No—NO!" Johnny screamed, trying to surge forward. His hands flared, but the webs caught them mid-cast. They didn't just hold—they cut through meaning itself.
Peter moved faster than cause.
One final punch—glowing with the full energy of the Nexus Core—slammed into Johnny's chest.
And everything stopped.
Johnny's body froze midair, cracking like glass.
His voice stuttered. Faded.
"...I just... wanted to burn brighter..."
Peter's eyes narrowed. "Then burn out."
CRACK.
The Herald of Galactus—Human Torch, corrupted and broken—shattered.
Not just body. Not just soul.
Story.
He unraveled at the seams of continuity, torn from the script, erased from the lore. No death animation. No body to bury. Only absence—a blank space where a character used to be.
Gone.
Silence.
Peter landed slowly in the crater, smoke trailing from his back. His chest emblem flickered, shifting from burning white... back to silver.
All around him, the terrain was scorched and broken—half the mountain gone, twisted into unfamiliar shapes.
The Star Guardians stood at the edge.
Speechless.
Lux trembled, gripping her staff like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Her breath came in shaky gasps as she stared at the battlefield—no, the crater—where Peter had just erased a cosmic-level threat from existence. She'd seen hope burn before, seen magic do impossible things. But nothing had prepared her for this.
Ahri stared in quiet awe, her nine tails stilled behind her. Her golden eyes didn't blink. She'd seen wars, betrayals, and star-born miracles—but this wasn't any of those. This was something older. Something primal. "He didn't just fight," she whispered. "He judged."
Ezreal's mouth was still slightly open, and for once, he had no witty comment to throw in. "I thought I'd seen power before..." he muttered, barely audible. His gauntlet pulsed faintly, reacting to the residual energy. "That wasn't just magic. That was... life-breaking."
Jinx whispered, "...holy crap." Then she let out a wild laugh that felt more like nervous adrenaline. "Did you see him rip that guy's lungs out midair with those spiky-web-tentacle-things? That was awesome and horrifying and I think I might be in love or traumatized—maybe both." She turned to Lux, poking her. "You sure you just 'met' him at a pastry shop?"
Poppy held her hammer like a shield, unmoving. "That wasn't normal," she said quietly. Her brows were furrowed. "He fights like someone who's seen the end of a universe... and didn't flinch." Her grip tightened. "Whatever he is... he's not just some warrior. He's a message."
Lulu had collapsed to her knees, holding Pix tightly against her chest. The sparkle in her eyes was gone, replaced by wide-eyed dread. "He... he unmade him," she whispered. "I could feel it. That man... his existence... he deleted it." Her voice cracked. "That's not how things are supposed to work."
Janna knelt beside her again, wrapping her cloak around the smaller girl. But her own expression was blank. Not calm—composed. Her eyes were fixed forward. "He wields something beyond the First Star," she said slowly. "Not a Dark Star. Not a Light. Something... unbound." Her fingers gently brushed the ground, as if feeling the fabric of reality itself. "And it listens to him."
Miss Fortune holstered her pistols slowly. Her lips were parted slightly—not from surprise, but calculation. "He just killed that being," she said flatly. "Not beat. Killed. Like it was personal." She glanced sideways at Ahri. "You feel it too, right? That chill in the air?"
Ahri gave a slow nod. "It wasn't vengeance. It wasn't duty. He erased a god like he was crossing out a line in a book."
Soraka stood at the very back, hands folded in front of her heart. Her glowing staff shimmered gently, but her eyes were closed. "He is lost," she murmured. "A Guardian... not of stars, but of consequence. And he's carrying a weight we cannot see."
And then—
Only Syndra smiled—just slightly. "What... are you?"
Her voice wasn't accusatory. Not fearful. It was hungry. Like something inside her recognized him.
Not as an enemy.
Not as a hero.
But as kin.
The silence stretched.
Then the figure moved.
Spider-Man turned slowly—still wreathed in smoke and shadow, the remains of Johnny Storm's existence fading like ash behind him. His mask began to peel back, not by his hands, but through a soft, sentient slither. The living black armor receded from his face in fluid coils, revealing Peter Parker underneath.
Unscarred.
Expressionless.
And very, very human.
The wind blew gently through his dark, tousled hair as he began walking toward the Star Guardians, the black suit adjusting with each step—shifting from something monstrous to something almost regal. A crownless knight. A myth made flesh.
He stopped only a few feet away, the dying sparks of cosmic ruin behind him painting his silhouette in a surreal, haunted glow.
Nobody spoke.
Then Lux took an instinctive half-step forward, eyes wide, trembling. "Peter..."
Her voice cracked.
Peter's gaze met hers—but he didn't smile. Not yet.
He looked tired. Not physically. Existentially.
"You all heard him," Peter said quietly, nodding toward the fading echo of Johnny Storm's last words. "So I guess the cat's out of the bag."
The name still rang in their minds like a tremor: Spider-Man.
Lux lowered her staff slightly. Her thoughts were a mess. Peter. Her friend. Her... maybe-something-more. The boy who met her in a pastry shop and made her laugh like it was easy. That same boy just erased a cosmic Herald like he was flicking away a smudge on a page.
She didn't know whether she wanted to run to him... or away.
Was he a monster? A savior?
Was he even Peter anymore?
But then she remembered—he had told her his secret. In his way. He'd known theirs and said nothing. Even after tonight, even after being told to stay out of the fight, he'd come back.
For them.
She swallowed and looked away, guilt mixing with awe.
Jinx, meanwhile, was far less subtle.
She stormed up, practically bouncing with manic energy. "Okay, first off—what the actual hell, Peter?! You're Spider-Man?! That's your secret?!" She jabbed a finger at his chest, nearly vibrating with excitement. "You're the black blur from that bank incident?! The guy who webbed a truck in half and then vanished?! You were holding out on me!"
Peter arched an eyebrow. "Was kinda the point."
"Ugh, that's so hot." she huffed, then immediately turned her head like she hadn't said that. "I mean—rude. Totally rude."
Janna stepped forward slowly, her cloak rustling. She was calm... but something in her eyes had shifted. The warm blue shimmer was dimmer now. Clouded.
"Why didn't you tell us?" she asked softly.
Peter's answer came gently. "Because if I had, none of you would've treated me like a person. Just a role."
Janna hesitated. Her hand drifted slightly toward her chest. Her heart ached at that. And though she wanted to argue—wanted to defend her silence—she couldn't. Because he was right.
Her eyes met his. Searching. She felt... something. Wrong. Buried.
Something twisting just beneath the surface of who he was.
Poppy took one look at Peter, then turned away, crossing her arms with a frustrated huff. "Well... that explains a lot."
She didn't mean it cruelly.
She just needed a second.
She'd let her guard down around him—trusted him. The guy who'd shown up out of nowhere. Made awkward jokes. Got along with Lulu. She didn't hate what she saw now, but it was... a lot.
She looked back over her shoulder, eyes serious. "You better not be some cosmic freak pretending to be cool."
Peter gave a half-smile. "Depends on the day."
Lulu peeked out from behind Janna, still hugging Pix close. She tried to say something, but her voice caught. The image of the monstrous black silhouette tearing through armies like nightmares made real still burned in her memory.
But...
"Are you still Peter?" she asked quietly, like a child asking if a story still had a happy ending.
Peter's expression softened. He nodded once.
That was enough for her.
Soraka tilted her head, watching the exchange silently. "There's pain in him," she said, mostly to herself. "Something lost. Something fractured." She looked to Janna, who gave a subtle nod.
Ahri didn't move. Her eyes were fixed on Peter—like a predator weighing something far more dangerous than it seemed. Her tail twitched once.
"He killed a God," she said finally, "without any help."
It wasn't admiration.
It wasn't fear.
It was calculation.
Ezreal shifted nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. "Y-Yeah, I'm officially not the coolest guy here anymore." He chuckled awkwardly, but it fell flat. "Seriously, how the hell do you even do that kind of stuff?"
Peter glanced at him, voice dry. "A lot of pain. A lot of stubbornness. And a suit made of very illegal physics."
Ezreal blinked. "Wait, what?"
Miss Fortune, who had been deadly quiet, finally stepped forward. Her voice cut through the quiet like a blade. "You saved us."
Peter nodded.
"But you also didn't tell us what you were walking into," she added. "We all could've died. You acted alone."
Her words were stern—but not cold.
Peter met her gaze. "Because it had to be me. That thing wasn't meant for anyone else."
Miss Fortune stared for a beat longer... then looked away. "You're right," she said under her breath. "That's the problem."
And then—
Syndra took a step closer. Slowly. Floating just slightly above the ground.
She gave Peter a look no one else did.
Not judgment. Not confusion.
Curiosity.
"You don't belong to anything I've seen before," she said, eyes narrowing. "Not the stars. Not the void. You're... something else."
Peter tilted his head. "That's one way to put it."
Her lips curled slightly.
Touché.
Then he stepped back, eyes sweeping across the gathered Guardians.
"I'm Peter Parker," he said plainly. "But you already knew that."
The wind rustled his hair.
"...And I'm also called Spider-Man."
No one interrupted.
"I don't expect you to trust me. I don't expect you to like what I did. But I need you all to understand something."
His voice was calm. Measured.
"I came here because something is threatening this world—and maybe more. Something unnatural. I've dealt with this kind of corruption before. And I'm not going to let it win."
Lux's heart skipped again.
Peter looked down once—quiet, thoughtful.
"...You can call me The Guardian of the Multiverse."
Jinx raised a hand lazily. "That name is so metal."
Ezreal whispered, "Dude, you need a cape."
Lulu's grip on Pix loosened just a little.
Poppy smirked, just faintly.
And Syndra... just kept smiling.
To Be Continued...