Peter Parker woke up in a freezing apartment that smelled like ramen, regret, and rats with unfinished college degrees.
The alarm on his burner phone went off at exactly 6:00 a.m., even though he had nowhere to be. He slapped it off the milk crate he was using as a nightstand and lay there, staring at the stained ceiling like it owed him money.
He was already wearing his Spider-Man suit — not out of readiness, but because he didn't have enough clean clothes to justify the switch. The new red-and-blue number, courtesy of his last-minute Stark fabricator binge, had survived the final multiversal blowout. Pity it didn't come with rent money or a heater.
Outside, New York was already in motion. Car horns. Shouting vendors. A seagull that sounded suspiciously like it had a personal vendetta. His landlord's voice echoed up the stairwell like a death sentence.
"PARKER! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! RENT WAS DUE A WEEK AGO!"
Peter considered pretending to be dead, but that felt both cliché and wishful thinking. Instead, he whispered a heartfelt prayer to Aunt May, rolled off the mattress, and hit the ground with the grace of a tired cat.
"Coming!" he called out, because lying is a skill.
He didn't open the door. He just webbed the window, slung out the fire escape, and vanished into the morning like a vigilante with too many problems and not enough socks.
By 7:00 a.m., he was upside-down on a lamppost in Queens, chewing a protein bar that tasted like punishment. The city bustled below him, blissfully unaware that the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was now also the evicted, unremembered, and utterly alone Spider-Man.
MJ passed two blocks away without even glancing up. Ned was on a crosswalk, talking to a guy Peter didn't know. Happy drove by in a black Audi, sunglasses on, nodding to the music like he wasn't the ex-bodyguard of a billionaire who once trusted Peter with global tech and, incidentally, a planet-killing satellite.
None of them knew who he was.
Not Peter Parker. Not even Spider-Man.
The spell had worked. Everyone forgot him. And he was starting to wonder if he'd forgotten himself in the process.
By 9:30 a.m., Peter had taken down two muggers, saved a guy from a runaway delivery drone, and gotten hit in the head by a pigeon that mistook him for a perch. He considered it a win.
Then he spotted trouble.
Not trouble like a bank robbery or alien invasion. Real trouble. Existential trouble. Trouble with wheels.
"Is that... Big Wheel?" he muttered, squinting down at the street from a rooftop.
Yes. Yes, it was.
The supervillain — a generous term — was barreling through Midtown in what appeared to be a single giant wheel with a cockpit in the middle, painted in aggressive yellow and caution tape decals. Onlookers screamed. Cars swerved. Someone livestreamed it with an obnoxious "LET'S GOOOOOO" commentary.
Peter sighed.
"Of all the days."
He landed hard on the edge of Big Wheel's... wheel. The cockpit was sealed behind thick glass. Inside, a guy in a silver jumpsuit was laughing maniacally, pressing buttons like a kid on an elevator panel.
"It's the Spider-Man! You can't stop me, wall-crawler! I have momentum physics on my side!"
Peter knocked twice on the glass.
"Hey, Cliff. How's parole?"
Big Wheel's face fell. "That's... that's a violation of my privacy."
"You're driving a death donut through Times Square. I think privacy's off the table."
Big Wheel slammed a red button. Panels opened on the wheel's sides, revealing something that looked like rapid-fire dodgeball cannons.
"Oh, great," Peter muttered.
They fired.
Spider-Man flipped backward as dozens of bright-orange spheres rained down on the street, bouncing off cars, windows, and pedestrians with comedic yet destructive force. One ricocheted and hit a hotdog vendor. The cart exploded.
"Those are foam balls!" Peter shouted, mid-swing. "You're attacking New York with gym class trauma!"
"They're pressurized!" Big Wheel cackled. "Super polymer cores!"
Peter landed on a nearby awning, ricocheted forward, and webbed the axle of the giant wheel. He yanked — hard. The machine skidded sideways, fishtailed across 6th Avenue, and slammed into a parked food truck.
To his credit, Big Wheel didn't stop laughing until he passed out.
By 10:15 a.m., Peter was sitting on the edge of a nearby building, eating a leftover pretzel from the wreckage. It was slightly burned and definitely unsanitary, but free was free.
The NYPD had shown up. No one thanked him.
In fact, someone asked if he was "that new knockoff Spider-Guy." He gave them a thumbs-up and webbed away.
His suit was half-shredded by noon. Not from combat. From a snag on a fire escape.
He was webbing over a bodega when he saw it — the Stark drone.
Or what used to be a drone. Now it was a melted husk, crashed behind a row of dumpsters in a back alley that smelled like failed dreams and expired milk.
Peter landed next to it.
The thing sparked weakly, metal warped like a Salvador Dalí painting. He recognized the model: Mark 14 Observer-Class. Recon tech. Used during the Europe incident. It shouldn't even be here.
He crouched, brushed off a scorch mark, and found something strange.
A blinking blue core.
"Hello?" Peter said, poking it.
The core blinked once. Then again. Then—
INITIALIZING…
SYSTEM REBOOT…
PLOT DEVICE™ ONLINE.
Peter stared at the glowing text.
"…excuse me?"
YOU HAVE ACTIVATED PLOT DEVICE™: VERSION 0.1A.
A STARK INDUSTRIES™ EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVE ENGINE.
WARNING: THIS BUILD IS UNSTABLE AND HIGHLY DRAMATIC.
A small projector on the drone's chassis flickered to life. A blue hologram appeared, depicting a floating question mark inside a gear.
"Okay," Peter said slowly, backing away. "You're not real. This is trauma hallucination. Probably food poisoning from that pretzel."
PLOT DEVICE™ WILL NOW RESOLVE LOCALIZED STAGNANT CHARACTER ARC.
STAND BY FOR INITIATION.
"Nope. No thank you."
Peter turned to leave.
INITIATION LOCKED.
SCANNING SUBJECT: PETER PARKER.
PROFILE FOUND: 'TRAGICALLY FORGOTTEN ORPHANED VIGILANTE.'
INITIATING PLOT.
The air around Peter shimmered.
Suddenly, the sky turned a violent shade of purple. Street signs began rearranging their letters to spell cryptic phrases like "THE PAST DUE IS COMING" and "GET A NEW COSTUME."
A dramatic orchestral sting played from nowhere.
Peter spun around. "What the hell?!"
NARRATIVE PARAMETERS:
RISING ACTION: DEPLOYED
STAKES: MAXIMIZING
SUPPORTING CAST: UNAVAILABLE
ROMANTIC INTEREST: NULL
QUIRKS: ENABLED
DEADPOOL: OPTIONAL
Peter slapped the drone. "Disable everything! Cancel plot!"
ERROR: CHARACTER LACKS AUTHORITATIVE VOICE.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BECOME SELF-AWARE?
He blinked. "…what?"
CONFIRMED.
BEGINNING FOURTH WALL INTEGRATION IN 3… 2… 1…
Suddenly, Peter wasn't looking at the drone anymore.
He was looking up — not at the sky, but at something past it. The world around him flickered. Buildings flattened into gray boxes for half a second. The air rippled like a bad video stream buffering.
And then… nothing.
Everything snapped back to normal.
The drone was gone. The alley was silent.
Peter stood there, heart hammering.
"…Okay. That's new."
Then, from behind him, a voice spoke — cheerful, upbeat, and clearly artificial.
"Hello, Spider-Man. Let's make your story interesting again."
Peter turned.
There was no one there.
Only the faint blue shimmer of a hologram fading.
And a single word etched into the wall in glowing graffiti:
PLOT.