gwen (thespidergwen) wrote in crownplazaic, @ 2020-10-19 15:10:00 |
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Something was definitely going on. Gwen had sort of settled into the fact that she was stuck with the collective group at the hotel, but as she was coming to grips with that it now seemed that they’d wound up in some sort of new area. How that was possible was a mystery to her. She’d seen her fair share of weird stuff, and it honestly took a lot to shock her anymore but for all she’d gone through and been a part of, a world of candy wasn’t on her short list of things she thought she might wake up to when she looked out the window. Was that really what it was? Candy didn’t exactly sound dangerous so she figured now was as good of a time as any to see what they were dealing with up close. And if it did end up being dangerous, well, she was equipped to handle that the best way she knew how; totally wing it. Conveniently, she ran into Ned along the way and after discovering she liked keeping company with him, asked if he wanted to come with her. They’d shared some pretty great conversation before when they kind of successfully made cinnamon lattes, so she was glad to have him come with her to see what they could find out, and maybe talk some more. She wanted to hear more about his world and how it was similar or different to hers. “It smells so sweet out here,” she said. “Is that cotton candy in the sky?” Her heightened sense of sight had her squinting to be able to see the little details in the puffy clouds. “What even -- What happens if it rains?” --- Ned was doing pretty okay with the whole kidnapped by a haunted hotel thing. Growing up, things had gotten increasingly weirder with alien invasions and the Avengers and his best friend being a superhero. He was just coming off of a summer vacation where he’d almost died multiple times at the hand of an interdimensional traveller that had turned out to be a jerk with fancy tech. Ned felt ready to handle anything. Especially a world made entirely of candy. “Fruit punch?” He was still looking up at the sky as he answered. He looked back down at Gwen. “So what do you think? Same rules apply as nightstand mystery coffee, or are we about to take a food tour of this place?” --- “That’d be really sticky, but fun to try to catch drops on your tongue.” Gwen had started off looking around trying to wrap her mind around how anything like this could be possible, but that had never been her specialty. Going with whatever happened and figuring it out once she dove in was kind of more her style. That was kind of why she wasn’t in a panic about having been brought to a ghost hotel and was now stuck there. In the back of her mind it was a little concerning, but she wasn’t actively freaking out about it because that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Now there was candy literally everywhere and it was hard not to smile about it because, well, candy. “Um…” She did take a moment to get a bit serious and her Spider sense wasn’t going off like a red flashing neon sign saying STEP AWAY FROM THE MARSHMALLOWS. But then, she didn’t really feel anything like that with the coffee either so it was hard to say. “I haven’t been around to know if this kind of thing has happened before but like.. This looks like a whole world or something so it’s way different than someone putting a cup on your night stand, you know?” She plucked up a piece of grass that looked like Sour Punch straws. Wasn’t her go-to candy of choice but it was the most convenient. “That’s definitely sour,” she said after taking a bite and pursing her lips a little. “But kind of fantastic.” --- Ned nodded. “When I got here, the island was somewhere called Wonderland. It was pretty crazy. Then there were the pirates, so…” He shrugged. “I’m game if you are.” He watched as she picked up a piece of grass, then followed suit, not hesitating at all to take a bite. His face puckered up comically, but he shoved the rest in his mouth. “Definitely fantastic,” he agreed, mouth full. He swallowed, and then waited, as if he expected something to happen. “If it was going to turn us into grasshoppers or something, it would have happened already, right?” --- More like a spider, she thought to herself with a little smirk. “Exactly. That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it because I’m not really wanting to think that the candy goodness is really some sort of demonic presence instead,” she said. She’d come in on the tail end of the pirates situation and hadn’t really explored all that much because she was still getting her bearings, then the creeper coffee happened and that was off-putting but this felt like something she could handle. Gwen had her web shooters thankfully just in case anything got bad-bad but again, she didn’t sense anything and the candy didn’t reek of dastardly intent. “So if this is really an actual world, then are we traveling through the multiverse?” Gwen stooped down and plucked up a bit more sour grass. “I guess nobody knows, and nobody knows how we all got here, or why us. Why some people are coming from the same place, and others are the only ones from their worlds. Critical thinking isn’t my strong suit, so I don’t even know how to begin to answer any of those questions.” --- “I guess?” Ned didn’t sound convinced. “Maybe this is a place that’s somehow between the universes? That’s why it can draw in people from wherever. — Ooh, get one of those! Is that a gummy flower?” He pointed to a small translucent flower in the sour grass. “There are people in my world who can travel to others, but it’s just like a dude with science-magic ring or whatever. I don’t think you can transport whole places. What about where you come from?” --- Gwen took a couple of the gummy flowers and gave one to Ned. She kept one for herself, and one she’d give to Tony. She’d promised him a bouquet of goodness, after all. “No,” she said. “Not whole places. Just people. I don’t know much about it, the science or the technology. I just got sent around a few places.” She picked another two flowers, then wove them together with some strands of sour grass. Tony said nothing from the ground, but maybe he’d be okay with this. “I like your idea better though, that maybe this is kind of an in-between blip or something.” She wished there were more people there from where she came from, but maybe it was for the best that there wasn’t. She wasn’t exactly popular anymore. “Is there any rhyme or reason when people show up? Or is it just random? Like, did you show up with everyone from your world who’s here?” --- Ned popped the gummy flower into his mouth and savored the taste while he watched Gwen make a kind of snack braid out of the candy greenery. Should he do the same thing? Would it be weird if he copied her? “I think it’s random.” He looked around a little as he spoke, looking for more naturey food she could add to her bouquet. “Tony Stark and my friend Peter were already here when I showed up. Other people from my world too. What makes it all even weirder though, is the fact that our timelines don’t line up. Like, I was with Peter when I got brought here, but he was already here. And from a point in time later than mine!” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.” He nodded his head to the right, indicating that they should walk in that direction next. It didn’t sound like he was too concerned with the puzzle. --- Gwen wouldn’t think it was weird if he made a bouquet too. They could try to make the silliest looking works of candy art to take back, and snack all the while. She was more curious about his answer. He was right; it didn’t make any sense. He’d told her privately that where he came from, Tony Stark had died. Obviously Mr. Stark wasn’t dead now. But if it was true that people from the same worlds could show up from different points in time, then maybe it was possible for her Peter and Harry and Em Jay and Betty and Glory to show up. Peter… “Peter…” she said softly, and looked over at Ned as they changed course again. “I’m guessing, Peter Parker?” She knelt to pick two more gummy flowers that were different colors. A familiar dull ache throbbed in her chest but she was smiling nonetheless. --- “Yeah!” Ned replied excitedly. “Do you know him too? In your world, I mean.” He figured they had probably met in the hotel already. It was sort of a small world in there. He wondered if she had ever met a version of him. Maybe even one that had a superpower too! He waited for Gwen to finish with the flower candies before mosying up to a large tree that seemed to have apple-sized gumdrops as its fruit. --- Gwen took a moment before she answered. Her eyes were focused on the bouquet. She’d not shared much about her world yet. When the two of them talked before she mostly divulged about how the multiverse worked and a few other things, but she hadn’t gotten personal. She looked up at the tree Ned had discovered. “Yeah,” she said, and moved closer to the tree. “We grew up together. Next door neighbors. Best friends since we were little kids. Inseparable. Assholes at school used to bully him for being a geek. I always took up for him.” Her fingers traced along the grooves in the sugar of the tree trunk. “Does Spider-Man exist in your world?” --- Ned was suddenly much less interested in the sugar tree. “No way! Really?” A million questions entered his head, but then Gwen posed one of her own. His turn to take a moment before he answered. “Yeah, he exists in my world. He’s an Avenger.” He was cautious about divulging too much. Rule one of Friend of Spider-Man Club was that you didn’t mention you were an FOS. Ned wasn’t sure that Peter was necessarily hiding the fact that he was a superhero in the hotel, but it wasn’t Ned’s secret to tell. “Saved my life a couple of times on school trips. He’s awesome.” --- Gwen hadn't seen much of the Peter who was at the hotel. Peter Parker was a complicated subject, although one she looked at with both fondness and grief. She was sort of testing the waters asking about Spider-Man. From what she knew about the multiverse, in most worlds, Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Her world and a couple of others were the rare exception. She didn't know what Ned knew, but it wasn't likely he'd tell her right away, maybe not at all. He might not even know. “There's no Spider-Man in my world. No Avengers, either. We used to have the Wasp, but she retired. Captain America runs around but the Cap in my world isn't Steve Rogers. She's Samantha Wilson. And, well, Spider-Woman.” ---- “Whoa whoa whoa. All of your superheroes are girls?” Ned’s eyes were wide. “That’s crazy! I mean, that’s cool!” He added quickly, so that Gwen wouldn’t think he was being sexist. He half expected MJ to materialize out of thin air and punch him in the arm for that. “Super cool.” Okay, maybe he was overselling it now. “So Spider-Woman, huh?” he asked, reaching up to pluck one of the gumdrops from the tree. As he was about to take a bite out of it, he realized what Gwen was telling him. Or at least what he thought Gwen was telling him. If Peter wasn’t Spider-Man and she was his best friend, then maybe… “Wait.” He whipped his head around to look at her. “Does that make you Spider-Woman?” --- Gwen didn't take offense to his comment. It was definitely cool that the superheroes in her world were women, but she would've been lying if she said it wouldn't have been nice to have the Avengers in her world. It was interesting to hear that Spider-Man in Ned’s world was an Avenger. Most of the Peters she'd met were more loners as heroes like she was, although from stories she’d heard it wasn't uncommon for Spider-Man to work with the Avengers sometimes, kind of like how she and Captain America had teamed up a few times. When Ned asked her if she was the Spider-Woman she'd brought up, Gwen was momentarily at a loss. Should she fess up to it? It seemed kind of unnecessary to hide it. Ned wasn't from her world, so what could the harm be? “Well..” she pushed her sleeve back and shot a string of her webbing up to catch on a branch of the tree. Gwen swung around it and then lowered herself upside down and very spider-like in front of him. “Yeah.” --- Ned’s mouth went apage and he dropped the gumdrop he had been holding on the ground. Sure, he had seen Peter do something similar lots of times, but that was Peter. This was someone else. “Awesome,” he whispered reverently. He stepped closer, trying to inspect her webbing. “What’s your web fluid made out of? How much weight can it hold? How much weight can you hold? Do you have a costume?” --- Gwen figured the best way to answer was to show him, at least a hint, of what she could do. She didn’t think it would compromise her position in the house if he knew. If anything, she was glad he did, actually. “I don’t really know. Janet van Dyne, the former Wasp, she made it for me. All I know is that as long as there’s moisture in the air, it regenerates so I don’t ever run out. And, I guess it holds me so at least that much? You can examine it if you want. It might be a bit sticky for you though. I can hold a lot. A few tons, probably. I haven’t really tested that theory too much.” Gwen was petite, but she was ridiculously strong. “Janet also made my costume. It’s a little different than Spider-Man’s in color, but same idea.” --- “Regenerative web fluid,” Ned repeated excitedly, but managed to catch himself before he said, You’ve got to show that to Peter! He was curious to inspect the web fluid. He’d gotten himself stuck in Peter’s more times than he wanted to admit in the early days of his best friend’s superheroing. But he wondered how similar they were. “Maybe later. I don’t want to wind up with my hand stuck to my forehead or something before we’re done exploring.” He looked back up at Gwen with a broad smile on his face. “We should definitely put it to the test sometime.” --- Gwen was intuitive enough to pick up on a few things. Sure, he might’ve just been curious because Spider-Man existed in his world and he knew some things from an outsider’s perspective, but the fact that he was so inquisitive and that he was Peter’s best friend just sort of led her to thing he more than likely knew the truth, and that Peter was Spider-Man in his world. That wasn’t a shocker. Most Peter Parkers she knew were Spider-Man, save for one. His smile made her smile widen. Ned gave her a feeling of familiarity. Being around him was like hanging out with Peter and Harry, only different because Ned was Ned, and that was great. Having someone she felt comfortable around in the hotel was definitely a perk. “Absolutely,” she said, still grinning. She turned herself right side up and landed gracefully on her feet. “So, tell me more about your world. Was there any sort of big threat going on before you ended up here?” --- Ned leaned over to pick up the gumdrop he had dropped, thought better of it, then reached up for a new one instead. With his other hand, he grabbed a second and offered it to Gwen once she had righted herself. He shook his head. “Not really. The threat was over. Some crazy guy hijacked our summer vacation pretending to be a superhero from the multiverse who came to fight some elemental monsters that came through to our world. Really it was just a dude with some fancy tech who wanted to get his hands on some of Tony Stark’s. Spider-Man stopped him, though.” Apparently that hadn’t been the end of it completely, but it was all he knew firsthand. “What about you?” --- Gwen smiled fondly and thanked Ned for the gumdrop. She then listened as he began talking about what had been plaguing his world prior to his arrival at the hotel. Her eyebrow arched. “That’s some next level Wizard of Oz crap,” she said. When he asked her about what she’d been dealing with, she hesitated. It would show her hand, what she knew about Peter. “I was.. I was trying to find others like me,” she said. “Spider-people, I mean. Spider-UK, he was heading up a team of us from all over the multiverse, gathering us in one world because there was this group called the Inheritors who were hunting down Spider-people for sport. They wanted our heads on a wall. Billy — Spider-UK, asked me to help recruit others through the multiverse. That’s how I know about it. And I.. I know others like me, a lot of them, are Peter Parker.” --- “Spider-UK? What kind of superhero name is that?” Ned laughed, but it sounded a little forced. He was stalling. It sounded like she already knew Peter’s secret. Would confirming it be the same thing as giving his best friend away? He rubbed at the back of his neck. “No way, really? Peter Parker as a Spider-Man?” It was hardly convincing. But maybe Gwen would cut him some slack. --- Gwen had to laugh a little too. She’d never really thought about it but it was pretty weird. She thought of him more as Billy, so maybe that was why. It didn’t take a genius to see that Ned was trying his best not to give up Peter’s secret and she gave him mad respect for that. Gwen wasn’t going to push it. That was Peter’s story and secret to tell, and the two of them were planning to meet up soon anyway. “Crazy, right?” She smiled, to show she wasn’t going to press him about it. “But not in my world. He was just.. the best friend I could’ve ever hoped for.” She looked away then, and plucked a few lollipops to go into the bouquet. “He would’ve been so fascinated by this hotel situation.” --- “He is that,” Ned agreed, relieved that Gwen wasn’t going to push it any further. Except then he realized she was speaking about her Peter in the past tense. Did he ask her about it? They had been having a really good time up until now. Should he risk that to find out what happened? He didn’t know if she would even want to talk about it. “It is pretty weird,” he said instead, pocketing some lollipops for later. “Especially since no one can really get a handle on what this place is. Or how we all got here.” --- Gwen would have talked about her Peter for hours if she had the chance. It probably would’ve been telling Ned a lot of things he already knew even though their Peter Parkers weren’t the same person. Personality traits were usually pretty similar even if destinies were different. Granted, she knew she was very different from her counterpart in other worlds so maybe that wasn’t necessarily true. But, from what interaction she had with the Peter who was here, they seemed somewhat similar. “That’s a little unnerving, isn’t it? We have all these people here who have all had so many different, varying experiences and some people like you who are ridiculously smart, and no one can come up with what the hell this place is all about.” She shook her head. “Can’t even figure out the motive behind trying to bring such a random grouping of people all to the same bizarre place.” --- Ned’s smile returned when Gwen complemented him. “Whatever this place is, it’s like it’s locked against any kind of meddling. I tried to hack into the computer when I first got here, but it was almost like the computer was actively acting against me. Then there’s the ghosts…” Ned was actually pretty fascinated by the ghosts. While he had yet to have one actually communicate with him, he’d been wearing his ghost glasses quite a bit to see what they got up to while the rest of the hotel guests were lounging around. “Maybe this is what passes for entertainment by some advanced society, and we’re in some kind of Superhero Big Brother show? And they have to keep bringing us to all these different places because otherwise we’re just too boring to keep the ratings up otherwise. Man, then they really should have messed with the coffee. Did you hear what happened to Captain America when they messed with the desserts?” -- Gwen found herself liking it whenever Ned smiled. He had a presence about him that made her feel very comfortable. It was familiar; it felt like hanging out with Peter and Harry, and Eugene before he turned into a jerk. She’d sworn off friendships or being close to anyone a long time ago, but maybe her rules could change since she wasn’t in her world anymore. Then again, if something bad happened and Ned was sent away like others had been, that would hurt and she didn’t want anymore emotional pain. Tough call, but she also couldn’t help that she already liked being around him, so it was probably too late anyway. She laughed at the thought of them all being on some warped version of Big Brother. Some alien Julie Chen was narrating their lives to a widespread audience, throwing in twists like ghosts and candy worlds and pirates and who knew what. That actually made being thrust into this situation a little more tolerable. “No, no, what happened to Cap?” She asked, and tilted her head in curiosity. --- Ned’s face lit up when Gwen laughed. “Two words: naked jogging.” And then he started laughing himself. Mostly because the idea of it was so ridiculous. All he really knew of Captain America was the morality police version of him those stupid school videos portrayed. He had tried to read the really old comic books about him from World War II, but they were so cheesy, he couldn’t even make it through one. “I wasn’t here for that one. But apparently this Big Brother is for mature audiences only.” --- It had been a very, very long time since she’d really laughed. That sort of laughter that takes over your whole body and kind of makes you short of breath and your vision blur. Gwen had been going through a lot of emotional hell going back and forth from heartbroken to numb and trying so hard to stay focused, to stay alive. She’d forgotten what it felt like to just be silly. It felt so good. “Oh man, wow,” she said, and had to laugh again. “I don’t know what sort of strategy that is for him to stay in the game but I guess it worked.” --- "I guess so," Ned replied, a smile still spread wide across his face. He had liked Gwen almost immediately after they met. Cool, funny, and apparently superpowered, the more time he spent with her, the more he knew his initial impression of her had been right. He looked around at the world of unsampled candy nature, then back at Gwen. "Well, what do you say, Spider-Woman? Wanna see if there's some kind of 'taffy situation' we can get stuck in?" --- Gwen had felt much the same about Ned. He made her feel comfortable, and likely had absolutely no idea just how much she needed that. She hoped this would be the first of more adventures and time spent together. She wanted more of that feeling, and she wanted to know more about him. “Oh yeah,” she said with a nod. “Otherwise how can we say we really saw anything at all?” She grinned. “C’mon.” --- |