It was midday as Spider-Man, Silk, and the New Goblin sat with their legs hanging off of one of New York's tall buildings eating pizza together. They were getting ready to go on a patrol together, however, Harry suggested that they shouldn't do so on an empty stomach.
"Have you guys heard from Flash and Gwen? Been a couple of days." Harry asked both spiders with a mouth full of pizza. Spider-Man shook his head while Silk swallowed her bite of food before giving her answer. "Nope, I haven't. I don't really talk to Flash much, but Gwen hasn't said anything in the girls' group chat in a while."
"Girls' group chat?" Eren asked, taking another bite from his pizza with an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah. Me, Felicia, Liz, Lily, and Gwen are all in a group chat together. You know, girl stuff."
"What kind of girl stuff?" Harry asked, feeling a little offended that he was left out of whatever the girls were keeping secret from him and the other two guys.
"Don't worry about it." Cindy told him, though she couldn't help but notice the glares from her boyfriend and the New Goblin. "What? Don't worry, we don't talk shit about you guys... much." she teased.
Before either boy could respond, Lily's voice spoke through their comms. "Guys, there's a bank robbery down near Jose's, that restaurant we all went to that one time. Apparently, it's a guy with a white face and his partner has a yellow costume. I'll keep you guys updated."
"Thanks, Seer." Spider-Man said before quickly getting up on his feet to take the initiative. Silk got up just a second later and both spiders looked down at the New Goblin who was still finishing his slice of pizza.
"What?" he asked them both, once again having a mouth full of pizza. "It's not like the money is going anywhere. C'mon, I'm starving here!"
Spider-Man webbed the pizza slice from Harry's hand and threw it onto the roof of the building before webbing the pizza box toward himself. "We can eat later. Let's go."
Still holding out his hand as if he were holding the pizza slice, Harry sighed. "Fiiiine." he groaned as he pressed a couple of buttons on his palm, summoning his glider before stepping onto it. Both Spider-Man and Silk hopped on it as well, since it would be faster than swinging before the glider took off toward their destination like a rocket.
As they flew, Seer called them all once again and gave them even more information. "Spider-Man, these guys are familiar to you. The Shocker and the Chameleon." upon hearing those names, Eren could feel a jolt in his chest. Those were two names that he hadn't thought about in a while.
Cindy and Harry both knew about what the Shocker did to Eren's mother. Immediately, they both began to also feel a pit forming in their stomachs. "Are you gonna be alright, Eren?" Harry asked him, but Spider-Man was quick to respond. "I'm good, man. I figured they'd be back at it again. Please continue, Seer."
"They escaped from prison after the Green Goblin riots. They stayed out of trouble for a while after that, but it seems like they're back. As you know already, the Shocker has the ability to shoot shockwaves from his wrists. I compared the recent footage of him to footage of the past, and it looks like the new versions of his shock gauntlets are way stronger." Seer typed away at her computer as she said this, moving on from what she had on the Shocker to what she was able to compile about the Chameleon. "Looks like the Chameleon can just transform his entire body and voice into anyone he wants. He can copy a person's looks all the way down to the most minute details. Creepy..."
"So not much has changed then. These guys are jokes, we'll get this over with easily." Spider-Man told his friends as they continued flying through the air on the New Goblin's glider. "Thank you for the intel, Seer."
"No problem. Good luck guys, I'll let you know if there's anything else worth mentioning."
After a few minutes of flying to their destination, all three heroes arrived in front of the bank that Lily mentioned. All three of them hopped off of the glider just in time to see the Shocker and a police officer walking out of the bank together holding bags of cash. Immediately upon seeing Spider-Man, the Shocker froze, remembering him as the Phantom Spider from almost three years prior.
"Hello, Herman. I see you haven't changed." Spider-Man lectured him with his arms crossed. "I take it the cop is Chameleon in disguise, right?"
The Shocker, wearing his bright yellow signature costume, began looking around frantically for an escape route. He wasn't aware that Spider-Man couldn't use Godspeed, so he didn't even bother trying to run as he knew he would catch up to him in a heartbeat.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"I needed money, okay? After this, I'm done." the Shocker told him. He was being genuine at that moment. Spider-Man sort of changed the way the Shocker viewed the world and he wanted to dedicate himself to becoming a better man for his two kids, however, things wouldn't be that simple. He needed to put food on the table, and this was the only way he could think to do so. He struggled to get an honest job as an engineer with his record being tarnished.
"You have kids, right? Why don't you get a real job, Herman?" Spider-Man asked.
"Because I-" as the Shocker was beginning to explain himself, he could hear the sounds of some strange animals making bizarre noises behind him. Both he and the Chameleon turned around to see dozens of humans crawling on all fours at the top of the bank, sticking to the walls as they defied gravity.
Harry, Eren, and Cindy noticed it too, looking up at the deranged citizens with confused glares. "Is it just me or are those guys climbing walls like you guys?" Harry asked the two spiders.
"No..." Eren whispered to himself as visions from the many different timelines began to flood his mind. This was all too familiar to him, this was something that he thought he was able to avoid, but it seemed like that was not the case.
"Herman! Chameleon! Get out of here!" Spider-Man shouted as the deranged citizens lept from the building like wild beasts while they bellowed at their prey.
"What the hell are these guys!?" the Shocker asked as he pointed his gauntlets at the group of crazed citizens before firing them at them. A wave of energy hit them out of the air, compelling them to shriek and squirm on the ground in anguish as a black sludge began expelling from the orifices on their bodies.
Despite him having subdued a few of the zombified people, more began to jump down from the building, as well as from around corners and from atop other buildings. Even the three heroes were starting to find themselves surrounded by them.
"Oh my god!" Lily spoke through their comms as she began reading through the many posts and emergency messages being spread online. "There's been sightings of hundreds of... zombies running around the city. They're either eating or kidnapping people... It's like the lizard situation from before but worse... Oh my god... what is that!?"
The three heroes could only imagine what it was that she saw to give her such a reaction and it horrified them.
Before another word could be spoken by anyone else, the horde of zombies began to attack the three heroes, leaping at them like beasts as they showed them their sharp, monstrous teeth. Despite the zombies' numbers, Spider-Man, Silk, and the New Goblin were able to fend them off rather easily, however, the monsters kept getting back up despite the heroes' punches and kicks being strong enough to knock out any normal human.
"These guys are definitely not human anymore, what are we gonna do?" Harry asked, punching a few zombies in the face as he side-eyed Spider-Man.
Spider-Man didn't say a word as he too fended off the monsters. His face was hidden beneath his mask, but his expression was truly mortified. He'd seen all of this before hundreds of times, he knew exactly what all of this was. He knew exactly what it would all lead to, he knew exactly how it was all going to end.
One of the zombies then shot a web at the New Goblin, however, he was quick to slice it in half with his wrist blade. Seeing this, Silk immediately questioned Spider-Man. "Eren! What the hell is happening? Why are you being so quiet?" she asked, though she received no response. She figured this must have something to do with him, perhaps even the both of them since it appeared that these guys shared some of their abilities, but she couldn't be certain.
Not too far away from them, the Shocker and the Chameleon were fending off the strange creatures. The Shocker used his Vibro-Shock gauntlets to subdue the monsters, it seemed that the vibrations were their weakness, but they would get back up after a short time of wriggling on the ground.
The Chameleon was firing just a normal gun at the civilians, but it was doing seemingly minimal damage to them as they shrugged off each shot. Everything would soon begin to take a turn once one of the zombies shot a web at the Shocker's gauntlets, completely ruining them and disabling them. The deranged people then started to pounce on him. At the same time, the Chameleon was also overrun by zombies as they lept on him and began devouring his body with their razor-sharp teeth and claws.
The three heroes could hear their blood-curdling screams, turning around to see that both the Shocker and the Chamelon were being devoured like cattle. "HELP ME! SPIDER-MAN, HELP!" it was ironic that some of the Shocker's last words were him begging for Spider-Man to save his life as he reached out to him, feeling himself being torn limb from limb.
Outside of both the Shocker and the Chameleon's screams, the sound of their flesh being pulled from the bone alongside their bones being crunched and chomped made the three heroes feel sick, giving them flashbacks of their prom night two years prior.
More and more zombies started to appear, from all around them, quickly overwhelming the heroes due to their large numbers. The ones that they'd knocked down were still getting up as if they weren't hit by attacks strong enough to bend steel.
In the distance, they could see tens of the creatures hanging onto a helicopter as it began spiraling down to Earth, crashing into a skyscraper and igniting it in flames. The three heroes didn't know what to do. They couldn't sit there and fight forever, there were far too many of these deranged people. They also couldn't save everyone, which would be impossible due to how fast everything was happening.
The thing that bothered them the most was the fact that they didn't know what to do about the bloodthirsty civilians. They still looked like people, so they couldn't just kill them. But if they kept pulling their punches, the freaks would just keep getting up and they'll eat others.
"We need to get out of here." Spider-Man told his friends with a voice devoid of any real urgency or emotion.
"What is happening, Eren!?" Silk asked, however, she wasn't prepared for the real answer.
"It's the symbiote, Cindy. I didn't finish it... it's still alive and it must have found a new host."
Both Silk and the New Goblin's eyebrows raised upon hearing those words. They both knew what this meant based on the details that Eren had told them about the future in the hundreds of timelines he had knowledge of...
The beginning of the end was upon them.