Morden Man

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

"If your Peter Parker is anything like mine, he was one of the best. I know the one I know is great. And his Uncle was one of the most decent men I ever had the honor of knowing. I know his motto well. It's one of the reasons I do what I do."

@HenryJonesJr

Manhattan, New York

A burst of joy Johnny didn't know he still had in him ran over him. Peter Parker was alive – at least, this world's Peter was. Without thinking, he threw his arms around Spider-Woman's shoulders and hugged her close to him. A smile so broad that it hurt him to maintain it was etched into Johnny's face. Somewhere out there Peter was going about his life like a normal teenaged boy – without worrying about Norman Osborn hurling pumpkin bombs at him or Doctor Octopus crashing his Christmas party at the Daily Bugle.

And then Johnny heard Spider-Woman's words in his head. Not only did she know Peter Parker – she had called him hers. Johnny released Spider-Woman from the hug and then placed his hands on her shoulders. He squinted at her for a few seconds as he began to put the theory in his head together piece by piece. Suddenly a knowing smile appeared on his face.

Mary Jane Watson was Spider-Woman.

It was the only answer that made sense. Peter and MJ had been together since the beginning of time. There had been another girl on the scene once upon a time, but Johnny couldn't remember her name, and there wasn't a chance in hell that a girl as fierce as MJ would let someone take her man – in this world or the next. The thought of Peter Parker sat at home, waiting for MJ to message him back, while she was on the streets of New York keeping people safe buoyed Johnny's spirits.

He gave Spider-Woman encouraging grin. "You know, I always did think you'd make one hell of a superhero. Guess I was right, eh, Tiger?"

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Johnny had been telling Reed and Harrison Wells that if it came down to a choice between their old world, damned as it might be, and the new one they had found themselves in, he wouldn't hesitate. Happy as he was, he wasn't sure that had changed. But the wave of emotions that he'd felt when Spider-Woman had told him she knew Peter gave him pause for thought.

Johnny thought for a second about asking her to take him to see Pete – but it didn't take long to decide otherwise. Chances were Peter was a normal kid here. Well, as normal as any kid that loses their parents and their surrogate father figure before they're out of high school can be. He didn't need more drama in his life – especially not the spandex-wearing kind.

"Promise me something," Johnny said softly as he noticed the police cars assembled at the bottom of the building they were sat on.

He had no right to ask what he was about to ask – no-one did – but in the maelstrom of grief and anger that had been Johnny's emotions over the past few months, news of Peter Parker had provided a glint of hope. Johnny needed every last bit of that he could get.

"Promise me that you'll keep him safe," Storm said solemnly. "There'll come a day when all of this will reach the ones you love. Try as you might, as long as you're a human being under that mask there's no way of avoiding that. Just ... whatever else happens, you keep him safe. Because the world needs people like Peter Parker in it."

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

"So if you want to chat, let's chat. Your Spider-Man, he sounds like a great guy. What's his name?"

@HenryJonesJr

Manhattan, New York

As loathe as Johnny was to admit it, it felt good to get it all of his chest. He had expected Spider-Woman to try to cart him away to the funny farm, but instead she had just listened – she'd even dropped Peter's "friendly, neighbourhood Spider-person" line. Though she obviously wasn't Parker, there was something about the way she carried herself that reminded Johnny of him.

It was why, against his best judgement, he found himself giving away a secret identity he had guarded for years.

"His name was Peter," Johnny said with a smile as he recalled the first time the two of them had met.

Electro had drained almost every power source in New York to take Spider-Man down. Peter couldn't have been much older than fifteen or sixteen at the time but he held his own. No matter what Electro threw at him, no matter how hard Peter got hit, he kept on fighting. He was almost dead on his feet with the Fantastic Four had arrived. They'd been on some diplomatic mission to a galaxy far, far away that had gone awry – and returned to find the city at Max Dillon's mercy but for the sheer force of Peter Parker's will.

Boy, it had been something to behold.

The five of them had worked together to take Electro down. If Johnny remembered correctly, the fight had ended with Ben breaking Electro's jaw in four places. Dillon spent the best part of six months eating through a straw on the Raft. Reed had been so impressed by Peter he'd tried to recruit him right there and then on the spot.

"Sorry, Stretch, but I don't think the Fantastic Five has quite the same ring to it," Peter had said before disappearing off into the night.

It was only as the thin smile crept across Johnny's face that he became aware he'd become lost in thought. He shook his head, focusing back on Spider-Woman, whose hand had slipped from his back gently at the mention of Peter's name. He realised the name alone meant nothing.

She needed to hear Peter's story to truly understand who he was – and what he meant to Johnny.

"His parents died when he was a kid. I guess we had that in common – though we didn't really ever talk about it," Johnny shrugged. "Peter's aunt and uncle brought him up. They were decent, salt of the Earth types. Saw to it that he kept his head down and focused on his schooling."

Peter had always sought to downplay his intelligence, both in the Spider-Man suit and outside of it, but Johnny knew there was a formidable brain beneath Parker's thick skull. If not for the spider that had bit him, he might have gone on to win a Nobel Prize or something.

"So one day Peter gets these powers – like yours, I guess – and he has no idea what to do with them. He went from being the punchline to every joke to having superpowers overnight. And what does he do? Go beat the snot out of the kids that made his life miserable? No, Pete being Pete, he decides to start a wrestling career to earn a bit of money to help his aunt and uncle out."

The smile crept back onto Johnny's face as he remembered the day that Peter had shown him the awful, hand-stitched costume he'd worn in the wrestling ring. He still remembered how much his stomach had hurt from laughing after seeing it. It looked like something a child would come up with.

"Not long after some low-life holds up the wrestling joint that he's working out of and ... well, Peter doesn't lift a finger to stop him. I guess he figures it's not worth getting shot over a couple of bucks that aren't even his, right?" Johnny said with a grimace. "And who could blame him?"

There was a nervousness on Spider-Woman's face. He could sense that she had tensed up somewhat, maybe correctly suspecting the story was about to take a turn for the worse. Even now, after everything that Johnny had seen and lived through, he found himself fighting through a knot in his throat to talk about what happened next.

"Anyway, Peter goes home that night to find a police car parked outside his house. By some wicked twist of fate, Peter's uncle, Ben, had been shot during an attempted break-in by the very same low-life Peter had failed to stop at the wrestling joint earlier that evening."

Johnny and Spider-Woman sat in silence for a few moments. In the distance, Johnny could see a news helicopter watching them. He could even spot a cameraman basically hanging out of the back of it with his camera pointed at them. Johnny raised a hand in their direction and waved meekly before turning back to Spider-Woman with a sigh.

"It tore him up inside. He told me once that the only thing that kept him going was something Ben had said to him a few days before he died."

Johnny pictured Peter speaking along with him as he repeated Uncle Ben's words of wisdom. "With great power comes great responsibility."

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

It was certainly interesting to read.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

I wanna point out to all of y'all using colours (for any potential other partly colourblind peeps) please for the love of god avoid really bright or dark colours. I honestly can't read them off the dark grey of the guild, and while I read 90% of posts from my phone (as you post overnight or while I'm at work) it means I don't read them cause I can't easily highlight them.

@Sep

If you hit the "raw" button it should convert posts to plain text. That way people that are inclined to use really bright or dark colours can continue to do so and you can read their posts.

Everyone's a winner.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

"So...uh...what's your deal?" is about all I can think to ask. It's about as eloquent as a jackhammer in a glass factory, but it's all I got. "Clearly you thought someone else was showing up to see your light show. As far as I know I'm the only one who wears a mask like that, but I've only been on the job a few months."

@HenryJonesJr

Manhattan, New York

"Right, right, Spider-Woman, of course," Johnny muttered admonishingly to himself. "Sorry, it's been a rough couple of ... well, months."

Peter's screams rang through Johnny's ears as clearly as they had that day in New York. He felt tears forming in the corner of his eyes but gritted his teeth determinedly and fought them back. He had come here in the hope that speaking to Peter might help him put an end to the wallowing and the anger – not to start blubbing in front of a teenaged girl.

"My name is Johnny Storm. I'm from another world – another Earth, not like Mars or Jupiter or anything corny like that. On my world the guy who wears that mask, Spider-Man, is a friend of mine. Or at least he was a friend of mine."

As if hearing his own words back, Johnny's face scrunched up in discomfort. It sounded bizarre, like the ramblings of an escaped mental patient or some soon-to-be mass shooter's stream of consciousness, but he didn't know how else to explain it. If Reed were here, he'd know exactly what to say to make this whole thing make sense – but Reed wouldn't ever be here, he wasn't stupid enough to be.

So Johnny was on his own.

"Look, this isn't going to make much sense and I'm not sure that I'd even believe it if I hadn't lived through it all, but ... my Earth was attacked, conquered by something far worse than anything any of us had ever encountered before, and my family and I were the only ones that made it out. We tried to escape through time but something went wrong and we ended up being shunted across worlds."

There was no judgement in Spider-Woman's eyes. At least, if she was judging Johnny she was doing a reasonably good job of pretending otherwise. Either that or her mark was better at disguising her features than Peter's had been.

Johnny shook his head as he realised he regretted having even opened his mouth. "I guess I've just been struggling with it all – and I thought seeing old webhead again might help me figure out how the hell I'm supposed to deal with all of this."

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

"Nice fireworks. The likeness is pretty uncanny. Listen," I sigh as I break the silence between us, "I've had about my fill of fire for one...lifetime after this past week. If you're here to fight, can we just skip to the part where I web you up and hand you over to the authorities. I'm not sure I've got all that much in me for a real fight right now."

@HenryJonesJr

Manhattan, New York

Johnny's heart had sunk in his chest when he spotted her swinging towards him. The mask was the same but the similarities ended there. Whoever was beneath this cowl was almost certainly not Peter Parker – in fact, it was pretty clear that whoever was beneath it was a woman. From the way she moved and the sound of her voice, she was young too. College student? No, maybe younger still, Johnny thought as he remembered that Peter had started as a high school student.

"I'm not here for a fight," Johnny said with a heavy sigh. "Why do these things always have to start with a fight?"

Storm glanced over his shoulder at the waning Spider-Man symbol he had created and then exhaled through his nose. He didn't even know where to begin to explain. He wasn't even sure that he should – but he was screwed no matter what happened, or at least he would be once Maria Hill got her hands on him, so he figured there was no point holding back.

Johnny scanned the woman's costume as he tried to deduce her name. "Let me guess, you must be Arachne or Silk or something?"

Before she had a chance to answer him, Johnny slunk down to the edge of the ledge of the building he was stood on. His legs dangled over the side and he laid back, fingers locked behind his head as a makeshift cushion.

"Whoever you are, you're definitely not the guy that I was looking for – but if you're wearing that mask, I guess you're the closest thing this world has to him. So you might as well take a seat."

The young woman didn't budge.

"Go ahead," Johnny gestured nonchalantly at the space on the roof beside him. "Do I look like a radioactive spider? I'm not going to bite, kid."

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Manhattan, New York

It had been easy enough for Johnny Storm to slip past Guy that morning. Try as he might to pretend otherwise, it was clear that the SHIELD agent was running on fumes. His journey to Central City with Reed was meant to be routine but they’d found themselves in the middle of an international incident. And from the looks of things Gardner had caught a bit of a beating while he was there. It was fair to stay that he was distracted – and that Johnny had been sneaking his way out of the house since long before he became the Human Torch.

The old Johnny Storm had made a living out of sneaking past his sister so he could take part in drag races against his friends. He’d always win – not because he was a better driver than any of his pals, but because he took chances that they would never dare to. Growing up, as far as Johnny was concerned, he was untouchable behind the wheel. God had taken both of his parents from him in a car accident. There was no way he could go that way too. It was impossible.

He was wrong, of course, and worse still, he was stupid. He was too young to remember the way he felt after his parents had died. If he had done, he’d never have taken his life into his own hands like that. He’d never have risked leaving Sue all alone. But now Johnny understood what loss felt like – and there was one loss that he felt more acutely than the rest.

Peter Parker.

It was missing Peter that lead him to sneak out that morning and take to the streets of Manhattan. Before leaving he’d thrown on some civilian clothes and an old hoodie with the Baxter Building crest on it over his Fantastic Four uniform. Thankfully, this world’s Johnny Storm had died before being catapulted to global fame so he was able to walk around without arousing suspicion.

The sounds and the smells took Johnny back. The street vendors were hollering at the top of their voices, tourists were monopolising the sidewalk, and beeping horns followed Johnny everywhere he went. In almost every way, this world seemed like his own – but it wasn’t. Every few minutes he reminded himself of that fact, as he had reminded Reed and Harrison Wells of it last night.

And yet here he was pounding the streets of Manhattan in search of the one person that might be able to help him. Peter knew what it was like to lose someone – he knew what it was like to feel like you could have done more – and he overcame it. He used that feeling as fuel and became a better man for it. So far all Johnny was doing was hurting himself and the people around him.

Perhaps if he spoke to him, Johnny could feel whole again. Perhaps he’d stop hurting Reed and Ben and Sue. Perhaps he could accept that maybe their world was gone.

Johnny winced as soon as he thought it and banished the thought from his mind. In the distance stood the Daily Bugle building. If Peter was to be found anywhere, it would be there. Johnny patiently made his way through the crowds of tourists stood outside of the building and entered it. There were men in suits making their way through a suspiciously corporate-looking lobby and past him. Sat at the front desk was a heavy-set black woman.

“Excuse me,” Johnny said as he leant towards the receptionist. “My name is Johnny Storm. I’m a friend of Peter Parker’s – he’s a photographer at the Daily Bugle. I was wondering whether you could tell him that I’m downstairs.”

One of the woman’s grey eyebrows cocked in confusion. “The what?”

“The Daily Bugle,” Johnny said with a sigh. “You know, it’s only the most-read newspaper in New York. Edited by a cigar-chomping shock-jock with hard-on for attacking Spider-Man every time a train pulls into Grand Central a few minutes late.”

The receptionist shook her head. “I think you have the wrong building, sir.”

“No, I’m definitely in the right place,” Johnny responded. “I’ve been here a thousand times before.”

The receptionist lent back in shock.

“Could you lower your voice, sir?”

Johnny let out a bemused laugh. “What the hell are you t-”

“Please, sir, that kind of language isn’t called for.”

Around the woman’s neck Johnny noticed a gaudy cross. A sideways glanced towards the inside of her desk revealed a picture of Jesus and several patron saints messily given pride of place. He rolled his eyes and tried his best to police his own tone, so as not to be accused of ‘raising his voice’ or using bad language again.

“Just get Peter on the phone, would you?” Johnny said with his fingers still pinched around the bridge of his nose. “Tell him that Johnny Storm is downstairs and that he has some very important information for him about Spider-Man.”

“Sir, I’ve already told you that I think you have the wrong p-”

The receptionist’s tone proved too much for Johnny this time and he reached over the desk towards the telephone.

“Oh, for god’s sake, I’ll do it myself if you’re going to be so goddamn anal about everything.”

As he did so the receptionist cried out and Johnny felt what felt like half a dozen hands wrapped around his arms and legs. He struggled against them wildly for a few seconds, the receiver of the telephone still in his hands, before finally realising he was overmatched. People stopped to watch as he was dragged from the building and sent heaving through its heavy front doors and onto the steps outside.

Johnny landed with a heavy thud and was sure that he felt one of his ribs break beneath him. Tourists grouped outside of the building flocked towards him but he shooed them away and climbed to his feet. There were a few small scrapes on his chin and along his hands where he had attempted to break his fall.

“Thanks for nothing,” he muttered in the direction of the retreating security guards. “You fricking jerks.”

He glanced down at the scrape on his hands with a sigh.

“What the hell are you doing, Johnny? The woman said there was no Daily Bugle. Maybe Pete works somewhere else on this world. Heck, maybe Parker Industries is actually a real thing here.”

For as long as Johnny had known him, Peter Parker had struggled to make ends meet. He was one of the smartest men that Johnny knew, Reed aside, but he just about managed to hold a job down at the Bugle – and sometimes did some tutoring for a high school on the side. “Parker Industries” was a pipe dream they’d discussed more times than Johnny could count. If a nerd like you can end up with a smokeshow like Mary-Jane Watson, anything is possible, Johnny would say to him.

And it was.

A defeated sigh slipped through Johnny’s lips and he considered his options. “There must be some way of getting in contact with him.”

High above him, Johnny heard the sound of a telecopter noisily passing by. He looked up at the logo of the TV channel printed on the side.

There was one thing, Johnny thought, as he mulled over the ramifications of the only course of action he could see before him. He undid his hoodie and threw it to the ground. Johnny’s fingers tugged at the first two buttons of his shirt clumsily before settling on tearing it open. The shirt fell to the ground and the buttons skittled along the pavement. By the time Johnny took down his trousers, people were watching on.

“Sorry, Sue,” Johnny muttered as he burst into flames.

There were murmurs of shock from the people around him and cameras flashing in his direction as Johnny took to the skies. Just feeling the wind whipping past his head as he climbed through the air and above New York’s towering buildings gave him a rush. The movements came naturally to him – the mask etched into his memory so deeply he could recall it in his sleep. Finally, once Johnny had come to a stop, he was stood proudly beside a flaming Spider-Man mask that burned brightly and proudly above all else.

“If you’re out there, Peter, now would be the time to make yourself known, because I’m going to be in for a whole world of trouble when I get back to the Baxter Building.”

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Have I done that before? I was just gonna let that be a recurring motif in that post. Don't really care much for Korn, I did like Never Never when I was fourteen though. On the other hand, I do luv luv luv Incendiary.

@Nightrunner

I don't know what any of this means and I don't think I want to know what it means.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

None posts deep and we're about to finish this origin story, kinda.

@Nightrunner

Are you going to keep making references to random drummers in all of your posts? Asking for a friend.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Baxter Building, New York

It was the morning. At least, Ben Grimm thought it was the morning. He rolled over in his bed to see that the clock had just struck seventeen minutes past ten. He’d spent his evening helplessly watching what morsels of footage they received at the Baxter Building of Superman and the Flash battle against the Silver Surfer. When they had gone to bed, the Surfer had been downed – but they weren’t sure how long it would be until his master would be upon them. In short, Ben wasn’t sure whether there would be a world to wake up to if he went to sleep last night. He was glad to see that there was.

The Thing climbed up from his specially-reinforced bed and made his way towards his en suite bathroom. After a hurried shower he stood before a large mirror and brushed his pearly white teeth. There was a shaving foam dispenser beside the taps that Grimm tapped with a smile. He slathered the foam on the lower half of his face and chuckled at his reflection before washing it away and heading down to the kitchen.

There waiting for him on the counter was a baloney sandwich with a handwritten note from Sue. He glanced at it but the sound of football from the living room distracted him and he set the note down, picked up the baloney sandwich, and headed to the source of the noise.

Guy Gardner was sat on living room sofa with a root beer in his hand. On the television, highlights from the Gotham Knights-Metropolis Meteors game earlier that morning were playing. The ginger-haired SHIELD agent nodded in acknowledgement and handed the Thing a root beer as he plonked himself on the sofa beside him.

“What the hell happened to you?” Ben asked as he noticed the shiner below Gardner’s eye. “You look like a bag of crap.”

“I feel like one too,” Guy said curtly as he tracked the path of a deep pass on the television screen.

Unsatisfied by the shortness of the answer he’d received, Ben cleared his throat and leaned towards Gardner with an expectant look. Guy let out a sigh as the deep pass fell to the ground incomplete, felt the weight of Ben’s gaze on him, and let out a sigh as he prepared to recount a tale he was clearly reluctant to tell.

“The world’s ending and I see a bunch of kids trying to loot a mom-and-pop convenience store. Do I say to myself ‘screw it, they’re probably insured’ and leave them to it? Of course not. I figure I can go talk some sense into the little bastards. Turns out I was wrong.”

To Guy’s surprise, Ben’s craggy features did not move an inch. They were perfectly still for the first few seconds as if he was trying to process the information that Guy had just unloaded. Then a particularly conspicuous-looking frown appeared on the Thing’s face and he set down the bottle of root beer with care.

“You’re telling me that big, bad SHIELD agent Guy Gardner got his ass handed to him by a bunch of snot-nosed punks?”

Gardner nodded sheepishly.

Ben erupted into a fit of laughter that was so sudden it made Guy flinch. There was a look of genuine mirth on Grimm’s face as his shoulders bounced up and down uncontrollably. After a good thirty to forty seconds of uninterrupted laughter, Ben slowly began to calm down. In the corner of his famous blue eyes a few tears had collected. His orange digits scraped them away as he let out a contented sigh.

“Oh man, that is too good to be true.”

Guy shook his head disapprovingly as he took a swig from the bottle in his hand. “What was I supposed to do?”

“If they’re old enough to loot, they’re old enough to get their asses whooped,” Ben shrugged. “Heh, you try and pull that kind of thing on Yancy Street and you might get more than your ass whooped.”

For the first time since they had met, Grimm saw something change in Gardner – the bravado, that chutzpah that he possessed in spades, melted away and was replaced not with fear or anxiety, but something much deeper than that. He wasn’t sure what he’d hit upon but he knew that he’d hit upon something.

“Beating on kids isn’t my style,” the SHIELD agent muttered before turning back to the screen.

Sensing that he’d struck a nerve, Ben rejoined Guy in watching the highlights. He alternated swigs of root beer and bites of the baloney sandwich that Sue had prepared for him in the morning. It wasn’t until Grimm was halfway through the thing that he’d remembered there had been a note from Sue attached to it – and that he hadn’t seen her all morning.

There was a note of concern in Ben’s voice that he did his best to mask. “Have you seen Suzie?”

“She left for Washington this morning,” Guy responded nonchalantly without so much as looking away from the television.

“Washington?!” Ben hollered as he let the baloney sandwich drop to the ground. “What for?”

The SHIELD agent shrugged his shoulders.

“Said she wanted to give Hill a piece of her mind in person.”

Ben’s eyes widened in shock. “And you just let her go?”

“What can I say?” Guy said with a mischievous smile. “I’d already had my ass handed to me once and didn’t quite feel like having it happen a second time. Plus I’m here to stop the four of you from getting yourselves into trouble, not to stop the Fürher from getting chewed out.”

Gardner reached down, picked up the baloney sandwich, and blew on it to clean it of dust. He bit down on it greedily and sank back into the sofa with a contented smile. Ben let out a chuckle as he imagined the world of hurt that was coming Maria Hill’s way and then gestured to Gardner to pass him another bottle.

Guy cracked it open and Ben took a hearty glug from it before letting a smile cross his lips. “You know what? You’re not too bad, Carrot Top.”

The two men shared a fraternal smile. It was cut short by the sudden appearance of a familiar sign on the screen in front of them. The football highlights had given way to breaking news footage taken from a helicopter high above New York. Emblazoned in the sky was a sign familiar to Ben Grimm, but not Guy Gardner – it was Spider-Man’s mask. Floating in the sky beside it was none other than the Human Torch.

“Fuck,” Guy muttered as he stood up. He brushed crumbs from his lap and looked towards Ben. “Looks like the two of us are going for a ride.”