8 Final fight

The battle raged intensely as we each engaged our villainous counterparts.

"Looks like the spider caught himself a few flies!" Doc Ock taunted, her metallic tentacles whirring as he attacked Peter and Gwen.

"You talk too much, Doc!" Gwen shouted, dodging a massive tentacle strike. "Why don't you just shut your mouth for once?"

Noir traded blistering gunfire with the brutal crime lord Tombstone, his jaw set in grim determination. "You're going down, Tomby. Just like all the other low-life punks."

"Is that so, Spider-Man?" Tombstone boomed, shrugging off Noir's bullets. "We'll just see about that!"

Meanwhile, Peni called out commands to her mech suit as she and the whimsical Spider-Ham confronted the mechanical Scorpion.

"Does this sting a little, funny bug?" The scorpion hissed, lashing out with his deadly tail.

"Hey, did someone order the crab cakes?" Ham quipped. "Cause you're getting steamed, clawzilla!"

As for me, I found myself squaring off against the altered Norman Osborn. His body mutated in violent, unstable ways as he charged at me with reckless abandon.

"You shouldn't have come here, little spider," Osborn growled, his voice twisted and inhuman. "I'm going to pull off every one of your little legs!"

I dodged his wild blows, underestimating his new level of savagery at first as he matched my speed. Seizing an opening, I unleashed a concentrated venom blast. "How's that for style points, gobby?"

But the monster that Osborn had become simply would not stay down. He caught me by surprise, grabbing my ankle and smashing me into the ground with brutal Hulk-like force.

"Did you really think you could stop me so easily?" he sneered, looming over me.

Thinking quickly, I switched to an intangible state, phasing through his grip to escape his crushing hands, though I was left battered and bleeding.

Half my mask had been shredded away, but I didn't care if my identity was exposed here. "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to hit a lady?" I shot back, reeling from the impact. Once this was over, I'd be returning to my own dimension anyway.

As the fight continued, I suddenly sensed a familiar presence join the fray—Miles had arrived, teaming up with Peter to double-team the devious Doc Ock.

"Nice of you to make it, kid!" Peter called out as they fought back-to-back.

Miles didn't respond; his jaw set in determination as he focused his venom blasts.

Gwen broke off to join me against the rampaging Osborn, and we established a rhythm: she would draw his raging focus, allowing me to land solid blows, and then I'd attract his aggression so she could counter-attack.

"Over here, you ugly green freak!" Gwen shouted defiantly. "Let's see what you've got!"

But then something terrible and unexpected happened. Osborn caught Gwen with a vicious backhand that sent her slamming through a concrete barrier.

"Gwen!" I cried out in horror.

As she struggled to get up, clutching her ribs, his mutated goblin arm morphed into long, viciously sharp claws.

A cold clarity washed over me as I realised why—he must have ingested the same lizard formula that had transformed Dr. Connors into the Lizard. Gwen went white as a sheet, no doubt reminded of her own horrific encounter with the Peter of her world.

"No...not again," she whispered, her eyes widening in panic.

Osborn pulled his arm back, talons gleaming as he prepared to disembowel Gwen, where she lay stunned. Reacting instantly, I launched myself between them and felt those razor-edged claws punch straight through my abdomen in a blaze of white-hot agony.

My blood spilled out in a torrent, but I shook it off, refusing to falter. "Gotcha," I hissed through gritted teeth.

I discharged every ounce of bioelectric energy I had built up in a single furious blast. Norman's mutated body convulsed violently as the current tore through him, his claws retracting as he collapsed in a smouldering heap.

"Alice!" Gwen cried out, struggling to her feet.

In that brief moment of stillness, my own strength finally left me in a rush. I could feel myself rapidly weakening from the grievous wound. Gwen started towards me, her hand outstretched to catch me.

But then, an entire section of the wall exploded inward with incredible force, raining shattered debris in every direction. Gwen was forced back by the powerful concussive blast, shielding her self..

"No! Alice!" Noir shouted, seeing me teetering on the edge. But it was too late.

I felt myself falling, tumbling over the railing towards the massive particle collider below. This is it; I realised it with a strange sense of tranquility. This is how it ends for me.

"Alice, grab my hand!" Miles yelled, shooting a webline towards me desperately. But I was already out of reach, plummeting downward.

At least Gwen got the goober from me, I thought as I fell. She could shut this thing down, close the dimensional breach, and stop any more universal damage from occurring.

"We'll find a way to get you back!" Peni tried to reassure me, but her voice was growing fainter. "Just hang on!"

As I fell, an odd calmness settled over me. I began glitching again, faster and more intensely than ever before. But there was no fear, no pain. Just...relaxation, somehow.

Flashes of memory, of other lives and incarnations, flickered through my mind's eye. And then, something transcendent—I gazed out over a vast, infinite cosmos, with each blazing star connected to the others via an intricate, gossamer web of destiny and quantum strings.

I felt the threads that bound every iteration of my being across the past, present, and future converging. Though the true breadth of my abilities was still obscured, I could sense the enormity of my potential finally unfolding.

In that boundless moment, I finally understood the truth of my greater power and my purpose. My second, truest ability.

Quantum Manipulation.

"I can feel it..." I whispered in awe, the realisation washing over me. "This is my true power..."

Perhaps this was not the end at all. Perhaps it was only the beginning of something far greater, something cosmic, and...

The cosmic vision was abruptly cut short as my fracturing body impacted with the swirling nexus of energy at the heart of the particle collider with a thunderous boom. For an instant, everything went blindingly white as I was consumed by the unstable rift.

As I pulled myself up from the floor, battered but very much alive, a stunned silence fell over the dimly lit control room. The others stared at me in shock and disbelief.

"Alice?" Gwen was the first to find her voice, her eyes wide. "Is that really you?"

"Yeah, it's me, alright," I confirmed with a wry smile, giving myself a once-over. Aside from some cuts and bruises, I seemed to be in one piece. "Sorry for the melodramatic exit there."

"But...we just saw you get blasted by the particle collider," Peter said slowly, still trying to process what he was seeing. "How are you still..."

I shrugged, wincing slightly at the residual aches. "Your guess is as good as mine. One second I was hitting that swirling vortex, and the next I was just...here, watching myself fall into it from like 10 feet away."

An uneasy silence fell over the group as the implications set in. I had just witnessed myself being obliterated in a cosmic blast, yet here I stood before them, seemingly no worse for wear.

"I think... when I released all that energy I'd absorbed from the collider, it triggered a sort of temporal paradox due to my second ability, which is 'Quantum Manipulation'," I said slowly, the realisation coming together. "My body couldn't handle containing that much power, so instead of being destroyed, I quantum leaped behind myself by a few seconds."

Noir adjusted his hat, regarding me with a new sense of wonder. "Well, I'll be. I guess the little webhead's ability really is manipulating quantum probability fields after all."

"So you can...what, travel through time?" Miles asked, his eyes widening.

"Not exactly," I said, shaking my head. "More like achieve localized temporal displacement by overloading my body's energy capacitors. But only backwards for a few seconds at most, and pretty unpredictably at that."

I flexed my hands, feeling the cosmic resonance still thrumming through me at a low level. "Wild, I know. But that's not even half of what I experienced in that infinite moment..."

"Guys, I'm fine. Let's continue our mission," I said, trying to steer the conversation back to our task at hand. But I could see in their eyes that this was a lot to process. And I couldn't blame them. After all, I was still trying to wrap my head around it myself.

We all approached the system to see if we could modify the collider. Miles put the goober in, stabilised the collider, and opened the portal.

"It was a nice adventure, guys."

"Guess this is over."

"I got the portal open. You first, Peni."

"Thanks, Miles, from both of us. Sayonara."

Next was Noir. He came to me and patted me. It's still annoying as ever, but guess what? It will be the last time for Noir.

"Well, I should get married. Take care; I love you all. And I will take this cube. I don't get it, but I will figure it out."

"Thanks, Noir, for everything." I said to Noir.

"No worries." He jumped down.

"I am next, guys."

"Thanks Alice."

"No problem Gwen, I got healing factor."

"So, are we friends?" Miles asked.

"Of course, we are." I shook my hand with both Gwen and Miles.

"I will definitely visit you all after I master my ability." I jumped down to the portal.

"And once again, it was nice meeting you all."

I again came over to the same place, but this time I was attracted to a certain star, or my own dimension. I passed through the dimension tunnel to reach there.

At the end of the portal, I fell down over a garbage dump. After climbing out, I realised I was in an alleyway. I realised I don't have any dresses other than a spider costume, which is full of holes. I sealed them with webs, and I found a coat out of nowhere, which I put over me.

I moved through the alley and found someone using the radio announcing something.

"The CEO of Stark Industry, Tony Stark, recently went missing in the previous expedition for the demonstration of Jericho."

"What the f*ck?"