RIPPLE ( peter parker.. ) ✔

001. When the Clock Stroke "Yes"..

"This is the 2709th Universe and let me tell you, I am beginning to understand these things only ever get worse the further we get from the centre of the map," Wendy talked to her recorder. She had picked it up somewhere along the first five universes drawn on her map. That heavy thing she carried around was nothing but a stuck together gigantic formation of several A4 pages stolen from all over the space-time regions of reality. The back of some pieces of the map were documents, alien or human, sometimes important too, other times simply just there to hold the walking glossary of all almost three thousand universes Wendy Weber has been through in travel so long she lost count to years.

There were few relics which gave her map a colorist worth carrying around and flaunting in her recordings: like its centerpiece, which was nothing else but the back of the Declaration of Independence Nicholas Cage was after so badly.

With the recorder up to her mouth, as if she was a beginner holding a microphone for the first time, she stepped with a dancer's grace through the wreckage which was New York City in that particular year. "3012," she let her recorder know, her only friend besides the multiverse itseld which, by her eloquent knowledge, was as much alive as the the world it held apart.

Wendy did not shy away from speaking loud and clear, with little to no care of what might lurk in the corners of the city, dirtier than she had ever seen it across other universes. "Green grime is on all walls, all shops are closed and desolate. People turned to savages, to hunters; world population seems to have decreased drastically for poor little Earth. Barely found a not expired casserole when I arrived. And the sky..."

Wendy kicked her head back and walked with her thoughts into the clouds. Unfortunately, no matter how hopeful her gaze was, it was stil met with disappointment; these clouds were not exactly puffy or welcoming enough to have anyone dream they could be touched, but instead they were green and filled with pollution, the very products of the war happening all about, louder and clearer than her own voice. They were the most prominent proof of the need of oxygen masks most of the time while being outside. Everyone wore them, so Wendy kept her emergency spare on too.

"Well, let's just say all the green moved to upper floors. Way above." Ironic to her words, Wendy lowered her gaze back to the desolation of Earth in this universe. Even with its pending gloom, her only conclusive reaction was treating it with a childish shrug.

Nothing had to be serious, not really, she has discovered after filling in a hundred universes on her map. Unless it was her one true world which she would find, it was better not bothering the unfitted universes and just let them carry on the events which confused her deeply.

"As for heroes," Wendy continued, "they are all pretty much extinct here from what I gather."

Amongst the records she kept on each universe she has been to, in order to justify how that was not her true home, Wendy noted down a special footnote: Heroic figures shape reality. Their absence dismantles it.

Each Universe entry held account of what heroes it had and which were missing entirely or temporarily (an unusual death perhaps has taken them away too soon). This one... well, it seemed to have none left, hence why, to her easy deduction, it was doing so badly.

"I don't know how all of them died, but by interviewing here and there the children of some of the very few barbaric locals left in New York City, I managed to gather this much: the Scarlet Witch went on a rampage in this universe, for unknown reasons, and she had to be put down by Doctor Strange. Her death caused a war amongst the heroes and Doctor Strange was a casualty of it. Unknowingly, that was a mistake from everyone. His demise left Earth vulnerable to mystical attacks, which immediately happened, preying away on all the planet's valuable resources, cutting down population numbers and probably annihilating the unprepared, remaining heroes. Oh-!"