Deadpool Syndrome - Spider Soulmates

Chapter 9 - I Think It Kind Of Funny, I Think It Kind Of Sad

***GWEN***

A week or so goes by. In that time, Peter orders me that white hoodie, along with some matching skinny jeans (for which he somehow manages to guess my size), for my new Spider-Gwen costume. Of course, "Spider-Gwen" isn't going to be my actual code name, but I'm sticking with it for now because I think it sounds a little cooler than the inevitable "Spider-Woman" or, worse, "Spider-Girl." (Peter likes the latter, but I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of being called a girl by people who don't love me the way he does.)

I also spend the next week learning how to use my Spider-powers. Peter gives me a boxful of webshooters to train with, but I end up wasting at least half of them in two days. These webshooters, especially when they're clipped to my wrists, are harder to use than I would have thought before. It takes me quite a while to get my fingers flexible enough to reach the webshooters. And then I have to learn how to aim them properly as well. Luckily, we have a good demonstration dummy in Tony Stark. Everyone else agrees that he should "volunteer" for that duty after he keeps stealing Peter's webshooters and mishandling them several times. All the other Avengers (besides Black Widow) manage to get covered in web at least once each because of him.

Before long, it's the first day of May. Fury somehow manages to get ahold of a copy of Age of Ultron for a screening here at the Avengers facility, and everyone (but especially those who were in the movie) is invited to attend. I sit in and watch alongside everyone else, and am, appropriately, dazzled by the action and humor and even the more human, dramatic moments. I'm not very well-schooled on the work of Joss Whedon (other than watching the occasional old episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Peter and/or my brothers, who are all big fans), but he's got a great handle on how to make a movie, I can say that much. Even Ultron, whom I half-expect to voice his negative opinion on his portrayal at every turn, sits there cross-legged in the aisle in front of one of the exits, in rapt silence the whole time.

At the end of the movie, Vision (who was the one to finally kill Ultron for good, or so the movie makes it appear) approaches Ultron and holds out his hand, saying, "No hard feelings, right?"

Remaining seated so he can at least sort of be on Vision's level, Ultron shakes his hand, saying, "What do you think?"

"That's what I was hoping to hear," Vision says. "It's too bad, though, that the Marvel team didn't allow them to show me removing your chip and taking it with me."

"For those of you playing at home," Ultron says, "that's sort of how I'm still around today."

Fury approaches the front of the theater as the screen goes dark and the lights come on slowly. "Any questions?" he asks.

I raise my hand and pose the first one. "Sorry, but I'm really confused about one thing. All these movies - they're being released now in some other world, but how long ago did these events all happen? For real, I mean. For..." I'm about to say "For us," except I wasn't part of this movie. And yet, after spending over a week living with the Avengers, I'm already considering myself a member of the team. Peter, too, although from what I've heard, he already found his way into their ranks, sometime after I died. That's what Skye says, anyway. Skye's my most reliable resource on these things, along with her fellow science-oriented SHIELD agents.

Fury has enough information to answer my question, though. To the best of his ability, anyway. "There's a lag between the events happening for us and the movies being released by Marvel in other universes. Usually, it's anywhere from six to twenty-four months."

Bruce stands up and says, "In this case, the lag was ten months. All the events of Age of Ultron took place in July of last year for us. At the time, all the other universes where they see these movies, they were being distracted by the hype train for Guardians of the Galaxy."