Ultra Responsibility (My Hero Academia X Spider-Man Reader)

Issue 119 - Fighting Back

I woke up in the car again.

The engine had stopped.

The doors were open.

Uncle Ben was gone.

For several seconds, I remained slumped against the passenger window, waiting for him to return. The fog still pressed against the glass, but without the engine humming beneath me, the silence felt heavier.

"Uncle Ben?"

Nothing answered.

I straightened slowly and looked toward the driver's seat. His hands were no longer on the wheel. His brown coat was gone. There was no sign that anyone had ever been sitting there.

The seat belt tightened across my chest.

I grabbed it, but the material softened beneath my fingers. Instead of releasing from the buckle, it began to peel away from me in long black strands, crawling over my shirt before slipping down into the darkness beneath the seat.

I stared at it.

Then I stepped out of the car.

The door slammed shut behind me.

I spun around.

There was no car.

There was no fog.

There was nothing.

I stood in an endless black void, unable to see a floor beneath my feet or a sky above my head. There was no wind, no temperature, no horizon, yet I could still hear my own breathing as though the darkness had pressed itself against my ears to listen.

"Uncle Ben?"

My voice travelled ahead of me without producing an echo.

I started walking.

There was nowhere else to go.

At first, the void remained empty. Then thin black lines appeared in the distance, stretching from one side of the darkness to the other. As I approached, I realised they were webs.

Hundreds of them.

Black webbing hung around me in enormous tangled sheets. Some strands were thin enough to tremble as I passed, while others were as thick as ropes, dripping a dark liquid that vanished before it could reach the ground.

Shapes were suspended inside them.

People.

Or things that had once been people.

They hung with their arms trapped against their bodies, their faces hidden beneath shadows. Some moved faintly. Fingers twitched. Heads turned. Mouths opened without producing sound.

Most remained still.

I moved between them carefully, trying not to touch the webs.

"What is this place?"

One of the figures shifted.

I stopped.

The shadow was larger than the others, its shoulders broad beneath the webbing. A familiar skull emblem rested on its chest, almost completely swallowed by black strands.

"Frank?"

I approached him.

Frank Castle's face was barely visible beneath the darkness. His eyes were closed, and the webbing ran through him rather than around him, stitched into his arms, his neck, and his chest.

"Frank, can you hear me?"

There was no response.

I grabbed the webs covering his shoulder and pulled.