Deadpool Syndrome - Marvel's Folly

Chapter 3 - There's An Ordinary World

***PETER***

I lift one side of the headset - the side with the attached mike snaking its way towards my mouth - and look up at Ricky. "Dude. Seriously. How the hell does this thing work?"

"I could sit here and spend nine or ten hours explaining it," he says, raising his eyebrows, "but that's not gonna be nearly as interesting a story as yours."

"He says, like he's sure it's the God's honest truth." Holland chuckles at his own joke.

Tuning out his laughter - and Maguire's as well - I lower the headset back over my ear and speak into the mike again. "Gwen? Are you still there?"

"Yeah," she says, her voice breaking. "I-I'm here. And so are Wanda and Kitty - you remember Kitty, right?"

I blink and return to the coroner's lab table, then spot Gwen and Kitty out of the corner of my eye. "There you are," I say. "I wish I could turn my head and see you better." Kitty's quick to oblige my request, turning my corpse's head. "Okay, that was gross, but...okay. So...Gwen. You said you wanted me to tell you what's happened to me?"

"Let me guess," Gwen says. She's got tears streaming freely down her cheeks, but she's smiling all the same. "'Not much to tell, really?'" She asks that question in a crude imitation of my own voice.

"That's really my catchphrase now?" I ask. Somewhere looking up from my current position - relatively speaking, that is - Wanda walks into the room again. "Hi, Wanda. I didn't scare you too badly, did I?"

She shakes her head. "You'll have to do better than that."

"Don't tempt me." I focus in on Gwen again. It's hard to actually look at anything that isn't directly ahead of me, because my dead eyes really, really don't want to move. "Okay, so...well, I died. You know that much, right?"

"Mm-hmm," Gwen says. "Go on."

"Well, after that, I woke up and...well, now I'm in Ricky's head. Or something." I return to Ricky's head space. "That's where I am, right? I'm not in any, you know, 'real world' setting?"

"If it's in my head, it's real," Ricky says. "Just not real real."

"Right." I blink back to the coroner's lab - Jesus, this switching between dimensions or whatever is making me hella dizzy. "So...yeah, Ricky's head. He's determined not to let me be done with this story yet, so he's brought me here, somehow. Don't ask - I don't know jack about how it works."

"Well..." Gwen swallows. "Well, I'm so glad I can still talk to you. But I...I-I'd rather you were back, honestly."

"You mean back in my body completely, and not just a voice in the air?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that."

I sigh. "Oh, I know. I wish I could, but...I don't think Ricky's got the magical experience for that sort of miracle yet."

I expect him to protest loudly in my ear, but all I hear from him is a resigned, "Unfortunately, he's right." I think that's what he says, anyway. With the headset on, it's hard to tell.

"But you know what?" I continue. "It's not all bad. Get this - I'm not the only Spider-Man in the house. There's three of them, me included."

"You, Tobey Maguire, and...who else?" Gwen asks.

"The one who's supposed to replace me," I say. "He's even more British than I am, if you can believe that."

Kitty snickers. "Since when are you British?"

"We'll explain later," says Gwen.

"Hey, if this new Spidey makes his way to our world," I say, getting a silly idea in my head, "he could replace me as your boyfriend."