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Peni Parker Lore

Gone with the Thunder

"It sure would be easy to be sad," thought Peni Parker as she climbed out of the hot springs and got ready for her next patrol. She'd lost her parents, the world had been completely turned upside down because some guy named Doom had scrambled all of time, ruining the "Web of Life and Destiny" or whatever, and if that wasn't bad enough, she was in Tokyo and was set to miss every high school event in New York for the next forever. Seriously heavy stuff, but at least she would get to skip finals.

She'd also had a lot of time to put her Dad's SP//dr mech through its paces and work in his old lab. It wasn't easy letting herself be bitten by a radioactive spider, but Peni would have done it a hundred times over to be able to follow in her Dad's footsteps. Now, she is linked to SP//dr, fighting bad guys and protecting not just Tokyo, but the entirety of time and space!

Plus there's this Chronovium stuff everywhere? What even is that? She knew people were after it, but what did it do exactly? She'd run some experiments that suggested it was, like, crystallized time, but that didn't explain much. Next time Peni took SP//dr in for maintenance and upgrades, she planned to spend a little more time figuring out exactly what Chronovium could do.

Life was a lot better when you focused on the positive. She needed to remind herself of that from time to time, because she spent a lot of her time fighting a whole slew of weirdos from other timelines that probably didn't even know they were threatening the collapse of all of time and space. Or were they? Those details weren't always clear to Peni, but she loved hearing the Master Weaver and his apprentice, Spider-Zero, argue about it. And she knew that when push came to shove — as it often had since the Timestream Entanglement — she and SP//dr would defend the Web, even on mundane patrol missions like the one she was starting just now.

That meant defending both the Master Weaver and Spider-Zero, who were always so preoccupied with mending and weaving that they pretty much never noticed when they were about to be attacked.

Like right now.

A single Doombot angled toward the Nexus at the heart of the Web of Life and Destiny. The Master Weaver never noticed it. Peni did, though, and she had a plan. "SP//dr, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

SP//dr was.

Peni tensed, and SP//dr leapt away from the Web strand she'd been sitting on, falling toward the Doombot. She had to time this just right, or it would be a long fall to the ground somewhere in Shinjuku. SP//dr might be able to handle the fall, but the shock of landing wouldn't do Peni any good.

But her timing, as it turned out, was perfect. The Doombot noticed her far too late, just as she had shot her own webs out from SP//dr's spinnerets and used a Web strand to snap her around in a long arc. The Doombot barely turned around when SP//dr slammed into it feet-first. Sparks shot from its chassis and bits of armor plating stuck to nearby stands of the Web as the Doombot tumbled away into the neon-speckled darkness below.

Peni finished off the maneuver with a perfect, thruster-assisted double somersault that landed her on an upper strand of the Web, close enough to the Nexus where she could see both the Master Weaver and Spider-Zero. They were talking, and Peni didn't want to interrupt, so she hung upside down, just because, until Spider-Zero headed out onto one of the Web's strands, making little repairs as she went. Peni noticed Spider-Zero removing stuck bits of Doombot armor on her way, and felt a little guilty — but hey, she'd done what a hero had to do. Protect the Web!

Still, did Doom — either Doom — ever run out of those things?

"I suspect not," a familiar voice said by her side, and Peni jumped. It was the Master Weaver.

"Hey," Peni said. "Did you just read my mind?"

"Not exactly. I sensed certain vibrations in the Web, and they suggested to me what you were thinking."

"Right." Peni said. "Same diff. Hey, I've been meaning to ask you. I've been doing some experiments in my Dad's lab — my lab now — and Chronovium, wow, what is that stuff, anyway?"

"Here, it has become part of the Web," the Master Weaver replied. "But all things are ultimately part of the Web."

Which was a super Master Weaver-like thing to say, but didn't really bring a lot of clarity to the situation?

Before Peni could rephrase the question, the Master Weaver had passed on to another part of the Web. She decided to take the same question to Spider-Zero.

Also, she wanted to know if anybody knew when Doom was going to attack the Web himself. That seemed like a near-certainty, since there were just about always Doombots around, but nobody ever wanted to talk about it. Peni didn't know whether that was because they didn't know, or didn't want to tell her because she was a kid, or some other stupid reason, but she felt pretty strongly that Doom attacking the Web was a logical next step for him. Either of them. They had to be ready!

As she approached Spider-Zero, Peni was baffled to see the Weaver's apprentice doing something with...paper? At this distance it was hard to tell. She vaulted over onto another strand, then another, zigzagging until she got close enough to Spider-Zero that she could see Spider-Zero dropping little pieces of Chronovium into some of the portals that existed around the Nexus. The Chronovium in the Web was kind of sticky, and it looked like Spider-Zero was...yeah, she was writing something on pieces of paper and then sticking those pieces of paper to Chronovium?

"Hey!" Peni called when she was close enough. "What are you writing?"

"A message to another version of myself," Spider-Zero said.

"How do you know where to find other versions of yourself?"

"That's part of what the Master Weaver is teaching me," Spider-Zero said. "I can listen in on an infinite number of other worlds and futures. Sometimes I can even..." She made a conducting motion with both hands. "Influence them a little."

"So you could do something about Doom? Or the Timestream Entanglement!" Peni's thoughts drifted to maybe even saving her father, but she couldn't bring herself to say it. Was it even possible? And if he came back, would Peni just be a regular person again? It would be worth it.

Spider-Zero was watching her, as if she could see the emotional tug-of-war going on inside Peni's mind. "Well...possibly. But that is, if you'll forgive the expression, a very tangled web. Tugging on one strand will have all kinds of unpredictable effects. I wouldn't take any action until I've had more time to trace the path of each strand."

"How much time?"

"Dunno, more than we've got with so much happening."

"Okay, so anyway, there are more Doombots climbing the Web to get you and the Master Weaver." Peni had just spotted them, jetting upward from the ground.

Spider-Zero looked down. "Uh huh," she said. She scribbled something on a piece of paper and stuck it to a bit of Chronovium. Then she pushed that through a tiny portal that opened briefly, like a soap bubble, by her hand. The minute she pushed the message through, the portal was gone.

A split second after that, all three Doombots were gone too, swallowed up by a larger version of that portal that appeared around them and then blinked out of existence.

"Whoa," Peni said. "That's definitely cooler than what I did."

"Oh, it's not a competition," Spider-Zero said. "We all protect the Web in our own ways."

"Speaking of that," Peni said, "you guys know that sooner or later Doom is going to get sick of sending Doombots and when he does, he'll show up to finish the job himself?"

"Wouldn't surprise me," Spider-Zero said.

"So should we, like, maybe be doing something about it?"

"What makes you think we aren't?"

Peni groaned. "You sound more and more like the Weaver every day."

Spider-Zero smiled. "He's teaching me a lot. You too, I think. You've grown a lot since you started protecting the Web."

This had Peni feeling pretty good about herself until she looked up and saw Spider-Zero right there next to her. "I have to repair that," Spider-Zero said, pointing at the dangling strands of the Web Peni had accidentally snapped while fighting the Doombot.

"I had to!" Peni protested.

"I know," Spider-Zero said. "I'm not angry. I just have to repair the Web. That's what I do. That's who I am. And without the Web —"

It was Peni's turn to say, "I know." After the Timestream Entanglement, the Web was more important than ever. It wasn't just the Dooms they had to worry about, but any other dimension-hopping villain or creature might appear at any moment to destroy the Web or the Weaver — or they might try to destroy Tokyo, or Japan, or the world, or all worlds!

But none of that was going to happen while Peni Parker was on patrol. That should be a banner, she thought: PENI PARKER ON PATROL! How cool would it be to have her own banner that followed her around, and maybe her own sound effects. A synthesized soundtrack! Even better. She started composing the tune in her head as SP//dr leapt and climbed among the endless strands of the Web. Soon enough, she had Spider-Zero back where she belonged.

She looked down on the city, then up at the vastness of the Web and the universes beyond it. "I wish my father could have seen this."

"My father is also dead," Spider-Zero said, pausing for a moment in her work. "But I think he would be proud of the work I do. Same for you."

Well, that gave Peni a little twinkle in her heart. This hero business wasn't just about the fights. It could make you feel good sometimes too.