New York City (Ultimate Universe), Saturday early evening
Spider-Man
There was bad and there was bad. Spider-Man thought that today had been about as bad as it got, but then he came face-to-abs with the Hulk. If he moved... Hulk might start smashing things. If he fled... Hulk might start smashing things. Basically anything he did... Hulk might start smashing things.
So Spider-Man did the only think he could think of. "Hi. Um, I'm Spider-Man. Hulk? Do you know where you are?"
Hulk
"Hulk..." the Hulk said, his voice booming as quietly as possible. Hulk had a very big voice, as it turned out. "Hulk wet."
Spider-Man
"Of course. We all are, Hulk," Spider-Man said, satisfied that he wasn't going to have to deal with the world's only nine foot tall walking, talking natural disaster. "Everyone is wet. And people are hurt and some people died. I need to help them." Spider-Man considered the situation for a moment. "Will you help me?"
Hulk
Hulk just looked down at the talking bug man as calmly as he could manage. "Hulk help little friend," he decided.
Spider-Man
"Okay," Spider-Man said. "Um. Follow me."
Hearing a scream, Spider-Man led his unlikely partner to a burning building. Spider-Man gave people a web to escape with. If they slipped, Hulk was there to catch them. A subway car somehow ended up on a roof, Hulk picked it up so Spider-Man could search in vain for survivors. But all of the death was getting to be too much for Spider-Man.
He needed to stop, just for a moment. But that moment of calm had a side effect.
Dr. Bruce Banner
"What the hell happened here?"
Spider-Man
Spider-Man turned to look at a skinny guy barely holding up the pants Hulk had been wearing. "Doctor Banner?" he asked.
Dr. Bruce Banner
"What is this? Is... Is this New York?" Banner took a look at his the destruction all around him. "What did I do?"
Spider-Man
"Good news, Doc. It wasn't you. It was Magneto, the terrorist?" Spider-Man said. He needed to be encouraging. He kept the Hulk calm once, but he couldn't risk it a second time."Just calm down."
Dr. Bruce Banner
"I want..." Banner started. "I want to die. You don't have much time before the Hulk takes over again. I want you to kill me."
Spider-Man
"You didn't do this," Spider-Man repeated. Banner was clearly agitated and getting worse. From what he knew of the Hulk, he knew this wasn't going to end well. Already, Banner's shape was changing again and his skin was turning gray. In moments, an enraged Hulk was feet from Spider-Man. "Hulk! It's me! Your little friend, Spider-Man!" Spider-Man yelled, hoping Hulk would remember.
Hulk
"HULK SMASH!" Hulk answered.
Spider-Man
Before Hulk could actually smash him, Spider-Man leaped out of the way, letting the dodged punch wreck the building he had just been standing on. Using his webs to speed away, Spider-Man did his best to get out of the vicinity, but Hulk was catching up by jumping massive distances.
Spider-Man needed somewhere to rest. Somewhere away from the Hulk, somewhere he could get his wits about him again. It had started to dawn on him what neighborhood they were in when he noticed the purple light and smoke radiating from a large house. Then, when he got a closer look, he noticed the demons.
Spider-Man landed on the sidewalk across the street and just stared. It took him a moment to realize that the Hulk had done the same. "No two ways about it. Today bites," Spider-Man said.
Zero
There were a lot of demons, and some of them were quite large, so it might take a little while for them to notice that the focus of the demons' attention was a girl. A girl with pink and blue hair who was hitting and/or stabbing the demons with anything handy with additional kicking, punching, and even biting as necessary. She was also shouting obscenities, many of which were not actual words, if the rest wasn't enough to make an educated guess as to her identity.
"SQUALLIN' BACKBITER--OI YOU BRABLISTER GET BACK HERE!"
Zero would have to agree. Today bit.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man recognized the yelling immediately. "I really shouldn't be surprised that she managed to get into the middle of that already."
Leaping towards Zero, Spider-Man asked, "What would your mother say if she heard you using that kind of language, young lady?" as he kicked a demon in the back of the head.
Zero
"She'd say hit 'em harder!" Zero hollered, and punched a demon in what she thought was its face. "'Bout time you showed up!" She bludgeoned another one with the first aid kit, as Daredevil had suggested.
Spider-Man
"Sorry, I had some issues to take care of. Fortunately, one of them is very good at smashing things that need a good smashing!" Spider-Man said, webbing another demon.
Unfortunately, he didn't hear any smashing. The Hulk was just standing there, surrounded by demons. "Huh. He's usually a lot more active than that."
Zero
"Sounds like my kinda guy!" The demons seemed to realize she had something else to hit them with, and this concerned them, because they backed off a little, buying her space to look over at the Hulk. "Whoabig."
And then she got tackled by a demon. "GERROFF GERROFF GERROFF!" she shrieked, while delivering punishing kicks with her steel-toed boots. They were magic, you know.
Spider-Man
"Want a hand?" Spider-Man shot a webline at the demon's face and pulled it off of Zero. It didn't go very far, but she'd have an easier time fighting it now.
Hulk
The demons surrounding the Hulk started to change, turning into human shapes. "You killed us," they chanted. "You killed us all." Hulk finally started lashing out at them, but there just seemed to be too many of them. They were starting to swarm, holding him back with sheer numbers.
Zero
"My hero," Zero said, and scrambled up to deal out some punishment to the demon. It had managed to rip the sleeve of her jacket and scratch her arm, and she'd liked that jacket. Between blows, she managed to get out some vital information. "They're--fear, something about fear--there was a man in a red cape."
Spider-Man
"Red cape?" Spider-Man asked, looking in the direction his spider-sense was pointing him toward.
Nightmare
The body of Doctor Strange strode towards Spider-Man. "I've met you before," it said. "You were a gorgeous vessel for me. Let me show you your nightmares."
Spider-Man
That was the key word for Spider-Man. "Oh no. No, no, no." He'd dealt with this guy before. Something called Nightmare. He tried to use Peter as a bridge to this world once, a long time ago, months before he had even gone to Fandom.
Nightmare's Demons
The demons around Peter had changed, too, turning into a mass of his worst villains. The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro... They were all standing in front of him. "Crud."
Zero
"That would be...squall." Clearly she'd gotten off easy with the attack of the sweater. Zero rounded on red cape guy--she didn't know it was Doctor Strange, or something wearing Doctor Strange--and said, "Stop it!"
Spider-Man
"Don't worry about it, Zero," Spider-Man said. "None of this is real. This Nightmare guy gets into your mind and he makes all of this magic crap show up, but he can't really do anything. I mean, nothing in my head is worse than what's actually happen-"
And that's when one of Doctor Octopus's arms grabbed him by the face and threw him into a building.
Nightmare
"Mister Parker is wrong," Nightmare announced, looking at Zero. "Their nightmares are so powerful, him and his monstrous friend over there. I've waited so long to come to this world. To be free in this world. And they're giving me the power to do it. With every second, and every horrible thought."
Nightmare's Demons
To emphasize this point, Spider-Man was punched out of the building by the Green Goblin.
Zero
Zero would have facepalmed if the situation had been less dire. She could have told him they could attack him. The sweater had seemed real enough. Luckily, Peter was sturdy.
"Right," Zero said slowly, bending down to pick up her mallet, rather shorter since the handle had broken hitting a demon. She'd used it to stab another one. "See, here's the thing. That's my boyfriend." Messing with a Hopeless-Savage's boyfriend: generally bad for your health. Just ask British Special Forces and the Chinese mafia. "So, you can knock it off and go back where you came from, or I beat the squall out of you. Your call."
Nightmare
"This world is done and I'm feeding off of it. What do you think you can possibly do here?" Nightmare asked.
Spider-Man
"This world is done and I'm feeding off of it. What do you think you can possibly do here?" Nightmare asked.
Spider-Man, meanwhile, was being assaulted by more of his villains. Venom seemed larger than he was the last time Spider-Man saw him. Thanks to the physical assault he was taking and his rising fear, he was clearly losing his ability to fight Nightmare off.
Zero
Zero spared a moment to shout to Peter, "TRY NOT BEING SCARED!" then whirled back toward Nightmare and did what she always did to gits: tried to beat his head in.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man didn't hear that. He was a little too busy being beaten into the ground.
Nightmare
Nightmare took a few of Zero's shots before leaving Strange's body. Strange dropped to the ground as Nightmare reappeared a few feet away in the form of Electro, a man glowing bright blue with electrical energy. "He's right to be afraid. These are scary times. The world is done. It's over."
Hulk
That body switch seemed to disrupt Nightmare's focus just a little. It was enough to allow the Hulk to break free from his demons. He didn't look afraid anymore. Now he just looked angry.
Zero
He had supervillain menacing talk down pat, Zero would give him that. "Yeh, well, he--"
Whatever Zero had been about to say was cut off by her noticing something different about the big grey guy and cutting her eyes toward him. That...didn't seem good.
Hulk
Hulk grabbed Nightmare's electrified body from behind and started squeezing before trying to rip him in half. All of the demons, dead people, and villains disappeared as Nightmare turned into pure electric energy before reforming a few feet in front of Hulk. Realizing that he his power couldn't match Hulk's anger, Nightmare ran straight for a large orb that seemed to be giving off the mystical light that was flooding the area.
"HULK KILL YOU!" Hulk yelled as he gave chase.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man did his best to sit up as he watched this happen. His costume was torn apart, but he was still alive. That had to count for something.
Zero
Zero was not stupid enough to get into the middle of that. She scrambled toward Peter, because he'd just gotten his ass kicked and therefore needed checking on. "Oh my god oh my god 're you alright?"
Spider-Man
"Still breathing. Everything beyond that's a bonus right now," Spider-Man said. "How about you?"
Zero
"I'll live. There was--d'you know a guy called Daredevil?"
Spider-Man
"Yeah," Spider-Man said. "This one time he called me a baby who had no excuse for being in a costume. Did you meet him?"
He was kind of afraid of the answer, all things considered.
Zero
While it was nice to know that Zero's vague impression that he was kind of a cock had been dead-on, the news she was about to have to impart still sucked. "We came in together. Dragon got him."
Spider-Man
Spider-Man shook his head. "He deserved bet- Oh no." His spider-sense blaring, he looked over at the Hulk and yelled, "Hulk! No!"
Hulk
In order to flee the Hulk, Nightmare jumped into a large orb - the source of the light and smoke that filled the area. It had survived the destruction of Strange's house, and it transported Nightmare back to his own realm. Hulk wasn't able to follow, but he could smash. "HULK SMASH YOU!" he yelled, pounding on the orb until it started to crack.
Zero
Zero really, really didn't think that was a good idea. "Hulk, I don't think--"
Spider-Man
Spider-Man grabbed Zero and pulled her to the ground as Hulk gave the orb one final punch.
Explosion
With the destruction of the orb came a massive release of magical energy in the form of a giant explosion. Nearby buildings fell. The Hulk was thrown a couple blocks without suffering any injuries. And the only trace of Peter and Zero was Spider-Man's mask laying in the rubble.
[OOC: Plot elements and some dialogue taken from Marvel Comics' Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimatum. To find out what happened to Hulk, refer to Ultimatum. To find out what happened to Doctor Strange, check out two pages of Ultimatum. And then the aftermath of that is in Ultimate Fantastic Four: Requiem. This damn event really gave a middle finger to the art of straightforward narrative. To find out what happened to Peter and Zero... stay tuned!
Preplayed with the humorous and coordinated swerval_zero.]