NOVEL NEXT The stripping truth
I had to admit, Wanda had been pretty shrewd when she'd decided to make a meal for everyone. At the dinner table, the tension between the girls that had been in the air since Stacy had come to the lab was somehow released. Bobby and I took the opportunity to tell the story of how we'd met; so far, only Mary Jane had known about the kidnapping.
It was another step toward mutual understanding. I realize clearly that teamwork, like the idea of relying on other people, is new to everyone here. Deadpool, though she has considerable group experience, has always been a loner by nature, but she adapts quite well, plus she has a powerful incentive in the form of the promised cure. Bobby was also part of the group in the past, but she must have felt alienated after the merger with the symbiote, and our company is important to her because we don't reject her new nature. It must be worth a lot to her. Well, Gwen isn't even sure where she stands in the world yet, but she's already tasted the loneliness of not knowing her secret identity and not even her own mother as a friend. I, on the other hand, am the liaison for them. In the end, each of them is here only because of my initiative. Now they need to get used to each other. I really hope our little group grows into something bigger.
To solidify the camaraderie a little more, I told Gwen not to hesitate to ask me, all of us, for help.
"Just try not to bring any reporters or anything with you," Deadpool responded to my suggestion with some irony.
I guess that's mostly because she never showed her face to us. After all, it would have been a lot safer if it wasn't Spiderwoman, the superheroine that every dog in town knew, but Gwen Stacy, the student nobody knows.
"Oh, come on," I stood up for Gwen, "yours is no better."
"But I don't do several interviews a day, and, as you can see, I've managed to keep this place a secret all these years." I didn't have anything to say about that.
"I think I can handle it," Gwen replied tactfully, but with some challenge.
"So, are we kind of a team now?" Venom asked cheerfully, to steer the conversation in a more peaceful direction, "like the Fantastic Four."
"Yeah," Wanda sluggishly accepted her idea, "let's have a party and order strippers and have a drunken orgy for the occasion."
"Just strippers?" I chuckle, realizing that it is the male dancers we are talking about "And you want me to watch the one-eyed boa constrictor dance, too?"
"Mmmm... let's get you a hot girl dancer! Who do you like better? A fireman, a teacher, or maybe a policewoman?"
"Ha, why are you talking about professions? What difference does it make if at the end of the day, she takes off all her clothes?"
"Oh, believe me, she'll stay in her cap or with a hose in her hand! They always do that, I'm good at it..."
"Why?" Bobby wondered, suddenly interested in the subject.
Sensing an opportunity to shine her wit, Wilson immediately perked up, prepared to speak.
"Ha-ha, look. When chicks watch strippers, they want to see the stripper's dick, his pumped-up body, right?" Bobby nodded with a slightly embarrassed look at me, "Well, do you think it's the same with men? No! When a stripper, say in a police uniform, dances a striptease, she makes sure to leave her cap and holster. Because men need to know what her profession is, how much she earns. That's what turns them on! We want to know the size of the penis, they want to know the size of the salary. That's the truth."
"Well, since there are no losers here who are only interested in money in women, I think we can dispense with the police uniform," I say.
"Oh, I'm getting jealous of the bitch who's gonna give you a lap dance!" Wilson exclaimed and reached for her phone.
"Hey!" shrieked Stacy, "you can't be serious. What the hell is a striptease, you're the one who was talking about discretion a minute ago!"
"Spidey is right," said Bobby nervously, who also suddenly stopped liking the idea of having a party.
Wanda and I looked at each other, "Are they really falling for this joke?"
"Don't worry, there won't be any orgy," I reassured the girls, "Why don't you tell me who you were comparing us to? Some team of, uh... superheroes?"
"Fantastic Four," Bobby explains as if that's supposed to mean something to me, but, seeing my bewilderment, continues, "Really? You don't know the Fantastic Four? Jesus, Parker, even the most godforsaken farm in Texas knows about them, you live in New York!"
Deadpool and Gwen silently support Bobby's position, waiting for me to respond. But what can I say if I really don't know who they're talking about. I don't remember such a group of heroes in my past world and I've never come across any mention of anything like that in this one. The Internet is huge, you can't keep track of everyone, and I didn't set myself the goal of finding out all the information about all the known people with powers.
"So who is it?" Without going into the explanation of my ignorance, I ask.
"He's not kidding," Bobby exhaled shocked and looked for support from the other girls, "but do you know about them?"
"Of course," Stacy says, "they were the talk of the town last year, but I haven't heard any news for a long time. They seem to be more focused on science, and are trying to keep a low profile."
"Probably, they are looking for a way to bring their stone woman back to normal. She's even luckier with her powers than I am," Wanda's tone suggested that the stone woman must have more trouble than good from her powers. After all, it's not easy to get over the constant pain and disfigurement of Wilson's disease.
"Hey, why don't you tell me what it's about already!"
"Well, in a nutshell..."
Bobby went into the explanation. I had to admit, I was shocked. A portal into another dimension where five people got supernatural powers and then came back alive? That sounds crazy! What are the chances that another dimension won't kill you by radiation, gravity, temperature, or any of hundreds of other possible causes? After all, the range of environmental conditions at which a human can survive is negligible. The slightest deviation makes the area deadly to humans. It's like a story from a space opera in the sixties, where, crashing on an unknown planet, the heroes find themselves in conditions comparable to those on Earth. One chance in many billions! On most planets in one day only the temperature can vary in the range of hundreds of degrees, not to mention the presence of the atmosphere, cosmic radiation and other things in this spirit ... space is not a resort!
But that wasn't the most shocking part! The man who built the portal, who could it be? I should have looked him up earlier! Or about her? God, this was too much for me, I didn't want to know! Of course, I hoped that my friend and colleague Reed Richards had survived that experiment, but he hadn't been thrown into a woman's body, had he?
I was snapped out of my thoughts by the beep of my phone, echoed a moment later by Gwen's cell phone. M.J. was calling for Gwen and me to meet at their rehearsal spot in an hour and a half. I didn't read the text message on the girl's phone, of course, but I suspect Mary Jane had applied the mailing to the whole band. The gist of the message was that Anna, apparently heeding my advice, had made allowances for her daughter's punishment. And Red, immediately suggesting that everyone get together for a rehearsal in a couple of hours, called me too.
I figured it would take longer to solve the Osborne problem, so I warned M.J. that I might be gone for a few days, but since everything worked out so well, thanks to the symbiote, why not spend time with the girls, since they accepted me into their group so easily. All the urgent business is done: the samples have been processed, and the plasma and blood cells can be stored for about a month and a half, so I can afford a little rest.
Undoubtedly, Gwen guessed that I was also called to their rehearsal, and therefore, in order not to give us grounds for suspicion, she tried to think of the most distant excuse for her departure, besides, she did not delay with it and, saying that she had to be in another place in half an hour, hurriedly left us. Sneaky.
NOTE: As you might have guessed from this chapter, there are some differences between classic Marvel and the past world of Peter. Some people there did not have superpowers (Richards, for example), but most importantly, there Earth never made contact with any other alien civilizations. No Asgard, Skrulls, Thanos, or anything else.
And no magic. Only Earth and science.