I Shall Fall Along Side You.

OH DEAR GOD It’s been less than 24 hours and I honestly didn’t expect anyone to actually have reactions about my little “Capsicle Treatment” plot bunny I'mjustsooverwhelmedIfeelsovalidated.

At the same time though I’m all like WAIT WAIT WAIT HOLD ON I DIDN’T GET TO PART TWO YET.

Specifically, the circumstances surrounding Spidey’s time-freeze.

Simply put: World War Three.

A more detailed explanation tells you about how (for once) humanity isn’t fighting each other in this war.  It’s the ^&*^*ing Skrulls.

The Avengers caught the shape-shifting pond slime before they could get very far with their plan to infiltrate human government on all levels, but unfortunately not soon enough to nip the invasion in the bud.  In order to counter that pesky shape-shifting, Tony Stark made a sound-based program that makes it impossible for a Skrull to hold their stolen form when they hear it.

Tony then hacked the internet on a massive level, and embedded the program in every music file and song-creation program.  He literally made the Skrulls’ kryptonite music - something everyone has access to/possession of, on their personal computing devices.

The Skrulls retaliated by taking hostages.

Even if the music meant they were only able to do it for a short while anymore, whenever a Skrull “replaced” someone, they kidnapped the original and detained them on one of their hidden bases (on earth, because they honestly didn’t have spare resources to allocate to smuggling everything needed to keep humans alive off-planet).  If (when) a Skrull’s cover was compromised, it came with an ultimatum:  If you kill me, you will never see the real one ever again.

Superhero teams found niche roles in the war.  The Avengers were the heavy artillery on the ground, storming forts and gaining ground.

The Fantastic Four dealt with missions that involved sabotaging the Skrull’s operations.

Coulson’s Class (as the Hellicarrier staff had dubbed Spiderman’s first team) were elite calvalry, called in when a military unit was pinned down deep behind enemy lines and needed extraction.

Though all of them had quite a bit of media coverage, it was Spiderman’s Web Warriors - or “The Spiders,” as they came to be called - that had the biggest footprint on both the media and American culture at large.

Pummeling the Skrull army was all well and good, but what about the people who were being held captive by the enemy?  Who would save them?

The Spiders, that’s who.

Whenever S.H.I.E.L.D. found a Skrull base, Spiderman’s team was sent in, in full stealth mode.  By the time the Skrull realized the Spiders had been there, Spiderman and his team had already spirited the hostages away to safety.  Thanks to good old Spider Sense, the Web Warriors could pinpoint the location of both the hostages and patrolling Skrulls, allowing them to operate with phenomenal efficiency.  Once they got the hang of it, hostages never spent longer than a week in captivity - the Skrull had their hands full just trying to have enough hostages for leverage as the Spiders raided their hostage bunkers on a daily basis.

The propaganda machine latched onto this, fast.  Before, people had been panicking about the kidnappings more than anything else.  It was an immense relief to know that if even if you did get kidnapped, Spiderman wold save you.

Propaganda wasn’t as potent a tool it had been in the 40’s because of social media, but it still had an effect.  Spiderman (and his Amazing Friends lol) was portrayed as a fearless trickster who outsmarted his enemies into making fools of themselves.  He was portrayed as a man who got ^&%* done when nobody was looking, slipping in and out of the shadows like water.  He was a wise, wily ninja who sheltered everyone in his web, and god help you if you messed with his charges.

It doesn’t matter where you are.  Spiderman will find you.

Social media corroborated this portrayal… most of the time.  Iron Spider (who had turned into the team medic over the years, packing the contents of an entire ER in his armor) started up a facebook - just to make sure the people they saved were okay afterwards.

It spiraled out of control very quickly.  Soon, all the spiders had official facebooks, tumblrs, and youtube pages for their masked identities.  Spiderman didn’t really check his other than to make a post (hearing JJJ roast him on a daily basis had convinced him that he’d always get a bad rap, so why torment himself reading about it?), and Kid Arachnid was the unofficial coordinator of the Spiders’ online presence.

The internet fell head over heels in love with these adorkable wierdos - especially with spiderman, whom his teammates posted about more than anything else.

(The video of Spiderman breakdancing on the ceiling like a boss never lost its popularity, even into the year 2099)

The good times came to an end, in the final years of the war.  The Web Warriors had been doing rescue missions long enough that any one of them could do it solo - it had been months since the last time there was a mission hard enough to require a team up, and the Skrull had stepped up their game to the point where S.H.I.E.L.D. needed the spiders in as many places as possible.

Spiderman was alone, when he found out the base he infiltrated wasn’t a base at all.

It was a bomb.

The Skrull were a vast empire, who controlled planets across numerous galaxies.  In the rare scenario where a planet they’ve set their eyes on proves unconquerable, they make absolutely sure they won’t be harassed after they withdraw from it…

Spiderman may be a genius, but there wasn’t enough time to study it enough to disarm a bomb designed to blow up the entire Earth.

So he did the next best thing.  Spiderman manually rerouted (read: ripped out) some of the extraneous equipment and cobbled together a time displacement field generator - which would trap the entire bunker-sized bomb in a bubble where time was slowed until it stopped. 

Unfortunately, he couldn’t activate it remotely.

The entire time, he had his phone on speaker; explaining the situation and saying his goodbyes to the people important to him.

Spiderman’s final social media post was a livestream video, giving a brief rundown of his impending fate.  After a brief consideration, he did it without his mask, revealing that yes, he was human too.  Peter Parker put his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of the world, and being a hero isn’t about superpowers like everyone seems to think it is.

His final words before the time-bubble activated, was a final reminder that “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

–

I fffffffucking beat it! Oh thank god. Took hours of grinding but I did it. Holy moly. 

Otherwise an excellent game, but that last minute difficulty spike was buuuuuuullshit.  I was planning on checking the other endings out (I saved on the 6th day end part, so I could pick another path), but what with that grindfest, I think I will just check the other endings out online. Not too keen on the idea of repeating that grind. 

And I liked the majority of the characters too, the only one I didn’t quite like was Yuzu, ‘cause I found her kinda annoying with all of her complaining, but meh, who cares. I didn’t like Midori when she kept refusing to listen to our characters, but once she joined the party, I liked her. Also, Atsuro is best boy, always best boy, just sayin’ (I love him so much, he’s such a precious dork)