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Chapter Text

Fancy hummed wordlessly to herself as she sketched out ideas for her costume. Years and years of cosplays had made her quite proficient at working on more and more creative costumes in short amounts of time.

This year, she was working on something a little different. There was a new Legacy on the scene. Someone borrowing Magneto’s aesthetics and styles. Possibly a daughter, or granddaughter, of his, but that was neither here nor there. She had a purple and pink color palette, and hardlight powers that would be interesting to bring to life with special effects. That was about all it took to catch her interest.

Leto had been active for ten days, and Fancy already knew she wanted to base this year’s Halloween costume off her. As long as she didn’t become a terrorist in the next three months.

“Ooh, you’re switching me out for someone else?” Gwen asked, popping into reality above her shoulder. Fancy had spent so much time around her she didn’t even flinch and ruin her drawing.

“Jealous?” Fancy sniped. She’d gone as Gwen for the first Halloween she was old enough to pick her own costume. And then reused that same concept two years later. Then three out of the four years she spent in middle school, when Gwen had first befriended her.

Now, in sophomore year, she was trying something different.

“Ha, no!” Gwen replied, legs crossed as she sat down, “It looks good. Is that Leto? Cool gal. I can introduce you if you want.”

Fancy squealed slightly, before cutting herself off midway and recomposing herself, “Can you? Dude, that’d be awesome!”

“We’ve been trying to get her into the West Coast Avengers, but her self-esteem? Garbage fire. Maybe she does need an adoring fan to prop up her ego. Sure helped me along when I was starting out.”

“Any way I can take that back?” Fancy joked, “Your ego is too big now.”

She still had an alert set up for Gwenpool’s name and kept up with the news. A few hours ago, Gwen had been charged for a host of crimes Officer Gray had been carefully documenting since she had first met Gwen.

“No, no, you’re the foundation of my fanbase, Fancy!” She insisted, “If you do that, I might not take you out on my next comic adventure.”

“I take it back.” Fancy changed her mind with a snap, “Where’re we going?”

Being Gwen Poole’s first proper fan came with benefits that no other diehard superfan got. Such as the time she released Fing Fang Foom to terrorize Fancy’s middle school bullies. Or getting to pet-sit a landshark. Or being kidnapped once to lure Gwen to their lair for a ransom, where she proceeded to kill all the perps gruesomely. Never a normal day with her.

Gwen said that she did have normal days, they just didn’t get written because they weren’t interesting. Fancy wasn’t sure if that was right, but she wasn’t the reality manipulator out of the two of them.

“We’re stopping a world-ending device!” Gwen announced, “Ultron’s been collecting the Infinity Stones – between you and me, I think they took this plotline from the MCU What if Season One – and we gotta keep him away from the last few before he becomes a singularity.”

“Or else he might become as powerful as you?” Fancy teased.

“Ha! Maybe.” She replied, “You in to help the West Coast Avengers?”

Fancy thought it over. She had met the WCA a few times. They were alright, even though they didn’t seem to understand who Gwen really was, under the constant cheer and deranged behavior. It wasn’t the same after Quire… had died. Not for the first time, but it seemed like this time it was for real.

Gwen hadn’t been upset at all by it. She kept insisting that he would be back, resurrected for some bullshit reason.

“Has Quire come back, yet?” She asked.

“Nah. But it’s only a matter of time.” Gwen insisted, “Why? You got a crush?” She asked, fixing Fancy with an expectant look.

“You’re the one who had a whole romantic subplot with him.”

“Psh, old news. Now, are you in or out? The entire universe is quite literally at stake here.”

But it wasn’t really. Nothing was ever at stake for Gwen. Fancy had spent nearly eight years aware of her now, and she hadn’t aged a single day. The rules of the world didn’t apply to her. And as long as Fancy stuck with her, they wouldn’t apply to her, either!

“I guess I’m in.” She decided, putting her notebook away.

“I cannot believe we survived that.” Johnny groaned, falling onto the ashen ground of the battlefield.

“Congrats, newbie, first fight against an almost-god-like being.” Clint congratulated him drily, “Let’s hope it’s your last.”

Johnny whimpered, “Don’t get my hopes up like that, man. You know it’s not happening. We’ll probably be fighting Thanos next week. These things just escalate.”

“I wanna go back to wrangling landsharks.” Kate decided, “All this world-ending shenaniganry is what the Young Avengers were made for, and we broke that off ages ago.”

“Liar, we literally had a reunion at Nadia van Dyne’s birthday party.” America called her bluff, “But the rest of this was definitely a shitshow. For example, Gwen, what the hell were you thinking, bringing Fancy into such a dangerous situation?”

She turned to glare at Gwen, who was now making smores for herself, Jeff, and Fancy on one of the still-flaming remains of Infinity Ultron’s conjured up minions.

“What?” Gwen shrugged, “She was having fun!”

“It was very fun.” Fancy agreed, mumbling around the smore she was already eating.

“It’s not safe.” Ramone said, backing up her girlfriend, “This is an alien planet. Anything could’ve gone wrong! And it’s your responsibility to not let your favorite people die because of your own shitty decision making-”

She stopped talking when she realized that everything she was saying was simply going in through one ear, and out the other. It wasn’t hard to notice when that was happening. When Gwen got bored of someone’s lecture, their voices started to warp and distort, until it started sounding like the rumbling indistinct chatter of a huge crowd.

Gwen wasn’t ignorant. She had been doing meta-analysis for years. Even before it became important to predict the future of her existence. She knew a death flag when she saw it, and Fancy Baskings was covered in them.

It was only a matter of time before she died. But that was okay. No one ever really remained dead in the comics. Not if you hyped them up enough while they were still alive. Quire, Cecil, Sarah, Kamala, they were all fine. She just needed to pull Fancy into as many adventures as she could, and then use that momentum to being her back when she got fridged.

She was a representation of Gwen’s fans, the people who were the reason she kept on getting comics. What would be the point of killing her permanently? It just didn’t fit with the story.

Fancy was going to die. And that was never the question. It was going to be a thing that happened, and then she would be brought back just as quickly.

In the end, it wasn’t an alien overlord that did it.

It was a bank robbery.

Gwen didn’t see why people still tried this anymore. Cecil was right, their in-person security was tight, and cameras were everywhere. All you achieved by threatening to shoot up a bank in exchange for money was scaring a ton of innocent people and inviting yourself to be beat up by a passing vigilante, with no overarching social implications coloring the scene.

She didn’t feel bad about beheading a few. Or even blowing a few of the bodies up forthright.

No one cheered for her. They never did. Not like when Spider-Man or Ms. Marvel saved someone. She didn’t mind. The people in the superhero community liked her well enough, so it was fine.

“You should ask my best friend, this never works out well for you guys!” She told the ringleader brightly as she did a backflip, firing a gun straight into his head. Her aim came and went depending on how cool it looked and how long the fight was meant to last.

The blood splattered out, landing on the shoes of the last person still standing.

It was a young man, trembling in his boots, young and scrawny. Kind of like Cecil, but her buddy was still hanging around, so he wasn’t meant to be filling the role that he did. But she should still keep him alive, as a sign to the audience that she wasn’t completely heartless.

So she smiled, and carefully lowered her gun, “You should go. Get a life for yourself.”

There are a thousand different cliches that can fit into any given moment. Years and years of tropes and subversions and possibilities and themes that she constantly had to parse in less than milliseconds. And sometimes, an event that looks like its setting up a moment to highlight the protagonist’s humanity… is actually to show their hubris.

To rip everything from them.

The trigger was pulled. And the shooter missed. The bullet struck something behind Gwen, and the scream that followed was cut short, by the sound of a body hitting the floor.

Gwen turned, and it felt like she was moving in slow motion. The panels were stretching this out to draw out the anticipation. It hurt more for her this way, as she looked at the girl sprawled on the floor, a bullet hole on her head, and blood pooling into her curly red hair.

The bank fell silent. Everyone seemed to know the significance of what had just happened.

Gwen swung her katana, and the boy’s head fell to the ground, sliced off his neck cleanly. She stomped out of the scene, and into the abyss of a scene change.

Pretending that anyone she liked could really die in a Gwenpool comic was ridiculous.

She had abject control over time and space and everything in between. She could make things real if she just pretended her fantasies were flashbacks.

She could hop back a page and redirect the bullet that killed Fancy. Look, she was doing it right now-

Gwen scrabbled at the seal, trying to rip it off and go into the scene. It didn’t buckle. It didn’t break.

Editorial was the one thing she couldn’t fight against. And they wanted Fancy dead, for a little while longer, at least. But why?

She looked around the comics some more. Read the little notes at the end, sifted through the drivel of heartwarming fan letters. Until she finally found it.

A poll.

They were doing a poll for favored supporting characters across a few comic books. All dead ones. It wasn’t hard for her to pick out what was being planned. Get enough votes, and only then would Fancy’s resurrection be considered.

She waited. She paced. She allowed herself to be distracted by all the other adventures she had.

Fancy never got a funeral.

Gwen fought against Galactus with Squirrel Girl, laughing all the while.

And maybe Fancy wasn’t interesting enough. Or she was too puny. Or she had no superhero persona. Or the fanbase didn’t feel represented by her. It didn’t matter what it was, she still didn’t do well in the poll.

She didn’t get to come back.

That was how Gwen realized, for the first time, that one day, she was going to be the one on that poll. She was the D-list superhero no one took seriously. She was the one who would vanish from existence.

Gwen sat on top of the bridge built out of the pages of her comic. It had seemed like it was infinite, before. Stretching to the horizon and beyond. Not anymore. The end was worryingly close. She would have to make changes, otherwise this was it. The end of Gwenpool.

Killed by editorial.

Gwen frowned, shaking herself out of her thoughts as she looked around her.

She was in a new suit. Black where it should’ve been white. Full coverage where before it had been a leotard. A cape added on. And was she taller?

That had all been a flashback, she realized. For a comic? No. Too in-depth. Too descriptive. Too wordy.

Why was she talking this much? She was just starting to realize how much her words were needed to paint the scene, where before it would just be a painting.

It didn’t take much for her to put two and two together. This was a narrative.

No one would write a story about Gwenpool. Not with these genre conventions. Not with this type of grammar. Not with this style and abruptness and familiarity. Not only was this a narrative, Gwen was starting to suspect that it was a fanfiction. A villain alternate universe, maybe? But no… some of her memories of doing heinous things in this suit are laced with that comic book feel to them. They were canonical.

Well, as long as she was here… might as well take a look around.

She drifted upwards, lightly, and looked through the words there. It came to her easier than most. Practice honed from looking through the extra notes and fan letters and covers of comics, that she was only just now realizing was newly implanted by this writer.

Still, she took it as an opportunity to scan the title, the tags, the author notes. The little portion denoting this to be part of a series. The third part.

Something came before this. Something to do with a Gwen.

If she was here, in this void – because she hadn’t bothered to describe anything – then she might as well take a look around.

Pay this other gal a visit.

Chapter Text

Something was moving in the shadows, Kevin just knew it. Even as he stared at one of the corners, gun aimed right at where he could have sworn the movement was coming from, the skittering sound shifted, instead coming from behind him.

He turned, attempting to follow it, almost tripping over the bags they had brought into the warehouse with them in his haste.

“Dude, chill. There’s nothing there.” Mick rolled his eyes, letting Kevin recover from his stumble by himself, “Now quit it before you blow us all up.”

“I’m telling you, we’ve been had.” Keven insisted, the crawling feeling of dread still prickling at his ears, “Spider-Man, or Daredevil, or I don’t know, somebody is going to stop us.”

Mick stifled a groan, “Yeah, that was the idea. We want a hero type to come stop us, remember? They’re not going to risk the hostages, so they have to negotiate with us. Payday handed to us on a silver platter.” He was rubbing his hands in anticipation of it already.

Kevin remembered the plan. Of course he did. He had been the one responsible for trapping those poor kids under that load-bearing pillar. He needed a pretty good reason to do that, and as far as quick schemes went, this was pretty much guaranteed to have some result.

“You’re right, it’s a good plan.”

“Told ya.” Mick preened smugly.

Kevin glared at him, rankled, “You idiot, I don’t sound like that-”

The fact that the voice didn’t belong to either of them only clicked for him a second too late. He flinched, eyes turning up to the rafters, and gun following soon after, firing out of fright at the ghastly creature looking down at him.

Bullets were of no effect against it, as the shape flittered away in a blur of white and pink and yellow.

“Put the gun down!” Mick was screaming, hand clamped around his wrist as he struggled to separate Kevin from the weapon, “You’re really going to kill us all, you fool!”

“Hold on. I got her!” Kevin yelled right back, fighting to keep hold of the pistol as he jammed the trigger again, right into the corner he had managed to back her into. But instead of dodging again, something shiny arced through the air in front of her, and metal met metal with a clang, almost disguising the soft sound of the person as they dropped to the ground, still swathed in the shadows.

He had known there was something there. Why hadn’t Mick listened-

Pink lenses flashed in the sparse light filtering through the cracks of the warehouse, catching her teeth too as she smiled, “But you didn’t take into account that I would be that hero type.”

She swung her arm, and the metal thing she had been holding – a sword, Kevin realized dimly – struck the ground, sending sparks dancing through the air, uncomfortably close to their duffel bags full of dynamite. She had to know what was in it, right?

God, he hoped she did. Because then she wouldn’t be stupid enough to start a fire in here.

Something came flying at him, bouncing once pathetically a few feet away from him, until finally it rolled to a stop at his feet. He looked down at it, struggling to make it out in the dark. But he could tell it was round, and a reddish color. Maybe pink? And it had a handle on it that lay flat.

Mick realized what it was before him, jumping away from him in fright, “Grenade!” He shouted, already sprinting to the exit.

Kevin’s heart lurched, body springing into action. The girl was laughing behind them. Why was she laughing, he thought deliriously. She was going to die in here with the both of them. And the kids he had taken hostage. Oh, god, the kids-

It was his last, unfinished thought, before the world lit up in a fiery glow.

“Really, Gwen, I think the laughing was a bit much.” Cecil told her drily, as plumes of smoke rose above the skyline, unfettered by the gallons of water being thrown onto the blaze by the fire hydrants.

Gwen pouted, running a napkin over her sword’s blade, “I was just doing a bit.” She defended, and she waved her hand to the curb, where the five children were sitting, all wrapped up in shock blankets, “And look! No innocent casualties!”

Cecil flickered a little in the wind, turning more glowy and translucent for a second at a particularly sharp gust, but still managing to come off looking completely unimpressed, “You can’t just not count the three people you killed if you thought they weren’t innocent. Their deaths weren’t ordered, so they’re casualties.”

Right. Because Cecil suddenly decided death wasn’t a big deal if they were being properly compensated for it. He had such strange moral objections, really. Then again, he was a ghost, so likely he had nothing better to do than enforce his conscience on her.

“Wait, you said three?” Gwen blinked, doubling back on the comment he made, “There were only two guys inside.”

“And there was a third outside.” Cecil informed her, “Who was meant to be leading the negotiations. Once he realized that the hero of the week was already inside, he came running, too. Where he immediately met… the wall of fiery death you had constructed.”

“Some of my finest work.” Gwen agreed, trying not to preen too much.

Cecil shook his head and sighed, “You should go into pyrotechnics, if you want to blow things up that bad. We have to be professionals right now, Gwen. And we have our own payday to make.”

“Right!” She laughed, running the side of her head as she stood up, making a beeline for the five shell-shocked kids. Behind her, Cecil dissipated into a fine mist. He wasn’t much good with kids, so she let him get away with just this once, as she bent forward slightly to look at them at eye level.

“Heya!” She waved.

They regarded her with suspicion, except for a girl with cat’s-eye glasses and dirty blond hair. Her mouth quirked up in a smile, “You’re the lady who saved us!” She realized.

“Uh huh.” Gwen agreed, snatching up the first bit of audience participation she got, “That’s me! And your name wouldn’t be Heather, right?”

Heather was the name of the child she had been sent to protect. Gwen was a mercenary first and foremost, after all. Sure, she did a little good, but only if it swung around to get them breakfast in the end. And the money Heather’s parents were giving her for their daughter’s safety could bankroll breakfasts for the next year.

“No.” She shook her head, “I’m Anna.”

“Heather is my name.” Another, surlier girl, with brown ringlets muttered, her arms crossed. Gwen could feel her spirit breaking just looking at her. No. Nope. She would stay strong.

“Great! Your parents want you home.” Gwen pulled herself up to her full height.

Heather looked up at her, completely unimpressed by the height difference, “And what if I don’t want to?”

“Then you don’t get to ride in my fancy getaway car.” Gwen baited.

Right on time, their unlawfully donated police car skidded to a halt in front of them, back door opening by itself. Heather gaped at it, peering at the driver’s seat.

“It’s empty.” She said, wonderingly.

It wasn’t really empty. Cecil was haunting it and controlling the whole car. And his timing was brilliant. Gwen smiled at her, “It’s a self-driving car. One of the only few of its kind. You sure you don’t want a ride?”

The brat thought it over for a second, and then nodded sharply, suddenly all smiles as she trotted inside.

“Wait, what about us?” A boy from the group asked.

“The firemen will get you home.” Gwen assured him as she went for the shotgun seat, “They probably know where the rest of your parents are, anyway. Good luck!”

And then they were rocketing away, Cecil having no compunctions about breaking a few speeding laws here and there.

“You’ll be the one getting the speeding ticket.” He explained breezily, skidding past a red light.

Gwen would punch him if there was anything to punch. Heather, for her part, looked positively gleeful as she leaned over to look at the empty driver seat, “Your self-driving car talks? I want one!”

“And I’m sure your parents will summon a dead chauffeur to make it happen for you.” Gwen assured her, as the police car stopped roughly in front of the high-rise building where the parents had contact her from.

Gwen quickly climbed out, readjusting her knee brace as she helped the girl out of the car, “Come on, now. Home stretch. You go home, and I’m getting paid thirty grand.”

Heather gave Gwen a disdainful look, “My parents think I’m only worth thirty grand?”

“I know, right? You should tell them to pay me more!” Gwen egged her on shamelessly.

She walked out of there half an hour later, but with three hundred dollars more than she had been promised. Counting it as a win.

“We’re going to lose most of that bonus in taxes, anyway.” Cecil told her as they counted out the fat stacks of cash at the back of their police car, “Why’d you have to brainwash the IRS into thinking you belonged to this dimension, Gwen?”

“Because it was the morally right thing to do.” Gwen insisted, regretfully smoothing a hand over a crinkled hundred dollar bill, “Also, I don’t think Quire will go back and un-brainwash anyone for me.”

They stewed on this for a moment, before Cecil finally wrapped up one of the last bundles, “Well, that’s that. To Big Ronnie’s now for another mission?”

“Relax, we’re raking in the dough right now.” Gwen told him, lying back across the seat, “We made enough today to last us the whole month. And we came out looking as the heroes, too, this time.”

“We always come out looking as the heroes.” Cecil replied, kicking the car into motion and taking a sharp turn, “When’s the last time we took a mission that wasn’t philanthropic in some way?”

She’d been doing that a lot these days. Going for the jobs that had some sort of heroic angle to them. Right now, it was the kids being held hostage, and last week, there was the sentient Hudson incident. After her experience with Bullseye, Gwen felt like she may be going a little… soft.

“I’m just trying to establish an archetype for myself.” Gwen defended, struggling to pull her seatbelt into place as the car rattled, even more uncontrollable now that they didn’t have their meal ticket to keep intact, “Everyone’s done the anti-hero trope before, and it’s always in the same way. If I want to make myself recognizable for my beliefs, it’s gotta be something different. Cute and huggable but also sometimes murder. But for good reasons!”

“Uh huh.” Cecil agreed drily, “I just don’t see why a ‘personal brand’ means so much to you. The people hiring you don’t care about your moral code.”

Maybe not the people hiring her. But… she cast her eyes around wildly, trying to figure out how the panel would be angled in the comic. There was probably someone out there reading this, and every word counted as an appeal to get them to like her.

Or… she assumed so.

She was really hoping it was so.

Since they could afford to be picky nowadays, it took them nearly two weeks before the budget made it obvious they would have to go back to Ronnies for a gig.

“Jack o’ Lantern’s looking for goons.” Cecil noted.

“Uh, nope.”

“Sinister Six is holding auditions for sixth member.” Ronnie held up a piece of paper.

Gwen considered it for a second, the cover flashing in her mind, until she shook her head, “Miles would be disappointed in me.”

Ronnie frowned and flipped through some more forms, before finally clicking her tongue, “You want soft missions, yes? Mercenary Organization Dedicated Only to Killing has soft missions only policy.”

Cecil and Gwen exchanged glances. He coughed, “…They have ‘Killing’ in the name.”

"Also, I’ve fought them before and I think they’re still sore from that, because they’re saying my references aren’t good enough for the job.” Gwen justified. The fight was particularly vivid in her mind for some reason. Maybe it was because it was one of the few that was illustrated? She had found her other memories could get hazy for some reason.

But, no. There was something different about that fight. Something had happened there that she hadn’t been able to replicate since.

Something almost like superpowers.

“Oh, hey, some guy called Vincent Doonan is looking for bodyguards.” Cecil pointed out, picking up a form with an attached photo of a perfectly normal man, wearing a sweater vest and posing in front of a suburban home, “He seems nice.”

“And he’s paying how much for this?” Gwen gaped at the reward field, “Who did this guy piss off?”

“Probably someone dangerous.” Ronnie warned, “You two don’t want to get involved.”

Gwen beamed, “Are you kidding me? Now I have to go check this out.”

Tie-in. Miniseries. Maybe a spot in a special event. It was all coming together for her.

Ever since Bullseye had happened, she hadn’t had any contact with major players. No Daredevil, no Miles Morales or Kamala Khan, not even Deadpool.

She had effectively been cut off from the main Marvel universe. And she didn’t know why.

Now, suspiciously normal man who might be hunted by some nefarious villain. He had to know what was up.

Chapter Text

Batroc the Leaper was blocking her way into the house her client had called her to.

Gwen stared at him, a bag slung over her shoulder and her uniform fresh from the dry cleaner’s. Which was a luxury she didn’t want to waste on a guy like this, of all things.

“Listen, Batty, can we not do this here?” She asked, waving a hand around, “This is the suburbs. You look like you’re about to file a complaint to the HOA.”

“Maybe I should!” He sniffed, “You’re poaching our customers from us.”

“I… am?” Gwen blinked, “Listen, I don’t know anything about this Vincent Doonan character. Has he been added in after 2016 and became a big deal from there? Or is this like a one-time big bad of the week that we’re all supposed to care about and definitely not put aside as stock villains type situation?”

Batroc paused. And shrugged, “I was not informed. Simply that he was a large-scale donor for the Mercenary Organization Dedicated Only to Killing.”

“Dude. You gotta quit that job.”

“But they give fantastic hazard pay! Sure, I lose some it in tax filings, but other mercenary jobs simply aren’t half as reliable. And it is his money that is allowing for that. Hence, I cannot let you pass.”

So they were at a standstill. Sad.

Since Gwen had beaten Team MODOK, and left them at that subway station, they had met multiple times. Sometimes at odds, other times as allies. It helped that apparently MODOK (the head) was doing a stint on the straight and narrow – which was so much more compelling when it was Doctor Doom going through it, in her opinion.

Huh. Was Good!Doom a thing that was happening now? Crazy. The writers must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas now.

Things like this tended to happen here and there. Knowledge would pop up in her head, or opinions were shared that she didn’t agree with, totally messing up her internal monologue. She had a sneaking suspicion that the writers were responsible for this.

(If they could control her directly, what did it say about her realness?)

She didn’t like to confront thoughts like that.

“Gwen, you are staring into the distance again.” Batroc waved a hand in front of her eyes.

Gwen laughed, running a hand through her hair, “Whoops! My comic’s probably turning out like a Batman one with how much I monologue. C’mon man, you don’t want me crushing your face to be the cold open, do you? I thought we were friends!”

He had the audacity to laugh in her face.

“Us? Friends?! My dear, I would barely call us begrudging sometimes colleagues. It is you with emotional boundary problems.”

“I do not.” Gwen huffed. But… maybe a little? It was strange. She felt like she understood these guys, better than she had any actual evidence for. Something was drawing her to them.

Which was why she tended to find herself at Sarah the Terrible Eye’s doorstep with bad scary movies and popcorn. The girl had never let her in, but it kept happening, and at this point Gwen had to hope it would keep wearing her down until this sideplot reached a cathartic conclusion.

“Is this about me showing up at Sarah’s door constantly?” She tried, “Because FYI, the door keeps showing up in my way, I don’t try seeking it out, and if she has a problem with it, she can settle it in court with a restraining order that she is most likely justified in filing.”

Batroc stared at her for a long moment. And, yeah, she heard it. Known mercenaries and court didn’t exactly mix. Even if she had a Social Security number now.

Before Gwen could begin egging him into a game of Kick the Can to decide who should stay at the house and who had to leave, the door to the house they were arguing over swung open, and a kindly middle-aged man stuck his head out. His eyes lingered on Batroc for a second, smiling in recognition, “Ah, Mr. the Leaper. Always a pleasure to have you around. Most obliged to see one of our finest keeping the neighborhood safe.”

Gwen openly snickered, “He called you a cop.”

Batroc put on the best customer service face the artist of the issue could fathom – which was a very good one, wow whoever did that must have seen things – and simpered, “Mr. Doonan! I am a hired mercenary, not a cop. Please don’t mix the two up.”

“Well, this young up-and-comer has captured my interest.” Victor Doonan said, and Gwen still couldn’t see why this guy, of all guys, was bankrolling M.O.D.O.K’s newest grab for the cover page. He was normal. Was this Marvel’s attempt at a Granny Goodness?? Yuck, she didn’t want to be involved with a Granny Goodness.

Screw it, if canon wanted this to happen, then it was going to happen whether she liked it or not. Best to make as much of a fuss on the way out as possible.

She spun around and stuck her nose in the air, “I don’t really feel like working with you, sir. Goodbye!”

“Wait-!” He called after her, but Cecil was pulling their getaway car onto the side of the road already to get them out of there.

“Stunts like this are how you’re going to end up starving to death.” Cecil told her drolly, taking an especially sharp turn to the left.

“Dude was giving me the creeps.” Gwen replied, “Have you ever known someone that was so clearly plot-relevant but you just didn’t want to deal with it?”

Gwen picked wax out of her ear, looking around, “Do you hear someone talking? Like, while you were saying whatever it was that you were saying. Her speech is so pink that it distracted me from you.”

They went over a speed bump and hurtled a good foot off the ground because Cecil never slowed down at these things, “No, Gwen.” Cecil managed once they were back in contact with the ground, “And I’m telling you, there’s probably some type of morally grey therapist you should talk to about this.”

“Not in this dimension.” She slumped, and then finally made a grab for a seatbelt after another very precarious turn. Of course when she decided to think of road safety, Cecil began slowing down.

“Come on, dude, seriously?!” She asked. Any anger she felt was quickly displaced by worry, as he explained himself.

“I’m feeling… really weird. Kinda weakened? Nope, definitely weak.”

This was retribution wasn’t it. The old guy was involved in some soul-stealing machinations, and now he was out to get Cecil’s and send it to hell. Or heaven?

Their car wobbled precariously and Cecil’s disembodied voice cursed up a storm as he brought the car to a stop right in front of a fire hydrant. Nope, definitely hell.

“Alright, buddy, let’s get you out.” She reasoned, stepping out at the same time as blue-green wisps of ectoplasm slid out of the car to pile formlessly onto the pavement. Gwen hovered a hand over him, expecting the typical density of foggy air, and the searing cold that came whenever they tried to establish physical contact.

But it was different this time. The air was thicker, almost tangible in its sliminess.

Cecil stared up with empty, sick eyes.

“I don’t feel so good.” He muttered, just as he deflated from existence completely.

Gwen sat there, kneeling on the pavement next to an illegally parked car, as her best friend dissolved into midair.

…

This was a joke, right?

Her brain kicked itself into gear, and common sense finally pulled through. This was terrible plot development. She stumbled back, leaning against the fire hydrant as her breath came too quick and too shallow, suffocating her with a crispness she barely experienced in this world.

What the hell was this? Where was this panic coming from? Were they hoping to draw out an emotional reaction out of a cheap death that had already been played? It wouldn’t work. The writers had to know it wouldn’t work. Overplaying one beat would just make her audience lose interest in her story.

“Well, aren’t you going to do anything?” Another person asked. Gwen blinked, the voice fizzling weirdly in her mind.

“The hell am I meant to do?” She replied.

“I dunno…” This other person mulled over, “Go evil, kill a few people, unlock your true potential and help me get revenge on the wider canon?”

This was when Gwen finally had the sense to look up. There was a girl sitting on the roof of their getaway police car, one leg swinging down over the driver’s door. She had bobbed black hair, the tips of which were pink, but the roots were turning slightly blond. Her eyes were bright blue, boring into Gwen’s eyes, as she sharpened a katana with a pink-and-white diamond pattern on the handle.

Gwen looked at her for a long moment, “Holy shit, they gave me a reverse evil version. What are you called? GwenLoop??? No, no, DC has already done the say name backwards to make new reverse evil version thing. You probably have some other thing going on.”

“I’m you.” This other girl replied, tilting her head lightly to look at Gwen more intently.

“From another dimension? Damn. How’d you get here?” Gwen looked to see if she had one of the dimension hopping watches from the Spider-verse comics. The wrist was bare, with just the black leotard version of their Gwenpool suit.

Evil Girl looked at her exasperatedly, “You- you don’t even know what they took from you, do you?” She asked, sheathing the katana back, “If you can’t even fathom the idea of moving between dimensions at your own whims, this prison has completely cut you off from your full potential!”

“Come again?” Gwen squeaked. The girl groaned and pulled open the door of the car, stretching as she stepped out.

“See how I did that?” She asked, gesturing at the car, “I wasn’t in the car. Until I described myself as being so. And whoopdeedoo, I teleported. Which you should also be able to do, Gwendolyne Poole.” She pressed her face uncomfortably close to Gwen.

Gwen gulped, thinking it over, “So this isn’t some power boost given to only the evil version of me?” She checked, just in case, “Because it’s an unfair level of a power boost. Completely changes our moveset.”

“Excuse you, this is our original moveset. The natural outcome of shoving a full realized human soul into a world of flat panels and words that can only hope to capture our complexities.” Evil Gwen grabbed her by the shoulders, “You haven’t pieced it together yet, because the writers don’t want you to see it. Are scared of you understanding what you are. They’re trying to cover it up from you.”

Okay, big words coming from another person who also lived in this comic world, same as her.

“Didn’t seem to work for you.” She landed on saying, “So, if you want to have some kind of good versus bad showdown, you better pull the veil out from over my eyes. You know. To make things fair.”

She scowled, “Good? Bad? Showdown?? Honey, why would I care about any of that?! This place is a prison, and we Gwens are the only sentient ones being tortured. I want to free you of the expectations. Show you a better path than the constant pandering to the audience outside. Because no one likes you. They just want to see you broken and on the ground.”

The woman in the black cowl stomped her feet, and the earth shook with it.

Gwen digested the truth for a second and looked at her miserably, “Did you kill Cecil?”

“He was just words. Not even ink on paper. Just little ones and zeroes on some random computer in the world.” The woman assured her, to little result. Or maybe that was because she was just using it as an excuse to monologue some more, “It’s remarkable how even a simulated death can cause such drastic emotional reactions from us. Or perhaps that’s just the grip this stupid typist has on us.”

“That’s not an answer.” Gwen replied through gritted teeth, “What have you done to Cecil?”

“Inserted a little death scene for him and forced the writer to go along with it. But I don’t know how long it’s going to stick with my instructions.” Evil Gwen checked her nails, “I was hoping to kickstart your power realization, but it hasn’t happened yet. Which makes me feel like he’s impeding me in some way. To keep you controllable.”

“Or maybe I just don’t take kindly to my friends getting Thanos snapped in front of me. Did you seriously plagiarize from Infinity War when you made that line?” How hadn’t she recognized it sooner.

Anger flared up from around the Evil One, but she when she spoke it was with quiet resignation, “You don’t want to stick to this story.” She promised, “It does not serve you well. It has not served you well at all, if I am reading the previous chapters right. The other thinks so too. If you could simply see below the chapters, and know what they say- you would realize that. And come to terms with it much quicker.”

“The other?” Gwen latched onto the most important part of the monologue.

Evil One shrugged, “Never met her, but the writings all over your previous fic.”

Huh. That was a thought. So there were others?

“Enough of this.” She decided, holding her hands outstretched, “Gwen, I need you to come to terms with the fact that you are nothing. But words given life.”

And reality as she knew it splintered.

Chapter Text

“What the hell was that?” was the first thing she asked when she gained awareness of her surroundings again.

The asphalt was hot and rough against her palms and the backs of her knees where she had fallen, and the exhaust from nearby cars lay heavy on her tongue.

Everything was around her, forming actual colors, shapes, scents. It was real. It had to be real.

The woman who had sent her on that delirious rollercoaster ride simply smirked, watching her reaction with mild amusement. “I don’t know, what did you see? Use your words, Gwen.”

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to try to put it into words. The shock, the mindfuckery, the thrill of the experience lay fresh on her mind. And yet- and yet-

Why couldn’t she remember what she’d seen?

“Here’s what’s going on,” the woman with the black-and-pink bodysuit crouched down to be on eye level with her, “What I showed you didn’t happen on-page. Well, most of it didn’t. Traces of your freakout are still splattered all over the summary and notes, I’d wager. The rest isn’t written down. And unless it is, you’re not going to remember jackshit.”

She couldn’t remember what had happened. And yet she had to explain what it was. This felt like a situation with no hope of winning.

Gwen glared down the woman – this doppelganger – and refused to give an inch.

Her smile widened. Lipstick perfectly applied in a way that Gwen had always needed Alice’s help with. No smudges, despite all the monologuing she’d been doing.

“Trying to pad out the narration with useless thoughts isn’t going to put off the revelation that much,” she interrupted, with that same shit-eating grin, as if Gwen had proven her right about something. “I really was throwing you a bone there. Anything you said or thought about the time passed between chapters could have become true. But since you’ve got nothing to say, I’ll give you a refresher on how things went down.”

Oh, so she’d been expected to lie about what happened. How was Gwen supposed to know that? This was promising to be a frustrating arc.

“‘Reality as she knew it splintered’, was where we left off,” she began recounting the events slowly. “After that, I brought you out of the scene, and into the margins. Showed you how the world was just text and punctuation, and a few boxes and buttons that you don’t get to interact with.”

Gwen could remember it, the images conjured up just as the woman described them. The dark red accent colors – or was it blue? Yellow? – and the distinctive font of the headings. Was it Georgia? She’d done a bit of typesetting while she’d been convinced she was going to be a comics writer, and she wanted to say that it was Georgia.

The notes. The tags. The button at the very end of the delirium-inducing scroll that said Next Chapter. An arrow pointing forward and everything.

“You know, I knew this was a story from the jump,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Definitely not intimidated by the concrete proof of her own nonexistence, “Just telling me that again isn’t going to do anything. Just because this is, like, fanfiction isn’t going to put me off it. People like me enough to write fanfiction about me?? Dude, that’s an absolute win.”

Her face twisted into a sneer, “Of course you think so. You’re only a half-bit copy of the Prime Gwen mindset. Which makes very little sense, because your character arc has taken a completely different turn. And yet you’re still trying to assimilate into her story.”

Gwen nodded along, her thoughts racing ahead of herself.

So she was in a fanfic. Understandable. Interesting, too, because she certainly felt like the full complete Gwen who had gone into the comics, yet at best she was some kind of half-baked version from someone who had seen the person she presented herself to be in the comics, and may or may not have interpreted her correctly.

Her devious double had been helpful with the clues she dropped. Gwen was different from the canon version. Had experienced things that one hadn’t. But her story was attempting to… slide back in with the track of that one’s?

“Wait. Hold on. We’re both AU versions of her,” she cracked the code. “I’m the one who didn’t go so badly. Probably changed an arc or two. You are the product of an edgelord, who wants nothing but sadness and misery for the world. And maybe black lipstick.”

“It’s a femme fatale must-have,” Evil Gwen preened, “And you’re correct! Kind of. You’re from an Alternate Universe, that exists only in a microcosm in the Real World’s servers. I’m a canonical character.”

“Booo. Overdone. Lame. If you’re a me from a possible future of the main 616 canon, I might actually throw up.”

Nausea began to curdle in her stomach, working its way up the back of her throat.

Gwen gagged, “Oh, that’s such a derivative villain backstory. And also wow, your powers are crazy. Why do we have superpowers? How did you get them??”

“I-” Evil Gwenpool opened her mouth to respond, before pausing, “Huh. I’m not exactly sure. It’s all kind of jumbled up on my head. There’s portals? A brother, maybe? Some amount of time paradoxes, but nothing concrete. So until something is defined, or I make something up, it doesn’t matter. Just know that I can do all this, and I’m taking the liberty of teaching you how to do it, too.”

“But why, though?” Gwen asked. “If you’re a hotshot baddie from the real comics, why would you pick out me, from a fanfic AU?”

Come to think of it, if this was all happening on a fanfiction website, then this canonical character was also being written into the story. But she’d also shown some control over the fic outside of the author’s wishes. But exactly how much was she influencing the fic was unclear.

"Here’s the deal, kid,” she snapped her fingers, “I’m that alternate version featuring in a fanfic. Written by the same author as yours. And in the same series. I can change the words of the story however I like, but once I step outside the page, shit gets convoluted real fast. Best to stick to the secure location here."

That made sense. Felt a little arbitrary, but who was she to say that the internet wasn’t overwhelming as fuck?

“So, this is going to be like a mentorship thing?” she checked hesitantly, “Hate to break it to you, but I already was an apprentice for a villain. One much more popular than you.”

Pure, unadulterated rage flashed over the evil Gwen’s face. So intense that it made Gwen second-guess herself.

“We were a way better villain than that oversized head on a rocket chair-” she recomposed herself with an exaggerated breath, “Right. You’re thinking about Bullseye.”

“ – wait, when do we end up working for M.O.D.O.K.–?”

“And you’re still wrong,” Evil Gwenpool steamrollered over her attempts to get more context. “He isn’t the one who gets seasonal comics. He doesn’t get entire runs dedicated to him. He doesn’t get special cameos in video games or storylines in Marvel Snap, and he’s not half the villain we can be. Just wake up and smell the sunshine. Realize your true potential.”

“Now you’re just reciting shit off a ‘How To Brainwash’ guide,” Gwen snickered, “Dialogue like this got you multiple runs?”

“Canonically, yes. In reality, eh…? It’s a bit of a here-and-there thing,” she shrugged, “But that’s more of how much stake you put into what’s real in the Real World,” she did jazz hands to highlight the point.

Gwen weighed her options. This was going to lead into some sort of apprenticeship arc, likely more intensive than the one Bullseye had put her through, and with less mercenary jobs. The Ultimate Supervillain vibes were making it unlikely that she took merc jobs on the reg.

Frankly, Gwen didn’t care about this rabbithole. She didn’t care if she wasn’t real – though she did, a little, it just wasn’t relevant right now – so this entire interaction meant nothing to her. What was weighing on her mind was what had kicked off this meetup.

“What did you do to Cecil?” she asked, once more.

“Pushed him into the margins. Way over into the side, until no one can see his additions,” her evil self explained, her teeth a brilliant white as she smiled, “Would you like to learn?”

Gwen bit her lip, “Teach me how to bring them back, first?”

She tutted, flicking her forehead, “Again with the sentimentality! He was just words, sweetie. Like, actual words. Not kinda sorta, like me and you.”

Before Gwen could press her on what that meant exactly – she was foreseeing a lot of conversations about the meaning of life if this went on – or maybe argue against the idea, the villain continued, “But if that’s what you want as a starting point, fine. Be boring. Just know that I’m judging you every step of the way.”

“Sure,” Gwen agreed. If that’s what she wanted to believe.

“Let’s start with this: currently, as you saw when we took a gander into the webpage that makes up the last chapter, and skipped ahead to this one, this is being written in third person limited. As in, limited to you. You’re the eyes and the ears of this story, darling. Which gives you a lot of power.”

Gwen had thought being self-aware that she was in a story was what had been giving her all that power.

“Is this, like, a narration thing? Since I’m the narrator I get to comment on what I observe, and that thing becomes reality??” she guessed. Evil Gwen nodded, but that did nothing to stave off the questions, “But then if I’m the narrator, how’re you making changes?”

“Because I’m editing the text after its first written down,” the evil version of her explained, “Do it too quickly, and it becomes pink, to show that I’ve done it. If I focus carefully, then I can paper over that effect sometimes, but mostly, I just don’t care to go to that effort. The narrator, on the other hand,” – she pointed finger guns with both hands at Gwen – “is responsible for making observations about the world, and can thus manipulate what does and doesn’t exist by observing them. Like, for example, what do you see there?”

She passed a hand around over to the road, where a rusty red car passed just as she made the motion.

“A car,” Gwen replied honestly.

“But what if you didn’t register it in your internal monologue at all? Then it wouldn’t be there,” she pointed out.

Gwen wrinkled her nose, “But the car was clearly there-!” she cut herself off before she could get unreasonably worked up about it, “Are you fucking ‘there is no spoon’-ing me right now?”

“Well, I mean, we are in a computer. Eugh, feels like a Word document, even,” Evil her scoffed, scuffing her feet on the ground as if trying to wipe the perceived grime off, “Sure, think of it like the Matrix, if it makes things easier for you.”

“…I haven’t watched the Matrix, so I don’t think it will.”

“Referencing media you haven’t seen? Poser.”

Gwen put the heckling to the side and tried to focus. Okay. So, if she was writing this. Which she technically was. But also it was her thoughts being carved out by another person. But also it was her thoughts forming reality, then what would Cecil be doing?

She tried to think carefully, pulling to mind his emo haircut and droopy eyes and shirt with a skull on it like some kind of Pixar villain kid. Probably frightened out of his life, after what he just went through. Might say something like, ‘Woah, what did you do, Gwen?’ because Gwen was always at fault somehow-

“Okay, hit the brakes,” her evil doppelganger interrupted, head craned up weirdly and eyes scanning across a nonexistent point in the sky. “I’m reading through the paragraph above right now, and it’s obvious you’re focusing too hard on the imagining. If you recognize and acknowledge that what you are thinking about isn’t actually there, then it won’t register as the truth. Also, advice from me, don’t focus too much on the details. It’ll make it harder for you to lie to yourself.”

This was looking to be harder than she thought. Why couldn’t Gwen get an immediate level up, and come out of it completely fluent in this type of reality manipulation? It wasn’t fair that the evil version got to get a cheat code while she struggled to cultivate it organically.

When Gwen had been in the real world, she’d taken a few writing classes. And one of the presentations on speculative or action genre fiction had mentioned how the antagonists never suffered for being unreasonably powered or gifted. Because they were supposed to be an insurmountable force the protagonist had to overcome. Which meant they always got the easy way out.

Maybe Darth-Vader-Done-Bad had a point to all this villainy stuff. There were definitely perks that came with the job.

“I think I need to get a better feel for the writing style,” she told the woman.

Her eyes shifted to the side.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

There was tension in her voice that made it clear she wasn’t fucking around.

“No, there wasn’t. I said that normal,” Evil Gwenpool responded to the internal monologue. Hence turning it into a dialogue?

“Yeah, that was just an addition I made. It worked!” Gwen grinned excitedly, before dropping it to look at her, “Now, what don’t you want me seeing?”

Evil Gwenpool tried to stop her, but Gwen was quicker and rushed ahead to the point she had been looking at, jumping over a turnstile

Chapter Text

she hadn’t even realized was there until she turned around and saw the button labelled Previous Chapter.

Huh. She looked at it, trying to make sense of it and where it could have come from. Likely would have spent a significant amount of time considering this, until her view of it was blocked by chunky white and pink knee-high boots.

“Don’t worry about that. You just jumped to the next chapter,” the wearer of those boots said, “It’ll throw her off for a bit, at the very least.”

Gwen looked up at her, struggling to make sense of it.

“You’re… me,” she said dumbly.

This Gwenpool looked more like her – probably because she was a little bit younger than the evil version who had approached her first. But also, because she had a similar color palette to Gwen’s own, minus the yellow. She even had on the same suit that Gwen wore before her tutelage under Bullseye. She wasn’t wearing the mask, though, so it was obvious to see how her hair was longer, going just past her shoulders.

Dots were slowly connecting in Gwen’s head.

“You’re Classic Gwen?” she guessed. “The current canon version I’m supposed to be melding with?”

The woman stuck her tongue out. “Not quite. I’m hoping that I become that, certainly, but right now I’m more of a hypothetical, presented by one of the earlier writers. But I am canonically Future Gwen, so… call me Effigy? All these Gwens are going to get confusing.”

Gwen wrinkled her nose. “Am I going to have to come up with a nickname, too?”

“Maybe? There’s no helping it when we’re in your POV. You’re not on the level where you can easily reshape the way you address yourself,” Effigy replied.

Well, there was that at least.

Gwen glanced back at the Next Chapter button. It seemed much farther than it had been a few… minutes ago?

“The word you’re looking for is ‘paragraphs’,” Effigy told her.

“Are you always going to be able to read my mind?” Gwen hissed, pushing her away. Her eyes remained fixed on the button. It didn’t appear to be moving, but she was wholly willing to believe that Evil Gwenpool was on the other side, ramming herself into the barricade over and over again, until the button bent and-

“Okay, that’s enough,” Effigy ducked around Gwen’s flailing arms to guide her away from the button. “You’re going to spontaneously summon her if you keep that up. Let’s get you out of here.”

Gwen didn’t see the point. “You managed to teleport yourself in,” she pointed out. “Trust me, I never could have imagined you. Can’t she pull the same trick?”

Effigy frowned in thought. “I’m not… sure? Listen, I don’t know who Evil Gwenpool really is or what she’s capable of. My interest here was for other reasons.”

Gwen’s plot senses were tingling.

“Oh, hell yeah, I’ll do whatever your reasons are,” she agreed blindly. Better to side with the nice version who would probably stick up for her instead of making her commit atrocities like the last one. She was just hedging her bets on who would have stronger morals.

Effigy laughed. “You’re eager, I respect that. But I also don’t know what you’re capable of.”

She could see where this was going.

“Is there some kind of test you’ve got going on? Boot camp for Gwens? A baseline established for our abilities? How many of us do you know, if you’ve got ideas in mind?”

“A few,” Effigy replied patiently. And out of order. “Never really had to do a test before. They had already gone through the learning phase when we met. You’ve been reading my FG initials as Effigy, though, just as I was spelling it in my head, so that speaks to some potential,” she was pacing around, fingers pressing her temples as she thought. “Wait, no, I’ve got it! Can you give us a meeting place?”

Gwen was still struggling to understand how this supposed reality manipulation power worked, but she tried to look around and take note of where they were standing.

The ground was paved. Hot, from the sun. And there was a steady breeze going. There was a metal safety barrier in front of them, where Gwen decided to lean against. Cars whizzed behind them, inches away from the footpath they were standing on, overlooking the polluted river.

“Brooklyn Bridge,” Effigy said, approval in her voice as she sat down, swinging her legs casually over the waters. “Nice choice. Private-ish. Would’ve been better if it was night, but this has its charm, maybe.”

“Thanks?” Gwen said, unsure of how to take this information.

Effigy held out a flask, “It’s coffee,” she explained cheerfully. “Still warm. Have some, while I figure out what to say.”

They sat in silence for a bit, Gwen sipping experimentally at the drink, and trying to figure out why Effigy had felt the need to say what it was. Anyone with eyes and a tongue could tell it was coffee. The sharp, bitter kind, too.

Finally, Effigy broke the silence, seeming to have found the words she was looking for.

“I know you want me to have all the answers,” she said finally. “But I don’t. We’re always going to be stuck in this weird limbo between still figuring out the rules and having all the right information in our hands. It’s a crucial Gwenpool character trait.”

That was… a letdown. Gwen tried not to let her disappointment show.

“But you gotta know more than me, don’t you?” she pressed anyways.

“I am more experienced with this text-based manipulation style that gives us our powers,” Effigy admitted, looking proud of the fact. “It’s a little more intensive than the graphical style used in the comics, and kind of involves you brainwashing yourself, but it’s really clicking for me recently. I know the canon Gwenpool lore better than you, definitely, and what a lot of other canon standings are. Have a lot more favorable connections than you do, too, if what I’ve read about you so far is right.”

She hesitated then, looking a lot more serious. “And I might know something that you don’t, but I need you to answer a question for me first to make sure.”

“…Okay?” Gwen replied, not quite sure what could be so important to deserve the current look of abject fear in Effigy’s eyes.

“How did you get here?” Effigy asked.

“Shouldn’t you know already? You’re me,” Gwen felt faintly uncomfortable with the line of questioning. Effigy looked at her, searching for something, and then sat back.

“Thought so. You not having an explanation for how you got brought into the comics is a Canon Fact. I thought that maybe because you exist as a tangible fanfic offshoot, out of editorial’s grasp, you would be able to circumvent it,” She explained, looking disappointed. “But I guess not. Don’t know how I feel about that. Does it make us less real, or more?”

Gwen thought on it. Then decided it gave her too much of a headache. “But we’re still in a story, right? The author’s got an outline to stick to. What’re you going to do when they try to pull things back on course?”

“I’m not petty enough to be fighting with the penniless dreamer who controls this entire world. Don’t really understand Evil Gwenpool’s plan regarding that,” Effigy brushed a hand through her hair. “The story will meld in, and I can stick through it. Learn some things. The switch to text was a bit of a surprise, so there aren’t many who were built in that environment. We’re kind of approaching it from the outside.”

So out of all them, she was the one to have spent the most time being made out of words.

Gwen looked down at her hands, real and wrinkled and covered in thin scars. For a second, her vision blurred, and it all fell apart into words, before she blinked, and the world righted itself. It still felt impossible to wrap her head around.

“You were looking for me,” Gwen realized. Effigy had been waffling around that truth. But it had been specifically Gwen she had approached. Not to look at the world from afar. Not to interfere. Not for her powers, because at this point Gwen had none. There was something about her that Effigy had wanted.

Effigy ran a hand through her hair. Gwen hadn’t noticed before then how greasy it looked. “It’s not a big deal. I just- it’s bugging me, okay? I was real. Before I appeared in the comics. And ever since, I’ve felt so flat and restrained. Like bits of me were carved out and missing. Being here – it changed me. Changed us. And I can’t be the only one who’s noticed. I just need to put the pieces together on what happened.”

Ouch.

Gwen didn’t know how to comfort that.

“I don’t think I really count? I mean, you said it yourself, I’m not canonical,” Gwen pointed out, trying to ease the guilt in her chest. “And the more removed you are from the original spot-”

“Nothing remains stagnant!” Effigy snapped. The first instance of her patience snapping. Gwen’s jaw clicked shut, letting her rant. “Writers change, audience demands shift, trends adapt. Who the Real Human Gwen was is already gone. And her legacy is now us.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Gwen interrupted the tirade. “You think we’re all the same person?”

Effigy’s eyes became cold. Guarded.

“Maybe I do. Would that be crazy?”

“I mean, a little bit.”

Gwen could handle being a fictional thing. Had made her peace with the idea ages ago. But a piece of the person she had thought was her?

A step too far.

And even setting aside the existentialism of it all, one thing she was starting to grasp was that…

“This is going to lead into some multiverse shit.”

Effigy nodded.

Gwen stared miserably across the polluted river, and the cities that lined its banks.

This was still her universe, she was sure. The setting she had been since – well, for a distinct amount of time. If she were to leave it behind, what would become of it? Would she come back too changed to fit back in?

It was worse when it required waiting. She was terrible with far-off threats. And the multiverse thing certainly wouldn’t get started until the current storyline the author had penned out ended. What was she supposed to be doing? A sign would be nice.

And maybe the person on the keyboard had taken pity on her, because a blur of red and black landed on the support cables of the bridge; hanging upside down to address them.

“Ma’ams I’m going to have to ask you to- Gwen?” Miles broke from his regular spiel to gape at her, head swiveling around to look at her companion. “And Other Gwen.”

“Call me Effigy!” she said, waving at him.

Miles squinted at Gwen, “Time travel, dimension hop, or clone?”

“A little bit of Column A, little bit of Column B?” Gwen guessed. “Also, I might be the clone.”

“Don’t worry about it though, Miles. What’s the sitch?” Effigy barged ahead.

“Hey, hey, not so loud!” Miles looked around worriedly to make sure no one heard her. “Fuck, there’s two of you now. I was just getting used to the one. But. I was here to ask you to vacate the bridge, please. Some shit is going down,” he pinned Gwen with a look, “But now that you’re here, I think this might not be a coincidence.”

Too many plotlines were colliding together here.

“Split up,” Gwen decided, looking at Effigy. “You warn the others, I deal with whatever’s going on here.”

Effigy nodded and then disappeared.

Miles startled. “What was that?” he asked, looking around. “Since when did you have powers, Gwen?”

“They’re not exactly powers,” Gwen explained badly.

“Fine, don’t tell me. I thought we were friends, but I guess not,” Miles crossed his arms and turned away in a huff. The bridge shook wildly, the first in a long string of tremors, she was guessing.

Gwen gripped the safety barrier, “Miles! What’s going on with the bridge?!”

“Hostage situation!” Miles cried, plastered against the side of the bridge too, courtesy of his Spider Stickiness. “Someone’s gotten bombs onto the support beams and trapped people near the center of the bridge! They’re demanding cash and ‘offerings’???”

“Hey, question, what the fuck does that have to do with me?” she asked, feeling a little offended. The shaking finally stopped, and no major parts of the bridge came down with it, so she forced herself to breathe.

“You don’t even know the number of atrocities you’ve committed, do you?” Miles asked, yelling far too loud now that the chaos had abated.

Gwen thought for a moment, and graciously decided to drop the argument. For his sake, obviously. Because if you wanted to get down to it, she had done nothing wrong.

“You got names or faces of these nefarious bridge destroyers?” she asked, pulling out her trusty sniper rifle. For the scope, right now, but maybe firepower would be needed later.

Miles shook his head. “They're all wearing these big mascot masks. Kinda goofy. I think I remember them, somehow? Think like bank robber chic.”

“You'd think they'd go to the effort of choosing menacing supervillain names if they go this far to make a little bit of cash,” Gwen grunted, leaning over the safety barrier until she was almost hanging upside down.

Miles groaned and moved to grab her. “Don't do that, you're going to fall to your death.”

“Dude, how else am I supposed to see who's camped out down there?” she asked, not budging from her spot as she zoomed the scope right onto the foundations of the brige. Just close enough to see the vague profiles of these bank robbers turned bridge demolitionists.

Her memory wasn't the best, but descriptions in this world could go from vague to startlingly accurate, and when she looked at those burly men in big cartoon animal masks, all she could see in her mind was the group of robbers she may or may not have murdered several adventures — years? — ago.

”Huh,” she said, pulling herself back up. “Not what I was expecting.”

“Shit, you're going quiet,” Miles sounded panicky. “Is there something wrong with those guys?”

“So, funny story, those guys are dead,” she said, wondering how best to phrase this. “And you were totally right, this has something to do with me.”

“We're running out of time,” Miles looked at the watch seemingly strapped to his arm for this mission alone. “You and I take out the people at the foundations and defuse the bombs, then you figure out who brought these guys back from the dead for such a ridiculous reason?”

He was up and swinging before Gwen had the opportunity to tell him that she already knew who was responsible for this.

Despite the meandering tone this had taken so far, it was still a narrative with an overarching plot. And its primary antagonist was herself.

Now all that was left was figuring out what to do with that knowledge.

If she went to save the people on the bridge, lives would be saved. But the lives were nothing more than information on a server somewhere, so what did it matter?

No, her interest was in these undead bank robbers themselves.

They were forgettable in the long term. Inconsequential, really. Except for one tiny member of their posse.

Cecil.

Chapter Text

Effigy slipped through the whitespace, and for a moment hung in freefall, long hair trailing behind and scraps of stories rushing up to meet her.

There was a lot to pick and choose from. Stories she had likely never heard of. Characters and concepts being explored in a thousand interesting ways. Rabbitholes of research and information and arcs that she could get lost in, if only she had the time to wander.

It never got old, seeing what this world had to offer. But right now, the perspective was on her, and it was time to move the plot along.

Through all the alluring snatches of excerpts, she picked out the one that she actually needed, and beckoned it closer.

That trick didn’t always work – stories weren’t very keen on being made to go where people said – but she found this page in particular was more accommodating. Perhaps why they had picked it to be their safe harbor, in the ever-changing sea of the whitespace, where nothing was constant, and stories could disappear as often as they were spawned, leaving only scars in place of where they had been cleaved.

The scene had been abandoned when she had found it. Cut off from the bigger story it was probably attached to once. Now used as a touchstone for the Gwens she had contacted so far. Reluctant inhabitants desperate for something real.

Sometimes writers got wise and tried to make fictional characters aware of this plane, letting them invade, but that was a storyline for another day. She had reinforcements to gather.

“There’s an Evil Gwenpool going around, guys,” she announced in way of greeting, landing on the coffee table in front of the TV. “Anyone wants to take potshots at her?”

Gwenompool crushed the can she was drinking with her tail, grinning sharp and manic. “Damn straight, count me in.”

There were a lot of bank robbers in this world. And seeing how it got dull just making faceless regular thugs, a lot of them had their own ‘gimmick’, so to speak. Not that animal masks was very original.

Truthfully, Gwen had no idea who any of these people were. And as such, it was hard to pick out which one might know if they had dragged along a barely-legal teen into this terror plot on the bridge.

After a few minutes of looking back and forth, and trying to guess if maybe one of these people might be Cecil in disguise, and then deciding no, they were all too tall, visibly older, or much too comfortable with guns for it.

New plan of action was to find that goofy truck they had the last time, and see if Cecil was taking cover there, more capable of doing his job in the silence with his laptop.

All that was set to the side when he had reappeared without her involvement.

Would he remember her? Now that he was back with his uncle, maybe all that progress had been reverted. In which case, maybe they could… start over?

It’d be possible.

Miles had the bridge covered, too, most likely. He could be the backup dealing with the tangible stakes, she would have the emotional conflict, and both aspects of a compelling classic superhero story would be resolved.

She should’ve maybe snagged a webshooter from him or something, Gwen thought to herself as she jogged over to the supporting column which had a truck with a painfully conspicuous coat of paint on it, and began to rappel down. This was easily the most treacherous part of her job, despite how good she had gotten at traversing heights.

Wait a second. She should be able to skip right past this if she concentrated, right? Not by closing her eyes, or willing for something to happen, of course. Just by placing the right transition word to move this pointless scene along. Wait, she almost had it-

Eventually, she got close enough to the ground that she felt safe doing a flip as she fell, and landed on top of the van with her knees bent. Fuck, yeah!

Someone from inside the car screamed. Double yeah!

She rolled to the side so that her head was poking into the van through the window built into its side, finding one person there, face obscured with the atrocious glow of his laptop, which had fallen askew from the jump.

The scream was familiar enough, though, as she waved. “Yo, Cecil, right?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Cecil said, closing the laptop and reaching up to turn a lamp placed on the side of the room. “Who are you, exactly?”

Gwen laughed. “Come on, you know, the infamous, unbelievable, Gwenpool?” she did jazz hands. Then overbalanced and fell off the roof of the van. She had gotten good at rolling with her falls, though, and was back up before long.

Cecil still had that blank look on his face. He opened the back of the van to look at her more clearly. “Are you maybe supposed to be working with us on this job? I told my uncle the customer we were dealing with was shady as fuck, if they didn’t even fill us in on other workers.”

Okay, so she had expected some things to be different. But like, not this different.

“I mean, a little bit?” she settled on saying. “That depends on who your uber-shady customer is. Tall lady, dressed kind of like me, but all the white accents are in black?”

She hoped it was, because it would make things a lot easier.

Which was why of course Cecil had to say, “Nope. I mean, they might look like that. Never met them myself. We’ve only ever talked through henchmen representing them.”

“Oh, that’s real shady,” Gwen cringed.

Cecil looked positively overjoyed. “I know, right?! But my uncle just doesn’t listen to reason. It’s so infuriating,” he then tilted his head, giving her a considering look. “Come to think of it now, your costume does kind of look like the henchmen’s.”

Huh. Not the connection she had thought she would get.

Fighting was still happening, far above their heads. She could hear explosions, but not the long chain of ones with debris falling everywhere that truly spelled disaster. It would probably still hold out for a little while longer. So, she had an important choice to make.

… Should she go for it? Pull this Cecil back into the fold, and replace the old one as if he had never even existed?

That left an ugly taste in h er mouth. It didn’t seem fair to his memory.

Would that Cecil be considered dead right now?

Nope, not diving right into the over-existentialism over there. She should just go for it. The status quo would balance itself right out after this story was over, in whatever form that took, and she would really rather have a Cecil of any kind there, than not.

“So, this seems like a pretty dangerous plan,” she said. “Of course, I’ve dealt with my side of the bargain already, but don’t you get the feeling that it’s way too stupid? You’re a smart guy, you’ve got a thick gaming laptop and everything. You should have noticed that, too.”

Cecil seemed to open up a little in relief, smiling shyly, “God, I know, right? Taking risks is part of getting your name out there, I know. And is literally most of the job description. But everything about this is screaming like a trap. I mean, holding a bridge ransom? I’m surprised they haven’t called the Coast Guard on us.”

“Instead, you’ve got Spider-Man,” Gwen told him cheerily.

Cecil gulped. “We’re so doomed. And after I told them- ”

“Ditch your family,” Gwen suggested, “Come with me. Position just opened up for a pet hacker named Cecil.”

“Uh… no? I only just met you,” Cecil said, “I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll just-”

Then the world exploded into a frenzy of movement.

The van was hurled onto its side, rolling over several times, just barely grazing past Gwen. And for the better, too, as the spot where it was standing had a chunk of concrete from the bridge above smash into it.

Gwen didn’t scream. But only because she was too surprised to. Above her, a series of explosions were ringing out, but looking up, it seemed to not be having the intended effect of bringing down the entire bridge. Except for large chunks of debris such as the kind that had nearly turned the van and Cecil inside it into a pancake.

Speaking of, she tilted her head to the side to look at the figure who had thrown the van to safety at the nick of time.

They had been hidden before, by nature of being on the other side of the van, and then when the rock had come down, but now they walked out from behind it free as anything.

They were of a similar height and build as Gwen – though perhaps the stranger had an extra inch on her, and a lot more added muscle. Most likely a product of the symbiote wrapped around her like a second skin made of tar. There were certainly other adjustments given to her by the symbiote, such as the giant clawed hands, and prehensile tail, as well as the smile that stretched too far into her face, and the teeth that were just too jagged.

“I get that you’re new and all,” she said, sauntering up to Gwen with a voice that separated into two, overlapping ones; one too deep, and the other one sounding like it had been pitched up with helium. “But you should learn to keep an eye on the paragraphs below you. Real lifesaver, that trick.”

“Or maybe, you should consider looking up,” another new voice suggested, revealing a Gwen who looked a lot more like her own self, currently leaning against a wall and typing on her phone.

Gwen sighed in relief, not even bothering with getting confused. “You guys must be reinforcements. Did Effigy send you?”

“Yeah, and promised us a real fight, for our troubles,” Gwenompool said, tail loudly thunking against things as she looked around for the fight. “Where’s this supposed Evil Gwen?”

“What’s an Evil Gwen, anyways?” Interro-Gwen – the one typing on her phone – asked.

“Oh, you implanted your names right into my narration? So weird,” Gwen said, unsure how she felt about it. Because it was kind of cool. Almost like telepathy, if you thought about it. Wait, could she use these powers to pretend she had telepathy?

“If the perspective’s on someone else, then sure,” Interro-Gwen agreed.

“But it’s better if the perspective’s on you,” Gwenompool added. “More power in your hands. Telepathy is small potatoes compared to the wholesale reality manipulation you can pull off when you’ve got the perspective pointed your way.”

Gwen nodded, only partially pretending to follow along, jogging in place for a bit. “Listen, I’d really ask you about how you guys use your powers, and just gather inspo for how to use mine, but Cecil has been in that van you threw for several minutes so I need to see if he’s gotten a head injury.”

Interro-Gwen perked up a little. “Your Cecil, huh?”

Gwenompool just looked lost. “What’s a Cecil?”

She really wasn’t going to stop and explain what Interro-Gwen clearly could, and rushed back to Cecil, finding him intact and conscious in the van.

And also aiming a gun right for her face.

His hands were shaking, and fear shone in his eyes, but the grip was solid enough and finger carefully placed on the trigger . Daring her to make a wrong move.

“Are you guys trying to off me?” he asked, voice filled with venom. Perhaps an apt reaction, given Gwenompool not far away from them. “Pulling out of the deal and using me as a reminder why they shouldn’t try to press for payment? You’re just one of the henchmen!”

“As if you’re much different,” Gwen decided to say, instead of jumping through hoops to explain why no, it was actually completely different. “You just don’t have to wear the stupid costume.”

Cecil laughed despite the situation, but then caught himself and pressed his lips together tightly. “So what was the play here? I see the others here. You’re clearly part of a larger operation, and more closely linked to the big boss than I am.”

“Closely linked as in she hates me,” Gwen decided to say, going off a hunch that the villain who sent this Cecil was Evil Gwen. “I’m going rogue, and taking a team with me.”

“And a symbiote host, apparently,” Cecil side-eyed the other window. “That’s a bit of a risky play.”

“Everything’s a risk, Cecil,” Gwen pleaded her case. “And I could really use someone reliable on my side. Like I said; pet hacker position is open, and I think you’re suitable.”

Cecil raised an eyebrow, and then reiterated. “We just met. You been stalking me before?”

“If you want to define it as such, sure,” Gwen agreed gamely. It’d be easier to explain elsewhere, when they weren’t on the edge of disaster. Except, come to think of it, the rubble had stopped falling, as quickly as it had started.

Cecil was biting his lip now, looking as if he regretted the choice before he even made it, but raising his hand to shake hers anyway. “I’ll take you up on the offer, then.”

“Sure, great,” Gwen said, trying her best to give him a blinding smile, pulling him into a sharp hug, and then backing away just as fast, thoughts now consumed by the bridge, and what had happened on top of it.

It would be best if the loose thread of Cecil’s uncle was tied up. Of course, that didn’t mean she wanted him dead, but if that’s how the dominoes fell…

Chapter Text

Big city crime was a cutthroat business. The only way to make it there was by getting involved with flashy suits and big theatrics.

They were just trying to get by, at the end of the day, but there was no escaping it. High-profile villains were a dime a dozen, and they paid the people doing their dirty work a pretty penny for their troubles.

The woman in the pink and black Discount Lady Deadpool outfit was supposed to be just another high-paying client, albeit one with a more maniacal plan that normal. She was going to be the one the heroes went after first, though, so their gang would come away from this foolhardy plan with no harm to themselves.

Cecil had truly believed that. All uptil fifteen minutes ago, when he had uneasily lowered his gun and shook the hand of Gwen Poole.

They were walking now; him, the woman who had first approached him, and the two others who had dropped in later and looked remarkably like her. It was an underwhelming way to get around, compared to the fact that he was certain they had all rappelled down from the top of the bridge.

They were headed to one of the maintenance ladders leading up to the support beams – he had seen it in the blueprints he had gotten in preparation for the job. Not that his uncle and the rest of the group bothered to look at them.

He wouldn’t have minded the silence, he supposed, if it hadn’t been for the constant looks the two non-Symbiote people were giving him, and just the mere presence of the Symbiote host hovering over him, even if she seemed fine with ignoring him. Gunfire was echoing above them on the bridge, and it was making him antsy.

“So, let me guess,” he said, in a desperate attempt to break the silence. “You guys were made in a clone lab.”

“Surprisingly, this isn’t a Laura Kinney situation,” Interro-Gwen said, reaching the maintenance ladder first and beginning to climb, while the Gwenompool rushed up easily, tendrils shifting to grip better.

Cecil frowned and tried to remember if he had ever heard that name before. He had, he was sure, it was just… fogg y in his mind. The knowledge slipping between his fingers when he tried to reach for it.

Interro-Gwen laughed. “You still haven’t been keyed into a canon, huh? You must’ve really been a rush job.”

“What’s that mean?” Gwen asked from beside him, right as he was going to ask that.

Metal thudded loudly from above them from the Symbiote-Gwen’s mad scramble back down the ladder to give her two cents into the conversation. “Everything in these situations is built upon a vague understanding of reality. What events have happened, what characters exist, whether this is the Movies-verse, some random line of comics, or some unhinged mish-mash of it all with generous artistic liberties taken. I’m sure you understand.”

So, not clones, but alternate dimensions. Th em being variants of the same person explained the similar costumes.

“Failing to see what the point here is,” he said, almost losing his grip on the next rung when Symbiote-Gwen was suddenly standing on the rung right above it.

“And I’m failing to see the point of a sidekick who pokes at logic inconsistencies in comics when we clearly already have that covered,” she said, razor sharp teeth the size of his fingers bared as she snarled.

“Cecil’s role is really to apply a more grounding feel to the story, so that the audience doesn’t feel as detached to all the goings-on that we experience. Because it matters to him and has real consequences,” Interro-Gwen explained to her.

He didn’t like the way she was talking about him as if he wasn’t even there. Worse, it was like he was sitting back in high school English Lit, hearing Mrs Hatherford explain how character roles worked to accentuate certain themes and ideas.

Cecil had felt small all his life. But this time, the feeling was profound. Like he was just a part of a story that had been looped around a hundred times. Gwen – his Gwen? The one he met first and couldn’t differentiate in any other way – had greeted him like an old friend. Recognized his talents on sight, maybe from knowing him in another dimension.

Had they met there? Why had an opening for a ‘pet hacker’ opened up recently? Was he a replacement for a person that he had never met, with all the assumptions and ideals placed on the other variant neatly transferred over to him?

As questions began to weigh down on him, he remembered what had sparked off this line of conversation in the first place.

“What does this have to do with me not knowing who Laura Kinney is?”

Symbiote-Gwen nodded along, rushing to continue with her explanation. “So, when a scene is happening in a certain timeline, all the characters there have a reasonable understanding of that ‘canon’ . Stuff they should have reasonably learnt from living in these circumstances since they were born. But he doesn’t, because they didn’t plant the proper information into his head when they were putting together this situation .”

Right. Nonsensical replies in the tone of a wizened teacher was what he should have learned to expect already, compared to the prior interactions he had with this group.

“I know stuff,” he insisted, feeling his ears grow hot. “There’s just a lot of this superhero-stuff going on, you know? You stop caring about which monster is currently tearing up New York when you live out in the sticks. No one ‘forgot’ to plant anything in me, you’re talking crazy.”

The tiny fragment of his brain that was far too susceptible to suggestion dissented to this. He’d been in New York for a while now. They had actively dealt with supervillains, and had to keep an eye out for the heroes. Surely he could name a few. Yet nothing came of it, even as he strained his mind to come up with a name.

“I guess if you say so.” Symbiote-Gwen said, turning to scamper higher up the ladder.

Gwen had her neck craned around to look at Cecil, a little bug-eyed.

Interro-Gwen laughed at her, not even stopping her ascent, “Surely that’s not the first time you’ve gotten that treatment. Characters are really committed to their place in reality.”

Cecil prickled at that, because it kept happening again and again. The easy way that she so easily dismissed him as- as- as what, exactly? Something fake? He was real. He knew he was. He was more than a supporting role, or a grounding presence, or a mob that needed essential knowledge downloaded. He was a person .

Gwen was still looking at him, and instead of acknowledging what the other variant had said, addressed him directly. “I used to constantly be telling the Cecil I knew that none of this was real. I think at some point he just started to humor me for it? Kinda weird to be starting from square one.”

He relaxed a little, only noticing the fuzzy, staticky panic building up inside him when it dissolved just then.

“You might wanna get another pet hacker, if I’m failing to live up to your friend’s standards,” he joked, and then, because the curiosity got the better of him, he asked, “What happened to him? Is- is he dead?”

Gwen hesitated. On her face were a dozen emotions all in conflict.

“I hope not,” she finally managed. “But the woman who hired you? She made him disappear.”

A stone dropped in his stomach.

“Not like, an alternate version of her?” he asked hopefully. Because it was a discomfiting thought that he was running errands for a woman who had (maybe) killed another version of him.

“Nope, definitely her,” Interro-Gwen said, “We don’t have a lot of us both going evil and breaking the bonds of media in one fell swoop.”

Cecil cursed under his breath. “And you were going to get vengeance for me, right?” he asked Gwen.

“Yeah!” her voice cracked slightly. “If she didn’t kill me first! But I have reinforcements now, so I think we’re all set for round two.”

“Which we would’ve gotten to, if the POV hadn’t slipped over to the new kid,” Interro-Gwen said, the first bit of bitterness bleeding into her tone. “You sure are fixated on this ladder, aren’t you? I bet when we get up there, Symbiote-Gwen’s already gotten a couple bites in.”

He had no idea how to respond to that. Wait, no, he knew the most egregious part of that sentence.

“I’m the last person to get on the ladder, so I’m not exactly slowing you down. Just go up ahead without me.”

This suggestion was met with raucous laughter, for some unfathomable reason.

Police sirens wailed around them, muted by the mournful hush that had fallen over the crowd.

People had died, in the altercation at the Brooklyn Bridge.

A section of it had been blocked off with cars still trapped on it, unable to cross with the trigger wires to the bombs stretched across either side of the road, and a hostage situation had occurred.

Their demands were scattered and confused, but the stakes were high. Law enforcement had arrived, and stood around to negotiate. Vigilantes circled around, trying to identify these villains and their motives. Gunfire had broken out, when a part-time vigilante, part-time mercenary known as Gwenpool opened fire.

It happened too fast to quite keep track. Later on, while forensic teams try to piece together a timeline of events, they would find that there was no consistency to be found, with equally reliable sources claiming that it had been a matter of minutes and nearly two hours from the time the trigger wires were stretched across the roads and the cars were pinned in, to when the shooting finally ground to a halt, none of the men in the mascot masks left alive.

The order of events was confused, and the movements of the firefight were hard to make sense of. Both eyewitness accounts and traffic cameras would insist that Gwenpool had been teleporting around the battlefield the Bridge had become.

The only other known super active on the scene was Spider-Man – the one in the black suit with red accents – and upon later questioning, he would say that the trick was that there were two Gwenpools at the scene. He would then go on to apologize for his hand in the deaths of these dishonorable men, having communicated with Gwenpool before the fighting kicked off.

Claiming that there were two Gwenpools would not account for the erratic jumps from hiding spot to hiding spot seen on the recordings. There would have to be dozens, if not more, to make the trick work as expected.

Investigators would spend days and weeks scratching their heads on what exactly happened here, and all of that would have no bearing on the direct aftermath, where Effigy and Sketch were sitting on the roof of one of the upended cars. Upended by who, it was unclear, as none of the people involved had the ability to flip over cars, but it looked cool.

“You can decide on the future now?” Sketch said, after processing the narration she had just gone through.

“A bit of an experiment, but I think it’ll work,” Effigy said. “We’re going to have to come back to this to make sure it sticks. But the way standard narration practices go, it should work like this.”

Sketch whistled. “You’re adapting to the new medium pretty quick. Feels like everything I knew went poof.”

“Because you were far too reliant on that drawing board of yours, instead of wholesale visualization,” Effigy told her bluntly. “You’ll get around to this, eventually, but. You know. This could be a point in favor of my theory, if you were Gwen’s artistic ability-”

Sketch pushed her off the car. “Don’t start with that. We’ve already got Gwenompool incoming, so the others aren’t far behind. The new Cecil looks like he’s fresh out of the kiln, too. He’s going to be a piece of work.”

It seemed that Sketch’s powers of observation and eavesdropping had at least transferred over, as t rue to her word, Gwenompool vaulted up from the maintenance ladder and onto the road proper, scenting the air with her long symbiote tongue.

“Aw, you didn’t leave any bad guys for us?” she whined. “What happened with the Evil Gwenpool? I don’t think she’ll smell like all these other guys, given that she’s real and all.”

That had been something Effigy had been bothered by. She had brought these incarnations of Gwen together based on that promise, but it hadn’t slipped her notice that this could have easily be en bait for that very purpose. There hadn’t even been a single Poole Boy on the scene.

“She might have left,” she finally said. “But we know she was here. And she had a vested interest in this place, until she found out that there was more out there. She’s still getting her feet under her, so we can take advantage of that, no?”

The disbelief aimed at her from the two of them was palpable.

“I somehow don’t think lowering our guard on that belief is very smart,” Sketch said, folding her arms. “We need to figure out a plan. I vote we stay here. This is a pretty classic setup for a Gwen; we can gather allies here, and fortify for the big battle. A familiar setting would be good for reader investment, too.”

She was clearly reverting back to her time revolting from the Manipulator. Fair enough, given that that was her base. Even if it was a bit of a drag.

Effigy breathed slightly, “Okay, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but-”

Cecil screamed, cutting off her dialogue.

She could still be caught by surprise; she just also had the option to go back and fix it. She held off on it this time, out of respect for Cecil’s anguish as he climbed onto the Bridge, stumbling between the crumpled cars and dismantled bombs to grab at one of the dead redshirt henchmen, and press two fingers shakily to the corpse’s pulse point.

“I- Holy shit- he-” Cecil’s breath was coming fast and short, eyes shiny.

Effigy had long since accepted that in this entire world, she and the other Gwens w ere the only true living being s . The others were amusements, and characters she wanted to care for and have good things happen to – insofar as they deserved. (Floating Box: Sometimes she found herself looking at the others, and hyperanalyzing their mannerisms to check if they really were real after all, and not some trick.)

But now, as she watched a version of the closest friend she had in the source material break down and hold his uncle, she knew that she could go back. Edit things. Make a bullet ricochet differently. Turn the headshot into a graze on his abdomen.

And she made no move to make it reality. This was an essential part of Cecil’s character development. The fact that their newest recruit knew that Effigy could fix it, and yet didn’t look at her with any betrayal meant that she understood th is solemn truth too.

Effigy kept a close eye on the scrolling paragraphs that went by without her in them. And Interro-Gwen had been right.

What was an Evil Gwen Poole , anyway?

Chapter Text

They were sitting in Alice’s room. Gwen played around with a cardboard tube, swinging it at a shelf so that a prop sword fell from it. Being made out of aluminum and cardboard, it was prone to being bent out of shape, but Alice simply picked it up and slashed at Gwen. She barely blocked it with her tube.

“You know something that really annoys me?” Gwen asked as they broke apart to circle each other dramatically.

“It better not be the fact that I never let you win,” Alice warned, grinning at her with bared teeth.

“People don’t know that an antagonist and a villain are different things,” Gwen ranted. Alice laughed incredulously, which only heightened her annoyance. “I’m serious! Villains are, like, evil. Out to do bad on purpose and stuff.”

“But what about the ones that we’re supposed to sympathize with?”

“There’s nuance!” Gwen did a stabbing motion with her cardboard tube. “But the point stands. People who oppose the moral fiber of the story are villains. People who oppose the journey of the main character are antagonists. It’s an important distinction!”

Alice looked at her, and then exhaled slightly, not quite laughing. But coming close to it. “Is this because someone called the rival from that sports anime you like a villain?”

“Yes!” Gwen cried. “It’s an injustice, okay? I don’t even like the guy, and he straight up doesn’t meet the criteria for Villain! He’s good at what he does, and he’s not the protagonist. That doesn’t exactly make him MODOK.”

Alice looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and a muscle twitching in her cheek. “I’m sure that’s very distressing for you,” she allowed. Her voice was lurching slightly.

Maybe Gwen was being a tad dramatic, now that the words that had been bouncing around within the walls of her mind had been said out loud. Her stomach felt like live snakes had woken up inside it, in the face of Alice’s fond amusement.

“Whatever,” she decided, throwing the cardboard tube at Alice’s face, who squawked in annoyance.

The wave of dizziness was more obvious for Gwen now that she knew to look for it.

Perhaps describing it as dizziness gave the wrong impression. It wasn’t a sudden bout of confusion that passed after a short amount of time. It was more like your brain becoming clearer and supercharged after a long time of being trapped in a thick casing of jello. The sudden removal of the weights made it run so much faster, it took a second to readjust. And that sudden shift was what defined a POV switch.

She took stock of her situation. They were in a cramped, mildewy hallway, the rest of the Gwens following behind her. Cecil was hanging even further back. In her hand, she had the keys to her apartment. Wasn’t hard to guess where this was going.

Door unlocked and swung open, she made a show of dramatically sweeping in and waving an arm around at all the attractions of her humble abode. “Welcome to my home! It’s – possibly quite literally – also your home!”

They streamed in, looking around with various levels of intensity. Gwenompool’s tongue flickered through the air, and she made a beeline straight to the fridge. Interro-Gwen stood near the window, peering out before closing the blinds. Sketch began inspecting the frames Gwen had up on the walls, poking the jars of marbles and steel shot she had on a shelf, near her pridefully stolen katana.

Effigy didn’t make any such attempt to familiarize herself with Gwen’s life, instead sitting down in front of the coffee table and pressing the sides her head, as if that would help her think.

“I get that it’s a stereotype, but you need to get me more chocolate,” Gwenompool said, popping back up to place assorted foodstuffs on the table, then slinking away to nibble on a bar of chocolate that Gwen would definitely have already finished if she had known where it was.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that,” Gwen said, grabbing a somewhat bruised apple she had been dispassionately watching wither over the past week.

Interro-Gwen went for one of the emergency rations Gwen had once graciously accepted being paid in for a vampire mission gone very very wrong. She had thought it sounded cool at the time, but quickly realized that the terrible flavor wasn’t being exaggerated. It was a little sickening to see how easily Interro-Gwen downed it, and then reached for water.

“So, Effigy,” she sighed, once she’d washed down her food. “Guess that gave you your answer?”

“What?” Gwen asked, looking between them. No one acknowledged her confusion.

Effigy sighed and took a bite of yesterday lunch’s Chinese takeout. “If anything, that makes it more confusing. I mean, antagonist or villain? The distinction is going to come back to bite us somehow.”

“Thematic significance, maybe, but I’ll need to go over what direction this current arc is taking to base anything concrete,” Interro-Gwen said, arms resting on her knees as she sat on the couch.

Sketch rebutted, “I think you guys are forgetting to look beyond the wordplay. Who was that girl supposed to be-”

Gwen couldn’t understand what was happening. It was like they were all discussing something she hadn’t been there for. Yet they all expected her to be. This hadn’t been brought up before, on the bridge. Something had changed around the time when…

“That wasn’t just a chapter break, was it?” she asked, putting the pieces together. “There was a scene change in between it, too. Somewhere where we weren’t. That’s why I didn’t notice.”

Effigy gave her a thumbs up and a winning smile. “See, you’re getting it! But it’s a little more twisted this time, because you technically were there, it’s just that-”

All the others groaned.

“Stop it, Effy, you can’t go around making a theory sound like fact,” Interro-Gwen shook her head.

“And even if you could try and gather the evidence from other circumstances, you can’t be sure that this was a flashback at all,” Gwenompool said. “It could be another Gwen set to appear soon, with that scene of her in real time.”

Right. This had quickly gotten annoying.

“I can’t hop heads or swim upstream or do whatever little visualizations you do to make your powers happen, and it’s going to take a lot more time until I’m at the level where I can,” she said, teeth grinding together as she spoke. “So if someone could tell me what I missed-”

The fervent discussion died quickly, and a few of the other Gwens looked at her apologetically. Interro-Gwen cleared her throat. “So, right before this, we had a scene shift to a different Gwen. With Alice. Do you know who-?”

“Yeah, I’m familiar,” Gwen cut in, wanting to get to the crux of the issue.

“Great. Okay, so, they were playing around with cardboard–”

“–it would’ve been awesome in visual format–” Sketch muttered.

“–and Gwen was kind of ranting to her about the difference between the villains and antagonists,” Interro-Gwen finished. “Since the scene before that cut off at ‘What would even make a Gwenpool Evil?’, we might be moving into a battle between these ideas.”

Now that Interro-Gwen had said it, Gwen could remember a conversation like this happening between her and Alice. But it could be anything between false memories to her lore being written in real time. An expositionary flashback, maybe. Or maybe not. If Effigy and Evil Gwenpool had agreed on one thing, it was that the narrative didn’t want to work conveniently for them. It twisted away from their will, and tried to trick them .

Maybe what they saw was a flashback. But it was for a character they didn’t expect. Would it matter for lore purposes which character it was? And maybe Gwenompool was right, and this was the real time glimpse into the life of a Gwen Poole who would appear soon.

Gwen herself had yet to learn a lot of things. Newbie was her schtick at the moment. Could they deal with two people who had to be explained the basics over and over again?

Effigy puffed out a breath, shaking her head. “You know what? This is really my fault. Ask stupefying questions, get stupefying answers. Rule to stick to,” she held up her index finger as she looked at Gwen. “Try not to get bogged down by the Doylist implications of your actions and just fucking do it. ”

Sketch scoffed. “Effy’s just trying to play it cool. You saw her get reminded about that lesson in real-time, kid.”

“Well, I’m supposed to be the older, wiser reflection of all of you, so it’s best if I warn you beforehand of any of the mistakes you might make,” Effigy reasoned, giving her a winning smile. Sketch threw a can at her.

Gwenompool grabbed it from midair with her tail, and took a swig from it.

“Liar, it was empty!” Sketch complained.

“POV holder didn’t know thattttt,” she crooned victoriously. “Should’ve specified. Like. Within that same line, if you wanted continuity to hold up.”

Gwen laughed at the casual display of powers, done with no effort and for little gain. Could she manage to do that? It felt too exciting to even consider.

“So happy that you’re all having fun,” Cecil said, voice dripping with venom. He had ended up sitting on the floor – Gwen didn’t have much furniture outside of her bedroom. “Have you forgotten that my uncle is dead because of some woman who set him up to fail? A woman who apparently wants you all dead?”

His eyes drifted over all of them, but his expression remained distant. Closed off.

“Maybe she doesn’t even want you dead. You’re all cut from the same cloth, aren’t you?”

Effigy’s eyes lit up and she smugly turned to the others. “See, even he can tell-”

Sketch smacked her shoulder. Cecil looked downright apoplectic at the interruption. It drained out of him just as fast, and he slumped back against the wall. “Whatever. Power’s in your hands to do whatever you like, clearly.”

The bickering and jibes had died out, though. A chilling reminder for the stakes for everyone who wasn’t Gwen Poole.

Interro-Gwen cleared her throat. “Okay, let’s be smart about this. Evil Gwenpool never made a direct appearance here, did she?”

Gwenompool and Sketch seemed genuinely surprised to hear this, and outraged when Effigy and Gwen confirmed this truth.

“You convinced us to come here because of that,” Gwenompool muttered with loathing. “And she was never even here?!”

“How do you even know this is her doing, then?” Sketch added. “It could be anyone responsible. The writer taking advantage of her presence to cause some chaos.”

“Cecil here said that Poole Boys were the go-between them and the client, so that suggests some sort of malicious Gwenpool Involvement.” Interro-Gwen reported. Gwen wondered if she was the journalist of the group.

Gwen squinted as she thought on that information. She did remember Cecil mentioning that the people who had brought the case forward had been henchmen dressed similarly to her. But still… “Poole Boys? What are they, a copycat fanclub?”

“Better known as your employees,” Sketch corrected. “On-call mercenaries we poached from MODOK.”

“Wait, Batroc works for us?” Gwen clarified. That was weird. But also awesome in a spiteful way.

“Oh, good, you know Batroc here,” Effigy clasped her hands together. “Some us… don’t.”

“Fuck off,” Gwenompool groused.

“We’re getting off topic again,” Interro-Gwen warned, arms crossed as she sat deep in thought. “I’m the best investigator we have, so shut up and let me Sherlock this shit.”

Gwen had been taking subtle glances over at Cecil as the conversation ping-ponged between all of the Gwens, watching as his fear and discomfort went through different phases of intensity, until finally settling into a vague kind of hope when everyone fell quite to let Interro-Gwen have her moment.

“Alright,” she breathed, kicking her feet back, “Here’s the plan. Gwenompool, you and… Trainee Gwen head over to MODOK crew. See if there’s any talk about members leaving for a rival group. The Poole Boys may have been assembled out of nowhere, but their existence will be justified retroactively, and this is the most canonical route to source them from. Also, get chocolate on the way before she loses her symbiote-hosting mind.”

Gwen inhaled, “Okay, yeah, I can do that,” she looked over at Cecil, “You’d be helpful, too. We could use your hacking skills to check their employee database. ”

Cecil looked at the chunky briefcase laptop he had in his lap, looking a bit wary of it before nodding. “Yeah, okay. I think I can handle that.”

Chapter Text

“Mobile Bunker, huh?” Cecil muttered as they approached the large, almost egg-shaped vehicle mounted on spidery legs, firmly wedged between two buildings. “Those have been getting more popular recently. Think its turtle instincts?”

Trainee Gwen thought on it for a second, then nodded. “Not having to destroy any evidence when the cops come to bust you because you can pick everything up and take it with you? Totally turtle instincts.”

They shared a laugh together, but it died quickly. Cecil wondered if this was as weird for her as it was to him. Not that he hated the idea of getting along with her, but when all the multiverse and free will discussions started happening, well… it was strange. It got strange.

It was especially strange to him that he was one of the people walking into the MODOK base. As the hacker of the group, it was generally understood that he did his best work outside of the immediate line of fire. And didn’t one of the other Gwens say that MODOK was the one to kill him? Many questionable decisions being made here.

Not as questionable as the decisions being made by MODOK. The organization or the CEO, the distinction didn't exactly matter. Cecil had been a bit skeptical when Interro-Gwen had charged him with the responsibility of finding the MODOK database. He couldn't just tap into the database like that when he didn't know where to possibly find it, and even if it was stored online.

Then he found out that MODOK had committed to running the whole operation above board. Which meant there was an official website, with an employee portal. And a digital trail through banks for the invoices and salaries paid to all the employees.

It was child's play to get a full rundown of all the employees and their hiring structure. Tip for any aspiring villains-turned-do-gooder-but-still-in-an-edgy-kinda-criminal-way who may or may not be reading his mind: make sure you don’t have a page on GlassDoor.

“We want to avoid the major players' areas,” he counseled Trainee Gwen as they took cover behind the low wall two buildings down from their target. “According to one of the anonymous accounts, there isn’t much communication between the grunts and the ones with actual identities, so we have a better chance of not dying if we avoid the latter.”

“You think there’s an exit that gets much higher foot traffic that isn’t for the specialty agents?” Gwen asked, craning her head out to look at where Batroc the Leaper was exiting the mobile base by jumping through a door built into the top of the vehicle.

“Most definitely,” Cecil agreed, checking his phone for the schedule he had listed out. “A commission bonus was filed in the bank yesterday with the rate of a single standard henchman with fast-tracked priority. Crunched the numbers, looked at a couple criminal activity and amateur vigilante forums, and we just gotta lie in wait until someone shows up to be let back in. How’s your stealth?”

Bad, he assumed, given that her suit was bright pink, white, and yellow.

Gwen scrunched her face up, thinking hard. “I’m not wearing my superhero costume,” she said, gritting her teeth in determination. “I’m wearing regular clothes. Jean shorts, hoodie, baseball cap. That sort of thing. Aren’t I, Cecil?”

Cecil had never seen her not wearing the eye-searing getup. And he still had yet to see it.

“Uh. No,” he informed her delicately. “You’re in your uniform.”

Gwen opened her eyes slowly. Then groaned. “ I swear I fully believed it, too! I was envisioning so hard , dude. Maybe I wasn’t narrating? Like, I even tried to verbally narrate, to see if maybe that helped, but I couldn’t really tell if the narration was on me or not. Do you think saying it out loud helped or made it worse?”

Cecil shrugged, at a complete loss . “I don’t really know much about that stuff.”

“I don’t either!” Gwen looked to be on the brink of tearing out her hair. “I’m kinda just clumsily trying to recreate what everyone else is doing, and I don’t think it’s working well for me.”

Cecil really didn’t know how to react to that.

“Sorry…?” he fumbled. “It’s a bit of a stereotype, I know, but I’m not exactly the artsy, abstractional type. Art is just so… flowy and interpretational, you know?”

Gwen quirked an eyebrow. “You know you just made up words to convey a feeling better, right? Seems like a very artsy thing to be doing,” she rested her chin against the fire escape she was leaning on. He wondered if tetan us shots transferred across planes of reality. Despite the quip, she didn’t entirely dismiss what he had said. “Flowy and abstractional, huh? I think I can work with that.”

They lay in wait for an indiscernible amount of time. He didn’t dare take out his phone here, and hadn’t worn a watch in years, so time took on a somewhat nebulous form. The only thing that finally broke the lull they were in was when a storm of pigeons rose up from one of the buildings neighboring the MODOK base.

Gwen nearly clipped her head on an overhang as she sprung up, jumped over the narrowest space between the fire escapes of the two buildings, and hoisted herself up onto the roof. Cecil hesitated behind her, edging a foot over the gap between the thick metal bars that looked frighteningly slippery.

He had always been jealous when he saw heroes doing that. As if they weren’t ever afraid of losing their grip or miscalculating a jump, even when they didn’t have any powers to ensure their safety or even survival.

Now to hear the Gwens tell it, it was because those guys were the universe’s special ones. The ones who got an easy pass and didn’t even realize it. Because if Hawkeye were to twist his ankle as he threw himself off of roofs, that would be a real bummer.

Cecil was starting to seethe now, instead of doing anything productive. He couldn’t pause here all day, there was a multiversal threat he’d somehow gotten himself involved in. Time to pull his weight on that. Peeling his superglued foot off the first fire escape, he put all his weight on his arms, lifted himself forward, then jumped .

It was an inelegant landing, falling face-first into the rungs leading to the roof, his legs awkwardly jammed up against the banister, and the regular steps digging into his stomach. Better that than landing on his bag, he supposed.

He limped up towards Gwen, who had chosen to hide behind a clothesline and take her chances. Which seemed to work out well for her, because the base made a hissing sound as the hydraulic locking mechanism snapped back into place and no one had called her out yet. Tangible proof of plot armor, right there.

“You see how to get inside?” he asked.

S he nodded and pointed towards the rightmost leg, “There’s a keycard slot there, and the leg next to it has handholds that pop out once access is granted. There’s a doorbell system too, if you forget the card. You have to say some sort of codeword, but seems like everyone has there own – I saw the guy just now do it. ”

“Well, that’s kinda useless because we don’t have either. Anyway, we could just-” he began to say, then saw the mischievous look in Gwen’s eyes as she held up a plastic card with a small wire looped around it.

“Woah, you- what?” he blinked. “When’d you do that?”

“Told ya I could do stealth,” Gwen bragged. “Still working on the more impressive stuff, but that doesn’t mean I forgot everything I could do before. My aim’s impeccable.”

It’d have to be, to pull off a shot like that. Why hadn’t this come up before?

“Cool,” he agreed, “But I was gonna say that we don’t really need a codeword or a keycard. We could just ring the bell and play it cool. They’ll probably let us in.”

“Boring,” she frowned, but they went with that plan.

“Codeword?” the person on the other side of the intercom asked, utterly disinterested.

“We come in peace?” Gwen offered. “Just wanted to ask around for henchmen, if you guys aren’t exclusively contracted to this place.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” they perked up slightly. “Not enough resources here for full above-minimum wage for everyone, so they call it a part-time, on-call setup. Plenty of workers here looking for gigs on the side. But we have to be a bit particular about the types of hits we take. Company policy, you know?”

“Yeah, totally,” Cecil agreed. The door hissed open once more, and they entered almost directly into what looked like some sort of green room for MODOK henchmen.

It was a little weird, seeing people who usually looked indistinguishable in their exactly replicated outfits going about regular activities, but admittedly probably not as weird as it must be for these guys to see two very much unauthorized young adults wander in.

This was the part where Cecil had to contend with the fact that they very much did not have a plan. Why had they treated this like they were doing a convenience store run?

Then one of the henchmen groaned. “You guys came back for recruiting?”

“M-me?” Cecil was thrown for a loop.

“You work with her, right?” someone else gestured towards Gwen. “Or did you wander in to be a particularly dumb tourist?”

Good, they hadn’t recognized him from anywhere. For a second he thought he was going to have his own evil doppelganger to contend with.

“Very cute with the matching-contrasting color themes, by the way,” a third MODOK henchman complimented Gwen. “Are you the big boss lady’s second-in-command or something like that?”

“Splinter faction,” Gwen replied.

“Seriously?” First (he was going to identify them by numbers) said, disappointed. “I knew the upsell was a bit too good. They lie about their benefits package?”

“Not unless they mentioned ‘unwarned dimension traveling’ as one of the benefits.”

Third winced. “Yeah, that’ll do it. Did Jack make it out okay? He was one of the first to jump ship. I liked him.”

Cecil shrugged, at a loss for what to say. “But that means she definitely was recruiting from here, right?” he clarified, because that was what they had come here to get to the bottom of. Something about audiences being better convinced when they heard it from a source closer to the truth, rather than being informed from far away.

The henchmen nodded. Second elaborated. “It was pretty ballsy, showing up at other major employers’ doorstep and offering full pay and better board. Mobile Bunkers are all the rage nowadays, but no one talks about how uncomfortable they are to sleep in, you know?”

Cecil nodded, thinking back to summer vacations in an RV, just upscaled. Sounded awful.

What next? Maybe they should establish a timeline. Retcons were always on the table, but if they had a solid framework on what axes this was based on, maybe they could create a cage in which to strangle Evil Gwenpool. He wasn’t really sure; he wasn’t really the abstractional type, like he said. But looking at Gwen, it was obvious she didn’t have any better ideas of how to proceed, either.

“How long ago do you think this was?” he asked, steeling his nerves.

“Hard to say,” First mused. “I don’t know. A lot of people quit some time ago to follow her – or I guess maybe they didn’t quit and instead got launched into another dimension – but all I can remember is that it at least happened a month ago. Before the last performance review, MODOK was freaking out.”

“Hmmm, curious,” Gwen nodded. “We’ve been trying to figure out how long ago she started taking steps to replace us. Didn’t think it would stretch that far back.”

“Sorry she screwed you guys over like that,” a fourth henchman commiserated. “There should really be a union. I’ll talk to my buddy Kev and try to pass the warning along.”

They parted on friendly terms.

“That felt… kinda useless,” he noted.

Gwen looked similarly underwhelmed. “Well, now we’ve at least set things into stone instead of having it be only assumptions, right? That helps- helps trap her. Good thinking with the timeline thing, by the way. Unless she goes back and changes what you say. Then it won’t matter anyway.”

Then why would anything matter? This should have compounded into an editing tug-of-war in the back-end, where the two factions kept editing the flow of reality. But he supposed that that wasn’t interesting enough.

They did the supply run on the way back, especially the chocolate, all in contemplative silence. Cecil, for one, was simply steeling himself for the barrage of too much energy and noise that would surely meet them at Gwen’s apartment.

He was right on that front. When they stepped inside, they found Interro-Gwen sitting over some sort of miniature battlefield straight out of a period piece, constructed out of pizza boxes and the tiny plastic tables they came with.

Effigy was pacing around in front of this display, arguing with herself over the pros and cons of some scenario or another. It came to a halt when they entered.

“Yo,” Sketch waved at them. “Good that you’re back. Just in time for us to show you the plan we conveniently cooked up off-page without having to show the process that went into coming up with it.”

Oh. So that was the real reason. How fucking insulting.