At 3:07 p.m. on a Wednesday that had the audacity to be sunny, Peter Parker was halfway through unclogging a community center's roof gutter when the sky opened like a laptop crash.
It wasn't thunder.
It was narrative error code.
A massive floating message — like a giant software popup made of static and regret — appeared in the sky over Queens. It blinked rapidly.
PLOT DEVICE™ V0.1A: PATCH INCOMPLETE.
ERROR: MAIN CHARACTER TRAJECTORY NOT FOUND.
APPLYING RANDOMIZED CONFLICT GENERATOR…
"Nonononono—"
Peter didn't even finish the sentence.
The sky unzipped.
That's the only word he had for it. One moment it was blue, the next it was a rip in the fabric of spacetime, and from that rip fell three things:
A goat wearing a cape.
A floating vending machine shooting soda cans.
A mid-tier supervillain screaming, "I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M HERE!"
Peter backflipped off the roof mid-swear and landed on the street below as a root beer can whizzed past his head and exploded against a mailbox.
The goat bleated menacingly and headbutted a stop sign.
The villain, whom Peter identified as Paste Pot Pete — rebranded recently as "Adhesivor" — landed hard on a parked moped.
Peter sighed and shouted, "Is this about character arc again?!"
Somewhere above, an invisible narrator whispered:
"...You brought this on yourself."
Peter ducked behind a car as a foam adhesive grenade splattered across the sidewalk. It was neon pink and smelled like expired glue sticks.
"WHY IS THERE A GOAT?!" he shouted.
"WHY AM I HERE?!" Adhesivor shouted back, firing another glob that stuck a taxi to a tree.
The vending machine hovered six feet off the ground, letting out aggressive ping! sounds and spitting cans like bullets. Someone caught a lemon seltzer to the knee and screamed.
Peter web-zipped toward Adhesivor and kicked him across a bus shelter.
"Okay," Peter muttered, dodging soda cans like a caffeinated acrobat. "Let's break this down."
Step 1: The Plot Device was real.
Step 2: It was rewriting causality like it was improv night.
Step 3: Peter's life had officially stopped making sense, and that was saying something for a guy who'd fought alien goo, purple space Grimace, and a multiverse full of himself.
"Plot Device," he muttered. "If you're watching — and I know you are — we're going to have words."
Then the vending machine turned toward him.
And spoke.
"I AM REFRESHMENT, BRINGER OF FIZZ. I AM SODA-TRON."
Peter froze mid-swing. "Oh, come on."
The machine fired three cans — Cherry Coke, Ginger Ale, Mystery Flavor (which may have been WD-40). Peter webbed the first, dodged the second, and caught the third with his face.
"Why does it taste like engine oil and disappointment?!"
The goat flew past overhead, cape fluttering.
Peter had a migraine forming.
Fifteen chaotic minutes later, Soda-Tron exploded in a dramatic arc of fizz and defeat. Paste Pot Pete was webbed to a lamppost muttering about brand awareness. The goat escaped.
Peter sat on the hood of a bus, dripping soda, and asked the sky:
"Did that mean anything? Or are you just throwing things at me until I learn a lesson?"
The Plot Device™ did not respond.
Instead, the glowing letters returned. Floating, flickering, just behind his retinas.
NARRATIVE DEVIATION DETECTED.
HERO LACKS TEAM DYNAMIC.
SOLUTION: FORCE COMPANIONSHIP.
Peter frowned.
"No. Absolutely not. I work alone now. That's the point. No more Avengers, no more friends, no more—"
INITIATING COMPANION INSTALLATION…
There was a pop.
Like reality burped.
And standing next to him — inexplicably, impossibly — was Deadpool.
Wearing Crocs.
Pink Crocs.
"Oh no," Peter said.
"Oh yes," Deadpool grinned. "Audience retention is back on the menu, baby!"
Deadpool flipped onto the bus hood beside him.
"Nice weather! Too bad about the vending machine warfare. Did you get the goat's autograph? He's doing incredible work lately."
Peter stared at him. "How are you here?"
"Plot Device™," Wade said, gesturing upward like it was obvious. "I got yanked out of a taco stand mid-monologue. One second I'm debating whether guac is worth the upcharge, next second — poof! Now I'm your reluctant sidekick-slash-narrative foil."
Peter pointed an angry finger. "No. No foiling. No teaming up. I don't team up."
Deadpool leaned in. "Don't worry, Spidey. I'm not here to help. I'm here to escalate."
Over the next hour, Peter tried everything to ditch him:
Webbed him to a streetlamp. Wade cut through it with a comically oversized plastic knife.
Left him on a train. Wade was on top of the next one.
Jumped into the river. Wade did a cannonball.
By hour two, Peter was lying flat on a rooftop in SoHo, groaning into the gravel.
"Why. Won't. You. Leave."
Wade handed him a smoothie.
"Because, buddy," he said brightly, "we are in a story now. A weird story. And you need a wildcard. Someone unpredictable. Someone chaotic. Someone with zero respect for tone or pacing. You need—"
"I swear to God, if you say 'me,' I will throw this smoothie off the roof."
"—me," Deadpool said proudly.
Peter threw the smoothie.
It hit a banker on a lunch break.
Later that night, as Peter sulked in his apartment trying to recharge his web cartridges with a bootleg toaster, Deadpool leaned against the window like an uninvited parrot.
"I fixed your wi-fi," he said. "Also, your landlord now thinks you're an Albanian violin prodigy named 'Spiderovich.'"
"Get out."
"Too late. I signed a six-episode arc. Contractually obligated to annoy you until Act II climax."
Peter turned, fully ready to scream — when he stopped.
Deadpool was holding a file folder.
And not one of his fake ones titled "Spidey's Darkest Secrets: Volume 420."
No. This one was labeled: "Multiverse Breach: Localized Anomaly – Queens Epicenter."
Peter walked over.
Opened it.
Inside were photos. Surveillance. Blueprints. The Stark drone. The vending machine. The goat (circled three times, for unclear reasons). And a map of New York... glowing with pulse points.
"Where did you get this?" Peter asked.
Deadpool leaned in, face suddenly serious.
"I didn't. It was taped to my chest when I popped in. No sender. No message. Just one note on the back."
Peter flipped it.
Four words. Scribbled in shaky pen.
"It's not random, Peter."
Peter's stomach dropped.
He looked up. Out the window. Toward the horizon where the first vending machine fell.
Deadpool cracked his neck. "Told you. Escalation, baby."
Peter nodded grimly.
"Fine. We find the source. We end the story before it writes something worse."
Deadpool beamed. "That's the spirit! Road trip!"
Peter pointed to the door. "No Crocs."
Deadpool pointed back. "No emotional repression."
Both paused.
Neither agreed.
The plot thickened anyway.