But… It’s me! The real Spider-Man!

How would I myself feel about the statement that the person I know, with whom I have firmly connected my life, is a fake? Okay, not a fake, a double. Like a twin brother, bearing the same name, but still different, mistakenly occupying a place other than his. A stranger.

I realize now, of course, that such things are possible... parallel worlds with their own laws and even travel between them. But if I didn't know what I know, if I hadn't had this sad experience? What would I have thought? At the very least, I would question the sanity of the person claiming to be a visitor from a parallel world.

Luckily for me, Deadpool, Gwen and Bobby were not as adamant as I was in their judgments.

In fact, full disclosure wasn't originally in my plans, but after thinking about it, I decided not to let Fury and her agents know more about Peter Parker than the people closest to him. It wasn't long ago that I was determined to avoid lying... or at least minimize it as much as possible. And so it was that when I started to explain what had happened after the kidnapping, I came to the point where I had to create a new body from scratch.

"Wait," Wanda interrupted me to start the chain of questioning, "does this mean exactly what I thought it meant?"

The thought that entered her head was so important that the mercenary even put aside a slice of pizza and an opened can of beer, and that says a lot.

"Knowing you, I don't think anyone in this room knows what you're thinking," Bobby grinned, less shocked by the story of my confrontation with the Hydra Shard than anyone else.

"Come on!" Wilson didn't let up, "now that he has spidey abilities, who do you think he could have copied them from?"

Saying this, Deadpool unambiguously transferred her gaze from me to Gwen and back.

"That's very perceptive of you..." I confirmed her guess, "I really didn't use only my genes."

"And that means..." Wanda paused, asking us to finish her thought, but no one was in a hurry to do it, "Come on, everyone thought about it! They're related now! You see, Gwen, you kissed your clone!"

"You're sick." After a long pause, Bobby sealed, "And a pervert, too."

"Don't deny it, you were thinking it too! Everyone was thinking it!" Wanda looked around for support, but neither Gwen nor I were prepared to comment on Wilson's statement, and her new friend, Gita the cabbie, had gone on her way at my insistence... after I promised to compensate her for the repairs.

"It's nothing like that!" Bobby continued to stand her ground.

Wanda was alone in her incest fantasies... and she didn't know that I'd used her genes, too. It's strange that no one has figured it out, because without the regeneration factor it would have taken much longer.

"So," Stacy began in a low voice, but everyone could hear her, "the fact that you have powers is because you used my genes?"

There was something else behind that question, some thought. Given Gwen's strange behavior when we first met, and the fact that she'd managed to identify me under my mask, I guessed what it was. I nodded affirmatively, waiting for the girl to finish her thought.

"But that's not all... is it?" With a strange mixture of conviction and uncertainty in her voice, Stacy continued, "I felt... not as clearly as I feel now, but I'm sure of it: you were like me from the beginning."

I didn't plan this. It's one thing to tell what happened through the fault of the apostles, and quite another...

On the other hand, what am I so afraid of? What would it change if the girls knew the truth? And I don't seem to be able to get away with it. If I didn't want to weave this web of lies around me again, I had to tell them everything. I gathered my courage and resumed my narrative.

"Well, my name is Peter Parker and... during the science exhibit at OzCorp, I was bitten by a radioactive spider. Since then I was the one and only Spider-Man, until, through a failed experiment, I found myself in this place and time."

There was silence in the room. Well, at least no one's trying to make me laugh. That's not bad.

"Remember when you kidnapped me?" I turned to Bobby, "and that's when I woke up."

"Wait, wait," Gwen finally came to her senses, "I don't understand. You mean you went back in time? But I was bitten by a spider! You weren't even on that field trip."

"Not the past, Gwen. Another world. And you can't say I fully traveled... I woke up without powers, bound hand and foot, with a bag over my head in the car of a gang of criminals. I woke up in the body of the Peter Parker of this world, with a double set of memories." I decided not to go into too much detail about the temporary amnesia and other unpleasant aspects of my appearance here. "I don't fully understand why this is the way it is, but I can't change it."

"Parallel worlds... so you're Peter Parker from another world in which you were a superhero nicknamed Spider-Man," Gwen summed up a bit, "that explains a lot, I'd even say that everything finally falls into place."

"Explains?" without hiding the irony in her voice, interrupted her friend Bobby, "maybe you meant to say: more confusing? The Shield and Hydra and the apostles weren't enough."

"This story is too fantastic for the real world," said Wanda, "but, you know, I believe you. Parallel worlds, clone-breeding, secret nazi organizations, that's good enough for a superhero comic book."

There she goes again with her jokes.

"Listen," the mercenary went on, "in that other world was Wanda Wilson, did you know her, I mean me? Was she like me there?"

"Partly..." for some reason I hesitated, "my home world was different from this one in many ways... yes, there is your double there and he is almost like you in everything, except for one little thing..."

"Just say it already, don't drag it out!" snapped the mercenary impatiently.

"Deadpool's in there, too, but he's a man. The Talkative Mercenary, Wade Wilson. I crossed paths with him a couple of times..." I decided not to go into detail, Wade was an asshole, though charismatic.

"Fucking hell!" Wanda exhaled with a kind of admiration, "I wish I'd met him... I mean, met myself. I bet he's a cool dude."

"Yeah, kind of..." I didn't deny it... some days he was really cool, "and let's stop asking about the past for now, we all have better things to do."