Joey was preparing to travel to the year 2099 of a parallel universe.
Perhaps building a machine capable of traveling through the timeline of one's own universe required solving countless problems and was nearly impossible in practice. But traveling between parallel universes came with far fewer restrictions and difficulties.
The reason Joey wanted to go to 2099 was because the Spider-Men had predicted that a major battle would take place in that universe.
The Inheritors had gotten lucky.
They had used those two young family members as a distraction while launching an attack against the Spider-Men from another direction at the same time.
Under normal circumstances, Joey should have been able to arrive at the scene in an instant.
Unless, of course, he was tied down by something like the Destroyer Armor.
By the time he realized what had happened, it was already too late.
An Inheritor named Karn had launched a surprise attack and taken away the other Spider-Men from a warehouse in Queens...
Wait—
Spider-Girl, SP//dr, Spider-Ham, and the local Peter Parker.
Joey counted heads.
Although all four looked battered and filthy, at least they were alive and unharmed.
That left him completely confused.
"So what exactly are you all crying about?"
The one crying hardest was Spider-Girl, Mayday Parker. Spider-Ham and the teenage Peter Parker tried their best to comfort her, but neither had any success.
Peni Parker, pilot of the SP//dr suit, still wore an icy expression.
During the brief battle earlier, her Spider-mech had lost an arm. Connected directly to the machine, she was enduring intense pain, yet she still calmly explained the situation to Joey.
"Mayday's little brother, Benjy Parker, was taken by that Inheritor."
"Are you alright?"
Even Starfire could faintly sense the pain radiating from her.
She could hardly imagine how this small girl remained so composed while suffering through it.
"I'm fine. The pain won't last."
Peni had no interest in explaining exactly how she was connected to the Spider-mech.
Instead, she continued outlining the situation.
"The Inheritors definitely have a plan. In the past, they always consumed their prey on the spot. They wouldn't go through all this trouble just to kidnap a baby."
Stopping Starfire from pressing the issue further, Joey decided it was better to understand the entire situation before solving the problem once and for all.
"Give me the full recap."
As for Peni's mental state, Joey was convinced it was entirely the result of piloting giant robots.
Especially after learning she had a classmate named Shinji.
That only reinforced his theory.
The red Spider-mech she piloted was a dangerous technology that humanity in her world still didn't fully understand.
And technologies like that always came with unimaginable tragedies attached.
Every Spider-Man, it seemed, carried their own impossible burden.
Mayday Parker was the daughter of a Peter Parker from another universe.
Her Spider-family had lived a peaceful life until one day a man named Morlun appeared and brutally murdered almost all of them.
Had other Spider-Men from across the multiverse not arrived in time, she and her infant brother Benjy likely would have died as well.
Traveling alongside other Spider-Men through countless universes, searching for survivors and fugitives while avoiding the Inheritors, became Mayday's life.
After fleeing across multiple realities, Mayday eventually realized that her little brother held some kind of special significance to the Inheritors.
That was why they never stopped pursuing them.
Just yesterday, after witnessing how the mysterious Superman of this universe effortlessly destroyed members of the Inheritor family, Mayday had transferred her infant brother into this universe seeking safety and protection.
In the end, it still wasn't enough.
"So you're saying I failed in my responsibility as a protector."
Faced with Joey's question, Peni's expression didn't change.
"I never said that. After all, this is simply our internal matter."
"Not anymore."
Joey had to admit that after arriving in the Marvel Universe, he had unconsciously relaxed.
The Inheritors' ambush never should have succeeded.
Back in his previous universe, he constantly kept watch over Batman, Atlantis, Billy, and countless other threats simultaneously.
He divided his attention endlessly and never stopped monitoring the people under his protection.
But the relative peace he'd found here had allowed him to grow complacent.
That complacency had led directly to this mistake.
To Joey, a vampire race that hunted Spider-Men across the multiverse for sport, feeding on the souls and lives of others, had no reason to exist.
"There won't be any place left for the Inheritor family in the multiverse."
---
"So that's the situation."
Tony, working beside Joey at the laboratory workbench, gave a distracted whistle.
"Whew. The multiverse is really something else."
He tossed over a large red button.
"Here. It's finished. Use your heat vision to help me with the final processing. No, nothing's wrong with it. My OCD is acting up. Polish it into a perfect circle."
With Tony's scientific genius and Joey's ability to observe and manipulate matter down to the atomic level, the two worked together with astonishing efficiency.
The portal device was completed in an incredibly short amount of time.
Starfire had already departed for the Flashpoint Universe to recharge her Lantern Ring.
Without the Green Lantern Ring as her primary tool, she found herself heavily restricted.
As a living star, she could effortlessly reduce enemies to ashes.
What she couldn't do was control the collateral damage.
Because of the differing flow of time between universes, ten minutes on her side translated into three or four days here.
Joey had no time to wait for her.
By the time he dealt with the Inheritors and returned, there would probably still be enough time to throw her a welcome-back party.
"So, do we leave now?"
"We?"
Joey blinked.
"I'm leaving. Not you."
He pointed at Tony.
"This isn't a field trip. We're talking about a multiversal vampire family. People will die."
According to the coordinates and information provided by the three Spider-Men who had already traveled ahead using a smaller portal device, the Spider-Army had gathered in a future universe set in the year 2099.
Spider-Men from across the multiverse had assembled there, turning that world into their headquarters in the war against the Inheritors.
To Joey, concentrating everyone in one place felt dangerously conspicuous.
But it was also the Spider-Men's only real option.
If they remained scattered, they would simply be hunted down one by one without any chance to fight back.
Gathering together carried the risk of being wiped out all at once.
But at least it gave them a chance to resist.
The Inheritors might seem weak compared to people like Joey or Thor.
But to Tony, at his current level, they were the sort of threat that could kill him the moment he encountered one.
"You said it yourself."
Tony grinned.
"In the future I'm some kind of unstoppable supervillain."
He spread his arms.
"Doesn't that mean the current me is invincible?"
"That's not how predetermined future events work!"
"Come on, Joey."
Tony's eyes lit up.
"That's the year 2099!"
Plagued by his attempts to analyze the Amazo Core, Tony had already been struggling to sit still the very first time he heard the term 2099.
"Have you ever heard of the programming concept called 'reinventing the wheel'?"
Reinventing the wheel referred to trying to invent a brand-new type of wheel despite the fact that round wheels already existed as a proven solution. In the end, no matter how creative you got, you'd usually arrive right back at the same conclusion.
Applied to software development, it meant building an entirely new solution from scratch when a mature and effective one already existed.
Right now, Tony needed new technology and new theoretical frameworks to study the Amazo Core. Those technologies and theories were the wheels he was missing—and by 2099, those wheels might already be everywhere.
Sure, give Tony a month or two, and he was confident he could create something even better than what the people of 2099 had.
But if all it took was a glance to solve the problem, why waste months of precious time?
Especially when both his time and Joey's were extraordinarily valuable.
The time distortion between universes could at most buy them a little over a year.
If they failed to achieve their objectives within that year, Joey's Earth would likely be destroyed in a cosmic-scale war.
"Fine!"
After weighing everything carefully, Joey finally relented.
"Go put on your armor and prepare an interdimensional communications channel. I'll go through first. Once I confirm it's safe, I'll contact you."
Tony immediately revealed the expression of a man who had already prepared for this outcome.
He spread his arms.
Pieces of Iron Man armor flew from nearby racks and seamlessly locked into place around his body.
After loading the coordinates that would locate the universe where the Spider-Men were gathered, Tony watched as Joey stepped onto the teleportation platform.
"Ready. I'll count to three. One, two—"
"Wait!"
Joey interrupted the countdown.
"Check the parameters again. Don't let anything go wrong this time!"
Years of suffering at the hands of teleportation accidents had made Joey extremely cautious.
After all, every single time he used a portal, if nothing went wrong, then somehow something still managed to go wrong.
"Relax. I'm not Cyborg—a second-rate operator using first-rate hardware. I'm Tony Stark. A genius."
Tony reviewed the control panel and verified every parameter three more times.
Satisfied, he slammed the large red button they had specifically built to activate the portal.
"Initiate!"
A flash of white light erupted.
Joey vanished instantly.
Tony picked up a communicator and spoke toward the parallel universe.
"So? Everything good?"
[So? Everything good?]
The only response that came through his earpiece was an echo.
And it sounded alarmingly close.
Tony turned his head.
Then the genius Tony Stark froze.
The communicator—which was supposed to be traveling through dimensions with Joey—was still sitting neatly on the workbench.
"Oh , come on..."
In their obsession with verifying the coordinates, both he and Joey had forgotten to actually attach the communicator to Joey.
The communicator wasn't just a radio.
It was also the return beacon.
Without it, Joey had no way back.
In other words, Tony had just thrown Joey into an unknown universe without attaching the rope needed to pull him home.
"JARVIS, take over the portal system. Send me through!"
Snatching up the communicator, Tony could only grit his teeth and continue with the plan.
As for what awaited him on the other side, he had absolutely no idea.
Maybe everything would be peaceful.
Maybe he'd materialize in the middle of a battlefield.
With particularly bad luck, he might even appear in deep space.
Still...
The coordinates and locator beacon had been double-verified.
Surely nothing could go too catastrophically wrong.
...Right?
A flash of white light engulfed him.
Clad in armor, Tony arrived in a brand-new parallel universe.
He found himself standing in the middle of a highway.
Ahead of him were three biker gang members speeding away down the road.
Behind him came the deafening roar of motorcycle engines.
The collision sent Tony tumbling.
"Damn! Are you okay?!"
Tony himself was completely unharmed.
His Mark 11 armor could already withstand virtually every conventional weapon on Earth.
A speeding motorcycle couldn't even scratch the paint.
The rider, however, might very well have suffered broken bones.
Tony hadn't expected his sudden arrival to immediately become someone else's accident.
Still...
It was the year 2099.
Did motorcycle gangs really still exist somewhere on Earth?
Thinking that, Tony got to his feet and moved to help the fallen rider.
Only then did he notice that the biker's outfit looked strangely familiar.
Red-and-blue costume.
Web patterns.
Spider mask.
Wasn't this one of the Spider-Men Joey had told him about?
"You're Spider-Man?"
The motorcyclist had been pursuing several strange individuals belonging to the Iron Cross Army.
Seeing that his targets had already escaped, he reluctantly abandoned the chase.
He had no idea who this armored stranger was.
But his Spider-Sense wasn't warning him of danger.
So Spider-Man—Takuya Yamashiro—politely answered:
"Yes. Watashi wa Supaidaman desu."
---
A flash of white light appeared.
Joey arrived in a new parallel universe.
The senses of a Kryptonian allowed him to perceive changes in a universe's fundamental constants without needing to consciously examine them.
Not bringing Tony with him had been the correct decision.
Because the place where Joey appeared was, admittedly, slightly unsuitable for normal human survival.
Behind him was a yellow sun.
Around him stretched the vacuum of space.
Below him hung the blue Earth.
And directly in front of him...
Was a red sun.
"Huh?!"
Then Joey looked more carefully.
That wasn't a red sun.
It was an enormous red sphere hurtling directly toward him.
The reason it had looked like a sun was simple:
The instant Joey appeared in this universe, the object—traveling faster than light—had already been less than ten feet away.
At that distance, facing something moving even faster than a Kryptonian's punch, Joey had exactly enough time to shout:
"What the fu—?!"
Then it hit him.
The red sphere collided head-on with his Kryptonian bio-field.
The clash of energies triggered a violent explosion.
A cosmic-scale firework burst across the heavens.
Almost the entire eastern hemisphere of Earth, whether day or night, witnessed the spectacle.
As consciousness faded, Joey reached a final conclusion:
He was apparently cursed when it came to teleportation.
In the last moment before blacking out, he thought he saw the red sphere that had collided with him shatter apart from the impact...
Revealing nothing inside except pure, radiant light.