"Doctor Schiller!! Doctor Schiller!! Are you there?!!"
The tranquility of a New York morning was broken by a piercing scream. Outside Arkham Sanatorium, Peter, with Deadpool in one hand and Pikachu in the other, stood shouting.
Still sound asleep in bed, Schiller furrowed his brows, turned over, slowly opened his eyes, glanced at the clock. It was only 5:30 in the morning. Hearing Peter's voice at this hour must be a hallucination.
Peter's erratic schedule of staying up late and rising early had deeply imprinted in Schiller's mind. Therefore, he casually dismissed Peter's shouting as an illusion and drifted back to sleep.
But a few seconds later, another loud shout from outside: "Doctor Schiller!! I need you urgently!! Open the door!! Big trouble is coming!!"
Schiller sprang up from bed, grabbed the sleeping cap on his head, flung it aside, and directly teleported downstairs, intending to give Peter a piece of his mind about healthy sleeping habits.
But as soon as he got downstairs, he saw Peter holding a red and black figure in one hand, and Schiller instantly turned into a cloud of gray mist and retreated a few meters.
Seeing the gray mist in front of him now shaped like a question mark, Peter hung Deadpool on the front gate railing, and then waved to Schiller saying, "Hey, Doctor, it's me. Quick, open the door. I need you for something!"
With a "pop", the gray mist turned into an arrow, pointing at Deadpool who was hanging on the railing by Peter.
"Oh, him. He's my friend. You may not know him. He's a mercenary named Deadpool..."
With another "pop", the gray mist turned into an exclamation point. Before Peter could shout out, the gray mist slowly formed into an X shape.
"Uh, Can't I come in? It isn't me? Then who is it? Deadpool can't come in? Why? Oh, right, the hospital may not be able to handle this kind of smell. Okay, I'll just leave him hanging here."
Then Peter saw the gray mist turn into an even bigger X, to which Peter said somewhat awkwardly, "Can't hang him here either? All right, I'll find a restaurant nearby and get him something to eat."
When Peter came back, he thought he would be able to walk smoothly through the main entrance of the sanatorium. Instead, he was greeted by a dozen fully armed medical staff.
They were all wearing protective gear and carrying disinfectant spray. As soon as Peter opened the door, it was as if he had entered a sanctuary. The heavy disinfectant spray made it impossible for him to see the road ahead. If not for his Spider-sense, he would've run into a tree.
At first, Peter tried to block the spray with his hands, shouting, "No! Don't spray me! I'm not that sick!"
But by the end, he had given up resisting. At the entrance to the Arkham Sanatorium, Schiller halted Peter's advance with one hand and asked the gray mist in his mind, "Can you sense the scent of Deadpool on him?"
"I'm not going near him, that guy looks filthy." The gray mist sent back a resisting emotion. Schiller didn't force it. After all, Deadpool was a lifelong enemy, a psychological shadow, and had already been put on the gene blacklist by the symbiont race.
"Be good, I've already disinfected him. You just need to check him out. After checking, you can drink two bottles of booze…"
But instead of celebrating the promised drinks, the gray mist hesitated to separate a part of the symbiotic factor and approached Peter.
The instant it got close to Peter, it severed the bond between that part of symbiotic factor and the main body, only resuming the connection after ensuring that they were not affected or polluted.
"Phew, thankfully, he is clean." The relieved voice of the gray mist came through, "Do you know how many blacklisted records Deadpool has in the gene directory? He's literally the hell of symbionts!"
"You are the bravest symbiont!" Schiller praised, "You achieved the unprecedented feat of facing Deadpool's scent without hesitation. You are my eternal pride!"
Schiller had never praised the gray mist so straightforwardly, but this time, he genuinely thought so. Anyone who dared to taste something knowing it was shit was a true warrior.
Only after he confirmed that Peter hadn't been tainted by Deadpool did Schiller let him in. As soon as he walked into the office, Peter anxiously said, "It's not good, doctor, Deadpool has stirred up a huge mess! And they have found out, what are we going to do?!"
"Don't panic, Peter, sit down and talk." Schiller sat in his chair, calmly poured himself a glass of water, and then asked, "What happened?"
"Deadpool, Deadpool he…" Peter stuttered for a moment, then raised his voice saying, "Deadpool has thrown shit at the Eternal Temple!!!"
"Oh, so Deadpool threw shit again. It's not his first time. Remember that time with the Dwarf's Star Port... wait a minute, who did you say?"
"Deadpool."
"No, I mean, the one he flung the shit at."
"Eternity... oh, Doctor, you may not know, among our Spider-Man team, there is a person called Captain Universe Spider-Man, he is incredibly strong, for he is a follower of Eternity."
"Eternity bestowed upon him immense strength, making him the most powerful Spider-Man, and according to him, Eternity is the foundation of the cosmos, the greatest God within it, yet Deadpool, he actually..."
Peter wore a helpless expression, stating, "From what I know, Eternity has already discovered him, but for some reason, Eternity can't determine exactly which universe's Deadpool did it, so he is searching for all Deadpools across the universes..."
"Why Eternity?" Shiller asked with some confusion.
What he really wanted to ask was, why Eternity, and not OAA? Shouldn't the big boss of the Marvel World be OAA? It's OAA who doesn't provide compensation, too. Eternity? Just a programmer.
While Shiller was genuinely angry about the planner not giving out compensations, he wasn't petty enough to take it out on a programmer. Why should one worker make life hard for another? If you are going to confront someone, confront the big boss; if you're going to kill, kill the capitalists. Without capitalists, where would the lackeys come from?
Peter let out a sigh and said: "Wade has always been a bit mad. He insists he's doing it to avenge me. But I don't understand, what grudge do I have against Eternity? I have never crossed him."
Shiller gave a dry cough, rolled his eyes. Seeing his expression, Peter asked: "Doctor, why do you seem a little guilty?"
Shiller's brain began to spin rapidly. He set down his water glass, looked into Peter's eyes, and said:
"Do you still remember? You once told me that everyone who ever told you, 'With great power, comes great responsibility,' is dead."
"Oh, yes. I did say that. I heard it from other Spider-Men. They said it's the curse of Spider-Man."
Peter said, his eyebrows furrowed, then he stopped suddenly, his eyes widened staring at Shiller: "You don't mean to say that Eternity is responsible for this curse, right?"
"You said it yourself, Eternity is the greatest God in this universe, even if he didn't initiate it, he should know about it. Is it right that he let it carry on, knowing it was happening?"
"This..." Peter began but then hesitated, feeling a tightness in his chest.
After communicating with so many Spider-Men, he understood that in the stories he heard, tragedy is summarized in a few simple words, "He's dead" or "They are all dead".
But these words are like heavy stones, weighing on the hearts of all Spider-Men. They bear the death of their beloved ones, no matter how many good deeds they have done, no matter how much they have grown, they can never erase the deepest pain of that moment.
Peter wasn't often involved in mysticism, so he never thought about the divine. But now it seemed, if there were indeed an All-knowing Omnipotent God in the universe, why would he be indifferent to so many tragedies?
A breath lodged in Peter's chest, leaving him short of breath.
"Deadpool... Does he perhaps know something, so he wanted to take revenge for me?" Peter lowered his head, "In the past, he would often spout nonsense, about how there isn't enough space in the comics to draw, or that he could predict the storyline..."
"He's a bit crazy sometimes, but there's something magical about him. Maybe… But this will bring him great trouble!" Peter expressed with real concern.
However, Shiller looked at Peter and said: "I do have a way to solve this issue, but it requires you to have enough courage."
"Courage?" Peter muttered the word, then added, "I might have it...I must have...What's the solution?"
"Take your friend and surrender."
Peter's eyes widened at Shiller's words, "I understand that flinging shit into someone's house is not right, but...well... Deadpool may be my friend, but just because I can't help him doesn't mean I should set him up, right?"
"Rest assured, there is a trick to surrendering." Shiller flipped through a case file and gave a smile which sent a chill down Peter's spine, then he added:
"I guarantee, Eternity won't dare touch you. Not only that, he'll politely escort you out and furthermore…"
"He will give you a not insignificant compensation."