The storm slashed at her face like a thousand whips. Rain, cold and sharp, soaked her to the bone as she dug her bare feet into the muddy mountainside. But Mary Jane had no time to stop. Not here—not with the lights of the “hunters” glowing like crimson stars below her, weaving through the twisted network of trails that cut up the misty peaks she was scaling. The Spider-Mask stitched onto her jacket pocket felt heavy against her chest, as though it held the weight of an entire past she longed to forget. She pressed her trembling fingers to it, her lips parting to whisper, “Find me, Peter. Please…find me.”
Her breath fogged in the ice-cold air, which tasted of damp soil and iron. Behind her, the mechanical howls of drones ripped through the fog—high-pitched metallic screeches that let her know they’d caught her scent. Mary Jane pulled the threadbare hood of her white, cropped jacket tighter around her red hair—the hair that always gave her away. It used to be her pride. Now, it was a beacon for death.
The canyon yawned beneath her—a thousand feet of jagged rock, swelling rivers, and shattered ruins. Once, these lands belonged to a thriving civilization—lush, green, and filled with sunlight. But that was before The Rift Wars cracked reality itself six decades ago, leaving Earth fractured into miserable shreds of competing cultures clawing for survival. Mary Jane adjusted her coal-black trousers—their fabric coarse and patched with faded blue—making sure the knife sheathed at her waist hadn’t shifted. No room for error, not tonight.
“Mary Jane Watson,” a voice growled behind her. Low, slurred, inhuman. A cybernetic “Hunter.” She could hear the clicking of exposed gears and pistons even before she turned to see the silhouette. They had come for her. Again.
Taking a quick glance over her shoulder, she saw three of them: hulking cybernetic stalkers clad in matte black armor, their masked faces glowing faintly with green energy. All augmented bodies, no visible flesh. They moved in sync, each carrying hybridized weapons—blades that gleamed like the very night itself. But her focus wasn’t on their weapons. It was on what they guarded.
Behind them floated the Spider-Plush. Except, it was no longer an innocent token of Peter’s love. It had been corrupted, twisted—a floating obsidian drone shaped to look like the stuffed toy from years ago, the toy Peter had gifted her when they were still lovers in another life. A cruel message from the Revenant Syndicate. “Give us the Mask,” the plush had screeched when she awoke to it that fateful morning. “Give us Spider-Man’s legacy, or die.”
The mask. Peter’s legacy. She clutched the emblem tucked above her shattered heart. Her mind flickered with images.
Echoes of Another Life
They had been carefree then—Mary Jane and Peter. He always smelled faintly of city rain and old paper as they laughed atop the dim-lit apartment rooftop, the world bleeding with amber light from the Brooklyn dusk below. He wore that ridiculous mask even when he wasn’t Spider-Man, just to make her smile. “You keep me human,” Peter had once told her, pulling her close. “When I start to feel like I’m losing myself, you’re my anchor.” And then, his voice had dropped, soft as the breeze that framed the skyline. “If I fall, promise me you’ll stand. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Mary Jane had whispered back then.
But promises didn’t mean much when drones lit entire cities to ash, when tear gas riots blurred into blackouts, when Peter Parker—a version of him from a timeline no one truly understood—went missing during *The Rift*. They called it a battle for multiversal stabilization. She just called it losing him forever.
The Deadliest Leap
Now, she faced the cybernetic hunters, blades tearing through the fog. Atop this crumbling cliff in a shattered world, there were no cavalry, no miracles. Just her. A sound pierced the air—the whirring rhythm of death. One of the hunters hurled a plasma lasso, its edge sizzling as it slashed the rock near her feet. Mary Jane reacted instantly, rolling to dodge the weapon.
“Hand it over,” said the lead hunter, his voice modulated but almost amused. “For a relic of a failure, you’re putting up a fight.” The “Spider-Mask,” still tucked against her jacket, burned against her heart now.
“Fight for this?” she cried defiantly, her voice shaking but unyielding. “This isn’t Spider-Man’s fear you’re hunting. It’s his hope!”
She threw the plush first—a decoy move. As it soared at the hunters, she sprinted to a jagged outcrop at the canyon’s edge. The world seemed to slow. Her mind screamed at her body to stop. Run away, hide, give up. But no. Peter’s voice rang there, soft as ever. You stand when I fall.
With all the strength and defiance she could muster, Mary Jane leaped into the canyon’s whistling void, the wind wrapping around her like a ghostly veil. She reached for a thin vine-bridge swaying beneath the drop—an ancient survivalist structure built by the broken tribes still clawing at life in the lower valleys. Her fingers caught its crumbling edge as her body slammed against it with a sickening jolt, her breath knocked out.
Above her, the lead hunter stared over the edge of the cliff, his luminous eyes narrowing with hate. “You think this is survival?” he sneered into the winds, raising his weapon. He fired. The vine bridge snapped. Mary Jane fell again, tumbling into the abyss as rain swallowed the world. But her eyes, determined and glowing faintly with resolve, locked on the sprawling depths of the canyon ahead. She wouldn’t die here. Not tonight. She couldn’t.
A Faint Signal
Hours later, deep within the hidden ruins of the canyon-floor temple, Mary Jane’s trembling hands pulled out a small, weathered radio from her soaked bag. She tuned it desperately, listening through static and cacophony. And then, just as her hope had almost died…
“Mary Jane?” a voice gasped through the signal. Peter’s voice.
For the first time in years, a flicker of a smile broke through her rain-drenched face, as her head tilted toward the glowing temple carving far behind her. Fractions of its abandoned power core were beginning to pulse faintly—its energy a faint echo through the void. The hunters would come soon enough. But hope wasn’t dead. Not yet.
Genre: Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure
The Source…check out the article that inspired this amazing short story: Mary Jane Watson Cropped White Shirt Cosplay Ideas
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