Deadpool Syndrome - Marvel's Folly

***PETER***

It seems like only a second or two passes before the Lizard shakes off the Night-Night shots' chemicals and gets back on his feet. Undaunted by the lack of a decent head start, Ricky leads us on a merry chase up and down the streets of his mindscape. It's very, very, oh so very Inception-esque in the ways that geometry bends to his will. Geometry, and meteorology, and all the ologies. Just not herpetology - that damn Lizard just won't go down, even when Ricky shoots him repeatedly.

"It might help," I say after the Lizard shakes off yet another onslaught of bullets from what has to be at least the third clip Ricky's loaded into his gun, "if you don't keep wrecking our webs!"

"Yeah," Holland chimes in. He deploys more webline and tugs on it after it makes contact. The Lizard's arm is yanked, and a faint popping noise, followed by his howl of agony, suggests that Holland's just dislocated his shoulder. "These things are so much more fragile than they look!"

"Oh, what do I know?" Ricky asks flippantly. "I'm just a bloody Yank with no powers."

"So were the rest of us, way back when," Daisy points out. She turns to look around a corner and says, "Of course you'd have the beach right off Grayson Street."

"'Cause of all the superheroes' secret identities, Grayson's the one who's most beach-ready," Ricky says. "And because it's Grayson, it intersects with Miralo Avenue, which runs directly into the heart of the city."

"This makes no sense to me," says Maguire.

"Peter would remember it best, probably," Ricky says. "You met Grayson and Olivia before you graduated, in case you forgot."

"I think I remember," I lie. Well, not really. I do sort of remember a guy whose suit had a stylized bird logo splashed all over his chest. What was his superhero name...oh yeah. Nightwing. And Olivia was his girlfriend, beautiful and smart and funny. But I mostly remember her for using me to show everyone else her secret power - she got me to kiss her, and even fall in love with her for a second until Grayson undid the spell she cast on my feelings. What a witch she was. I mean that as a compliment, just so you know.

Jesus, how badly messed-up are my memories? And how much of it is me actively repressing them versus having them tampered with by Ultron and Loki and Strange and whoever else? On second thought, I might not want to know. Besides, I can't really focus on that at the moment anyway, not with that stupid Lizard still demanding more of my attention.

I wonder...are the rest of us just as capable of harnessing the power of Ricky's mind?

There aren't a bunch of cardboard boxes laying around, but there are plenty of plastic ones. I open one and find weird contents inside. What they are, I'm not sure, but I think I've seen them in war movies and stuff.

"Is that a grenade?" Daisy asks.

I look up to see her gazing intently into the box. "I...guess?" I lift the "grenade" up - it's a bit on the heavy side, even for me.

"Whoa, careful!" she cries. "That thing might be live!"

"How does it even work?" I ask. "Doesn't look like any grenade I've ever seen."

"Just throw it," Daisy says. "Like this!" She seizes the grenade and tosses it at the Lizard, where it explodes on contact.

"Whoa, hey, don't!" Ricky brandishes his gun wildly as he runs over to us. "We're not trying to kill his ass! Are we?"

"No," says Maguire, "but how 'bout we try to get the Lizard onto the sand?"

"Yeah!" I say, nodding furiously. "The sand should be hot enough to overload his cold-blooded system!"