There was a moment of falling, the sensation of something wispy and barely present clinging to his skin. It was peaceful, if a bit disconcerting. The feeling of oddity slinked down his spine, curling in his gut like an impatient snake. Waiting.

He felt the world drop out from under him, like that startling edge of balance when he was tipping, just so slightly off the edge. Too late to turn back.

Peter jerked awake.

His breaths came in ragged gasps, eyes flying open. He clutched at the blankets below him, sucking in a deep lungful and holding it. He exhaled in a gust. He rolled over, grabbing an armful of coverlet and curling around it, burying his face in the green fabric.

Green?

Peter froze, pulling his head back slowly.
The blankets on his bed were definitely a dark red. Easier to hide blood stains when he swung home and was too tired to clean up. He lifted his head from the comfortable pillow, eyeing the misplaced color, trying to remember where they came from.

Oh shit, was he even in his own room?

He sat upright, feeling weak. The layout of the room was familiar, but everything was green, from the curtains to the ceiling. Light shining through the small window flashed across a small picture hanging next to the door. One of those generic landscape paintings found in every garage sale on the planet.

His memory of the events leading to this location was shoddy at best. He remembered fighting some low-grade criminals, teasing one of them who had attempted firing at him while the gun's safety was still engaged.

He remembered swinging across the city, making a game out of how far he could get without letting his feet touch anything. It had been an easy night. Between getting bored enough to land on a flagpole and waking up, he had no recollection. Not even a shiver of spider-sense.

Peter rolled sideways, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
It was only through the sudden buzz of danger in the back of his head and a quick twist that he didn't land on his face. The heck?

He looked down at himself, wondering what was going on with his body. Drugged? That would explain the faded memory.
Disbelief arched through him like a gunshot.

Peter lifted one soft hand, flexing his fingers. An oversized sleeve fell away, revealing a limb that was half the size it should have been, lined with either displaced swelling or baby fat. His grey sweatshirt, once fitting slightly tight around his shoulders now fell in swathes of cloth. He dropped his hands to his sides, watching with wide eyes as the sleeves covered his fingertips. Tangled around his legs was a pair of huge jeans, the rips and one memorable stain identifying them as his own.

He was...

He was tiny.

Somehow this alarmed him a bit less than waking up in a strange room did. He'd been through freaky stuff before. Finding out he could climb walls was odd, being sent to another universe with the Fantastic Four was also 'up there' on his weirdness scale. He'd been possessed by an Alien slime, hunted like an animal, grown an extra pair of arms and switched bodies with a mutant who called himself Wolverine. Yeah, finding himself as a child wasn't much of a stretch.

Peter took another deep breath, kicking the jeans away and made a crack about Fate wearing the pants in their relationship. His own voice had even changed, sounding high-pitched in his ear. A bit nasally. He needed to find someone to fix this, and fast. He didn't know if there was a time limit to whatever had been done to him. A curse, some sort of genetic regression, no idea. Better sooner than later, anyway.

A quick check of his pants pockets found them bereft of anything useful. A crumpled grocery list and some lint not exactly being a great help.

He looked around for clues to the mysterious apartment. Again, he noticed the similar layout to his own room. The slightly off-center door frame, a deep scratch on the edge of the windowsill. Something niggled at his brain, but he pushed it away, not quite ready to accept something like that. (It was one thing turning him into a child. Time travel was out of the equation.)

Peter snapped open the window locks, hoisting it up. His sweater hung down, past mid-thigh when he stood upright. His boxers were baggy, but clung enough that he could pretend they were shorts. The smell of New York City sliced through the humid room, bringing with it a chill that spoke of approaching winter months. He bit down a shiver, moving the screen and swinging around, closing the window behind him.

His wrists were bare, but Peter still had to check himself awkwardly when he made an automatic move to start swinging. He was a bit glad no one had seen the awkward flail.
Webshooters gone, child body, woke up in a strange apartment and... what?

He stopped, half-crouched on the side of the building. Everything was... weirdly familiar. He turned back, counting floors. The window he had jumped out of... It was his own.

How did? What?

He blinked.

How did someone move into his place so quickly? They even fixed the hole in the wall, and the water stains in the left corner. That scratch hadn't been similar, it was the same.

Even the mattress was the same, a creaky old thing that had come with the place.

God, he hated time travel.

What was the date?
Peter crawled down the wall, eyes scanning the alleyway for signs of someone inhabiting it.
The coast seemed clear and he dropped to the ground, bouncing up on his toes in a half-hearted attempt to avoid the frigid cement. He sidestepped a damp, grungy pile of cardboard and peeked out at the street. Pedestrians milled about, varying between slowly meandering along and striding at a clipped pace.
He spotted a newspaper halfway poking from a wire trash bin and edged around the side of the building to pull it out. There was a suspicious brown stain on the corner and something that looked like ketchup, but otherwise seemed fine.

He hopped back into the safe shadows of the alleyway, shifting from foot to foot. There was no snow on the ground, but the weather seemed close enough that seeing the white flakes wouldn't surprise him.
His spider-sense warned him away from a pile of broken glass and he found himself seated on a turned over wooden crate.

He glanced at the date, grim with the affirmation of his imagining. It's already November, he had last checked the date in May. He went on to browse the articles but was struck by the repeating familiarity. The text spoke of people he thought were long gone, right next to people he had never heard of, but were spoken about as if they were everyday names.

A headline caught his eye.
TONY STARK RENAMES "AVENGERS TOWER"

Eh?

Peter flipped back to the front page, looking at the date again.

November 3, 2010.

He stared at the ink and paper, feeling like the gears in his brain had slipped, spinning uselessly. That was... 2010 was two years ago. Tony Stark had hooked up with the Avengers decades ago. The Avengers tower should have been finished nearly that long in the past.

Peter looked more carefully at the newsprint, cross-referencing the names and events to what had happened in his own time. Some sort of alien invasion had occurred, recently. Apparently it was the first time the Avengers had been called to fight. He looked at the names, paused, looked again. There wasn't a 'list continued on page so-and-so'. This was the full list? Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor. That was... really short. What about Wasp or Ant Man? Scarlet Witch? Quicksilver?

The idea of 'time travel' was looking less likely, in favor of the even less-enjoyed 'Alternate Universe'

Peter sighed, closing the newspaper and pressing the edges of the pages against his forehead, breathing in the smell of old paper, garbage and that crisp hint of ice that lingered on the wind. He wrinkled his nose, feeling the rough edges of the newsprint rub against it.

Okay. Alternate Universe. Not only was he a kid, but he was also in some weird version of Earth where the Avengers didn't get together until there was an alien invasion.

He jerked open the pages, skimming the articles, roughly turning the paper over in a clatter of noise. There wasn't any mention of other superpowers. No outcry against mutants or complaining about superpowered people.

Bizarre.
He could handle this. It's all good. He was currently just a kid with some crazy abilities, no need to worry that they had nothing to compare him to, and would likely kill first, ask questions later if he was spotted. Even claiming to be a mutant would do no good. They didn't exist here, apparently.

Terrific.

He lingered in the alleyway trying to figure out his options.
First of all, he wasn't going back into 'his' old apartment. The decorations implied someone else was living there currently, and it was only luck that kept them from finding a strange child in their bed.

Well, unless they were the ones to have transported him here which, though possible, seemed unlikely. He'd check it out later.

So he was currently homeless, looked like a kid, still had his intelligence (yay!) and needed to find a place to hunker down against the cold night.
The dumpster in the alleyway ended up delivering him a pair of hot pink flip-flops close enough to his size, and a wool coat with a splash of white across the front. Wow, careless with the paint.

Peter folded the coat around himself, wiggling his toes against the cheap foam and plastic. Better than nothing, he guessed.

His first impulse was to go to a nearby homeless shelter, but he had zero desires to end up in foster care, or even on any records. His current appearance was runaway tween at best, abandoned child at worst.

With an extra tuck of the coat to hide most of the paint stains between folds, he slipped behind a small family on the sidewalk and trailed after them as if he belonged. There was a girl with pigtails hanging over the father's shoulder, watching Peter curiously, but she didn't say anything.

He took a side street toward where he recalled a hideout should be, a place where kids and teens living on the streets took refuge. He had chased a case into there, and found a fan in their midst. It was almost a fond memory, having a little girl demand that he say "I am Spider-Man" just because she could. Her laughing face afterward was worth the embarrassment.

Peter stopped, mouth drawing into a thin line. Where there used to be ramshackle buildings, barely held together with boards and shattered windows, there was now a normal row of apartments. A bit weathered, but definitely not beat up enough to be able to hide a community of runaways.

So much for that plan.

The park was within sight, the small street curving down along a hill, just enough to show off the red and orange leaves peeking over rooftops. New York Central Park. Lovely place, full of trees and rocks and way too many adventures than he cared to remember.

The sun was setting, casting long shadows out from under his feet, and tinting windows in orange and pink light.

He finally found a mostly-abandoned-looking apartment, sneaking in through a broken window on the tenth floor. The dust-sheets were pulled off a wardrobe and a lumpy couch, the second piece of furniture earning his appreciative gaze.

Peter tucked his legs up inside the overlarge coat, taking care to fold the ends of the sleeves over his feet so they wouldn't slip out and get completely frozen. The sheets kept in a little heat, but frostbite didn't sound fun.

He gingerly sat down onto the creaking cushions, closed his eyes, and resolved to better figure out his situation when he woke up.

Alternate universes were stupid.