"Something terrible must have happened here."
That was Miles Morales's first reaction after arriving on Earth in the Cancerverse.
The streets were deserted, fallen leaves had piled up with no one to sweep them away, and dust coated the cars. The roadside trees had bare branches and black, twisted trunks, like the work of an incompetent prop maker on a low-budget horror movie.
Even without Miles Morales saying anything, Peter and Gwen Stacy could tell that something must have happened on this Earth—or at least in the city they had seen so far.
"This looks like Queens in New York, doesn't it?"
Using the roadside signs and a few landmarks that appeared in most universes across the multiverse, they managed to identify the neighborhood.
All three immediately reached the same conclusion.
If they found this universe's Spider-Man, they might learn something.
The other two Spider-People followed Peter, swinging on webs, and finally found Aunt May's house as Peter remembered it. But the sight of windows that were pitch-black even in broad daylight made him hesitate.
"Even if this isn't my universe, I don't think I could bear seeing anything happen to Aunt May."
After all, when a loved one looked exactly like the person in your memories and even had much the same memories as the original, it was hard not to become emotionally invested, even if you knew deep down that they were only a counterpart from another universe.
Miles Morales and Gwen understood how Peter felt. They had become acquainted so quickly precisely because each had met the others' counterparts in their own universes and even formed emotional bonds with them. Transferring some of their feelings for the originals in the Home Universe onto one another had naturally made them friends, even though, strictly speaking, their first meeting