Faustian Bargain: Second Pact Winner - July 2025

I met the gaze of the Ancient One for the third time.

The first time I had seen her was the moment I awoke in Peter’s body, in a classroom, suddenly, and without warning. She was the same as I recalled, bald, wearing robes, but there had been no smile on her face, and there had been none of the warmth she had for Stephen Strange, none of the humor, none of the lenience.

Even as she lifted a hand, levitated me out of the classroom, and snapped my neck before I could utter a single word, I found myself wondering… why?

The second time was after I was reborn, born into this world as Peter Parker, and lived in terror for two whole years, until my second birthday, when I had already begun to walk and talk, and was being hailed as a genius by my parents, Richard and Mary. She appeared, just as I cut the cake, extended her hand towards me, and without a word, snapped my neck.

When I woke up, finding myself in a crib at the hospital, two whole years prior, my heart had still been beating incredibly fast, and terror had still been burning in my stomach. I thought of all the possible reasons, all the possible explanations, but before any of them could come, the same woman, the same Ancient One, appeared, for the third time. She stood over me and gently levitated a pillow over my face.

Why?

I woke up again, in the crib, and the Ancient One was there again, and the result was the same again.

Why?

I woke up again, tried to scream and cry, tried my hardest to wail, to sound the alarm, but the result was the same again.

Why?

I tried to crawl away the fourth time, but she levitated me into the air, and the pillow came once more.

Why? Why?

The fifth time, I crawled on my knees and tried to ask, tried to plead, tried to speak to her, tried to seek an explanation, but my voice, my infant chords, could not produce words. Thus, the result, again, was the same. The pillow came, as it had before, and as it would again.

Why? Why? Why?

The sixth time, it happened again. The lack of air in my throat, the suffocating darkness that consumed me, the Ancient One’s empty, pitiless, merciless gaze became branded into my mind, and hatred swelled within me from the depths of my soul.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

The seventh time, it was the same. The eighth time. The ninth. The tenth. The fifteenth. The seventeenth. The twenty-first.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

I could not die. I did not understand why I could not die. Every time, I would awaken in that crib, at that moment, barely having any time to react before the Ancient One arrived and claimed my life.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Thirty-four times. Thirty-five. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. One hundred, one hundred and ten—

Again, and again, and again and again and again and again and again and again and again—

In the brief moments between my existence and my death, I focused on controlling my throat, on learning how to control it, on learning how to croak out a single word, a single defiant word, a single question, until came the one hundred and seventy-sixth attempt, when I could finally whisper:

“Why?”

For the first time in over a hundred cycles of life and death, the Ancient One answered me.

“You already know.”

I did not. I didn’t.

“You do not belong here.”

The Ancient One’s voice was curt.

“All that must happen, must happen, if there is any hope of salvation. But you merely usurping this body means all that must happen will not happen. I must minimize the chaos before you throw this universe even further off course and lead it to its destruction.”

…what?

Indignation ran through me. Fury boiled through me. I wanted to scream. I wanted to roar. 

You think I chose to be here?!

I was a nobody! A fucking wastrel! A fucking Robotic Engineering dropout! A loser who worked at an Android repair shop! A nerd who spent his off days playing Dungeons and Dragons and Cyberpunk RED! I hadn’t offended anyone! I hadn’t killed anyone! I hadn’t stolen from anyone, tortured anyone, or ever assaulted or hurt anyone! I didn’t have the power to fucking cross entire universes!  How the fuck would I have crossed worlds?!

The last thing I remember was going to sleep in my friend’s place after we finished tweaking his robot for his BattleBots debut. After that, I woke up as Peter Parker, randomly, and without warning! 

None of this was my choice. None of this was by my design.

You think I fucking want to be here?!

“You do not know how you arrived here.”

I did not know if it was the rage in my expression, or perhaps, my indignation that came through me, but somehow, she understood.

“Regardless of whether it was by your design or by accident, this universe cannot tolerate the meddling of an outsider wearing Peter Parker's skin. The consequences are too great.”

There was a momentary pause.

“I am truly sorry.”

Something in me broke.

And the Ancient One killed me for the one hundred and seventy-seventh time.

The further loops, I became hopelessly optimistic, or perhaps driven to the brink of despair, I started to believe that some ability would come, some power, something would trigger that would allow me to change my fate, some ‘cheat’ bestowed by whatever cosmic entity had seen it fit to play this joke by making me transmigrate into Peter Parker’s body.

There was an entire genre related to how an ‘everyman’ from Earth found themselves in another world with fantastical beings like elves and dwarves, and would awaken with miraculous powers and abilities that set them apart from everyone else. I’d seen it all, in every iteration, and every variety. From those who woke up with their smartphones, those who woke up as a slime, as a goblin, as a dragon, as a vending machine, as a girl soldier, as a skeleton overlord, as a demon emperor, as a magical professor, as even an accursed worm.

However, I was ‘Peter Parker.’

The greatest cheat that could have come already came to me by virtue of being born as Peter Parker. It was access to a genius-level intellect, and it should have been superpowers from being bitten by a spider. Yet, after that first time I died, it occurred to me that getting bitten by that spider was down to pure chance. Trying to get it to intentionally happen was statistically improbable.

Was it even possible to become Spider-Man intentionally?

Becoming Peter Parker was being set up for failure.

“We’re in a time loop!” I managed to rasp, letting her know, after nearly a thousand cycles of death. “Please, end the loop and just kill me!”

She had paused.

“I do not sense any such anomalies of time.”

The Ancient One did not believe me.

She did not believe we were stuck in a loop.

I tried, again and again, and again, but time and again, she never believed me. Nothing I said, nothing I did could convince her.

“I can prove it to you, tell me something only you would know, and in the next loop, I will give you that information so you can end this torment. If there truly is no loop, this information will be meaningless to me!”

Yet, the Ancient One did not once agree to that request. Perhaps she was wary I would use that information to fool a different version of her, across the multiverse, which would lead to their undoing, or perhaps there was some other reason, but never, not once, did she accept.

And so, my deaths continued. 

I became desperate for a way out. I had started screaming, “SYSTEM! I NEED YOU, SYSTEM!” to the answering of nothing but darkness and the slow, bitter unraveling of my sanity. I tried everything from ‘Menu’ to ‘Status’ to ‘Start’ and ‘Stop.’ I moved my tiny helpless body in rhythm, going: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start, all to no avail.

Despair had gripped me by the throat, and it had whispered like a billionaire in a Dark Romance Novel: “You’re mine now.”

Hate.

I started to bubble over with hatred.

“Wait, I come from a world where you’re all—”

She did not listen.

“I know about the Time Varia—”

She did not stop.

“Stephen Strange is—”

She did not parlay.

“Please, please, please, I’m begging you, please stop.”

She did not show mercy.

“Please, please, we can work something out, if you’d only—”

The Ancient One was not Stephen Strange.

“Please, gods, please… please… please stop… pl—”

She did not bargain.

I laughed and wept and screamed, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? ONE ABOVE ALL! WATCHER! HEIMDALL! ANY OF YOU! COME ON! ARE YOU NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINED?!”

No one answered me.

My only companion was the Ancient One, with her pitiless gaze, killing me, again, and again, and again, likely until the end of time itself. Too stubborn, or perhaps prideful, to believe or accept we were looping for eternity.

I started to hate the Ancient One. I started to hate the fucking deterministic nature of this universe. Everything about it. With great power came great responsibility, Uncle Ben would say, but what responsibility could you have in a universe where life and death were predestined, and deviations were not permitted? In a universe that ran on rails and could not tolerate alterations? 

How could there be responsibility if there was no choice?

Could Spider-Man do differently and save Uncle Ben? No, the universe would not allow that. Spider-Verse made that clear, with variants of Spider-Man watching their ‘Canon Event’ happen again and again and again and again. These were called Absolute Points, moments fixed in stone that could not be changed without devastating Multiversal Consequences. I remembered that was the term given to Doctor Strange by the Ancient One after he tried and failed to save the woman he loved again and again in What If?

Anchor Beings were proof that this universe, everything and everyone in it, were contingent on the existence of a ‘Main Character’, and after that ‘Main Character’ died, trillions of souls across galaxies and planets would be condemned to extinction because they were nobodies that the universe didn’t give two shits about.

An uncaring, grandiosely deterministic, multiverse. What merit was there in it?

Hate.

I started to hate this universe.

Hate.

Every time the Ancient One killed me, the hatred in my heart grew stronger and stronger and stronger, and the madness in my soul grew greater and greater and greater, until I started audibly cackling, giggling, and chortling. I had lost count of how many times I had died. My last count was in the hundreds of thousands, and it had been a while since. 

I was forgetting things. Forgetting people. Forgetting places, events, details.

I forgot my parents. I forgot my girlfriend. I forgot my dog. I forgot my friends, the university I went to, my nationality, the city I grew up in, my childhood best friend, my first time, my first kiss—

My name… 

My original name—

I could no longer remember it.

Every time I tried, the only name that came to me was “Peter Parker.”

The only thing I could remember vividly was details about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and those details I remembered, because in my heart, every memory connected to it was filled with hate.

Thanos Did Nothing Wrong? No, he did. His mistake was forgetting to snap the other half of this wretched universe out of existence. If given the chance, I would do it. I swear to fucking god I would do it. There were infinite timelines, and in infinite timelines, there were infinite versions and infinite variants, and infinite universes where he hadn’t snapped, so, in the end, did the fact that Thanos won in one universe out of the infinite ones make that much of a fucking difference?

The anger, the grief, the despair, the hopelessness, the torment, the eternal torture upon which I would not wish upon my worst enemy, all of it, every iota of it, radiated from my being and my soul, and I uttered a sentence with so much vehemence that it came raw and true as though it were the Eleventh Commandment given by God himself.

“I will burn every branch of your fucking Sacred Timeline.” 

It was probably a horrifying sight, from the Ancient One’s perspective, looking at an infant in a crib that swore to destroy everything, radiating with hatred, and in that loop, she killed me even swifter than in all others.

However, something had changed.

In that loop—

She did not use the pillow to kill me.

She used her magic.

And for the first time, when I died, I did not wake up in the crib.

I awoke in a place where I could not make sense of up or down, left or right, a place where a giant, malevolent, unsightly entity gazed down upon my infant form with an expression that seemed as though it were smiling.

“Human.”

The Cosmic Conqueror, the Destroyer of Worlds, a being of infinite power and endless hunger, spoke to me with the warmth of a father welcoming back his prodigal son.

“I have come to Bargain.”

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Unsacred Responsibility

- A Spider-Man MCU SI.

Suggestion by: GODKINGASH.