Zombie Hunting
I waited for Shuri and T'Challa to prepare a room in the palace where I could keep the zombies for my experiments. I didn't want people to know that I had them and decide to 'liberate' them, so I kept it hush, just between me, Shuri and T'Challa.
It took a while but eventually a bare concrete room was prepared for the zombie. It was away from everyone, even the prisoners that the Wakandan's had in their prison cells, because we didn't want it to accidentally bite someone and ruin our chance for saving humanity.
"The room has been prepared, but I don't know how you're going to get a zombie in there without getting bitten." Shuri walked up to me and guided me to the exit of the palace once more. This place was huge and if she wasn't here, I would have needed a map to find my way around.
"Don't worry, the zombie won't get the chance." I activated the watch and spun the dial a couple times, landing on a velociraptor like alien with a prehensile tail and orbs grasped in its feet. I pressed down and transformed in a second, becoming my fastest alien for the job.
Without letting Shuri comment on my new alien, I zoomed away, leaving a trail of wind in my wake and blowing leaves and dust away. I reached the dome that surrounded the city in less than five minutes and called Shuri on a transceiver she had given me.
"Hey, I'm at the dome and need you to open it for me." I waited for her response, but instead of receiving one the dome split and allowed me passage to the outside world. "Thanks, make sure to close it behind me."
I zoomed out, running for a few miles before reaching the first town near Wakanda. I looked around the small village and realized that no one was here, they were probably evacuated to Wakanda when they gave refuge to survivors.
I began running once again and started my search for a zombie that I could take back with me. After running for hundreds of kilometers I eventually reached a formerly densely populated city that hadn't been evacuated during the outbreak.
It didn't take long for me to come face to face with a zombie, but I didn't immediately grab it and run back. I decided I might as well check if there were any mutations in the zombies, something like an evolved zombie that might be harder to deal with than a regular one.
I ran through the city avoiding detection from the zombies with ease. Any zombie that did end up noticing me took a look in my direction before deciding it wasn't worth it to chase me. It seemed that zombies had a small bit of intelligence, or at least had a detection radius that was quantifiable.
It took me around an hour before I scoped out the entire city, but I didn't see anything that may have been seen as an 'evolved' zombie. I rushed back in the direction I had come from and picked up a zombie with my tail, making to bind its arms and keeping its mouth out of reach.
I rushed back to Wakanda, coming across some rogue wandering zombies but never anything that could be said to be out of the ordinary. Reaching the border, I turned on my communicator and signaled for Shuri to let me in.
"Hey, I'm back, open the gate." Following my words, the barrier split open, and I zoomed across the land of Wakanda, reaching the palace in another five minutes. Without anyone noticing my arrival I raced to the palace dungeons where I proceeded to place the zombie into the room allocated for it.
When the zombie was released, it slowly rose to its feet and proceeded to charge at me, however the door was slammed shut before it could reach me.
I returned to Shuri to inform her about the zombie but didn't stay long as I wanted to hang with Parker, after all we were about the same age so we should have a few things in common. I didn't transform into an alien to search for him, so it took me a long time to find him.
After looking for about fifteen minutes I eventually found him in what I assumed to be a mess hall with large tables for hundreds of people to sit at. There was a queue of people lining up to receive what I assumed was the food reserved for survivors.
I walked past the group and walked around the table where pots of what I assumed to be stew were sitting and grabbed a ladle to serve some food to the survivors. He was wearing his spider costume, but I could tell Parker was looking at me with a side glance, but he didn't stop me from continuing.
"So, how did you meet with your other universe counterparts?" I tried breaking the ice with a question, it took baby steps to build a friendship and those steps needed to be small.
"How did you hear about that? I thought you came from a different universe." He quietly asked his own question, a skeptical tone taking over his voice. Jeez, even the trusting Peter Parker has turned into a paranoid lunatic.
"I do come from another universe but that doesn't mean the world that I know is that different from yours. Also, Tony told me." I answered with a hint of fake annoyance, but that was quickly replaced by a lighthearted chuckle.
"Right, sorry, the apocalypse has got me losing my mind. I can't do anything to help and it's driving me insane." Peter chuckled at himself as well, trying to forget about the apocalypse and his inability to help. "I'm Peter by the way, Peter Parker."
"Clay, nice to meet you. So did something happen that broke through the multiversal barriers or did some multidimensional being decide to mess with the world, what's the story?" I asked like a teenage girl asking about the latest gossip.
"Actually, my identity was revealed to the world, and I wanted to erase that. I went to Dr. Strange so he could use a spell so everyone would forget but I botched it up and brought a bunch of my counterparts' villains here." He spoke almost the same plot of the movie but didn't mention anything about his friends or college.
"What was it like seeing alternate versions of you?" I honestly had no idea about any of this universe travelling so I wanted to know what it would be like to meet another version of me.
"It was... weird, but cool at the same time. It was as if I had brothers who were able to relate to me." I assumed that he had a smile under his mask that I just couldn't see as he spoke.
"I'll bet, and what about the villains? Did any of them have some counterparts in this universe or were they all brand new to you?" I didn't expect there to be a difference but with all the changes that have happened it couldn't hurt to ask.
"I didn't know any of the villains, they all came from the other worlds... No wait, that isn't exactly true." As if a lightbulb turned on in his head, Peter turned to me and continued speaking. "There was this black goo creature who called himself Venom. I faced someone like him a little while before the multiversal gathering with Iron Man, though I didn't get his name then."
I nearly stumbled at hearing this world had Symbiotes before Venom was summoned here from the incident. And at the fact that Venom showed up for the fight between the Spider-Men and the villains at all.
"This world just keeps getting weirder and weirder..." I muttered under my breath. I don't know if Peter heard me and chose to ignore me or if he just didn't hear, but he didn't push the matter anymore.
"And what about you, you faced any villains in your world with that watch?" Peter asked me a question this time, one that I wasn't expecting at all.
"Actually, my world is relatively peaceful. No supervillains looking to destroy the world every week and no superheroes out to save the day. I didn't even have the Omnitrix before I came here, I just sort of got it." I rubbed the back of my head as I spoke about my world.
Peter was in disbelief as he heard my explanation of my world. Clearly, he was envious about having a world with no supervillains, but I thought that my old world was boring to be perfectly honest. Sure, there was the whole future careers and jobs for the future, but it just lacked the excitement I wanted in life.
"Your world must have been paradise. Never having to worry about destruction, about whether someone is coming after you or your family. It sounds so peaceful." I waited for him to finish speaking his idea before I spoke and burst his image of the world.
"Who said that we didn't have to worry about that? Sure, we didn't have super powered people running around and blasting fireballs left and right, but we still had criminals, terrorists, war. My world was far from peaceful."