Arlo had been living a relatively normal life every since cutting ties with Otto and moving out. But this was New York. Things don’t just stay normal.

There was some new guy in town that goes by “Terror” or whatever that planned on striking fear into New Yorkers, making his name known, yadda yadda- Arlo didn’t remember the whole speech made on live TV. He didn’t care to. This was just another ‘villain of the week’ that the paragons of virtue in colorful costumes would take care of in less than an hour.

Oh how wrong he was.

Apparently, the villain had attached a gas bomb at the top of the Empire State Building, containing a mixture of science and sorcery (terrifying and impressive), big enough to spread all across NYC if activated. His big plan was to turn everyone’s deepest, darkest fears- into reality. Some members of The Avengers was called up to stop Terror. They put up a fight but in the end was too slow, as the timer ticked down to 00:00…

It only took a few minutes before the range of the gas reached almost half of the city. People were screaming, running, hiding in their homes, children crying as their parents tried to cover and protect them. Futile. Those scared of spiders was covered in them; scared of being old got stripped of their youthful beauty and strength; heroes got their powers stripped away. It was a nightmare came true.

Arlo was just studying on his laptop outside of a café until he heard muffled screams through his headphones. He took them off, confused- then the gas hit him. He coughed and wheezed, suddenly feeling disoriented. Then pain. Pain was all he could felt at that moment, in every fiber of his being. And fear. It felt like his back- his spine, had something stabbing into him.. or out of him. It hurt so much he wanted to throw up.

When all that was left was a dull ache, he finally opened his eyes, only to see his reflection in the café’s glass panes… had 4 dreadfully familiar tentacle appendages accompanying it.

Now he really wanted to throw up…