"Spider-Man, I believe everything circulating online must be fake. I know your character better than anyone — you would never do something like that!"

Mysterio's voice rang out with total sincerity, and Peter Parker was almost moved to tears.

"Thank you, Mysterio... Even though we've only known each other a few weeks, I'm really grateful you're still willing to stand by my side right now."

Peter sniffled. Not even the suit's built-in voice modulator could hide the thick, choked quality in that voice.

Mysterio walked over and patted Peter on the shoulder, just as warmly as before. "What are you saying? We're friends."

Then, as if to wipe away Peter's tears, Mysterio reached out and brushed a hand past the mask, only to catch the futility of it and pull back with an awkward little laugh.

[Hiss — seeing Spider-Man like this... could it really not be Peter's doing?]

[Same. Peter looks genuinely devastated...]

[Wait, you're both falling for this already? That video was tested. No tampering detected. Zero.]

[sob Mysterio is so kind. Mysterio genuinely treats Spider-Man like a real friend.]

[Such a shame this friend still betrayed that trust.]

Behind the building, Yang Luoluo was watching the livestream on her phone. Her brow furrowed without her noticing. She kept feeling like she'd forgotten some detail.

What was it...

"Something feels off." Steve's voice came through the earpiece. From a distance, Steve gave a small wave to Tony Stark and Yang Luoluo from behind another building.

Normally, when reaching to wipe someone's tears, a hand goes straight for the eyes. But Steve was willing to swear on that enhanced eyesight: Mysterio's hand had definitely paused, just for a moment, right over Peter's nose.

An uneasy feeling took root.

No matter how hard Yang Luoluo turned it over in her mind, she couldn't pin down what she'd forgotten. All she could do was watch the two of them more carefully, hoping to catch whatever detail kept slipping away.

"What happened?"

"That fishbowl head is trying to use Peter as a stepping stone..."

Wait — there shouldn't be anyone to her right.

Yang Luoluo stopped mid-sentence, suddenly aware something was wrong, and turned sharply to look.

"Loki?!" she gasped under her breath, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth and whispered, "When did you get back?"

Loki had appeared to Yang Luoluo's right without a sound. Now he shifted into the same crouching, peeking posture as Yang Luoluo and Tony Stark, it had to be said, it was a genuinely unkind position for someone with legs that long.

A shrug. "Three minutes ago."

The original plan had been to land directly here, but Heimdall had taken one look at their furtive, hunched-over movements and concluded they were probably on a mission.

To avoid disrupting them, Yang Luoluo's guess was that Loki mostly didn't want to get thrashed by the Avengers for blowing the op, Loki had asked Heimdall to drop him off farther away, then strolled over at a leisurely pace.

Yang Luoluo filled Loki in on everything that had happened recently. With each sentence, Loki's expression grew stranger and stranger, until his face had settled into a mask of pure, baffled disbelief.

Were these Midgardians complete idiots?

This was a world with wizards, aliens, and super-powered individuals. How could anyone still believe that whatever showed up in an untampered video must be the truth?

If Loki had known Midgardians were this dense back when invading New York, there would have been no need to take the field personally. Just conjure a few illusions of the Avengers committing murder, Midgard would have fallen without lifting a finger!

Loki was positively sick with regret.

Loki's expression was veering into genuinely alarming territory. Sensing that Loki was entertaining some very dangerous thoughts, Yang Luoluo hurriedly waved a hand in front of Loki's face to drag attention back to the present.

"Why did you come back so early?"

Two extra Lokis had shown up overnight to split Frigga's attention three ways. Yang Luoluo had assumed that Loki, quietly stewing in jealousy, would stay on Asgard for at least a month. Coming back this soon hadn't even crossed her mind.

Loki curled his lip and rolled his eyes, right in front of both Yang Luoluo and Tony Stark, no pretense whatsoever.

The moment Frigga announced to Asgard that there were now three Lokis, the Aesir had descended into collective panic. Everyone braced for a fresh prank waiting behind every door, every morning, the instant they opened their eyes.

Then, the very next second, they saw Sylvie.

!

Another universe's Loki, yes, but still Asgard's princess, when all was said and done. And a princess who wouldn't go rampaging through the populace with a giant wolf and a broadsword, at that.

A thoroughly bewildered Sylvie was immediately swept up in a tidal wave of adoration from the Aesir. Every single day, Sylvie's only task was to wander around Asgard and enjoy it, living an extremely happy life.

As for God Loki, given everything God Loki had been through, Frigga's heart ached all the more. During this period, a nonstop stream of daily necessities and food flowed into God Loki's temporary quarters as if cost meant nothing, leaving God Loki no choice but to haul load after load back to the End of Time, trip after trip, where the true body resided.

And Loki, poor Loki had been conscripted by Thor to handle state affairs together. The sheer crushing weight of bureaucratic work left Loki without the energy to feel even a flicker of jealousy toward the other two.

Unable to take it a single day longer, Loki slammed down the pen in a fit of fury, walked out without a word, and strong-armed Heimdall into sending him straight back.

"..." Even Tony Stark felt a touch of sympathy at this point.

Thinking about everyone else out having fun, while being pinned to an office desk by Pepper Potts to grind through company business...

HISS,

Tony Stark couldn't help but shudder.

What a miserable Loki.

Yang Luoluo was just reaching out to give Loki a consoling pat on the shoulder when a glance at the phone screen made her stop. The comment barrage had spiked, noticeably more than before. At the same moment, Wanda Maximoff's voice came through the earpiece, taut with anxiety.

"What happened to Peter?"

Yang Luoluo and Tony Stark snapped their attention back to the livestream. Loki leaned over to look as well. The screen was flooded with question marks.

[What happened to Spider-Man?]

[No idea, but Peter looks really on edge, did something happen?]

[Okay, now I actually believe Peter is a murderer. Did you see those spider legs nearly stab Mysterio just now?!]

[I saw it. Lucky Mysterio dodged fast enough.]

[My god. Looks like the Avengers are really cleaning house this time.]

[...]

"What just happened?!"

His heart leapt into his throat. Asking over the team channel in a tense voice, all of Tony Stark's attention had been on what Loki was saying, and the situation on the ground had slipped by completely unnoticed.

"Peter was still talking to Mysterio, and then I saw Peter suddenly drop into a defensive stance. The suit activated Instant Kill Mode."

One moment Spider-Man had been speaking normally. The next, Peter had dropped low, the wide white lenses bleeding red, four golden spider legs erupting from the back with razor tips poised and ready.

Even the comment barrage had gone dead silent for a few seconds.

Wanda Maximoff's voice was faintly unsteady, a quiet thread of dread running through it. "It's like Spider-Sense kicked in. Peter sensed danger."

Danger?

Apart from the team, there was only Mysterio around. Had Mysterio pulled something again?

The comments were turning uglier by the second. Tony Stark quickly had J.A.R.V.I.S. connect to Peter's suit AI, Karen.

"Karen, have you picked up anything wrong?"

"Two minutes ago, an unknown gas breached the suit's interior. Source: a wrist device on Mysterio. Analysis identifies it as a neurotoxin capable of inducing psychological disorientation."

Tony Stark relayed Karen's report to the team in rapid-fire succession. Everyone's hearts seized at once.

The uneasy premonition Steve had felt earlier snapped into sharp focus. Mysterio must have released the gas while pretending to wipe Peter's tears, catching Peter completely off guard, with no defenses up at all.

Out in the street, Peter was fully under. Operating under the delusion that enemies were closing in from every direction, Peter was attacking wildly. Mysterio kept dodging with an expression of perfectly performed shock.

Worry tightened around Yang Luoluo's eyes. Her palms were damp. She turned the problem over and over in her head, searching for any way out, while nearby teammates were already straining at the leash to charge in.

Then her right hand brushed, without thinking, against the small pouch at her waist, bought from the Wizarding World, stitched through with an Undetectable Extension Charm.

The cool surface hit her like a splash of cold water. Yang Luoluo went still.

There was a way.

➤ Next: Veritaserum — The Conversation

Chapter 142 - Veritaserum — The Conversation

Yang Luoluo shoved her hand into the small bag and rummaged around. She'd packed in such a rush, and the bag was already stuffed to begin with, nearly half her arm disappeared inside, which from the outside looked genuinely unsettling.

Under Tony Stark and Loki's watchful eyes, she fished out a small transparent dark-green vial. The clear liquid inside shifted with a faint, gentle slosh.

Yang Luoluo carefully worked the wooden stopper free and held the vial out toward Loki.

"This is Veritaserum. Professor Snape had Draco Malfoy pass it along to me."

Back in the Forbidden Forest, Yang Luoluo really had saved Severus Snape's life. Severus Snape hated owing anyone anything and had agonized for a long time over how to square the debt.

In the end, the decision was a large package delivered through Draco Malfoy, containing almost every kind of potion imaginable, including even a small vial of something as extraordinary as Felix Felicis.

Yang Luoluo said only that one sentence. The other two understood her immediately.

"Hand it over." Loki nodded and reached out to take the Veritaserum, but Yang Luoluo had a death grip on the bottle. Loki tugged at it for a good while without getting it free.

Yang Luoluo's face crumpled into pure misery. "I only have this one bottle. Use it carefully... three drops is enough."

This was a potion personally brewed by Potions Master Severus Snape. Giving up even three drops to feed Mysterio already made her feel like her heart was bleeding. If not for today's whole mess, she had fully intended to keep every last one of those potions locked safely away.

Loki clearly wasn't treating the Veritaserum with any reverence. What if the entire bottle ended up gone?

Never mind what Mysterio would turn into after drinking a full bottle of Veritaserum, where was she ever going to find another one personally brewed by Severus Snape?

Loki opened his mouth, then closed it. Based on the expression on Loki's face, Tony Stark reasonably concluded that whatever was going through Loki's head was extremely foul-mouthed.

...Better find some time to bring her back to Asgard and show her what real Asgardian potions look like, Loki thought privately.

In the end, defeated by the pleading look in Yang Luoluo's eyes, Loki had no choice but to extract exactly three drops from the bottle. They condensed in midair into a water sphere no bigger than a pinky fingernail.

Nobody knew how Loki managed it, but in the span of a single blink, the already-transparent sphere became even harder to see, completely invisible unless you were specifically looking. All three of them watched as it shot toward Mysterio and passed clean through the fishbowl helmet.

What happened after that was hidden from their view. But given the smug expression spreading across Loki's face, it had presumably worked.

Hmph. Tony Stark crossed both arms, deeply satisfied. Let's see Mysterio try to fool the public now.

Seeing the plan land, Yang Luoluo let out a breath and fired off a message to Ron Weasley, those kids were definitely lurking somewhere nearby, telling them to relax, that the situation would be resolved soon.

Only after that did she shift her attention back to the bridge in the distance.

...

On the other side of the bridge, Peter Parker — mind shredded by the gas Mysterio had released, was still lashing out at everything around without distinction. Karen's frantic calls didn't register at all. Neither did the voices coming through the team channel Tony Stark had forced open.

Peter Parker blinked. More ferocious figures surged into view, several of them enemies already beaten down moments ago. Breathing hard, Peter Parker dragged up the focus to keep going and attacked again.

What Peter Parker didn't know was that from the outside, every single strike looked like a frenzied, unprovoked assault on a kind and innocent Mysterio.

Meanwhile, the "kind and innocent" Mysterio dodged the relentless barrage with just enough theatrical panic, and laughed inwardly the entire time.

Go ahead and keep swinging, Spider-Man. After all... this is going to be your last move.

Edit the footage later, drop it to a media outlet, and then what would Spider-Man and those Avengers be worth? Nothing. Only Mysterio would be the real superhero.

At that thought, if the camera hadn't been rolling, Mysterio would have laughed out loud. Instead, the only option was to stay quiet behind the fishbowl helmet and savor it in silence.

Doesn't matter. The one laughing last is definitely going to be me, Mysterio...

Hm?

Mysterio licked both lips, suddenly puzzled. Was that an illusion, why had there been a split second where the lips felt cold?

No further thought was given to it. Probably just some spit that flew out in all the excitement. Mysterio settled back down and threw full commitment into the performance.

"No, Spider-Man! Stop!"

"I can't believe it — you really are a murderer! So the person in that video really was killed by you!"

"Why would you do this?!"

"..."

Somewhere Mysterio couldn't see, the livestream comments were still blazing past in outrage.

[God, are the Avengers just going to stand there and watch?!]

[I knew it, the Avengers are all the same! This is exactly the moment to help Mysterio and they're doing nothing!]

[Oh, poor Mysterio! Only finding out now what Spider-Man really is. I feel terrible for them just thinking about it.]

[Don't worry everyone, I've already called the police!]

[? Have you forgotten that the police always show up after the Avengers have already handled it?]

[True. Every single time, the Avengers have wrapped up before the police even arrive.]

[When you put it that way, the Avengers are actually pretty dependable.]

[Okay, fine, I'll admit the Avengers have sacrificed a lot... but that's still no excuse for standing there watching Spider-Man attack Mysterio!]

[...]

"Hey, should be enough acting by now, right? That's plenty of footage." Mysterio asked breathlessly into the comms while dodging another strike.

The response was dead silence. Not a single voice from any accomplice.

Had the performance gotten so immersive that their words went completely unheard?

Then again, that bunch was hardly reliable. They'd probably called out once, gotten no answer, and wandered off to start editing.

Mysterio talked the situation into something reasonable and moved on.

There was already enough footage, so a little taunting shouldn't hurt, right? Spider-Man deserved to know exactly what was happening before the end.

Mysterio stepped swiftly clear of Peter Parker's attack range. In an instant, every trace of performed fear and sorrow vanished, replaced by undisguised contempt.

"I have to say, Spider-Man — you are genuinely the stupidest person I have ever met."

The sudden shift in tone made the comment stream stutter for a beat. Mysterio had no idea. Totally absorbed in the gloating, the taunting continued regardless of whether Peter Parker's scrambled mind could even process it.

"Didn't any of your friends ever teach you to be suspicious of strangers? Honestly, I never expected you'd swallow everything I said without a single doubt."

Peter Parker's movements hitched, almost imperceptibly.

[Wait... oh god, it can't be what I think it is...]

[Holy, is this person the actual villain behind all of this?!]

[Was Spider-Man framed?!]

[I've been saying Spider-Man is a good person this entire time, it was obviously someone pulling strings, but nobody listened!]

[...]

"A multiverse. The Elementals... God, I can't believe there are actually people stupid enough to fall for that!"

"Throw together a few virtual projections and half the world buys it. Their ignorance is genuinely terrifying."

"I feel sorry for your old enemies, Spider-Man. To think one video is all it takes to finish you."

"..."

Hands clasped behind the back, Mysterio paced, voice soaked through with undisguised delight.

"Time for our entrance, folks!"

Tony Stark said quietly into the comms. The thrusters in the palms and boots fired with a thunderous roar, and Tony Stark was gone in an instant, a streak of light vanishing like a shooting star.

Yang Luoluo pulled her mask tight and pressed her lips into a flat line, working hard to project an aloof, unbothered coolness, the look she had picked up from Loki, who walked around every day like someone owed him a fortune.

Almost the moment Tony Stark gave the word, Wanda Maximoff's magic swept beneath the rest of the team, everyone who couldn't fly, and lifted them all skyward together.

Mysterio was still monologuing, thoroughly pleased with itself.

"Spider-Man, you know absolutely nothing about technology."

BOOM!

The crash was enormous. Mysterio flinched all over and spun around.

The Avengers were rising. Every single one of them stared back with cold, unfriendly eyes.

"And you, Mysterio."

Tony Stark retracted the faceplate. A mocking smile pulled at the corner of Tony Stark's mouth.

"Know nothing about magic."

➤ Next: The Truth Exposed