Across the Multiverse chapter 2: Terraformars.

-0-

-Mars-

-Unknown Location-

Peter jolted awake, lungs burning as if the air had been stolen from him. His hands flew to his throat in instinct— he couldn't breathe. There was literally no air for his nose to suck in.

Without thinking, he shifted into his Ice form.

Cold washed over him, calming his racing heart and freezing his panicked thoughts.

In this elemental form, his body didn’t need oxygen or food. All that mattered was how long his stamina could hold out. Ice-Man's mutation relied on his endurance like most mutants.

'W-what happened?'

Peter wondered, rubbing his frozen head.

The last thing he remembered was being back in his apartment, surrounded by beer cans and the fading credits of Terraformars on his TV.

He’d convinced himself the time he spent in A Quiet Place had all been some feverish hallucination—until he froze his coffee mug at work a few days later.

Ice-Man's mutant ability.

The power was real, he'd somehow retained it, though it was thoroughly weakened. Just enough to freeze a cup of water.

A limitation he figured only applied in the Real World, otherwise he wouldn't have used the Ice form to survive the lack of oxygen wherever he currently was.

'Speaking of, where the heck am I?'

Peter slowly sat up, his eyes adjusting to the dim light on the reddish sky. This place was definitely not his world.

Or any world he recognized, despite looking eerily familiar...

'I hope I'm wrong...'

His gaze flicked toward the glowing interface floating in front of him, confirming his worst fear.

---

[Welcome, Peter, to another reality. You are currently on Mars, in the world of *Terraformars*.]

---

“Terraformars?...Great.” Peter muttered, rubbing his temples as his suspicions came true.

He was in another movie world. An Asian horror Sci-fi he'd put on the previous night.

'Terraformars...is set on Mars. Guess I'm on another planet. That explains why I couldn't breathe and almost suffocated.' He thought, getting to his feet.

Twisting his neck around, Peter surveyed the area. He stood in a canyon, high cliffs towering around him.

He opened his mission tab, half-expecting the usual unreasonable task.

---

[Mission: You are currently 200 years before the events of *Terraformars*. Destroy the Cockroach Vermin before they complete their evolution into the Terraformars species.]

---

“Just perfect.” Peter groaned, already knowing how bad this could get.

He hated horror worlds—the relentless tension, the ever-looming threat of death. But *Terraformars*? It wasn’t just horror. It was survival at its most brutal.

Still, he wasn’t dealing with fully evolved Terraformars. That gave him a fighting chance. A small one, but a chance nonetheless.

With a quick burst of energy, he shot up the cliff face on a platform of ice, landing at the top.

The landscape before him was barren—rust-colored dunes stretched endlessly beneath a hazy, brownish-red sky.

The sun was far away, casting a weak, eerie light. It was cold-something he could even tell in his Ice form, though it didn't bother him.

From this vantage point, he could see further— into the barren terrain, and the very unexpected strange hints of life struggling to take hold.

'What the...?'

He muttered, constructing binoculars from his ice that he used to capture more detail on what he was looking at.

Weird fungi and scattered cacti clung to life in cracks and crevices of the Rocky land.

He remembered something about humanity's attempts to terraform Mars. By bringing over various lifeforms that could survive the harsh conditions. Lifeforms like Algae and Cockroaches- which is what led to the birth of the Terraformar species.

Then, in the distance, he spotted something.

Three colossal structures, like ancient pyramids, rising from the red sands.

His heart sank. He added frames to his conjured ice binoculars and focused in, confirming his suspicions.

Peter sucked in through his teeth.

The pyramids were teeming with activity.

Thousands—no, tens of thousands—of cockroach-like creatures swarmed in and out of the colonies like ants, busy with the grim work of survival.

Terraformars.

'Found them,' he muttered in his mind, already thinking of how he would complete his mission.

Maybe drop a massive ice block on them? Or a hailstorm of ice spikes? No, he might have had Ice-Man's powers but there was a large gap between them in power and skill.

Peter's stamina would instantly be depleted if he attempted to create anything larger than a small building, and his control lacked to create a rain storm of ice.

Getting close to destroy the Pyramid structures was not an option either, due to the overwhelming physical strength of Terraformars(even more durable and faster than the Aliens from A Quiet Place).

He'd be quickly swarmed and ripped apart- just like the human characters in the movie.

'If only I could freeze the entire planet like Iceman did to hell...'

Peter allowed himself some wishful thinking.

He sighed,

'This mission is going to be end in-'

A glint caught his eye, cutting off his train of thought.

*Bam!*

The impact nearly knocked him off his feet as something slammed into the ice shield he raised on instinct, cracking a hole and grazing his cheek.

Peter instantly ducked low, his danger senses going haywire.

'What the hell was that??!'

A buzzing noise filled the thin air with vibrations, producing a low hum from the ice barrier in front.

Curious, Peter peeked through the hole on the barrier and froze, terror clawing at his insides.

The glint wasn’t from a single source. It was the sun reflecting off countless pairs of insectoid eyes.

A swarm of them—bigger than he could have imagined—was heading straight for him, kicking up clouds of dust as they moved with terrifying speed across the dry land.

Miles were covered by swift skittering performed by the roaches numerous legs.

He'd been discovered. If they reached him, he would die.

“Not good. Definitely not good,” Peter muttered, reinforcing the ice dome as more debris began raining down.

The cockroaches were spitting small peebles from their mouths, shooting them his way with deadly force.

His dome shuddered under the machine gun-like assault, cracks spreading faster than he could fix them.

He fired off a series of ice spikes, trying to slow them down, but they shrugged it off. His attacks were barely an annoyance.

Turning around to run, he stopped as he spotted other swarms coming from different directions, moving through the canyon- all converging on the cliff he was on.

This was bad. He wasn’t strong enough for this. Not here. Not against an entire horde.

His mind raced, and desperation gnawed at him. He was going to die on this hellish planet, buried under a swarm of evolving nightmares.

Unless…

His hand shot to his Inventory, fingers closing around a single, fragile hope—**the Random World Entry ticket**.

It was risky. It could drop him anywhere. But staying here was a death sentence.

“Not much of a choice,” Peter muttered, ripping the ticket in two just as the swarm reached his crumbling ice defenses.

A rift opened in the air beside him, pulling him in with violent force. The last thing he saw before being swallowed by the void was a sea of angry, inhuman eyes.

The cliff he'd been on crumbled to soil under the sheer numbers of the the Terraformars.

[MISSION FAILED]

[TERRAFORMARS WORLD UNCLEARED]

[PENALTY: INVENTORY LOCKED]

[ENTERING RANDOM WORLD]

[NEW MISSION...]

A scream escaped Peter as he moved through the portal, passing an impossible space filled with a kaleidoscope of shifting realities, before he was unceremoniously hurled out.

He crashed into the mud with a sickening thud, the wind knocked from his lungs- now back in his human form.

Groaning, he rolled onto his back, his body protesting every movement. The air here was thick with the scent of blood and smoke, his head spinning from the sudden shift.

Slowly, he lifted his head, eyes adjusting to the chaos around him. A war torn landscape, with the sound of gunfire and explosions being traded between two parties. And in the middle of it, unbothered by the whizzing bullets, there she was.

A figure loomed above him, her armor shining even through the murky fog of battle—gold, red, and blue.

She stood tall, a lasso strapped to her hip with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Her dark hair whipped in the wind, her piercing blue eyes fixed on him with concern.

“You—are you hurt?”

she asked, her voice both soft and commanding, cutting through the chaos around them.

Peter’s heart skipped a beat. He recognized her immediately.

“I… I think I’m okay.”

He stammered, still trying to wrap his head around what had just happened.

One minute, he was on Mars, fighting off a swarm of cockroach mutants, and the next, he was on a battlefield face-to-face with an Amazonian demigod.

Wonder Woman. Diana Prince. And taking into account the fact that trenches, barbed wire and soldier corpses littered the place, he was in the middle of the 'Wonder Woman' movie, during the first World War.

Damn. Not much better than Terraformars, but at least all he had to deal with here was the Axis powers and a war mongering God. Over millions of super-roaches, he'd take that deal any day.

Diana extended a hand to help him up.

“This is no place for civilians.”

She said, her tone stern and urgent.

Peter took her hand, pulling himself to his feet.

“Yeah, well, wrong place, wrong time. Story of my life.”

At least with Wonder Woman, the only thing he needed to worry about was Hitler. A glance at the looming interface instantly killed his hopes.

[NEW mission assigned: Death of the War God: Kill Ares and steal his Divinity]