A year since the Shattering. That’s what people called it when the dimensional tears began to appear all over the Earth, causing things as small as rocks and as large as whole cities from other dimensions to appear where they didn’t belong. It’s unsettling, to say the least; to stand back and watch as a prehistoric dinosaur suddenly thunders through your neighborhood, only to be rescued by Allied war planes from the 1940s. Needless to say that even a year later since this madness began, people were struggling to continue on with their lives. When scientists couldn’t come up with an answer, people simply had to adapt…or perish. It was the way of the world.

Thankfully, New York City had some type of stability. Even from the high points of Nueva York’s spires, Miguel could see that. Attached onto one of the highest points, his enhanced vision allowed him to look out over the rest of the city and seeing the clear borders between dimensions. Through Brooklyn, he could see ships on the waters as they moved too and from Staten Island which was trapped in some ancient time. A glance towards the Bronx and Miguel spied old-fashioned cars, only detailed dots from his position, as they sped through the streets and disappeared behind brick and mortar buildings.

It was strange to witness these things and know that there was nothing that he could do about it. What made it worse was that these segments of reality were cut off of the rest of their own dimensions. He couldn’t get home to his wife, see any of his old friends, or even wage the war against evil on his own turf. All he could look after was Queens and lend his aide across the other dimensions. But none of that solved the problem. As a matter of fact, many were wondering there is was even a problem to solve! More and more it was beginning to feel like this was just the way things were going to be.

God that was depressing.

“Xina…I’m so sorry,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “I should have never gone to Queens that night.”

Even under his mask he could feel the tears beginning to well-up at the corners of his eyes. He had been thinking about Xina a lot this past year. Oh how much he wanted to just make sure that she was okay but even if he stayed in his dimensional pocket, he couldn’t contact her. That was most of all frustrating. The not knowing and the feeling of helplessness that was near crippling.

Thankfully before he could sink too deeply into that wading pool of depression, the sounds of screams and gunfire struck his ears. He looked, towards the street level and soon realized what the problem was…

“Shock! A tyrannosaurus rex?” he asked himself. The thundering creature had appeared from a temporal rift and was, in a panic, roaring and stopping through the streets of Nueva York, gnashing its teeth at anyone stupid enough to be in its way. Miguel rolled his eyes under his mask as he leapt off of the spire he was attached to and fell at a freefall towards the massive creature. “This just isn’t my day…”

...So maybe they couldn't be tamed.

Kurt teleported back onto the raging 'Rex's back. No. Much too hard to reason from here. He took a few steps up it's reptilian hide and then BAMFed again to find a shaky balance on its head. "Look. I think we got off on the wrong foot." He addressed the closest eye.

The king of dinosaurs shook its head to dislodge the blue demon but all it took was a quick BAMF and a puff of acrid smoke and Kurt was back. He wrapped his arms and legs and tail around the creature's mouth. "I don't really want you as a pet, you see?"

Its jaws were too strong for Kurt to keep them shut. He could hardly reach its jaw enough to get a hold on it anyway. He flipped up back onto its nose, this time assuming a tailor's seated position for extra stability. "I just want you to stop eating people. Certainly you can see why that might be a problem for me."

The T-rex shook its head again and this time as Kurt was falling, he tried to take a snap at him. As a mutant with no particular death wish, Kurt pushed off of the behemoth’s exposed teeth, kept his tail well clear, and rebounded onto a nearby building’s demolished upper floors.

The mutant stood slowly with new eyes for the whole scene unfolding around him. This human place was just not built to withstand such a force.

Kurt’s tail drooped down to the ruins of what had, up until just minutes ago, been his favorite pair of running shoes. Men’s 8 wide. Now his toe was gaping out the side.

He’d been so worried about the creature, that he hadn’t been paying attention to what it’d been doing. Now free from Kurt’s pestering, the T-rex rammed its head into the building below the mutant dislodging the detritus of people’s lives. Another slam of its head and the whole building shifted dumping a few people out of their windows.

Kurt teleported, catching a man and his toddler before their momentum got to be too great, and deposited the pair on the ground so that they could run. There was no way he could get them all...

Things were just getting stranger and stranger. Miguel was by no means easily startled; after all, once you watch your own universe shatter like a sheet of glass, there is little else that will really surprise you. But even after a year of dealing with this strange new collaboration of dimensions, he found himself unable to process exactly what was going on right now.

After a free fall of several hundreds of feet, Miguel latched onto the smooth glass of a nearby building; his taloned fingers cutting deep grooves into the thick glass. Coming to a stop, he firmly attached himself to the structure, eyes looking through his mask and to the scene that was much closer. The sound of his own, webbed cape flapped around and struck his ears, but it was drowned out by the deafening roar of a beast that had not been seen in millennia. It was needless to say that the creature was mad.

A wild look in its eyes, the former King of the Dinosaurs (as the holocubes referred to him), lashed out in both panic and frustration. More than likely the poor dinosaur had slipped through one of the dimensional tears that occurred and was now running amok in the city. Fresh scents, explosive lights, thundering noise, none of that did well to quell the creature’s rampant anger and fear. Buildings, vehicles, people were destroyed or eaten as the thundering dinosaur loudly proclaimed its dissatisfaction with its current predicament.

“Of all the times to not know how to speak dino,” Miguel grumbled underneath his mask. A quick web swung and the future Spider-Man brought himself closer to the scene, landing on a nearby structure. He knew he needed to act but facing down a thundering lizard from prehistoric times really wasn’t in his power base. However, he soon noticed someplace that needed his immediate attention.

A building collapse, people screaming as the Tyrannosaurus crushed the façade, sending several people tumbling into the air. Without thought as to how many and who to save, Miguel leapt into action. Kicking off of the structure, Miguel fired a line of webbing around the dinosaur’s mouth to keep him from chomping anyone else, at least for a few moments, as he leapt in front of its path. Catching a falling man mid-air, he then swung and captured another seconds before smashing into a jutting out piece of architecture.

However, his eyes immediately noticed others falling; there was no way he could get there in time! Quickly he tossed his own survivors and weaved a safety web to catch them just before they would hit the ground. Knowing that they would be safe, Spider-Man threw himself forward, ready to try and save a falling man and a toddler, but was surprised when a poof of indigo smoke appeared and then disappeared…along with the victim.

“What the shock?” he exclaimed. Still swinging, Spider-Man turned his body so that he ran along the edge of the building and picked up another falling person, just in time to see blue-skinned (or was that fur?) individual appear on the ground, ushering away the man and child he had seen falling only seconds earlier.

Making sure that no others were falling, Miguel spun and fell with an elegant grace to the ground, landing deftly on a nearby lamppost as he looked at the strange individual.

“Whoa! Buddy, and here I thought I was the only one who could pull off indigo.” The costumed Spider-Man edged closer, holding onto the lamppost as he tilted his head at the man. “Were you…how did you…?”

RRAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Miguel winced as the deafening roar nearly dislodged him from his perch. He turned and found that the dinosaur had freed its massive jaws from the thin layer of webbing that he had sealed it with moments ago. Now, it was even madder.

“Oh sho—“

He barely had time to think as the King of Dinosaurs hurled himself at Miguel, jaws opened wide…

He'd been worried about catching them all, but he hadn't noticed that net there. Or the stranger swinging by like a spandex clad Tarzan of the jungle. With a cape.

Ah. Who was he to judge?

The stranger did some admirable acrobatics in order to lessen his momentum before he came to halt on a lamppost. On that, Kurt could judge. 9/10.

> “Whoa! Buddy, and here I thought I was the only one who could pull off indigo.”

Kurt looked down at the sloppy remains of his track suit almost as if he hadn't noticed that he was indigo. He'd already noticed the wreck that had been his shoes, but the rest? His sweatpants had taken more than its fair share of rubble damage, his sweat jacket had betrayed him no telling how long ago by letting the hood drop from his head. At least he'd ditched the gloves on purpose when he first decided to jump on the back of the dino. He knew he'd need the extra traction.

In short, the mutant was revealed. Far more revealed than he preferred to be when out of his vigilante uniform. But he hadn't planned on trying to wrestle a dinosaur when he left this morning.

Maybe he should start carrying his costume places. Like this this fellow.

"Ja. We are two peas in a pod." The accent was German, but the easy smile was a solid result of the last year here in this fractured city. People were less likely to freak out after everything else they'd seen thus far. At this guy hadn't shot out his net at Kurt.

> “Were you… how did you…?”

"Really? You shoot nets and wear a cape and that's the part you're ---- ------- -----?"

The end of Kurt's question was drowned out by an eardrum shattering affirmation that their buddy was still untamed. The stringy stuff his pal had gotten around dino's mouth was gone now.

>>RRAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Kurt defaulted down to his natural crouch, ready for action.

Uh. But maybe not that much action.

BAMF! He appeared at his new friend's shoulders and grabbed him with all six fingers. They were gone before the T-rex could bite down. Gone before his friend could even finish his exclamation. Then it was a matter of two or three quick teleports in and out of dinosaur range before Kurt found a good spot to put this guy down.

"So." Kurt set Miguel down with tender care on the dinosaur's back between its shoulder blades. It seemed to be a spot like an itch that the dinosaur could not scratch. That didn't stop it from whipping its head, tail, and tiny arms back and forth trying. "I know you can't tame zebras, but did anybody ever really try on these guys? Because, I was thinking we should call her, Sue." Kurt seemed to have very little trouble keeping his balance.

Things were quickly taking a change for the odd. A moment ago Miguel was on the attempting to have a conversation with this strange person when several things occurred at once: First, the dinosaur tore itself free of his webbing (which wasn’t good), Second, all his saw was darkness and sharp teeth ready to clamp down upon him, and Third…suddenly the dinosaur was nowhere in sight and he was standing next to the younger, blue-skinned (furred?) creature. It took a second but Miguel was just having a tough time wrapping his head around what had just happened.

“Ugh, what was that?” he cautioned to ask. However, he didn’t get much time for an answer as another deafening roar tore through the air.

He blinked and looked down; floor wasn’t supposed to look like giant, leathery skin, was it? It was then that he realized that he was no longer in front of the dinosaur, but now situated on the back of its’ head. His taloned feet firmly latched him onto the lumbering beast and it seemed as Indigo there was perfectly balanced as well.

"I know you can't tame zebras, but did anybody ever really try on these guys? Because, I was thinking we should call her, Sue."

He had plenty of questions. Sadly, he doubted that any of them were going to find answers right now. Though his talons normally caused pain, he doubted very much that he was actually hurting the creature he stood upon. At most he was probably making that impossible to reach spot between the T-Rex’s shoulder itch. This would be proven by the fact that, suddenly, the creature moved and twisted its back against the edge of a building, attempting to rub and scratch the itchy spot.

Miguel, easily keeping his balanced, took a few steps away from the spot before turning his attention back to his savior.

“Well, Sue is a perfectly….suitable name of a rampaging engine of destruction, but I’m not sure she will be tamable,” he commented. Crouching low, Miguel started to climb the beast’s neck, moving gently as to not make it itch more. As he climbed, he made his way to the top of its brow and peered over.

The creature continued to chew and gnaw on the lamppost that Miguel had been on seconds before. But, realizing that his prey was gone and that metal didn’t taste good, the lumbering lizard released the post with a SPLAT of drool. However, still panicked by the lights and sounds, the dinosaur was soon on the rampage again, this time turning a bit too harshly, slamming its thick tail through nearly and entire floor of a building.

Miguel winced and shook his head. Thankfully at least it seemed that that particular building was empty of people. He sighed as he turned and crawled his way back towards his indigo friend.

“I’ll be honest here, prehistoric animals really are not on my list of specialties,” he said. Another lumbering move from the beast and Miguel latched on to remain in place. “So, if you have any ideas, I’m open for suggestions.”

People screamed below. In its panic, the T-Rex roared and made ready to snap at the disagreeable, fleeing people. Miguel, however, leapt to the occasion. Flipping backwards, he landed deftly on the creature’s head and quickly proceeded to spin thick web around the creature’s jaws. However, instead of letting it remain bound, Miguel hefted up the lines, using the webbing as a quick harness. He struggled to keep the creature in check as he called over his shoulders.

“This isn’t going to hold long!” he shouted, trying to steer the beast away from any more innocent civilians.