//------------------------------//
// Gwen Stacy: Into the Sunset Bar (Ghost Spider - Ongoing) 
// Story: Sunset's Isekai 
// by Wanderer D 
//------------------------------//


Sunset's Isekai
Gwen Stacy: Into the Sunset Bar
By Wanderer D






Gwen Stacy stepped out of class and stretched, wondering once more at the mechanics of inter-dimensional cross-universal curriculums and the mysterious operations of school secretaries that could make something like that possible. That, and she still had issues with old-er Peter Parker subbing for the occasional professor. It was cringy enough to deal with his eternal wistfulness to saving his local Gwen Stacy from a death he couldn't have stopped, but given what had happened to her own Peter Parker… well. There was too much baggage there to just roll with it easily.

Thankfully, other than waving at her at the end of class, he hadn't really insisted on talking, which was fine by her. She wasn't really in the mood for spider business right now, and she also had a mission.

And speaking of which...

"Hey Mark, have you seen Benji around? I still have a book she lent me last week and I haven't seen her for a couple of days."

Mark stopped stuffing his notebooks into his backpack long enough to glance over at her. "Haven't seen much of her since a couple of days ago. With exams coming soon I wouldn't be surprised if she recused herself from known society until she's done with them."

Gwen bit her lip. "Alright, I guess I'll text her. Again."

"Good luck with that," Mark snorted. He then started packing again. "By the way, Eve and the rest of the gang were wondering if you'd like to hang out again, maybe tomorrow?"

"I'll have to check my schedule, but if I'm free, I'll be happy to."

Mark nodded. "Fair enough! In any case, I'm off. Catch you later, Gwen."

She watched him go, waving her hand with little enthusiasm. "Well, there goes that lead." She sighed and started walking down the halls of Empire State University, nodding to the occasional classmate or teacher that she crossed paths with. 'Good ol' Earth-616,' she thought, 'where I can still walk down a building and not be harassed to rescue a kitten, take pictures or perform amazing feats for the masses.'

After her third walk around campus, she owned up to it and decided that her friend, Benji Jones, was really not around and thus she'd have to bring the book back tomorrow, when they did have class together. It probably would have been smarter too. Still, three walks took time, and she was already pushing it for time before she needed to get back home and ready for band practice.

"There's never time to relax, is there?" she muttered under her breath.

Mary Jane might've been working on her temper, but that did not mean it was a good idea to test how much she had improved on that front. And so, Gwen ran out of the building, down the stairs, across the street, up the wall as her clothes shifted and turned into her costume, and invoked a portal back to sweet home Earth-65.

This time, she made sure to use a building she knew rather than attempt a new one at random. She didn't want a repeat of her last misadventure after all.(1)

"Oh, shiii—"

That's when she realized she had forgotten one tiny detail. The old, spray-painted sign where she was used to landing had been recently removed to allow for remodeling the rooftop. So, in essence, she had flung herself out of a portal in mid-air and ready to land on a flat surface… which was now air and a bunch of pieces of metal in the way.

Instincts and body reacting immediately, she tucked in her arms and legs as she pressed her weight and momentum into a roll that allowed her a better angle to shoot her web to a side building, changing her trajectory as her lifeline bent around one of the metal edges, and swung her into a tight left turn. She increased her velocity by stretching just at the right moment and providing less friction as she flew, straight as an arrow, through three beams of steel.

The moment she passed, she spread her arms and legs, bending slightly forward so that she would be facing the next challenge in a more upright position, which allowed her to shoot another web, this time to turn right and land skillfully on another tall building, roughly seven stories up, and sticking to the wall long enough to take a calming breath.

That's when she felt herself slipping down a bit. "Gah!" she shouted, grabbing wildly for anything at all, and holding on from the doorknob for dear life. She felt her powers kick back in just a few seconds later, but still took her time easing onto the wall.

She glanced at the streets far below. "Well. That would have left a dent. Good thing this handy door was right here on the seventh floor, facing empty air." Gwen let out a long breath. "I don't have much of a choice now, do I?" she muttered as an addendum. Communing with her symbiote, she sensed that it was hungry again. Still, she should be able to at least investigate this a little.





It was a bar. On the seventh floor, with the only obvious entrance facing empty air. The term Building Violation didn't even begin to describe how this was a problem. Once she was inside, she closed the door behind her, the silver bell chiming once more as the heavy door sealed securely.

Gwen studied what she could see so far. Like many New York bars she had seen, this one had a bit of a short, dark hallway that emerged into the bar proper. It was nice too. The type of expensive bar one would expect to find wealthy locals at. It wasn't sporty… it had brick walls, polished wooden oak tables, a long bar that stretched almost to the back, and shelves full of expensive looking liquor. Even the bottom shelf had stuff in bottles that seemed handcrafted and exotic. Had she mentioned expensive? It all looked expensive.

Since she was in Earth-65, there was little point in wearing her costume, so she shifted it into a more appropriate dress and coat as she walked in. There was no sign of the bartender yet, and in their absence, Gwen took the chance instead to study the mysterious bar a bit more.

Even though the initial look of the bar spoke of old-school New York, the walls were covered in random things, like guitars and a poster for some sort of furry band called Villian Court, which was odd enough in how photo-realistic it looked. If Axel Rose had been born female, a purple unicorn and still had her (his?) musical career going, that's probably what she'd look like. It was signed and everything by a "Princess Twilight Sparkle, to my favorite bartender."

She walked down the bar, her hand trailing the tables as she made her way to the end of the wall, where several pictures were organized. 'Probably the beginning of an intended all-wall picture collection,' she mused. It was then that something clicked.

In all pictures, she could see the same girl, red and gold hair, light cyan eyes, an almost orange tan to her skin, and mostly wearing a black vest with a white or cream-colored blouse, or in some instances something more appropriate to a high-class old-western bar. That was probably the owner/bartender, but the really weird part, was the other people in the pictures. Or creatures, rather.

There was a picture of the bartender with herself and another girl. A picture of a Krogan, the bartender, and an actual unicorn that looked disturbingly similar to the furry in the poster. There was another admittedly beautiful unicorn furry in a cowboy suit. The bartender with a… pony, a griffon… a dragon, some sort of horsebug, another griffon like thing, and… most odd of all, a yak? A couple of pictures with other, darker-colored bug ponies, the bartender standing in the middle of a bunch of incredibly similar creatures that ranged from a human girl to a unicorn, to a robot and a cardboard cut-off…

"Oh." Gwen said, eyes wide as she studied the other pictures. Medieval-looking people. Creatures of myth. Several versions of a same person (or creature)... "This is an honest to god interdimensional bar." Maybe she should cover her face after all.

Before she could act on that, a door behind her opened, and she turned around in place, watching as the bartender girl from the pictures walked into the room, carrying a crate of things, topped with several heavy-looking books.

They stared at each other for a moment.

"Oh," the bartender said slowly, then her eyes widened as she seemed to finally take in the fact that Gwen was right there. "Oh! Sorry!" She quickly put the box behind the bar and out of view and dusted herself, making her clothes look presentable. "I somehow missed the bell ringing. My name is Sunset Shimmer. Welcome to Sunset's Isekai! I see you've already found the pictures. Are you familiar with the multiverse?"

"In more ways than one," Gwen said warily. "Name's Gwen Stacy."

"Well, that makes it more easy to explain the deal here," Sunset said, motioning for Gwen to sit at the bar. "So, pocket dimension, meaning it exists outside of your time and space."

Gwen felt herself relax a little. That meant that time here was not aligned with her own world. "Well that's good to know. At least I don't have to worry about being late for band practice."

Sunset Shimmer grinned at that. "Always nice to meet another musician," she said, nodding her head at the guitars.

"I play the drums, myself," Gwen said, finally deciding to take Sunset on the offer and sitting down at the bar.

"The cornerstone of any band," Sunset declared.

"So," Gwen glanced a the place once more. "How come your bar's door appeared on the seventh floor of a building, and facing the street?"

Sunset blinked. "Were you somehow on the outside of the building?"

Gwen nodded.

"Oh. Well, the thing about my bar is that whenever it appears like that, it's because you could use a drink," Sunset explained. "So, it'll open close to where you are at the time, in a convenient way to let you into it."

"I'm not one of the 'going to the bar to forget my woes' types," Gwen said, raising an eyebrow.

"You're one of my 'personal' guests as I like to call them," Sunset said, passing her a menu. "You don't have to drink anything at all if you don't want to, visits like these are because you need a friendly ear, not because I need cash. If you want a drink, that's a bonus."

Despite Sunset's words, Gwen still had her doubts. After all, the point of having a business was to make money. Still, glancing at the menu couldn't hurt, and she was kind of thirsty. She could always just order a pop if nothing else seemed good.

She looked again at the menu. "Wait, these are smoothies?"

Sunset leaned in and looked down at it. "Huh. Seems like it."

"You don't know what's in your menus?" Gwen asked.

"Gwen, there's so much alcohol and possible mixes here that if I put everything I have in the menu it would look as thick as a dictionary. My menus are designed to sense what you might want or what might benefit you most. Seems you're in desperate need of a smoothie."

"But why a—" Gwen interrupted herself, looking down at her clothes. Of course. "That makes sense."

"What does?"

Allowing the symbiote to change her into her costume, Gwen took some pride in the look on Sunset's face when she saw the clothes dissolve into millions of tiny spiders that reformed into her Ghost Spider suit. "My symbiote's diet has been an issue as of late. My friend Peter Parker told me that I basically just needed a higher intake of fiber, since Corn Dogs weren't nutritious enough for it."(2)

Sunset tapped her chin. "Hm. Do you like bananas and kiwis?"

"Meh. I don't dislike them," Gwen replied. She'd tried the smoothie diet before, but it had died early enough when it required an additional level of dedication that she just didn't have time for.

"Alright," the bartender continued, "then let me make you a smoothie that's high in fiber. That should help."

Gwen watched Sunset open a small fridge under the bar and pull out the ingredients. "You just happen to have them there?"

"Nope, this thing here is actually an interdimensional pocket of its own that allows me to store just about anything I want in a frozen moment in time. It gets a little loopy sometimes, but hey, we do with what we have."

"That's an odd way of describing something." Gwen shook her head as Sunset proceeded to make two good-sized smoothies and served them up. She studied hers carefully before giving it a sip. What she had said earlier was true, she hadn't really gotten into the smoothie thing, and she was mostly indifferent to bananas, but she had to admit, the acidity of the berries and kiwis made this a lot more tasty than she thought it would be. "Hmm. This is good!"

She slurped it up fairly quickly, a testament to the hunger the symbiote had been feeling, and didn't have to ask again for another serving to come right up. She had to admit, going to a bar and having this level of personalized attention was pretty nice.

"So, I'm assuming you're a superhero from the costume?" Sunset asked.

"Well," Gwen sighed, wondering how much she should actually share. She was starting to like this Sunset Shimmer, and didn't want to give her the wrong idea. "Trying to, at least. It's kind of hard when everyone knows your identity to do honest hero work."

Sunset's eyes widened a bit. "I thought it was common practice to not tell people your secret identity?"

Gwen grimaced. "Sometimes you can. Sometimes… it's inevitable. That's why I'm going to college in a different universe than mine. I'm not a celebrity of any sort in Earth-616. I barely even have a presence, and really the only ones that know me are other heroes that have gone across the multiverse at least once. Miles Morales or Peter Parker."

"Fair enough," Sunset said. "Must be tough though. In the world where I learned the most valuable life-lessons, I had to hide the fact that I was a unicorn from another dimension, and later on my magic or I would probably get into a lot of trouble with the government."

"Well, I'm not an illegal alien unicorn, at least," Gwen said, smiling at Sunset. "My university actually has an interdimensional exchange program, if you can believe it."

Sunset blinked twice. "I almost can't, but then again you looked at the pictures."

"You have met a few really weird creatures, and even one out of a videogame I recognized."

"So how come everyone knows who you are in your home dimension?" Sunset asked, making her curse internally.

"It's a long story," Gwen said, "and I don't really feel like sharing all of it, but… basically while I was doing 'hero' work, I broke a lot of laws and endangered a lot of people. When I finally brought down the big bad of the city, I asked the mayor to help me reveal my identity and… I did my time in jail."

Sunset winced. "That was probably really tough."

Gwen nodded, pressing her lips together and looking down. "It was. I was also in the same prison I sent many people to… they reminded me of that many times."

Surprisingly Sunset reached out and squeezed her hand. When Gwen looked up, she saw an understanding smile in Sunset's face. Nothing was said, but she knew—somehow—that Sunset herself had a history like her own, in some way or another.

Feeling a little better in sharing her story, she continued, "Although a lot of the people in New York like me and appreciate what I did to try and make things right, it also makes it very difficult to have some level of normalcy, even with the occasional crime-fighting going on." She sighed, slurping up a bit more of her smoothie. "My self-proclaimed 'nemesis', a harmless thief with a pet was recently seriously injured. I feel pressure from the band, my dad, the city... plus the added dangers of them being openly friends with a superhero."

She felt the frustration within her start to agitate the symbiote, but she reached out to it to calm it down, mentally humming a song to it until it settled into its content, usual self. Sunset waited patiently for her to continue. "The symbiote acting up like this and realizing that it's my fault for not taking good care of it and myself… not to mention interdimensional monsters hunting down spidermen and women all over the multiverse." She gave her host a bittersweet smile. "'Death loves Gwen Stacy,' is my motto now." She motioned at the pictures. "You've seen other versions of you, right? The good, the bad? In most universes I'm dead. In 616 I'm dead… and my friend Peter Parker is alive. And he's… over it? For him it's been decades since I passed away, but I can still see a little pain in his eyes when he looks my way.

"Just two days ago, I fell into an abandoned trap an old enemy of Spiderman's had left behind. Arcade made an elaborate trap involving robot versions of Spideys' enemies and a robotic copy of me… because my fame in that world came for Spiderman being blamed for my death." She chuckled. "It's a sobering thought when you realize you're the lucky one… that you're not just a pretty face to be captured constantly to give a hero something to do."

She licked her lips. "I don't… hate the other Gwen Stacys. But I resent in a way how compliant they were. I want to blame it on the times… many of them were alive in their respective universe's seventies but realistically they were just… compliant future housewives. It's weird… I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with wanting a home life, marrying, and such, but because it's me, it just bothers me so much." She finished up her second smoothie. "The fact that I could have potentially not joined the Mary Janes, or met so many amazing people from a multitude of worlds. Or saved lives. Or learn so much because I'm either dead or a housewife just nags at me."

Sunset nodded and took a deep breath. "The multiverse has a way of humbling you. It's bad enough when you discover that everyone you know has a counterpart, but when you start meeting your other yous, when you realize you are just one more in an infinite amount of versions of yourself? It's life-changing." She smiled in a way that still felt reassuring. "But I've learned that having so many versions of me just proves how unique I am.

"Sure, some got what I wanted early in life. Or have done so many different things that I never thought to, but I'm the one that's teaching a young du-girl how to use magic. I'm the one with the on and off ghost roomie; the one that punched Gilgamesh for trying to steal my sword. The one that gets to hear and meet amazing individuals and unique versions of people I've gotten to know. I've met myself at my best and… myself in a pretty bad place. And there's so much more!"

It was very optimistic, and deep within her, the cynical Gwen wanted to complain a little, but there was just something about Sunset's passion for what she did that was starting to not only make her feel better, but also more excited about her new interdimensional chances.

"I can't promise it will all be good," Sunset continued, looking her in the eye, "especially with you being a superhero, but come on! I got to go to an epic, once in a life-time concert!" she said, grinning widely and motioning with her hand at the poster Gwen had noticed when she walked in. "I got to be a cat and attend a royal wedding! I got drunk with Wrex! Can you imagine how much you'll get to do that no one else will?"

Gwen felt Sunset's hand squeeze her own, and she smiled in return at the bartender. "Thanks, that does make me feel a bit better." She turned her hand and squeezed Sunset's hand gently. "And I'd be happy to call you friend. Goodness knows I need more. But I think it's time for me to go."

"Well, you're always welcome here," Sunset replied, taking out a silver business card. "Whenever you need an ear or just to hang out."

Gwen nodded and put it in her pocket. Then glanced at the wall. "Do I get a picture taken?"





Sunset placed the picture on the wall, and smiled, nodding at herself. Gwen and her were posing with the Mary Janes, who had been slightly confused by her appearance with Gwen, but accepted the fact that she was one of Ghost Spider's interdimensional buddies.

She had stayed, she had listened, and she had taken that picture, and an invitation from Mary Jane to be a guest guitarist if she was ever around and available for some practice.

As she was about to turn, she noticed something. She leaned in, watching the tiny, pale white and purple spider crawl around the frame. Carefully, she let it get onto her palm. "Where have I seen you before?" she wondered, then blinked. "Oh… Gwen's symbiote."

She hummed. "Well… how about we get you some kale and other good sources of fiber?" she asked, walking over to the bar. "I'll have to get you a place to live."

As if it understood her, the little spider crawled up and down her hand excitedly, making her giggle. "I'll introduce you to Rarity, Lena and Danni later. Welcome to the family."(3)


End Chapter