Chapter 21: Parker: Online
The rain outside the old apartment let up a bit, and rainwater trickled down the glass windowpanes, leaving slender streaks of water.
The atmosphere on the living room carpet at this moment was as tense as a fully drawn bowstring.
The two of them each conducted an extremely tragic and brain-burning brainstorming session in their minds, picking up and discarding various excuses in the trash can of their thoughts.
The silence lasted for about two minutes, and almost at the very same instant, they raised their heads and their gazes collided.
"That..."
Two voices slipped out from the mouths of the two without distinction of priority. The voices overlapped, appearing exceptionally comical.
Arthur and Gwen were stunned once again. Arthur was the first to react, somewhat awkwardly touching the tip of his nose, and magnanimously raised his hand to say, "You speak first."
Gwen sat beside Arthur's thigh, her hands gripping tightly onto the hem of that oversized T-shirt, her fingers turning slightly white from the exertion.
She took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the restlessness in her heart, and strove to make her face flush with a normal girl's blush.
She lowered her head, her gaze dodging, and spoke in an extremely mosquito-like, soft voice full of shyness.
"Um, Arthur, it seems like... my period came early. My stomach is a little uncomfortable. Everything over here is stuff for grown men, and I really can't find anything I can use. I want to go back and change my pad."
After saying this, Gwen stood up stiffly from the carpet. She secretly gave a thumbs-up to her own wit.
A woman's menstrual period was definitely the most perfect and irresistible pretext in this World; no normal straight man would harbor doubts or probe deeply into this reason.
As long as she walked out this door, she could immediately call someone to deal with that broken tin-can robot.
Hearing this on Arthur's end, his heart blossomed with joy. It was like someone sending a pillow right when he was feeling sleepy; he was just worrying about how to get rid of this clingy little rice cake, and the excuse delivered itself right to his doorstep.
However, happy as he was inside, the act still had to be played out completely.
Without even a second of hesitation, he immediately bounced up from the carpet alongside her, casually grabbing an old umbrella nearby.
He put on a considerate boyfriend expression full of care and tension, and very naturally went to take Gwen's hand.
"How sudden. It's still raining outside. Come on, it's so dark, I'll walk you a piece of the way, and help you hold the umbrella by the way, don't catch a cold again."
Gwen's foot, which had just stepped out half a step, suddenly froze in mid-air.
She instinctively wanted to pull her hand back, opening her mouth to blurt out, "No need, it's not far, I can go back by myself."
But the words reached her lips and were forcibly swallowed back down by her.
No, if she refused stubbornly now, given their usual state of being glued together even when going downstairs to throw away trash, this would appear extremely abnormal.
In case it aroused Arthur's suspicion, it would be counterproductive instead.
She could only nod stiffly, pull out an unnatural smile, and say okay.
Thus, under the dim yellow streetlights, Arthur held up that large black umbrella, Gwen crossed her arms over her chest, and the two walked side by side on the damp street.
This should have been an extremely romantic rainy night stroll, but the gears in both of their hearts were spinning wildly, and neither spoke, save for the dull sound of raindrops pelting the surface of the umbrella.
It was only a few minutes' walk; stopping and going, the two arrived downstairs at Gwen's apartment building.
"Alright, I'll walk you to here. Hurry back, drink more hot water, and send me a message if it hurts really badly."
Arthur stood outside the apartment unit door, dutifully giving a few instructions.
Gwen obediently nodded like pounding garlic, urging Arthur to hurry home and not get rained on. Watching Arthurturn around and walk back as his figure disappeared around the street corner, the docile and weak disguise on her face instantly vanished completely.
Gwen, who completed her facial expression change in a second, immediately hid in the shadow beside the unit door. She nimbly took out her phone from her pocket, her fingers almost striking sparks on the screen.
She brought up the accident address she had forcibly memorized in her mind just now, along with a precise location link, and sent it directly to an unnamed number.
After sending the location, she rapidly typed out a line of text.
"There's something quite troublesome over here, hurry up and go solve it, make it quick."
Sending complete, Gwen let out a long sigh of relief. As a Ghost Spider senior, wielding all of New York's superhero resources, this was what you called strategizing within a command tent.
At this very moment, in an old-fashioned house several blocks away from this neighborhood...
Peter Parker was dragging his exhausted body back to his bedroom.
He had just ended a street melee triggered by a bank robbery. Although he wasn't badly injured, he was left covered in dirt and ashes.
He closed the door well, and had just pulled off halfway that rough, hand-made red hoodie exuding a sour sweat odor, preparing to comfortably lie down into the bedding, while his mind was still conceiving of activities that made him the happiest, like reading a newly bought physics magazine later.
As a result, the phone on the table violently vibrated with great disappointment.
Peter's original happy expression, which still carried a bit of being able to finally rest, visibly collapsed upon seeing that the text message sender was that terrifying pink-hooded senior, his face souring like he had swallowed a whole unripe lemon.
He clicked open the message, looking at the address on the screen and that extremely unquestionable command, and sighed a huge breath with a sense of lifelessness.
He pulled the half-tucked hoodie back onto his body, smoothly clapping that goggled red hood onto his head, and couldn't help muttering and complaining in his mouth.
"Fine, fine, fine, senior. You're the senior, the rules are all set by you, you call the shots. Poor Parker is just a heartless working stiff."
Muttering to himself, Peter pushed open the bedroom window, shooting a white Web-slinging into New York's thick night, his body, guided by the Web-slinging, reluctantly swung toward the distant night sky.
On the other side. Arthur, having confirmed that Gwen had gone upstairs, did not return to his little nest along the original path.
He turned into a dim dead-end alley piled with trash cans on both sides.
Confirming that there was no one around, not even a homeless person, Arthur closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking slightly deep within his mind, connecting with the Rabbit Talisman that represented ultimate speed.
Without any complicated preparatory actions, Arthuropened his eyes abruptly, and the muscles in his legs were instantly filled with an unspeakable, peculiar current of energy.
He merely took a step forward.
A gale whipped up flatly in this narrow alley, blowing those foul-smelling garbage bags and discarded beverage cans flying everywhere.
And Arthur's figure had completely disappeared from where he stood. If there were a high-speed camera aimed at the street here at this moment, it might barely be able to capture that flashing, physics-defying afterimage in the dark corners of the city.
The gale whistled past his ears, and the buildings on both sides turned into blurred color patches.
This space-shuttling-like travel experience was very much enjoyed by Arthur.
Without spending much time, he had already approached the location sent to his mobile text message.
The pungent smell of gunpowder smoke mixed with the scent of burned rubber hit his face.
Arthur nimbly vaulted onto the roof of a five-story building about a hundred meters away from the battle zone.
This position was simply a golden VIP viewing seat; not only would it not be affected by stray bullets, but it could also take in all the conditions below at a glance.
He had just squatted down at the edge of the roof, poking out half his head, when the scene before his eyes made him gasp slightly in a breath of cold air. Then, he was completely stunned.
In the middle of the street, illuminated somewhat pale by the streetlights, that huge-bodied Iron Monger, looking like a clumsy tin can, was emitting bursts of heavy engine roaring sounds.
And in mid-air, Tony Stark, wearing his silver-and-red Mark armor, was using the thrusters at the soles of his feet to maintain a condescending hovering state.
What happened next completely subverted Arthur's impression in his mind regarding the earliest stage Iron Man.
Originally in Arthur's memory, Tony at this period should have only mastered energy-dependent beam attacks like the palm repulsors and chest unibeam.
But the fellow in the sky right now was literally a shrunken-version humanoid walking arsenal.
Accompanied by fine mechanical interlocking sounds, the armor on Tony's shoulder parts actually flipped open to both sides.
Two rows of extremely compact miniature Rocket launcher nests rose up. Immediately following, his forearm armor flipped up, popping out two micro gatling guns that looked to be of considerable caliber.
Without any nonsense. Following the swing of Tony's arm, a deafening roar of metal resounded through the night sky.
Densely packed miniature missiles dragged white tail smoke, pouring down towards the Iron Monger below like a swarm of bees.
The tongues of fire from the bullets pulled out two dazzling fire lines in the dark night, and bullet shells dropped clatteringly like a rainstorm from mid-air onto the asphalt road surface, smashing out dots of sparks.
These various heavy firepower mercilessly greeted that huge silver-gray body crazily, blowing up ball after ball of fierce fireballs and rolling black smoke. The huge shockwave generated by the explosion even shattered the shop window glass of several surrounding stores.
Arthur, squatting on the roof watching the show, couldn't help reaching out to dig at his ears, which were feeling somewhat itchy from the vibration. He shook his head, attempting to digest this outrageous scene.
This situation was indeed not right. Arthur pondered inwardly.
Since when could a variant of Mark I, or rather the initial combat body, cram in such insane live ammunition firepower?
This completely violated the original intention of the armor's design.
Could that guy Tony have been stimulated back in the desert by his own magical means that could slaughter all directions without weapons, developing some weird firepower-deficiency phobia, and insisting on modifying this lightweight personal flight armor in the direction of heavy artillery?
If according to Tony's current way of doing things, then later when his good buddy Lieutenant Colonel Rhodeswanted to wear similar equipment, what should that armor originally called "War Machine" be called? That should be called Iron Man instead.
Arthur amusedly shook off these unrealistic complaints in his mind.
Since Tony was fighting happily right now, he simply took pleasure in the leisure, lying quietly on the edge watching this pure firepower output performance, calculating at which critical moment he should jump down again to act cool naturally.
And on the main battlefield below, the battle situation was changing.
The Iron Monger, a behemoth purely manufactured for slaughter and destruction, although large in volume and relatively clumsy in movement, had a shell armor material that was truly outrageously thick.
Facing Tony's overwhelming heavy firepower suppression, although the Iron Monger was beaten back repeatedly, its silver-gray paint surface covered with dense craters and charred marks, with some places still sparking electricity, it obviously had not suffered any fatal damage yet.
Obadiah, sitting inside, seemed to have been beaten into a genuine rage. A huge roar of gear friction and hydraulic pump operation came from inside the Iron Monger. This behemoth turned around abruptly, its incomparably thick mechanical arm extending downward.
Its fingers directly gripped the chassis of an abandoned private car parked on the roadside long ago.
Accompanied by a piercing sound of metal snapping and glass shattering, the Iron Monger actually single-handedly grabbed that car weighing over a ton, blocking it in front of itself like holding a huge shield.
Bullets and Rockets smashed into that pitiful car, instantly beating it into a riddled, burning beehive, but that also blocked most of Tony's effective damage.
Withstanding this tattered, burning shield, the tracks beneath the Iron Monger's feet, or rather the heavy mechanical feet, operated wildly.
Like a berserk bulldozer, it crushed the scattered cement blocks on the road, carrying an unstoppable kinetic energy, and began to quickly approach the direction where Tony in mid-air was located, wanting to forcibly close the distance for hand-to-hand combat.
Tony obviously didn't have the interest to compete in physical strength with a lump of iron that didn't know how many times heavier than himself it was.
The thrusters at the soles of his feet increased output, and his whole body flew backward extremely flexibly in mid-air to pull open the distance.
While retreating and pulling apart, Tony continued to raise his arms and shoulders, attempting to maintain that repressive firepower output from just now.
However, the physical limitations of this lightweight armor were exposed without reservation at this time.
No matter how extreme Tony utilized the space, after all, this was just a small frame, how much live ammunition could be hidden inside?
Soon. Just when the Iron Monger was less than twenty meters away from him.
From inside the micro gatling gun came a "clack-clack" sound of empty-chamber bolt-hold-open, and the tongue of fire abruptly vanished.
The shoulder Rocket launcher nests also had no new missiles emerging anymore, leaving only two empty holes emitting hot air outward.
The powerful firepower suppression was completely exhausted within a mere dozens of seconds.
Arthur, hiding at the edge of the roof above and seeing all this extremely clearly, almost exposed his whereabouts at this moment because he couldn't hold back his smile.
He could even incomparably clearly brainstorm in his mind that beneath the mask of that flashy silver-red armor, Tony's mustached mouth was definitely furiously cursing out nasty profanities at this moment.
Such as strongly complaining about why this suit of armor couldn't pack infinite ammunition like a four-dimensional pocket.
And on the street below, the Iron Monger, having lost its firepower suppression, directly flung away the car in its hand that had already turned into a pile of tattered scrap metal like throwing away garbage, and that pair of mechanical eyes exuding dangerous red light dead-locked onto Tony, who was in an awkward predicament in mid-air.
Chapter 22: Peter Parker's Solo Show
Just as the miniature Rocket pod on Tony's shoulder completely sputtered out, leaving only two wisps of smoke leisurely drifting away in the night air, the atmosphere seemed to be permeated with a scent called awkwardness.
That fierce, storm-like metal tempest from just now had stopped too abruptly.
Maintaining that cool posture with both arms extended and his repulsors ready to charge, Tony froze in mid-air for about two seconds.
The Iron Monger below was not idle either; Obadiah had originally been hiding behind that riddled, scrapped car shield taking a beating, but upon hearing the commotion stop, he fiercely smashed the scrap metal in his hand to the side.
That massive silvery-gray metal monster raised its head, its two red mechanical eyes glowing like a pair of fatal lanterns, staring fixedly at the small silver-and-red armor up in the sky.
Tony swallowed hard, and inside his armor's faceplate, red warnings of depleted ammunition were flashing frantically.
He hurriedly readjusted the output angle of his foot thrusters.
The reason he hadn't used his repulsors earlier was because weapons powered by small reactors would cause the system to overheat if fired continuously.
Right now, apart from hand-to-hand combat and running away, he truly had no other good options.
"Good lord, I shouldn't have pursued streamlined aesthetics so much when designing the blueprints,"
Tony shouted at the top of his lungs in the built-in communication channel while controlling the armor to dart around frantically in mid-air like a mosquito being swatted at.
"Dr. Yinsen, I need some constructive advice. This big chunk of iron is charging over, apart from flying in circles in the sky as a live target, can your brilliant brain think of any other countermeasures?"
An anxious response mixed with static came from the other end of the communicator from Dr. Yinsen.
That man who once accompanied Tony in a cave to hammer out the first-generation iron armor was currently sitting in front of a covert monitoring terminal at Stark Industries, frowning deeply as he stared at the rapidly jumping data streams on the screen.
"Mr. Stark, I'm watching. According to the thermal imaging feedback, the opponent's armor thickness is more than three times yours. My advice to you is to keep your distance, keep your distance. Don't let him catch you. If he grabs your arm, that Mark armor will be crushed as easily as flattening a beer can."
"What kind of advice is that?"
Tony sidestepped to dodge a lamppost casually thrown by the Iron Monger from the street below.
That heavy metal rod whistled past his shoulder with a howling wind, crashing into the wall of a nearby building and shattering into several pieces.
Tony broke out in a cold sweat, complaining endlessly,
"I asked you to find a way to paralyze his power system or look for any exposed cables, not to remind me over the phone that I'm about to be made into a metal sandwich. Had I known, I should have thickened the leg armor by two layers and used it all to carry micro-missiles."
Just at the critical moment when Tony was being chased by the Iron Monger from the roof of this building to the end of that street, looking extremely disheveled and about to be forced into a dead end,
A subtle and highly elastic "swish" sound suddenly came from the depths of the night sky.
The sound wasn't loud, and was even somewhat hard to detect amidst the deafening roar of the engines.
But immediately after, a slender white shadow cut through mid-air like lightning in the dark night.
That was a tough piece of Web-slinging.
This Web-slinging precisely stuck to the joint of the Iron Monger's thick mechanical arm as it was about to swing a fist at Tony.
Because of the immense pulling force, the Iron Monger's movement stalled for a fraction of a second, and that punch abruptly deviated from its original trajectory, smashing down an innocent brick wall nearby.
Seizing this opening, Tony quickly activated full-power reverse flight, putting a very dangerous distance between them.
He hovered in mid-air, looking along that Web-slingingwith some surprise.
Under the dim streetlights, a rather comical, thin figure was grasping the other end of the Web-slinging, swinging out from behind the billboard of the opposite building like a child on a swing.
This person was wearing a shoddy costume with heavy handmade traces that made it hard to look at.
A sleeveless red hoodie with no sense of fit whatsoever, layered over a pilling blue long-sleeve undershirt.
Wrapped around his head was an aesthetically devoid red cloth hood, and at the eye positions, two lenses that looked like ski goggles were perfunctorily sewn on.
It was none other than Peter Parker, who had only been on the job for a few days and was currently experiencing workplace bullying as a working stiff.
Although the clothes were shockingly ugly, Parker's movements possessed a lightness that defied the normal principles of human skeletal structure.
Following the taut Web-slinging, under the control of an extremely delicate force, his entire body was like a small red and blue cannonball, landing directly on the broad, flat metal shoulder of the Iron Monger.
"Hey, I say old buddy, can't you be a bit quieter when going out for a stroll late at night?"
As soon as Parker landed, the adsorption force under his feet allowed him to stick firmly to the smooth armor. His lips started flapping at high speed as if wound up with a spring.
"You really have a talent for breaking other people's things. Do you know how much insurance money those store owners will have to spend to repair that row of storefront windows? Can't you learn how to be a law-abiding, good citizen?"
Obadiah inside the Iron Monger was somewhat dazed by this sudden bug.
He shook his massive body, extending his other unglued mechanical hand, attempting to grab Parker on his shoulder.
That motion was like an ordinary person swatting a mosquito on their neck.
But this mosquito's speed was ridiculously fast.
Parker just gave a light leap, dodging the blow—which was enough to pat him into a meat patty—with an extremely exaggerated backflip. With a flick of his wrist in mid-air, another Web-slinging flew out, this time directly pasting onto the Iron Monger's facial monitor.
Following that, taking advantage of the downward momentum, the tips of his feet exerted a bit of force on the Iron Monger's back, and his entire body slid down the massive shell toward the legs like ice skating.
Along the way, the web-shooters on his wrists continuously emitted a "pfft pfft pfft" sound, and strong Web-slingings, one after another, began to tightly wrap around each movable joint of the Iron Monger like a messy ball of yarn.
Not only were his hands and feet not idle, but that mouth of his was spitting out words like a machine gun, and the topics jumped so fast that people simply couldn't catch the main points.
At first he was still talking about the Iron Mongerdestroying public property, but perhaps because he was called up for overtime in the middle of the night and had to travel in such severe weather, the grievance in the heart of this newly-adult high school student directly pierced through his celestial spirit.
While shuttling through the dangerous mechanical gaps, he began to vent this nameless fire onto a pink-and-white senior far away in Brooklyn who was busy dating.
"It's really enough. My physics homework from last night hasn't even been finished yet. As a result, that guy wearing a pink hood crawled in through my window, gave me a fierce warning, and then turned around and dumped all of New York's mess onto me."
Parker shot out another Web-slinging once more, forcibly tying the Iron Monger's two legs together.
"What is wrong with you adults, doesn't bullying minors require paying taxes? What do you mean she has to protect the person most important to her so she can't take risks? Isn't this purely prioritizing romance over friendship? Isn't this just a love-brained behavior with eyes blinded by hormones?"
Speaking up to this point, Parker seemed to have finally found an outlet for his emotions, and the more he spoke, the more energized he became:
"Just to live a plain and simple life with her boyfriend, she isn't even willing to work overtime. Terminal love-brain is beyond saving. When trouble arises, she only knows to push the newcomer junior to the front lines, and when that broken tracking link was sent over, there wasn't even a smiling emoji. I'm just a tragic brick, moved wherever there's a pothole..."
This continuous, flat yet extremely dense rambling, resembling chanting, echoed across the empty street.
On a fifth-floor rooftop about a hundred meters away in the distance, Arthur was originally lying on the edge, watching this grand drama with great interest, especially when seeing this crudely-designed little spider make a comical entrance, he was even ready to give this young superhero a passing grade in his heart.
As a result, when words like "pink hood", "love-brain", and "accompanying her boyfriend" popped out of Parker's mouth, the smile that had originally hung on Arthur's lips instantly froze.
The expression on his face became exceedingly colorful.
Good lad, in this Universe, the only one who would dare to openly and wildly roast Ghost Spider Gwen on the open street to her face like this for prioritizing romance over friendship as a love-brain is probably just this newborn calf that's not afraid of tigers—this little spider. This is truly stepping squarely on a landmine.
Arthur raised an eyebrow, and the quiet Monkey Talismanin his mind suddenly vibrated slightly. He touched his chin, his gaze turning somewhat intriguing.
This chattering little mouth was indeed a bit annoying; if in the subsequent battle, he were to slightly trip this kid up and make him take a big tumble, it could also be considered venting some pent-up anger for his girlfriend who was hiding at home feigning illness.
Meanwhile, in mid-air not far away, Tony Stark's situation wasn't too good either.
Although he had gotten rid of the danger of being beaten to death, that face under the mask was also a form of indescribable agony.
As a genius who was himself very chatterbox-like and always liked to sneer and mock others, he truly experienced the power of verbal bullying for the first time.
Where on earth did that guy dressed like a retarded clown pop out from? Why had no one ever reported to him that New York had such a pervert wearing a costume flying around everywhere and muttering incessantly?
Tony even felt that the nonsense he had heard in these few minutes was more than all the dry and boring shareholders' meetings he had attended in his entire life combined.
He felt as if his head had been stuffed with a hundred ducks having a party, buzzing loudly.
"Is this guy relying on sound to exhaust the opponent's stamina?" Tony couldn't help but complain to Dr. Yinsen in the communicator.
But the most painful one right now was definitely Obadiah, who was trapped inside the Iron Monger as the person involved and direct victim.
Having constantly failed to hit Tony had already caused a fire to pent up inside him.
Now a freak like a fly suddenly popped out, jumping around on his mecha, and the most disgusting thing was that this person's moves were slippery and elusive, so every time the Iron Monger's thick mechanical hand was about to grab him, he would nimbly dodge away.
Not only could he not be hit, but this guy was also outside constantly babbling nonsense about homework, love-brain, and the like against the mecha's shell, incidentally pasting all the vision and joints into a complete mess with white mucus of unknown material.
Obadiah was so angry that his eyes bloodshot, his chest heaved violently, and his breathing was as heavy as a broken bellows.
He fiercely pulled the control lever, and a Beast-like roar of complete exasperation came from his throat, passing through the heavy metal to the streets outside—this was the ultimate impotent rage.
Inside the Iron Monger's extremely heavy metal shell, Obadiah currently felt as if a nest of wasps had crawled into his head.
He originally thought that by putting on this giant mecha built secretly at a huge cost, he could easily crush Tony Stark like stepping to death a drowning dog.
As a result, a freak wearing red and blue tattered clothes ambushed halfway through.
This freak's body was as soft as boneless, continuously jumping around on the mecha, and the white Web-slingingwith extremely strong stickiness sprayed from his mouth had already glued several key drive shafts of the Iron Monger tightly shut.
But none of these were the most fatal part; the most fatal part was this kid's mouth.
From the moment he jumped up, that mouth never stopped, frantically broadcasting nutrient-less nonsense like a broken repeating machine, making the veins on Obadiah's forehead throb violently, and even his breathing became heavy.
"Now you have nothing to say, big iron can."
Parker was hanging upside down on the back of the Iron Monger, still feeling complacent about his frantic output.
Obadiah finally lost the last shred of his tolerance limit.
He roared, violently pulled the lever on the console, and smashed down hard on a red button.
With a loud bang.
The huge thruster ports at the soles of the Iron Mongerinstantly spewed out two thick, dazzling pillars of fire.
The powerful reaction force flipped over the gravel and scrapped cars on the surrounding road surface, and this massive and clumsy metal behemoth abruptly lifted off the ground, shooting straight into the night sky.
"Eh? Wait! What's going on!"
Peter Parker, hanging on the mecha, hadn't expected this turn of events at all. The intense weightlessness of instantly losing support under his feet directly panicked this high school student who had only been a superhero for a few days.
He instinctively gripped tightly onto the Web-slinging in his hand that was still connected to the Iron Monger's shoulder, his entire body like a red and blue tattered rag swaying in the wind, forcibly taken away from the ground, soaring all the way into the high altitude following that terrifying mecha.
The gale whipped across his unprotected cheeks like knives, blowing his crude red hood tightly against the bridge of his nose, almost making him unable to breathe.
Watching the cars far below getting smaller and smaller, turning to the size of matchboxes, Parker's heart almost jumped out of his throat.
"Nobody told me that being a superhero also comes with this kind of life-threatening spaceflight service."
Parker swung back and forth like a pendulum in mid-air, holding tightly onto the Web-slinging with both hands, and shouted at the top of his lungs:
A silver-and-red figure dragging a bright exhaust flame quickly cut through the night sky, flying straight up from the lower side.
It was Tony Stark, who had finally caught his breath.
Controlling his lightweight and flexible new armor, Tonyaccurately and flawlessly cut into the trajectory of Parker's fall and swing.
He raised his right arm horizontally, using the palm of the armor wrapped in metallic luster to precisely grab Parker's flailing arm.
"Hey, pajama boy." Tony's signature, slightly cynical voice came out through the armor's external speaker, sounding both punchable and reassuring:
"Playing high-altitude swings in the middle of the night is not a good idea, do you need a free ride down?"
Parker felt a steady and powerful support coming from his wrist, and he quickly took advantage of the momentum to let go of the Web-slinging in his hand, hanging disheveledly on Tony's armor arm, and was safely brought down by Tony onto the rooftop of a slightly shorter building nearby.
Chapter 23 Epilogue (Part 1)
As soon as his feet touched the solid concrete roof, PeterParker collapsed straight onto the ground, panting heavily.
He raised his head, looking through those comical ski goggles at the cool armor hovering in front of him, and sincerely exclaimed,
"Whew... Thank you so much, mister with the unknown name. Your rig looks absolutely awesome."
Tony originally wanted to strike a cool landing pose to accept the adoration of this fledgling kid, but the corners of his mouth, which were just about to lift, instantly twitched uncontrollably several times when he heard the word "mister".
He rolled his eyes heavily behind the mask, cursing inwardly:
Mister? I'm only in my thirties this year, right in the golden age of captivating thousands of young girls. This country bumpkin who crawled out of who knows what kind of Brooklyn garbage can actually calls me mister? If it weren't for the formidable enemy at hand, he would definitely give this kid's butt a blast with his repulsors.
At the edge of another building dozens of meters away,
Arthur had more than half of his body leaning out past the low wall of the roof, taking in everything that had just happened.
He had been in a ready-to-go state, constantly prepared to use the magic of the talismans.
In fact, just when that little spider was being taken up into the sky, he was already prepared to mobilize the Rooster and Rabbit to save people, but Tony took a step ahead; however, this also made him breathe a sigh of relief.
Looking at Tony's deflated expression right now, Arthuralmost couldn't help laughing out loud.
While rubbing his somewhat sore neck with his hand, he muttered inwardly: "Gwen really should come and see this guy's current pathetic state."
That silly girl is single-mindedly convinced that as Spider-Woman she has to shoulder the entire World, yet the pinch-hitting junior she casually picked up is not only a chatterbox, but also comes with a passive aura that irritates everyone.
The workplace of superheroes really is deep enough.
Thinking of Gwen, Arthur's gaze softened slightly. He could now roughly guess what kind of tumultuous inner monologue that tsundere pink-hooded girl was experiencing while hiding in the apartment.
And the facts were just as he expected.
In Brooklyn, inside Arthur's cozy little apartment.
The unlit bedroom was dim and dark. Ghost Spider, who usually shuttled freely through the night, was currently shrinking pathetically under the covers.
Gwen rolled up the hem of that oversized white boyfriend T-shirt and gripped it in her hands, her two feet in white socks rubbing restlessly back and forth against each other at the end of the bed.
Her bright blue eyes stared fixedly at the phone placed beside the pillow. No messages popped up on the phone screen.
"Did Arthur really go buy those messy medicines?"
Gwen muttered irritably in her heart. She originally thought that faking illness using a sanitary pad as an excuse would allow her to walk openly out the door to take a look at the crime scene.
But Arthur's careful instructions before going out and that untimely gentleness held her firmly pressed onto the bed like invisible soft ropes.
If she sneaked out through the window now, what if Arthurcame back in ten minutes?
What if he brought hot soup and a medicine box, pushed open the door and found no one on the bed, wouldn't her fragile ordinary girl persona that she had worked so hard to maintain for the past few months instantly collapse without a trace?
"Ahhh, so annoying."
Gwen grabbed the spare small pillow next to her and pressed it fiercely against her face:
"Is that full-of-bullshit novice even capable or not? Hopefully he won't be smashed into a meat patty by those iron lumps of Stark Industries. But if Peter Parker can't handle it, what will happen if something happens to Tony..."
Right now, she was simply a scapegoat trying to balance water on both ends. On one side was her extreme reliance on Arthur, not wanting any cracks of exposed lies to appear between them.
On the other side was an unshakable responsibility toward this city and the innocent people. These two forces were fighting in her brain.
And on the battlefield on the other side, the situation didn't leave anyone any free time to think.
Iron Monger hovered mid-air, its thick mechanical arms frantically scratching at its chest and legs. Accompanied by a teeth-aching sizzling sound, those troublesome white webs were forcibly snapped by its brute hydraulic power.
Obadiah, through the crimson armor's monitor, looked down at Tony and the still-gasping Peter Parker on the rooftop below.
That condescending posture was as if he were looking at two annoying ants.
"No matter what unknown bug you are that crawled out of which sewer..."
Obadiah's coldly synthesized and amplified voice echoed in the night sky, carrying bone-chilling killing intent:
"Congratulations, you've successfully pissed me off now!"
As soon as his voice fell, the huge machine gun assembly on Iron Monger's right arm began to rotate.
The heavy metal components emitted a heart-palpitating friction sound, and immediately after, the barrels of that Gatling gun began to accelerate in rotation, grinding out a circle of red afterimages in the dark.
"Oh damn. Looking at this really hurts all over."
Peter Parker, who had just caught his breath twice, was so scared by this array that he bounced straight up from the ground.
While rapidly muttering in his mouth, he exerted force in both legs and started jumping around like a frightened monkey in the wide space of the rooftop.
"If I get hit by that thing, it definitely won't be as simple as black and blue; I'm afraid even a puzzle wouldn't be able to piece me back together!"
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—
The Gatling gun roared, spitting out long tongues of fire.
Dense armor-piercing bullets were like a Death rain woven from firelight, ruthlessly pouring down onto the rooftop.
Every bullet hitting the concrete kicked up half-a-person-high gravel and smoke, and the floor tiles on the ground instantly shattered into pieces like plowed farmland.
Tony immediately activated the thrusters at the soles of his feet, starting a thrilling evasive flight hugging low altitude.
The machine gun bullets chased closely after the heels of his silver-red armor, leaving a long trail of shattered craters on the ground behind him.
"Mister. Can you fly a little further away, and stop drawing all the aggro over to my side!"
Peter Parker rolled back and forth in a hail of bullets, casually shooting a web to stick to the iron railing at the edge of the rooftop, and swung himself hard into a relatively safe dead corner to hide.
Tony had no time to deal with this loose-lipped spider.
During the past few close-range skirmishes and evasive maneuvers with Iron Monger, his sharp eyes, through the scanning data on the mask display, finally saw some of the core design details of this big guy.
That extremely primitive and crude outer armor splicing method, those exposed drive shafts, and that bulky torso with zero aerodynamics, designed purely to pile up firepower and defense.
All of this was proving an unbelievable fact to him.
He immediately activated the private communication channel with Dr. Yinsen inside his helmet.
"Hey, Dr. Yinsen. Can you still receive the footage on your end?"
Tony shouted urgently while sharply leaning to the left to dodge a row of bullets sweeping toward his head.
Dr. Yinsen, far away in the covert laboratory of Stark Tower, was staring fixedly at the data boxes flashing full-screen alarms, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard.
Hearing Tony's voice, he quickly leaned close to the microphone: "I am watching you very clearly being used as a live target, Mr. Stark. Any new discoveries?"
"Look at that crazy big guy in the sky, take a close look at the hydraulic line routing on its legs, and the outline of its shoulders."
Tony's voice carried a hint of a sneer:
"Don't you think it looks extremely familiar? It's just like that large piece of tin garbage I casually threw away right after returning to China in that broken cave?"
Reminded by Tony, Dr. Yinsen's mind, endowed with exceptionally high physics literacy, turned the corner in an instant.
He recalled that ugly and bulky Mark prototype armor that the two of them hammered out in the cave at the desert Base of the Ten Rings Gang back then.
"My god... I was wondering why the Military couldn't find even a single piece of useful sheet metal when they prepared to go to the site to recover the wreckage afterwards; it turns out they were all moved back home by someone!"
Dr. Yinsen's voice was filled with sudden realization and surprise, but immediately afterwards he calmed down:
"So what? This new armor of yours doesn't even have heavy weapons installed. Do you intend to use that glib mouth of yours to curse through its thick iron shell?"
"Therefore, this is called prescribing the right medicine for the illness." The corners of Tony's mouth curved up under his mask into an extremely confident, even somewhat arrogant arc.
He knew all too well what fatal flaws the things he designed with his own hands had.
That prototype was merely temporarily put together for escaping in the desert's high-temperature and low-altitude environment; it hadn't undergone various tests for high-intensity and high-altitude extreme environments at all.
Obadiah no matter how capable he was, it was impossible for him to solve the engineering problem he had just conquered last night on this rushed replica.
"The old guy has too much fire in him. When encountering someone with too much fire, you should let him go up and cool down properly."
Finished speaking, Tony abruptly leveled his flight posture, with the thrusters at his feet outputting at full throttle.
He no longer chose to flee pathetically hugging the ground like before, but instead directly traced a dazzling arc in mid-air, charging straight toward the front of the frantically firing Iron Monger.
"Hey. Big guy. Look over here, I'm right here."
Tony opened the all-channel amplification while swaying left and right within an extremely dangerous distance to dodge bullets.
That cynical taunting voice instantly overpowered the roar of the machine gun.
"Can't you even hit me at such a close distance? Is your presbyopia acting up again, or has your brain been glued up by that pajama boy's white glue? Take a word of advice from me, hurry up and gouge out that pair of useless mechanical eyes on your mecha and donate them."
Before Obadiah could reply, Tony added another sentence, the viciousness in his tone practically able to anger someone into a heart attack.
"No, come to think of it, regular hospitals probably wouldn't even be willing to take ugly eyes that grew crooked like yours. It's more appropriate to take them to the street corner to feed stray dogs."
This extremely precise and vicious taunt was like a sharp knife stabbing straight into Obadiah's heart.
An angry roar came from inside Iron Monger.
The Gatling gun that had still been searching for PeterParker's tracks on the rooftop lifted instantly. Accompanied by a row of miniature grenade launchers popping up from the mecha's left arm, all the heavy firepower locked firmly onto Tony Stark alone in mid-air in this instant.
Artillery and bullets intertwined into an airtight fire network, pouring frantically toward him.
Chapter 24 Epilogue (Part 2)
Two blinding blue exhaust flames burst from the soles of the silver-and-red Mark armor.
Tony did not choose to fly horizontally to create distance; instead, he adopted an extremely risky tactic, shooting straight up into the pitch-black night sky at a nearly vertical angle.
The dense barrage spat out by the Gatling gun was like a whip of fire biting onto him relentlessly.
Tony stared at the constantly flashing ballistic trajectory predictions on his mask's display, occasionally adjusting the output power of his palm repulsors.
The armor performed a few slightly thrilling, minor lateral moves in mid-air, and those finger-thick armor-piercing bullets grazed right past the edges of his metal greaves, even scraping a trail of blinding sparks across the smooth surface.
"Fortunately, that old fogey Obadiah doesn't work with a very good brain; it seems all those convoluted twists and turns at the board meetings usually have squeezed his brain cells dry."
While weaving through the hail of bullets in a mocking posture, Tony still had the leisure to chatter away with Dr. Yinsen in the helmet's private channel.
The wind pressure in mid-air was growing heavier and heavier, and the howling outside the mask was about to drown out the roar of the thrusters.
"If he could use his brain just a little bit to add a few layers of decent anti-freeze coating to this bulky piece of scrap iron, or install even the cheapest temperature-controlled circulation system...
Then today we would probably really take a big tumble in this cold wind spot."
Watching the steadily climbing altitude on the monitor, the mocking smile at the corners of Tony's mouth grew even more pronounced.
"However, having said that, if he could really consider that many details, then he wouldn't be Obadiah, who only climbed up by stealing leftovers from my dad."
In the mere dozen seconds while Tony was speaking, the two mechs, one after another, had soared to a height unimaginable to ordinary people.
The air here was frighteningly thin, and the temperature plummeted in a straight line like a cliff drop.
Iron Monger's massive and rough metal body quickly made the most direct reaction to this extreme environment.
At first, it was just a thin layer of moisture condensing on the outer walls of those unprotected hydraulic pipes.
Following closely, this layer of moisture transformed into a layer of off-white frost at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Starting from Iron Monger's shoulder joints, those ice shards rapidly spread along the texture of the metal.
In less than five seconds, the surface of this war behemoth, which had just been clamoring to tear everything to shreds, was wrapped in a thick, ghastly white shell of ice.
Obadiah's angry roar abruptly stopped in the speaker, replaced by a teeth-setting sound of metal jamming.
Because the pipelines were frozen, the huge main thruster nozzle on Iron Monger's back flickered its firelight twice and then went dead straight away.
The massive steel body lost its upward thrust, acting like a genuine piece of scrap iron. It paused rigidly in mid-air for half a second, and then began free-falling under the pull of gravity.
The camera pans back to the rooftop below.
Peter Parker was squatting behind a ventilation duct, supporting his knees with both hands and panting heavily.
He had just dodged a round of stray bullets relying on spider-like inhuman agility, and his red-and-blue mask was covered in dust.
"I can finally have a moment of peace. That bearded old man's firepower is simply that of a madman."
Muttering softly to himself, Parker sat cross-legged on the rubble-filled floor.
The exact moment his butt hit the ground, the Spider-Sense in his mind specifically warning of danger suddenly began to pulse wildly like pinpricks.
This feeling was ten times stronger than when the machine gun was strafing just now.
Parker abruptly raised his head.
Deep in the night sky, a massive humanoid shadow carrying a shrill wind was crashing straight down toward the top of his head like an out-of-control meteorite.
That shadow rapidly magnified in his field of vision, carrying a despair-inducing sense of oppression.
"Holy crap, how is this old fogey still falling from the sky?"
A curse suppressed in his throat slipped out involuntarily. Using hands and feet simultaneously in a clumsy scramble, Parker dashed toward the edge of the rooftop, rolling and tumbling like a ground-hugging rhesus monkey.
The moment his front foot left that position, Iron Monger's massive body slammed heavily onto it with his back foot.
With a muffled boom.
The entire rooftop seemed to experience a mini-earthquake; the hard concrete roof was smashed into a half-meter-deep depression, and giant cracks spread in all directions like a spiderweb.
The stirred-up thick dust and rubble splashed everywhere like fragment grenades, pattering loudly against the surrounding broken walls.
Before the dust had completely dispersed, Tonymanipulated his armor to land steadily on the edge of the large pit. That silver-and-red paint job looked particularly striking amidst the smoke and fire.
He looked at the Iron Monger at the bottom of the pit, which was completely paralyzed due to icing and violent impact, and then turned his head to look at Parker brushing off dust on the side, his tone carrying an undisguised commanding intent.
"Hey, pajama kid, next up is your solo show."
Tony extended a metal finger to point at the large pit.
"Hurry up and use those unknown white objects sprayed from your wrists to stick this big guy tightly. I don't want him rising from the dead again to punch me in a moment; completely restrict his actions."
"Sir, allow me to correct your phrasing. What I have here is professional polymer chemical Web-slinging, not just some random unknown white object."
Parker unhappily tugged at his mask, correcting Tony's rather terrible description.
Although he was complaining verbally, Parker's actions with his hands were not vague at all. He walked quickly to the edge of the pit.
He flipped both wrists simultaneously with palms facing up. His middle and ring fingers quickly pressed together, successively pressing the mechanical launch switches at the base of his palms.
The hiss-hiss-hiss sounds rang out continuously in the night wind.
Clusters of dense white Web-slinging with extremely high stickiness and toughness were shot out from his wrists, precisely covering Iron Monger's massive body.
Parker clearly had enough of tonight's tossing and turning; he didn't dare to be the slightest bit careless, increasing the frequency of firing his Web-slinging faster and faster.
Especially targeting Iron Monger's knee joints, elbow hydraulic rods, and that extinguished thruster port on the back.
He fired back and forth a dozen rounds on these main articulation points, not stopping even when his fingers ached slightly.
The only thought in his mind was that even if the person inside woke up with the strength of nine bulls and two tigers, he must absolutely not be able to move a single finger.
Soon, the metal behemoth that had just been majestic turned completely into an oversized cocoon wrapped in thick white gelatinous material. Except for the head position which was left with a gap because Tony waved beforehand, everywhere else was tightly fixed to the floor.
Seeing this situation, Tony walked forward with satisfaction.
He came to Iron Monger's huge metal helmet, bent over, and gestured for a long time amidst that messy pile of pipelines and engaging gaps.
As the hydraulic power was completely cut off, many armors that usually engaged tightly were now loose.
Tony found a connecting bolt deformed by the drop within the armor seam, and his mechanical fingers jammed directly into it.
He snorted coldly, controlled the servo motor of the armor's arm to exert force, and yanked upwards hard.
Amidst the harsh sound of metal breaking, Iron Monger's heavy skull, along with a row of complex wires, was forcefully ripped off by Tony and thrown directly into the nearby ruins.
Beneath the helmet, Obadiah's pale and distorted old face was revealed.
This old man obviously had never experienced the thrill of such high-altitude free-falling; the severe concussion caused by smashing headfirst left his entire person in a state of deep bewilderment.
His eyes were half-open and half-closed, his pupils completely out of focus, and he was spitting out white foam mixed with bloody froth from his mouth, unable to even say a complete sentence.
Parker didn't know when he had crept over again. He eyed the old man in the pit through his red ski goggles, unable to help sighing, his tone filled with helpless complaints after being squeezed by unscrupulous capitalists.
"So it turns out you are this guy with one foot in the grave who doesn't sleep in the middle of the night and comes out to cause trouble, making me get forcibly dispatched by that quirky-tempered woman to work overtime, huh?"
Parker shook his sore wrists and turned his head to look at Iron Man standing on the side.
"I say mister, how should this guy be handled now? Throwing him straight down from the building probably doesn't quite fit the behavioral norms of superheroes."
Tony stood at the edge of the pit in silence for about three seconds, seeming to weigh whether giving this old fogey a palm repulser blast directly or going through regular channels would be more satisfying.
"Jarvis."
In the end, Tony did not choose lynching; he awakened the artificial intelligence inside his helmet.
"Begin the highest-level legal procedures. File a report directly with the relevant departments, stating that Obadiah Stane is suspected of colluding with Middle EastTerrorists, planning and executing the kidnapping of Tony Stark. After returning, he committed armed robbery, stealing the core secret files of armor manufacturing from Stark Industries. In the end, not only was he unrepentant, but he also manufactured weapons of mass destruction attempting to murder me."
The faster Tony spoke, the chillier his tone became, making one shudder.
"Organize these charges, package them up, and submit them. Combine multiple punishments; I will hire the best legal team. Adding these items together is enough for him to sit through the bottom of that prison. Next life, let him study his shoddy imitations inside iron bars."
Having finished these words, Tony turned around. Accompanied by the slight hum of the armor's joints turning, he had his back to Parker, who was still dazed, and the thrusters on the soles of his feet began to preheat again.
"Hey, that kid in the red-and-blue pajamas."
Tony's voice paused for a moment; the arrogance emanating from his bones made him unused to thanking others.
"Although I really don't want to admit that you played a bit of a role just now. But tonight... I still have to reluctantly thank you for your blind meddling. I want to make one statement: even without you spraying glue wildly over there, I could handle this piece of scrap iron myself, it might just have taken a few more minutes of trouble."
Before Parker could retort, Tony added another sentence.
"Things are over, now hurry up and pack away those acrobatic moves of yours, and go back to your bed in Brooklyn to sleep early. The World of My Lord outside is too early for you."
Having finished this arrogant closing remark, without even glancing at Parker, Tony spurted fire from his feet and shot straight up into the sky.
His mind right now was entirely filled with Pepper, that woman who didn't know whether she was injured when he was being chased by the big iron block. He had to find her as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, on a high point not far from this building.
Arthur, who had been silently standing in the shadows eating melon, saw Tony's departing figure; it was also time to end this secretive observation.
If it dragged on any longer, the pink-haired Spider-Womanlying on the bed at home "weak and powerless" would probably start letting her imagination run wild due to his prolonged absence.
With his hands tucked into the pockets of his casual clothes, he activated the Rabbit Talisman, preparing to return to that warm little apartment undetected and at the fastest speed.
Chapter 25: An Egghead Appears Right in Front of Him!
Arthur was carrying an opaque convenience store plastic bag containing freshly bought painkillers, two packs of sanitary napkins, and a few boxes of strawberry-flavored donuts and potato chips that Gwen loved to eat.
After experiencing the thrilling scene of secretly watching the drama unfold on the rooftop not long ago, he had completely gathered his emotions by now, switching back to that considerate and steady boyfriend mode.
Standing in front of Gwen's somewhat old apartment door, Arthur freed one hand and knocked gently on the wooden door three times with his bent knuckles.
"Hey, is anyone in the room?"
Arthur raised his voice slightly through the door panel, his tone carrying undisguised teasing.
"If no one opens the door, I can only sneak off to the corner of the street and eat all the strawberry donuts and the snacks I specifically picked out in this bag by myself~"
It was very quiet inside the door originally, but just a few seconds after his words fell, a somewhat hurried series of footsteps sounded behind the door panel.
The "tap tap" sound of slippers brushing against the floor made it clear just how flustered the owner had been moments ago.
With a "click", the door lock was turned open.
As soon as the door crack was pulled open a bit, Gwen's cute little face poked out.
She was currently wearing a baggy white boyfriend-style T-shirt, the hem covering the base of her thighs, and her hair was a bit disheveled, obviously caused by tossing, turning, and being anxious on the bed just now.
But the moment she saw Arthur, her azure blue eyes immediately burst with uncontainable surprise and reliance, and the worry hidden deep in her heart about Arthur not coming back for so long was also swept away.
"Yu, you are finally back."
Gwen pulled the door open a bit wider, grabbed Arthur's sleeve, and pulled him into the room, her voice carrying an unconscious coquettish tone.
"I was just thinking wildly just now, thinking you ran into punks on the way buying something, or got into some trouble."
"Dealing with a few hooligans is still more than enough for me."
Arthur took the opportunity to walk into the room, changing into slippers while placing the bulging shopping bag in his hand on the low cabinet nearby.
He turned his head back, looking at Gwen's thin shoulders rising and falling slightly from excessive tension, and the mischievous thoughts in his mind popped up again.
He leaned forward by half a step, a bad smile hooking the corners of his mouth, and lowered his voice to tease her on purpose.
"However, compared to punks, I care more about the situation at home."
Arthur pointed at the bag.
"Both the medicine and sanitary napkins were bought, do I need to do it myself and help my poor, inconveniently mobile girlfriend change that?"
This sentence was like dropping a dynamite pack on Mars.
Gwen's originally fair cheeks instantly dyed a layer of scorching crimson from the root of her neck to the tips of her ears, just like a ripe red apple.
Her ruthless Spider-Woman aura in front of bad guys vanished completely at this moment, living up to being a cat whose tail was stepped on.
"No no no no no no need!"
Gwen was so scared that she immediately took a small step back, her hands swinging desperately in front of her, incoherently denying it.
"I... I can handle it myself, and I've already finished changing."
After explaining, she realized something was not quite right. Looking up, she met Arthur's face holding back a smile, that playful bad smile clearly meant to watch her joke on purpose.
That haughty little temper immediately flared up.
Gwen's eyes, which had widened due to panic, squinted slightly, and her cheeks instantly puffed up angrily.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, turned her head away, and deliberately refused to stare at that face that made people both love and hate.
"Bad guy, always teasing me."
Gwen let out a dissatisfied soft hum from her nasal cavity.
"I'm ignoring you, I'm going to eat the donuts you bought and eat your share too."
Looking at this furry little pink spider, Arthur knew the timing was about right; if he kept teasing her, she would probably give him a hard time tonight.
He smiled gently, raised his hand, and skillfully and naturally landed it on Gwen's light-golden-pink gradient short hair, his palm gently rubbing her head with a comforting temperature.
"Alright alright, I won't tease you anymore." Arthur's tone became extremely soft, just like coaxing a wronged child.
Feeling the broad and warm touch on top of her head, Gwen's defense that had just been erected softened instantly.
She closed her eyes and enjoyed that caress belonging to Arthur for two seconds, and her tense body relaxed accordingly.
In this narrow space with only the two of them, she could finally rely on him unbridled again.
Just as the atmosphere became sticky again, Arthur looked at the wall clock and spoke to break this momentary peace.
"It's getting late, and you're still in pain, get some rest early. I'll head back to my own room first."
Arthur withdrew his hand from her head and half-jokingly added a reason.
"Lest your dad suddenly gets off work and comes back to check up later, catching me in his precious daughter's room at this hour, wouldn't my old father-in-law, who is the Police Director, break one of my legs on the spot."
This sentence was originally a casual banter, but it was like an invisible fine needle suddenly piercing into Gwen's heart.
Gwen's sentence "Don't go, stay and keep me company" which was originally ready to blurt out was abruptly stuck in her throat.
Her lips were half-open, trying to find a suitable excuse to make him stay, but her brain at this moment was like a stuck gear, unable to spin out a reasonable rhetoric no matter how it turned.
Tell him that there is actually no need to be afraid of the Police Director? How should she open her mouth?
Tell him that in this unfamiliar Universe, she doesn't have any so-called family members at all.
Tell him that actually the only person who can wait for her when she goes home every night is him.
Tell him that the excuse she made back then to cover up her meddling and not being home late at night, saying that there was a strict dad managing her who would check rooms at any time, were all lies told to maintain the persona of a "normal high school girl".
If this lie is uncovered, Spider-Woman's identity, the past crossing the Universe, and the heavy trauma she carried on her body stained with another Peter's blood might all be exposed without a trace like a sweater with its yarn pulled open.
And all of this might tear her only little bit of ordinary peaceful life that she was desperately trying to protect into pieces.
In that short pause of less than a second, a flash of extremely hard-to-hide dimness crossed Gwen's usually bright and firm eyes.
That was the loneliness of countless secrets pressing on her heart, and the deep sense of guilt generated when lying to the person in front of her.
But she quickly swallowed this vulnerability into her stomach, and years of hiding experience made her instinctively trigger her defense mechanism.
Gwen refilled her eyes with that slightly haughty smile, the corners of her mouth curving upward into an obedient arc.
"Okay then."
Gwen nodded, her voice carrying a bit of deliberately breezy sweetness.
"Then I'll honestly rest later, and when the cramps in my stomach get better, I'll go over to your place to keep you company, it's just a short walk anyway. You go back first and warm up the bed for me."
Seeing her agree, Arthur didn't suspect much, and after exhorting a few unoriginal but truly useful words like remembering to drink hot water, he pushed open the door and walked into the somewhat chilly corridor, walking towards his own residence not far away along the stairs.
The cold wind of New York's night blew away some of the warmth on Arthur's body.
Walking through a few dim blocks, Arthur returned to his apartment door. He took out the key from his pocket, inserted it into the keyhole with the weak street light, and turned it with a "click".
The moment he pushed the door open, an unfamiliar breath that did not belong to his room rushed straight at him.
The room was pitch black, and the lights weren't turned on. But with the light penetrating from the corridor, Arthurinstantly noticed something was wrong.
In the center of the living room, with his back to a few wisps of city neon outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, stood a tall Egghead, bah, man wearing a black long trench coat quietly.
His hands were behind his back in an extremely confident and all-controlling posture, standing against the light, and that greasy, gleaming black bald head still looked very eye-catching in the night.
More recognizable was that he wore a black eyepatch over his left eye.
If anyone else came home in the middle of the night and saw such a person, the first reaction would definitely be to scream and then call the Police.
But Arthur was only slightly stunned for the first second of pushing the door open and seeing the figure, and then he recovered his calmness.
He knew too well who this man looking like an Egghead in front of him was.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Director, Nick Fury.
That Agent who always hid in the dark, liked to uninvitedly arrive, and had been rummaging around the Worldrecently to pull superpowered individuals together to form the Avengers.
Hearing the movement of the door opening, Fury turned around, surveying Arthur standing at the doorway with his remaining eye, a smile unique to those who had been in high positions for a long time, seemingly polite yet full of oppressive force, on his face.
"Good evening, Mr. Arthur."
Fury's deep and husky voice rang out in the quiet living room, his tone sounding like reading a boring report.
"Sorry to disturb so late. But the situation is special, we found something unusual in the recent monitoring data. Just a few days ago, in a certain war-torn desert area, an 'unknown superspeed creature' that could not be captured by conventional optical instruments suddenly appeared."
As Fury spoke, he slowly took two steps forward, his footsteps so light they were almost inaudible.
"That creature's speed is absurdly fast, it has appeared in our military advanced satellite monitoring screens several times. The most interesting thing is, after our intelligence department's peeling-cocoon investigation and trajectory backtracking, the geographical coordinates where that unknown creature stayed the longest and finally disappeared."
Fury's single eye stared fixedly at Arthur's face, trying to capture the slightest bit of a guilty conscience or surprise.
"Just happens to be inside this apartment of yours right now. I don't know, regarding this matter, do you have any opinions you'd like to share, Mr. Arthur?"
Fury originally thought that throwing out this rhetoric of beating the grass to startle the snake would somehow make this seemingly ordinary college student reveal some flustered flaws, either desperately finding excuses to deny it, or nervously asking what S.H.I.E.L.D. found out.
However, Arthur just put his hands in his pockets like that, standing expressionless at the doorway porch.
He was not in a hurry to enter the room and turn on the lights, nor did he go to close the door behind him, just quietly watching Fury perform, without even messing up the rhythm of his breathing by half a beat.
That indifferent posture of it being none of his business was as if he were watching a salesperson who had walked onto the wrong set.
The air in the living room solidified for a full ten seconds, and the scene was somewhat awkward for a moment.
In the end, the shrewd Agent couldn't hold it together anymore either.
Fury sighed helplessly, lowered his two hands that were originally behind his back, and spread his palms.
"Sir, your reaction makes me very awkward."
On Fury's already serious face, a rare trace of a deflated expression appeared.
"I originally thought I could at least get some defense or surprise, everyone is a smart person, at least you can give a step down slightly, can you not make the atmosphere so rigid."
Seeing that Arthur was still as unresponsive as a stone, Fury knew that beating around the bush with such a steady and highly vigilant person was a complete waste of time.
He put away those clichés used for probing, his expression became exceptionally serious, and his tone also carried an unquestionable solemnity.
"Since nobody likes beating around the bush, I'll say it directly."
Fury's sharp single eye stared fixedly into Arthur's eyes.
"Mr. Arthur, on behalf of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, I formally invite you to join our S.H.I.E.L.D.. I don't know, regarding this proposal, what is your opinion?"