The itinerary was brutal. The Midtown High students were scheduled for a frantic morning of sightseeing in Lisbon, followed immediately by an afternoon bus ride across the border into Madrid, Spain. Thanks to the massive Spanish highway network, they were set to arrive at their new hotel by nightfall.
Peter Parker sat by the window, staring out at the rolling European countryside. He hadn't had a single second to process his photos.
"So, we definitely have to develop these in Madrid, right?"
Peter turned. Eugene "Flash" Thompson leaned over the seat back. The brash freshman, whose outward bravado barely masked a massive Spider-Man obsession, pointed at Peter's camera. "Because I'm telling you, Parker, Spider-Man is in Europe! I swear I saw him yesterday!"
Peter forced a polite nod. He finally understood the logic behind the stealth suit Nick Fury had tried to push on him. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't care about fooling Hydra. The real objective was fooling Peter's classmates. He had to convince Midtown High that Peter Parker and Spider-Man were two entirely different people.
Fortunately, the massive sandstorm had completely obscured his web-slinging during yesterday's ambush. He still had a chance to fix this.
[What's the play?] Venom hissed in his mind. [You got some kind of genius strategy?]
Better than genius, Peter thought back. It's simple.
Harry, who sat next to Peter, pulled out his phone. "Hate to break it to you, Thompson," Harry said, pulling up a social media feed. "Spider-Man is strictly stateside. Look."
The video showed Spider-Man swinging past the Empire State Building. Peter internally thanked the Life Model Decoy currently running his New York patrol route.
Flash's shoulders slumped. He looked genuinely crushed. "Man. Okay. But then who saved us yesterday? I saw those armored soldiers drop from the sky, but there was another guy. He moved just like Spidey."
Before Peter could answer, the bus tires locked up.
Rubber shrieked against asphalt. The students jolted forward, slamming into the seats ahead of them. Out the windshield, the highway vanished. Swirling, abrasive brown dust swallowed the convoy.
"Another sandstorm?" Harry yelled over the grinding wind.
The dust coalesced, building upward until a colossal, humanoid torso blocked the sun. Flint Marko had returned.
Suddenly, a heavy thud rattled the roof of the bus.
Flash pressed his face against the window, looking up. "Is that... Spider-Man?!"
A masked figure vaulted off the roof and landed on the hood of the bus. It was a Spider-variant. The top half featured classic red fabric with raised black webbing. But from the waist down, the suit was navy blue, dominated by a massive, stark-white-and-red Union Jack stretching across the torso.
"Sandman!" the figure bellowed, layering on a terrible, exaggerated Cockney accent. "I 'ave pursued you 'cross the Channel! Prepare for judgment from... Spider-UK!"
Flash blinked, his brain momentarily short-circuiting. "Spider-UK?"
Amadeus Cho pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. The Korean-American freshman possessed a genius-level encyclopedic memory. "It makes sense, actually," Amadeus deadpanned. "Russia has the Red Guardian and the Crimson Dynamo as Captain American and Iron Man knockoffs. Britain has Captain Britain. It's logical they'd have a localized, bootleg version of Spider-Man."
Flash nodded slowly. "Yeah. Okay. Bootleg Spidey. I buy it."
Outside, Sandman didn't care about copyright infringement. The mercenary just wanted the American spider dead. He shifted his massive bulk, raising a fist the size of a minivan.
"I've got a bus full of hostages here, bug," Marko rumbled, his voice like grinding stones. "Make a rash move, and I crush them."
Spider-UK stood up straight. "Right, yeah. Massive sand-bloke. Punching you seems a bit daft, innit?"
The Sandman sneered.
"Good thing I didn't come empty-handed!"
Peter reached behind his back. He unslung a heavy, modified PP-19 Bizon submachine gun—a parting gift from the Wild Pack. He leveled the barrel at Marko's chest.
"Times have changed, my lord!" Peter yelled, dropping the accent completely.
He squeezed the trigger. The SMG chattered, unleashing a high-pressure volley of specialized chemical desiccant rounds. The capsules shattered against Sandman's torso. The chemicals reacted instantly, violently binding the silica. Marko let out a mournful, grinding shriek. His colossal form destabilized, crumbling into a massive, inert pile of hardened mud.
Peter dropped upside down over the windshield, his lenses widening as he rapped his knuckles against the glass. "Floor it, mate! Get us out of here!"
The stunned bus driver snapped out of his trance and slammed his foot on the gas. The bus tore down the highway, swerving around the mud pile.
Peter pulled the pins on two Wild Pack fragmentation grenades. He chucked them backward into the hardened sand to ensure Marko stayed down. Explosions rattled the asphalt in their wake.
Peter crouched on the roof, the wind whipping past him. The specialized gear worked, but it was just a stall tactic. The Elementals couldn't be permanently killed. Fighting four of them was going to be an absolute nightmare.
In the very back row of the fleeing bus, Jessica Drew sat in total silence. The methodical senior running the Detective Agency stared out the rear window at the receding smoke. Her brow furrowed, her eyes narrowing in deep, analytical suspicion.