"I've got a question," Peter said. "How long have the Wild Pack and the Elementals been going at it?"
Peter pulled a stark white lab coat over his red-and-blue mesh. He leaned over the stainless-steel workbench, peering into the eyepiece of an electron microscope. Silvija Sablinova stood nearby, her arms crossed over her tactical vest, watching him slide a silica sample onto the glass stage.
"Almost five months," Silvija said, her voice clipped.
Peter did the mental math. Five months ago was September. What was he doing in September? Getting thrown through walls by Mysterio, the Scorpion, and the Rhino. It felt like yesterday.
"So, you've been fighting them for half a year, and you finally found a countermeasure, right?"
Peter squinted into the microscope. The sand from Flint Marko was just... sand. He detected no unusual chemical binding and no physical anomalies linking the grains. He pulled away from the lens and picked up one of the Wild Pack's specialized shell casings from the table. He turned the brass cylinder in his fingers, his eyes narrowing.
"High-frequency vibration?" Peter asked, tossing the bullet.
Silvija's silver eyes widened slightly, a flicker of genuine surprise breaking her icy facade. She caught the bullet out of the air. "Correct. It's the only effective counter we've developed against Sandman and Hydro-Man. Sustained, high-frequency kinetic impact actively disrupts their molecular control over the ambient elements."
"So, hypothetically," Peter said, leaning back, "if we hook up a massive vibratory field generator, we could just shake them until they dissolve. Haven't you tried that?"
"We did," Silvija said, her jaw tightening. "We cornered the water elemental. We locked him in a closed reservoir and bombarded him with a sonic-vibration array for an entire hour. We thought we had eradicated him." She let out a sharp, frustrated breath. "We were wrong. The absolute millisecond our generators powered down, he reconstituted, summoned a massive tidal surge, and vanished."
The Wild Pack was fighting a blind war of attrition. They didn't know the Elementals' biological limits. Could Hydro-Man regenerate from a single drop of condensation? Could Sandman rebuild himself from a speck of dust in the wind?
Peter looked back at the terminal monitor. The biometric data for Sandman, Hydro-Man, and Molten Man all read completely normal. Too normal.
"Hey, Silvija," Peter said, his voice dropping an octave. "If the Elementals always know exactly which labs to hit, what materials are inside, and the entire security layout..." He turned to face her. "Doesn't that mean they know I'm standing in this building right now?"
Silvija froze. Her posture went rigid. "You lured them here."
"They've already ambushed me twice on the road," Peter said, ticking it off on his fingers. "They're gonna try for a third. They don't just know your operational playbook, they know mine. If they see an opening to take me off the board, they'll take it."
Silvija's hands balled into fists. "You should have disclosed this immediately! I needed time to fortify the perimeter!"
"If you fortified the perimeter, they would have noticed," Peter fired back. "They clearly have an intelligence pipeline. The absolute best defense was keeping them completely in the dark. No advanced warning. No prep."
Silvija glared at him, her teeth grinding together. This kid is a carbon copy of Nick Fury, she thought. Are all Americans this insufferable?
She spun on her heel and stormed out of the lab.
Peter sighed. He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened a secure messaging app. He typed a quick, pre-arranged code word to Cindy and Felicia. It looked like a mundane text, but it signaled the trap was sprung. They should have already slipped out of the facility.
If the Elementals took the bait, Cindy Moon and Felicia Hardy would have a front-row seat.
And they did.
"Well. That's definitely a statement," Felicia murmured.
Clad in her sleek, black leather tactical suit, Felicia perched on the edge of a nearby rooftop. She engaged the telescopic zoom on her lenses, staring down at the Royal Institute of Madrid.
It looked like the end of the world.
Massive, twisting tornadoes descended on the research facility from all four points of the compass. A roaring cyclone of pure fire scorched the earth, while a churning waterspout ripped up the asphalt. A blinding, suffocating sandstorm swallowed the night sky, turning the moonlight into a sickly, bruised yellow.
Both Felicia and Cindy wore the Wild Pack's specialized force-field generators strapped to their belts. The localized electrostatic shields hummed quietly. They actively repelled the elemental particles, preventing the villains from using the ambient air to rip them apart.
Cindy stood by the idling jeep down on the street. Her eyes remained closed. She focused entirely on the spider-sense bond linking her to Peter. Despite the apocalyptic weather tearing toward the lab, Peter's bio-rhythms were totally stable. He wasn't panicking. Cindy let out a breath and waited for Felicia to drop down and take the wheel.
Inside the Institute, Peter jogged to catch up with a furious Silvija.
"Do you have any concept of how many people are in this facility?" Silvija yelled over the rising wind outside. "How many scientists? How much volatile material? We are completely unready for a siege!"
"Shouldn't you have planned for this?" Peter asked.
Silvija faltered. Honestly? She hadn't. She assumed Spider-Man and his crew were just Fury's backup muscle for her operation. It never occurred to her that eliminating Spider-Man was a higher priority for the Elementals than their actual heist schedule.
They kicked open the main facility doors. The sky above them was a roaring inferno of red and yellow ash. The heat was blistering. Silvija drew her sidearms, her face pale. The Wild Pack was going to be slaughtered.
"You know, a friend of mine had a dad with a serious problem once," Peter said conversationally, stepping out into the howling wind. "I could've stopped it if I just knew a little bit of magic. So, I figured I'd do some reading."
Silvija stared at him like he was insane. "Magic? What are you going to do, pull a rabbit out of a hat?"
"Not exactly," Peter said.
He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He brought his hands up, his fingers twisting into a complex, ancient geometric formation.
"Winds of Watoomb!" Peter shouted, thrusting his palms forward.
A concussive, explosive shockwave of pure mystic energy erupted from his hands. The magical gale slammed into the converging tornadoes with the force of a freight train. The fire snapped out. The water crashed to the pavement. The blinding yellow sandstorm dissolved into nothingness.
The sky instantly cleared, revealing the cold Madrid stars.
Out of the dissipating debris, four massive, humanoid figures slammed into the asphalt. They groaned as their elemental forms coalesced. The Elementals had gathered.