Peter's astral projection strategy had successfully exposed the Elementals' fatal flaw, but the villains still held the tactical high ground.
First, they had the numbers. Even as naked, tethered spirits, they outnumbered Peter. And worse, engaging Peter in the astral plane didn't stop their physical avatars from wreaking havoc on the Wild Pack in the real world.
Second, the astral plane leveled the playing field. Without the physical enhancements of the spider-bite, human souls were theoretically identical in strength.
Mark Raxton—the Molten Man—realized this. His spirit form lunged at Peter, expecting an even brawl.
Instead, a glowing blue webline shot from Peter's translucent wrist. It plastered over Raxton's ethereal face. Peter yanked the line, effortlessly hurling the scientist's soul across the astral void. In the physical world, Molten Man's liquid-metal shell violently mimicked the movement, crashing heavily into the Spanish asphalt.
Raxton ripped the glowing webbing off his face, staring at Peter's floating spirit in utter bewilderment. "How... how are you maintaining your abilities as a ghost?"
Peter dropped into a crouch in mid-air. "Magic, buddy. Didn't you know spiders have their own gods?"
Peter launched himself forward. His translucent fist cracked across Raxton's jaw. Brilliant, blinding light flared from Peter's knuckles on impact. It was raw energy channeled directly from the Web of Fate. The Patriarch connection allowed Peter to funnel the cosmic web's power directly into his spirit, effectively granting his soul all the proportionate strength and agility of a spider.
Down in the physical courtyard, Hydro-Man watched his fiery teammate hit the pavement.
"Ignore the ghost!" Morris Bench roared. "Help Molten Man! Kill the physical host!"
Hydro-Man dissolved into a torrential wave. He surged across the asphalt toward Venom. Silvija Sablinova barked an order. The Wild Pack opened fire. Hundreds of high-velocity, vibrating rounds tore through the air.
Bench didn't bother dodging. He fluidly separated his water mass, opening perfectly timed, localized holes across his body. The bullets zipped harmlessly through empty air.
Hydro-Man reformed in front of Venom. He crashed over the towering black symbiote like a tsunami, completely engulfing him. Bench attempted to force water down Peter's throat to drown the physical body from the inside.
He failed. Venom's molecular density was completely impenetrable. The black sludge sealed airtight, repelling every single drop of moisture.
Frustrated, Hydro-Man shifted tactics. He gathered his mass around Venom's waist, shaping his upper body into a massive, muscular torso of solid, pressurized water. He began pummeling Venom's face with piston-like hydro-punches.
Venom took the hits without flinching. A deep, guttural laugh vibrated in his chest.
"You think this hurts?" Venom hissed. He swung a massive black arm, slapping the water construct with the force of a wrecking ball. Hydro-Man exploded into a fine mist, splattering across the concrete.
"You're overestimating yourselves!" Venom roared.
Hydro-Man didn't reform. Instead, the water droplets hung in the air.
David Cannon—Whirlwind—hovered above the battlefield. The mutant spun up a localized, freezing cyclone. The massive drop in air pressure instantly flash-froze the suspended water droplets. Flint Marko seized the opportunity. The Sandman funneled thousands of jagged silica grains directly into the freezing vortex.
Water, freezing wind, and grinding sand fused together. Countless razor-sharp, jagged ice-blades materialized in the sky.
Whirlwind snapped his fingers.
The storm of deadly shrapnel rained down directly toward Silvija and her exposed mercenaries.
Venom moved in a blur. He vaulted across the courtyard, landing squarely in front of the Wild Pack. Black sludge erupted from his forearms. He extruded a massive, overarching symbiote shield. The ice-blades hammered against the impenetrable dome in a deafening staccato.
"Piece of cake!" Venom laughed.
"Molten Man! Create an opening!" Hydro-Man shrieked from the puddles on the ground.
If they couldn't bypass the symbiote, they couldn't kill Spider-Man's body. Hydro-Man realized their elemental attacks were useless against Venom's physical mass. They needed to hit a specific weakness.
Whirlwind and Sandman merged their attacks again. This time, they didn't aim for projectiles. They created a localized, high-speed sand vortex entirely around Venom.
The friction of a million sand grains grinding against each other in the hurricane-force winds created a horrific, high-frequency sonic screech.
Venom shrieked.
The intense sonic vibrations violently disrupted the symbiote. The black sludge boiled and peeled back from Peter's face, exposing his physical skin to the elements. Up in the astral plane, Peter cursed loudly. He ignored the pain echoing from his physical body and rained blows down on Molten Man's spirit, desperately trying to take the heavy hitter off the board.
Near the parked convoy, Cindy Moon watched the chaos unfold. She hadn't engaged yet. She was waiting for the opening.
"Is it ready?" Cindy asked.
Felicia Hardy slammed the hood of a heavily armored Wild Pack jeep. She wiped a smudge of grease from her cheek and flashed a sharp, brilliant smile.
"It's perfect," Felicia purred. She picked up a heavy canvas bag. "I hope we don't actually need these. They're Peter's secret weapons. If we use them now, it just proves European tech is completely useless."
She had taken one of the Wild Pack's specialized anti-elemental artillery shells and hotwired it directly to the jeep's heavy-duty battery block, following Peter's rapid-fire teenage engineering specs.
Cindy nodded. She locked her fingers underneath the jeep's reinforced front bumper. She engaged her spider-strength, hoisted the military vehicle over her head, and hurled it directly into the sky at the swirling Elementals.
Whirlwind reacted on instinct. He generated a massive, compressed wind-blade and sliced the flying jeep perfectly in half.
The blade ruptured the rigged shell.
A colossal, silent shockwave detonated in mid-air. The specialized vibratory disruption field wiped out the artificial weather system in a microsecond. The deafening sandstorm died instantly. Both Sandman and Hydro-Man lost all molecular cohesion, collapsing into a useless, disorganized pile of wet mud on the asphalt.
Silvija lowered her rifle. She stared at the smoking wreckage of her jeep in absolute shock. "What did you do?"
Felicia rested a hand on her hip. "I borrowed a shell from your armory. Then I hooked it to a car battery based on the instructions of a high school boy."
Silvija gritted her teeth, staring at Black Cat with a potent mix of disbelief and hostility.
Cindy ignored the banter. Her eyes were locked on Peter's physical body.
The shockwave had rattled Venom. The symbiote was sluggish, still battered from the recent pumpkin bomb blast in New York, and heavily destabilized by the sonic sandstorm.
"Molten Man! Now!" Whirlwind screamed.
Mark Raxton's physical avatar ignited.
Despite Peter relentlessly pummeling his astral soul, Molten Man forced his magma shell to go supernova. Blinding, incandescent white light erupted from his core. He was going to endure the spiritual agony just long enough to burn Spider-Man's physical body to ash.