At the same time, back at the group's secret base—
"Eddie? Eddie, answer me!"
Peter stood there clutching the phone, both hands shaking. All that came from the other end now was the dead, empty tone.
The mood in the whole base turned ice cold.
Gwen and Cindy, who had just been happily showing off their new suits, both stopped at once and looked toward Peter in shock.
"What is it, Peter?" Gwen hurried over, immediately seeing how pale he had gone.
Peter looked up, and in an instant his eyes were bloodshot, full of panic and fury.
"Something happened to Eddie... he's in Brooklyn. Someone's hunting him. He's dying!"
Peter grabbed the red-and-blue suit that had just been finished on the worktable and started dragging it onto himself.
"I have to go save him. Right now!"
Gwen and Cindy exchanged a glance.
Neither of them hesitated for even a second.
"We're going too. He's our friend." Gwen decisively zipped up her black-and-white suit and pulled up the hood. Cindy quickly pulled on her red-and-black uniform too, checking the web-shooter ports at her wrists.
She didn't know Eddie as well, but she still wanted to help people.
Clark, who had been sitting quietly until now, stood up.
He didn't try to stop any of them.
Instead, at the workbench, he grabbed a few discarded electronic components and, in less than a second, broke them down and reassembled them into three miniature communicators.
He handed one to each of them.
The trainees were heading into their first real mission.
And they were getting ready to fight.
"Put these on. Keep the channel open."
"Clark, aren't you coming with us?!" Peter asked, looking at him anxiously. In his heart, he was certain that if Clark came, Eddie would be saved instantly.
Clark looked at his frightened little brother and shook his head.
"If the three of you can't handle one street-level freak, then you don't deserve to wear those suits. Being a superhero isn't a game. The enemy won't go easy on you just because you're kids."
Clark looked at Peter, Gwen, and Cindy in turn.
"Tonight, this is your fight. Go prove that you're worthy of the power you've been given."
Peter clenched his jaw.
He understood what his brother meant.
He had to learn to face real darkness on his own.
"Let's move!"
All three of them fired webs at once and shot out of the abandoned factory, disappearing into the endless rainy night.
Only after he watched them leave did the hard expression on Clark's face relax, and the worry in his eyes become visible.
Of course he was not actually going to abandon them.
With his super-hearing, he could hear not only Eddie's heartbeat growing weaker and weaker, but Gargan's furious shouting.
And he could hear farther than that.
Clark pulled open the zipper at his chest, revealing the suit beneath, now bearing a bright red S on the front.
A sonic boom cracked through the air.
Clark vanished from where he stood, moving so fast he overtook the three spider-kids almost immediately.
He reached Gargan first.
Peter, Gwen, and Cindy were charging into New York in this new form for the very first time.
There was no time to adapt.
No time for rehearsal.
They had to save Eddie.
Especially Peter and Gwen. Eddie was one of their closest friends, and they would never abandon him.
Never.
This should have been your test, Peter, Clark thought silently.
The reason he had acted so cold back at the base, the reason he had refused so firmly to go with them, was not because he was arrogant or cruel.
Quite the opposite.
It was because he cared too much about these three younger siblings who had only just gained their powers.
In his previous life, he had read too many superhero comics.
He knew that if he acted like a parent forever, always shielding Peter and the others, always handling every battle himself, then they would only ever become fragile hothouse flowers with powers.
Not real heroes.
Power that was never tempered by blood and fire, never tested by the fear of death or the burden of saving lives, would eventually become poison.
Clark wasn't there yet.
And his younger siblings certainly weren't either.
Against Gargan, equipped with a mechanical exoskeleton, this was a perfect fight for the three new spiders to grow through.
Gargan had heavy firepower and that mechanical tail, but his nervous system still operated at normal human speed. As long as Peter and the others could perform properly and use their spider-sense and teamwork, they had a real shot at beating him.
That was exactly the first field lesson Clark wanted to give them.
But first, he had to deal with Eddie.
Time didn't wait.
Mac Gargan hadn't landed the killing blow yet, because five seconds hadn't even passed before Clark arrived.
At that moment, Eddie already had his eyes closed.
But the pain he expected never came.
Mac Gargan had been grinning, the tail already driving downward to kill Eddie.
But instead of the satisfying feeling of punching through flesh, what he got was a metallic clang.
The smile on Gargan's face froze instantly.
He felt a massive resistance feed back through the tail behind him. The mechanical weapon, which could tear through four inches of solid steel, had stopped dead less than eight inches from Eddie's chest.
It was like it had hit a mountain.
Something harder than a mountain.
Gargan's eyes widened as he looked up.
In the pouring rain, a tall man had appeared in front of Eddie without anyone seeing him arrive. He was wearing a dark blue bodysuit with a bright red S on the chest.
No trunks on the outside, thankfully.
And without even glancing back at Gargan, he had casually reached out with one hand and caught the deadly metal barb between two fingers.
"How is that possible? There's no way anyone can be that strong!" Gargan's pupils blew wide.
His exoskeleton was pushing harder and harder, alarms already sounding from the overload, but no matter how much power he poured into it, the tail could not move forward by so much as a fraction of an inch.
Worse, he couldn't even pull it back.
That man simply stood there, feet planted in the rainwater, body absolutely still.
The calm, crushing pressure rolling off him made Gargan, a man who had spent years wading through blood in the streets, feel something he almost never had.
Fear.
True, soul-deep fear.
Clark turned his head slightly.
His eyes were the kind that made even evil men afraid.
And Gargan was no exception.
That one look alone made Gargan feel as if some ancient predator had locked onto him. Cold sweat instantly soaked through his combat suit.
But Clark didn't waste time on the thug.
His X-ray vision had already gone through Eddie's body and shown him the damage inside.
Eddie needed help first.
As for Gargan—
That supervillain could be left for Peter and the others to deal with.
***************************
Read advanced chapters ahead of everyone else on my P@treon.
P@treon/GodDragcell