The Shocker stepped out of Midtown Bank and looked at the ring of police officers surrounding him, then at Spider-Man crouched above the entrance.
He showed almost no reaction at all.
George made the decision instantly.
"Open fire!"
The officers unloaded everything they had, 9mm rounds from standard-issue sidearms pouring toward the supervillain in front of them. But the shots hitting the gold-titanium armor did not even scratch the paint.
The Shocker stood there in silence, watching them keep firing.
Then he slammed both fists into the ground.
The resulting shockwave flipped every nearby officer and every police car around them.
Then the Shocker took a deep breath.
"Come on, Spider-Man. Round two."
"Leave him to me, Captain! Get everyone out of here!"
The only one still standing was Spider-Man. He had already swung down in front of the Shocker and was trading blows with him again, even while shouting back to George, who had been knocked to the ground.
"I've got him! I almost had him last time!"
"You were nowhere near almost, bug!"
After punching Spider-Man back again, the Shocker finally noticed the web attached to his arm. Spider-Man yanked hard, making him stumble forward two steps, then came flying in with a kick to the head. A second later, he pulled the line again, dragged one of Herman's arms across his own chest, and locked it there with webbing before smashing another punch into his face.
"You know, Herman? I could do this all day. You know Cap says that all the time, right?"
With one arm stuck to his chest, the Shocker swung the other at Spider-Man. But at some point, webbing had already wrapped around his ankles too, and he went crashing to the ground. Spider-Man instantly dropped on top of him, twisted his arm behind his back, pinned it at the waist, and webbed it down.
The Shocker, of course, had no fear of hurting himself. He fired a shockwave point-blank into his own chest, blasting both himself and the Spider-Man sitting on top of him into the air.
But Spider-Man still had enough control left to hook him with a web, yank himself back in close, and hammer him with two heavy punches before the Shocker managed to blast him away again.
Herman hit the ground first, barely getting a second to breathe before Spider-Man's next present arrived.
Webs shot out from both hands and latched onto the overturned police cars on either side of him. Then Spider-Man hurled both of them straight at him.
The two cruisers slammed together on top of the Shocker, and in that same instant he fired off a shockwave and detonated both vehicles.
Flames rose around him.
The Shocker staggered out of the fire looking dazed, and the weaknesses in the armor were finally starting to show. Because of limited funds, the suit had serious heat-dissipation problems. The long fight and the explosions had left him dizzy. He could already feel the dehydration setting in.
"Stop this, Herman. You know you're running out of steam."
Spider-Man stood in front of him again, still refusing to stop trying to talk him down.
"You're a genius. You don't need to hurt people just to become somebody."
"If... if you'd said something like that the first time we met, maybe it'd be different, bug."
The Shocker let out a bitter laugh.
"It would've meant something if you'd said it to Herman Schultz instead of to the Shocker."
"I am saying it to Herman..."
"You're lying!"
The shockwave that smashed into the ground tore a crack through the street, venting the kind of rage most people would never understand.
"You're only saying that because I can do this now! Because you know what I'm capable of! You know how much damage I can do!"
"Before I became the Shocker, nobody respected me!"
"You really don't listen, do you, Herman?"
Watching the Shocker somehow drag himself back into fighting shape through sheer anger, Spider-Man could only sigh. At least by now the police had pulled back to a safer distance, so they would not get caught in the middle of the fight again.
Spider-Man chose the simplest answer he had.
He tore the giant vault door out of the wall where it was lodged and shoved it straight at the Shocker.
"Mind the door!"
"What?!"
The Shocker looked left, then right, realized he had no room to dodge, and fired at full output into the vault door. Spider-Man just kept pushing through the blasts, driving the giant slab of metal right into Herman.
The two of them strained against each other with the thick vault door between them. On one side was mutated superhuman strength. On the other was power amplified by advanced tech.
For a moment, neither could overpower the other.
But Herman was starting to feel himself break down. Sweat was pouring off him. He knew it was only a matter of time before dehydration left him too weak to keep fighting.
And on the other side of the door, Spider-Man seemed to be fading too. For some reason, his strength was not what it had been before.
Good.
So the bug was running out of gas too.
With that thought, the Shocker roared and shoved forward with everything he had. The entire vault door toppled over and crushed a police car beneath it, sending one of the wheels flying away.
Then Herman just stood there staring stupidly at the car pinned under the metal slab.
The next thing he felt was weightlessness.
Spider-Man had slipped behind him without him noticing, webbed him across the back, and then hurled his whole body into the air before smashing him back down onto the street.
If the Shocker was too strong to be restrained by webbing around his weapons, then fine.
Spider-Man would just swing the whole man around and use him as the weapon.
"Sorry, Herman! I really hope your armor is as durable as you said it was!"
The Shocker barely had time to process what was happening before Spider-Man slammed him into the ground again.
And again.
And again.
Only after the third or fourth impact did he finally get used to the rhythm enough to fire a shockwave into his own body, blasting himself loose from the webbing and throwing himself away. He dragged himself back up, utterly drained.
He did not want to keep going.
He had badly underestimated how tough the bug was, and how much he never stopped talking. Spider-Man kept trying to lecture him into becoming a "good person" while also beating him half to death.
Still, Herman Schultz was a genius.
And he knew exactly what kind of weakness his enemy had.
Just not here.
"You still want to keep this going, Herman?"
"Save the speech, bug. I'm done here."
"What? Wait, you can't..."
Spider-Man did not even finish the sentence before the Shocker blasted the ground, shattered the street beneath himself, and vaulted away into the distance.
George finally stepped out from cover and stared at the battlefield in disbelief.
Wounded officers on the ground.
A nearly destroyed bank.
A ruined, burning street.
So this was what a superhero battle looked like.
Was the cost always this high?
"Herman Schultz is fleeing the scene. Repeat, Herman Schultz is fleeing the scene. SWAT is on the way? SWAT can't stop this anymore! Can we reach the National Guard? Hello? Hello?"
The radio signal suddenly cut out.
Then, through the static, a new voice came through, one George could hardly believe.
"Captain Stacy, this is Steve Rogers. We are in pursuit of the dangerous suspect Herman Schultz."
"The Avengers are taking control of the situation."
Spider-Man, completely unaware that the Avengers had now entered the picture, kept swinging after Herman.
Wherever Herman reached, destruction followed. Manhattan's streets were being blasted apart into craters, and Spider-Man was doing everything he could to keep up and stop the damage.
"Come on, Herman! You're just running now? Jameson's definitely going to tear me apart for this later. Could you maybe do me a favor and let us settle this already?"
"You want to settle this?"
The Shocker stopped beneath an elevated commuter rail station, apparently no longer interested in running. He was breathing heavily. There were still plenty of civilians around, especially up on the platform where passengers were waiting.
"Then let's settle it, bug. You're a hero, right?"
"Let's see what a hero does."
This time, Herman was not targeting Spider-Man directly anymore.
He raised one arm and blasted apart one of the load-bearing pillars holding up the station.
"What are you doing?"
"Go save them, hero."
"Great idea, Herman. That way I won't have time to stop you from escaping."
Spider-Man shot upward beneath the elevated tracks and started webbing the damaged support columns together. He swung between the surrounding buildings, anchoring the elevated structure to them with thick web lines while shouting at the passengers above to get out.
But the columns kept failing.
One of them was far too damaged to repair with webbing alone, so Peter made a split-second decision. He kicked the broken support column the rest of the way free and then dropped underneath the collapsing section himself, bracing the entire elevated structure on his shoulders to buy the passengers time to escape.
The Shocker did not run.
He had been waiting for exactly this.
Waiting for Spider-Man to be standing there, using his own body to hold up the support and the entire weight of the elevated rail.
Herman raised his arm and took aim.
He could hear the civilians screaming. He could feel their panic. All he had to do was close his fist. Spider-Man would be blasted away, the elevated structure would collapse, and the bug would be buried beneath it.
He could kill Spider-Man right now.
The cost would only be a few dozen lives.
"To hell with that."
Herman Schultz lowered his arm, punched the ground instead, and chose to leave.
(End of Chapter)
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