"Is... is there... still anyone... who hasn't gotten out?"
Peter Parker's voice was shaking, every word forced painfully out of his lungs.
His arms and back were carrying an unimaginable weight. An entire section of elevated track, four or five hundred tons of it, was bearing down on him. Even if not every support column had fully collapsed, it still felt as if the whole world was trying to crush him flat.
Peter had never tested the true upper limit of his strength before.
Now he was sure he had found it.
At that moment, if even a single pigeon had landed on top of the structure, he felt like he might have collapsed. Blood thundered through his veins. His eardrums swelled until they felt ready to burst. His vision had blurred into flashing patches of harsh light and darkness. He could not even hear his own heartbeat anymore. All that remained was a terrible near-death ringing inside his skull.
He did not know whether everyone had made it out safely. He could not feel anything anymore. He had only one way left to warn them.
"IS! THERE! ANYONE! STILL! UP! THERE!"
It sounded like someone answered him, but he heard nothing.
The only thing he could still truly feel was the rusty taste in his throat.
No, there was something else.
His arms and back could feel a violent, fast-building vibration. Even with his hearing and vision failing, Peter could still understand what it meant.
The train was coming into the station.
Some enormous sound seemed to explode beside him. Spider-Man stood there swaying, barely holding on. Outside the elevated structure, crowds had gathered, staring at the struggling figure beneath the track. Then it seemed like they noticed something else, and all of them turned to look.
Suddenly Peter Parker thought everything in front of him had turned red.
Then his hands and back felt no weight at all.
That abrupt, impossible lightness robbed him of consciousness, and he collapsed into that sea of red.
It wasn't blood.
It was a gigantic red hand.
"I've got the kid. Tony, I need your Mark Thirty-Eight here."
A giant Ant-Man, looking like some giant red titan, held the unconscious Spider-Man in one hand while using the other to support the broken section of track. The train roared past safely. The crowd erupted into deafening cheers, celebrating another time the Avengers had saved the city.
A streak of blue light cut through the dust a second later.
A massive Iron Man suit slammed into the ground. The Mark 38 armor, Igor, took Spider-Man's place beneath the broken support. The hydraulic jacks in its spine extended with a metallic clang, and as Ant-Man slowly lowered his hand away, the armor took the full weight of the elevated rail and held it firm.
After shrinking back down with the unconscious Spider-Man in his hand, Ant-Man loaded the kid onto a flying ant and left the scene. Only then did he finally have time to contact the others.
"I'm taking the kid back to Avengers Tower. Where's Herman, Tony?"
"Uh, Cap and the Wasp are chasing him. I'm tracking from the air."
Dehydration. Overheating. Total cooling failure.
The Shocker was in terrible shape.
He stumbled through the air in ragged, broken leaps, so out of it that he did not even notice the shield until it struck him across the back from an impossible angle, violating several laws of physics on the way. It knocked him out of the air and sent him skidding across the pavement in a shower of sparks.
"It's over, Herman Schultz."
Captain America pulled up in front of him on his motorcycle.
"You have no idea how dangerous your weapons and your actions are. Surrender now and disarm yourself immediately."
"Yeah, just give up and surrender to the Avengers already."
The Wasp appeared in a blur and drove a bio-electric sting straight toward the back of his neck.
Unfortunately, it did not even spark.
"I don't get it...?"
Herman, who had only wanted to escape, actually laughed.
The sound came out dry and harsh, like sandpaper scraping metal. He did not even bother standing up. He simply clenched his fists, and wave after wave of violent vibrations began spreading outward in all directions. The ground beneath his feet started collapsing. The air itself twisted visibly from the density shift. Traffic lights, utility poles, and fire hydrants all began warping and buckling. Even Captain America and the Wasp started staggering under the force.
Still releasing shockwaves, the Shocker pushed himself to his feet and roared.
"I know exactly how strong my invention is!"
He stood up fully, shouting into the ruined street.
"Strong enough that it takes the Avengers to stop me!"
Captain America chose that moment to lunge in.
The ground collapsed again.
Cap leapt, driving his shield into the concrete to stop himself from dropping through, but the Shocker had already used another shockwave-assisted jump to escape.
"Where are you going, Herman? You've got nowhere left to run!"
The tiny Wasp, unbelievably, had already caught back up to him. She hovered only a short distance behind him, firing stings again and again. They were not doing much damage, but Herman could not afford to run with someone like that on his back.
So after his next jump, he spun in midair and aimed at the barely visible little figure.
A red-and-gold blur hit him at supersonic speed.
Iron Man slammed into him from the side, driving him back down into the street. Tony landed cleanly and powered up armor-piercing rounds from his forearm plating.
"Give it up, Herman. I don't know where you got that gold-titanium alloy, but I know your armor won't survive one shot from this."
After getting hammered by attack after attack, Herman started laughing again.
And suddenly, he understood something.
Killing Spider-Man was not the only way to become famous.
There was another path.
If even the Avengers came after him and still failed, that would make him even bigger.
He slowly raised both hands, as if he were surrendering.
Then, just as Iron Man started walking toward him, Herman smiled.
"Goodbye, Iron Man."
The armor-piercing round fired at the same instant those words left his mouth.
But the pavement under the Shocker had already collapsed.
He dropped straight into the sewer system below, then used shockwaves to bring down over ten meters of road behind him, burying the entire access route and cutting off any pursuit.
By the time Captain America reached the spot on his motorcycle, all he could do was stare at the collapsed roadway along with Iron Man and the Wasp.
As for the Shocker, there was only one place left for him to go.
Still wearing the armor, Herman used the last of his strength and the suit's remaining kinetic assistance to make it back to Otto's hideout. This time, the door was already open. He did not even get the chance to walk in under his own power. A mechanical claw shot out, grabbed him, and dragged him inside. Then several tentacled robots slithered out, erased the traces behind him, and sealed the hideout shut.
"I saw your performance," the electronically synthesized voice said from the shadows. "You could have killed Spider-Man. Why did you hold back?"
Herman pulled off the helmet, which was nearly full of his own sweat, and took the bottle of water a mechanical claw offered him.
"I don't know. Maybe because I've never killed anyone. Maybe because I believed Spider-Man could hold up that track. But if I killed people on purpose... then everything would be different."
Leaning against the wall, Herman sat there for a long time before finally getting the words out.
Otto was silent for a while.
Then, for the first time, he turned on the lights in the hideout.
Soft white light filled the room, and Herman finally saw the man called Otto for the first time.
He was a middle-aged man who looked almost completely incapable of moving on his own. His limbs were useless, and he was suspended inside a bulky mechanical life-support rig. It looked like he could barely turn his neck. Some of the machinery had been driven directly through his throat, merging his vocal cords with the electronic voice generator. His eyes were hidden behind goggles, as if he could no longer tolerate bright light. The four agile mechanical tentacles around him were his only functioning limbs now.
"A little light. Thought it might make things easier on you, my friend."
"I... really wasn't expecting you to look like this."
Otto did not seem to care.
He turned back toward the cluster of old computers and resumed his calculations.
"If you had an old friend like Norman Osborn, ending up like this would count as getting lucky."
Herman instinctively felt that Otto still was not telling him everything.
But he had no interest in pressing it.
Instead, after pouring the rest of the water over his own head, he asked for what he wanted.
"Can you contact that boss of yours for me? I don't believe he'd turn down someone who can open any lock for him."
Otto adjusted the glasses on his face with one of his mechanical arms.
"So that's what you want? Make a name for yourself, then go get a job working for someone else?"
"The next step is taking down the Avengers. Iron Man. Captain America. Ant-Man. The Wasp..."
Herman very sensibly did not include Hulk or Thor.
"I'll show them that Herman Schultz's gear can outclass Tony Stark's, Hank Pym's, and anybody else's. I am a real genius!"
At his core, Herman only wanted fame.
Big fame.
And that made the Avengers his new target.
To get there, he needed more money to keep upgrading the armor, especially the cooling system, so he would never end up nearly dehydrated like this again.
So he needed cash.
A lot of it.
He was completely out of reserves. Robbing another bank directly would probably get him caught by the Avengers before he could finish what he had started.
That left one answer.
Kingpin.
If Kingpin had been willing to help finance the armor in the first place, then after what Herman had shown today, he would definitely be willing to put him to work.
Otto had no intention of refusing his new friend.
He also needed someone with enough weight behind them to test the Avengers and the other superheroes, so he could keep adjusting his weapons programs properly.
But he did have one more question.
"What about Spider-Man? You didn't really beat him. Is that just over now?"
"He'll come looking for me," Herman said. "And once I upgrade the armor, he won't be able to touch me."
(End of Chapter)
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