"Marvel: Tomorrow MAX"
Chapter 4: "Spinning the Armored Thread"
Disclaimer: As the universe depicted here is an extrapolation of the current direction of the universe depicted in comics published by Marvel Comics, it technically belongs to Marvel. All I really own is the characters depicted in this story, even if they happen to be offshoots of extant characters within the Marvel Universe. However, I don't make any money off this story; my "profit" comes from the satisfaction of knowing someone's read this.
Author's note: Here we go, the end of this opening arc of Marvel: Tomorrow MAX. However, that doesn't mean you'll have seen the last of Hate-Monger, nor does it mean an end to Arachne's troubles. In fact, her troubles will only continue on into the next several chapters, but later for that. Right now, it's time for the showdown.
Audrey's eyes widened in devastated horror as Ethan crumpled to the ground from Hate-Monger's shot. She had gotten to his side, but too late for her to do anything about it. "Ethan. Ethan, wake up. Ethan, snap out of it!"
"Sorry, Audrey . . ." Ethan wheezed. "So damn sorry."
"It's gonna be ok," Audrey whispered, cradling his head gently. "It's gonna be ok."
"No, it's not," Ethan answered. "I'm gonna die. I'm ok with that."
"I'm not," Audrey affirmed, her voice choking with emotion. "I'm not going to let you die, not when . . . you're going to graduate from school. You and me, we're going to go to college together. We can take some classes together, too, you know, like old times. We can get to know each other again." She noticed Ethan wasn't saying anything, just staring almost blankly at her. "You can say something, you know."
"I . . . I'm sorry. I'm sorry for pushing you away when you wanted to help me. Maybe if I hadn't, we wouldn't . . . be here."
"We'll worry about that –" Audrey's spider-sense interrupted her and she jumped back with Ethan to avoid a gunshot from Hate-Monger. "Later. Right now . . ." She noticed Ethan had stopped speaking again, his breath coming in shallower and shallower pants. "Ethan! Ethan!"
"It's too late, Arachne," Winter Soldier spoke grimly. "He's gone."
"Shut up, Winter," Audrey snarled. "Shut up. He's not gone. Not yet. There's still a chance!" She placed her symbiote-gauntleted hand over Ethan's wound and began to extrude its substance into said wound. "Come on, Ethan. Don't die on me. Don't you dare die on me, goddamn it!"
"You've always been a sweet girl," Ethan murmured. "Don't . . ."
Then another burst hit him, this time in the head . . . and he had no more to say. Audrey looked at him, at the hole seared into his head, and knew only the darkest of rages. It was a rage that clenched her heart like a vise, a fury that tightened her jaw, and beneath . . . a grief that consumed her soul. So consumed she was that she did not even notice the suit moving to cover her face once again, and then she had tackled Hate-Monger into the wall with astonishing speed and force.
"You're going to die!!" Arachne screamed.
"Sorry, but all that sappiness between you two got on my nerves," Hate-Monger answered coldly, before pushing Arachne off him. Arachne flipped backward and skidded on the ground on the balls of her feet, looking up at Hate-Monger.
"Come on, bastard," Arachne challenged.
Hate-Monger drew his gun and shot at Arachne, who ran at him while dodging his blasts. She launched herself into a flying side kick that sent him crumpling against the wall closest to his back. Hate-Monger merely rebounded off it and rolled in another direction, springing up to shoot Arachne again. Arachne bounced all over the hall, dodging his shots with an agility that even the best acrobats and gymnasts could not duplicate.
Finally, she snagged his gun with a dark web and threw it aside. "Let's see if you can fight me without a gun."
In return, Hate-Monger drew a serrated combat knife and lunged at Arachne, who caught his blade with her gauntleted hand and kneed him in the stomach. She elbowed him in the face with enough force to knock out some teeth and knock him to the ground. He looked up at her and spat his broken teeth at her, only for her to swerve out of the way and stomp on his shoulder, knocking him on his back. Hate-Monger attempted to get up, but Arachne kicked him to the ground again.
Hate-Monger rolled away from her, but she ricocheted to the other side of the hall and dived at him, pinning him to the ground. She began to punch him viciously, battering him again and again until she'd broken every single blood vessel in his face. She didn't stop there; to the contrary, she continued to punch him. She was so caught up in her anger and grief that she almost didn't notice when she was shot in the shoulder by Van. Instead of paining her, it caused her to laugh.
The distraction was almost enough for Hate-Monger to score a punch on Arachne. To his chagrin, she caught his fist and, in a burst of speed, got up and threw him at Van. Hate-Monger fell into Van, knocking them both to the ground and causing Van to lose his gun. Arachne lunged at them both, although Van recovered his gun and began shooting at her. She dodged the bursts and webbed his gun, too.
"Go ahead," she taunted. "Shoot."
"You're dead, spider-whore!" Van screamed, pulling the trigger.
That turned out to be a very bad decision, as the gun simply exploded in Van's hand from the backfire. The explosion utterly decimated Van's hand, leaving it as nothing but useless bone with stray bits of skin and muscle still attached. Van screamed in agony from the result of the explosion, falling to his knees.
"My hand . . ." he groaned. "You took away my hand!"
"I'm going to take something else soon," Arachne snarled.
"You bitch!" Van screamed, lunging at Arachne with his remaining hand outstretched to strike her. Arachne sidestepped Van's charge and grabbed his wrist, throwing him to the ground and spearing his other hand with a bladed symbiotic tendril. He screamed again, this time from the pain of his wounded hand. "Damn you!"
"I might be on my way to hell . . . but you'll beat me there," she hissed.
"Arachne, don't!" Winter Soldier shouted, even as he maintained a firefight with several Panzers.
Arachne laughed, a cold, harsh noise. "Don't what?"
"He's not the one you want to kill," Winter Soldier replied.
"Good point," Arachne whispered. She stomped on his knees, hard enough to shatter them. "That ought to keep you down."
By this point, Hate-Monger had gotten up again, and he was livid. "You . . . I'm going to kill you."
"Come on, then, bastard," Arachne challenged. "Kill me."
Hate-Monger lunged at Arachne and tackled her to the ground, his hands wrapped around her throat. The symbiote thickened around her neck, obstructing Hate-Monger's efforts to kill her. As he strained to end her life, Arachne wedged her knee between them and pushed her leg up to kick him off her. Arachne flipped to her feet and darted behind him, kicking him in the back and sending him sprawling to the ground. Hate-Monger simply rolled onto his feet and pulled out a spare gun, shooting at Arachne.
Arachne ran at Hate-Monger full speed, almost literally outrunning his shots. She grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the nearest wall, only for Hate-Monger to pull out another knife, press a button on it, and stab Arachne in the stomach with it. Arachne gasped in horror, feeling the vibrations of the blade.
"High-frequency dagger," Hate-Monger explained. "Good for piercing armor." He pushed her to the ground. "Now, you're going to die."
"You first . . ." Arachne snarled, rising to her feet. The symbiote, despite being wounded by the high-frequency blade, was healing itself, and Arachne. Neither of them was exactly in any mood to let Hate-Monger off easy.
"Oh, so this isn't going to be easy, after all." Hate-Monger smirked cruelly. "Good. It wouldn't be fun if it were so easy."
"Shut up and die."
Arachne flipped into a kick, striking Hate-Monger in the jaw before landing upright again. Hate-Monger stumbled back against the wall to right himself, pushing off it to attack Arachne, but Arachne slid into a low kick that knocked his feet out from under him. Hate-Monger landed on his hands and pushed off the floor, twisting in midair just as Arachne sprang up to kick him. Hate-Monger skidded backwards on the floor, only for Arachne to again dart behind him and grab him by the neck. Hate-Monger reached behind him and threw Arachne over his shoulder and to the ground, only for Arachne to hold on and toss him to the ground with her.
The two combatants sprang to their feet and clashed again. Finesse was utterly abandoned at this point; they just punched, kicked, kneed, and elbowed each other. It was all about killing the other one at this point, and Arachne was just fine with that. For what Hate-Monger did to Ethan, she would claim more than just a single pound of flesh.
"I'm going to beat you until you're nothing but a bloody pulp," she threatened. "Then I'm going to flay the skin off you, slowly. I'm going to make sure you stay alive for as long as I can possibly keep you alive, just so you can suffer. When you can't take it anymore, I'm going to take a little more . . . and then I'll kill you."
"Really? Do it, then."
Arachne chuckled sinisterly. "My pleasure."
Just then, a voice could be heard, amplified over a megaphone. "This is ATF! Come outside with your hands up now!"
"F# you, Zionist pigs!" a Panzer screamed. "We're not gonna be taken alive!"
"Idiot," Winter Soldier mumbled to Leonie. "They have snipers out there with AR scopes, don't they?"
"Yeah," Leonie confirmed. "Soon as they get a good shot, they'll probably start taking people out if these idiots can't bring themselves to just surrender."
"Fanatics don't surrender."
"Duly noted. Cover me?"
Winter's response was to shoot over her shoulder at a Panzer, striking him in the shoulder. "You're covered."
Meanwhile, Arachne and Hate-Monger were still pummeling each other. Neither even cared to dodge the other's blows anymore; it was a matter now of purely outlasting their opponent. Each hit Arachne took, she returned in kind. Each hit Hate-Monger took, he returned in kind. The difference between Arachne and Hate-Monger was that Arachne had a living suit that constantly regenerated her, allowing her to fight longer and harder than Hate-Monger could. He would tire far sooner than she would, enhanced abilities or no . . . and then she would kill him.
"This is your second warning! We will only ask you one more time after this to surrender! Continued defiance will result in us taking the necessary measures to bring you in!"
"Go to hell!" another Panzer screamed.
"Yeah, go f# yourselves!" a third shouted.
"Your people are quite steadfast, aren't they? I could admire that, if I didn't hate everything you and they stand for so damned much."
"You don't know anything, you little c#," Hate-Monger snarled. "There are a lot more of us than you think. Enough to take this country and return it to the natural state of things."
"You really think that?" Arachne asked.
"You can't kill what I represent. Even if I die, someone else will take my place. More like me will rise up! The mongrels you are trying to protect will never rule us! Do you hear me?! Never rule us!"
"Shut your mouth." Arachne punched him hard in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. She kicked him in the ribs for extra emphasis, with enough force to send him flying into a wall.
Hate-Monger panted after sliding down the wall to the ground. "What the hell are you?!"
"You really want the answer to that question?"
Hate-Monger pulled out three vials, each filled with blue-colored liquid, and popped them open. "You leave me no choice. I've never attempted such a high dosage before, but . . . you pushed me to this." He drank all three vials at once, swallowing most of their contents and tossing the vials aside. He panted heavily and then began to groan, as his wounds healed at an incredible speed, bruises fading away and broken blood vessels repairing themselves, leaving clear skin behind. He slowly stood up, the healing process completing itself as he looked up at Arachne.
"You wanna go now . . . bitch?"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Hate-Monger darted in front of Arachne and punched her in her masked face, sending her flying toward a wall. As she flew, he darted behind her and kicked her in the back, knocking her to the ground. She landed on her hands and skittered to her feet, but Hate-Monger launched into a flying side kick, knocking her to the ground again. Arachne was about to roll to her feet again, only for Hate-Monger to kick her to the ground once more.
"Stay down."
"No."
"This is your final warning! Surrender now, or we are prepared to storm the complex and take you all in by force!"
"We're not surrendering, Jew f#&!" a Panzer screamed.
Winter shot him. "Quiet."
As Winter Soldier and Leonie continued to battle the remaining Panzers, a laser burst suddenly pierced the window and struck Hate-Monger in the shoulder. It had really been intended as a headshot, but Hate-Monger's senses had alerted him in time for his reflexes to save him. He gripped his bleeding shoulder, as the Panzers looked at their stricken leader in horror and outrage.
"Those Jew f#& are gonna die!!" a Panzer shrieked.
The Panzers stormed out en masse to avenge their leader upon the ATF agents positioned outside the complex. That sort of fanaticism, unfortunately for them, simply rendered them moving targets for the ATF to shoot down, while the snipers focused on Hate-Monger, who was now dodging their shots while trying to fight Arachne.
"Your boys and girls are dying out there," she whispered harshly, while dodging his blows and retaliating in kind. "Dying for you. What is it about you that inspires such fanatical loyalty? Your charm? Your scintillating personality? Or is it just that you're so good at looking less like the loser that you really are that they think you're some kind of guru?"
Hate-Monger threw Arachne into the path of another sniper shot, but the shot was powerful enough that it went through Arachne and hit him as well. He dropped Arachne, clutching his newest wound while struggling to stay on his feet. Now that he was more or less stationary, the snipers could fire upon him at their leisure. More laser bullets hit him, but he still refused to go down, speed-limping outside to escape the snipers' shots.
"You miserable pigs!" he yelled. "Little Jew f#& pigs! You think you can beat us?! You think you can kill us?! You're WRONG! There's too many of us for you to kill! Too goddamn many!" He looked at his fallen men and women, the still-living having been herded into the ATF's vehicles, and shouted, "Panzerblatt forever!"
"Panzerblatt forever!" was the resounding cry of the still-living Panzers.
"Panzerblatt for –" Hate-Monger was cut off by another shot, just as Arachne, Winter Soldier, and Leonie came out. The shot had pierced him in the chest, punching through his ribcage and exiting through his back. He collapsed in a prostrate position, bleeding out onto the ground. "Panzer . . . blatt . . . for . . . ever . . ."
"Shut up," Arachne snarled and stomped on his vertebra hard enough to break it.
Several paramedics moved to take Hate-Monger away, carefully positioning him so as not to kill him themselves in the process of trying to save him. With Michael William Giles off the scene, the ATF agents had a freer hand to focus on Winter Soldier and Arachne, and they weren't exactly pleased with the two unregistered vigilantes. For that matter, Arachne herself wasn't exactly pleased with the ATF, either.
"Stay right where you are!" the megaphone-wielding agent shouted. "We are willing to show leniency in light of your aid, but you are still unlicensed vigilantes. If you come in quietly, you will have a greater chance of receiving leniency."
"F#& you and your leniency," Arachne snarled, and ran seemingly toward the ATF agents.
"Fire!" the lead agent ordered.
Arachne dodged their shots, even the ones coming from the snipers, and disappeared into the night via her suit's active camouflage. As she fled, one of the agents shouted to the snipers, "Use your AR scopes to find her!"
Even if the snipers could find her, she was moving far too fast for them to properly track. As soon as she reached high buildings, she fired a dark web-line and swung on it, heading back for her "borrowed" hotel room. Once inside, she fell on her knees and let out a piercing, unearthly shriek of mixed fury and grief, amplified by the symbiote.
Ethan's wake came a week later, and the funeral two weeks after. The funeral was an outdoor affair, in a beautiful garden cemetery, as though being surrounded by beauty could somehow make up for the fact that Ethan was dead. Death wasn't pretty and nothing anybody did could make it otherwise. That was just how it was and nobody was going to change that.
His family was in attendance, as were his former classmates. Karin was there, too, dressed in a starched black tuxedo with skirt. Audrey was also there, but hidden deep within the shadows cast by the trees. Her suit had molded itself into a black dress with a web-patterned silk bodysuit underneath, and a web-patterned veil concealing her face. She didn't want anyone to see her; she just wanted to say good-bye.
She watched as the funeral continued, the priest saying benedictions and such. Audrey personally thought the bastard was full of it; there was no loving God. No loving God would let the world He created turn into the kind of horror that turned sweet young men into monsters willing to embrace a philosophy of hatred. No loving God would let monsters like Hate-Monger exist and pull so many into his twisted web. No loving God would condemn her to life as a hunted, near-friendless outcast just because of the abilities that had been granted to her by a freak quirk of fate.
When Ethan's family and friends, and associates of such who had come for solidarity, filed out at the end of the funeral, Audrey and Karin were the only ones left. Audrey let her clothes morph into the suit again, the suit that was essentially black living muscle with a gruesome spider emblem seemingly digging into her body, and turned to disappear. She heard Karin walking toward her, and she didn't know what it was – maybe some spark of love – but she stayed.
"Audrey," Karin whispered.
"What is it, Karin?" Audrey asked tartly.
"You don't . . . have to be alone," Karin replied.
"I'm not."
"You mean it? That thing crawling in your head, slithering all over your body? That's what you turn to for companionship?"
"At least it won't leave me."
"I won't leave you! And, in case you don't remember, you left me!"
"Go away, Karin. I have to be alone."
"Alone with it?" Karin's anger – and jealousy – was obvious in her tone.
"Yeah. Got a problem?" Arachne's sneer was obvious in her tone, and she disappeared into the shrubbery, camouflaging herself to avoid being pursued by Karin, who looked at the spot where she had been with a sad sigh.
"Audrey . . ."
Michael William Giles had spent the last three weeks resting in the prison ward of a private hospital. Preliminary blood tests had shown mutation at the cellular level, chemically induced and occurring over a long-term period. Further tests would show just how deeply ingrained the mutation was, and if it was reversible at all. The most important thing, of course, was rehabilitating him to the point that he was competent to stand trial. After all, a crushed vertebra might not be fatal if attended to in time, but it would certainly have a very detrimental effect on his ability to move or speak.
As he rested, he became aware of another's presence in his room. He would have asked who was there, but he couldn't speak or even turn his head to see who it was. He was helpless, a prisoner in his own body. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't even do that . . . and it was that spider-whore that had done it to him. He was going to make her suffer for that, repay her for the pain she had caused him with three times the intensity and agony.
"Mr. Giles, can you hear me?" a cultured, German-accented voice asked. "Blink if you can. You don't need to do anything else."
I CAN'T do anything else, you stupid f#&! Hate-Monger screamed inside his head. Despite his outrage, he blinked.
"What would you say if I told you that I could restore you to your full vitality?" the voice asked. "If I told you that I could make you even better than you were?"
Hate-Monger gritted his teeth in frustration. Was the bastard taunting him?
"No, don't worry. No need to speak. I already know what you're going to say. You want vengeance, vengeance on the system enforcers that killed your father, the system enforcers that shot down your followers, and the girl that left you in this sorry state. I can give you that vengeance. I can give you the power to do it, power beyond anything you ever dreamed of.
"Those scientists you employed? They're freelancers, but their highest loyalty, besides money, is me. Because they, you and I? We believe in the same things. We believe that we have the right of ascension, of dominion, over this world. We believe that this world needs to be held in the palm of a firm hand. We believe that our hand is the firm hand this world has been looking for.
"What do you say, Mr. Giles?"
Hate-Monger seethed silently. If he could talk, he would tell this mysterious interloper that he had a deal; just get him out of this accursed hospital bed, make him able to walk and talk again, and he would do whatever the son of a bitch wanted. Besides, he couldn't wait to get his hands on the little spider-bitch and pluck off her limbs one by one.
"I see we have a deal. Very well, then. Do you want to know who I am?"
A figure stepped into the meager light shining out of the half-shuttered hospital window. He wore a black cassock, slacks, leather gloves, and polished boots, but they weren't what would have been so shocking to an observer capable of looking at him. No, the shocking thing was that his "face" was a blood-red death's-head mask.
"I am your new best friend."
The next night, a shadowed figure watched the hotel room Arachne was currently occupying. That figure was not alone, having been accompanied by one other. The two had been waiting, seemingly forever, and then a lissome black figure leaped onto the windowsill, shooting a dark web-line and swinging into the city on it. Both figures watched her curiously from what was a curious perch upon the façade of a nearby building.
"Is it her?" one of the wall-crawling figures asked, her voice a slithery whisper.
"Yes," the other replied, her voice just as slithery but deeper, with a stronger bass. "It's her."
"What do we do?" the first figure asked.
"We wait," the other replied. "We watch. For now."
End Notes: I usually don't like to end so early, but this is as much as I can dredge up right now and have it still good. Any longer, and it would just be stalling for length; everything important has already been addressed for the time being.
For the record, I probably wouldn't have done this without The Wolf Demon's prompting . . . and the Punisher War Journal arc featuring the "revamped" Hate-Monger. Thank Demon and Matt Fraction for that. Our version of Hate-Monger is going to return in a later story, but for now I'm going to be focusing on other things, like Arachne dealing with her symbiote, the deal with Cuayin and Callisto, and the skeletons in the Initiative's closet.
Until next time, make mine Marvel! (And don't forget to leave a review.)