The Narrows
The docks looked perfectly ordinary to Specs, as they would have to any given native of Earth-61610, but to any of the other Spiders they would have been a remarkable sight. The seawall dipped from fifty feet to maybe thirty, with large cranes rising from its top every thirty meters or so. Boats were docked on the other side of the wall, and large warehouses were connected directly to it, with panels in the roof that could open for the cranes. A fenced-off yard sat beside the warehouses for storage of the large metal shipping containers. Specs personally thought it rather telling that more money went into maintaining the whole structure per year than had ever gone into restoring the district immediately outside it.
He landed now some ways outside the fence, gasping and clutching his hurt leg as he hit the ground. The street he had landed at was a thin one characteristic of the district; if he had stretched his arms out he could come within a few inches of touching both the buildings that flanked him. In front of him, the asphalt cracked and ended in a large hole, leading directly into a sewer tunnel. And there was no sign of any giant robots. He sighed.
He then turned and looked around at the seemingly abandoned row of warehouses. For a second his head tilted as he stared at the nearest one. Supervillains do love their warehouses, he thought. Might as well start there.
He was careful to jump off of his good leg, sailing through the air and landing catlike on the first warehouse. The nearest skylight had two missing panes, and he peered through curiously. Nothing. No movement, no real sound, even the sensations at the back of his head seemed to slow. He bit his tongue as he darted to the next warehouse.
Still nothing. The wrapper of a fast-food hamburger peeked into the orange light of the setting sun filtering in through the skylight. Specs stared at it, only then realizing how hungry he was, before he concentrated and moved on to the third.
His skull had started tingling before he had even landed, and he stiffened as he crawled across the roof to the nearest skylight. There was no movement, but a faint humming buzzed through his fingertips and his head was a sea of tingling, pulling his focus towards the back of the warehouse. As silently as he could, Specs broke off the remaining pieces from the emptiest pane of the skylight and lowered himself halfway through.
He squinted through the heavy shadows, but it was probably to the credit of his danger sense that he made out the shapes of three huge robotic creatures, all deliberately slumped and dormant. Specs curtly nodded to himself, pulling himself back out of the skylight and shrugging his backpack off.
It took a few seconds of rummaging around to find the phone he had thrown into a random pocket, only to pluck the disclike camera off of the back and drop the phone back into the bag. He pulled out another device—three concentric, motorized rings that he snapped the camera lens into the center of. He pulled several thin cables out of the outermost gimbal and was in the process of anchoring it to the edge of the skylight when the sudden, insistent tingle in his head made his blood run cold and his body stiffen.
"Hello, Specs."
The voice, combined with the tingling, sent a shudder up his spine as he turned around. Standing behind him, just on the edge of the roof, was a man a few years older than he, dressed like a street tough and clutching an Uzi. His head blared like an air-raid siren as his eyes darted up and down his frame—between the weapons in his jacket and the contents of his duffle bag, he bore enough armaments for a small militia—Guns. Bombs. But even without them, he radiated danger, forcing red-hot needles through Specs' brain and sending icy fear down his spine…
He began to speak. "How the hell did you—"
"I'm not deaf, numbnuts. The Spider-Dyke called you 'Specs' before you dropped an entire fucking building on me!"
Specs felt the rage spike in the man through the tingling in his own head and leaned away reflexively, but then he realized who this was and his own rage rose up like a blood-red, boiling hot tide. He stepped forward again. "Tell you what," he hissed. "I'll apologize for that, when you apologize for the hundred and four people you killed today…!" He stopped, forcing himself to calm down, and an observation piped up somewhere in his mind. "But first, you ought to apologize to Sun Tzu. I mean, good God, man. Whatever element of surprise you had, it's gone now. You do this a lot back home?"
move
Specs dove to the side as Arachnolord opened fire on him with the Uzi. He hit the roof hands-first and rolled, leaping again off the edge and firing a webline to swing downwards and out of sight.
"Was that a yes?" he called up, pressed into the wall of the warehouse and crawling across it. "That sounded like a yes!"
"Laugh it up, Parker," Arachnolord growled, walking towards the edge of the roof. He reached the edge of the roof and aimed for where Specs' voice had originated, then when the boy proved to be absent from the spot his eyes swept across the wall just in time to see him launch himself off the wall and over the roof of the next warehouse. He leapt after him.
movemovemoveMOVE
Specs dodged another burst of fire as he fired a webline and zipped to ground level. He sprinted out from between the warehouses, vaulting over the fence closing off the docks and whirling to face Arachnolord as he did the same. Just as Arachnolord cleared the fence, Specs fired off a barrage of web shots, one of which hit Palmer's hand and froze his trigger finger, and another of which splattered across the barrel of the Uzi.
Arachnolord quietly cursed as he landed, attempting to rip the webbing off with his other hand. His own spider-sense tingled hard and he looked up just in time to see a gloved fist smash into the side of his face. The glove's carbon-fiber knuckles had cracked and split from the impact, but any pain Arachnolord might have felt from it faded into a lingering ache quickly. He leaned backward to avoid Specs' next strike and reached into his jacket—
Specs felt the rise in danger the instant Palmer had started to move, and he gave a small scream and grabbed his wrist as it whipped out a small pistol. Specs moved too fast for Arachnolord to really react, but he moved on instinct, simply pushing both gun hands away from himself.
"What's the matter, Specs?" sneered Palmer.
Specs looked up at the taller combatant, his breath erratic thanks to the insistent ringing in his head, and said, "The other Parkers aren't here. I'm Spider-Man." He grunted as Arachnolord began to force his hands back towards his target. "Gah…What, not gonna wake your friends up?"
"I wanted to do this personally," Arachnolord grunted, and slammed his knee into Specs' crotch.
Specs collapsed, coughing as he fell onto his side. "Ahhh!" he gasped. "Right through the cup." The ringing tingle wavered as Arachnolord stepped over him and he tried to push himself up, failing on the first attempt.
Arachnolord examined his right hand, specifically the way his Uzi was glued to it, then tossed the pistol in his left into the air. He caught it by the barrel and swung it Specs' head like a hammer, only to miss as the younger fighter rolled out of the way. A webline hit the pistol as he accidentally smashed it into the ground, and Specs successfully ripped it from his hand and tossed it over the rooftops behind him.
"You're a fast one," said Arachnolord, watching the gun's shadow turn end over end and vanish. He looked down at his right hand as Specs unsteadily got to his feet and tore the webbing off, wincing as it took a bit of skin with it. "But tell me—can you run faster than a bullet?" He ripped the web off the barrel and readied his Uzi once more.
Specs ducked under the first rounds of the following volley of bullets, already sprinting forward. He banked to the left, running a few feet up the chain-link fence and leaping off it, over Arachnolord's gunfire and over his head, and kneed him in the face on his way over.
Arachnolord whirled, leveling his Uzi at where Specs may have been standing, but the kid was already leaning to the side, and his hand shot forward and grabbed the top of the gun. Two bullets had been fired reflexively in the eighth of a second that passed between Palmer raising his gun and this moment, but the stream of lead was cut off as Specs brought his hand back, metal tore, and he took the top of the gun with him.
"No," he said, crushing the steel in his fist. "But who cares? I'm faster than the kampfhund holding the gun. Or what's left of it."
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Arachnolord screamed."THAT'S MY WEAPON OF CHOICE!"
"It was," Specs corrected, dodging Palmer's wild swing. He retaliated by slamming his fist into Palmer's gut and hitting him in the temple with his other fist, the one still closed around steel, knocking him away. "Maybe you can use it to pound in nails." He cracked wise, but in reality Specs was becoming quite worried that his punches consistently failed to do any lasting damage—and that Arachnolord showed no sign of fatigue. In contrast, Specs could feel his heart pounding in his chest, his breath growing hot in his throat.
He took a step back as Arachnolord aimed a swat at him, then aimed a barely-dodged spinning kick at his head. Palmer's hand grabbed his ankle in midair and slammed him headfirst into the concrete, sending a spiderweb of cracks jumping across the ground beneath them. Then he released Specs, who pushed himself up with a groan, facing away, and drew another handgun.
MOVE
Specs dove away as Arachnolord fired at his head, leaping over the first of a stack of shipping containers and springboarding over the rest. He fired a webline at the jib of a crane that hung over the dockyard, zipping up to it as he dodged another two shots. He stuck to the bottom of the jib for an instant before scrambling to the top, finally catching his breath as the rush of tingling in his head settled into an insistent pins-and-needles sensation.
He took a few deep breaths, his eyes shut. Without much ceremony, Specs shrugged his backpack off and webbed it to the struts in front of him, then his eyes landed on the slight bulge in a side pocket and a small spark of memory lit up his brain and tugged his lips into a smile. He reached into it and pulled out the small hypodermic dart he had taken from the floor of OsCorp. The needle was bent from where it had struck the quartz door, but the main body was fully intact, and Specs reckoned it would still work just fine.
There was a slight ripple of vibration in the steel beneath him and Specs flinched as the tingling rose to a nerve-wracking ring. The vibration seemed to pulse several times a second and he leaned over to see Arachnolord climbing up a webline, rising towards him alarmingly fast. Specs turned his wrist and glanced at his right web-shooter: the face was glowing red. He nodded to himself, then proceeded to fire a collection of web shots down at Arachnolord.
Palmer twisted to avoid a few, growling as he returned fire with his own webbing. He wrapped his arm around his webline and kicked out, entering into a swing and sticking to the bottom of the jib twenty feet from Specs. He climbed to the top just in time to see Specs load a new cartridge into his right web-shooter, but then the younger boy's head shot up as Palmer pulled out an automatic rifle.
"What the fuck, man," Specs said, his tone more annoyed than anything as he threw his hands up. They trembled visibly. "What are you, the Spidey and the Punisher of your iteration?"
move
Specs lunged off the crane, barely avoiding the path of incoming fire. He fired a webline as he fell, swinging under the crane and behind another stack of shipping containers before he dropped.
His leg burned as he landed on it and began to run. He could feel the booby traps Palmer had set around the area—explosives, most likely. The ringing in his head peaked as he rounded a corner and he dove, curled into a ball, through a hole in the nearly invisible spiderweb that had been set up as a tripwire. He hit the ground running again, conscious of the rising tingle that foretold Palmer's approach.
Keep…moving…
He gasped at the spike in tingling, flinching into the wall, an instant before Palmer appeared on top of the shipping container opposite him. The rifle in his hands was already aimed at him. Specs' fingers stuck to the wall above and behind him, and he flipped himself up and over the wall an instant before gunfire perforated it. The maneuver had sent him into a backflip and he fired another barrage of web shots in Palmer's general direction.
His landing on the opposite side of the wall was less than graceful, overbalancing and falling onto his ass as pain jolted up his leg. He sat for a second, gasping. Then the tinging flared again and he scrambled to his feet and to the side as his foe leaped over the wall to meet him.
Palmer paused as he looked at the kid who stood to face him. His fists were up, his stance a crouch typical of a Spider-Man, but his breath was audible even from six feet away and his shoulders were slumped. His lips curled into a smile, revealing a flash of sharp lower teeth. "Getting tired, kid?" he mocked.
Specs' head tilted in a gesture of reluctant agreement. "It's a workout," he admitted, but he gave Palmer no chance to exploit the fact and lunged forward. Tired he may have been, he was still much faster than Arachnolord, and the latter was midway through bringing his gun around when Specs shoved it back and punched him in the face.
Palmer grunted, releasing his gun with one hand and swinging at Specs' face. The kid ducked, grabbing one of Palmer's knees with one hand and stabbing it above the kneecap with the dart in his other hand. Palmer roared in pain, and Specs torqued his wrist, breaking off the needle point in the man's leg and tossing the main dart aside. Then Arachnolord kicked out and sent Specs tumbling across the concrete.
The barrel of the automatic rifle was bent from their struggle. Arachnolord straightened it slightly and started to storm towards Specs, but then he stopped, his footing suddenly unsure. He almost fell before catching himself, clutching and shaking his head. His vision swam. "Fuck," he breathed. "What the hell was in that dart?"
"Not sure," Specs groaned, dragging himself to his feet. The left lens of the goggles he wore over his mask was badly cracked. "But from what I've seen, it can make an elephant dizzy, so…" He shrugged, but didn't drop his guard. He had also seen that said elephant would manage to burn through the concoction in only a few minutes, and didn't want Palmer to get the chance to try. A webline hit Palmer in the arm, and Specs yanked him off-balance and landed a spinning kick on the side of his head.
Palmer's hit the ground ten feet away, where he attempted to get to his feet. "Guuhh…you…dirty rat," he snarled, reaching into his coat. "Couldn't beat me mano y mano, so you decided to drug me? That how it is?!"
"Something like that," Specs shot back. He had started to walk towards Arachnolord, but stopped as the sensation in the back of his head went shrill. A whine like a siren, rising to a shriek. Experience told him to hit Palmer now now now, but a wave of terror grabbed him by the throat and screamed to run. He caught a flash of white PVC pipe in Palmer's hand as he turned around, and the ringing told him all he needed to know.
move
Arachnolord threw the pipe bomb like a fastball. Specs gasped, diving to one side and running, but Palmer knew what he was doing, and the bomb exploded before he got far. Specs buckled as the shockwave hit, knocking him flat, and it was with some difficulty that he got back up. His entire body ached from the shock; his back in particular burned where shrapnel had pierced his skin. Even so, his head still rang like a fire alarm, rising above and drowning out the ringing in his ears. He turned to face Palmer, who was attempting to aim the rifle at him, and promptly dove to the side as the gunfire started again.
Review time, he thought. Those booby traps I sensed are gonna be more pipe bombs. They're linked to tripwires, and I don't need to be dealing with shrapnel. He stopped short as Palmer attempted to lead him and the ground just in front of him shattered from a burst of lead. Need to keep mobile—good luck trying to hit me while I'm zipping around the place, asshole. He's already burning through that sedative, though, and I'm wearing out.
Indeed, he had come to a stop on top of the crates that flanked them on either side, still coiled like a spring but his entire body slumped. He had darted out of sight in a final burst of speed before resting, and Palmer stalked around the corridors between the shipping crates. He dropped the empty magazine from the rifle, clicking a new one in from his coat pocket. Specs skittered after him, the whine in his head growing increasingly insistent as Palmer's footing grew surer.
Specs had already concluded that Arachnolord's danger sense was less sensitive than his own, but he still had no real knowledge of its limits. For all he knew, any minute now the sedative would wear off enough for Specs to be detected. He decided not to give it the chance. Hesitating for only a second, the tingling in his head like the rattle of a snake, he stepped off the stack of shipping containers and dropped towards Arachnolord.
It was true that Palmer's spider-sense was considerably less powerful than Specs' even at its best. It was also true that the sedative dulled it, as though it was trying to warn him through a sea of murky water. Nevertheless, it could still warn him of severe danger, and now he whirled, already aiming upward and sending a spray of lead towards Specs' falling form.
movemovemovemoveMOVE
Specs cried out, twisting as best he could in midair and kicking a foot out to launch himself away from the crates. The rifle's barrel had been straightened as best as Palmer could manage, but it was still wildly inaccurate. That didn't matter so much, though, when the goal was to create a veritable cloud of bullets, and Specs screamed as white-hot pain tore through his injured leg. Nevertheless, he ricocheted off of the container opposite his perch and dove through the bullet hail, tackling Palmer to the ground.
"Oof!" Palmer grunted, the back of his head cracking the concrete beneath them. Specs had landed on him, but his leg was on fire and he screamed, clutching it, blood seeping around his hands. Palmer took advantage of his distraction to punch him in the face, and when Specs recoiled in response Palmer brought his feet up and kicked him away.
Specs tumbled backwards, the tinging in his head rapidly rising in volume as he moved. He gasped and stuck to the ground, stopping himself short. His entire skull tingled as though electrified, throwing into sharp relief the webbing tripwire he had stopped just short of falling into. He glanced back at it for a second, then forward again as Palmer leapt to his feet.
"Nice try, kid," he growled, pulling out another pipe bomb. Specs gasped through his nose.
MOVE
His leg screamed as he tried to jump upwards, crippling the action. The pipe bomb sailed just beneath him, and its explosion triggered that of the booby trap. The shockwave caught Specs full across the back; he could feel the fire licking his skin as shrapnel tore through him and he hit a shipping container shoulder-first, denting it and tumbling to the ground.
Palmer had turned away from the explosion. The shockwave had knocked him back and he bled, but he sauntered towards Specs with a grim confidence as the latter tried to pull himself up. Specs faced away from Palmer, but the high-pitched gasp told Palmer that the kid was fully aware of his approach and he accelerated into a run.
Specs was still trying to get up. His breath came hot and his throat was ragged; when he moved at all, the PVC shards in his back shifted and dug deeper. Still, even with his left leg giving out beneath him, he threw a hand forward and fired a webline at the top of the nearest container. He pulled on it hard—but a hand grabbed his ankle a moment before he had zipped fully out of reach and ripped him off the line.
Specs turned as Arachnolord dragged him back, kicking with his other leg. The blow barely registered. Arachnolord reached out and grabbed Specs by the shirt; when the kid aimed a weak punch at him, he caught his wrist and crushed the web-shooter strapped to it. A sound like outrage escaped Specs' throat, but then Palmer slammed him against the metal wall of a shipping crate and aimed a punch at his face. When Specs' head managed to twist out of the way and Palmer instead punched a hole in the wall, he growled and tried again.
Three fingers—middle, ring, and pinkie—pressed hard against the trigger of the crushed web-shooter.
As one would expect, a thin line of webbing completely failed to jump from the shooter's nozzle. As one might not think to expect, a mess of transparent, faintly gold strands exploded from the shooter's crushed face—with the expansion chamber ruptured, the web fluid could react with oxygen freely, and in so doing expanded to a hundred fifty times its original volume. The explosion of webbing blasted the shooter's face open, and Palmer gave a yell of surprise as he found himself ensnared in a huge, crude net of webbing.
Specs, for his part, pushed him away with his feet, sticking to the wall he had been pinned to. The spaghetti-like tangle of webbing came away from what remained of the Teflon-coated chamber easily, and Specs crawled up the wall backwards, taking the chance to catch his breath.
"Okay, listen," he called down at the struggling man beneath him. Some webbing was tearing, but only that which stuck to skin—where webbing met fabric, webbing won. "Don't take this the wrong way, man…but I think there might be something wrong with you."
Arachnolord growled as he tore away the last of the webbing holding him. His efforts had destroyed his shirt and leather jacket, revealing several large, bandaged wounds.
"You can't keep this up forever, Specs!" he hissed upwards.
He was right. Specs had his breath back, but it was painful breath, every gasp reminding him of the broken ribs he had been ignoring and his parched throat. His costume's front was soaked in sweat; the back was torn and bloodied. Arachnolord jumped at him, and Specs darted away and over the top of the subsequent stack of containers. He fired a webline in midair and zipped to the left as Palmer followed him, sliding under another webbing tripwire, and Specs ducked around a corner and waited with baited breath.
Palmer threw a punch almost before he had rounded the corner, but Specs ducked easily and punched him in the amber eye. An inhuman growl escaped his throat as he kicked at Specs' bad leg, and when that leg buckled and Specs fell to one knee, Arachnolord raised both fists above his head and brought them down on where Specs had been.
Had been because Specs had rolled between his legs, unfolding into a crouch behind him. His fingers brushed across something long and thin and he looked down: a pencil, sharpened by knife, lay on the wet ground beneath him, likely dropped by a worker earlier in the day. Specs gathered it into his fist as Arachnolord turned around and started towards him again.
Specs took a deep breath. He darted upward once Palmer had come close enough, uppercutting him to little effect. Palmer stuck a hand to Specs' shoulder, but the red spandex tore instantly as Specs moved away. Frustrated, Palmer managed to catch Specs' arm and fired a web shot at his face. It splattered across the left side of the goggles, and Specs kicked Palmer in the kneecap before he pulled himself closer and, in the blink of an eye, pulled Palmer's arm upwards.
"AAAGGH!"
A thunderbolt of pain had exploded from Palmer's wrist, down into his forearm and right to his brain. He wrenched his arm away and kicked Specs in the chest before looking down at his arm, and his eyes went wide at what he saw. The small slit in his skin, just to the right of the vein in his wrist, the one that contained the spinnerets he had used to such ruthless and clever ends in the past—it now had a thin stick of painted wood sticking halfway out of it, ending in an eraser worn down to nothing. He grabbed the pencil and pulled tenderly, hesitating as his nerves screamed in response, then steeled himself and yanked.
"AAAAAAGGHHH YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR THAT!" he screamed down at Specs. The bloodied pencil was clutched in one hand, snapped in half by his grip, as blood and webbing dripped from his ruined spinneret in the other wrist. He threw the pencil aside and came at Specs like a locomotive.
movemovemovemoveM—
Specs' head dented the metal shipping crate as he was smashed into it. His eyes had closed reflexively at the impact, but he forced them open as he felt two hands close around his throat. He would've gasped had he been able to breathe; he settled for clawing at Arcahnolord's fingers and kicking desperately. Arachnolord's amber eyes were bloodshot and his teeth bared; his fingers tightened on Specs' neck despite his best efforts.
Desperately, Specs' hands lunched forward and clawed away the bandage across Palmer's chest. The wound beneath it bore careful stiches, but they were little match for Specs' fingers. He clawed at the wound, feeling already-damaged flesh tear further and he hooked his fingers inside and ripped away.
Arachnolord screamed through his teeth for several seconds, eyes and fingers still locked on Specs' throat. Then he ripped one hand away and punched the kid in the face with as much force as he could muster. There was a sickening crunch as the kid's nose broke from the impact, and then he managed to kick his opponent a few feet away and collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.
He could breathe again, but not with ease; it's hard to breathe through a mask soaked with blood. Specs' fingers tore away the fabric that covered the lower part of his face, revealing the broken nose and blood smeared down to his chin. He looked up at the reason his skull was blaring like an air raid siren, who had a hand across his chest and was staring back as if he was so angry he had forgotten what he was doing. Blood dripped from under his arm.
Specs couldn't help it. The snarking was wired too deeply into his system. His eyes lit up behind the shattered goggles, and he forced his swollen, blood-covered lips into a cheesy grin.
The back of his head informed him this was a bad idea.
"YOU LITTLE SHIT!" screamed Arachnolord. He aimed a kick at Specs' head, who barely managed to lean back to avoid it. Not amused, Palmer drew from his pocket the last of his pipe bombs, activating it and tossing it in front of Specs' crouched form. The ringing in his head was deafening as he somehow found the strength to scramble to his feet and down the corridor.
MOVEMOVEMOVE—
Somehow, Specs had jumped, and the explosion propelled him directly into a shipping container hard enough to knock it off its stack. He fell off the other side of the stack as, with echoing notes, the crate tumbled to a halt on the ground and he found himself in the main area of the dockyard, where this had all began.
He tried to pull himself to his feet, his hands shifting a few inches under him and legs scraping on the concrete beneath. Footsteps pounded through the ground and his head rang—though that may have been from the explosion; he wasn't sure anymore. What he did know was that a pair of hands turned him over and onto his back, and then Arachnolord was leering over him.
"You put up a good fight, Specs," he muttered. "But you're dead. Any last words?"
Specs attempted to spit on him. The saliva instead pooled on his own lower lip.
"Didn't think so," Palmer said, and pulled a chitin-covered fist back.
The sounds that echoed around that yard for the next several minutes were nightmarish. Hardened fists smashed against Specs' face, his chest and stomach, and any attempt he made to hit back were flatly slapped down and Arachnolord just punched him again. His eyes wouldn't open. All he could taste was blood, all he could feel were fists slamming against him. He had felt his ribs break worse than they had already; his jaw was fractured. He couldn't breathe. But he thought he could hear laughter.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Palmer looked up from the bleeding pulp that might even have been a kid, just in time to feel two sets of arms grab each side of him and drag him back. He looked up to see two Spider-People glaring at him through shattered eyepieces—one set of green eyes, one set of blue.
Scarlet threw him backward. He caught himself by sticking to the ground, his path stopping just a few feet away, but that suited Scarlet just fine and the punch she gave him echoed off the concrete seawall and metal warehouses. It wasn't like Specs' punches; Palmer's entire body felt the blow as he jerked to the side. He shook it off, coming back around and returning the blow, but Scarlet blocked it with her forearm and Lucky took the opportunity to kick him in the ribs.
"You mess with one of us?" he said, teeth audibly gritted. "You mess with all of us."
Palmer staggered backwards, forcing himself to breathe, as the two came at him again. He went to fire a web shot at Lucky's face, but his forearm only shot a thin stream of blood in response and he clutched it with a cry of pain. Spider-sense went off, and he looked up just in time for Scarlet to catch his jaw with a spinning kick. He recoiled right into Lucky's punch, and when he flew backwards two weblines hit him simultaneously and pulled him back. He managed to block Lucky's punch, but then Scarlet swept his legs out and brought him to his knees.
"What izz that infernal racket?!" came a voice from the third warehouse across the street. "Can't Wazzpinator recharge in peace around here?" Waspinator emerged from the shadows and looked over the assembled heroes, just in time to see Scarlet grab Palmer's hair and punch him in the face twice. "Oh. Well, this izz going to be—OH SLAG!" His gaze had chanced across Honeybee, who gave him a cheeky wave as she started to fly towards him. "IT'S THE ORGANIC THAT CONTROLLED THE INSECTS THAT GOT INSIDE WAZZPINATOR! WAZZPINATOR NOT WISH TO HAVE ENCORE OF THAT!"
"You coward!" Blackarachnia snapped, joining him. "If you want to do something done around here, you've got to do it yourself!"
"You ready to kick some ass, kiddo?" Drake whispered to Ollie as they both started walking towards the Predacons.
"Hell yeah I am!" she replied. "And don't call me kiddo." They both broke into a run, and Ollie vaulted over the fence and fired two web shots at each of the Transformers. Blackarachnia dodged the first, but the second shot hit her square in the shoulder and the resultant jolt of electricity surged through her systems, throwing them all off. As for Waspinator, both shots hit him in the face and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Blackarachnia clawed the webbing off, aiming at Ollie and shooting at her. A webline hit Ollie's shoulder, and she found herself yanked to the side by Drake and caught by Teresa. The latter two sprinted at Blackarachnia, leaving Ollie behind. Teresa leapt, kicking her in the face, as Drake fired two weblines at her ankles and pulled.
"Gaah!" Blackarachnia fell backwards, landing hard on her back and taking out a chunk of the wall behind her. Teresa crouched above her, punching her in the face, and she rolled over, transforming into Beast Mode and swiping at her with enormous metal spider legs.
Another web shot hit her in the back. Blacharachnia screamed as the electricity fried some of her systems, and she struggled to turn towards Ollie to attack. Unfortunately for her, Drake met her halfway and punched her back, and a pair of arms wrapped around one of her legs, dragging her backwards. Then she felt a small weight land on her back and a final surge of electricity ran through her systems, overloading them and knocking her out.
The four Spiders froze in place for a second, scrutinizing the Predacon carefully. Then Ollie, still standing on top of her, released the weblines she held in each hand and gingerly stepped off, Teresa instinctively helping her down. Blue dropped the legs and began walking around the robot as, with a buzz that wound down, Honeybee landed beside them, and they stood in awkward silence for a half-second before a few bees flew in between all of them, carrying a circular object the diameter of maybe a CD. They dropped it into Honeybee's hands, and she held it for the others to see. "What is it?"
Blue squinted at the center of the machine. He reached out a hand and detached the camera lens there, examining it.
Teresa looked over his shoulder. "That was on the back of Specs' phone, wasn't it?"
"I don't know," Blue replied. "I didn't see his phone earlier. It kinda looks like a camera lens—"
"Oh, shit," Drake interrupted. "Specs." They turned as one back towards the dockyard, which was now in deep shadow as the wall cut off the setting sun. The four of them jogged back to the fence and easily leapt over, just as Lucky and Scarlet finished tag-teaming Arachnolord.
Specs was battered almost beyond recognition; his eyes were swelled to slits behind the shattered goggles and purpling; his nose was broken and blood stained what was visible of his face. His costume's shirt was torn away; his muscles looked like they had been smashed beneath the skin; the broken edges of his ribs bulged against his skin. His legs and arms were bleeding and bruised almost beyond recognition; every breath was labored and wheezing. He was generally covered in second-degree burns, and deep, deep holes pitted him where shrapnel had done its work. But somehow, he had managed to roll onto his side, and his left arm and left leg were moving in slow, jerky spasms as he dragged himself across the ground, leaving a smear of blood on the concrete like a slug trail.
All the other Spider-Men hesitated several feet away from him, staring down at their battered brethren with silent horror. Teresa tried to cover Ollie's eyes, but the prepubescent girl brushed her hands away with a grunt of "Ach, geddoff." Blue hesitantly took a step towards Specs, and the motion seemed to break the spell. Lucky, Scarlet, and Blue rushed to Specs in that order, crouching down on either side of him.
"Oh, my gosh," Blue muttered.
"Specs!" snapped Lucky, grabbing his left hand as it reached forward again. "Stop moving, dammit! Are you trying to make it worse?!" The hand felt oddly swollen, causing Lucky to look at it, and he hurriedly dropped it as he realized two of the fingers were broken.
"…Cmnra."
Teresa leaned forward from where she stood, starting forward hesitantly. "What? What'd he say?"
"He said 'camera,'" replied the three at his side in unison, followed by Blue's addition of, "I think." He leaned down and held the lens in front of Specs, who peered at it through eyes swollen nearly shut and a haze of half-consciousness. "Specs, don't worry. We've got your camera. Now will you stop moving before you somehow make these injuries even more severe?"
Specs slowly rolled over to look up at him. The left side of his jaw was so swollen you'd think there was a grapefruit in his cheek, but he opened his mouth and attempted to say something else.
"And stop trying to talk," Scarlet added, leaning in. "It looks like your jaw is fractured. Whatever snarky comment you've got, it can wait. Honeybee! Honeybee, get over here!"
"Tmple," Specs mumbled. "Gme t' Claire Tmple." He tried without much success to bring his right arm up and grab Blue's shoulder. "Nrs…Wrks n' Matt smtms. M'bg. Ts n th crn…"
"What?" Blue demanded, leaning in. "On the crane?" He looked up at the massive crane above them. At that moment, Honeybee stopped in front of the three, and Blue stood up to give her room.
"I don't know how much I can do here," she said as she sat where Blue had been. "My honey's not a miracle fix! I don't know if it can even do internal injuries!"
"Smear it on an open wound!" Lucky snapped, as Blue jumped towards the crane behind them. "Whatever makes it work might seep into his bloodstream or something."
"…w…wht?"
"She can make honey that accelerates healing," Scarlet explained to Specs, whose brow furrowed painfully.
"…dfk?"
"Seriously, stop trying to talk. The swelling's getting worse. Hey!" She shook Specs' head slightly as his eyes closed. "Don't pass out! You might go into shock! Tiger—sorry, Lucky, push his ribs into place and bind them with webbing. We need to get him home ASAP."
"I found his backpack," Blue interjected, landing next to them with a dark red backpack on his shoulders.
"Great," said Lucky, not really paying attention. "…Alright, listen. I think it'd be best if two of us carry him between us. I'm gonna make a sling to carry him in."
"I can do that," Blue said. "My web-shooters have a setting for a net, so it should be easy enough to—"
"What should we do?" Drake asked, finally stepping forward.
"Um…hmm. Listen, why don't you go ahead of us and get out whatever medical supplies you can find? Specs said he's got a first aid kit yesterday."
"He also said he was a mad scientist," Drake added, ignoring the mumble of "rdcl." "Maybe he's got a scalpel or something. Might help Honeybee reach his ribs." Without really waiting for a reply, he turned, fired a webline at the top of the fence, and web-zipped out of sight, followed by Teresa and Ollie.
Blue, who had spent the last several seconds constructing a long, hammock-like structure between his hands, stepped forward with the completed sling. "Guys, you're gonna have to help me get him into this."
Lucky glanced up and made eye contact with Scarlet, and the two of them as one lifted Specs up and into the sling. Each grabbed one end and began walking towards the nearest building. They hesitated as a loud whirring made itself known, and looked up to see a steel-blue jet slow down above them, panels in the wings retracting to reveal propellers and beginning to lower it down.
"There's an eagle logo in a circle on the side of it," Honeybee noted. "Apparently, it's some sort of government aircraft."
"SHIELD," said Lucky and Scarlet simultaneously.
"Uh, quick show of hands," said Blue. "Who wants to stick around for questioning?" When absolutely no one raised their hands, he added, "Thought so. Let's get out of here."