Chapter 18
Gwen POV
New York City had been through a lot of things, much of which had fallen on Spider-Woman's shoulders in the last year. At this point, supervillains were not only widely known to be a real concern, the city had its own prison just outside the city specifically for the purpose of moving those supervillains somewhere that could hold them in a hurry. New York even offered supervillain insurance now, for heaven's sake. But even if everyone in the city had it, Gwen knew that it would be little help against what was happening now.
Seriously, she took a nap for one hour after one of the most taxing days of her life, and somehow the city managed to fall into complete chaos during that time. What seemed like every criminal in the city had crawled out of their holes and were now laying waste to everything in sight, looting and pillaging and destroying, and Gwen's best efforts could barely stem the tide. There was brawling and fires and even killing on apparently every street in Manhattan, which Gwen tried to clean up one by one, but it was slow-going work.
Even the Raft had been blown wide open, quite possibly freeing all three of the surviving supervillains that Gwen had put away in the last year. Oh, sorry. Of course, she meant the supervillains that the PDNY had put away while Spider-Woman danced uselessly in the background and destroyed everything, according to Jameson.
Still, she wouldn't mind actually having the help of the cops with something like this, even if they did hate her, but of course, the one time Gwen actually wanted the police around, they were nowhere to be found. Typical.
Usually, this would be an even more impossible task than it seemed at the moment, but fortunately, even without the police, Gwen still wasn't entirely alone in fighting to save the city for once.
As Gwen jumped down in front of a group of civilians running from about half a dozen men armed with automatic rifles, hoping to attract their attention onto her instead of the innocent people, they smiled and cocked their guns with pleasure upon seeing her, clearly eager for a clear shot at Spider-Woman. But their smiles disappeared quickly as they suddenly heard the screeching of tires coming from behind them, and they all turned around to see the terrifying sight of a car rolling towards them at high speeds, apparently with no driver behind the wheel.
All six of them instantly panicking and trying to shove each other out of their way so they could avoid the vehicle approaching them, they had all lost sight of the threat of Spider-Woman, who took advantage of their confusion to run forward and tether two of them to the walls of the buildings on either side of her. She took down another one by punching him into the air and jumping up with him to yank his gun from his hand before she tied him up with webbing and used a web line to leave him hanging upside-down from an overhanging streetlight.
At this point, two more of them, both of whom had made it to the sidewalks on either side of the street surrounding Gwen, had been reminded of her presence, and now that they were out of the path of the car, they shared a nod with one another and both raised their rifles to aim at her, hoping to box her in. Unfortunately for them, Gwen's Spider-Sense alerted her to the danger on both sides, and she ran towards the last criminal still standing in the middle of the street and jumped off his chest into the air, momentarily staggering the one she'd bounced off and causing the others to hesitate to shoot.
Using that moment to her advantage, Gwen crouched in midair, making the target (herself) smaller as she looked back towards the cross-firing pair of enemies and crossed her wrists to shoot a web line onto both of their guns, then uncrossed her wrists to roughly pull them both back inwards, tugged forward by their own weapons, and back onto the street, where they bumped into each other under their momentum and exclaimed shortly in pain before Gwen landed between them and slammed their heads together, knocking them both out.
She then looked to the last criminal, who was just barely recovering enough to turn and see the speeding car about to hit him, prompting him to drop his rifle and put up his hands over his face in fear.
However, at the last moment, a blur of magenta light indicated the arrival of a figure who dropped in front of the car and held out one gauntleted hand to stop the car dead a foot away from hitting the criminal. The Prowler then vaulted on top of the car's hood so he could stand taller and glared down at the man while saying, "I would surrender if I were you."
Sadly, with his nerves as frayed as they were from his near-death experience and now coming face-to-masked-face with perhaps the scariest thing he'd ever seen, the criminal no longer had the sense to surrender and instead simply turned and began to run away.
Letting out a sigh of exasperation, Miles raised one of his hands and opened his hand to fire a grappling cable with a spiked end, which impaled itself through the man's shoulder before he could get far, causing him to scream out in agony, but he was quickly put out of his misery as Miles tugged on the line, pulling the criminal to fly backwards through the air and crash onto the hood of the car at Miles' feet, instantly knocking him out.
Miles turned the man over with his foot and released the grappling line to pull it out of his shoulder and reel it back into the gauntlet, then stepped down from the car and approached Gwen while complaining, "Why is it that they never just surrender when I tell them to?"
"In fairness, fight or flight is a very powerful thing," Gwen defended as she shot a web line onto a wall high above herself and began to swing herself away from this area, knowing that they needed to quickly get to the next.
A moment later, Miles appeared by her side, running up the wall then along the roof above her, and said, "I know that the whole city's on fire and everything, but shouldn't we be trying to get to the root cause of all this?"
Gwen didn't answer immediately, as she swung around the side of the building and ended up soaring above another group made up of a couple dozen criminals throwing homemade firebombs at surrounding buildings. Deciding to put a stop to it, Gwen released her web line and allowed herself to fall down towards them. While she still had yet to be spotted by this group, Gwen waited until they threw their next molotov towards an apartment window before she shot a web to catch it, then pulled it back so that it fell and exploded in front of the criminals themselves, who winced from the light and heat and took a few steps back to avoid the surprisingly returned attack.
Not all of them got away unscathed, either. A couple of gangbangers got some of the fire on their clothes, which they quickly began trying to put out. Most importantly, though, they had been distracted by the panic among their own ranks into ceasing their attacks on the homes and businesses around them. That meant that Gwen could now focus on dealing with the criminals themselves.
Shooting a web onto one's back while she was still above them, Gwen pulled herself down to him and grabbed his head before slamming it roughly to the ground, though she was careful to only knock him out despite the anger that still flowed through her from her dad's recent passing. As soon as Gwen had that thought, she tried to put it out of her mind, but she could only do so much, as was evidenced by the way that as she stood up to face the remaining, now-alerted arsonists around her, she didn't make her usual joke and instead just glared silently at them all.
Admittedly, this behavior seemed to unnerve some of them, no doubt the ones that had encountered Spider-Woman before, as she noticed them exchanging glances of confusion and nervousness. Good. They should be nervous, Gwen thought to herself, reveling in the way they all hesitated to attack her.
However, the moment was ruined when Miles suddenly leapt down from above, landing behind the group who were all now facing Gwen, and said, "Sorry, boys. We had a dry season this summer, so fireworks and firebombs are both off the table."
Sadly, the pyromaniacs didn't care for the warning and all began to ready themselves to attack. Some of them began walking towards Miles, who narrowed his eyes at them and began his own approach, just as intent on standing his ground as they were with theirs.
Unfortunately for them, they weren't quite as well-equipped for the task as Miles was, and as he neared the criminal at the front of the line, he reached an arm out to his side to stab his claws into the side door of a car parked on the edge of the road, then thrust his arm forward forcefully to rip the door off of its hinges and send it flying into the taller man, who was thrown off his feet. Then, Miles dashed forward in a blur and began tearing his way through the rest of them, regularly tossing bodies into the air with every hit.
Soon, some of the firebugs towards the back of the group began getting nervous as Miles relentlessly fought his way closer to them and apparently decided that they'd rather take their chances with Spider-Woman. However, when they turned around to face her once again, they would find that fighting her was indeed not much better than fighting Prowler.
Shooting a web line onto a pair of them standing next to each other, Gwen tugged on the web lines to pull the two criminals closer to her, then fell on her back just as they arrived so she could kick them both in the gut, launching them straight upwards. While they were airborne, Gwen did a handspring back onto her feet and instantly darted forward, running towards another pair of criminals while they were still reaching for some sort of weapons inside their jackets.
They tensed up upon seeing Spider-Woman's rapid approach as they realized that they wouldn't have enough time to counter her attack, but they were both surprised when Gwen simply ran right between them, not even trying to hit them. However, their relief was short-lived as Gwen kept going until she was right beneath a traffic light pole hanging over the road, then fired two web lines behind herself to stick onto the feet of the pair of criminals. Then, before they could react to it in any way, Gwen jumped upwards in a 15-foot high backflip, tugging the pair off of their feet so that they could dangle upside-down from the pole that the web lines were now tethered to, Gwen sticking her landing perfectly on the ground beneath them.
At that moment, Gwen's Spider-Sense tingled to remind her of the other pair of criminals that she'd launched upwards, who were now currently on their way back to the ground. Jumping up, Gwen bounced off the chests of the two men hanging above her, causing them to grunt in surprise and a pistol to fall out of each of their jackets, but Gwen ignored all that and focused on getting back across the street just in time to catch the other two men, holding them a few inches above the asphalt by the backs of their shirts.
If they'd been allowed to hit the ground after falling from that height, it undoubtedly would've been extremely painful for them, probably meaning quite a few broken bones, and to be honest, the angrier part of Gwen was almost tempted to let it happen. She knew that they would've both lived, even if it was possible that they might get paralyzed or something. But Miles was still just a dozen yards from her, acting as a replacement for her currently-damaged moral compass, and Gwen knew that letting these people, despicable crooks as they were, get too badly hurt was not like her.
That didn't mean that she was just going to let them off easy, either. As they were both mumbling their thanks to Spider-Woman for sparing them from where they hung in her hands, Gwen spun around and tossed them bodily, making them roll roughly to a stop sitting on the ground with their backs against the wall of the apartment building to the side of the road, where Gwen proceeded to pin them in place with quick blasts of webbing to restrain their hands and cover their mouths.
And she also followed up by shooting a ball of webbing to hit them both in the groin, making both men groan in muffled pain.
Okay, okay, maybe it wasn't the most heroic takedown she'd ever done, and Gwen recognized it, but she was doing her best. And she'd saved them from a much worse fate before she'd hurt them. Still, Gwen knew that she had to do better. Allowing anyone to get hurt when it could be avoided, even the bad guys, was against Gwen's philosophy. It wasn't something Miles would approve of, nor Peter, and not… not her dad.
The thought of her dad still hung heavy over Gwen's mind, and of course it always would, but Miles was right. The city still needed Spider-Woman, meaning Gwen would have to get over her current dilemma if she wanted to focus on being the good guy and helping people. It was a tall order, one that the city didn't even know it was asking of her, but Gwen knew that she needed to recover from her loss. Good, innocent people were counting on her to do it.
Besides, with Miles sticking by her side, it would definitely be quite a bit easier. And maybe, given time, the death of Gwen's dad would help inspire her to save even more people, just as Peter's death had done. Besides, Gwen couldn't let the Prowler become the main funny one. Gwen had a reputation to uphold, and she'd seen what a Spider-person without a sense of humor was like. All of the weird and none of the fun.
Making an attempt to get back into her more sociable behavior, Gwen ran over to where Miles was nearly finished dealing with the rest of the arsonists and webbed onto the face of one right next to Miles before pulling herself towards him and kicking the criminal in the stomach, knocking him down.
"I was beginning to wonder when you'd get over your stage fright," Miles told her in greeting.
Trying to resume their earlier conversation, Gwen shot a web line onto another nearby criminal and pulled him in as she said, "If we want to get at the root of this invasion, we need to head after Murdock. Unless you know someone else that could've started something like this?"
"Every thug in Manhattan randomly decided to destroy everything in sight all at once? Yeah, I'm betting it's the Kingpin," Miles responded as he knocked the bad guy Gwen had grabbed to the ground, knocking him out with a single punch. "Only trouble is, at this rate, this city would be gone by the time we had Murdock in custody. We wouldn't have saved anything."
Gwen thought it over for a second, then suggested, "Maybe we just need to buy enough time for reinforcements."
"The police?" Miles scoffed. "They're no-shows, and honestly? With how much they don't like us, I'm wondering if maybe that's for the best."
Scrambling for hope, Gwen said, "The army, then. Someone's got to come, they can't just let New York City get taken over!"
Miles considered it, then shrugged and sighed, "I guess we don't really have much choice, do we? But the army wouldn't stand a chance against the supervillains. We need to stem the tide. Who do we have?"
Thinking through her old villains, recalling her bad encounters with each of them as she named them off, Gwen answered, "No more Scorpion just leaves Rhino, Vulture, and Shocker."
"So super-strength, flight, and vibrations," Miles noted. "Alright, how hard could it be? Shall we finish up here and go hang out with the 'in' crowd?"
"Yeah, these guys are getting kind of boring," Gwen agreed. "You want to do the honors?"
Miles POV
Nodding his acceptance, Miles turned and began to set out to end this while Gwen just punched him in the shoulder as he passed and encouraged him, "Go get 'em, tiger!"
By now, there were only nine firebugs left to deal with, all of whom instantly got tagged on Miles' HUD with a thought, allowing him to track all of their movements. Once that was done and Miles was sure that his enemies wouldn't be able to sneak up on him, he started his task of trying to intimidate them all into submission.
To start, he focused his glare on one particular criminal standing to the side of the street, the only one who had successfully managed to pull out his pistol so far, and began approaching him slowly and menacingly. Seeing this, the criminal raised his pistol and fired at Miles, and even with how bad his hands were shaking in terror, the bullet flew straight and true towards its target, but Miles just raised one hand and let the bullet flatten itself against his protected palm before falling to the ground.
Even more frightened now, the criminal took a few steps back until he was pressed against a car parked on the side of the road, which he quickly moved around to get on the sidewalk, placing the car between himself and Prowler as a form of meager protection. However, his defenses were even more feeble than he knew, and Miles just walked right up to the car and kicked it in the side so that it mounted the curb and slammed into the criminal, knocking him into the wall of the building behind himself before he fell down, unconscious.
With that job done, Miles turned back around to see that several more of the arsonists had drawn their guns now, but they seemed hesitant to use them, no doubt because of what had happened to their friend when he had tried the same thing, especially the fact that they now knew that Miles could deflect bullets with his hands and had the reflexes to do it as well. However, one particularly bold vandal, who seemed to be a woman underneath the mask she wore over the lower half of her face, lit one of her firebombs and threw it at Miles instead of trying to use her gun, hoping that this would do the trick.
However, to all of their collective surprise, Miles simply caught the molotov with one hand and effortlessly crushed the bottle in his grip, then kept holding his hand up for them all to see as the alcohol caused fire to cover his hand, but Miles didn't even wince as he simply let the flames burn out and leave his gauntlet slightly blackened but undamaged. Then, while the remaining criminals were all still frozen in shock, Miles looked around at them all and asked, "Anyone else?"
As if they had coordinated it, all of the arsonists began to hesitantly throw down their weapons and put up their hands in surrender, none of them willing to continue fighting the demon with his super-strength and immunity to bullets and fire. Once that had been done, Gwen approached them all and ordered them to stand around in a close circle, after which Gwen used her webbing to tie them all together and restrain them in place on the ground.
With another street cleaned up, Gwen walked towards Miles and told him, "Good work, Prowler. Now, the supervillains. Do you know where we can find one to start with?"
Instantly turning around to face into the heart of the city, Miles extended the range of his scanners, which would help him examine a larger area but also reduced the amount of detail. However, he didn't look for anyone in particular, just anomalies in the area that could indicate the nearby presence of a supervillain, and he quickly found one. "I'm reading huge dust clouds about twelve hundred meters northwest of here."
Gwen looked at him in confusion for a moment, then asked, "And… What's that in feet?"
"Does it matter, Ms. Does-Whatever-A-Spider-Can?" Miles asked in exasperation.
Shrugging as she shot a web upwards and began to swing northwest, Gwen responded, "Not really, I'm just kinda curious."
Joining her on the journey, Miles sighed but ultimately gave in and answered, "It's a little under four thousand feet. Happy?"
"Spectacular," Gwen responded as she shot a web onto two separate poles holding up a rooftop water tower and did a horizontal corkscrew spin as she slingshotted herself through it, the very image of grace as she narrowly slipped between all of the metal poles holding it up.
Yes, you are, Miles thought as he watched Gwen move, not able to stay annoyed at her as he'd already forgotten what they were talking about while he admired her instead.
However, he was soon broken out of his thoughts when Gwen called out, "Prowler! Watch out, traffic's rough!"
Confused, Miles looked at Gwen, then looked ahead of them just in time to recognize his need to dodge out of the way to avoid a car flipping end over end towards him in the air. Reaching out a hand in front of himself, Miles stabbed his claws into the roof of the car and held onto it as it flipped around, waiting until it was above the roof of an apartment building, then fired a burst of energy from his feet to slow the vehicle's descent, succeeding at the last moment in slowing it down enough so that he could land on his feet on the rooftop and set the car down harmlessly next to himself.
A moment later, while Miles was still trying to recover from what he'd just done, breathing hard, Gwen landed next to him and looked at the car as she commented, "You know, whoever owns this car should be relieved to find it alright, but they're going to be really confused when they find it up here of all places."
Walking over to the edge of the rooftop and looking below to see how the car had been thrown upwards, Miles looked at a familiar, overlarge silhouette and said sarcastically, "Oh, look. We found Rhino. Hooray."
Walking up by his side to look at Rhino as well, Gwen sighed, "And he seems even angrier than last time. Probably didn't appreciate getting beaten twice. That means extra fun for us."
"You know, you'd think I'd get used to this guy throwing giant things at me, but I never do," Miles continued complaining, still somewhat miffed about getting surprised with needing to catch a car.
Gwen just shrugged and ran forward to jump off the edge of the roof towards Rhino while saying, "Hey, at least he finally fulfilled the promise of flying cars. We've been waiting on that one for years."
Miles watched her go, not entirely thrilled about having to fight this guy again, but it was only his second time and Gwen's third, so he could hardly complain about it. And speaking of Gwen, a small smirk crossed Miles' face beneath his mask as he recalled what she'd said and thought to himself that maybe she was getting better.
He'd been somewhat concerned about Gwen needing to go be Spider-Woman again so soon after losing her dad. It wasn't fair for her, but oddly enough, getting back into a familiar environment with the simple job of saving as many people as possible actually seemed to be helping Gwen. With no time to think, she was acting more like herself, making jokes and saving lives. It seemed kind of weird to Miles, but then again, his own track record for dealing with grief was disturbingly similar. So with a sigh of resignation, Miles walked forward and stepped off the edge of the roof before using his shoes to launch himself at Rhino from above.
As Gwen had gone in slightly before, she'd already gotten Rhino's attention, leaving Miles open for an attack while the big guy was distracted, an opportunity that Miles took advantage of. Flying forward in a blur of movement, Miles reared back a fist as he approached Rhino and punched him hard in the back upon reaching him, making Rhino arch his back forward and let out a yell of mixed anger and pain.
However, Miles hadn't hit him quite hard enough to do any real damage through Rhino's armored suit, and the enormous, lumbering man turned around slowly to tower over Miles and stare him down with a glare that Miles met with equal intensity as he said, "Sir, I'm going to need you to come with me. Your half-brother, the Minotaur, wants to talk to you back at the station."
Rhino looked at Miles uncomprehendingly for a moment, then pointed one giant finger at him and said, "I remember you. The one with the zappy-pops in my neck. But you didn't make the jokes. Spider-Woman makes the jokes!"
"Yeah, she rubbed off on me a bit," Miles defended himself. "But you're right. I guess I kind of gave the impression before that I prefer to let my actions speak for me. Don't worry, I can still do that too."
Scowling, Rhino said, "I preferred you quiet."
Then, before Miles could react, he lifted one giant leg and kicked the teenage vigilante away from him, Miles flying backwards until he crashed into the side of a car, which flipped under his momentum and came crashing down on top of him, the interior of the vehicle getting destroyed as it was crushed under its own weight against the asphalt.
Flattened underneath a few thousand pounds of metal, Miles gritted his teeth and used his gauntlet-enhanced strength to keep the weight from crushing him while he heard Gwen resume her fight with Rhino, though it thankfully sounded like she was staying calm while she did so, meaning that she must assume that Miles was still alive down here despite the heavy hit he'd taken. Still, that didn't mean that Miles was going to stay down here. The fight hadn't started off too well for him, but Miles was far from being done.
With a low grunt of effort, Miles managed to get his legs underneath himself, then slowly began to stand back up while lifting the car upwards above himself, military pressing it once he had successfully managed to stand once again. In front of himself, he could see Gwen still fighting Rhino, though she was currently trapped with one of the giant man's hands wrapped around her waist to keep her from moving.
Knowing what to do next, Miles yelled out, "Spider-Woman! Get clear!" Gwen looked back at him, then at the destroyed car he was still holding over his head, and seemed to get a sense of the urgency of the situation. In response, Gwen curled her body up in a ball and used both her arms and legs to loosen Rhino's grip on her, then jumped up onto his arm and flipped out of the way.
Rhino looked enraged at losing Spider-Woman, but his expression of disappointment soon disappeared a second later as his face, and indeed, the rest of his body, disappeared behind the wrecked chassis of the car that Miles had thrown at him. Fortunately, his reflexes had been fast enough for him to catch the car before it could hit him fully, but that didn't mean much when Miles launched towards it from the other side and thrust one superpowered fist straight through the car to punch Rhino in the face so hard that he dropped the car and was sent tumbling backwards.
When he finally managed to plant one of his massive fists into the ground and drag himself to a stop, Rhino glared up at Miles from his place on his knees and used his free hand to wipe blood from his upper lip, where it was dripping onto from his nose, which was now bent at an odd angle. Then, pulling his fist out of the ground, Rhino instead slammed it to the ground right next to the hole and aimed the sharp metal horn on his head towards Miles as he said, "I will deal with the spider after you. I tire of you, durak."
"Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual," Miles responded, recognizing the signs that Rhino was readying himself to charge but refusing to back down from it.
His eyes wild with anger, Rhino let out a yell and ran towards Miles at full speed. Preparing to meet it, Miles looked back and asked Gwen, "Spider-Woman, mind giving me a boost?"
Gwen looked at Rhino closing in swiftly, seemingly in disbelief at her understanding that Miles actually intended to meet the Rhino's charge head-on. Still, knowing that she had no time to question it or change Miles' mind, Gwen just fired a line of webbing onto the walls of the buildings on either side of her, then pulled them together to form a single taut line in front of herself, then stepped back and nodded to Miles.
As soon as Miles knew that the improvised launcher was ready for him, he turned and dashed away from Rhino, then jumped up and launched himself into the web line Gwen had prepared with as much speed as he could muster, pulling the line backwards like some giant crossbow and Miles was the projectile to be fired.
All in less than a second, the web was pulled backwards and shot back again, firing Miles through the air towards Rhino at speeds even faster than he could achieve on his own, which ended with Miles punching the Rhino in the chest with such power that not only was the supervillain bested at his own game and thrown off his feet, but Miles' gauntlet had actually left a small crater in the chestplate of Aleksei's supposedly-indestructible suit of armor, making him land hard and leave a large crack in the road beneath him.
After it was done, Miles stood over his fallen enemy and watched him helplessly attempt to lift his hands to no avail, his eyes flitting around and staring at nothing in particular, clearly too dazed by the hit he'd taken for any sort of deliberate movement. Then, satisfied that Rhino had been thoroughly brought down, Miles turned and began to walk away from him, his gaze set with determination to bring the other criminals in the city down just as hard, again and again until they all ran for the hills and left Miles a clear path straight to the man behind all this.
Gwen POV
There was nothing quite like the feeling of bringing down Aleksei Sytsevich, as Gwen knew from multiple experiences. As strong as he was, it was impossible to defeat the rampaging Rhino and not feel like you'd just become the dominant life form on the planet, maybe even making you a bit arrogant. It'd happened to Gwen before, after the first and only time she'd ever taken him down single-handedly. Rhino had been the third supervillain she'd fought in her career as Spider-Woman, and after beating him, she'd gotten somewhat overconfident for a time with a three-time winning streak under her belt along with being able to honestly say that she'd overpowered the strongest force on the planet (at least physically).
Of course, her next encounter with another supervillain would knock some sense back into her, but still, for a time there, she'd felt invincible, like the most accomplished person in the history of the planet, no matter what anyone said about her. And to some degree, it was understandable that she'd start thinking that way, given what she'd done.
Hopefully, that same thing wouldn't happen to Miles, but Gwen thought she detected a slight swagger in the way he walked away from the crater in which laid the defeated Rhino, making her smirk beneath her mask and fold her arms over her chest as Miles approached her, amused by his subconscious shift in behavior. And yes, he hadn't exactly done it all by himself, but Gwen had only really supported him during the fight, keeping Rhino's attention for a few seconds and helping Miles get lined up for the finishing blow. In the end, it had been the Prowler who practically planted Aleksei, and anyone would have a hard time disputing that it was one of his more impressive heroic wins thus far.
As Miles arrived next to Gwen, he looked at her and asked, "So who's next?"
Scoffing, Gwen nodded towards Rhino and responded to Miles' question with a question of her own. "You take down the strongest guy on the planet and that's the first thing you say?"
"Rhino's the strongest there is, but not the most powerful," Miles said as he stepped past her, then looked back and added, "The most powerful man is currently in his office, reclining in his chair while his forces tear the city down. And I'm aiming to take him down today too, and if that's going to happen, we better get back to work."
Shamelessly confident, scarily determined, and unrealistically ambitious. Gwen's boyfriend was just like her in all the right ways, and she loved him for it. (Along with more than a few other reasons.) His inspirational speeches could use a little work, but at least he was staying focused on their objective.
Sadly, even though Miles was helping to keep her focused on the task at hand, Gwen didn't know how to respond to his question of who they should go after next. Usually, it took her a couple days or at least several hours before she could intercept these supervillains (unless they wanted to be found, which was never good), and that was when the rest of the city wasn't currently being attacked on every single street at once. Besides, they didn't have that kind of time.
Throwing up her arms helplessly, Gwen hopefully suggested, "I don't know, could you… Maybe just do that scanning thing you did. Try to find some irregularities again."
Nodding in agreement, Miles looked around at the surrounding buildings, clearly using his mask to scan for anything unnatural, but soon just looked down and shook his head as he said apologetically, "There's too much interference. All I can see is destruction everywhere, explosions and fires and buildings crumbling."
Having an idea, Gwen asked, "Can you check for patterns? Maybe a path, something moving fast, quick hit-and-runs?"
Placing a hand to the side of his mask and activating his scanner again, Miles did as Gwen had suggested, looking around more slowly this time, then finally said, "I think I've found something. A line of explosions, going down one street after another, way faster than any car or even a bike."
"That's got to be Vulture," Gwen said with certainty, recognizing the behavior despite not being able to see it herself.
Looking up and sighing with exasperation, Miles wondered aloud, "Rhino, Scorpion, now Vulture? Why do so many people in this city insist on naming themselves after animals?" He then looked at Gwen and hurriedly added, "No offense."
Gwen tried not to be offended by what he'd said, but having gained a certain defensive instinct for spiders in the last year, she couldn't stop herself from telling him, "You're just jealous that we could actually pick a specific animal to be themed after, Prowler."
Miles bowed his head at that, apparently having resigned himself to hearing something along those lines, but gave in and told her, "Alright, fair enough. But moving on, can we go after Vulture now?"
Waving him on, Gwen answered, "Lead the way, my ambiguous friend."
Grumbling to himself in low Spanish, Miles nevertheless turned and leapt upwards to begin leading the way towards where he'd located Vulture, and Gwen followed right behind him.
As they flew over the city streets, Gwen looked below and could see only terror and destruction everywhere in sight. The citywide panic was palpable, and Gwen wondered how many people they were passing by when they could be saving them. Every single innocent soul on the entire island needed saving right now, yet Spider-Woman was passing many of them by. When Gwen had started this, she'd promised to save everyone she could, that no one would get hurt while Spider-Woman was around. Now, she felt like she was breaking that promise.
Then, her mask of being unmoved by the scenes below, the illusion she'd tried to maintain, all fell away when her Spider-Sense tingled and she looked down and noticed an old man carrying a little boy in one arm while his other hand held tightly to a cane as he tried to hobble down the street as fast as he could to escape a group of four criminals, one of whom was using a baseball bat to destroy the man's store window while the others cheered, but one of them grinned maliciously and aimed a pistol at the old man's back.
Unable to keep herself from intervening, Gwen called out, "Prowler!" to let Miles know that she was stopping, then shot a web line from each of her wrists, one to grab the pistol from the man beneath herself and the other to pull herself to a stop, then allow her to swing down to kick the newly-disarmed criminal in the gut, knocking him away.
Then, as Gwen landed on the ground in front of the three remaining vandals and as the two of them directly in front of her recovered from their shock and leapt towards her at the same time, Gwen stood up straight just in time to catch one of their fists as it was thrust towards her before she redirected the punch into the face of his friend, who clutched at his nose and stumbled backwards in pain.
Appalled by what he'd been forced to do, the criminal whose fist Gwen had grabbed turned to his injured partner and began trying to apologize, but Gwen didn't give him a chance before she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his head, then threw herself into a backflip that pulled the man roughly along with her so that he flipped forward and landed hard on his back, knocked unconscious.
Not wasting a second, Gwen then turned to the last criminal, the one who held the bat, and ran towards him. Seeing her coming, the armed thief took a mighty swing at her head with his bat, but Gwen dodged it and shot a web onto the bat before pulling it from his hands and throwing it behind herself, where it hit the second criminal right in his already-damaged nose, making him curse and fall backwards once again as a fresh spurt of blood burst from his nose onto his face.
Meanwhile, when the wrongdoer currently engaged in combat with Gwen found himself disarmed, he quickly lost all of the confidence in his expression, but he still hesitantly put up his hands to defend himself and threw a punch at Gwen, which she also dodged by falling onto her back, then kicked her legs upwards to catch the criminal in the stomach and launch him up into the roof of the store, wooden planks cracking under his weight before he fell back to the floor in a groaning heap.
Finally, Gwen turned back to the second criminal she'd attacked, the one who now had a twice-broken nose, the last man standing. However, this one understandably seemed wary about facing her and was simply looking terrified as he tried to collect the blood dripping off of his face. Not really wanting to hurt this guy anymore either after seeing how defeated he already appeared, Gwen sighed and was about to simply web him up when suddenly a metal hand appeared on his shoulder before the man screamed out in pain and twitched uncontrollably as waves of electricity rushed over his body, and then he collapsed unconscious on the floor to reveal Miles standing behind him, looking at Gwen with exasperation.
Already knowing what it was about, Gwen began to say, "Look, I know, I know, we shouldn't have stopped. But these guys were going to-"
Miles put up a hand to stop her, then said, "Vulture's getting away while we're here, and you and I are the only ones who can stop him."
Confused as to why he seemed annoyed with her actions, Gwen defended herself, "I was saving lives!"
Miles gave her a sympathetic look but said, "I get it, Gwen. There were people in danger, and I don't blame you for wanting to save them. I really do understand. My mom is somewhere in the middle of all this, and trust me, I desperately want to find her and make sure she's safe. But everyone in the city has the same problems right now, and we need to keep moving. We're the only ones that can end this."
Gwen looked down shamefully. She didn't regret saving the old man and the boy he'd been carrying, but Miles was right. They didn't have time to save everyone, not yet. The supervillains were the biggest problems right now, and they were problems that would require other super-people to be solved.
Seeing her distress, Miles walked over to Gwen and placed a hand on her shoulder as he told her, "Don't worry. We're going to save everyone we can. I'm not gonna rest until this city's back to normal, its usual semblance of sanity."
Scoffing, Gwen said, "It's gonna be a long day, isn't it?"
"Long night too, most likely," Miles added. "But we can't keep stopping. We'll come back and help everyone else after all the most dangerous people are dealt with. Just… try to close your ears to it for now. I know it's hard, but until people like the supervillains and Murdock are gone, a dozen people are going to die for every one we save."
Much as it hurt Gwen to admit, she knew that Miles was right, and she took a deep breath before giving him a nod of acceptance, a nod that Miles mirrored before he turned around and launched back into the air to continue their pursuit of Vulture, now in a different direction from where they'd been going originally, and Gwen shot a web line to pull herself after him.
The journey to where Vulture was busy freely destroying and pilfering things to his heart's content was a difficult one. Everywhere they went, the sounds of suffering mounted in Gwen's ears, and though she did her best to tune it all out, she couldn't help but whisper quiet apologies to each and every person on every street that they passed by.
She'd seen some horrible things in her time doing this job, but this? It felt like the whole world was falling apart, and for the first time, even Spider-Woman felt small compared to it. Even with two superheroes now on the job, they could only do so much to hold the city together. At this rate, New York might not last until tomorrow, but as always, Gwen's mind was on the individual citizens of the city, so many of whom she was now leaving behind, and the only thing that made it bearable was the thought of how she was going to get the man behind this, Matthew Murdock, and personally ensure that he didn't get away with this.
The coordination of these attacks had to be regulated, most likely directly from Murdock's place of business, meaning that the police (if there were any to be found) would surely be able to track the source of those orders back to the man himself. If Gwen and Miles could manage to get the city back under control, Murdock would be revealed as what he really was for all the world to see, and he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. But there was a long way to go before that time.
They finally caught up to Vulture somewhere in the middle of Alphabet City, where they found him carpet-bombing a long line of vehicles that had been abandoned on the road in civilians' panic and desperate but fruitless attempts to escape the horror that was now befalling the island.
The Vulture, AKA Adrian Toomes, didn't seem particularly intimidating at first sight, considering that he was an older man, in his mid-fifties, bald, and liked to dress out by wearing a giant chicken suit. Okay, maybe calling it a chicken suit was selling it a bit short. It was a green bodysuit with clawed hands and feet (for cutting or latching onto things, as well as increasing his strength somewhat), and most notably, had large wings of a dark green that matched the bodysuit lined with black, coming out on the back with a twenty-foot wingspan. The edges of the wings (as Gwen knew from experience) were sharp as swords, and he could fly at speeds of ninety-five miles per hour and over two miles high.
He had been the first supervillain that Gwen had fought not counting Peter, and she had held back against him upon realizing that unlike Peter, he was merely a regular (and old) guy in a suit that gave him power to do bad things. Sadly, he hadn't given her the same courtesy.
Unfortunately, Vulture managed to spot Gwen and Miles at the same time that they saw him. Looking over to view their arrival, Toomes called out, "Spider-Woman! My old nemesis!"
Both Miles and Gwen landed on a rooftop next to Vulture, and as Miles narrowed his eyes at Adrian and began analyzing him, Gwen returned the greeting. "Yeah, it's me. Although I'm not sure if you're exactly my 'nemesis', per se."
"Nonsense!" Vulture insisted. "Our battles are the stuff of legends, my old foe! The tales of our countless conflicts will be told for centuries to come!"
Confused, Gwen told him, "We fought one time. Like, ten months ago. But let's not dwell on that. Let's try this again. Adrian, you old buzzard, you! How've you been? It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yes, just long enough for me to plot my revenge!" Vulture cried, his great wings flapping around him as he spoke, which was frankly more interesting to Gwen than the man's deluded rantings. "For nearly a year, I plotted for this moment, Spider-Woman. And now, I am ready to-"
"So you mean you spent ten months… hatching this plan?" Gwen cut him off.
Beside her, Miles sighed and stepped forward as he said, "Look, this reunion's cute and all, but can we wrap this up? The city's kind of on fire and we have a lot to do today."
Looking at Miles like he was just barely realizing that the younger man was here, Vulture asked, "Who are you supposed to be?"
"I'm the Prowler," Miles answered with a glare.
Seeming puzzled by that, Toomes looked back and forth between Miles and Gwen for a moment, then finally settled his gaze on Gwen and asked, "Really? You needed help and he was the best you could get? A novice?"
Miles' expression fell at that as Gwen gave him a sideways look of amusement, and then he leaned towards Gwen to warn, "I'm going to hurt this guy now."
Waving a hand to make him wait a second, Gwen looked back up at Toomes and said, "Look, Adrian, we both know this is going to end in a fight. But I beat you last time, and this time, you're outnumbered. So I'm going to give you one chance to do the smart thing and just surrender, and if you escape prison again, we'll pick this up some other time."
Following Gwen's words, Vulture looked at Miles again and seemed to realize that he was indeed at a disadvantage. Gwen saw him then tense up before he slowly began reaching one hand back towards the metal-covered pack on his back, saying, "You're saying that you want to… fight me again? You think you can just defeat me again and lock me back up? No… I won't make it so easy for you."
"Adrian, don't do anything crazy," Gwen warned him, predicting that he was setting himself up for a trick.
Sadly, Gwen would be proven correct a second later, as Vulture did not heed her request and chose to do something crazy. A slot opened up in the bottom of Vulture's flight pack and a small silver ball dropped into his open palm before he spun around and hurled the ball across the street, where it shattered through a window in the building adjacent to them, and then an orange light began to glow from inside the building, a light that Gwen recognized as the glow of a flame, steadily growing in size and intensity.
Sighing in annoyance, Gwen said, "Alright, take him."
Immediately, Miles pounced towards Vulture and used his claws to climb around him onto his back while the older man flailed about in a panic, trying to shake Miles off. Miles himself, on the other hand, looked all too pleased about getting to attack Toomes and exclaimed, "A 'novice', am I? Forget the police, I'm dropping you off at the nearest KFC once I'm done with you, and then we'll see who's a novice!"
Whether he was afraid at the thought of Gwen joining in to help Miles take him down or intimidated by the threat of being turned into a culinary delight, Vulture gave Gwen one last terrified look, then took off down the street, taking Miles with him, looking like some giant bird with a similarly oversized cat hanging onto his wings. However, he needn't have worried about Gwen. She trusted Miles to handle Vulture, and she currently had other business.
Running towards the edge of the rooftop in front of herself, Gwen leapt across the street and crashed through a window in the now-burning apartment building that Vulture had just lit up. She rolled to a landing inside the apartment of a couple who seemed to have taken cover here but now were finding themselves in even greater danger indoors and were incapable of getting themselves out. Without a word, Gwen wrapped the two of them up in lines of webbing and pulled them over to herself, then lifted them both off of their feet and jumped back out the window. She ignored their screaming as she got them both to safety, content that they were currently unable to flail around and potentially hurt themselves, and set them down on the sidewalk outside before she jumped back upwards and pulled herself back into the building to go rescue anyone else who she could find inside.
This time, finding more people to save wasn't quite as easy. She had to go door to door, busting through multiple locks to get into each apartment as she searched for anyone who might still be in the building. As she went, she got a call from Miles on the earpiece she was wearing under her mask, and she quickly reached up and tapped it to answer the call before saying, "Now's not really a great time, Miles."
Immediately, Miles' voice spoke back, "Oh, you want to talk about a bad time? How does 'hundreds of feet up and getting crushed against everything in sight' sound to you?"
"Oddly familiar, and I didn't have a protective suit or shoes that can absorb all impacts when I did it," Gwen responded somewhat testily as she finally broke into an apartment with people in it, a man and woman huddled in a corner with their crying baby.
Gwen quickly tied them all together with webbing, then ran to the window. Deciding that she couldn't get the whole family through the window, Gwen just ceded the fact that the building would soon be destroyed anyway and punched the wall hard enough to blow a large hole out of it. She then pulled the bundled-up family towards herself and attached them to a web line before throwing them out of the hole in the wall and lowering her web line until they were all on the ground.
Then, as she ran back out of the apartment and began climbing the next flight of stairs, now starting to really feel the heat of the spreading flames, Miles' voice said, "Alright, fair point. But where are you? Are you trying to catch up?"
Deciding to just be honest as she didn't have the presence of mind for anything else right now, Gwen explained, "I stayed back to get everyone away from the fire Toomes started."
There was a short silence, then Miles said, "Oh. Well, that's… Do you need help?"
Already knowing where this was going, Gwen kicked in another door and answered, "No."
Having found another family, Gwen began working on getting them out while she heard Miles say, "Are you sure? I mean, last time… We promised we weren't going to split up anymore."
"And we both knew that that plan wouldn't last long, even if we didn't want to say it," Gwen reminded him. "We don't get to choose when people need our help, Miles. I'll be fine, you just handle Vulture."
There was another pause, then Miles said, "Alright, if you're sure. I'm almost done here anyway, and then I'll- ¡Ay de mí!" The distant sound of crashing and explosions emanated from Miles' end of their connection, and then he continued, "Estoy a nada- Nevermind, Gwen, you're right. I'll see you soon, right after I finish plucking this big, annoying bird."
"If you're referring to his wings, he can hover without them. They just allow him steering and acceleration," Gwen advised him.
"Really? Well, that gives me an idea. I'll see you soon."
Miles hung up with that last comment, and just in time, because right then, Gwen finally arrived on the top floor of the apartment building, where the fire had risen to, and it was at its worst up here, consuming the whole hallway in such a way that Gwen wouldn't have been able to even hear Miles if they'd continued their conversation. The flames would make it nearly impossible for Gwen to be able to traverse this level. She wouldn't be able to check each door as she'd done before.
Still, if anyone was up here, Gwen was the best candidate to get them out when the floor was off-limits like this, seeing as she didn't actually need to use the floor. Knowing that she couldn't check for people in the normal way, Gwen closed her eyes and allowed her Spider-Sense to take over. It was an ability that she had learned to trust, an inbuilt danger sensor that was attuned not just for her own benefit and safety, but also for those that she cared about, giving her an opportunity to locate and save everyone as long as she cared enough about protecting them, and that was what she was counting on right now.
However, she got more than she bargained for when she opened herself up to it. Her Spider-Sense clued her in on something big that was about to happen. The flames were only the beginning. She didn't know the cause or what exactly the threat was, but she knew it was imminent. And on top of it, she could sense that there were indeed a couple more people left in the building.
She opened her eyes but continued to act on instinct, jumping forward and over the raging fires to stick to a wall, then bounced off the wall to knock down the apartment door across from her. However, Gwen could sense that she had only seconds to act, as the sudden outrush of fresh air fed the flames outside and made them spread even more.
A wall of fire rose up behind Gwen as she ran into the room and shot web lines to grab a woman and her son from one side of the room, and then Gwen pulled them towards her as she dashed forward and punched her way through the exterior wall and pulled the two civilians outside with her, jumping clear of the building just as a massive explosion went off inside of it, making the top few floors collapse immediately.
Most likely, it had been a gas leak, Gwen figured, but that wasn't what was important right now. Instead, she looked around at all of the civilians she'd pulled out of the building. They all still had some of Gwen's webbing stuck to them and were trying to free themselves from it, and many of them were crying as they looked up at their burning homes, but no one had died.
Gwen let out a deep breath that she didn't know she'd been holding. Deep down, she supposed that she was always terrified that she was going to mess up and someone would get hurt despite her presence. It had happened plenty of times before, after all, usually during supervillain attacks. For all Gwen's power, she couldn't protect everyone, and of course, one particular failure haunted her most of all. But this? This was what she had always striven for. Yet again, Miles had been right. This was what she did, doing her best to protect everyone in her power. Sometimes she was successful. Other times, she wasn't. But she always tried.
Suddenly, a voice spoke from next to Gwen, asking, "Why?"
Surprised out of her silent musings, Gwen turned to look at the speaker, who turned out to be the woman that she had just saved, whose hands were on her son's shoulders as tears of relief ran down both of their faces, and Gwen was shocked to realize that she recognized them both. Even more shocking were their identities themselves. It was the boy that her dad had died saving from the falling rubble and his mother, the woman who had told the police that Gwen had killed her dad.
The woman was now looking at Gwen with wide, wet eyes that held clear awe, confusion, and more than a little fear as she repeated, "Why? Why would you save… us? Me?"
Looking at her curiously, Gwen asked, "Why wouldn't I?"
Seeming to think that she was trapped, the woman's eyes darted sideways before she embarrassedly asked, "Do you remember me? We met… just last night. I was terrified for my son's life, and… for his mind after the trauma of having Captain Stacy sacrifice himself for him, and I was… I wanted to blame someone, anyone but myself, for putting them both in that position, and I said… horrible things about you. I- Why would you save me?"
Stepping towards the woman, Gwen told her, "Because I protect people. Everyone, with no exceptions. I help them, and you know who inspired me to do it? Captain George Stacy."
Hearing that, the woman's eyes brimmed with fresh tears once again and Gwen reached out to place a comforting hand on the woman's hand on top of her son's shoulder. As the woman began to relax a little, Gwen looked down at her son, who was staring at her in speechless amazement, and gave him a wink. She then looked back at the mother of the boy and told her, "Stay close to your child, ma'am. You don't want to lose your kid. And trust me, the kids don't want to lose their parents, either."
And with that said, Gwen turned away and ran across the street before running up the side of the nearest building, getting ready to try to find Miles and see if he still needed her help.
When she reached the rooftop, however, Miles was arriving at the same time, skidding to a stop in front of her after appearing in a blur. Looking around and not seeing Vulture tailing him, Gwen asked, "What happened to Toomes?"
Looking quite pleased with himself, Miles answered, "Well, he didn't exactly end up at KFC like I said earlier, but I'm satisfied with what he got instead."
Raising an intrigued eyebrow beneath her mask, Gwen said, "Well, now I have to know. Details, man, details!"
Chuckling, Miles said, "In a minute. During my tour of the city, I think I saw where Shocker is."
Impatient to hear the story of what happened with Vulture, Gwen waved him on and said, "Alright, whatever. Lead the way. You can tell me about Vulture while we're moving."
Immediately doing as ordered, Miles began running northwards and Gwen sprinted and began swinging after him, doing her best to stay by his side as he began telling the story.
"So, at first, it was just a matter of holding onto Toomes, you know?" Miles began. "But soon, he started trying to shake me off, and I eventually let him do it. I figured I could keep up with him on foot, just running on buildings and stuff, and for a while, I did. Of course, his flying made things hard sometimes, but I stayed close by taking a few shortcuts."
"And by 'shortcuts', you mean…" Gwen prompted.
"I may or may not have blasted my way through a few buildings," Miles admitted, but then quickly added, "but the city's falling apart anyway! I did what I had to, and it's not like anyone's going to notice if a few buildings get holes in them in the middle of all this!"
Sighing but knowing that there was nothing to be done about it, Gwen said, "Continue."
Resuming his story, Miles said, "Yeah, so anyway, Toomes eventually starts getting smart and starts throwing explosives back at me. And you know, you'd think his arthritis would start kicking in eventually, but noooo. That guy has a throwing arm like Satchel Paige. So that was the worst, but then you tell me about his wings, and I get an idea. I taunt him, tease him a bit, you know, get him nice and angry, then I run out in front of him and get him to chase me up the Empire State Building. Then, once we reach the top, I jump on him and tear off his wings. And just like you said, he could float without them, but not control. So…"
Finally understanding, Gwen said, "You did not leave Vulture hovering over a thousand feet above the ground."
"I most certainly did," Miles argued, then defended, "He threw bombs at me! So I reacted in the sensible way and left him dangling in the sky hundreds of meters up without a rope. Don't worry. I deactivated his weapons and made sure his flight pack had enough power for a few days."
"Miles, we are not leaving him floating there for a few days," Gwen insisted.
"He set an apartment building full of innocent people on fire just as a distraction," Miles reminded her.
Gwen thought about it for a second, then gave in and said, "Fine. But if Jameson asks, I knew nothing about it."
"As if JJ would ask before blaming you," Miles said, a point that Gwen couldn't deny was completely accurate.
Miles POV
When Miles had first gotten an aerial view of the disaster zone that he'd assumed must be Shocker's doing, a wrecked block surrounding the heliport on East 34th Street, it had been easy to determine his plan: getting out of the city. Apparently this particular criminal, Herman Schultz, didn't care for Murdock's hostile takeover plan, and felt no obligation to the man that had gotten him out of the Raft. He was using his new freedom for only one thing, an opportunity to escape.
One could easily think that Miles and Gwen should just let him go if leaving the city was their only plan, but Miles knew that they couldn't do that. He had a sentence to serve, and while he was armed with his gear, he would be just as dangerous anywhere else in the world. They couldn't afford to make Schultz some other city's problem. The world only had one superhero that was known to be able to stand in Shocker's way, and she wasn't big on travel. Neither was Miles, really, if it turned out that he could be included among those that could defeat Shocker. Or even among the "superheroes" of the world. No, even if all Herman wanted was out, they needed to stop him here and now.
Anyway, despite Shocker's plan being obvious, Miles hadn't been able to work out exactly why he was having trouble getting to the heliport, but suddenly it became clear. Ahead of them, Miles and Gwen could see Shocker facing off against what looked like half of the cops and SWAT operatives in the New York State. And though they'd held him off quite well so far, it was clear that they were losing. The entire area had been shaken badly. Dozens of squad cars and armored trucks that were serving as the only protection for the police were dented badly and the roads and walls all the way up the block had chipped stone instead of smooth, like the whole place had eroded by fifty years in the last few hours.
As Gwen saw the police, she commented, "Well, I guess we found out where the cops have been this whole time."
However, Miles' mask zoomed in on the police before he said, "No. All of these officers, PDNY and SWAT alike, they're all injured. Most of them have bullet wounds instead of just the concussions. Shocker didn't do that. They got here recently. They've been busy with something else."
Gwen thought it over and said, "They weren't on the streets with us, we would've seen them. Infighting? You think Murdock could've gotten to some of them?"
"Maybe. For a blind man, he's awfully hard to outmaneuver. But it doesn't matter. New York needs these cops back on the streets to keep order, so let's clear the path," Miles responded, then glared down at Shocker. Truly, they didn't have time to worry about whatever was going on with the police at the moment, and right now, Miles just wanted to finish fighting his way through all of these obstacles Murdock had set up to protect himself and get to the man at the top. And Shocker was the next obstacle in his path, so Miles was eager to take him down and do it quickly.
A quick scan of Shocker's appearance gave Miles all the information he needed for a swift strike. He was wearing long pants, gray work boots, and a brown leather jacket over a padded yellow shirt. Coming out from under the sleeves of his jacket were two silver gauntlets extending over the back of his hands, sparking with yellow arcs of electricity at the ends to signify the great vibrational power held within them. But what caught Miles' eyes most was the golden helmet that Shocker wore over his head, protecting him from glancing hits of his own power. A power rather similar to what Miles possessed with his own gauntlets. Perfect.
Looking to Gwen, Miles quickly informed her, "I'll be back in a second."
Then, ignoring the way that Gwen called after him to wait, Miles jumped off the roof and leapt down to the ground in seconds before running towards Shocker and jumping up into the air for a flying punch. He got in close before Schultz even had a chance to turn around, and Miles thought that he had already won, but then, as soon as he got within a foot of the quake-causing villain, a thin wall of yellow energy appeared in front of Miles, and he crashed hard into it before getting shot backwards unexpectedly, flying over thirty feet before he finally hit the ground and rolled, grunting as he finally came to a stop laying on his back in the middle of the road, all the breath knocked out of him.
A second later, Gwen appeared at the edge of his vision, leaning over him, and said, "I tried to warn you."
"Thanks, I needed an 'I told you so' right at this moment," Miles responded sarcastically, his voice still strained with effort.
Looking amused, Gwen offered a hand down to Miles, which he accepted and allowed her to help him back to his feet. They then began walking back down the street towards Shocker, who was still focused on the police barricade and didn't seem to have noticed the sneak attack his power suit had just repelled. Miles supposed that he should've considered that lucky, but instead he just felt rather insulted that Shocker hadn't even been bothered by him.
Deciding to be a bit more cautious this time, Miles asked Gwen, "Alright, could you maybe give me some pointers on this guy? Like how you took him down last time? He was the only villain whose defeat wasn't caught on camera."
"That's because I couldn't have anyone around when I beat this one," Gwen said. "I had to drop a building on him, and I couldn't have any innocent people getting in the way."
Looking at her disbelievingly, Miles asked, "A building?"
"A mall's rooftop, to be precise," Gwen continued. "His suit has a protective shield that can defend against just about anything, but enough weight distributed along the surface will cause the shield to overload and disable the whole thing."
Tilting his head thoughtfully, Miles said, "So we just have to bury him beneath something heavy? Well, I'm getting pretty good at that."
And with that said, Miles walked up to a car parked on the road ahead of them and grabbed the rear fender before pulling up on it roughly, flipping the car onto its front and sending it skidding along the road towards Shocker. Hearing the commotion behind himself, the sound of metal dragging against unyielding asphalt, Schultz turned around to see what was causing it and looked up in surprise to find the sight of a car about to fall down on top of him.
At the last second though, the car crashed against the energy shield surrounding him, making the protective bubble visible for a moment, and then he threw up his arms to knock the car away from himself with a pair of vibrational blasts from his gauntlets.
Once the show was over, Shocker finally spotted Miles and Gwen and glared at them angrily through the eye slits of his helmet as Gwen turned to Miles and said, "I could've told you that that wouldn't work."
"It wasn't supposed to," Miles responded, meeting Shocker's look with one of equal dislike. "I just wanted to get his attention. And what do you know? I'd say it worked out perfectly."
Looking at Miles with anxious anticipation, Gwen told him, "Well, have fun finding out exactly what that means."
Miles wasn't sure if "fun" was the right word for it, but as soon as Schultz saw Gwen, he proceeded to demonstrate what it entailed to have his attention by throwing out his arms towards them and firing another couple vibrational blasts. Miles and Gwen dodged to either side of the road, both ducking behind different abandoned cars, and the blasts flew past them to instead crash into a large garbage truck, the front of which was flattened by the force that hit it until it looked like it had crashed in a solid wall at full speed.
Looking at the destroyed truck, Miles commented, "Oof. I don't think that's gonna buff out."
"Not really the time, Miles," Gwen reminded him.
"Oh, please. As if you ever hesitate to make a joke in a bad situation. You're just mad that I beat you to the punch," Miles retorted.
"Speaking of beating me to the punch, why exactly did you antagonize Shocker before we were ready for him?" Gwen yelled back as another blast of energy destroyed a bus stop behind her.
"Hey, he attacked us when he saw you, so I'm pretty sure it's kinda your fault. Guess he doesn't like you for putting him in prison. Go figure."
Gwen took a deep breath and continued in a much calmer but still urgent tone, "Nevermind. We need to get Shocker somewhere relatively enclosed so we can box him in. Any ideas?"
With his task made clear, Miles activated his scanners and looked inside the surrounding buildings, trying to find one that could be safely brought down on Schultz, but they all had people inside them. He considered how quickly and efficiently they could potentially evacuate one of them, but then he spotted another option just ahead of them.
Looking back at Gwen, Miles jerked his head towards the police barricade and said, "Dead ahead. Just behind the police barricade, in the direction Shocker's trying to go, just before you get to the river, there's that overpass. If we get him under it, the two of us can drop the road on him."
Gwen looked around the corner of her car to see what Miles was talking about, nearly getting her head taken off by another blast when Shocker saw her, then said, "We'd need to convince the police to back up and let Shocker advance. They'll never listen to us."
"I'll persuade them, if you can distract Shocker for a few minutes," Miles told her confidently.
Gwen looked back towards Shocker worriedly, then shook her head to herself and muttered, "Fine. I'll hold off the walking earthquake, but only because I think you took the harder job."
Then, with her thoughts on the matter made clear, Gwen jumped up onto the roof of the car she'd been hiding behind and cupped her hands by her mouth before calling out, "Hey, Herman! I'm gonna have to ask you to surrender now, because you're now well past the limit for community service hours that can be fit into a single lifetime!"
As expected, Schultz did not accept the offer and instead fired dual vibrational blasts at the car Gwen was standing on, prompting her to jump off of it just before it exploded before she began swinging around in the air, trying most successfully to keep Shocker's attention on her.
In the meantime, he seemed to have forgotten all about Miles, probably due to his familiarity of Gwen's ability to defeat him and his lack of any such knowledge regarding Miles. Sometimes it paid to be the guy no one knew anything about. Not that Miles was content to maintain his disreputable status for much longer, but he figured that he may as well make the most of it while it lasted.
Not wasting a moment of the time that Gwen was so painstakingly buying him, Miles launched vaulted over the top of his own car and launched himself high into the air, jumping towards the front of the police lines.
The cops that had dug in here were defending themselves with battered defenses and had done no real harm to Shocker as of yet, and they didn't seem to be doing any better even when Schultz was distracted. They kept firing their guns at Shocker's back while he shot his blasts of vibrational shocks at Gwen, doing considerable damage to the surrounding property every time Gwen managed to evade him, but even with Shocker's attention being elsewhere, the police's bullets just kept getting deflected harmlessly away from the supervillain by his suit's energy shield. Still, that didn't deter the cops from continuing with their efforts in an attempt to eventually overwhelm him, clearly feeling that they had no other alternative but to keep trying their best.
When Miles arrived, however, it sounded to him like they were finally planning on switching up their strategy, but unfortunately not in any way that he approved of. He landed, unnoticed, on top of one of their trucks and heard the cops below him on the front lines speaking to each other as they watched the fight in front of them.
Lowering his pistol as he looked in shock at the sight of Gwen swinging and dodging around Shocker, one of the cops said in shock, "Hey, that- That's Spider-Woman! All units, stop shooting at Shocker and focus your fire on Spider-Woman! She killed Captain-!"
However, the officer broke off suddenly at that point as Miles suddenly landed on the hood of his squad car in front of him and forcefully seized his throat with one large, metal-coated hand, lifting him a few inches off the ground with that single hand. The man's partner standing next to him, a woman wielding a shotgun, saw her partner in danger and quickly brought up her gun to shoot at the dark figure holding him, but Miles just held up his other hand, letting the bullets crash against his palm and get flattened before the hand shot out to grab the shotgun from the woman's hands and clenched his fist to crush the barrel of the gun before tossing it aside.
He then glared around at the now-terrified cops all around him, looking at them with narrowed white slits for eyes surrounded by a glowing magenta as though daring more of them to attack him. When no one did, all of them too afraid for their lives against this dark figure that could stop bullets with his hands, the Prowler looked back at the man whose neck was still clutched in his hand and said, "Spider-Woman didn't do it. She didn't kill Captain Stacy. Not Peter Parker, either. The next person to say otherwise loses their tongue. She doesn't kill people. And I expect you to spread the word. Got it?"
The man nodded furiously as best as he could with his neck being held as it was, and Miles set him down on the ground and shoved him back a bit before hopping off of the car, ignoring the way that the police all backed away and aimed their guns at him again warily, and continued, "You're right about one thing, though. You should stop shooting. You couldn't really hurt Shocker with a missile, your guns are useless against him. But if you want to help, I have a way that you can. Spider-Woman and I have a plan to take Shocker down, but for it to work, you all need to back up this barricade. If you can get Shocker underneath the overpass just ahead, we can take him down."
Stepping forward, one of the SWAT team members present, the leader here by the look of his uniform, glared at Miles and bravely asked, "Why should we trust you? Even if Spider-Woman didn't kill anyone, which I'm not so sure I believe, you and her are still vigilantes. Like Captain Stacy always said, cops and vigilantes are enemies."
"In case you haven't noticed, sergeant, you already have plenty of enemies today. Maybe you should accept an ally when someone offers to help you while the city you swore to protect is on fire," Miles told him firmly. "In short, neither of us have much choice but to work together if we want to get through this. And if you refuse? Our plan will still work even if we have to take down Prowler after he's mowed his way through every last one of you."
The SWAT officer looked at Miles suspiciously for a moment, fingering the trigger of the rifle he held across his chest. Miles was just wondering if he was going to have to force the cops out of the way, fighting them for the sake of their own safety, when suddenly a woman with short dark hair stepped out of the crowd and said, "He's right. All units, fall back to behind the overpass!"
The SWAT sergeant gave the woman a disbelieving look and asked, "What? What are you trying to pull, lieutenant?"
"It's Acting Captain Watanabe now, actually, sergeant," the woman said. "And if you forgot why, it's because of these vigilantes and their madness. Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, Prowler, whoever they are, they're all part of the same problem. But it's a problem that's here now, and it's here to stay. Captain Stacy spent a year trying to fight 'the super-people problem', and it only ever got worse. Eventually, it got him killed. Well, I'm not going to make the same mistake. I say, if one of these freaks wants to help us take down another one, it'd be a waste of resources to try and stop them, resources we can't afford to waste right now. If one super-person's trying to destroy us and another one's trying to beat them, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the lesser evil."
The SWAT officer stared angrily at Acting Captain Watanabe for a second, then gave Miles a glare of deepest loathing before he turned and began to order his own men, "What are you all standing around for? You heard the captain, move this barricade back to the overpass! New positions in t-minus two minutes!"
The SWAT forces immediately began following his orders, speeding up the work that had already been started by the men and women of the PDNY, and Miles told him, "Thank you, sergeant."
Turning sideways to point a finger at Miles' chest, the officer said, "I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for the city. You say you can take out Schultz and get us back on the streets? You'd better deliver."
"Yes, sir," Miles told him with a short salute, then nodded gratefully at Acting Captain Watanabe before he turned around and began running back towards where Shocker was still preoccupied with the ever-elusive target that was Gwen.
Wanting to get Schultz's attention quickly to give Gwen a short reprieve, Miles ran over to the nearest parking meter by the side of the road and reached down to grasp it at the base before he ripped it straight out of the ground, leaving a sizeable amount of concrete still holding on at the bottom. He then yelled out, "Herman! This thing says your time here's up!" and tossed it like a spear at Shocker.
As expected, it merely bounced harmlessly off of his shield, the concrete on the end getting blown off as it was tossed away, but it succeeded in making Shocker turn his attention onto Miles. Meanwhile, Gwen landed on the rooftop above him, finally able to stop moving for the first time in several minutes, and looked at Miles with a silent question, prompting him to look back up at her and nod in confirmation that he had managed to make the police move.
Miles then looked back down at Shocker as the super-criminal spoke, his helmet slightly altering his voice but not enough to keep the surprise and amusement from his tone. "So, you didn't run away like I thought. What are you supposed to be, kid? Spider-Woman's sidekick?"
"Her partner, actually," Miles responded. "Now, stand down, Shocker. It's been a long day, and we've already beaten two other supervillains just this morning. You're not getting away, not if we have anything to say about it."
Stepping forward menacingly, Shocker asked, "And what makes you think I'm gonna leave that up for you to decide?"
Unfortunately for Shocker, he didn't know that Miles actually thought just the opposite. Despite his arrogant behavior, Miles knew that Schultz was actually getting quite worried, knowing that he was pinned down by both the heroine who had defeated him before as well as a second, unknown power that had effortlessly thrown a car at him moments before.
Miles could see Shocker starting to twitch, subconsciously rocking around on his legs, his fingers and head instinctively making tiny movements as he sensed a coming fight. He also noticed Shocker trying to discreetly look in the direction of the heliport, noticing that the police barricade had retreated further back, and Miles could practically feel the desperate plan forming in Shocker's head. Now, all that was left was to get him moving, and Miles had an idea about how to do it. A bad idea, but an idea nonetheless.
Mentally activating his comm, Miles quietly told Gwen, "Come save me. Let Shocker run."
Then, before Gwen could even finish processing the plan he'd told her, Miles launched himself into the air, flying towards Shocker from above with one arm reared back for a powerful punch. However, when Mils predictably failed to punch through Shocker's shield and instead bounced off of it in the opposite direction, getting launched bodily towards the building that Gwen was standing on, Shocker decided to double the pain by firing a blast of vibrational energy that hit Miles mid-air and accelerated the speed of his crash even more.
Miles burst through the wall of the building, flailing wildly and out of control, and rolled to a stop on the ground in a family's apartment, a family of four made up of a mom and dad and two little girls, the younger two of which let out a short scream and rushed to their parents when Miles arrived.
Looking up painfully to see all four members of the family staring at him in horror, Miles hesitantly said, "Uh, hi. Sorry to barge in, but do you guys have, like, an ice pack or something?"
Judging from the silent looks they all continued to give him, however, Miles didn't exactly feel particularly welcome. He supposed it was fair. He hadn't exactly entered in the conventional way, after all.
A moment later, though, Gwen swung her way into the building through the hole Miles had left in the wall, causing the two little girls to let out another shrill scream. Miles groaned and threw his head back in pain at the noise and held out a hand to stop them, soothingly saying, "Hey, hey. Even if you don't have an ice pack, could you at least please stop screaming? No offense, but my head is killing me."
The kids fell quiet immediately at Miles' words, apparently thrown by how Miles spoke to them like just a regular person. Miles tried to avoid their gazes. He knew his appearance was frightening. It had been designed to be, but he had done it to intimidate his enemies, not innocent people, and he always felt uncomfortable whenever he was around them in his costume.
Gwen walked over to Miles and gave him her hand so she could help him back to his feet, though he stood up again with a quiet grunt of pain. His suit didn't protect him from everything, and getting hit directly and repeatedly by ultra-powerful vibrational blasts was sure to leave a few bruises.
Still, a lot of people needed him at the moment, so he couldn't afford to take any breaks just yet. Besides, Gwen had to be feeling tired as well at this point, even with her powers, and some protective or perhaps just proud part of Miles refused to give in to the pain until she also appeared to be on the brink of collapse. He could accept Gwen being physically stronger than him, but he wouldn't allow himself to be considered exactly weak compared to her.
However, as Miles began walking back towards the hole in the wall so they could leave and go finish with Shocker, who he could see was indeed doing as he'd expected and was running towards the overpass, one of the little girls who lived in the apartment stepped towards him, holding an apple in her outstretched hand. Miles looked at it questioningly, then looked into the girl's face for an explanation, and she told him, "It's for your head. So you can feel better."
Miles remained frozen for a second, then hesitantly reached out and gently took the apple from the girl, his gauntleted hand dwarfing her small one greatly as he did so. He could feel Gwen next to him looking on in amusement, but Miles just examined the apple in confusion for a moment before he slipped it into one of his pants pockets and told the girl, "Uh, thanks. I would eat it now, but… You know, the mask. But later, I'll definitely-"
"I hope it helps," the girl shyly cut him off, then stepped back towards her family.
Still surprised by this unprecedented turn of events, Miles stared at the girl for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked ahead once again before running forward and dashing out of the apartment, leaping towards where he knew Shocker would be.
They could once again hear the sounds of gunfire as the police just behind the overpass engaged Schultz in combat once again, trying their best to slow his advance. Miles knew that they wouldn't be able to stop him, but at least they were keeping him in position. They might not be able to do much against a supervillain, but no one could deny that they were all incredibly brave.
However, Miles and Gwen now had their perfect opportunity to do some real damage. Gwen arrived underneath the road first and stuck to one of the support pillars on the police's side before yelling out to them, "Alright, everyone, time to clear out! This bridge is scheduled for a surprise demolition! Don't worry if you haven't heard of those yet, they're new!"
The cops seemed confused by what exactly Gwen was telling them, but it all became clear when Miles appeared a second later and blasted through the two support pillars at the other end of the overpass, behind Shocker, causing the whole structure to begin to shake. Understanding now that Gwen had meant exactly what she'd said, the cops all quickly yelled out in panic and began backing up out of the tunnel.
Of course, Shocker had also noticed the place beginning to collapse and seemed to quickly realize what their plan was, but since Miles had closed off his rear exit, the only remaining way out was forward. Ceasing his slow and deliberate approach, Shocker began to pick up speed and began running right after the cops, not even trying to blast them anymore.
Miles took out a few more support pillars himself, but Gwen was doing much more of the work by shooting web lines onto as many of the remaining ones as she could, so Miles instead began helping to move the police out from underneath the road. With his accelerated speed, he was done in a matter of seconds, and just in time as Gwen finished grabbing hold of all of the remaining support pillars and threw the web lines over her shoulder before sticking her feet in place and pulling as hard as she could.
Already damaged, the remaining supports began to bend and crack immediately, and Miles leapt upwards to punch the top of the bridge with one mighty, charged-up fist that cracked the entire thing into pieces and sent an avalanche of rocks tumbling down onto Shocker while Miles jumped free and landed back on the ground next to Gwen to watch the show.
Still desperately trying to escape, Shocker ran as fast as he could towards the open end of the tunnel, his bubble shield of yellow energy surrounding him on all sides to deflect falling debris, but he soon became trapped in place as giant stones fell down all around him and finally began to overwhelm his shield, and Shocker let out one final scream before the stones closed in around him and buried him beneath it all, unable to move, fight, or even make a sound.
A/N: I do not own KFC. Otherwise I would give you all a bucket of chicken. Leave a comment if you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!
