As we approach the finale to series three, we must look back to the brief past as a long shadow begins to reveal itself and the true threat finally begins to make itself known...
I present to you: Gauntlet!
Kaine has long been suspicious of S.I.L.K. and its leader, Adriana Soria. During his time chasing down the remnants of the HPSC and the Punisher, he and the rest of the Enforcers - Shocker, White Rabbit, Clash, and Boomerang - have been conducting an ongoing investigation into the agency and their activities. Slowly, as S.I.L.K.'s influence began to grow, so did Kaine's pile of information around them and their operations, from official to clandestine.
Then, as S.I.L.K. began to gain seats within the government due to them supplanting the HPSC and continue to grow and grow with each passing day, Kaine would continue to dig deeper into their activities, trying to find out as much about Adriana Soria as possible. This would prove to be difficult, as Adriana's past is entirely shrouded in mystery, not appearing on any records despite her sudden rise to power, especially with how young she is (having only just reached twenty years of age) and how quickly she grew to prominence.
As S.I.L.K.'s power continues to grow, the rest of the Enforcers become weary of dealing with Kaine's ongoing research, and are wondering if it is time that they cut themselves away from Kaine and go their own way once more.
Soon enough, during the week-long interim between the War of the Bounty Hunters and the present, Kaine would start looking into rumours of S.I.L.K. agents grabbing homeless people from off the streets and taking them off to who knows where. Kaine would take to these rumours and begin watching over the homeless residents of the city around him, trying to see if he could spot any of Adriana's men carting away the people in the city.
During this time, he ends up coming across Mitsuki and Masaru Bakugo, Katsuki Bakugo's parents. They have desperately been searching for their son since he disappeared months ago, and tearfully beg Kaine to find their son and bring him back to them. While he isn't exactly keen on it, he takes up the task nonetheless.
But then, he comes across not any of Adriana's regular mooks, but his fellow clone Jessica Drew, who sits down with him to talk. Jessica comments that she hasn't seen Kaine in ages, and Kaine says that the last time that they spoke to each other, he'd just stopped trying to kill them, so it wasn't exactly an amiable parting.
The two talk, and Kaine quickly realises that Jessica is fishing for information and trying to figure out what he is up to. Kaine is dismissive of his clone's attempts at conversation, and when she presses as to why, he tells her to her face that she is trying to dig intel out of him, trying to guess what he is doing and why he is doing it.
Jessica remarks that he would be a good agent. Kaine retorts that he's happy being a vigilante, and demands to know why she is talking to him. Jessica states that she only wants to make sure that Kaine is alright, and that he isn't trying to hurt anyone. She still remembers the whole cloning thing, and-
Kaine turns to her, and it makes her flinch. She still remembers what he did to their clones, how he killed so many of them, even if it wasn't of his own choice.
But Kaine shoots that down immediately. Kaine doesn't feel anything about killing his clones. Not regret, but also not elation. He doesn't feel anything about it, and he never will. And he isn't afraid to kill, even if he said he wouldn't. That's a promise that he's very willing to break. He's fine with spilling blood, except now it has to be in service to others. It has to mean that a life is saved in turn.
That is ultimately the biggest difference between Kaine and his progenitor, Peter, and his surviving clones. They are all moralists. Kaine, however, is a moral pragmatist. He's perfectly willing to bend and break as many people as he needs to in the name of the greater good.
"Then you and I have quite a lot in common."
Kaine flinches as Jessica turns around, and sees Adriana standing behind him, asking him to stop haranguing his sister and her agent.
Kaine is stilled for a moment. There is a strange sweet smell in the air now, but it doesn't hold him down. He demands to know why Adriana is there. Adriana blinks and stares for a moment, as if she hadn't been expecting that violent of a reaction, but then stills herself and tells Kaine that she's here to offer him a job. Kaine frowns under his mask and asks what she means, and Adriana continues, stating that as fond as she is of Peter and his fellows, Jessica included, they're not as flexible in their morals as she and the rest of S.I.L.K. needs.
There is a war coming. A war against those that just tried to coup the government not too long ago. It will be violent and bloody, and she needs people on her side who can get violent and bloody enough to match.
She needs people who, like herself, aren't afraid to take a life in the name of the greater good.
And that's where Kaine comes in. Kaine is the warrior that she needs for her agency. He has all the strength and skills of Spider-Man, and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty as well.
She'd give anything to have someone of her calibre on her side, someone who could do the things that no one else could.
Kaine pauses for a moment, contemplating her proposition to him. For anyone else like him, the offer would be amazingly tempting. Something that they would immediately jump onto as well.
But then, he thinks back to his time in the HPSC, and how he had been used by Doctor Octopus and the fat old men in charge to be their weapon, holding himself hostage unless he murdered his fellow clones, his brothers and sisters, all for the sake of creating the ultimate weapon.
And then he realises that she had been asking him, the one who murdered his brother and sister clones, in front of Jessica, her own agent and one of said clones, without a care to Jessica's feelings about it.
And as the sweet smell in the air strengthens, he feels his hands clench into fists.
He prods a surprised Adriana in the chest with a clawed finger, declaring that he will not be a pawn to anyone else, and swings away, leaving a surprised Jessica and Adriana on the rooftop behind him. Jessica sighs and shakes her head, but Adriana hums to herself.
Kaine will come around sooner or later. But his Enforcers were becoming a nuisance.
They would have to go.
Elsewhere, Kaine meets up with the Enforcers once more, but they make their continued displeasure at having to follow Kaine's whims known. They would rather be using their skills to make money like they were doing before the self-proclaimed Other showed up, not following along behind him and acting like the do-gooders they were not. Kaine has to threaten them back into line. He knows what they're like, and he's not afraid to remind them that if they don't fall in line, then they're all going to prison.
This isn't enough for the Enforcers. Not anymore. If Kaine shows no loyalty to them, then why should they show any loyalty to him?
They begin planning their getaway, and discretely make contact with Adriana.
Soon, Kaine catches wind of Bakugo being sighting in the lower districts of the city, and he finds the boy wandering around in an empty allotment in the city, looking ragged and worn and starved, swearing at himself and throwing punches at everything that he comes across. He is training himself for a fight against Izuku once again, though Kaine doesn't know why he isn't using his quirk.
Then, suddenly, a pair of S.I.L.K. agents grab Bakugo and throw him into a van, kidnapping him.
Kaine flies into hot pursuit as the van speeds away, using his webs to drag himself behind the van and avoid the shots from the agents firing from the van at him. He calls to the Enforcers over the radio for assistance, but gets nothing from them. He swears to himself, and is forced to break off the pursuit when S.I.L.K. reinforcements arrive.
Returning to his hideout, he finds not just the Enforcers, but also multiple S.I.L.K. agents waiting for him. The Enforcers, having seen how little care he has for them, have sold him out to S.I.L.K., and are planning on leaving to do their own thing.
Kaine isn't bothered by that fact. He had expected this to happen. He just wished he had more time to prepare for it.
The Enforcers flee as the S.I.L.K. agents attack Kaine, only for them to be completely demolished by the Peter Parker clone. While they will all live (as Kaine doesn't see them worth killing), it will not be without broken bones and scars.
The Enforcers, on the other hand...
When he had first met the Enforcers, he had slipped tiny trackers onto the four criminals to keep tabs on them in case they ever tried to turn against him. Now that eventuality has passed, and they can complete one last task for him.
They can lead him to where Bakugo and the other kidnappees are.
So, quietly, he tracks the four villains to the old U.A. building, having been turned into S.I.L.K.'s primary logistics and research base. Sneaking his way in and taking out any guards that he finds, he finds himself in a dark laboratory, filled with dozens of bodies, some alive, and some dead, but all of them having been experimented on with vats of what he assumes to be a mutated form of the Anti-Venom Symbiote.
Then, he finds a room filled with braindead Nomu, their minds being reprogrammed for a new purpose. In the centre of the room is a vat filled with someone that Kaine hasn't seen in a long time: Itsy Bitsy, the aberrant, mutated clone that had gone on a killing spree back when Peter was wearing the Black Suit, looking like she has been torn open and picked apart as she floats in the vat, unconscious, unmoving.
Reading through the logs in the laboratory, Kaine finds a name that he is unfamiliar with being repeated over and over again.
Who is Ezekiel Sims? What is Spider-Society?
Then, in another room, he finds a different sight.
Bakugo, having been torn open and dissected, covered in his own blood, but very much still alive.
According to the logs, S.I.L.K.'s scientists were attempting to analyse how the Anti-Venom Symbiote had successfully neutralised Bakugo's quirk. Apparently all the Anti-Venom samples that they had cloned could only disable a person's quirk temporarily, for a single day straight. However, according to those same logs, they were beginning to make progress.
Kaine resolves to destroy their data. All of it. However, before he can, he spots another room, with a disturbing sight within that incurs anger within him.
A lab filled with vats, clone bodies floating inside of them. All of them were covered in boils and sickly wounds, as if they were dissolving before his eyes.
They were all failed experiments. Failed clones.
Of Doctor Octopus.
Then, suddenly, Kaine senses an incoming presence, and slinks away to hide. Into the room walks Doctor Octopus, even more sickly and frail as ever, his body wrapped in a metal cocoon whilst his four metal arms keep him mobile. Behind him, his assistant, Carolyn Trainer - the self-proclaimed Lady Octopus, whom actually has an octopus quirk and four octopus limbs jutting out of her back - follows behind him slavishly, attending to his every whim as Doc Ock investigates what tripped the silent alarm.
The villain swears to himself, wondering just why Adriana is having him perform all these foolish experiments instead of allowing him to perfect his cloning experiments. Without the Soul Stone to help stabilise the mentality of the clones, all of his cloned bodies are failing. It doesn't matter how much he improves the formula in making the clones themselves, they will always continue to fail. How is he supposed to be able to transfer his consciousness into a new clone body if the clones will continue to degrade?
Carolyn suggests simply transferring his consciousness into a regular human body instead, or one of the spider clones like he had originally planned, and Doc Ock finds that he likes that idea.
Kaine hears all of this, all of Doc Ock's plans and ambitions, and remembers all that the mad scientist had done to him, how he had made him, warped him, and made him murder his own kin.
The guilt from all that he had done and the anger from all that had been done to him commingles together, and in a blind fit of rage, he attacks Doc Ock, throwing him to the ground and tearing his metal arms off. Carolyn tries to help her idol, but is attacked by Kaine as well and pinned down, a blade going through one of her octopus limbs and keeping her in place as she howls in pain.
But as he tears Doc Ock's metal hide open and readies to pulverise the frail body inside, the dying man simply remarks that he remembers Kaine, and smugly remarks that maybe he could just transfer his consciousness over to this body, and truly become the Superior Spider-Man he had envisioned within his mind. Kaine, beyond enraged at this remark, goes for the kill, only to find that Carolyn had torn the blade out from her octopus limb and slammed all four of them into him, saving her mentor's life and throwing Kaine through a wall and out of the room...
…Right to where Adriana was suddenly standing, the air around her filling with that sweet smell so thick that it clogged his lungs, and with the four Enforcers that were once his falling to the ground, writhing on the floor in ecstasy as the sweet smell smothered them.
Adriana smiles. Pheromones are a wonderful thing, aren't they? Just need to adjust the air around them with her fragrance, and suddenly everyone becomes just that little bit more... agreeable.
Kaine's eyes widen. So that was how Adriana rose to power so quickly. She has a, what? A pheromone quirk? She's been using her pheromones to drug the people around her and make them more compliant to her demands. Adriana remarks that it isn't just pheromones. Any good politician needs to have a silver tongue after all. She just uses her unique power to help... clear the air.
Kaine does not appreciate the joke.
Adriana frowns. Her pheromones usually work well enough on people with just a small amount. She's throwing everything that she has at Kaine, and it's still not enough. Very impressive. She needs someone like that in her organisation. Someone who couldn't be so easily controlled.
Kaine tries to throw a punch at Adriana, but a spindle of web flies out of her fingertip and onto his bawled hand, trapping him against the ground. Organic webbing. She didn't just have a pheromone quirk. She might not even have a quirk at all.
Kaine bitterly asks if she's seriously trying to give him a job offer like before, and Adriana simply replies that if at first you don't succeed, try try again.
Then, she begins to talk. Does Kaine know what she calls herself? The Spider Queen. Does he know why? Because she wishes to make a kingdom for all spider-people. Peter Parker, Ben Reily, Jessica Drew, and even Kaine himself. She wishes to make a world where all those that carry the banner and the name of the spider can live and be at peace. No more Uncle Bens, no more Gwen Stacys and Harry Osborns, no more tragedies at all. She wishes to build a place where they can all live in peace for the first time in their lives. No more power, no more responsibility.
She loves them all, her spiders. She wants to show them all her love by building a better future for them all, the future that they all deserve.
All of this, what Kaine sees around him? This is merely the first step to that future.
Kaine is being smothered by Adriana's pheromones. He feels himself slipping away, succumbing to Adriana's words and intentions. It feels like any second, he's going to bend his knees and bow to this woman, to acquiesce to her desires.
But he remembers what happened to him during his time in the HPSC. He remembers what he had been forced to do, the blood on his hands and the people that he had killed.
And then he remembers the dead men and women on the tables, the braindead Nomu and Doctor Octopus clones in the vats, the broken Bakugo on the slab in the middle of the lab, and the deteriorating remains of Itsy Bitsy in the vat, looking like she had been pulled and sliced open, then stitched back together as she wasted away in the vat.
He knows what he did to her, one of the Spider-People that she supposedly loved.
Kaine powers through the pheromones and tells Adriana to go to hell, before tearing his hand out of the webbing around it and throwing it into the release hatch on both the Nomu and Itsy Bitsy. The Nomu go into a mindless rampage, attacking Doc Ock and Carolyn, and Itsy Bitsy wakes up and throws herself at Adriana is a bout of rage, snarling and clawing at the director of S.I.L.K. as Kaine frees Bakugo from his bonds and flees the building, leaving a mess behind as he sprints across the city, a wounded boy in his hands.
Soon enough, Adriana would clean up her mess...
Doc Ock would continue his own plans...
S.I.L.K.'s power would continue to rise...
And Kaine and Bakugo would find themselves staring up at Peter and Ochako, both of them scarred and covered in their own blood.
There was originally supposed to be more in the way of an ending to this chapter, but I decided to move that to the next arc, as I needed to fill it out a bit more.
But yeah, this arc is really meant to solidify Adriana as one of this story's main and biggest villains. Hopefully I've been able to communicate this well enough, but there's going to be more of that coming up, so let's hope that I do this well, especially with the big twists that I've got cooking up back here!