"Over? No! The Shocker doesn't quit!"
Herman's roar practically pierced Peter's eardrums. Herman thrashed wildly. He strained to close his fists. His knuckles went bone-white under the suit's underlay. Peter let go of Herman's arm. He grabbed the thick metal housing of the Shocker Gauntlet with both hands. The gold-titanium alloy shrieked. It twisted under Peter's mutated grip.
But he was a fraction of a second too late.
A deafening blast detonated at point-blank range. The shockwave launched Peter backward. He slammed spine-first into a pile of mangled billboard scaffolding.
"No, no, no! Herman, stop!"
Peter scrambled to his feet. He wasn't yelling out of pain. He was staring at Herman's right gauntlet. The casing was completely compromised. Angry blue sparks hissed from the cracked alloy. The power core was cascading. The hydraulic limits were breached. The battery pack was going critical.
Herman didn't even notice. He stumbled forward. He raised the sparking gauntlet to aim at Peter. He tripped over a chunk of asphalt, throwing his aim wide. More sparks sprayed from the damaged housing.
"Okay, we are definitely on a ticking clock!"
Peter fired twin web-lines at the ground behind Herman. He yanked himself forward like a slingshot. He slammed into Herman's chest. Peter grabbed the sparking gauntlet with his left hand. He dug the fingers of his right hand into the cracked casing. He ripped the gold-titanium shell completely off. He tossed the heavy plating aside. Raw, glowing circuitry was exposed to the night air.
It's the exact same architecture as the alleyway prototype, Peter realized, his eyes darting over the fried wires. He just miniaturized the output coils. I know this circuit.
"Get off me!"
Herman swung his left arm in a wild, concussive arc. Peter ducked instantly. The shockwave clipped the top of his mask.
Peter stared at him in disbelief. "Dude, I'm trying to save your life! Your battery pack is melting down!"
"I..."
Herman blinked. The head trauma from the falling billboard had completely scrambled his brains. He stared blankly at his own sparking wrist. Then, his eyes narrowed. He lunged forward. He slammed his heavy metal helmet directly into Peter's forehead. A sickening crack echoed. Peter saw a constellation of exploding stars. He tumbled backward across the pavement.
"I can fix it," Herman slurred, swaying on his feet. "I just have to finish you first."
Peter groaned, rubbing his head. He threw his hands up in sheer exasperation. "Are you kidding me? You lost! Look around! It's over!"
"The cameras..." Herman muttered, staring up at the hovering news choppers. "So many screens. I can't lose on TV. I won't do it."
The guy was completely unreachable. Peter exhaled a sharp breath. He had used the media spotlight as bait. He hadn't realized the attention would trigger a complete psychotic break. Herman was fully camera-drunk.
But the exposed gauntlet was still whining. The pitch climbed higher every second. The explosion was imminent. Think, Parker, think.
Peter executed a flawless backflip. A sloppy shockwave tore up the street where he had just been standing. He couldn't just strip the armor off Herman piece by piece. It took too long. What if he managed to yank it off, and it detonated right in his hands? For the first time in his life, Peter really wished supervillain weapons came with a giant, glowing red digital countdown clock.
Wait. I can force an overload. Peter tilted his head. A kinetic blast ruffled the fabric of his mask. I can prematurely detonate it. He visualized the crude prototype from that first fight. Herman had dialed back the total output for this armored version. The original prototype hit harder, but it tore itself apart. The safety limiters on the gauntlets were jammed. Herman was manually throttling his own punches to avoid a blowout.
If I bypass the limiter and punch at maximum output... it'll blast me into the stratosphere. And then the core will melt down. Peter ducked under another clumsy swing. He stared at the exposed wiring on Herman's right arm. The news choppers circled like vultures. The cameras broadcast the bizarre dance below. Spider-Man effortlessly side-stepped a flurry of desperate punches. He wasn't even throwing counter-blows. He was just studying the stripped gauntlet. He tracked the primary power cable to a mechanical governor switch. The safety pin.
Herman clamped his fist to fire. The physical tension dictated the acoustic yield. The mechanical safety was completely wedged in place.
"Alright, Herman," Peter muttered. "Since we're standing in the middle of Times Square, we're going to have to take this outside."
Peter slipped under a right hook. He grabbed the hydraulic seal locking the gauntlet to Herman's elbow. He squeezed. The metal bracket snapped. Peter violently wrenched the heavy weapon completely off Herman's arm.
Herman just stood there, swaying and mumbling to the cameras. Peter fired a massive web-net, sticking Herman securely to the asphalt.
Peter shoved his own right arm into the oversized, sparking gauntlet. The interior mechanisms clamped down awkwardly over his spandex sleeve.
"Going up!"
Peter aimed his right hand straight down at the ground. He clenched his fist. He pushed his mutated muscles to their absolute limit, bypassing the suit's manual resistance. The gauntlet screamed. A massive seismic blast cratered Times Square. The concussive recoil launched Peter vertically into the night sky like a ballistic missile.
The G-force pressed his mask flat against his face. He ripped the mechanical safety pin out of the wiring with his left hand. He squeezed his right fist harder. The wind roared in his ears. He breached the cloud layer. The neon grid of Manhattan shrank into a glowing circuit board below him. He was terrifyingly high. He angled his body, pointing the gauntlet straight up toward the stars.
The core breached.
A final, apocalyptic shockwave detonated. The sheer kinetic force instantly vaporized the surrounding clouds. The recoil slammed into Peter's chest, rocketing him back toward the earth. The damaged gauntlet ripped itself off his arm. It shot higher into the stratosphere. A split second later, the battery pack exploded. A blinding, silent starburst of white light illuminated the sky.
Okay, so that worked, Peter thought, the icy wind tearing at his suit. Just one tiny problem.
He was in a terminal velocity free-fall. The shockwave had actually accelerated his descent. He squinted through his lenses at the rapidly approaching skyscrapers. If he just fired a single web-line to swing from a building right now, the sheer sudden G-force of the stop would literally tear his arms out of their sockets.
He had run the physics calculations in his head a hundred times during boring math classes. He had designed a high-altitude deceleration web-net specifically in case he ever had to catch a falling civilian. He just never expected to be his own crash-test dummy.
He leveled out into a skydiver's spread. He plunged into the concrete canyon of Times Square. His web-shooters rapid-fired. He sprayed thick, horizontal lines between the adjacent skyscrapers. He wove layer upon layer of overlapping silk, creating a vertical gauntlet of trampolines.
He crashed through the first net. The silk stretched, groaned, and snapped. But it bled off a fraction of his momentum. He tore through the second layer. Then the third. The fourth.
After plunging through two dozen layers of decelerating webbing, the final net held. Peter bounced wildly in the center of the massive silk hammock, twenty feet above the pavement. He gasped for air, his heart hammering against his ribs. Below him, the police barricades had broken. Camera crews swarmed the cratered street. Peter groaned.
He dropped from the web, his boots hitting the asphalt. He pushed his way through the dense ring of reporters surrounding the immobilized Herman.
"Did you see the sky?" Peter panted, crouching next to the webbing. "That gauntlet was literally three seconds away from turning you into a Roman candle."
Herman didn't look at the sky. He looked at the cameras. He reached up with his free hand and popped the seals on his helmet. He pulled it off. The bruised, sweating face of Herman Schultz was instantly illuminated by a hundred camera flashes. Herman closed his eyes, soaking in the blinding strobe lights. A slow, deeply satisfied smile spread across his face.
"I really hate to say this, man," Peter muttered, patting Herman's armored shoulder. "But you need serious therapy."
Peter stood up, turning to face the wall of lenses.
"The Shocker is finished."