Mac Gargan's rage was simple arithmetic. Two Spider-Men had caused his own bullet to ricochet and sever his spine. The injury left him a paraplegic. To walk again, he had to let them bolt a monster's exoskeleton directly into his nervous system. He blamed the spiders. He came here to vent his suffering and make them bleed.
But Spider-Man's rage was absolute zero.
With a raw, wordless exhale, Peter drove his hands into the crack of Gargan's shattered gold-titanium helmet. He pulled his arms apart. The heavy metal tore cleanly in two. Peter tossed the scrap aside and drove a brutal front kick into Gargan's chest, sending the massive villain skidding across the pavement.
A block away, Tony Stark hovered in the night sky, watching the measurement feed. "The kid doesn't need us for anything except a ride," he remarked dryly over the comms.
The Avengers had a specific mission tonight: establish a hard perimeter around the neighborhood. They were keeping the media and local authorities out to protect Cindy Moon's civilian identity. Handling the Scorpion was entirely Peter's job.
Standing on a nearby rooftop, Captain America looked down at his tactical tablet. He watched the bio-readouts. He knew exactly what was happening down there. Spider-Man was venting.
Down in the crater, Gargan scrambled upright. His mechanical tail thrashed wildly, reconfiguring into a massive, razor-sharp scythe. He swept it in a wide, lethal arc. Spider-Man couldn't just vanish. It had to be active camouflage. The tail's built-in turrets spun up, spraying indiscriminate suppressive fire into the dark street to flush the bug out.
Gargan's Scorpion Sense violently spiked.
Before he could react, a heavy boot stomped directly into the back of his knee joint. The hydraulic pistons buckled. Gargan crashed down onto his knees. Spider-Man materialized directly behind him. He dug his fingers under the heavy plating of Gargan's right arm and violently tore the armor entirely off the joint, tossing the twisted metal to the ground.
"Stop hiding!" Gargan roared.
He swung a desperate, blind backhand. The strike carried enough kinetic force to decapitate a normal man. It hit nothing but empty air.
Spider-Man wasn't using camouflage. He was entirely gone.
Peter Parker was tearing through the barrier of reality itself. In the microsecond before Gargan's fist connected, Peter stepped sideways into the Web of Fate. He slipped into the interstitial space between universes, coasting on the multiverse currents for a fraction of a second, before stepping back into reality a few feet away. It was a crude, highly localized form of teleportation.
And it was tearing Gargan apart.
The Scorpion missed again. Otto had promised him that his spliced genetics were vastly superior to a spider's. But the reality was staring him in the face. He had paid the ultimate physical price. He almost had the hostage. He had the girl by the throat. He could have snapped her neck.
So why couldn't he land a single punch?
Gargan lost his mind. His tail cycled erratically through its weapon configurations: electromagnet, auto-cannon, scythe, acid sprayer. The constant shifting drained the armor's power reserves. He was fighting a ghost. A silent, relentless phantom with dead white lenses that kept appearing out of nowhere to dismantle his indestructible armor with bare hands.
"Show yourself!" Gargan screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Come out here!"
Spider-Man stepped out of the thin air. He stood perfectly still, staring at the ruined, sparking remains of Gargan's suit.
Gargan smiled through his bloody teeth. Finally. A physical target. He lunged forward.
Peter reached out and caught the massive mechanical tail.
He planted his feet. He twisted his hips. He swung the massive villain over his head and slammed him face-first into the asphalt. He didn't let go. He ripped Gargan back up into the air and slammed him down again.
Gargan felt the pavement shatter against his exposed jaw. He felt the hot rush of blood filling his nose and mouth. He spat out fragments of his own teeth. His entire face went completely numb.
The Avengers didn't intervene. Peter knew exactly where the line was. He understood his own physical strength, and he knew exactly how much kinetic trauma Gargan's mutated body could endure. He just clenched his jaw and slammed the Scorpion into the concrete again and again.
Then, a hand grabbed Peter's shoulder.
"You're going to kill him!"
Peter froze. He turned his head. Cindy stood behind him, her chest heaving.
Peter looked at her. His voice was flat, hollow, and utterly terrifying. "He almost butchered your family."
Cindy met his gaze. Her eyes were wet, but she didn't blink. "My dad said we don't kill people. He said this guy isn't worth it."
Peter shoved Cindy hard in the chest.
The push knocked her safely backward just as Gargan's tail blade stabbed through the exact space where their heads had been a fraction of a second prior. Cindy hit the ground. She watched Peter vanish and instantly reappear. With her unique connection to the Web of Fate, she was the only one who could actually feel the reality-shift.
Gargan spat a mouthful of blood, letting out a wet, desperate laugh at his failed sneak attack.
Then, the air left his lungs.
A heavy boot planted directly onto the back of his neck, pinning his face to the asphalt. Spider-Man knelt down. He ripped the lower half of his own mask away, exposing a clenched jaw and a hard frown.
Peter drove his knee into Gargan's spine. He grabbed the mechanical base of the tail with both hands.
He pulled.
Gargan's eyes bulged. A primal, horrifying shriek ripped from his throat. The heavy metallic brackets snapped. Peter forcibly tore the entire tail, along with its integrated nerve-connectors, clean out of Gargan's back.
The sensation in Gargan's legs instantly vanished. He was paralyzed all over again.
Peter tossed the bloodied mechanical tail aside. Gargan was still breathing, his body twitching on the pavement. Peter looked down at him, then over at Cindy. She was staring at his partially unmasked face, trying to read the emotion in his eyes.
"Your dad is right," Peter said coldly. "He doesn't deserve it."
White bio-electric lightning erupted from Peter's skin. He grabbed Gargan by the ankle, lifting him off the ground. He unleashed thousands of volts of raw electricity directly into the villain's mutated nervous system. Gargan seized violently, his eyes rolling back in his head, before going completely limp.
Peter dropped the unconscious body. He pulled his mask down, sealing the lenses. He tapped his earpiece, dialing a secure frequency.
"Scott," Peter said, his voice returning to its normal, steady cadence. "I need a massive favor from Emma Frost. I've got a brain down here that needs a deep scrub."
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