Chapter 21
[36]
Ren swung through Shinjuku as fast as he could while looking at his phone. The tracker seemed to be leading him to a large warehouse that looked out of use. Landing on the ground in front of the warehouse, Ren finished slipping on his makeshift costume.
“As far as evil lairs go, I’ve seen better.” He joked to himself. “Now, how to go about this?”
Ren crawled up the outer wall and slipped in through one of the windows. As he entered, he heard the clanging of metal coming from the back. He clung to the ceiling and moved silently towards the sound. When the Vulture came into view, he was out of costume and working on his wings, seemingly attaching more metallic ‘feathers’ to them.
As Ren got a closer look at the villain, he noticed that the man was quite old with silver hair wrapped in a ponytail. Evidently, he had replaced the leg Ren had taken as he walked on two large silver talons that reminded Ren of a dinosaur’s legs. The old man seemed to be preparing for something, possibly for him, and as Ren saw it, there would be no better time to strike. Ren dropped from the ceiling and immediately webbed Vulture’s legs to the floor.
“Give it up! Just come quietly!”
“Ugh, you again. You’re a lot more annoying than the last Spider-Man.”
“Wow. And here I thought we had a good back and forth going. Y’know I make playful quips, you threaten my life, but that’s just plain hurtful.”
“Oh I’m done threatening. Usually I despise taking lives, but this...I’m going to enjoy this.” With that, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small remote. When he pressed a button on it, the wings hanging behind him whirred to life and lifted off of the chains they hung from.
“Holy-” Before Ren could finish, one of the ‘feathers’ shot from the wings at high speeds directly at him. Luckily, his spider-sense warned him and he was able to dodge it by a hair and it dug into the concrete behind him.
The wings seemed to detect that they missed and began firing more projectiles his way, flying closer to get a better angle on him. Ren somersaulted backwards to avoid the deadly metal. ‘Thank you Sumire.’ He thought as he flipped to safety, if it hadn’t been for her teachings, he’d never have been able to pull that off.
While Ren was busy avoiding death, Madarame freed himself from his constraints, the deadly talons tearing through the webs. He approached the masked vigilante while he was still focused on the wings. Madarame got in close behind Spider-Man and reached out with a talon, the boy turned at the last second as Madarame’s talons wrapped around his chest and slammed him into a support column.
“Agh!” He cried out as he was pinned against the pillar. The strong mechanisms in Madarame’s feet whirred as they clenched harder against Ren’s body. His bones creaked and he groaned in pain.
“So much for the New Spider-mmm” Madarame was silenced by a web to the face. As he pulled at the webbing, Ren shot a web line at Madarame’s other leg and pulled with his immense strength. The older man was thrown off balance and released Ren as he fell to the ground.
Finally able to breathe again, Ren sucked in a desperate breath shortly before his spider sense went off again. He was bombarded with more metal feathers as the wings seemed to recognize that they were no longer in danger of hitting their owner. Ren rolled over and took off running from the stream of projectiles.
“Damn those things are annoying.” He said to himself as he hid behind another pillar. The projectiles suddenly came to an abrupt halt as Ren hid. He waited for a few moments, not daring to peak lest he be shot in the face. Finally, he decided to check around the pillar, he dove out from behind it and took aim where he believed the wings to be, only to catch a glimpse of the Vulture, now donning them, take off straight through the ceiling.
‘No! I can’t lose him again!’ Ren thought as he followed the winged menace through the hole he’d created. Now in broad daylight, the Vulture was easy to find in the open air. He took off after him and caught up quickly, as he closed in on his target, he was surprised when the Vulture turned and shot a feather at nearly point blank range.
As it turns out, having a spider sense doesn’t mean much if you can’t act in time. Ren wasn’t able to dodge the foot long shard of metal that pierced deep into his left shoulder. If it hadn’t been for all the adrenaline running through his veins, he might’ve collapsed from the pain, but instead he managed to grab Vulture by the lapel of his aviator jacket. Gripping onto the jacket aggressively, Ren came face to face with the villain.
“Get off of me!” The older man attempted to punch Ren off of him, but without his tech assisting him, his blows were harmless.
“Not a chance! This time, you’re coming with me.”
“No!” Madarame pulled at his attacker’s mask and managed to tear it off. The two of them flew recklessly through the Tokyo skies, dangerously close to several large buildings.
‘I’ve got to stop him before we crash.’ Ren thought to himself. He glanced at his hand and remembered his first battle with Kamoshida. Back then, his hand had produced some kind of electrical pulse that had sent Kamoshida flying.
‘If I can manage something like that again, I may be able to...Oh screw it, it’s worth a shot.’ As the two of them hurdled at high speeds, Ren reached out a hand to one of Vulture’s wings and tried to recreate the moment he’d first used that power. Much to his surprise, it actually worked! Blue electricity built up around his open palm and discharged into the wing. The electrical pulse shorted out both wings and the propellers in them slowed to a halt.
“W-WHAT DID YOU DO!?” Vulture cried as he began to plummet with Ren still holding onto him.
“My job.” Ren replied simply. He kicked the now useless wings and with no power they came off of Madarame’s back easily and fell harmlessly to the streets below. Ren then shot a web out to the nearest building and wrapped the, now flightless, bird-man around his arm. The two of them came to a slow halt as they hung from the line.
Ren left the elderly man hanging, completely restrained, from a light post with his talons removed and sticking to a nearby wall. With his job completed, he sent Naoto a text saying ‘Here’s your plucked goose.’ Along with his location. Naoto responded back with the okay and Ren left the scene.
Putting his phone in his pocket, Ren’s adrenaline started to wear off and he realized how much pain he was in. He looked down at his costume and saw it was shredded, he also noticed the foot long steel blade in his shoulder.
“Oh shiiit! Takemi’s gonna kill me!” More pain shot through his body. “If I don’t bleed out first.”