Secret Invasion Part 1: The Betrayal

Chapter 5

"Secret Invasion"

Spider-Man | Iron Man | Hawkeye

Peter Parker | Harley Keener | Kate Bishop

[Manhattan, New York. Mid 2028]

[Baxtor Building, 0333 PM]

“Hey, Pete,” Gwen announced her presence inside the Fabricating chamber on the sixth floor, where Julia Takeda and Peter himself spent most of their time inside engineering most of the inventions from Reed Richards’s borderless mind and their own. As of now, Peter is currently busying himself over a design terminal, finetuning the new version of his Spider-Man suit after the incineration of the previous one following his lovely trip in the city’s sewers. A holographic 3D model floating at the center with a simulation spinning slowly, showcasing the details of the incomplete design; same lenses, but the suit resembled more of his old one back in 2025 with all-red arms instead. It is still in a red and black combination with a white spider. “New suit?” the brunet with damp hair, dressed only in his spare clothes, turned towards her with a smile and urged her to get closer.

“Yeah. I wanna add some features into it just in case.” A slight smile graced his lips as he zoomed in on the circuitry inside the mask, “Carbon nanotube for the control system and coated with thin layers of non-conductive polymer for insulation and respiratory filters. Keener found Edith and I wanna prep this one for immediate integration.” He felt Gwen’s hand snake around the small of his back without uttering a single word, encouraging and congratulating him. “How’s the iguana?”

“Dissected and samples are being analyzed as we speak; this lab is amazing,” Gwen replied, “What do you think happened down there?”

“Don’t know yet, but with the base chemicals from the analysis, we should be able to match it to the residue that was left in one of the pipes.”

“You think the water systems were contaminated?”

“It would explain how you got such a complex mutagenic agent inside your system. Digestion was the easiest way, second only to injection that you might receive from the hospital.” Peter then hums deeply, lost in thought, before returning his eyes to hers. “You think there’s a chance others might’ve developed a mutation like yours if the chemicals were spread into the city’s tap water? Should we be concerned about a couple, or dozens, of newly mutated spider-people?”

“You creampied that many gals?” Gwen quirked her brows playfully at him, enjoying the sheen of red dappled across his face and cheeks.

“No! but…just curious!”

“A-ha…”

“What?”

“Should we go check on Felicia?” She prodded his side with a grin.

“That’s ridiculous,” Peter scoffed with a ridiculed expression. “We haven’t done anything remotely close to that.” He waved the notion off, rotating on the collection of suit designs with various characteristics; one or two of which come with a hoodie.

“I dunno, Pete, you two sure spent lots of time together at one point.” Gwen shrugged her shoulders and rotated the roster back to the hoodie ones, inspecting the designs with interest, “Kinda makes a girl wonder, you know?”

“Gwen…” Peter sighed heavily, but Gwen’s finger rested on his lips and silenced him before he could continue.

“I’m just messing with you, dork, I know nothing is going on; if there was, you wouldn’t be able to keep it shut for this long, would you? Too much of a gentleman to do that to a girl, especially to someone like her.” Gwen harbored a playful smirk on her face, yet a shadow of doubts still clouding her eyes, “but Sue mentioned something, and your recent alcoholism started to worry me.” Her hands gathered his face in them, caressing the cheekbones with her thumbs and demanding to be looked at in her sky-blue irises, eventually, he relented and rested his forehead against her, taking advantage of their height. “Talk to me…” she coaxed him with gentleness and soft words, encouraging him to do it on his own. In the end, Peter only shook his head lightly in their embrace and exhaled heavily. Gwen lessened her hold with hooded eyes and a gap increased despite being so close to one another.

“It’s…not yet. I have to look into it more before I can say anything,” It was an excuse, he knows, but it was better than nothing to offer as a reason.

“What’s going on, Pete?”

“It’s complicated, Gwen.”

“Dude, we lived together for almost a year, and we fucked a lot, I’m not exactly a stranger.” A little frustrated, Gwen lost control over her tone, her eyes squinted in accusation and hurt. “You went out our window almost every night, sometimes you came back with gunshot wounds or knife marks, or bruises. You can climb walls with your bare hands, you lift an SUV like nothing, and you fight with a purple alien warlord once on an alien planet with evidence of intelligence civilizations. You even pleaded a wizard—”

“Sorcerer.”

“-sorcerer to erase your existence from the entire universe. Being in a relationship with you is complicated.” Gwen ranted with her arms, exaggeratedly. “Whatever it is that you kept from us? It can’t be more complicated than any of those.”

Peter sighed and squinted his eyes shut, massaging the bridge of his nose and his temples with a groan, and then looking at her determined expression. “I think my dad’s still alive.”

‘That is complicated, all right, but not by much.’ Mused Gwen internally as she continued observing the man in front of her, trying to guess the reason why such great news would be a cause for distraught. Patience with a new approach in mind, Gwen silently retraced her hands to rest just under his jawline, feeling the pulse of life coursing through him.

“Remember the explosion in Queens suburb?” He asked, met with a silent nod, “That's when Felicia and I tracked down the Chameleon, the one who shot you, to the place that should’ve been hers and Doc Ock’s safehouse.” Gwen nodded slowly, trying to stay with the story. “It’s my childhood home.”

It took a minute for Gwen to comprehend the information, and then her eyes almost popped out of their sockets with a sense of dread washing over her entire being.

“So, yeah. My dad might still be alive and possibly be one of the most dangerous villains I’ve ever met, almost killed me once, and turned Mister Richards, Johnny, Mister Grimm, and Sue into something else against their will.” He forced a thin smile with a shadow of self-loathing behind the usually warm hazel orbs. “The best part?” He inquired sarcastically, “It’s all me!” He returned to the terminal with Gwen standing in silence at his side, afraid to even reach out. “The Spell fried parts of his brain, irreparably damaged, went crazy.” The design was dissected into different parts; the head, torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet. “Hammerhead and the Maggia were powerful but nowhere near the capacity to launch an attack that big without his help, all the deaths and destructions…”

“It’s not your fault,” Gwen started when she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Pete, it’s not.” She tentatively closed the gap between them, reaching out with her hand towards the tense shoulder of his and feathery brushing the digits onto them like a question, asking for permission. “If anything, you are the one who put a stop to it.”

“Just cleaning after my own shits, like always.” He grumbled, refusing to look away from finishing the new suit design. “I only solved the problems I’ve caused. If I didn’t ask Stephen to do it, all of that wouldn’t have happened in the first place.” He felt her hand retreat and a lump formed in his throat for a moment before her body pressed against his side, eyes focused on the same thing as his.

“You wanted your friends to be safe. Was it selfish? Yes.” Gwen saw the scrunches on his face but kept pushing. “That just means you are human like all of us. Shit happens; it’s how you deal with them that defines who you are.”

He’d turn stoic, but she recognized the unspoken question.

“Someone who always wants and tries to do the right thing. Not Spider-Man. Not a hero. Not a perfect guy. Just a nerd from Queens.” Gwen laced her left hand and fingers with his, squeezing ever so lightly considering how much strength both of them shared, “The man I love.” The last word was delivered in almost a secret whisper only for them to hear. “Life is not a game that you can restart from a save point if things go south to get the best outcome, we can only move forward, and do better. Wallowing in the past helps no one.”

“Didn’t someone say that our past defines us?” Peter tightened his hold on their slotted hands.

“As long as you don’t let it become a shackle around your neck,” Gwen replied with a cheering smile, sweetly resting her head on his shoulder. “…I saw a future with you in it, Peter Parker,” Gwen whispered to the tiniest gap that separated them. “Will you go there with me?” The question hangs in the air for a while, only their breathing and the mechanical whirrs of the machines can be heard. Then their joined hands were raised to his face as Peter softly planted a kiss on her knuckles and accidentally landed on the ring finger. He kept it there for a few moments before returning it to the space between them.

“To the world’s end, Gwen Stacy.” His answer put a stupid smile on her face, cheeks flushed pink, eyes sparkled. He dived in for a kiss and the sunflower-blonde accepted it with all her heart. Guided by something seated deep inside each of them, Peter gathered her up by her waist and roughly set Gwen down on the design terminal without breaking the contact, one hand traveled up to the middle of her back for support while the other kept pressure on her waist, locking her in place with significantly more force than any of them ever experienced in their shared intimate moments.

Gwen wasn’t familiar with the adhesive ability as much as Peter did, but she could still feel the changes under her palms that roamed over his back and the nape of his neck like they subtly protesting whenever she moved them around, even stray strands of his brunet hair clings to her skin when she rakes it through the mob on his head. His mouth traced down to the pepper light kisses and suckles over her jugular, melting her into the cage of his arms and leaning over the terminal further, until her hand landed on the surface for a brief moment, calling a holographic display of a hooded spider-suit to lapsed with her body. Peter startled a little and retreated just enough to look at what happened, gaining a smirk on his flushed face.

“What?” Gwen inquired about the stupid grin he got on his face along with the sparkle of ideas lighting up those dilated hazels.

“You look cool with a hood on,” Peter commented as he was looking with attentive eyes at the lapse of images between Gwen and the holographic suit lightly covering her. “Nate, initiate a body scan and integrate Gwen’s data into the Spider-Wardrobe.” He commanded and the AI obliged wordlessly. After a minute or so, the new simulated model resembled Gwen’s body and a collection of suits shown on the holo-projector “What do you think?” he asked as Gwen placed herself to his right side, alternating her eyes between him and the projection.

“Is this your idea of a couple’s outfits?”

“Early Halloween tryouts?”

“Fine.” Gwen playfully rolled her eyes at his plea and looked over to the design interface that Peter brought up. Her scanned body lacks only her facial features and hair, other than those it was almost a perfect replica, very ideal for virtual fitting. “Okay, what do I do?”

“Just pick some that you like from the archive, throw them into the model, and Nate will adjust them for the proportion.” Peter demonstrated with the classic version of his old red and blue suit, “Or you can put in a new one with a custom menu.”

“Like a character creator?”

“More or less?” He shrugged. “Come on, try it.” He enthusiastically urged and Gwen chuckled a little before relenting.

“I don’t think the red suits me,” Gwen mumbled after a while of taking bits and pieces from Peter’s designs and combining them into her own; simpler than what he has with a different type of footwear, devoid of color on the carbon fiber parts while the adaptive fabric sections are still black. The torso bears a triangular design akin to his Mk-III suit that was used in the Siege with a little bit of adjustment. “Maybe all black?”

“Too edgy,” Peter commented playfully.

“Says the guy who wears red and black.”

“It’s my trademark! I can’t change too drastically; my adoring fans wouldn’t be able to keep up with the plushies and merchandise.”

“How did you come up with that anyway? The first one.” Gwen asked without looking at him, still adjusting the small decorative parts on the back of the suit into a symbol of some kind.

“It was Uncle Ben’s hoodie. May almost get rid of it because it was so torn and worn-out, I learned my first sewing lesson with it.” He replied with a nostalgic smile, but the usual sad tone that accompanied the recollection of memories about his surrogate parents lessened its hold and barely showed itself anymore. “Then it kinda sticks around, you know? Kids love it, and the bad guys always thought I was just a clown, which gives me the advantage.”

“But…you are a clown.” Gwen teased with a straight face.

“Very funny,” Peter grumbled with a hidden smirk, pushing her head to the side playfully.

[Manhattan, New York. Mid 2028]

[New York City Fire Department, 0328 PM]

“Storm! Get off your ass! There’s a fire on Roosevelt Island!” his superior officer shouted hurriedly into the break room as Johnny was enjoying the lazy afternoon on the communion couch, shirtless because nothing can survive his Pyrokinesis except for the Unstable Suit. “I want you to get to the site and minimize the damage!”

“On it, Boss!” Johnny sprung himself up and quickly ran from the break room while zipping up the jacket and activating his earbud, “Dispatch, NYFD-4, destination Roosevelt Island.”

“Authorized for take-off.” The dispatcher confirmed firmly, “Good luck, Storm.” Johnny chuckled a bit into the comm and shot himself up into the air with thrusters of fire from his feet and hands. He gains altitude as well as velocity while adjusting the trajectory by leaning his upper torso into the direction of the island and feeding more energy to the propulsion, soaring through the air like a horizontal comet, mindful of keeping his fire engulfing his body only from the waist down. Evading pigeons and other avian species was good practice in flying.

It took him around ten minutes to reach the airspace above the island and the source of the fire; a burning mansion, half-ruined, with what seemed to be two humanoids moving inside. One of them had a full-body third-degree burn and his left arm was missing a chunk of flesh at the bicep rendering that arm useless, the other was a tall, green-skinned pointy-ears humanoid alien with a ridged chin, moving its imposing height around with two arms covering in flame.

Johhny circles the two as his eyes witness an unbelievable sight when the shorter and charred man gets pummeled away by an elongated stone arm and he peels off his dead skin like sleeving a hare. As the shorter man charged back into the fight again, his skin rapidly regenerated. By the time he closed the distance, the newly formed raw skin had already covered his whole body and he was using a set of bladed talons on his right fist to jam it under the alien’s diaphragm.

“Boss?” Johnny doused the fire from his hands and hovered using only his lower body, calling out to the senior firefighter responsible for him. “I’ve got eyes on two superpowered individuals fighting on site!”

“Copy.” The boss held off for a moment to inform his units and returned “Give me a SITREP.”

“One of them seems to be immortal, while the other can use Pyrokinesis like me.” Johnny averted his eyes a little at the side towards the mansion or lack thereof. “The fire source was a mansion on the north side of the island, completely burnt. I think I can localize the situation to the site for now.”

“Negative. Observe and be ready for containment, I’ll call in the cavalry.”

“Copy.” Johnny sighed heavily, gaining more altitude, and did as told. Watching a death match between two superpowers unfold at a safe distance.

[Upstate New York, New York. Mid 2028]

[Avengers Compound, 0341 PM]

“You might be the only friend I have that willingly cut their Italy countryside vacation short, Bishop,” Harley yelled with a broad smile against the rumbling of repulsor engines of the mini Quinjet going through a de-energizing procedure, settling comfortably on the helipad in the center of the circular-shaped building. “Smooth ride?” He took Kate’s duffle bag from her and accompanied Hawkeye into the main building, looking sideways at the tired face of the archer.

“The right repulsor acted a bit weird in higher altitude, but that’s it.” The raven-haired woman replied casually as they reached the residential section of the Compound. A dozen vacant rooms lined the hallway, labeled by names of the Avengers members, acting as their local lodgings and personal storages; hers was adjacent to a nameless one that belonged to Spider-Man before the resignation. “When’s Morgan’s birthday again?” Kate received her duffle from Iron Man and tossed it into the closet.

“Next Tuesday. Pepper wanted to hold it at the Cabin rather than in the city.” Harley leaned against the doorframe with his back turned to the interior of the room, giving Kate the privacy to change her clothes. “You coming?”

“Maybe?” Kate voiced her uncertainty from behind the partition cover “I didn’t have any gifts yet,”

“Morg is not some spoiled little girl who’ll throw a fit about it,” Harley chuckled from his position, listening in to the sound of a pair of shoes being put on. “Parker might be there too, just saying.” He got a smirk on as Kate’s exaggerated sigh could be heard.

“What is it with you and Yelena always teasing me about Pete?” Kate groaned curiously as she walked past the doorframe into the hallway, followed by Harley, “He got a girlfriend, jeez.” The archer dramatically gestured her arms around.

“Girlfriends.” Iron Man corrected it for her with a smirk, “I’m sure you can apply for the third one, adding some diversity into the mix a little. The picture is too blondes, pun intended.” His joke gained a snort from the raven-haired Avenger in front of him as they reached the main hall and turned toward the adjacent conference wing for the debriefing. “Anyways, how’s the eyes?” FRIDAY opened the door for them and inside there’s a hologram of Colonel James Rhodes awaited them with a frown on his face. “Colonel?”

“Prep for deployment, Iron Man, Hawkeye,” The former Avenger and now their diplomatic representative ordered firmly and clearly with his military background “Roosevelt Island. Extraterrestrial specimen. SWORD requesting requisition of the specimen, alive.” There’s a shadow of confusion on the older man’s face, but he carries on nonetheless, “The local authorities will set up a perimeter along the coasts and evacuate the nearby civilians as fast as they can. Please minimize the battlefield to the immediate site only.” Kate bolted towards the hangar as soon as the order was given, meanwhile, Harley clapped his hands loudly to the integrated AI in the conference room.

“Anything else?” Harley inquired as the table split symmetrically to reveal a contraption hidden under the floor, delivering the stored suit from the underground storage that Tony installed a long time ago, in case of an attack. The dirty-blond Tennessee engineer called the housing unit of the Iron Man armor Mark-V up towards his chest and quickly deployed the nanomachines into a suit that resembled Tony Stark’s Mark-L but with modification to the color palettes. It took the programmable bots around ten seconds to complete the assembly as the far end wall of the conference room lifted into the ceiling, ready to take off.

“NYFD’s new golden boy, The Human Torch, was already on site. I expect full collaboration on this assignment, Iron Man.”

“Sightings of Spider-Man on the scene?” Harley inquired as he took off with the repulsor and jets while Kate already ascended the Quinjet into the sky from the side.

“Negative.” Colonel Rhodes answered quickly, eliciting a huff from Harley inside the helmet as he gained more and more speed through the air, aiming at the mentioned island. “Should I inform him to stay put? This is Avengers business now.”

“No need, Colonel.” Harley accelerated more and broke the sound barrier just before he entered the populated area.

“Keep me updated, Iron Man.”

“Yes, sir.” He replied and Colonel Rhodes cut the communication, then he directed the link into Kate’s Quinjet. “Hawkeye? Can you pull up at the Baxtor?”

“Why?”

“Pick up.”

“Wait,” Kate paused a bit, “Are you saying we’re gonna get him in on this?” There’s a confusion in her tone, tinged with a veiled excitement.

“We trust him, don’t we?” Harley plotted the course and accelerated his suit. “Karen linked his new phone to the system already. I’ll head to the site first.” At the far distance to his right, Harley witnessed the Quinjet take a sharp turn and make its way into the city of Manhattan.

“Save some fun for us,” Kate said before cutting the comm.

[Manhattan, New York. Mid 2028]

[Baxtor Building, 0345PM]

“Say what?” Peter said into the phone, his free hand rapidly initiating the finishing process of the fabricator, despite the new spider suit being only 55% done, after Kate Bishop surprised him with a phone call and told him that there was a situation on the Roosevelt Island. Mark-V has only finished its adaptive fabric formation; meaning the base layer of black synthetic material was done and nothing else besides the STF padding white spider on the torso. Is it wearable without finishing the red carbon-fiber outer coat? Absolutely. Especially when the situation calls for it like this.

“ETA at the Baxtor in 2 minutes, which floor are you on?” Kate’s question came with a rush of excitement.

“This building’s not exactly an open-space company, Kate. Meet me on the helipad.” He quickly transferred the linked line into his earbuds and put them on, while the fabricator finally finished the extraction process, and quickly shed the sweatpants to shimmy his legs into the newly fabricated black pants and the torso, adjusting the chafes and snugness to comfortably fit on his body. Peter snatched the mask from the formation chamber and put it on after he was done with the footwear. In the main area, Susan and Gwen were chatting about something when their eyes landed on Peter in an all-black suit, then confusion descended upon them.

“What’s with the edge-lord fit?” Gwen inquired with a mix of teasing and criticism.

“Where are you going?” Susan added with furrowed brows, her tone borderlines disapproval.

“There’s a situation on Roosevelt. Kate’s coming for the Uber-Jet.” Peter quickly answered and called the lift. “Let’s agree to call this incomplete and not edgy, okay?” he turned the last sentence towards Gwen, who got a smug on her face.

“As long as we can go with you,” Susan demanded, surprised even Gwen at the determination behind the biochemist’s words “Johnny called earlier, and said something interesting happened on Roosevelt; I assumed it was the same situation you mentioned?” She approached Peter’s side as soon as the lift slid open. “Maybe I can be of help.” It was not an inquiry, but a certain statement.

“We don’t know what kind of danger we are walking into yet! I can’t do that!” using his hand to hold open the sliding door with relative ease, Peter stood firmly in place to deny the two blondes an entrance to the steel cargo. “Not in good conscience. No.” his white lenses narrowed, but due to the design and the lack of color, it rendered them more nefarious than ever. “Stay here, please.”

“Pete, you always say that great powers come with great responsibilities,” Gwen cocked her hip sideways and crossed her arms across her chest, looking intensely at his narrowed lenses and black mask. “Sue and I got powers, you can’t make us stay behind all the time, we can help!”

“I don’t know if this is something mundane or Thanos all over again! You can’t expect me to willingly endanger both of you like that.” He stood firm and protested against their pleas.

“If it was something like Thanos, would it make a difference if we were here and not there?” Susan spoke firmly. “No offense, Peter, but if you and your friends failed, all of us here would still suffer nonetheless.” From the horizon line, he saw the Quinjet getting closer and closer, trying to find a counterpoint to Susan’s argument.

“You are going to fight an alien, Pete. Bringing two biologists wouldn’t hurt.” Gwen added with a sheepish grin.

“That…makes no sense.” He replied. “And none of you had ever seriously trained in self-defense or fighting with your powers; you haven’t even trained your reflexes with the Spider-Sense,” He criticized the sunflower-blonde and turned towards the fair-haired beauty at the side, “You got tired too fast maintaining the forcefield.”

“Never too late to learn, and there’s nothing more educational than firsthand experience.” Susan offered seriously.

“Sue—”

“It’s two on one, Pete. Respect the democracy.” Gwen nudged Susan’s shoulder with her own.

Peter hunched over a bit and huffed heavily, until he let out a long sigh of defeat, retreating his arms and stepping back into the steel cargo, allowing the girls to enter. “…If we are going to do this, you have to listen to what I say. No exception. No objection. Is that clear?” both women reluctantly nodded their heads, “I want both of you to stay in the Quinjet until I say otherwise, provide information support if you can, but I don’t want to be worrying about any of you engaging in combat with the alien, understood?” He looked at them demandingly until both mumbled an acknowledgment and then he connected a line to the Quinjet again. “Kate, we’re going up.”

“We?”

“Yeah. My, very, persistent girlfriends insist on tagging along.” He gives them a stinky eye, which Gwen sticks her tongue out as a retort, and Susan harbors a mild smile at the corner of her lips. “Before you say anything; good luck convincing them.”

“Rhodey’s gonna eat our heads.” Kate conceded after a sigh.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Peter shrugged his shoulders. “Still got the autopilot?”

“Yep. Don’t worry, Friday is still a better driver than both of us combined.” Kate replied, “The others are en route for reinforcement, but for now it’s only us three plus blondie over there.”

“Anything interesting so far?” Peter led the two women into the cargo of the small Quinjet and hit the button immediately, sealing the ramp for take-off.

“Tennessee just landed, still assessing the situation; but there’s someone else on the scene, fighting the alien.” The raven-haired archer said from the cockpit without turning backward.

“Yeah?” He takes Gwen and Susan to their respective seats, fastening them in as Kate initiates the ascension.

“A-ha. Some short guy with metal skeleton, talons on each knuckle; six total.” As she described the suspected superhuman for him, her peripheral caught his all-black suit sitting on the co-pilot seat and lifted her eyebrow at the unfamiliar sight. “Black is the new Black?” her eyes roamed upon the new arrangement of the legs that hugged his chest down to the side of his ribcage and upwards into his back.

Peter chuckled softly at her pun, foregoing the seatbelt as he utilized his sticky power instead, “Sewers adventure earlier today, this one’s not finished yet.” He linked the suit’s integrated computer to the local mainframe of FRIDAY at the console, a beep indicated the connection was established. “Short guy with six metal talons? What a coincidence.”

“Friend of yours?” Set a course for the island, Kate let FRIDAY control the jet while rechecking her gears once more.

“No. I caught him harassing someone at night once, the guy’s a heavyweight; I barely do damage to him with regular hits.” He reached over and casually adjusted the loose clasp of her sling without a thought. “…Maybe there’s something else going on there and I just fucked something up for him?” The uncertainty started to show, and Kate punched his shoulder lightly with an encouraging chortle.

“It may, or maybe not, who knows except that guy. We can talk to him later; but apparently, he’s kinda immortal.”

“For real?”

“Yeah. Harley said he saw the guy got toasted like two times already. Fully regenerated in seconds.” The Quinjet closing in on the island at an accelerated rate, prompting both former teammates and lovers to prepare their entry. Kate held on to Peter’s offered arm as he led both of them towards the closed ramp, waiting for FRIDAY’s signal. Her blue eyes scanned the two blondes of different heights and body types; Gwen Stacy was a petite woman with a lithe body and modest curves, while Susan Storm was elegant and taller with prominent assets. “Hi! Wish we’d have met in a more preferable circumstances; Kate Bishop.” With her left hand firmly stuck to Peter’s shoulder, she offered her right one for both of them to shake. The taller blonde took it firmly, while the sunflower one exhibited a lot more force in her grip. “Ouch, that’s one hell of a grip.”

“Gwen Stacy.” The petite blonde replied, “Sorry. I’m a bit nervous; still getting used to Spider powers.” Gwen apologized sheepishly.

“Huh?” Kate alternated her quizzical expression between the petite woman and the Arachnid-themed vigilante beside her.

“Long story.” He offered, “Maybe we can grab some dinner together? I knew a few decent restaurants.”

“Since when?” The archer inquired.

“Felicia Hardy.” Susan clarified, her lips forming a thin straight line with her eyes harboring dissatisfaction. “Spider-Man was quite friendly with the city’s infamous thief, apparently.”

“Infamous thief…Are you dating Black Cat?” Kate got a baffled expression on her face as she whipped her head back in Peter’s direction, catching a deliberate sigh from him. “Three women at the same time? Pete, you are on fire!” She cackled a little at his discomfort.

“No. We are not dating. I just help her with some investigations.” Peter explained to Kate only, knowing that the other two already knew the nature of his and Felicia’s relationship; Susan just wanted to be mischievous from time to time. “We can gossip later, ladies, I think we are here.” Feeling the craft stabilized itself over the designated site, Peter hit the emergency button and opened the shuttle door. “Gwen, Sue, stay on the Quinjet. Friday will manage the piloting.” He looked at Kate next before gathering her battle-ready form into his side.

“You got that, Fri?” The raven-haired archer inquired into the interior until the monotonic voice affirmed from the cockpit. “Just don’t push any buttons that are red, blue, or green.” Her eyes fall upon the two blondes and satisfied with the nods of their pretty heads. “The whole thing uses voice command, just tell Friday to get you out of here if shits hit the fans, deal?” Kate said and then hopped to piggyback Peter. “Just like old times?”

“Just like old times.” He confirmed and then leaped out of the cargo hold into the air with the raven-haired archer stuck to his back before deploying the glider wings to slow their descent into the ongoing battle below. Iron Man hovers around with occasional repulsor shots interrupting the alien in his close combat with the immortal man, while Johnny Storm circles and absorbs the alien’s fire into himself.

“New guy is hot!” Kate yelled against the rushing wind as Peter steered them to a safe distance to let her down. The archer quickly deployed her collapsible bow and loaded the first trick arrow with an ice blast head.

“That’s Sue’s little brother, Johnny,” Peter informed her and deployed the gauntlets on his arms. “Thanks for the birthday gift, by the way. Quite handy.” He gestured at the kinetic-reflection contraptions and was confused by Kate’s confusion when she looked at them.

“What are you talking about?”

“Keener said you asked him to make these for me, as a gift?”

“No? I thought I’d be giving you something for this year along with the one from last year.” She cast her eyes at the suit of armor with the iconic color schemes with a smirk plastered on her lips. “Maybe he just wanted to call a truce and didn’t want to say it?”

“We are still talking about Harley Keener, right?” Peter snorted a little at that, looking down at the armor pieces with piqued interest.

“You two were friends, once. Is it so hard to accept that?” She took a sliver of opportunity and launched the arrow into the mix, it landed with a bullseye on the alien’s right shoulder, weakened the raging fire for a moment before being overwhelmed. “Damn it!”

“Can I have some of them icicles? My webs couldn’t do much against the fire.” Kate loaded and gave him a couple of ice arrows and loaded another one before nocking it and firing another arch that temporarily put out the local fire they landed upon. Peter leaps into the air and catapults himself over the fight before throwing a couple of ice-blast arrows into the alien, covering the torso and the arms in sheens of ice, and exposing the stone surface underneath. “What the?” His eyes saw the rushing straight punch about to collide with the metal-taloned man and yanked him out of harm’s way just in time. He shot another web and threw the short man out of the circle to let him catch his breath. “Anyone can fill me in with what happened here? Make it less than 200 words will be indefinitely appreciated!” Peter landed on the swinging arm of the eight-foot-tall alien and sprung off after restraining the arms and legs into the ground with a barrage of webbing.

He jumped off and stuck his hand to Iron Man’s calve without looking, letting the Avenger haul him higher into the air and detached himself before twisting to land near the regenerating man who look so pissed off.

“Hi, there.” Peter waved at the burly and almost naked man beside him, gaining an annoyed scoff for his effort. “You okay there, brother?”

“Just dandy, bub.” The rapid reformation of his skin and tissues amazed Peter, it was like watching a time-lapse video of an axolotl regenerating its limbs. “You got some plan going in that webhead of yours, or do we have to keep playing with that bastard all night?” The burly man seems unbothered by the nakedness, and now Peter sees the hair start to regrow on his head, approximately about 100x times faster than normal.

“What can you tell me?” Peter asked and rechecked his capacity in the HUD.

“Super strength. Pyrokinesis. Stone skin. Stretchy limbs. And sometimes I was pushed by some invisible walls.” The man grumbled and hissed a little as he sprung his talons out, showcasing the unique pattern and characteristic of the material; they are matte and somewhat darker like blades that were forged by a meteorite. “Grade-B healing factor. I stabbed him two times in the noggin, one in the diaphragm, and cut his hands off multiple times, but they all regrew.”

“What is it?” He inquired while watching Iron Man and Human Torch relentlessly assaulting the green alien in sync.

“Dunno. Just happened to be attacked by it, had to fight back.” Out of habit, he seemed to be looking for a cigar that was not there, along with his clothing. “Shit.”

“I guess, from your familiarity with this, that you got some experience dealing with this kind of thing before?” Peter inquired, observing Kate Bishop moving around, trying to find a perfect spot to support the flying duo.

“More or less; a sure way of killing the type that has healing factor is to destroy the brain. I can try decapitation but doubt it would do anything with how fast the regeneration is.” Kate deployed another barrage of concussive arrows and traps, but most held too short of an effect against the amount of strength and versatility the alien possesses. “If you can somehow plant a bomb inside his skull, the regeneration won’t matter.”

“Um, you have anything else that was…milder?” Occasionally, Peter would restrain the alien after Johnny Storm subdued his fire and gave Kate an opening to land all of her trick arrows. “Like, a way to temporarily stop the healing so we can apprehend it? Like, cutting off the arms and holding it down, kinda stuff.”

“Pete?” Gwen called his name through the Quinjet’s linked comm with an alarming tone.

“What?” Kate followed, putting in another combination of electrocution arrows.

“It has merits if a tad too extreme,” Susan commented, mostly towards Gwen at her side on the aircraft.

“It could work if we are solely talking about the healing factor and not anything else it can do!” Harley added sarcastically, maneuvering himself through the sweeping arms trying to knock him off the sky “I can try the dampener on it, but the configuration was made for homo sapiens, it might not work on whatever race this one is.”

“You finished it already?” Peter inquired as he jumped into the fight, yanking the alien backward before landing a powerful hook at its jaw, thunderous crack of bone could be heard from the dislocated jaw. Kate, despite being quite a distance away, is still surprised at the brutality he shows.

Peter continued with a combo of hooks and punches, utilizing to the fullest extent the gauntlets he had on his arms. Each punch repels the target because of its design by the genius mind of Harley Keener, but he can’t see any normal human using them against a stronger opponent without super strength and durability; they were specifically custom-made for him with his capabilities in mind. The next step might be to make a local housing unit onto his spider suit and have it operated under a neuro-link interface to deploy nanobots onto any part of his body for various purposes; like a more versatile and superior version of the Spider-Armor.

“87% done with the integration and need some fine-tuning, but I think its functionality is good to go!” Harley replied with a grunt and without any signal exchanged between them, he shot a beam of repulsor into Peter’s guarding arms to reflect the kinetic beam into the alien’s back, blindsiding it effectively.

“Care to fill me in?” Kate inquired from her cover position, nocking and releasing a couple of armor-piercing arrows in a way to distract the alien while conserving her depleting supplies of trick arrows.

“Later!” Harley weaved and retaliated with a repulsor shot at the green one’s chest as Peter simultaneously delivered a mean hook to where the kidney was supposed to be. “Karen, I need the Kryptonite protocol!” Harley saw Peter backflipped away from the tornado of elongated stone arms with a raging fire and he was caught by the ankle and was about to be pulled down when a mass of propelling nakedness whistled through the air with a satisfying sound of a sharp knife cutting the arm off.

“Focus, you maggots!” The burly naked man shouted to all of them, including Johnny Storm who was hovering above the scene. “I need Iron Man to keep distracting, Fireboy will put out the fire so Webhead and I can fight, Arrowgirl over there just aim at the exposed area. Got it!?”

“Who is this guy?” Johnny Storm protested from above but still obliged by constantly absorbing the raging flame from the alien into himself while circling the site, evading the stretched arms.

“Right now, I’m your commanding officer! Get it done!” Yelled with finality, the metal-talons man closed the gap immediately and delivered a flurry of slashes and stabs, followed closely by Spider-Man’s barrage of martial arts. “I can cut the stone with no problems, but how long until this solution will be here?”

“Depends on the delivery, I’d say around ten minutes, top, from here to the Avengers Compound,” Peter answered while acrobatically evaded a rocky punch to the guts, then shooting a line of webbing to reel himself into the waiting face of the alien, dislocating the jaw again with his unleashed animosity. He spread his fingers and using the newly added claws of the suit dug into the crevices of the rocky surface and ripped them off with the momentum of his body, making the alien wail in pain and lose focus. Flexing his body unnaturally, Peter coiled and latched on the alien’s back, punching the side of its head with a force that more than what he’d landed on Thanos back on Titan, whipping the green head to the side violently. Spider-Sense blared screamingly from the back of his head and Peter jumped off before a powerful vortex of repulsor beam and Johnny Storm’s fire blasted into the head of the alien.

Logan lowered himself after a rush and cut his Adamantium talons into the knee of the burning green-skinned and yanked it off before the tissues could mend themselves. He felt Spider-Man hand hauling him off his feet just before an explosive arrow landed on the staggered alien, powerful enough to blow up a truck. “You carried that around on your back?!” Logan roared at the raven-haired archer, seeing her repositioning herself.

“It’s inert!” Kate retorted in kind, launching another armor-piercing arrow into the regenerating adversary. “Sorry for the danger close!”

“Points for taking the initiative, kid, don’t worry about it.” Then a glob of webbing covered his lower body from his waist down to his knees, prompting a look of ridiculous confusion at the Spider-Man.

“It’s better than letting it dangle about!”

“Feeling insecure, bub?” Logan smirked.

“Not in the slightest, buddy.” Peter retorted with a scoff, “Testicular torsion is no laughing matter, my furry friend.”

“Call me that again, punk, I dare ya!” Logan growled at the taller young adult beside him.

“Alright! Jeez…” Peter raised his hands in surrender with a ghost of a cackle escaping his lips, “What should I call you, then?”

“Logan.”

“Logan…?”

“Just Logan.”

“Okay.” Peter looked at the ongoing conflict with thoughtful expression hidden under a layer of reinforced material. “Any plan rather than killing it, Logan?”

“Hmm.” The mutant looked at the struggling alien as it suffered another fatal blow from the combination of fire and explosive arrow, something caught his keen sight. “You see how the regeneration works?”

“…It negates the other powers!” Peter exclaimed after a brief observation, eliciting a small appreciative smirk from Logan. “Gwen, the regeneration is a problem, any suggestion?” He learned a long time ago that working in a team means having a broader spectrum of knowledge to deal with any given situation.

“We can overload the reproduction of cells by powerful explosion or intense radiation, roughly calculated based on its body mass, though…we will need at least an equivalent of a small warhead, concentrated into a small area. I don’t think we have the explosive strong enough for that, let alone the means to contain the blast.” Gwen quickly informed everyone after her brief consult with FRIDAY’s terminal on the Quinjet.

“We do! I can create a sphere around the specimen while Johnny acts as a bomb!” Susan exclaimed.

“Sue, we don’t know yet if you can withstand that kind of kinetic energy,” Peter interjected with concern regarding the people occupying the battle right now. “That theory needs testing!”

“So, let's test it, then!” Johnny yelled from his hovering position, turning his head towards the archer below. “What’s the explosive arrow compared to the mentioned warhead?” He swished around in the air and absorbed another torrent of flame, feeling the captured energy inside himself getting more intense.

“Umm…” Kate started to do quick math, but Harley beat her to it.

“1/20, roughly.” He keeps a concentrated beam of repulsor on the defensive alien, reading the remaining energy of the suit to about 64%. “Can you give me a summary of your containment method?” Harley inquired to the two civilians that somehow Peter decided to bring with him.

“Bio-electromagnetic field manipulation. I can condense particles into solid constructs.” Susan answered the Iron Man firmly.

“Neat. So, a forcefield.” Harley then gained a distance away from the fight to cool down his consecutively used repulsor, as well as to check on KAREN’s reinforcement’s arrival. On the horizon, he saw a speeding transport pod getting closer. “Friday, land the Quinjet behind me.” Then he flew towards Kate as Spider-Man and Logan engaged in a close-combat with Johnny Storm cutting out the burst of energy from the alien. “Bishop!” He passed and grabbed Kate by her free arm to haul the raven-haired archer near the cargo hold of the landing Quinjet. “Test the containment out, I’ll try to prime the dampener.” He said after dematerializing his helmet into the armor along with both arm guards.

“What can I do?” Gwen inquired as Susan and Kate Bishop relocated a few feet further to the waterfront, and Harley Keener busied himself with guerilla engineering.

“Depends?” Harley turned to her a bit with his brows raised.

“Almost anything Pete can do, minus the web-swinging.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“How?”

“Complicated, very.” Gwen demonstrated it by jumping about twenty feet high into the air with seemingly no effort.

“How do you feel about being a test subject?” Iron Man forced an encouraging smile out of his face and offered her the primed bracelet. “Put it on, then we can estimate the timing of execution of the plan you came up with.” He pointed at the delivery casing nearby, “It was made from Ti-Au alloy, test your superstrength out before and after. I need a timeframe.”

Gwen nodded and took the item with her, then proceeded to punch the casing with all her might, wincing at the reaction force applied upon her but still amazed at the sizable dent she made on the composite material.

“Parker didn’t teach you anything? You punched like a girl.” Iron Man commented with a chuckle.

“Excuse me?” Gwen whipped her head around with stinky eyes and a bit of a huff.

“It’s true. Your body was too stiff, you didn’t follow with your strike, and the wrist was too loose, even your fist wasn’t properly closed.” Harley clarified with sincere criticism, “If you don’t know how to throw a punch, use the butt of your palm instead. Less damage to your knuckles and muscles that way.” He instructed her with a brief demonstration.

Gwen followed with another strike and noticed the difference immediately. “Thanks!”

“If you decide to join the circus, I can call in Black Widow to give you a special course; hell on earth guaranteed.” The Tennessee engineer gives her a playful thumbs-up.

“It can’t be that bad.” The sunflower-blonde said with evident doubt, but only garnered a scoff from Kate Bishop through the earbud and Harley’s shake of his head. A muffled boom went off from the spot where the biochemist and the archer were.

“Now, put the bracelet on and strike exactly one second each.” She complied and it took only five before her superstrength waned. “Alright, come here.” Harley waved her over and quickly unclasped the power dampener from the petite blonde’s wrist. “It should take about ten seconds on greenie.” He spoke into the earbud to Peter and the Human Torch. “How’s the test?”

“Should be fine!” Susan answered as both retraced their steps to the Quinjet, visibly pleased. “For about two seconds.” Then the fair-haired beauty looked upon the flying figure of her little brother, noting that the entirety of his body barred the head was covered in raging orange flame. “Jonathan, have you ever done this before?”

“Turning myself into a powerful explosive? Not that I can recall, sister dear.” He chuckled darkly, a shadow of doubt almost slipping past his sister’s attentive mind, “It shouldn’t be a difficult task, anyways, considering I’m burning with energy right now!” Johnny soared upward and shot a torrent of flame down toward the alien as Spider-Man and Logan guy jumped out of proximity. Luckily, despite the similarity between them regarding their powers, Johnny can tell that his fire is more intense and powerful, allowing him more control over the destructive element in their tug-o’-war. “So, how are we going to do this?”

“You put out the fire. I’ll hold him back with my webs. Keener will hit it with a sonic blast. Then you get in position and Sue will encase both of you in a sphere.” Peter ejected the emptied cartridge and reloaded a new one, he turned towards Logan to be met with the shorter man’s quizzical look. “Logan and the others get on the Quinjet and get to a safe distance.”

“Hold on, Webhead—” The burly man started a protest, but Peter cut him off with a gesture of his hand.

“I don’t care how resilient you are, Logan. Get on the Quinjet with the others.” His lenses squinted like a teacher scolding his student. Logan retaliated with equal stubbornness.

“Make me, bub.” Logan stood firmly for a moment before he yelped as Spider-Man casually picked him up and tossed him through the air toward the general direction of the Quinjet. The ferocious mutant growled annoyingly at the way he was treated like a bag of feathers by the younger vigilante after he landed heavily on the ground, creating a small crater around his feet and hands from the added weight of the Adamantium skeleton.

“Okay, all of you, get on the Quinjet!”

“But—” Gwen started a step but was caught by the arm by Kate. The sunflower-blonde woman turned her head back towards the raven-haired Avenger, seeing her determined expression and a tinge of seriousness.

“Pete might not be a leader anymore, but I know when to listen to him. You are inexperienced, don’t do anything stupid.” The raven-haired urged the blonde while alternating her eyes back towards the battle, seeing how Iron Man and Spider-Man fell back into their rhythm despite years of animosity towards one another. “Come on, the sooner we get out of here, the better.” She starts applying more force to the tug and eventually, Gwen relented, but not before talking into the intercom.

“You two better be safe; you hear me?” She demanded and heard a soft chuckle through the communication link from Peter and a reassuring smile from Susan just out of the Quinjet’s ramp before the cargo door closed and the AI initiated a take-off.

“Okay, let’s do this!” Peter signaled for the remaining superpowered humans and the armored genius while he catapulted into the fray after Johnny was done with the absorption. One punch to the jaw was followed by a weave, another knee by a duck, and elbow strikes predate the overhead jump to deliver another set of kidney punches. Peter moves fast and whippy like a viper striking its prey as the two flyers constantly provide fire support by their mirroring positions. There are occasions when the stretchy limbs are about to collide with the blur of black and white, but they are stopped by invisible walls and barriers, guided by the Spider-Sense, Peter vaulted over the edge of the invisible cage and engaged in another close-quarter session. Implementing his kicks and legs for their powerful muscles, Peter delivered a barrage of consecutive strikes to wear the alien down for the crux of the plan.

“Peter, get out!” Susan yelled from her spot as she finished the hovering pyramid construct above the alien and slammed it down around the green-skinned hybrid after Spider-Man flipped out of the vicinity. Given time to recharge their assaults, Iron Man and Human Torch coiled their energy weaponry while Susan kept sustaining the cage for a moment longer. “Now!” She shouted and dispelled the condensed walls, allowing the two hovering men to rain hellfire upon the regenerating alien. A moment later, Johnny Storm stops his onslaught dives into the spot beside the alien, and engulfs himself in the intense coat of fire. Susan gritted through the knocking presence of vertigo in her head. She pushed herself, encasing the blindingly bright spot where her brother charged up the stored energy inside himself, radiating intense heat even to where she stood a good distance away from him.

Peter landed beside her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, silently encouraging the fair-haired beauty despite the visible wrinkles of turmoil present on her face. “Keener, prep for containment,” Peter said while looking up at the hovering Iron Man, his arms and legs sore beyond imagination but still ready for anything. “Steady as she goes, Sue,” He whispered, his hand squeezing firmly on her shoulder.

Johnny Storm screams explosively inside the confined of his sister’s barrier, exerting a tremendous amount of energy in constant pulses that quake the ground they stand upon, vibrating the invisible barrier ever so violently. He felt the changes moment by moment, noticing how fluctuating the energy being dispensed into the tight space, increasing the intensity of heat and destructive power.

At the peak of the explosion, the build-up pressure almost destroyed Susan’s barrier, staggering the fair-haired beauty backward into the waiting frame of Spider-Man, steadying her. He felt her body tremble violently from the exertion of energy she put into the containment field, prompting him to put both his hands on her shoulders and provide sturdy support. “Easy, don’t lose focus. You can do this.” His warm presence reinforced her mind, and Susan braved the onslaught of exhaustion and nausea, determined to contain the blast as best she could, eventually she had to enlarge the surface area as the pressure proved to be too much to handle in such a tight confined. “You can release the barrier any moment now,” Peter demanded firmly as he planted himself in front of her, acting as a kind of blast wall shielding her from the shockwave.

Susan heeded the plea of her body and collapsed onto the ground as soon as her concentration faltered and the heated residue blast collided with everything in the 100-foot radius, not as a strong and brutal kick, but the lazy caress of a lover. “Now!” Peter shot off the ground he stood upon with all his might, propelling his body in an arch while Iron Man rushes in with a couple of power dampeners in his armored hands. Johnny Storm knelt beside the alien, exhausted and still glowing dimly from his entire being, heated air creating a cocoon of mirage around their bodies. In contrast, the green alien lay on the ground with 70% of its being charred and slowly regenerating at a significantly reduced speed. Iron Man clasped the bracelets onto both wrists while Spider-Man delivered a decisive hook straight into the alien’s jaw, so hard that its head bounced against the petrified dirt, going unconscious. Taking advantage of the situation, Peter bound both wrists together using a considerable amount of his webbing.

Iron Man landed beside him as Johnny Storm regained his bearings, witnessing the receding of the mutated skin and the dimming of the inner glow associated with Johnny Storm’s powers. “Well, that was fun.” Harley started as he finished the thorough analysis of his suit, mumbling silently to himself at the remaining energy level of 32%. “I thought you’d be a bit rusty now, seeing that the city’s almost run by CRUD agents nowadays.” Harley snarked at the black-suit Spider-Man at his side, “Glad to see that we can still count on you, Parker.” Harley hesitantly praised his former friend and teammate, trying to fist bump but stopped just as he was about to lift his hand, retaining the stilled and neutral air around them.

“Send a thank you gift to RAC, Keener. Maybe I’ll believe it when I see it.” Peter casually detached his nanomachine arm guards and handed them back to Iron Man, prompting a look of confusion even with the lifeless golden mask covering it. “Kate said she never asked you to make this,” His lenses squinted accusingly at the Iron Man. “Why?”

“Whyever not? You are the savior of Manhattan; it seems appropriate for a leader of the New Avengers to endorse their former teammate.” Harley shrugged his shoulders and casually answered the question, he challenged the demanding glare of the Queens’ superhuman but eventually relented after the intensity behind those leaf-shaped judging eyes bored a hole into him. “Despite your shitty abandonment,” Harley emphasized, “Morg still adores you. I don’t want you to die so easily, it would break her heart. So, put that thing on, for her sake.” He pushed the offered items back to the owner.

Peter stays quiet for a moment, then he nods his head with resignation and puts the gauntlets back on, accepting the reasoning. “So, what are we gonna do with this one?” Peter gestured to the bound alien as he helped Johnny Storm get back on his feet with heaving breathing and the still slightly overheated body. “You okay there, Johnny?” The blond pyromancer nodded his head with a firm pat on Peter’s shoulder in response.

“You guys just get on the Quinjet and head back to the Compound for a check-up while I wait for SWORD.” Harley answered and started the call with Colonel Rhodes with a portable holoprojector integrated into his suit, “Unless you want to be in the evening news, that is? Maybe giving the reporters some spicy rumors about Spider-Man rejoining the New Avengers? Or the Storm siblings' initiation?”

“Why SWORD?” Peter inquired as he landed beside Susan, gathered her up bridal style so easily like she weighed nothing, “I thought extraterrestrial business was SABER’s job?” Enjoying the flush of pink on the woman’s otherwise exhaustedly pale face, Peter pressed her comfortably into his broad chest as he retraced the steps toward Harley and Johnny.

“How the hell did you know about SABER?” Harley disengaged his helmet and shot a baffled look at the black-suit vigilante.

“It wasn’t exactly a well-guarded secret, Keener. Also, I’m a paranoid freak, I have to know about lots of things.” Peter sarcastically replied and shrugged his shoulders dramatically with ease since Susan’s body was stuck to him rather than being held.

“Everything’s all right down there?” Kate’s voice rang through their communicators, as the Quinjet hovered above their heads. “I mean you two kinda been flirty and all chummy with each other for a while now, care to include us?” The raven-haired archer teased with a lighthearted tone. Harley groaned with annoyance while Peter just shrugged it off with an amused chuckle. “But to answer your question; SWORD specifically requested the requisition of the specimen.”

“I hope you have good news for me, Iron Man?” Colonel Rhodes spoke as his holographic imagery appeared.

“Successful subjugation and containment, Colonel. Should I transport the subject back to the Compound or?” Harley converses professionally while Peter lends his shoulders to Johnny as the Quinjet slowly descends into a landing. He looked down at the struggling alien, surprised to see the green-skinned Thanos’s knock-off rapidly looking worse for wear and some part of the visible body starting to degrade. “…We might have a problem here.” Harley then turned to the Quinjet and hollered. “I need Stacy over here!”

Peter quickly placed Susan on the seat and gathered Gwen up before jumping off the ground to land with practiced grace in front of the thrashing alien. “What…in the…”

“It looks like a severe case of cellular degradation, common in ineffective cloning specimens.” Gwen provided the information quickly as she leaned down a little, still keeping herself close to Peter, and looking at the alien more intensely. “See the pattern of tissue destruction?” She pointed the trail of death for them but both men were rather experts in different fields of science.

“Can we stop it?” Peter inquired with his lenses squinted.

“No. unless you have access to the original genetic batch that was used in creation and a lab.” Gwen replied with furrowed brows and pressed lips, eyes roaming over the pitiful alien, and then an idea popped into her head. “The healing factor you suppressed must be the countermeasure for it!” A reluctant smile graced her lips, looking back up at Iron Man and Spider-Man.

“You suggest we let it regain powers? Remember how hard it is to defeat it?” Harley looked back at the perked-up siblings and the raven-haired archer, all harbored concerned expressions except for the burly immortal man dressed only in Spider-Man’s webbing. The Storm siblings are in no shape to do a containment again, and outright killing it might be the ultimate solution. Yet, that solution is still not ideal on the notion that the cells might still be degraded afterward, and it would be all for nothing. “It has to be another way.”

“I’m a geneticist, not a miracle worker. I can’t magically whip up a solution out of my ass.” Gwen squinted her eyes at the dirty-blond Tennessee man. “These kinds of metasciences require years of study and trials, and some goddamn faith in the hope that your next experiment won’t outright disintegrate before development.” The sunflower-blonde petite stood up again, dusting her knees a little, and turned towards the wide-eyes Spider-Man, “We can try cryonics if you have the tech for it, but I can’t guarantee a result; only speculations.” Gwen shrugged apologetically at her boyfriend.

“It’s fine, Gwen, don’t worry about it.” She can outline a smile underneath the black material and relish the sensation on her lower back where he rested his palm encouragingly. He turned towards the leader of the New Avengers “Can you fashion a cryonic pod out here?”

“Even if we take apart the Quinjet for the components, it will take at least an hour. I don’t think Shrek over here got that much time left.” Harley whipped his head towards the crowd at the Quinjet in nonchalant sarcasm “Any of you know someone who can manipulate temperature? Some kinda Iceman or something?” Most just shook their heads, except for Logan who cackled ironically at the question. “The best bet we have is to take a thorough bio-scan before it is completely gone or call in the stabilizer pod from the Compound and hope it works.” Harley then initiated the scan and returned to the conversation with Colonel Rhodes “SWORD will have to make do with bio-scan data; its body is disintegrating due to genetic complications. Possibly a clone.”

“That’s fine, I can smooth things out with Hayward, but the question is, why did you allow civilians such as Miss Stacy and Miss Storm into the battlefield?”

“You should ask Bishop about it, I’m not the one who flew them here.” Harley shrugged his shoulders with a smirk as Kate’s protest cut into the comm.

“Your technicality bullshit won’t work, Tennessee! We are going to the lecture together, pal.” Peter cackled at the exchange, prompting Kate to whip her head his way with a pointing index “You are not excluded, Queens!”

“Hey, I’m not a registered Avenger anymore! I don’t have to do anything like that.” Peter plastered a triumphant grin on his face. “Ah, the sweetness of vigilantism at its finest.”

“Colonel?” Kate fished around for an ally.

“I’m sorry, Hawkeye, but Spider-Man’s right.” Colonel Rhodes chuckled fondly at the trio, “but if he were to be taken into custody…that would be a different story.”

“Oh, would it now?” Kate harbored a mischievous grin on her dirty face.

“Not a chance.” Peter squinted his eyes at them.

Harley was enjoying the air of nostalgia around him when KAREN notified him about a strange object at the center of the alien’s chest cavity. Quick analysis tells him that it resembled some sort of a dead man’s switch, and now it is rapidly broadcasting the activation signal to receivers nearby. “Parker,” he called his former leader and plunged his armored hand inside the cave of ribs and yanked the device out with ligaments and grimes, “Something’s not right,” he presented the device to the vigilante, “Karen, trace the signals.”

“On it, boss,” The AI acknowledged, and it took her about a second or two until the result came back, “Three incubation tanks had been activated, in that direction.” The HUD highlights the ruin of a burnt mansion, where a trio of advanced coffins burst out of the ground in their range of visions.

“Wild guess; more of the clones of our boy here?” Concede to the fact his suit’s equipment wasn’t as advanced as Harley Keener’s, Peter relied on Iron Man to give a SITREP at this distance.

“Parker’s luck strikes again,” Harley forced a nervous grin out and directed his attention to the comm again “Colonel?”

“I’ll alert the city, but try not to let it get out of hand,” Rhodey replied with an air of urgency, “Captain America and Falcon are en route to your location. I don’t know about Doctor Strange, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

“Negative, rerouting Bucky and Sam towards the city for evacuation and coordination, these guys are out of their league.” Harley turned towards the crowd at the back of the Quinjet, eyes roaming over the roster as his mind raced at top speed to deduce a plan. “Parker, you get them out of here.” The Iron Man ordered and started calling in reinforcement from the orbital sentinels, handing the control over to KAREN as he needed to focus on the three awakened aliens who were gaining awareness after their pods finished resuscitations. He’d expected Spider-Man to get on the Quinjet to evacuate the exhausted superhumans and the others that were not suited for the incoming battle back to the city, but his peripheral caught the stark darkness of the vigilante’s new suit standing at his side instead—a familiar pressure of a reassuring hand firmly patting his armored shoulder just like old times.

“I won’t be able to look at your family if I do that, Harley.” Obscured by the black mask as it is, Harley was able to discern the tight-lipped smile he’d not seen in a long time. Peter turned back toward the others and looked at them attentively; Susan and Jonathan Storm were exhausted and not in any shape to continue the fight, Mister Logan was a skilled warrior, but his powers contributed less than ideal, Kate had nothing else other than her martial arts and archery, and Gwen only got the super strength and untrained Spider-Sense. “Everyone, please get out of here.”

“Hold it right there, kid, I can still fight.” Logan started but Peter cut him off with a gesture of his hand.

“I know, and I see that you are some kind of a leader.” Peter then gestured towards the shoreline of Manhattan “Which is something they needed if these guys get past us.”

“Don’t you fucking Steve Rogers me now, punk! I am an adult here, and I won’t run away leaving two kids behind.” Logan jammed his thick index finger into the center of his chest, emphasizing his words.

A caravan of orbital pods hovers above them and some descend upon Iron Man, assembling the Hulk-Buster for additional shielding and firepower.

“Well?” The brunet genius inquired to the dirty-blond one.

“At least we can use him as bait or a distraction.” The hulking (ha!) suit of armor replied nonchalantly, surrendering to the notion that none of them could convince the ferocious man otherwise. “Can you not get toasted every minute?”

“I can certainly try.” Logan scoffed with a smirk and sprung his talons, ready to pounce and get more comfortable in the Spider-underwear covering his junk.

Susan and Johnny tiredly approached them as well, determination evident on their pale and exhausted faces. “We are staying as well, Spider-Man.” The Human Torch forced a bravado smirk at him, while his sister only communicated with her sapphire orbs.

“Not a chance; you look just a push away from passing out.” Peter protests against Johnny first and averts his squinted lenses at Susan “It’s too dangerous, Sue.”

“Let us decide that,” Gwen walked up from behind the fair-haired woman and supported the lower back with her hand. “I don’t have web-shooters, but I can still hit really hard.” Her upturned chin and sharp eyes tell him to better not object.

“You have no training, Gwen, it’s not just about how hard you can punch something! This is not a time to be arguing, get on the Quinjet!”

“You can’t fight those things alone! See how hard it was with all of you together? You need all the help you can get.” Gwen pleaded with firm conviction.

“And you think having you all here with me will change anything?!” He burst out, anger rising from deep within, frustrated that she chose to be stubborn at the worst time possible. “They are aliens who can shoot fire and turn themselves into stone. This is not a joke, Gwen.”

“I know I can help, Pete.” She took his hand in hers, “We are in this together now, it’s my responsibility to look after you, too.” She tries to appease with a confident smile.

He felt the surge of anger coiling inside, but doused it with all of his will, careful not to lash out at the sunflower-blonde in front of him. “…you paired with Kate and stay behind cover, take care of Sue and Johnny.” He said with a heavy sigh, carefully taking off his gloves along with the web-shooters and putting them on hers. “I have no use for webbing when fighting them. Aim and press on the contact with the middle and ring fingers; that will close the trigger circuit. Long press for web line and short for shots, got it?” He secured them on her and urged her to try. Gwen shoots a line of webbing into the air after a couple of adjustments due to the difference in the size of their hands. “Keep both fingers tight together, otherwise it won’t work.”

“It’s not as hard as I thought it would be.”

“The hardest part was the aim, it’s not a gun but the spinnerets provided the same rifling motion to the webs and stabilized them, yet they are not propelled by explosive gas, they lose their initial velocity faster. Aim higher the farther your target is.” Peter directed them behind a cover where Kate laid down all of her remaining arrows for easy access. “They are designed for my use, the webs are not tuned for your body mass, don’t hold on to it if it hits the target. Even with superstrength, we still have to abide by physics.” He then turned his eyes to the Storm siblings, “You guys can join in anytime you want, just don’t push it.” Lastly, his gaze landed on Kate, “Don’t shoot me.” He saw the corner of her lips curled up in a smirk.

“Don’t run into it.” The raven-haired archer retorted playfully, and he jumped into the fray as Logan had already sunk his talons into one of the three newcomers, and Harley stood between the other two utilizing the sheer mass of the Hulk-Buster to his advantage.

[Manhattan, New York. Mid 2028]

[Sanctum Sanctorum, 0425PM]

“What do you mean; no?” Wanda furrowed her brows and glared dagger at the sorcerer in front of her.

“I’ve told you times before, Miss Maximoff. There are rules and balances to be maintained.” Stephen stood at the foot of the grand staircase, with Wanda Maximoff standing about five or six steps higher than him. “I cannot intervene in Earthly matters, not anymore after such a catastrophe with Spider-Man.” The repercussions of his and the vigilante’s collective idiocy stretched years in the form of a mystic pack forged upon him by Wong and the Masters, punishable by imprisonment inside the Mirror Dimension. “And since you are my ward, I cannot allow you to, either.”

“There are threats out there that need the Avengers; need us!” Wanda exclaimed in frustration, They had recently enjoyed the library together as Strange educated her more about the finer magics and incantations that the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj possess knowledge of -runes, ancient dialects, enchanted words, intra-dimensional hopping, demonology, and such- until a viral clip of someone’s drone shot shows the fight between a group of Keener’s Iron Man, Spider-Man, an unknown naked man, Bishop’s Hawkeye, and other two unknown superpowered humans against what seems to be an alien with green skin who possesses a variety of powers ranging from pyrokinesis to stretchy limbs as well as apparent immortality.

“We are many groups responsible for various duties, one such as this does not require our meddling.” Stephen is unrelenting and stands firm in his spot and determination to prevent Wanda from leaving the New York Sanctum “You are an acolyte to Kamar-Taj, first and foremost, and must heed our rules beyond those of others.”

“Rules? I can’t believe my ears,” Wanda scoffed as she paced about on the current step she was on “Stephen Strange, the rebellious sorcerer himself, upholds the rules by any means necessary even if it means letting the friends he fought with die?!”

“I have my burdens to bear because of my actions, don’t let the same happen to you.”

“I remember a man said to me, once,” She said cooly, sparkles of energy coursing through her veins, lighting her eyes up in a set of glowing red rings “That in a world full of robots, aliens, super soldiers, and many other frightening things that might put you into the darkest corner you can squeeze in, all it takes was the courage to step out of the door.” Her hands glow with tendrils of red energy, more sophisticated than before due to the training she’d received from Kamar-Taj and more understanding of it, as a part of herself and not a power forced upon her in the blinded rage of vengeance years ago. “I am an Avenger, Stephen, I owe it to the world and the people I’ve hurt to do better than looking out only for myself.” She looked upon him with a sad smile and saw that his eyes hooded down in turmoil “It had been cherished years, Stephen Strange, if this means our goodbye…thank you, for taking care of me.”

They looked upon one another, anticipation clouded the air between them, anxious that the other might do something first that requires retaliation. Wanda nursed the energy in her hands while Stephen just stood in place and stared at the auburn-haired woman with pleading eyes, eventually, the former neurosurgeon let out a heavy sigh and stepped aside, allowing a passage for her.

“Take care of yourself out there…Wanda.” He silently said to her without turning back, missing the solemn smile on her face directed at him, and she was gone by levitating herself using her powers and heading towards Roosevelt Island.

“Master Strange,” A Nigerian African woman in a cream robe appears a moment later, walking out of a portal with two companions in red, “I see that even with the council’s expressed demand, you still allow such transgression to occur.”

“Master Okune,” Stephen greeted the woman with his charming smirk, masking the earlier turmoil quite well “I assure you; Wanda Maximoff will not become a problem.”

Okune harbored a doubtful expression on her beautiful ebony face, traveling down the steps with her companions following her from a respectable distance, until she stood in front of Stephen Strange with a demanding presence. “You might be the Ancient One’s successor and one of the most powerful of us, Master Strange, but even you shall suffer the punishment if Wanda Maximoff falls short.”

“I am aware of that the moment I made a binding vow, Master Okune,” Stephen replied firmly, gesturing for her to follow him into the adjacent room “But your visit does not focus on her, does it? Are you and the masters ready?” He put on a sling ring, the specially crafted one, and averted his eyes backward a little to them. Satisfied with the nod of their heads, Strange opened a portal to the mountain top, at the horizon stood an imposing fortress veiled in darkness and thunderstorms. “Come, we don’t have much time before our presence will be known.” With another flick of his wrists, Stephen cast a cloaking spell over them as the red robes conjured their weapons. “The book should be inside the fortress, likely at the central altar.” The squad of four trekked along the stretch of a snowed path cutting into the isolated location out of time and space.

[Manhattan, New York. Mid 2028]

[Roosevelt Island, 0432PM]

Peter flew around, contorting his body following the storm of limbs and fireballs from the trio of clones. Harley in his Hulk-Buster armor acted as a sponge of damage for the other two, while Logan ferociously ran around the aliens to deliver a couple of slashes and stabs to each. Peter began with an uppercut as Logan followed with a cut below the knee and Harley came in with a blast of repulsor that knocked the Alien-1 off its leg.

Spider-Sense dictated his body and Peter ducked down before Kate’s concussive arrow lodged into the zooming fist of stone that was about to ram into his back, igniting a small explosion of air that interrupted the speeding limb and allowed him to take advantage with a powerful capoeira kick that launched the Alien-2 into the air just for the Hulk-Buster to bombard it with a barrage of missiles and shots of repulsor.

Logan got knocked off his feet with a powerful hook and flew towards them, but Peter was quick with the catch and followed the momentum with a powerful javelin throw using the immortal man and his wicked sharp talons as a substitute. The man went through the alien in a bloody mess of gore and explosive guts due to the density of his skeleton.

The aliens started their regeneration and that was a queue for Kate to release consecutive shots into each of them as fast as she could, the aliens grunted in pain but the trio near them won’t relent.

Spider-Man pounced onto one with a scissor kick and followed with a combo on its center of mass, avoiding the area where it had turned the skin into rocks all the while heeding the Spider-Sense to evade attempts to grapple and maneuvered himself like a spider all over the Alien-1’s body.

Logan retracted the talons on his left hand and grappled with them against the Alien-2 in front of him, occasionally stabbing his Adamantium blades into its ribcage and blending the inside ferociously.

Harley braved the torrent of flame shot at him from Alien-3 and punched it in the face with the armor’s pneumatic piston, followed by a shot of repulsor to the knee to bring it to the ground and another punch that should have more damage if not for the rubbery property of its body.

Logan growled in frustration as the Alien-2 snaked and wrapped its stretchy body around him like a constrictor with one of his bladed talons being pushed upon, forcing it to retract. “Shit!” Logan wailed in pain as his extremities were forced back into their socket so suddenly, he felt like someone stabbing a red-hot rod into his spinal cord. The alien charged up its inferno temperature and was about to cook him alive before an arrow from Kate pierced its forehead. Losing concentration for a moment, Logan took the opportunity to spring those blades out again and stab the skull from the side. He utilized his massive weight and pivoted around to cut through the cranium like butter as the regeneration overrode the other powers. Still, it does possess the same category of healing factor as himself, which almost immediately mended and closed the slashes he managed to inflict with the Adamantium blades. He twisted around as his instinct kicked in and almost got pummeled by the Hulk-Buster’s twin repulsor beams that sent the one he fought with flying, his eyes squinted, and a growl escaped as he charged into the direction of the armored giant and pounced using both sets of talons to skewer the Alien-3 behind Iron Man in its face and chest, dragging it away with his heavier mass. Logan spun around with the alien still stuck to his hands and threw it off into the coming mass of Spider-Man, who collided loudly with it in a drop kick. Peter delivered a triple-kick combo before bringing the Alien-3 down to the ground and started pummeling its head.

Peter recoiled after a moment after his knuckles split open from the abuse and backflipped away while letting the black substance inside his body fix the wounds. He spun himself in the air after the Spider-Sense blared again from his side, narrowly evading a torrent of flame before the Hulk-Buster collided its fist with the Alien-1’s head and sent it flying into the ruin of the mansion. Peter landed near a boulder of a decent size when the Alien-2 was about to jump on Logan and used his sticky power and super-strength to pull the boulder off the ground, then hurled it into the sneaky alien just a foot away from Logan who was engaging in a close combat with Alien-3. “You’re welcome, Logan!”

“What?!” The burly mutant loses focus for a second and gets a fistful of rock knocking into his face, sending him sailing through the air and colliding with a tree, sinking into the wood due to his incredible mass.

“Ooh…sorry!” Peter quickly jumped to the shorter man and helped pull him out, “I got the one who was about to jump you,”

“Wanna praise or something?” Logan squinted his eyes quizzically.

“No! just, making a conversation.”

“You and Kitty will be annoying together.” The short mutant gritted out as he took a deep breath before resetting his knee back into place with swift action, letting the healing factor do its work.

“Who’s that?”

“One of the girls I looked after at the school, a chatterbox with skippy steps.” There’s a hint of fondness in his mentioning of her that Spider-Man was able to detect. “What the hell’s so funny?” Logan quirked his eyebrow at the snickering vigilante.

“Just imagined you as a teacher, golden!” Peter replied and quickly shoved Logan out of the way of a whippy elongated axe kick from Alien-3 and then used the retraction as a speed boost to deliver a straight hook to the alien’s jaw, almost snapping its neck. “I’ll believe it when I see it,”

“If that’s your way of asking for a visit, shove it.” Logan trusted his experiences and weaved another attack before slamming his bladed fist into the same alien as Spider-Man does, effectively a knock-out punch with additional sharp objects. He let himself be hurled forward like a cannonball by Spider-Man’s tremendous superior strength and bulleted his arm through Alien-1.

“Come on! We fought each other once already, and now we are fighting aliens together; premium core memory of a life-long friendship right here in my book!” Peter exclaimed with forced enthusiasm as he evaded another attack and another and another until he managed to land significant damage on Alien-2’s abdominal cavity that it should collapse its lungs. “To be honest ‘fought’ each other might be a bit exaggerated; I whoop your ass!”

“Keep yapping, bub. Let’s see if you can do it again in a ring if you survive this.” Logan retorted with an excited grin “Mano o’ mano.” Logan ducked a sweep and pierced the spleen with his right talons before violently tearing the flesh and guts open.

“Can I use kicks?” Peter jumped and rolled around with his flexible body and acrobatics prowess guided by Spider-Sense. One web line landed on his shoulder and interrupted his flow a little, long enough for him to receive a pummeling punch to his stomach that sent him flying into the same tree as Logan did earlier, albeit leaving a shallower mark and crater. “Ouch, my back!” Peter groaned as he dislodged himself and somersaulted away from a beam of fire ramming into the tree where he was earlier.

“Pete!?” Gwen almost ran to him, but Kate managed to stop her. “I—”

“Focus!” Kate raised her voice a little, “Keep your head in the game, he’s fine!”

Her Spider-Sense flared almost too late and might have ended in tragedy if not for her instinctual movement that caught a stray tennis-ball-sized rock, just an inch before colliding with Kate Bishop’s head, in her hand. The impact still travels through her muscles and nerves, but not as bad as expected. The archer quickly pulls her down under the cover with the other.

“Thank you,” Kate said a bit out of breath from the sudden realization of her mortality earlier “almost got my brain in a mush.” Then she looked over to the sunflower-blonde’s hand and cringed at the bruise that was rapidly forming. “You okay? That looks nasty.”

“I guess? It hurts like hell but not that much? I don’t know?” Gwen tried flexing the injured hand but flinched from the sharp sting.

“I saw bruises like that on Pete more times than I can count, it usually took about an hour for it to heal.” Kate absentmindedly reminisced, but then bulged her eyes out comically as it dawned on her the meaning of the phrase “Sorry, didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine. It’s not like I’m a jealous girlfriend or anything…” Gwen trailed off “…unless…” The petite blonde squinted her eyes, hiding a playful smirk.

“Gwen?” Peter’s voice came through, a bit like grunting, “You shouldn’t shoot into the fight.” His demand was short and precise, devoid of any affection. “Shoot only at the one we knock out of the rumble, got it?”

“Pete, I’m s—”

“Later.”

“…You sure you’re not mad at me?”

“Later.” And his comm was cut off.

“…He’s mad at me.” Gwen sighed, shoulders slumped and expressing a deflated look.

“He’s just like that when he’s fighting a serious enemy, but I’m sure he’s not mad at you.” Kate let out a reassuring smile, then averted her eyes upward and furrowed her brows “Maybe?” Kate nocked another arrow onto her bow and quickly shot the last concussive explosion at the one that got thrown out of the mix by the Hulk-Buster.

Gwen shook her head violently to chase the guilt away for the time being and followed Kate’s action with a couple of webbing shots that covered the alien’s face in a thick layer of the chemical substance. Logan charged in but got there a bit too late as the alien immediately erupted in flame, and flew into the running mass of muscle thus burning the immortal man once again.

Then the others followed as Peter and Harley lost focus on the mutant’s scream of pain, igniting themselves into a living fire and continued the fight with the scale tipped in their favor as Spider-Man and Wolverine could not get close to them, leaving the heavy load on Iron Man’s shoulders. Harley got jumped by Alien-1 and Alien-3 and hoping that the alloy armor would hold against the raging hellfire, the Alien-2 chased Spider-Man around with occasional fire bolts and punches to the ground where the Arachnid-themed vigilante landed after each evasion.

“Parker! Get that one here!” Harley roared into the comms as he got wrapped around by two stretching bodies made of flames, his peripheral caught the chase coming in closer and the insulation layers started to wear down, allowing the intense temperature to seep in little by little.

“High temperature detected, initiating coolant,” KAREN informed him and automated the process, coating a layer of coolant into the gap between Mark-V armor and the interior of the Hulk-Buster.

“Prep for eject!” Harley grunted into the helmet as he gathered the two burning beings into his side and Peter landed in front of him with a curious expression. Each docking joint was released and primed in a matter of seconds. “Now!”

Peter watched as the Hulk-Buster burst open from the inside with pressurized gases and spread the outer armor pieces like shrapnel that pushed back the aliens. The piece of the chest plate flew towards him prompting the Spider-Sense and twisting his body out of the trajectory to let it embed into the Alien-2 behind him, knocking it backward as he maneuvered his body through the minefield of titanium shrapnel created by Iron Man. The explosion of armor pieces put two of the green-skinned clones under a significant amount of damage, prompting the negation of other powers for regeneration, allowing a sliver of opening for Peter and Logan to get close to them.

“Got anything else?!” Peter roared against the crunching of bones from the way he caved in Alien-1’s chest via stomping.

“No! I can’t have WMD in possession!” Harley gritted through his teeth as he soared around with Alien-2 on his tail, executing various evasive maneuvers to avoid the raging fire. “Have some legions stationed in the Compound, how about that?”

“Don’t! The pyrokinesis is like a thermonuclear generator; it absorbs energy and converts it.” Peter objected while cartwheeling himself to the side and contorted his whole being out of the fire bolt’s trajectory “Throwing more firepower at them is pointless.”

“We need brute force and more numbers, doing damage and forcing them to regenerate while trying to subdue them!” Logan shouted from his position exchanging blow after blow with the stone-covered alien clone at the side. “Where’s the fucking Hulk?!”

“Off states somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a radiation leakage and he was called in,” Harley replied with a grunt, twisting his armored body away from a vortex of fire, retaliated with a shot of repulsor dead on the head of the Alien-2. “Thor and Danvers are off-world, something about a cosmic anomaly near Proxima Centauri b.” he landed on the ground then morphed his right arm into a sword and changed his approach to a close-quarter combat to conserve his reactor’s energy.

“I’m starting to see a pattern here, Keener,” Peter exclaimed as he evaded a bolt of flame and then pulled a lamppost off the concrete with relative ease, using it as a makeshift mallet to shut the fire down from the engulfed being of Alien-3. The alien got whacked across the courtyard and landed on the side of an abandoned building “It's almost like we are the only ones who stay ready for Avengers business.”

“It’s not every day that a threat of this level appears, but whenever they are the heavy hitters seem to always be unavailable,” Kate added through the comms. “Tennessee and I were supposed to be like an alpha team to scout the situation, but it feels like we have to do everything by ourselves!” Kate grunted in frustration and cursed angrily “I’m out of arrows!”

“Kate, Donatello protocol?” Peter inquired, harboring a smirk despite the situation, and it almost morphed into a grin as he caught the scoff from the raven-haired archer.

“You make me a new one if this broke.” Gwen looked at the archer with a confused expression and witnessed the custom bow being twisted and turned by the raven-haired Avenger into a staff. Then she was handed the weapon by Kate Bishop with expectant eyes “Can you throw it to him?”

The sunflower-blonde hesitates, recalling the recent fuck-up she had done which resulted in Peter getting hit. “What if I hit him in the head or something?” Gwen asked with a nervous frown.

“That was an honest mistake, Gwen,” Susan said tiredly from her spot, leaning against her little brother who looked nowhere near ready to get back into the fight “You won’t do it again, I know it.” The fair-haired beauty gave her a smile of encouragement. It took about half a minute before Gwen took the bow-staff from Kate’s hand and stood up, looking in the direction where Peter’s black suit stood.

“Pete? Incoming.” She warned him simply and aimed high before javelin threw the weapon in an arch at an impressive distance, exerting all of her muscles into it. She saw Peter’s eyes tracking the weapon and executing an acrobatic flip to catch it midair, landing gracefully on his feet in a fighting stance. But before she can say anything more, the alien clone who got embedded into the rubble of the building shoots itself like a flaming javelin back into the fight and starts attacking Spider-Man again. She knows that he likes those old Hongkong martial arts films, there’s a collection of Jackie Chan flicks somewhere in their apartment, and he said more than once that Daredevil taught him some moves, but she never thought that he could do something like what unfolds before her eyes.

Peter looks like an Olympic gymnast or a ballerina with a metal rod in his hands, gracefully evading while countering the attacks with the jab of the weapon or a swing that cracked some bones. The additional reach he got from using a weapon gives a fresh wave of second wind as he’s now the one pressuring the alien clone into a corner with the speed and power behind each strike. Whenever the alien clone staggered away, Gwen would chance a line or two of webbing to distract and interrupt it as Peter pounced onto it with another set of combos.

The fight left all three exhausted and sloppy.

Logan got his head clutched in the hand of Alien-1 and was driven into the ground repeatedly, breaking his nose and popping his eyeballs by the pressure being applied to his metallic skull and the impact. A hurricane of fists rained upon him next, crushing every chance he got at retaliation as well as his soft tissues, knocking the teeth out of their sockets, the world started to darken; he won’t die, but as of right now he’s done.

“Logan!” Peter lost his focus again after witnessing the gruesome scene and Gwen’s webbing came too late, allowing a powerful hook to hit the side of his ribcage, cracking the bones and sending him flying like a ragdoll into a metal lamppost, denting and bending it before slouching onto the ground.

“Damnit!” Harley exclaimed as the other one who just wrecked Spider-Man joined in on the fight against him, burning and tearing away the armor, piece by piece.

Kate quickly got out from behind the cover and loaded up taser pellets in her gauntlet before shooting them into the back of the one that was pummeling Logan into the ground, giving the immortal man a chance to retaliate. “Pete! Harley!?” Spider-Man’s still out cold and Iron Man grunting and trying his best to fight off the relentless aliens close to killing him. She unloaded all of the pellets into the back of the one that was on her side, interrupting the attacks long enough for Harley to attempt an escape. One of them got their eyes on her “Shit!” Kate abruptly stopped herself and turned around, sprinting away while unloading the remaining taser pellets into the one standing on top of Logan, making the alien stagger a bit but ultimately it kept pummeling Logan into the ground. Occasionally looking back, she saw one of them closing in on her with the lower half of its body engulfed in flame, closer still as she pushed herself with all her might and desperation to outrun death. With the options out of the window, Kate dives to the side to evade the charging alien and simultaneously takes a combat knife out of the back of her belt and throws it with pinpoint accuracy into the opening eye of the alien, diverting its course into a nearby lamppost.

Gritting her teeth through the dislocated shoulder when she landed, Kate gathered herself up and headed for the Quinjet instead of returning to the others. “Friday, I need a turret!” She screamed into the comm, and the AI immediately responded by lifting the jet a little before turning the frontal machinegun in her direction, rotating the Gatling and ready to fire “Target acquiring!” Kate, being mindful, sidetracked to keep the line of fire away from the others in the back. A sense of goosebumps dictated her body and forced her to look back, seeing the alien was mere meters away from reaching her with that flaming hand, she felt her skin burning as the glowing fingertips closed in and memories flooding her mind; vacations with her parents, the last breakfast she had with her dad, her mother’s joyous laughs when she met Jack, and Peter.

She opened her eyes in the middle of the night, expecting to find a vacant spot next to her on the messy sheet, instead, she saw the sleeping face of Peter Parker still in place, drool falling out of his parted lips accompanying his light snores and messy curls of brunet hair. Some scars are almost unnoticeable on his face; one over his right brow, two just below his left jawline, and a faded line across the bridge of his nose.

Her fingers ran along their locations feathery, mindful not to awaken the exhausted Spider-Man, and rested them just above his lips tasting the exhaled hot air on her fingertips.

She wants to say it but doesn’t know how things will be afterward.

One of the simplest sentences in the world, yet the most difficult to spell with honesty and her whole being.

A gamble most treacherous, for it can tear you apart.

A commitment not always mutual.

So, she went back to sleep, tugging her head underneath his chin and lulled by the constant beating of his heart and the choir of his breathing.

The summary of her dreams and regrets was cut short as Johnny Storm collided with the chasing alien with a war cry, rapidly sucking all the fire around them into himself until his whole being burst into flame and preventing the alien from becoming her grim reaper.

“Target acquired,” FRIDAY announced as she remembered about the fire support that was recently requested.

“Cancel that!” Kate roared hurriedly, afraid that the Human Torch might catch a stray in his struggle.

“Negative. Target acquired.” FRIDAY informed her and a panic descended upon her, as the alien had been led by the younger Storm towards the river, soaring upward as he kept absorbing the energy from the clone.

Kate rushed to the front turrets and jumped with all her might to reach the whirring gun that hovers just a foot above her head, “Friday, override code; HKE-B15H0P. Cancel the firing sequence!” Pulling down with all her might and body weight, Kate aimed to avert the line of fire from spraying Johnny Storm with bullets, but the Harley Keener and the automates of Stark Industries were too good at their jobs to secure it in place. The mechanical whirr washed her with a chill, cold fear traveled down her spinal cord as Johnny Storm stabilized himself and the alien in place. “FRIDAY!?”

“Negative.” The AI’s voice came out deeper and with a hint of mockery caused by some technical issues going on at the moment.

“Cancel the firing sequence!” Kate roared and yanked on the gun until her muscles burned and the joint screamed, but it wouldn’t budge. “Come on!” the raven-haired archer grunted and kept yanking with waning hope and rising terror. “No!” she felt the first bullet being shot as the recoil rammed into her, almost knocking her off, but instead of piercing into Johnny Storm or the alien, the bullet compressed into itself against an invisible wall just a few feet away from its target.

Susan Storm gritted her teeth through the onslaught of mental jolts with each bullet from the Gatling colliding into her barrier at high speed and a ridiculous amount. Falling to her knees, she kept maintaining the barrier despite the blur in her vision. In her peripheral, she caught a zooming figure of Gwen Stacy rushing toward the hovering aircraft.

Gwen had never felt this kind of power flowing through her before, propelling herself forward with powerful legs and then jumping up more than six feet into the air with relatively no strain, flipped herself midair and latching to the belly of the Quinjet just beside the firing Gatling. With her feet firmly stuck to the surface, Gwen grabbed hold of the Gatling and exerted her superstrength onto the machinery, prying it off the mounting panel in a spectacle of sparks and stray electrons, Kate Bishop still held on to it, but she didn’t even register the raven-haired archer’s weight.

Johnny Storm held on to the alien in his arms tighter and tighter, bringing the thermonuclear inside himself to a critical threshold until the green-skinned clone started disintegrating from the intense heat. It took about a minute to completely erase the alien from existence then the Human Torch fell into the river below from exhaustion, boiling the immediate area around himself in the process.

As Gwen brought Kate down to the ground and was about to jump into the water for Johnny’s rescue, the other two were done with Iron Man and Logan, looking at them as Spider-Man regained his composure. His suit was torn from his right shoulder down the entire length of his arm with splinters of wood protruding from it and a black substance mixed with his blood flowed slowly over the cuts. One of his lenses cracked and the insulation inside was torn open, revealing the sharp eye underneath filled with rage after they laid upon the bloody mess of Logan and the limping pile of titanium scraps.

KILL

The voice deep within growled at him, prompting a blood-thirsty scream out of his lungs to the point he felt his vocal cord ruptured, and he pounced onto the nearest one with his instinctual move of shooting web despite the lack of his inventions, but the strand of black tendrils shot into the alien clone instead. Forego the logical thought or analyzing what happened, Peter let the primal rage inside him loose and collided his fist into the alien’s head, ignoring the rocky surface and subsequently breaking his knuckle in exchange for a crater of flesh and bone. The black substance poured over his mangled hand and restored it in mere seconds, just for him to pummel another into the rapidly healing crater where the alien’s face used to be. It felt like a surge of energy, of his darkest emotion from within emerging after a deep slumber, as Peter let loose and used all of his superstrength to keep punching and punching until the entire head of the alien rendered into a mess of grime. He stopped after he couldn’t go anymore, the hands kept healing at a slower rate as well as the fading of the bloodlust.

The lifeless body of the clone slumped onto the ground with a collective gasp from Susan and Kate as Gwen had already dived into the river and now dragging the unconscious Johnny Storm back on land.

They start running after seeing Peter fall to the ground like a doll that ran out of battery as the last alien approaches him, Susan surges forward with her barrier trying to block the path to the unconscious Spider-Man, and almost doubles over when the alien clone punched her barrier with a flaming fist. Gwen reached him first then hauled his heavier body up on her back and started running back to the group when Susan cried out in agony as her barrier shattered.

The alien surged forward a torrent of flame big enough to engulf the Quinjet at them with all of the energy it could muster, Kate dragged Susan Storm by her arm out of the way, but it was too late as the fire was just a foot away from them.

The heat comes…

.

.

.

.

…but not the burn, as a sheen of red energy cocooning and stopping it completely.

All looked upon the newcomer like a sign of an angel; flowing auburn hair loose behind her beautiful face, eyes sharp like a viper’s, hands outstretched, draped in red, and hovering in the air. Wanda Maximoff pushed the fire back to the alien, burning it with a screech of pain. She quickly descends upon them and spreads out a red barrier resembling the formation of Doctor Strange due to their shared teachings for the past five years.

“Are you all okay?” the auburn-haired Avenger inquired with worried eyes as she looked upon the battered casts of fighters and Avengers before her. She recognized Kate Bishop from her visits at Clint Barton’s homestead; another stray that the old grumpy took under his wings, as the raven-haired younger woman nodded her head tiredly. Wanda averted her eyes and focused on the enemy, who was charging up another attack and about to launch it.

Recalling the lessons from the masters of Kamar-Taj, Wanda conjured up a cage of red runes and compressed it upon the foe of her fellow Avengers, trapping them inside as the fire went off, burning itself.

When the fire died down, it left a charred body of the alien standing in place, cocooning inside the cage of mystic art.

" SECRET INVASION "