Herman stepped through the settling dust of the ruined Midtown Bank. He barely glanced at the perimeter of squad cars, nor at Spider-Man perched on the embedded steel vault door above him. Captain George Stacy didn't hesitate.
"Open fire!"
The NYPD unloaded their service weapons. A hail of 9mm rounds sparked against Herman's suit. The bullets flattened against the kinetic mesh and bounced off the gold-titanium alloy plates without leaving a scratch. Herman stood perfectly still. He let them empty their magazines. Then, he slammed both gauntlets into the asphalt. A massive shockwave ripped up the street. The blast threw the officers off their feet and flipped the surrounding cruisers onto their roofs.
Herman straightened up. He took a slow, heavy breath.
"Come on, Spider-Man. Round two."
Peter launched himself off the vault door. He dropped right into Herman's guard, throwing a rapid flurry of punches. He yelled over his shoulder to the downed police captain. "Get your men out of here! I've got him! I almost had him a second ago!"
"You weren't even close, bug!"
Herman threw a heavy right hook. Peter rolled with the blow, flipping backward. A thick web-line snapped taut from Peter's wrist, connecting straight to Herman's left arm. Peter yanked the line hard. Herman stumbled forward. Peter capitalized, springing off a flipped squad car and burying both boots into Herman's helmet. He landed, hauled on the webbing again to pin Herman's left arm against his own chest, and delivered a brutal left hook to the jaw.
"Don't sweat it, Herman! I can do this all day! You know, like the Captain says?"
Herman growled. He swung his free gauntlet in a wide arc. He never saw the tripwire. A low web-line snagged his ankles. He crashed hard onto his back. Peter dropped his knees right onto Herman's chest. He grabbed both of Herman's wrists, forced them down to his sides, and emptied his web-shooters to glue the gauntlets to the asphalt.
Herman didn't care about the recoil. He triggered both gauntlets at point-blank range against the ground. The concussive blast launched them both thirty feet into the air. Peter recovered instantly. He shot a web mid-air, yanked himself back toward Herman, and landed two rapid-fire punches before a secondary shockwave blew him away.
Herman hit the pavement hard. Before he could even roll over, Peter fired webs at two overturned police cruisers on opposite sides of the street. Peter hauled his arms together. The two heavy vehicles skidded across the asphalt, slamming directly into Herman in a crushing pincer attack. Trapped between the chassis, Herman unleashed a massive, panicked shockwave. The blast ruptured the cruisers' fuel tanks. Both cars detonated in a twin fireball.
Flames licked at the wreckage. Herman stumbled out of the inferno, his armor smoking. The suit had a fatal design flaw. The homemade cooling system couldn't handle the excess heat of the gauntlets combined with an external fire. The internal temperature was spiking. Herman swayed on his feet. Sweat poured into his eyes. His vision blurred with sudden, intense dehydration.
"Stand down, Herman. You're overheating." Peter landed lightly a few yards away, hands raised in a placating gesture. "You're a genius. You don't need to hurt people to prove you matter."
Herman let out a miserable, ragged laugh. "If only you had said that when we first met, bug. If only you had said that to Herman Schultz. Instead, you say it to the Shocker."
"I am saying it to Herman."
"You're lying!" Herman punched the ground. A jagged fissure tore through the concrete, venting a lifetime of bitter frustration. "You're saying it because of what I can do! Because you know how much damage I can cause! Nobody respected me before I put on the gauntlets!"
Peter sighed heavily. The adrenaline was keeping Herman upright, overriding his physical exhaustion. Captain Stacy and his men had pulled back to a safe perimeter. Peter needed to end this now. He shot a web, yanked the embedded steel vault door out of the nearby brick wall, and shoved the multi-ton slab straight down the street at Herman like a snowplow.
"Watch the door!"
Herman planted his boots. He had nowhere to dodge. He raised both gauntlets and unleashed a sustained, full-power blast against the center of the steel slab. On the other side, Peter dug his heels into the asphalt and pushed back with all his spider-strength.
They deadlocked. The multi-ton steel door groaned between them. Raw, mutated muscle strained against raw, engineered kinetic output. The asphalt buckled under their feet.
Herman's arms began to shake. Sweat flooded his eyes, stinging sharply. His heart hammered erratically against his ribs. The heat inside the suit was suffocating. But on the other side of the door, Peter's forward momentum began to stall. The kid was tiring out too.
He's losing his grip, Herman thought. He roared, channeling the last dregs of his battery reserves into one massive surge. The blast ripped the vault door out of Peter's hands. The steel slab flipped through the air and crashed down onto a crushed squad car, sending loose tires bouncing down the street. Herman stood there, chest heaving, staring blankly at the wreckage.
Where was the spider?
A sudden, terrifying sense of weightlessness seized him. Peter had vaulted completely over the door. He landed squarely on Herman's back, grabbed the heavy armor by the shoulders, and hoisted him entirely off the ground.
If the gauntlets blow apart every web, Peter thought, I just have to use the whole guy as a baseball bat.
"Sorry, Herman! Really hoping that kinetic mesh works both ways!"
Peter slammed Herman face-first into the asphalt. Before Herman could even register the impact, Peter hefted him back up and slammed him down on his other side. Left. Right. Left. Right. Herman bounced off the pavement like a ragdoll.
Dizzy and battered, Herman fired a weak shockwave straight down, popping himself out of Peter's grip. He hit the ground rolling and staggered to his feet. He was done. He had wildly underestimated this kid's stamina. The bug wouldn't shut up, wouldn't stop lecturing him about being a good person, and wouldn't stop hitting like a freight train. But Herman Schultz was an engineer. He knew exactly how to exploit a structural weakness.
"You still want to go, Herman?" Peter asked, breathless.
"Save the sermon, bug," Herman panted, backing away. "I'm done. I'm leaving."
"What? Wait, you can't just—"
Herman aimed his gauntlets at his own feet. A concussive blast launched him high into the air, propelling him down the avenue in a desperate, arcing leap.
Captain Stacy emerged from behind a barricade. He stared down the ruined street. Paramedics were already tending to wounded officers. The Midtown Bank was half-collapsed. Plumes of black smoke billowed from burning patrol cars. If this was what a superhero fight looked like, the collateral damage was staggering.
Stacy grabbed his radio. "Suspect has fled the scene. I repeat, suspect is moving east. What's the ETA on SWAT? Never mind, SWAT can't handle this. Get me the National Guard. Dispatch, do you copy?"
Static hissed sharply through the radio. The dispatch frequency died. Then, a calm, authoritative voice cut through the channel.
"Captain Stacy. This is Steve Rogers. We have eyes on the suspect, Herman Schultz."
Stacy froze.
"The Avengers are taking over."
Oblivious to the radio chatter, Peter swung wildly down the avenue in pursuit. Herman was using his shockwaves to propel himself forward, leaving a trail of shattered concrete and cratered intersections in his wake. Peter pushed himself to the absolute limit, firing web after web to keep pace.
"Come on, Herman!" Peter yelled, swinging off a streetlight. "You're just gonna run? Jameson is gonna blame me for all these potholes! Can you please be considerate of my PR and just surrender?"
"You want to fix this?"
Herman skidded to a halt beneath the elevated tracks of the intercity railway. He hunched over, gasping for air, the servos in his suit whining in protest. Commuters shrieked and scattered. Above them, the platform was packed with evening passengers waiting for their train.
"Then let's fix it, bug," Herman wheezed. "You're a hero, right?"
"Let's see what heroes actually do."
Herman didn't need to fight Spider-Man anymore. He raised his right gauntlet. He didn't aim at Peter. He aimed directly at the massive steel-and-concrete load-bearing pillar supporting the crowded train platform. He fired. The concussive blast obliterated the pillar's base.
"What are you doing?!" Peter screamed.
"Go save them, hero."
"Great plan, Herman! Really top-tier villain distraction!"
The elevated tracks groaned, sagging dangerously toward the street. Peter abandoned the pursuit immediately. He swung up to the fractured overpass. He fired thick, rapid bursts of webbing, trying to lash the crumbling concrete together. He ricocheted between the adjacent buildings, slinging heavy web-lines to anchor the sagging platform to the surrounding architecture. "Everyone get off the platform! Run! Now!"
Concrete rained down around him. The anchor webs were snapping under the immense tonnage of the station. The primary support beam buckled outward, completely shattered. Webbing wouldn't hold it.
Peter dropped to the street. He kicked the jagged remains of the pillar out of the way, planted his boots, and shoved his shoulders upward against the descending steel girder of the overpass. He screamed as the crushing weight of the entire station settled squarely onto his back. He held it up, his muscles burning with agonizing fire, buying the screaming commuters above the seconds they needed to flee.
Herman hadn't run. He stood thirty feet away, his chest heaving, watching the kid anchor himself under thousands of tons of steel. He raised his gauntlet. He aimed squarely at Spider-Man's exposed chest.
He listened to the chaotic screams of the civilians scrambling for safety above. He felt the terrifying, helpless panic rolling off the crowd. All Herman had to do was close his fist. A single blast would knock the kid out from under the beam. The entire structure would instantly pancake, burying Spider-Man under the rubble. He could end his only enemy right now. The cost would just be a few dozen innocent lives.
Herman stared at the struggling, shaking teenager holding up the sky.
"Fuck you."
Herman Schultz lowered his fist. He aimed a low-power shockwave at the asphalt, vaulted into the air, and disappeared into the city.