The world was a nauseating, tilting smear of color and sound. My skull felt like a bell that had just been struck by a sledgehammer, the vibration rattling my teeth and turning my equilibrium into a syrupy mess. A thousand tiny drills bored into my temples, a high-frequency shriek that was more of a feeling than a sound. I pressed my palms against the sides of my mask, trying to physically hold my head together.
"Come on, Parker," I grunted, my own voice a distant echo. "Shake it off. You've had worse headaches." Not true, but a little self-deprecating lie can be a great motivator.
Slowly, the spinning stage lights coalesced back into individual beams of electric blue and pulsating crimson. The arena, which had been a whirlpool of chaos, steadied itself. But the sound… the sound was still wrong. It wasn't the initial piercing attack anymore. It was a deep, hypnotic bassline, a four-on-the-floor beat that pulsed in time with the thudding in my chest. It was a siren's song with a drum machine.
And the crowd was singing along. In perfect, unnerving unison.
"Hustler! Hustler! Hustler!"
Their voices weren't filled with the usual rock-and-roll fervor. It was a chant, monotonous and hollow, like a recording on a loop. I pushed myself up on one elbow from the stage floor, my gaze sweeping over the sea of faces. Thousands of them, all turned toward the figure at center stage. Their eyes… their eyes were glowing. Not like a comic book villain, but a faint, phosphorescent sheen that caught the stage lights, making them look like a field of bioluminescent fungi. They were puppets, and the man with the microphone was pulling every string.
Hustler stood there, bathed in a golden spotlight. He was all style—a sequined jacket that shimmered with every move, reflective sunglasses that hid his eyes, and a cocky, self-satisfied smirk plastered on his face. Around his waist was a thick belt, its buckle a complex array of dials and a glowing central amplifier. The source of all this madness. He wasn't singing anymore; he was just letting the beat do the work, his arms outstretched as if to embrace the adoration of his mindless army.
My eyes scanned the front rows, a cold dread seeping into my veins, far worse than the lingering disorientation. I was looking for one face. Just one. And then I found it.
Elaine.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a panicked rhythm that was jarringly out of sync with Hustler's oppressive beat.
This wasn't just about stopping a new super-villain anymore. This wasn't another Tuesday night brawl for the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This was about her.
I got to my feet, the world still a little wavy at the edges, but my resolve solidified into a diamond-hard point. "I can't let the music take her."
Hustler finally noticed me stirring. His smirk widened, and he lifted the microphone to his lips, his voice booming through the colossal speaker stacks, smooth and venomous. "And he's back on his feet, ladies and gentlemen! Give it up for our opening act, the Amazing Spider-Man!"
He gestured dramatically towards me, and as if on cue, the crowd responded. Dozens of fans near the stage turned in unison, their glowing eyes locking onto me. They moved with a shared, fluid purpose, a human wave cresting over the security barricade and onto the stage. They weren't fast or aggressive, just relentless. Unstoppable.
"Now, now, play nice," I quipped, my voice tight. The joke was for me, not them. There was no one home behind those eyes.
One of them, a big guy in a torn leather jacket, lunged. I ducked under his clumsy swing, spun on my heel, and used his own momentum to send him stumbling into a woman with neon-green hair. A quick thwip of a web-line shot out, sticking them both to the stage floor, back-to-back.
Another group swarmed me. This wasn't a fight; it was a dance. A horrible, defensive ballet against people I was sworn to protect. I flipped backward onto a stack of amplifiers, my feet pushing off two more hypnotized concertgoers in mid-air. I vaulted over a drum kit, webbing the cymbals together to create a makeshift barrier. They just kept coming, their hands grasping, their movements synchronized to the merciless beat thumping from the speakers.
I used the scaffolding above the stage, zipping up into the rigging. From my perch, I could see the whole terrifying orchestra. Hustler was the conductor, waving a hand here, pointing a finger there, directing his puppets with effortless grace. He was toying with me.
"Keep up with the rhythm, Spider-Man!" his voice echoed, dripping with mockery. "Don't miss a beat!"
I swung down, aiming to create a wide web net to stop the advance. I shot webs at the lighting rigs, at the speaker towers, creating sticky tripwires and cocoons that snagged clusters of them. I worked fast, my movements fluid, but for every ten I managed to harmlessly incapacitate, twenty more took their place. And all the while, I could see Elaine, getting closer and closer to the front, her hand outstretched toward him.
"Okay, new plan," I muttered, launching myself directly toward center stage. "Less crowd control, more deejay control."
Hustler saw me coming. He didn't even flinch. He just tapped the buckle of his belt.
I was maybe twenty feet away when it hit me. It wasn't a sound this time; it was a physical blow. A sonic pulse, focused and brutal, exploded from his belt. It was like being hit by a wall of invisible force. The air rippled, and every molecule in my body screamed in protest. I was thrown backward, tumbling end over end off the stage and into the audience below.
I landed hard, my back slamming against the floor. For a moment, the wind was knocked out of me, and all I could do was gasp for air. And then I felt the shift.
The crowd, which had been a chaotic sea, parted around me with an eerie, unnatural silence. It was like the Red Sea, only instead of a path to freedom, it was a prelude to being crushed. Then, as one, they began to close in. The space around me shrank, their glowing eyes a tightening circle of predators. They moved in time with the music, stepping forward on the bass drum kick, swaying on the snare hit.
I scrambled to my feet, my back against a few others. There was nowhere to run. I had to fight, but I had to hold back. Every punch was pulled, every kick was a push. It was like trying to fight a tidal wave with a bucket. I dodged a grasping hand, deflected a clumsy shove, and vaulted over a pair of shoulders, but the circle just kept tightening.
And through it all, my spider-sense was going absolutely berserk.
It wasn't the usual sharp, directional warning I got just before a punch or a bullet. It was a constant, high-pitched thrumming at the base of my skull, a chaotic buzz that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. It was just noise, adding to the sensory overload… or was it?
In a moment of desperate clarity, dodging another lunge, I realized the buzzing wasn't random. It was pulsing. It was fading in and out, peaking and troughing. I closed my eyes for a split second, focusing on the internal alarm instead of the external chaos. The pulse in my head… it matched the beat. It was syncing with the music.
Of course. Hustler's attacks weren't just powered by sound; they were the sound. My spider-sense, my precognitive danger alarm, wasn't just warning me of individual threats. It was picking up the entire pattern. It was reading the sheet music of the fight.
A man to my left swung on the third beat of the measure. My spider-sense flared a fraction of a second before, and I ducked effortlessly. A woman behind me lunged as the bass line dropped. The thrum in my skull intensified, and I spun away without even looking.
It all clicked into place. I wasn't fighting a crowd; I was fighting the song itself. And my spider-sense was giving me the ultimate cheat sheet.
A slow grin spread across my face beneath the mask. "Okay, Hustler," I whispered. "I hear you. Let's dance."
I stopped fighting against the rhythm. I joined it.
My movements became fluid. I used the beat, letting it guide my dodges and weaves. I became a part of the choreography. A web-line shot out on the upbeat, yanking a speaker cable to trip a group of four. I swung around a lighting pole on the downbeat, my feet catching two more and sending them tumbling harmlessly into their comrades. I was no longer a frantic intruder; I was the lead dancer in their hypnotic ballet, and I was changing the steps.
Hustler, seeing his puppets failing, narrowed his eyes. He pointed directly at me, and I felt the air charge. My spider-sense screamed in a rising crescendo, perfectly in time with the synth melody building in the song. He was preparing another sonic pulse from the belt.
But this time, I knew the timing. I knew the exact beat it would drop on.
One beat before the pulse, I shot a thick glob of webbing straight at his microphone, yanking it from his hand. Two beats. I fired another set of webs, not at him, but at his feet. Three beats. The synth reached its peak. Four beats.
Just as he triggered the pulse, I yanked.
He stumbled forward, his balance completely thrown. The sonic blast fired harmlessly into the scaffolding above, rattling the rig but missing me entirely.
The crowd gasped. A real, human gasp. For a split second, the rhythm was broken. A few people blinked, their eyes losing that faint glow, looking around in confusion. The spell was fragile. If I could take out the source, I could break it for good.
This was my chance.
I used the momentum of his stumble, swinging in close, my body low to the ground. He was off-balance, exposed. The belt buckle, the source of it all, was right there. I drew my fist back, aiming a precise, focused strike, not to hurt him, but to shatter the device.
But I underestimated his showmanship.
Just before my fist could connect, a wicked grin flashed across his face. He wasn't fumbling for balance; he was reaching for the main dial on his belt. With a dramatic twist, he cranked it all the way to maximum.
"ENCORE!" he roared.
The world ended.
Not with a bang, but with a bass drop.
The stage erupted in a blinding, white-hot flash of light. The sound that followed wasn't just loud; it was a physical entity. A deafening, gut-wrenching wave of pure sonic force that hit me like a tactical nuke. It blew me off my feet, sending me hurtling back across the stage like a rag doll.
I slammed into a tower of speakers with a sickening crunch. The impact was brutal, but the sound was worse. The vibrations from the speaker stack poured into me, shaking my bones, pinning me against the metal grating. My vision went white with static, my muscles locked up, paralyzed by the sheer concussive force of the soundwaves.
Through the ringing in my ears and the blinding light, I could just make out Hustler's silhouette. He stood tall again, arms spread wide, basking in the raw power he had unleashed. The crowd was no longer dazed; they were on their knees, hands over their ears, but their eyes glowed brighter than ever. He had them back, completely and totally.
He let the wave of sound subside just enough for his voice to cut through, a triumphant, amplified declaration that echoed through the entire arena.
"You think you can silence the Hustler?" he sneered, his grin a slash of white in the strobing lights. "This is only the opening act!"