We stood opposite one another across a hundred feet of cracked concrete, two predators sizing each other up under the flickering death-rattle of the emergency lights. On one side, him: the skull-faced specter, Taskmaster, shield glinting, sword held in a perfect swordsman's grace. On the other, me. And for the first time in a long time, the only voice in my head was my own, and it was screaming for violence.
There was no preamble. No witty quip, no monologue. We moved at the same instant, a silent, mutual agreement that words were a waste of breath. The distance between us vanished in a blur of red and blue, of white and orange. I didn't swing, I didn't leap. I ran, my feet pounding against the floor, each step a piston driving me forward. He met me with the same terrestrial fury, his cape snapping behind him like a thunderclap.
The first impact was a sonic boom. My fist met his shield. Not a glancing blow, not a strategic tap. I put every ounce of my strength, every fiber of my rage, into that single strike. The sound was a war-gong of vibranium and bone. The shockwave tore through my arm, rattling my teeth, and sent him skidding back ten feet, his boots carving furrows in the concrete. He absorbed it, muscles coiled like high-tension cables, and came back at me, a fluid extension of his own momentum.
His sword sliced the air where my head had been a millisecond before. I dropped, sweeping his legs. He flipped over my attack with an acrobat's flair—my acrobat's flair—and landed silently, already bringing his shield around in a decapitating arc.
This was the prelude. The violent handshake before the brawl.
The fight became a vortex of viciousness. The dance was over; the maelstrom had begun. All the rules, all the restraint I'd hammered into myself over the months—don't hit too hard, don't break bones, don't cripple, don't kill—they melted away like frost in a furnace. This wasn't about stopping a robbery. This was about exorcising a demon, and he was wearing a skull mask.
I hammered into him with flurries of blows, a percussive rhythm of knuckles against metal and Kevlar. My fists felt like raw meat, but I didn't stop. I was a machine built for this, and the pain was just fuel. He blocked and parried, his photographic reflexes a perfect, infuriating mirror. But a mirror can only reflect, it can't create. I was the source of the storm.
Webs shot from my wrists, not as elegant swings or clever traps, but as thick, brutalist ropes. They snapped against his sword, trying to foul the blade, to gum up his grip. They plastered his shield, momentarily blinding him. He'd rip them away with a guttural roar, his strength nearly a match for my own, and retaliate with bone-shattering strikes.
He fought with the collected knowledge of a hundred brawls. A shield bash straight from Captain America sent me flying into a bank of rusted machinery. The impact was a full-body concussion, metal shrieking and folding around me. Sparks rained down, illuminating his approach. He moved with the predatory grace of the Black Panther, then drew a bow with the impossible speed of Hawkeye. An arrow, broad-tipped and wicked, was fired point-blank.
My spider-sense wasn't a warning anymore; it was a continuous, agonizing scream at the base of my skull. I twisted, the arrow tearing through my side, a hot, searing pain that I answered with a roar of my own. I ripped the shaft out and lunged, the blood painting a stripe across my suit.
Neither of us was defensive now; it was all teeth and claws. It was a contest to see who could break first. Who could overwhelm the other with sheer, unadulterated aggression. We were two animals fighting for territory, and the territory was this moment, this breath, this heartbeat.
The environment suffered for our savagery. The floor cracked under our landings. The few remaining walls dented and buckled from our impacts. I threw him through a plate-glass window and he emerged from the shower of glittering shards, completely unfazed, and tackled me through a concrete support pillar. The ceiling groaned in protest. Dust and debris filled the air, a choking fog in which we were the only two moving things. It was primal, it was ugly, and it was the most honest I'd been in a fight in my entire life.
I saw an opening. It wasn't clean, it wasn't elegant. It was a half-second of over-extension as he swung his sword in a wide, vicious arc meant to cleave me in two. I ducked under it, the wind of the blade ruffling my mask, and drove my body upward. My movements were a blur of instinct. A left hook to the ribs to draw his guard down, a right uppercut to his chin that snapped his head back.
But it was the third blow that changed everything.
As his head was still reeling, I pivoted on my heel and threw every last bit of my power, my grief, and my fury into a final, definitive strike. It wasn't a punch. It was a battering ram. My fist connected with the side of his skull mask with a sound like a tombstone cracking in half.
CRACK.
The sound echoed in the ruined space, louder than any explosion before it. Taskmaster was thrown sideways, staggering, his perfect balance finally broken. He stumbled back, one hand flying to his head. His sword clattered to the floor. For the first time, he was reeling.
He slowly straightened up, his movements stiff. The right side of his iconic mask was a spiderweb of fractures, with a large piece splintered away near the jawline. Through the rupture, I saw his true face for the first time. A patch of tanned skin, a smear of blood trickling from his temple, and lips—lips curved into a slow, twisted, utterly ecstatic smile.
His eyes, visible through the cracked lens, were not filled with pain or anger. They were alight with the thrill of a profound realization. He looked at me, a low, breathy chuckle escaping his bloody mouth.
"So that's it," he rasped, the words a low, gravelly revelation. "All this time… you've been holding back on me."
The words hit me harder than his shield ever could. They stung because they were the absolute, damning truth. I had treated him like any other thug. Pull the punches. Web him up. Make sure he can be carted off to jail with a few bruises and a wounded ego. I was always afraid—afraid of the power humming beneath my skin, afraid of what would happen if I ever truly cut loose. Afraid of becoming the monster people like Jameson always claimed I was.
And here was that monster, staring me right in the face.
He laughed. It wasn't a villain's cackle; it was a low, cracked sound of pure, unadulterated joy, filtered through blood and broken plastic. It was the sound of a man who had been searching for something his entire life and had finally, impossibly, found it.
"Good," he breathed, his smile widening into a predatory grin that stretched the skin on his exposed cheek. "Finally."
He reached up, his fingers hooking into the fractured edge of his mask. With a sharp tug, he ripped the damaged half away and tossed it aside. It clattered on the concrete, a discarded pretense. The man beneath was scarred and weathered, his eyes burning with an intensity I had never seen in another human being. He looked at me not as a hero or a villain, but as an equal.
"Now show me," he commanded, his voice raw with anticipation. "Show me the real Spider-Man."
The air crackled. The fight was no longer a job; it was a sacrament. The half-hanging mask was a metaphor for us both. The pretense was gone. I wasn't the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man anymore, and he wasn't just a mercenary for hire. We were what we had always been beneath the costumes and the titles: predator versus predator.
We stood opposite each other in the wreckage of our battle, two broken figures outlined by the sputtering lights. My side was a bonfire of pain. His head was bleeding, his body was surely a symphony of bruised ribs and screaming muscles. But we were both grinning through the agony, a shared, savage understanding passing between us. We were ready to tear each other apart.
And in that moment, I understood. This wasn't about survival anymore. This wasn't about winning or losing. This was the fight of my life, the one that would define me. Every punch I'd ever pulled, every foe I'd ever spared, had led to this crossroads. Was I the hero who held back, who always chose mercy even for the merciless? Or was I the man who, when faced with a true reflection of his own violent potential, would meet it with equal force?
Taskmaster shifted his weight, settling into a new stance—one I didn't recognize. It was his own. He was done copying. He had seen what he needed to see, and now, he was fully invested, more dangerous than he had ever been. His eyes locked on mine, and in them, I saw no malice. Only a chilling, profound respect. He was giving me a gift: a battle with no limits.
I clenched my fists, the ache a welcome, focusing sensation. The scream of my spider-sense had quieted to a low, steady hum. The choice was made.
He and I, we were about to find out what kind of hero I was going to be.