There was no memory of the first punch, only the continuous, grinding reality of the hundredth. We were already deep in the heart of the chaos, two animals tearing at each other in a cage of steel and moonlight high above Manhattan. My lungs were furnaces, my mask was a spiderweb of cracks held together by sheer will, and the blood trickling from my lip tasted like rust and failure.
The skeletal frame of the unfinished skyscraper groaned around us. Every impact was a percussion of screeching metal and crumbling concrete. Sparks rained down from a severed power conduit, a shower of angry fireflies in the dust-choked air.
Taskmaster's voice, filtered through his own cracked skull-faced helmet, was a predator's purr. It cut through the din, hungry, almost gleeful.
"Yes… YES! This is it, Spider-Man! Finally, the fight I've been chasing. Not a boy in a mask… a predator. A monster like me!"
He moved like a nightmare montage of my betters. A shield bash with Captain America's brutal efficiency sent me staggering back, my ribs screaming in protest. His sword, a blur of silver, each parry a perfect mimicry. He threw himself into me with savage abandon—a knee to the ribs borrowed from Daredevil, a spin kick that had Natasha's flawless technique. Every move was vicious, a ghost of a hero twisted into a weapon of pure malice.
Something inside me snapped. Not a bone, not a tendon, but a leash. The part of me that calculated, that pulled punches, that worried about concussions and internal bleeding, went silent. The part of me that just wanted to survive took over. I stopped caring about defense.
He came in with a sword slash aimed at my throat. I didn't dodge. I lunged forward, letting the flat of the blade slam into my shoulder with a deadening thud, and drove my fist into his chest. There was a wet, satisfying crack of bone. He grunted, stumbling back, the air punched from his lungs. Before he could recover, my web-shooter hissed. Not a net, not a swing line. The strand of webbing shot out like a bullwhip, cracking across his helmet and wrapping tight around his throat. I yanked, hard, pulling him off his feet and slamming him face-first into a pile of rebar.
The thud echoed in the cavernous space. He was on his feet in a second, but slower. The gleeful hunger in his posture was now tinged with something else. Respect. And a desperate, terrible need for more.
This wasn't a fight anymore. It was a war of attrition, and the battlefield was our own bodies.
We crashed through a temporary wall of sheetrock, a plume of white dust erupting around us as we tumbled onto the next floor down. I landed on top, my fists a blur of motion. I felt my knuckles split against the hard composite of his mask. He twisted, a blade I hadn't seen nicking my side. A hot, wet line of pain flared up my ribs, but I barely registered it. The city lights spinning dizzily below through the open sides of the building were the only witness to our mutual destruction.
Blood slicked the concrete floor between us. His, mine—the distinction had blurred. I could taste iron with every ragged breath, the coppery tang coating my tongue. He struggled to his feet, one hand clutching his chest where I'd broken his ribs, and he laughed. It was a ragged, wet sound, half-choked with pain, but it was unmistakably laughter.
"More!" he rasped, spitting a wad of blood onto the floor. "Don't hold back! You think I can't feel it? That thing you keep chained up? You've still got more to give. SHOW ME, SPIDER-MAN!"
He was right. The Spider-Sense wasn't just a warning anymore; it was a fire, a primal scream in my skull demanding violence, demanding I end the threat. It wasn't telling me to dodge; it was telling me where to hit to do the most damage.
I obliged.
He lunged, and I met him halfway. My fist connected with his jaw, and the crack echoed through my own arm. He stabbed me in the thigh, the blade grating against bone. I roared, a sound torn from the deepest part of my chest, and grabbed him by the back of the head. I didn't throw him. I didn't punch him. I slammed his head against a steel support beam. Once. Twice. The third time, the beam dented with a deafening BOOM, and he went limp in my grasp. I let him fall to the ground in a heap.
For a moment, there was only the sound of our breathing, two broken engines gasping for air. Then, a scraping sound. He was pushing himself up, one elbow at a time. The front of his mask, already fractured, finally gave way. Shards of white composite fell to the floor, revealing a scarred, swollen face, a blood-caked grin stretched across his lips. His eyes, one rapidly swelling shut, were alight with a terrifying, desperate joy.
"Do you get it now?" he wheezed, his grin turning ragged. "This is what we are. Fighters. Killers. We only live in the moment the other man breaks. There's no good, no evil. Just the last one standing."
He was wrong. I knew he was wrong. But in that moment, with the adrenaline singing a siren song in my veins, his words felt dangerously close to the truth.
He pushed off the ground, a final, desperate surge of strength. He swung with everything he had left—a wild, telegraphed haymaker that abandoned all his copied technique for pure, brutal force. It was the swing of a man who wanted it all to end, one way or another.
It was slow. Too slow.
My hand shot out, catching his wrist mid-swing. The bones in his arm groaned under the pressure of my grip. His eyes widened slightly. For the first time, the manic joy was replaced by a flicker of something else. Surprise. He had expected me to meet his wildness with my own. He hadn't expected control.
With his arm still in my grasp, I drove my other fist into his stomach. It wasn't a frenzied punch. It was a single, devastating, piston-like strike. All my strength, all my rage, all my pain focused into one point. The air left his body in a single, explosive gasp. His eyes rolled back in his head. And with one last, shuddering breath, I dropped him. He collapsed at my feet, a broken marionette with its strings cut.
He lay on the floor, coughing up a thick slurry of blood and phlegm, one eye swollen completely shut. The fight was over. I had won. But he was still smiling.
Through the blood and the broken teeth, his smile was a rictus of victory. His voice was a death-rattle rasp.
"End it… Spider-Man."
I stood over him, my own body a symphony of agony. My fists trembled, not from exhaustion, but from the residual, electric hum of violence that still coursed through me. The hunger was still there, a wolf clawing at the inside of my gut, demanding to be fed.
"Don't insult me with mercy," he coughed, a fresh trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. "Finish what you started. Give me the death I've been craving. Prove I was right."
For a terrifying, crystal-clear moment, I almost did it.
I saw it happen in my mind's eye: my hand, closing around his throat. The fragile cartilage giving way. The light in his one good eye fading out, his twisted philosophy silenced forever. It would be so easy. A final, definitive act. An end to the pain. An end to him. An end to the part of me that he had so gleefully dragged into the light.
I raised my hand, my fingers curling into a claw. The wolf howled in triumph.
Instead, with a roar that tore my throat raw, I slammed my fist into the ground next to his head.
The concrete didn't just crack. It exploded. A crater formed under the force of the impact, dust and rubble blasting outward in a shockwave. The entire floor shuddered.
Taskmaster flinched.
It wasn't a big movement, just a reflexive jerk, a tightening of his muscles. But his one good eye was wide, the manic glee finally, totally extinguished. In its place was a sliver of something he had never shown before, something he couldn't copy or comprehend. Fear. He wasn't afraid of death. He was afraid of the power I had just displayed, and the choice I had made with it. He was seeing the truth.
I stumbled back, my arm shaking uncontrollably. I forced the bloodlust down, shoving the snarling wolf back into its cage, locking the door. The red haze in my vision cleared, leaving only the throbbing pain and the cold night air.
"No," I rasped, my voice thick with exhaustion and disgust. "I'm not you. I'll never be you."
I looked down at the broken man, and then at my trembling, bloodied fist.
"That's why I win."
He didn't answer. Taskmaster lay broken on the floor, his mad laughter finally fading into a wet, broken cough of despair. He stared at the crater beside his head, the raw display of power I had refused to use on him. For the first time in his life, he had nothing left to say. He had been given the ultimate fight he craved, and in the end, he had been defeated not by a blow, but by an idea.
I collapsed against the cold steel of the wall, sliding down to the floor. Every muscle screamed, every cut burned. My body was shredded, a testament to the monster I had allowed myself to become for a few desperate minutes. But as the adrenaline faded and the quiet descended, I felt my spirit settle. It was bruised, battered, and scarred, but it was whole.
I had proved it. To him, and more importantly, to myself.
I am Spider-Man. Not because of the strength I have, but because of the strength I refuse to use.