[A/N]: Yay, we did it 🎉 Our Second goal of 400 PowerStones is officially done, and this is your Second bonus chapter!
Now for the next target 👀 Third goal: 600 PowerStones. Hit that, and I'll drop TWO more bonus chapters.
This chapter is something I cooked up with Tsunashi777 and Gmaxter over Discord. Hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think.
---------------------------------------------------------
Daily Bugle Headquarters, Manhattan
The Daily Bugle building shook as another Sentinel tore through the neighboring skyscraper. Debris rained down on the streets below while sirens wailed and smoke obscured the New York skyline.
Jonah Jameson stood at his office window watching the chaos with his signature cigar clenched between his teeth, his mustache bristling with barely contained fury as he took in the destruction.
"Those damned metal menaces!" His voice boomed through the office loud enough to make his staff flinch. "First aliens, now killer robots! And where are the so-called heroes? Where's that wall-crawling menace Spider-Man when actual threats show up?!"
"Mr. Jameson, Spider-Man was reported saving students at Midtown High," Robbie Robertson called from across the newsroom, his voice tight with urgency. "And we need to evacuate! Three Sentinels are converging on our location. The building next door just collapsed!"
Jonah spun around, his eyes blazing with that trademark fury that had terrorized generations of Daily Bugle employees. "Evacuate? EVACUATE?! The Daily Bugle doesn't run from threats, Robertson! We report them! Now get your camera ready because when these tin cans show up, I want photographs! Clear ones this time, not those blurry garbage shots Parker always brings me!"
"Sir, with all due respect, we're not equipped to..." Robbie started, but his words died as the wall exploded inward.
Concrete and steel erupted into the newsroom as three Sentinels tore through the building's exterior like tissue paper, their red optical sensors sweeping across the office with cold, mechanical precision.
"MULTIPLE TARGETS DETECTED. SCANNING FOR MUTANT SIGNATURES."
The newsroom erupted into pandemonium. Reporters dove under desks, assistants ran for the stairwells, photographers abandoned their equipment. Papers flew through the air like snow while computer monitors sparked and shattered.
But Jonah didn't move.
He stood there in the center of the chaos, cigar still clenched in his teeth, mustache bristling with righteous indignation that bordered on suicidal. His bulldog Bat, a squat English bulldog wearing a tiny Daily Bugle press badge on his collar, sat beside him. The dog's jowls hung low with drool pooling on the floor, but he didn't bark or run, just sat there, stubborn as his owner.
"MUTANT SIGNATURE DETECTED. DESIGNATION: JONATHAN REED."
One of the Sentinels extended its weapon arm toward a young man cowering behind an overturned desk. Johnny Reed, the new intern who'd started just last week, the kid who reminded Jonah of his son John when he was younger. The kid whose mutation let him change the color of ink, completely useless for anything except making the print department's job easier, but deadly in the eyes of these machines.
"No," Johnny whimpered, his eyes full of panic. "Please, I'm not dangerous, I just..."
The Sentinel's weapon charged, energy coils glowing red.
"Mr. Jameson!" Johnny's voice cracked. "Help me!"
Something in Jonah snapped.
Pure, unadulterated rage, the same rage that had fueled decades of crusading journalism, that had exposed corruption from City Hall to the White House, that had made him the most feared newspaper editor in New York.
"Like hell you will!" Jonah roared, his voice carrying over the chaos. "That's MY intern! MY staff! You want him, you mechanical piece of garbage? You go through ME first!"
He charged forward, a fifty-five-year-old man in suspenders running at a killer robot with nothing but a cigar and stubborn refusal to accept reality.
Bat barked once, sharp and defiant, then waddled after his owner with his short legs pumping and jowls flapping.
The Sentinel's optical sensor tracked Jonah's suicidal charge with calculated precision, its weapon arm adjusting trajectory and locking onto the newspaper editor instead.
"NON-MUTANT HUMAN. NON-THREAT. REMOVING OBSTACLE."
The weapon fired.
And then reality got weird.
Two golden motes of light descended from the hole in the ceiling, moving with purpose and seeking specific targets. One drifted toward Jonah. The other, impossibly, toward Bat.
The voice that spoke wasn't just in Jonah's ears but resonated in his soul, maternal and ancient, carrying the weight of billions of years.
"John Jonah Jameson Jr. Your courage to protect those under your care moves me. Will you accept what I offer? The strength to shield those who depend on you?"
Jonah's mind, that analytical newspaper editor's brain that had exposed countless frauds and debunked every supposed "miracle" he'd encountered, tried to process what was happening. Light didn't talk! That was impossible! He must be hallucinating from stress or smoke inhalation or...
But Johnny was still behind him, his staff was still in danger, and that was all that mattered.
"Give me whatever you've got!" Jonah snarled around his cigar. "Just let me save my people!"
Beside him, impossibly, Bat barked an affirmative, the bulldog's jowls set with determination that mirrored his owner's.
The golden motes surged forward.
Power flooded through Jonah like nothing he'd ever experienced. His tired, fifty-five-year-old body restructured itself at the cellular level. Muscles that had grown soft from decades behind a desk suddenly remembered what strength felt like. Bones that had started to ache with arthritis became unbreakable. His heart that required blood pressure medication suddenly beat with the strength of youth.
The transformation was instant and complete.
[Image Here]
His suspenders dissolved into golden light and reformed into something else: a costume that was somehow both ridiculous and intimidating, red and white with a high collar and a stylized "J" emblazoned across the chest. His signature flat-top haircut remained, but now framed a face that had lost thirty years in an instant.
The mustache stayed, naturally. Some things were sacred.
Bat's transformation was equally dramatic and somehow more absurd. The squat bulldog's body elongated, muscles exploding outward until he stood three feet tall at the shoulder. His jowls, those magnificent drooping jowls, remained but now framed jaws that could crush steel. A red cape, miniature but no less impressive, billowed from his shoulders.
They looked ridiculous. Jonah knew it even as power coursed through his veins: an old newspaper editor who'd just turned into a Superman knockoff, standing beside his bulldog who'd become Krypto's more aggressive cousin.
But he'd never felt more alive.
The Sentinel's energy blast struck them both dead center.
The suits hardened instantly and energy that should have vaporized them dispersed harmlessly across the surface like water hitting diamond.
Jonah looked at his hands, at the power radiating from them, at the Sentinel that had tried to kill his intern. His mustache bristled with an emotion that transcended mere anger.
"You," he said slowly, his voice carrying new resonance that made the building shake, "just made the biggest mistake of your manufactured life. And I've seen Spider-Man's hero skills, so that's saying something!"
He moved.
Not flew, moved. The difference was important. Flying implied grace and control. What Jonah did was more like being shot from a cannon that had anger issues and a personal vendetta against proper aerodynamics.
His fist connected with the Sentinel's face with a sound like a freight train hitting a brick wall. The impact created a shockwave that shattered every window on the floor. The robot's head crumpled like aluminum foil, circuits sparking and metal shrieking.
The Sentinel flew backward, crashed through three walls, tumbled through the accounting department, demolished the break room, and finally embedded itself in the elevator shaft with a terminal crunch.
"Holy..." Jonah stared at his fist, cigar nearly falling from his mouth. "Did I just... Robertson! ROBERTSON! Are you getting this? I want photos!'"
The other two Sentinels turned toward him, their adaptive systems learning, analyzing, adjusting, probably calculating that this angry man in spandex was a significantly larger threat than anticipated. They charged simultaneously from different angles.
Bat moved faster.
The bulldog launched himself like a furry missile, jaws opening to reveal teeth that gleamed like daggers. He caught the first Sentinel's arm in his mouth and bit down with a crunch that echoed across Manhattan.
Metal screamed. Adaptive plating that should have been unbreakable crumpled like a soda can. Sparks flew as Bat's jaws crushed through circuits and wiring. The Sentinel tried to shake him off, but the bulldog held on with the same stubborn determination he showed when fighting over his favorite chew toy.
"That's my boy!" Jonah shouted, pure pride in his voice. "Show that tin can what happens when you threaten our people! Tear it apart! We're the press, dammit, we bite back!"
The third Sentinel adapted, coming at Jonah from behind with its weapon arm charging. Its systems had learned from watching its companions fall, had calculated the optimal angle of attack.
Jonah's new senses screamed warnings. He spun faster than he thought possible and caught the Sentinel's fist in his hand mid-swing.
"You know what your problem is?" Jonah said conversationally, his mustache twitching with barely contained glee. "You're not nearly photogenic enough for the front page! Also, you interrupted me mid-cigar, and that's a FIRING OFFENSE!"
He pulled, using the Sentinel's momentum against it, and hurled the robot straight up through the ceiling. The machine crashed through floor after floor, office after office, until it burst out the top of the Daily Bugle building and continued into the sky like a very confused satellite.
Jonah crouched, golden energy coiling around his legs like compressed fury, and launched himself after it with a battle cry that sounded suspiciously like "PARKER!"
The chase that followed would be talked about for years.
Jonah caught the Sentinel three hundred feet above Manhattan, grabbed it by its leg mid-flight, and spun like a discus thrower on steroids. The robot became a club, a very expensive, very confused club that Jonah used to smash through the swarm of Sentinels converging on their location.
Each impact sent robots tumbling through the air like leaves in a hurricane. Adaptive plating crumpled, optical sensors shattered, weapon arms bent at impossible angles. The sound was glorious, a symphony of destruction conducted by a newspaper editor who'd spent his entire career fighting with words and was now getting to fight with his fists and thoroughly enjoying the change of pace.
"This is for every libel lawsuit!" CRASH. A Sentinel's head caved in like a crushed beer can.
"This is for every threatened cancellation!" SMASH. Another robot's chest plate crumpled into abstract art.
"This is for Parker being late with photos AGAIN!" CRUNCH. A Sentinel folded in half.
"And THIS," Jonah roared, his voice carrying across the Manhattan skyline with the fury of a thousand missed deadlines, "is for making me miss my coffee break!"
He brought his makeshift weapon down with enough force to create a sonic boom. The Sentinel he'd been using as a club exploded into scrap metal that rained down like the world's most aggressive confetti. The one he'd hit embedded itself in the street below, creating a crater thirty feet across and probably destroying several underground utilities.
Below, Bat was having his own moment of glory and discovering that yes, violence WAS the answer when the question was "how do I stop murder robots?"
The bulldog had discovered flight, though "discovered" was a generous term. What Bat did was more like controlled falling with attitude and a complete disregard for physics. He bounced between Sentinels like a pinball made of muscle and fury and excessive drool, his jaws crushing through armor plating wherever he landed.
Each bite was accompanied by a growl that sounded like distant thunder mixed with a garbage disposal. Each impact sent robots spinning like tops. The dog's stubby tail wagged with pure joy because finally, FINALLY, someone was playing rough the way he liked it (none of that "gentle petting" nonsense humans usually insisted on).
A Sentinel tried to grab him mid-flight, which was its first mistake. Bat twisted, caught its hand in his jaws, and used the leverage to swing around and headbutt the robot's optical sensor with a crunch that was immensely satisfying to both dog and owner.
"BAT!" Jonah called from above, his voice carrying pride that made his chest swell. "FETCH, BOY!"
[A/N]: Support my work and get early access to chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server- https://discord.gg/Q9m7yKdn