The moment he finished speaking, I moved.
I crossed the distance before the nearest guy's brain even registered danger. One slash, ripped a blade out of another man's hands, drove my claws straight through his ribcage, felt bone give, then yanked free and kept going.
I bounced off a wall, jumped over a railing, landed behind four of them and broke their spines in a quick and powerful roundhouse kick. I was everywhere at once.
"What the hell are you playing at? Kill this guy!" they swarmed.
Gunfire followed me but never caught me. Bullets hit concrete where I had been half a second earlier; and I climbed walls like a beast.
I let instinct take over.
Claws tore. Fangs sank in. Punch broke. One man swung a blade, I caught his wrist, twisted until it snapped, then buried my claws into his face and shoved him into another attacker, both of them collapsing in a heap of blood and broken bodies.
Someone screamed orders.
Someone else screamed in pain.
"Shit, where is he? I lost sight of him!" shouted a goon, before I strangled him with my webs.
I grabbed one by the collar, used him as a shield as rounds punched into his back, then flung his corpse into a group rushing me. I landed in the middle of them.
One tried to run.
I webbed his legs, yanked him back, and ended it before he hit the ground.
Within seconds, the confidence was gone. Fear took its place. They backed up, tripping over their own dead, hands shaking, eyes wide. They weren't fighting a hero anymore.
I was jumping from one side to the other.
They were fighting a predator.
I stood there in the center, breathing hard, cause of the adrenaline, claws dripping, bodies scattered, around me.
Blood on the rooftops, falling on us like rain.
"Send the next wave." I told them, signaling them to come forward.
"And they call this shit a hero." one of them said.
Before we could engage again, Royd came running in, followed by Mechaman descending from the sky.
[ Robert's POV ]
I landed, smoke surrounding me before slowly dispersing.
"This armor is the premium package. You really outdid yourselves." I said, looking at my arms.
"The Man is Mecha again, it's like you went from a bike to a motorcycle." Royd said, then added. "Whoa… this is a bloodbath."
I looked around, and yeah, it was a massacre. And the cause of it, was Spider. 'Thank God he's on our side.' I thought, something I'd been thinking for a while now.
Before I could dwell on it, more of Shroud's men joined us.
"This is great, did you get a makeover, Mechaman?" Toxic said, an enemy I had some unfinished business with. "I'm guessing this new suit runs on the Astral Pulse, so thanks for bringing it back to us." He laughed, then added, "Your father would be so proud of you, if he wasn't dead. Because Shroud killed him, just like he's going to kill you and everyone around you."
"And break your fucking arms!" said Armstrong, a villain we had beaten at The Sardine bar.
"Sigh… yeah, we can break their arms before killing them. Or you just give us the Pulse and we let you live." Toxic added after his colleague's interruption.
"With broken arms!" Armstrong said.
"Of course…" Toxic replied, exasperated.
"And for them, both arms and-"
"Alright, everyone gets it! No need to make it weird." Toxic snapped, turning to Armstrong.
"Where's Shroud?" I asked simply.
"Shroud? Where is Shroud, is that what you're asking me?" he replied.
"Yes. That's exactly what I asked." I confirmed.
"Right." he said.
"What the hell am I waiting for?"
[ Miguel's POV ]
Robert was talking to one of Shroud's men. The guy was naked but had a superpower, his entire body was in some kind of acidic form.
Suddenly, a shadow passed over all of us.
"Crazy, right? It's like, really big but super quiet. Cool." Toxic said.
Above us was some kind of cyclopean mech spider.
"Your father told me he'd help me build a mech if I helped him create the Astral Pulse, just another promise he didn't keep." said Shroud, piloting the mech above us.
"That's what this is all about?" Robert replied. "You needed it to power your stupid spider shit."
"Come on, kid. Using the Pulse to power a mech is like plugging your cell phone into a nuclear reactor. I'm going to use the Pulse to change the world." Shroud said in response.
"Predict me kicking your ass." Robert said-but Shroud said it at the exact same time.
"Oooh, they usually don't like that." Toxic commented from the side.
The next second, Mechaman launched himself toward Shroud, firing lasers from his hands at the mech, as it tried to grab him.
"When I kill you, I'll take that new mech too, as a trophy." Shroud told him.
Lowering my head as they fought in the air, I heard Toxic turn to me and say. "Alright, I'm gonna take care of you."
At that moment, the other members of the Z-Team arrived on site.
"Fuck, it's a total mess here!" Malevola commented, before jumping into the fight against Shroud's goons alongside the others. Above us, explosions echoed as Robert, in his armor, dominated Shroud, unleashing missiles, lasers, and a gatling gun at his opponent's spider mech.
Toxic took flight and charged straight at me at full speed, but Blonde Blazer swooped in from the side, smashing him with an energy-wrapped punch that sent him crashing through a window.
"Fuck, you're really starting to piss me off." he said as he got back up.
I was already rushing toward him before his head had even lifted enough to see me coming. I couldn't grab him with my webs in his current form, so my claws were my only option.
He was tough and seemed able to regenerate, easily the most problematic enemy I'd faced so far. We traded blow after blow.
"Die, damn it! Why aren't you disintegrating?!" he yelled, firing a jet of acid that I dodged before lunging in and smashing him in the throat.
"Ughhh, fucking rat, I'm really going to kill you." he snarled, clutching his throat. We went right back to exchanging hits. My suit started to disintegrate under a heavy punch, holes tearing through it, but I was still dominating the fight.
[ Robert's POV ]
"Shroud, you didn't see that one coming!" I shouted as I fired lasers at the legs of his mech, slicing one clean off.
"The outcome will be the same." he replied, firing a laser back at me. I raised an energy shield, then followed up with a shot from the arm-mounted blaster on my back, snapping off another leg of his mech, which I grabbed and smashed against it.
[ Miguel's POV ]
The fight was starting to drag on way too long for my liking. I couldn't damage him the way I wanted to, until an idea hit me. I fired webs at Flambae, who was fighting nearby.
"What are you playing at, Spider?" he asked.
"What, you want to make it two-on-one, pathetic?" Toxic mocked.
I yanked Flambae hard and hurled him straight at Toxic. 'Acid is extremely flammable.'
"Ignite yourself." I said.
He did, and Toxic exploded on impact. BOOM!
Flambae got back up, only missing a chunk of his suit. "You could've warned me!" he snapped.
I just nodded at his complaint, then climbed onto the rooftops and webbed Shroud's mech while it was still airborne, restricting its movement. At that moment, the others piled on, hammering it with attacks, Phenomaman in particular, dealing massive damage and ripping off two more arms.
The machine finally gave in and crashed down in the distance, slamming into the ground.
A few minutes later, we were all gathered around the crash site. His mech was burning on the roof of a coffee shop.
"We fucked them up!" Phenomaman cheered, grabbing Waterboy in his arms. The others started celebrating too.
Malevola stepped closer to me, wiped something off my face with her hand, and said. "You had a bit of bloods on your face. It bothers me for what I want to do." Then she kissed me.
But it turned out it wasn't over. Shroud stepped out of his mech, holding Chase hostage, arms and legs bound, mouth covered, aiming a gun at his head.
"No! Let him go!" Robert shouted, retracting the mask of his armor.
"Why is everyone so tense? What are you afraid of?" Shroud said.
"If you do anything to him, you will die. Know that." Robert replied, and Shroud started laughing.
"I won't lie, killing TrackStar, basically your brother or your second father figure, sounds tempting." he continued.
"Then why don't you do it?" Robert asked.
"Climb up, and only you, Robert. Get out of that new suit, remove the Astral Pulse of it right in front of me and give it to me. In exchange, Trackstar lives."
As he finished speaking, the few remaining men he had surrounded us.
Robert flew up onto the roof.
"Come out, don't be shy." Shroud said to him. And Robert stepped out of the armor.
"There you are, so predictable, but this costume doesn't work with the Astral Pulse, I see. Don't try anything." he added, turning to us and showing that one of his men was also holding Robert's dog, Beef.
"I know you, and all your weaknesses. I knew you'd develop feelings for Blazer. I knew you'd take Invisigal under your wing, teach her the ways, that's why I placed her there. Eventually, you might even have developed feelings for her too. And yes, she works for us."
Invisigal stepped out of the circle we were trapped in, Shroud's goons letting her pass.
"Awww, she's embarrassed." Shroud commented as she turned invisible.
I couldn't even be surprised. I knew someone among us was a traitor, I just didn't know who.
"All of this is just to say that whatever you did, it was already accounted for in my calculations. And once I have the Astral Pulse, I won't need to predict anymore, I'll just know. So don't do anything stupid, Robert. Not now." he said, cocking the pistol pressed against Chase's head, who was trying to struggle.
Robert stepped forward. "I just want a fair exchange. Release Beef first." he asked.
"Release the fat dog." Shroud replied, and his men complied. "See? I'm a man of my word. Now let's make the exchange and end this."
Robert moved closer, extended his hand above Shroud's, and dropped the Astral Pulse. Shroud immediately let Chase fall to the ground to grab it.
But in that brief instant, while the Astral Pulse was falling, I shot a web onto it, and onto his gun, and yanked both back to me.
"What does this mean?! That wasn't the deal!" Shroud shouted.
"Like I told you last time, I'm not much of a talker." I said, before firing his own gun straight into his leg, dropping him to the ground and taking everyone completely by surprise.
The others snapped out of it and started fighting the remaining goons who were still surrounding us. Chase was being evacuated by Invisigal, who was invisible up on the roof.
"Spider!" Shroud shouted, crawling on all fours on the rooftop in front of Robert.
I joined them up there and grabbed Robert's hand, placing Shroud's gun into it.
"Finish him." was all I said as I handed it to him.
He started breathing heavily, his eyes filled with hatred as he stared at the man crawling in front of him, the murderer of his father. He aimed the gun at him and asked,
"What does it feel like to be on the other side?"
Shroud didn't answer his question.
"Come on, tell me what you feel like in this position?!" he said, stepping closer to him.
Then he took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eyes, calmed himself and chose to lower the weapon, despite Shroud's mocking smile.
'So I'm going to have to do it.'