"You asked for this!"
Black-suited Spider-Man exploded forward the instant he let Sandman go. His entire body seemed to tense and sharpen at once, as if every strand of rage inside him had been yanked tight. Being photographed by some random stranger in the middle of that moment had crossed a line in Peter's head, and whatever restraint he still had left snapped cleanly in half.
In the past, smashing a camera would've been enough. That would have settled it.
Not now.
Now he wanted to make an example out of the idiot standing in front of him. He wanted the masked bastard to understand that some people were untouchable, and Spider-Man—New York's golden boy, the city's self-appointed savior—was one of them. He was supposed to be righteous. He was supposed to be clean. He was supposed to stand above ordinary filth.
No stains. No cracks. No evidence.
Anyone who tried to tear that image down had to pay for it.
A low, feral sound tore out of his throat. It wasn't human anymore, not completely. The black symbiote across his suit writhed like living tar, rippling over his chest and shoulders as the pale spider emblem stretched and twisted into something uglier, more savage. The thing looked alive, like it wanted blood as badly as Peter did.
A normal person would've frozen on the spot just from seeing that.
Locke didn't.
He even had the nerve to click the shutter two more times.
Only when Spider-Man was almost on top of him did Locke move. His right hand snapped up, bringing the violin case level across his body. The latches burst open in one smooth motion, and a blood-red longsword flashed into his grip like it had been waiting to breathe.
The blade came out with a sound like a beast breaking free of its cage.
It roared.
The cold gleam that followed was so fast it barely registered. One instant, Peter was lunging in with all the fury of a rabid animal. The next, his body jerked backward and he was forced to retreat faster than he'd come in, boots scraping hard against the ground as he fought to keep his balance.
The exchange happened too quickly for the naked eye to catch.
By the time the air stopped humming, the two of them were already several steps apart.
Peter stared at Locke, stunned.
He had just taken a loss in a direct clash.
It wasn't a crushing defeat, not yet, but it was enough to make his heart skip. Ever since putting on the suit, and especially after bonding with the symbiote, everything had gone his way. His reflexes were monstrous. His dynamic vision let him track attacks before they fully happened. His instincts, intelligence, and raw physicality had made most opponents look slow.
But now this masked freak had nearly cut him.
With a knife.
Peter's eyes narrowed. He looked Locke up and down more carefully, taking in the posture, the effortless way he held the sword, and the ominous crimson sheen along the blade's edge. Recognition clicked into place, and his expression hardened.
"So it's you," he said coldly. "The Butcher."
"The Butcher?"
Sandman had only barely managed to pull himself back into human shape by dragging in loose sand from the tracks. His face was still pale from the pain, but hearing that name drained what little color remained. He looked from Peter to Locke, and his throat tightened.
He knew exactly who that was.
Lately, the Butcher's name had spread through New York's underworld like a plague rumor. Gang bosses who laughed off ordinary vigilantes would go silent when his name came up. Most heroes beat people bloody, broke a few bones, maybe cracked a rib or two if things got ugly.
This one was different.
This one cut heads off.
The leaked footage was already halfway to becoming urban legend. In the clips, when the red glow rose in his eyes, he looked less like a superhero and more like a monster wearing human skin—some demon dragged up from hell, dripping murder and madness. Even the criminals who pretended they weren't afraid had started changing routes and canceling deals over whispers that the Butcher might be nearby.
First Spider-Man. Now this guy too.
Sandman felt his stomach sink.
Today really might be the day he died.
But then his daughter's face flashed through his mind, fragile and small beneath hospital lights. She was still waiting for him. Still breathing because he kept fighting. As long as she was alive, he didn't have the luxury of giving up.
Family locked his spine straight again.
He clenched his fists, ready to drag himself back into the fight no matter how hopeless it looked.
Then Locke smirked.
It was a small expression, but there was something almost amused in it as he rested the sword lightly against his chest and tilted his head toward Sandman.
"Today," he said, calm as ever, "I'm on your side."
Sandman blinked.
Peter's eyes widened, then burned with immediate fury. "You're siding with a criminal?" he snarled. "You're really going to stand in the way of justice for a robber?"
Justice?
Hearing that word out of Peter's mouth nearly made Locke laugh for real.
And then he did.
The sound was low, mocking, and completely unbothered. He rolled one shoulder and let the sword angle slightly downward, as casual as if they were discussing the weather instead of deciding who got crippled next.
"I caught you torturing him on camera," Locke said. "From where I'm standing, you're the violent one here. He robbed a bank, sure, but he didn't kill anyone today. Didn't even seriously injure anyone."
His gaze sharpened under the mask.
"You, on the other hand, just tried to grind his head against a subway train. So tell me again—which one of you is the criminal?"
Peter's jaw tightened. "That's not how this works."
"No," Locke said. "It's exactly how this works."
The symbiote twitched violently across Peter's shoulders, responding to his anger. In his mind, all of this was absurd. Villains were villains. They hurt people, spread fear, poisoned the city, and made everyone else clean up the mess. If one of them got hurt in the process of being stopped, then so what?
Sandman could turn into sand. He could recover.
And if anyone wanted to talk about excessive force, then the man in front of him had even less right than Peter did. The Butcher didn't bruise people. He carved them apart. He was a walking massacre with a hero label taped over the blood.
Peter pointed at both of them, voice hard and absolute. "I'm taking you in. Both of you. I'll hand you over to the law myself."
Blue light began to crawl along Locke's blade.
The glow started at the hilt, then spilled outward in quiet streams, tracing the edge until the whole weapon seemed wrapped in freezing moonlight. The air around it thinned and sharpened, carrying a pressure that made even the dust on the ground tremble.
"Then try it," Locke said.
Sandman stood there staring, completely lost.
A superhero… helping him?
Not blackmailing him. Not trying to bait him. Not using him as a distraction. Actually helping him.
It made no sense.
He and the Butcher had no history. No alliance. No shared interest except the guy in black standing across from them. And yet the man had stepped in without hesitation. Sandman's chest tightened, not with fear this time, but with something dangerously close to hope.
Hope made him look toward the scattered money.
The suitcase wasn't far away.
A million dollars wasn't some abstract jackpot to him. It wasn't greed. It wasn't a luxury. It wasn't some criminal's dream of fast money and easy living. That cash meant hospital bills. It meant machines, specialists, intensive care, one more day, then another after that.
It meant his daughter had a chance.
This wasn't stolen money in his eyes.
It was life.
Sandman looked at Locke again, and the emotional math in his heart came out in one absurd, heartfelt conclusion.
"What Butcher?" he muttered hoarsely. "That's not a butcher. That's a damn angel."
Then the angel moved.
Locke drew his sword fully across the space between them, and the station was drowned in light.
A terrifying blade arc tore forward, azure and razor-thin at its edge, but vast enough to swallow the whole line of attack. The energy screamed through the air with a force that made Sandman's skin crawl. It wasn't just sharp—it was the kind of thing that gave off the absolute certainty of death.
Just seeing it from the side was enough to make his body go cold.
If Peter took that head-on—
He'd die.
Spider-Man felt it too.
His instincts went berserk, every sense in his body firing warnings at once. In that stretched-out fraction of a second, he saw the sword energy shear a visible layer off the surrounding stone wall as it passed. Concrete didn't crack under it. It peeled away like soft clay under a giant blade.
Peter's pupils shrank.
That level of destruction shouldn't have belonged to a sword.
That was artillery.
That was tank-shell damage carved out by a man's arm.
The symbiote reacted instantly. Black matter flowed and twisted across his torso with a wet, furious writhing, and then two arms burst from his waist. A heartbeat later, another pair pushed out beneath them, slick and monstrous.
Six arms.
Six-armed Spider-Man.
The symbiote was dragging out every ounce of potential it could squeeze from him, mutating him on the spot into something even more monstrous than before.
But Locke's slash didn't stop there.
To Sandman, it had looked like a single cut.
It wasn't.
Buried inside that one motion were layers upon layers of sword intent, a seamless fusion of the first three forms of the Aohan Six Secrets. The blade shadows multiplied and overlapped until the attack became a cage of killing light. It fell in sheets, dense and suffocating, like a domain made entirely of steel and frost.
Spider-Man tried to meet it.
He failed.
The six-armed figure was blasted backward and slammed into the wall with crushing force. Cracks raced out from the point of impact, and loose chunks of concrete rained down around him.
Sandman stared for a second, then scratched the side of his head.
"He doesn't look that strong," he said honestly.
Then he remembered the money.
His whole body jolted, and he spun toward the train car where the damaged suitcase had fallen. Forget the battle. Forget the drama. If he could just grab the cash and leave, maybe this insane day could still end with his daughter alive.
He ran.
He didn't even get two full steps.
"Bang!"
Something slammed into him at terrifying speed.
Sandman lost all balance and crashed hard to the ground as a star-spangled shield ricocheted away and curved cleanly back through the air.
A broad figure stepped forward and caught it without even looking.
Captain Steve Rogers planted his feet, shield in hand, his face stern and unyielding as he looked straight at Sandman.
"Kid," he said seriously, "you can't take that."