Aleksei Sytsevich—the Rhino—was rampaging through the streets of Manhattan for one very simple reason. He was broke.
The Kingpin had fronted him two million dollars. Aleksei initially thought that was a mountain of cash. It wasn't. It wasn't nearly enough.
So, naturally, he escaped from his holding cell, smashed his way into a downtown bank, and physically ripped the gold reserve out of the vault. He was currently stampeding down the asphalt, carrying the gold on his back, intending to find a way to trade the heavy yellow bricks for usable cash.
He faced a few major logistical hurdles.
First: he was an eight-foot-tall walking tank. There was no alleyway dark enough to hide him from the NYPD's surveillance network. It was only a matter of time before the heavy artillery arrived.
Second: he had absolutely no idea how to fence gold bullion. If the gold had stayed in the vault, he wouldn't have this headache. But the gold was currently strapped to him. The only silver lining was that gold was a universal currency—he just needed to find someone who would take it.
Then, there was the third problem.
A dense, reinforced net of webbing suddenly snapped across the intersection, blocking the entire street.
Aleksei lowered his massive horned head, clutched the gold tighter, and charged straight into the webbing. He intended to tear right through it. He didn't notice that Spider-Man had quietly popped the manhole cover directly in his warpath.
Rhino's massive foot found empty air. He lost his balance, pitching forward and crashing into the asphalt with a localized earthquake that cracked the pavement.
"Aleksei, buddy, what is wrong with you?" Spider-Man called out, dropping from a streetlight. "Weren't we getting along perfectly yesterday? The cops kept you out of S.H.I.E.L.D. custody specifically because you were on your best behavior. They didn't do it so you could take a weekend stroll through a bank vault!"
Peter didn't waste a second. His wrists flicked in a blur, firing stream after stream of impact webbing, pinning the downed giant to the cratered street. "You got arrested yesterday. Today, you're robbing a bank. Walk me through the thought process here."
Rhino grunted, struggling against the sticky cables. True to his straightforward nature, he answered honestly. "I did the math. I realized I do not have enough money. So, here I am."
Peter slapped a hand over his face, letting out a heavy, muffled sigh through his mask. Sometimes, dealing with aggressively literal villains was exhausting.
"You can't just rob a bank because you're broke!" Peter yelled, anchoring another web-line to a fire hydrant. "If everyone who was broke robbed a bank, the banks would go out of business, Aleksei! That's basic economics!"
Rhino froze. He blinked heavily, his thick brow furrowing inside the armored suit. He laid there for three full seconds, genuinely processing the statement. Finally, he shook his head. "I am short a lot of money. Nobody will lend it to me."
"Uh... maybe you could ask me? Or, I don't know, talk to Tony Stark? The guy throws around grants like candy!" Peter fired a fifth layer of high-tensile webbing over Rhino's torso, pulling it taut.
Honestly, the Rhino was an absolute nightmare to fight. Even with Peter's recently upgraded abilities, Aleksei was a walking natural disaster. Whoever designed that armor—Peter strongly suspected Otto—had heavily insulated the metallic skin against conductivity. Peter's new bio-electric blasts were basically useless. If Rhino hit you, it was like taking a direct strike from a Class-100 heavyweight.
Rhino let out a deafening roar. His biceps bulged, the hydraulic servos in his suit whining as he simply flexed his arms outward. The five layers of reinforced webbing snapped like cheap string.
He stood up, dusted off his knees like an obedient child, and picked up the massive sack of gold nuggets. He casually reached over to a parked sedan, tore the steel roof off with one hand, and wrapped the sheet metal around the gold to secure it to his forearm.
He looked up at Spider-Man and shook his head righteously.
"No," Rhino declared, completely rejecting the Stark idea. "I cannot do that. Asking for money like that... it is extortion. Blackmail. I have a code. I need to do it this way: I take the money, I hand it over to the people I owe, and then you can catch me."
He pounded his armored chest. "Only this way can the wicked receive their proper punishment."
Peter stared at him. The lenses of his mask widened to maximum capacity. He was completely, utterly speechless.
"Are you kidding me?!" Peter finally shrieked, his voice cracking. "Dude! Have you looked around? Look at the crater you left in the street! Look at the crushed cars! People almost died today!"
Spider-Man's utter bafflement washed right over Aleksei. The giant just nodded solemnly. He had already factored the property damage into his moral calculus. Any punishment—life in prison, the death penalty—was entirely acceptable to him. But the debt had to be paid first.
With the gold secured, Rhino ignored Peter entirely, turned on his heel, and took off sprinting down the avenue.
"Oh no you don't!" Peter fired two thick web-lines, slapping them dead-center onto Rhino's broad back. He planted his boots into the asphalt and hauled back with all his augmented strength.
Underneath that armor, Aleksei was supposed to be a regular guy without any super-soldier serum or genetic mutations. But the suit's kinetic output was completely absurd.
Peter felt an overwhelming, terrifying yank on his arms. It was infinitely worse than trying to stop the Scorpion, and completely dwarfed the time he tried to halt a speeding truck.
Spider-Man's boots skidded across the concrete. A second later, his feet left the ground entirely.
Peter was literally airborne, flying horizontal to the street like a kite caught in a hurricane, completely at the mercy of Rhino's momentum. He hit the pavement, bounced, and realized he was being bodily dragged down the avenue.
Okay, new plan! Peter thought wildly.
He scrambled to his feet while still being dragged at thirty miles an hour. He whipped the web-lines around his own waist, securing himself. Then, firing rapid-burst lines from his wrists, he latched onto the structural columns of the buildings passing by on either side of the street.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
He acted as a living anchor, using the buildings to generate enough counter-force to slow the behemoth down. The immense strain threatened to pull his shoulders out of their sockets, but he could feel the massive resistance digging in. It was working.
But as Peter looked ahead, his heart dropped into his stomach.
A burly, broad-shouldered African-American man in a yellow hoodie was casually crossing the intersection, his head down, completely unaware that an eight-foot-tall mechanical rhinoceros was bearing down on him like a runaway freight train. In two seconds, the man was going to be reduced to a bloody smear on the pavement.
"HEY! WATCH OUT!" Peter screamed, his lungs burning.
It was too late.
Rhino slammed into the man at full speed.
The impact sounded like a bank vault being dropped from a skyscraper. The burly man was launched backward like a cannonball, skidding violently across the concrete.
But miraculously, the collision acted like a brick wall. Rhino staggered, his forward momentum instantly halving. The sudden deceleration sent a violent shockwave back down the web-lines. Peter was thrown entirely off balance. To avoid getting his spine snapped like a twig by the whiplash, he violently jerked his wrists, snapping his own anchor lines.
He flipped through the air, landing perfectly crouched on the vertical brick face of a nearby apartment building.
He snapped his head toward the crash site. Down below, the Rhino shook off the impact, readjusted his grip on his sheet-metal gold purse, and resumed his lumbering sprint, disappearing around the corner.
Peter looked at the victim. The man in the yellow hoodie groaned, brushing debris off his shoulders. He stood up. He wasn't bleeding. He didn't even have a broken bone. The man looked down at his intact chest, glanced around the chaotic street, pulled his hood up, and immediately bolted down an alleyway.
Peter blinked in pure shock. Okay, so he's definitely an enhanced.
But the indestructible pedestrian wasn't the immediate problem. The Rhino was getting away.
Peter coiled his leg muscles, preparing to launch himself off the wall and swing after the giant.
A deafening roar of rotors cut him off.
Hurricane-force winds slammed into the side of the building, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and trash. A sleek, black tactical helicopter descended right between the skyscrapers, hovering parallel to Peter's position.
Peter shielded his eyes against the downdraft. The chopper's side door slid open.
Standing in the bay, trench coat whipping in the wind, was the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. His single, cold eye locked directly onto Spider-Man.
"Forget the Rhino, Spider-Man," Nick Fury barked over the roar of the engines.
Fury's face was grim. "Let the Thunderbolts handle him. I need your help. S.H.I.E.L.D. is in serious trouble."
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