"Oh-ho?!"
Hearing Reed's tactical deduction, Peter raised an eyebrow in mild amusement. As expected of the man established as the 'smartest on Earth' in the comics.
To grasp the significance of the Omnitrix in a single glance at their first meeting—the guy really has some chops.
However, thinking he could strip away Peter's power by merely destroying the watch was pure, unadulterated naivety.
The Omnitrix was the ultimate, pinnacle creation of Azmuth.
It was fundamentally engineered from its inception to serve as a high-tech Noah's Ark in the event of a cosmic apocalypse! Its structural durability was so absurd that it could emerge entirely unscathed from a planet-shattering super-nova detonation.
In fact, any kinetic or energy assault directed at its chassis would merely be absorbed and converted into battery reserves to sustain its operations...
Furthermore, as the host, Peter possessed absolute, system-enforced dominion over all his acquired inventory.
This meant that even if someone managed to sever his entire arm, they still wouldn't be able to separate the watch from him!
"Mr. Fantastic truly lives up to his name. But unfortunately, your grand strategy is fundamentally doomed to fail!" Peter smirked. "However, your unique biology is quite fascinating... I'll be taking it!"
Even as the words left his lips, the Omnitrix's spatial scanning beam silently initiated its sequence on Reed.
Sensing a sudden, profound prickle of instinctual danger, Reed's mental alarms flared. He knew he had to end this engagement immediately; he couldn't afford to let this adversary replicate his specific genetic package.
The entity before him was already an astronomical nightmare. If it managed to acquire a biology that was entirely immune to blunt physical trauma and could fluidly alter its mass and shape...
Good heavens, if that happened, even his peerless super-genius brain would be entirely powerless to concoct a countermeasure against such a monster!
With that pressing thought, Reed let out a sharp cry, his physical body instantly losing all rigid mass to become as fluidly malleable as noodles.
He elongated his torso and limbs at terrifying speed, weaving a complex, elastic web between the surrounding buildings to completely restrict Peter's vectors of movement.
Having established the perimeter, he still retained immense reserves of elasticity, extending a dozen coiled tendrils simultaneously to seize Peter.
In the source lore, Mr. Fantastic could extend his mass over hundreds of kilometers without hitting a biological threshold, so a localized stretching sequence like this was practically child's play for him.
Peter casually traded a few opening blows with the stretching elastic form, quickly discovering that Reed's capability was an absolute cheat in close-quarters combat.
In terms of raw offensive output, Reed's base physical conditioning was entirely unremarkable.
His standard strength hovered around a few hundred kilograms, and even when consolidating his cellular structure to maximize leverage, his peak force output topped out at a mere few tons.
But where his biology crossed into the realm of the absurd was his absolute defensive mechanics. His rubberized physique was far more broken than that of a certain pirate captain before his rubber fruit's awakening.
That pirate captain was merely immune to blunt-force trauma prior to his awakening, still retaining a critical vulnerability to slashing attributes.
Reed, however, could actively alter his physical structure down to the molecular level. This molecular-tier structural modulation granted him a form of absolute kinetic diffusion—a literal, perfected execution of "Shaoli."
Even if a master swung a vibranium blade straight through his torso, Reed could fluidly elongate his cellular matrix around the cutting edge, rendering slashing and piercing metrics completely obsolete.
A heavy punch carrying over a hundred tons of raw impact would merely flatten him into a paper-thin sheet, and within seconds, he would snap back to a pristine state.
This effectively meant Mr. Fantastic was completely immune to the entirety of the physical damage spectrum. Only elemental and energy attributes could inflict genuine agony upon his frame.
Well... how incredibly unfortunate for him. Peter happened to be a distinguished, high-tier elemental mage.
However, he wasn't in any particular rush to take down Mr. Fantastic just yet. Ending the match too quickly would simply be too boring.
"Before I fully catalog your genome, let's play a brief game of hide-and-seek!"
The exact millisecond the syllables left his lips, Peter's silhouette abruptly dissolved into thin air. It was the Invisible Woman's signature optical camouflage!
"Where did he go?!"
Thor swung his divine hammer through the empty air, the heavy weapon whistling as he scanned the surrounding plaza with heightened alertness.
Reed's swarming elastic limbs similarly caught nothing but wind.
He immediately attempted the tactical methodology he utilized when locating Susan under normal circumstances—extending his slender, hyper-sensitive tendrils into the atmosphere to detect minute shifts in air pressure and thermal currents, aiming to pinpoint Peter's coordinates.
Yet, the tracking method that had never failed him in the past was rendered completely useless now.
Because while cloaked under the optical shroud, Peter had smoothly toggled his Wizard Driver into the Hurricane Style.
Shielded by the defensive shroud of the gentle winds, Peter completely mitigated the inherent biological flaws of Susan's invisibility.
He actively manipulated the localized air currents to mask his body heat and perfectly synchronized the ambient air displacement around his movements, erasing any trace of turbulence.
It could be said that combining Hurricane Style with the Invisible Woman's cloaking yielded a state of mathematically perfect invisibility.
If he were to integrate a form of elemental intangibility on top of this, it would essentially manifest as an alternate, localized state of phasing.
Watching the two legendary heroes standing in absolute, high-alert paranoia, Peter couldn't help but let out a mischievous, mocking grin.
He subtly altered the resonance of the local air current vectors, causing his voice to echo hollowly from every single direction at once:
"Replication progress at 10%... 30%... Oh, a friendly heads-up—once I'm finished processing this rubber band, the next target for my catalog... is you, you hammer-wielding alien."
Reaching that point, he dropped his vocal register, mimicking Thor's boisterous, booming tone with flawless accuracy:
"Oh, blazes! Mr. Fantastic, hurry and use your invincible super-brain to think of a way!"
Being entirely unable to locate Peter's physical position while simultaneously having their mental composure dismantled by such targeted psychological trash-talk was a nightmare.
The sheer frustration boiling within Thor and Reed could easily be imagined.
"Odinsblood! How dare you mock a God of Asgard?!" Thor bellowed, his temper flaring aggressively as he spun Mjolnir in a blur.
Heavy arcs of divine lightning began to cascade violently along the metallic surface of the hammer.
Clearly, his patience had evaporated; he was preparing to unleash a massive, wide-area lightning storm to completely glass the entire city block to flush Peter out!
"Don't do it!" Reed instantly deduced the Thunder God's tactical intent, his face turning entirely pale with sheer panic. "My elastic cell structure cannot handle the thermal discharge of your divine lightning!"
"Then what do you propose I do?!" Thor barked in frustration, only to instantly realize that his phrasing was virtually identical to the exact line of trash-talk Peter had used to mock him a moment prior.
This realization caused his already red-hot face to flush several shades darker with pure embarrassment.
Nevertheless, Reed truly remained one of the premier minds of the Marvel Universe. In the span of a single heartbeat, his intellect formulated a chillingly effective counter-strategy.
His gaze snapped sharply across the shattered square, locking onto Gwen, who was currently locked in a fierce, mobile skirmish against the Hulk!
"Though this method is beneath my standard code of conduct, you leave me no alternative!" Reed's voice cut through the roaring din of the battlefield, carrying a distinct, clinical coldness. "What you inflicted upon my wife, I shall return in kind to your woman!"
Before the final syllable could fully echo, his elongated arm suddenly altered its trajectory with terrifying velocity. Transforming into a hyper-tension kinetic javelin, it thrust straight toward the blind spot behind Gwen's back while she was occupied with Tony's armor!
His gambit succeeded. This specific tactical vector unerringly crossed Peter's absolute red line.
The exact millisecond Reed's hardened, stretching fist was about to pierce the air behind Gwen—
Flicker.
Peter's silhouette materialized like a phantom directly behind Gwen's back, his gloved hand snapping closed around Reed's incoming forearm with an unbreakable, iron grip.
The exact moment his physical form became visible to the naked eye—
"Now, Thor!" Reed screamed at the top of his lungs.
Though Thor fundamentally disdained utilizing such underhanded leverage to draw out an opponent, the memory of Peter's blatant sacrilege against his divinity overrode his hesitation. He raised Mjolnir to the heavens, calling down the storm!
CRACK-BOOM—!!!
In that split second, a column of divine, celestial lightning as thick as a structural pillar violently tore through the upper atmosphere. It descended unerringly, striking Peter with absolute, unmitigated force!
The blinding, blue-white pillar of pure energy completely swallowed Peter's form. The sheer, savage output of the electrical discharge caused the asphalt pavement to fracture and disintegrate for yards around.
The deafening, concussive boom of the strike was potent enough to cause the entire island of Manhattan to violently shudder.
Watching the apocalyptic display from the perimeter, the Spiders felt the blood drain completely from their faces, turning pale with sheer horror.
Could the Boss... actually survive an unmitigated strike from a God?
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