Chapter 55: Ch 54: The Lemurian Star Hijack XIV
2k words!
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SWISSHHHHHH.
The thick white steam hissed loudly...
After the Daily Bugle incident, Luke had hit the system shop and purchased a healing ability specifically to hide his super-villain injuries from his family.
[Titan Healing (Attack On Titan) : 3 Day Cooldown ]
It worked perfectly for mending unbearable, bone-shattering injuries, but because it was the cheap version, it came with a massive, highly inconvenient three-day cooldown.
Oh, and it absolutely wouldn’t work if his head got chopped off - a very important detail he always had to keep in mind.
As the Titan-esque vapor finally cleared, fully mending his shattered arm, busted nose, and bruised mouth, Veritas slowly tilted his head up at her. In the pale moonlight, the painted, manic smile on his jester mask seemed to stretch so wide it looked like it might just tear the mask apart.
From her perch on the shipping crate, Gwen watched the healing happen with narrowed eye-lenses.
’That healing... it isn’t passive,’ she theorized, her eyes tracking the fading steam. ’It’s not something he can just spam whenever he takes a hit. It has to have severe drawbacks... like healing consuming his lifeforce or something like that....’
Her logic was backed by what she had observed in their last fight. Because if he could heal instantly and limitlessly, he would have used it back during their fight on the Bridge the second her spinning kick made him bleed. But he hadn’t. There had been no magical steam pouring out of his mask back then.
’So,’ Gwen concluded, a dangerous smirk forming beneath her mask. ’If it has a limit, all I have to do is keep breaking his bones until he can’t use his rejuvenating steam bath anymore. Then he crumbles.’
And Gwen’s theory was entirely spot on. He usually saved the healing factor until after the stream had completely ended so that all of his accumulated damage could get healed at once, allowing him to stay completely carefree without worrying about the massive three-day cooldown.
Tonight, Gwen had forced him to burn it mid-battle.
"Alright," he said, raising his newly-healed right arm and flexing the fingers one by one. "You have my interest again, Miss Spider."
Hearing his words, a strange, complicated knot in Gwen’s chest suddenly loosened. That murky unknown feeling completely vanished, replaced by a surge of familiar adrenaline.
"Sorry," she retorted, her voice regaining some of its familiar edge, "I’m not attention-starved like a certain creepy clown. But hey, I’ll add that to my resume. Right under ’Expert at Breaking Clown Hands Like Twigs.’"
Veritas let out a loud, highly amused snort at the comeback. "Oh, you’re doing resume jokes after getting employed now? Adorable!"
And then, Gwen’s Spider-Sense buzzed wildly again.
With a massive, concussive explosion firing from his back, Veritas launched himself forward. He crossed the distance in a microsecond, blitzing right in front of her. His palm shot out, glowing with deadly orange energy, aiming to detonate a point-blank blast right in the center of her face.
Gwen’s reflexes took over. She practically folded herself backward, dodging by a hair’s breadth. The glowing palm grazed the very tip of her mask’s nose just as the explosion violently detonated in the empty space where her head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
She pushed off with her legs, darting sideways. But Veritas didn’t let up. With a quick counter-blast from his free hand, he reversed his direction mid-air instantly, pivoting with impossible physics.
He was right in front of her again, lower this time. His palm glowed orange... and his speed now wasn’t something Gwen could safely evade.
BOOM!
A massive, high-volume explosion engulfed her entire body. Her suit once again shielded her from the worst of the heat, but the concussive shockwave sent her hurtling backward toward the steel wall.
"Arghhmmmm!"
Gwen winced in pain as she quickly shot two thick web-strings, anchoring them to the ceiling to catch herself and stop her devastating backward momentum. The webs stretched tight like a bungee cord. Using the tension, she immediately slingshotted herself right back at him, her fist pulled back for a jaw-shattering punch.
Veritas flew toward her as well, a yellow, expanding sphere of condensed explosive energy crackling in his palm. He swung it directly at her face.
Gwen had no intention of blocking it. She was going to break his jaw before he could detonate it. Even if his explosion landed, she trusted her suit to absorb the worst of the heat and tank the shockwave.
It was a high-risk, high-reward gamble.
Except this time the cards weren’t in her favor...
Just as her fist was a millimeter away from connecting with his white mask... he vanished.
Gwen’s white eye-lenses widened. Her spider-senses flared in a panic, pointing directly above her.
Earlier, when he had violently choked her against the wall just before she snapped his arm, Luke had secretly placed a Flying Thunder God seal directly onto the fabric of her neck.
Gwen reacted on pure instinct, twisting her body in mid-air to face him, but she was too late. Mid-twist, she saw it - the glowing, expanding ball of explosive energy had teleported right along with him.
Before she could raise a hand, he slammed the concentrated blast directly into the side of her twisting torso.
KRA-THOOOOOM!!!
"GaaaAAAh!!!!!"
The heat may not have scorched most of her flesh, but the raw, bone-crushing impact slammed her into the floor with devastating force. The steel deck couldn’t handle it. It shattered on impact, and Gwen plummeted through to the level below, debris and twisted metal raining down around her.
But Veritas wasn’t done.
High above, Veritas rocketed upward toward the jagged hole in the ceiling.
Then, at the apex of his ascent, he reversed direction.
His palms angled downward, continuous explosions propelling him into a spiraling, roaring descent. He became a storm. A tornado of fire and concussive force, screaming toward the hole in the floor.
’Howitzer... Impact!’
’It’s that explosion tornado move again...’ Gwen gritted her teeth, barely clinging to consciousness. Her body screamed in protest, every muscle and bone howling in agony.
But unlike last time on the bridge, she wasn’t free-falling with no way to dodge.
She shot a web at the nearest wall and pulled with all her remaining strength, dragging herself far out of the impact zone.
BOOOOOOOM!
"Haaaah! Haaah!" Gwen panted heavily, lying flat on her back a few dozen feet away. Her suit was more battered now, exposing her burned skin at even more spots. The patch near her abdomen and her side was completely gone now. And her ribs were probably crushed to dozens of pieces. Each breath hurt her like hell.
’5 times his maximum heat... I feel like I got scammed somewhat.’ Gwen thought panting, her chest heaved painfully.
She dragged her aching body up into a crouch, staring at the blazing inferno of fire, soot, smoke, and shattered steel at the exact spot she had been lying just a second prior.
As the thick dust began to clear, Veritas jumped out of the hole in the floor he had created and strolled towards her...
’His patched-up broken arm aside... how does that damn suit of his not even have a single crease?!’ Gwen thought, completely exasperated, as every single muscle and bone in her body screamed in agony. ’Seriously, what brand is that?’
She forced herself up again, her arms trembling violently. Every movement was agony. Her HUD flashed critical warnings she’d long since stopped reading.
’And that teleportation...’ She bit her lip beneath her mask. ’It’s really bad news.’
His blinking in and out of existence was just too fast. There was absolutely no visual tell, no displacement of air, and no way for her eyes to predict when or where he would reappear.
Panting heavily, she closed her eyes.
There was only one thing that could help her counter an instantaneous, unpredictable teleportation assault: a power that warned her of the unpredictable before it even happened.
Her Spider-Sense.
She opened her eyes again, her white lenses glowing faintly in the dark, and raised her trembling fists in front of her face. Her entire body felt weak and heavy.
She honestly wasn’t even sure if her battered, fractured body could physically move fast enough to react, even if her Spider-Sense gave her the warning.
Her chances of winning this were dropping to zero. He had grown lot stronger, she realized... in today’s fight she was getting brutalized from start to now...
But as she stared down the explosive Jester, she planted her feet firmly on the steel deck. She was Spider-Woman. And she absolutely refused to back down.
Looking at her weakly trembling body, still stubbornly locked into a fighting stance despite the overwhelming damage she had taken, Luke couldn’t help but be genuinely impressed by her heroic spirit.
’You really just always have to be so inspiring, don’t you?’ he thought with a fond, hidden smile behind his mask. He briefly gazed up through the broken ceiling toward the night sky.
The minimum duration for his stream had already been met long before the S.H.I.E.L.D. response team had even arrived. At this point, Luke was simply extending the broadcast to farm the bonus Terror Points for fighting a super and rake in donations from the action.
The patrons loved a good fight, and Spider-Woman versus Veritas was apparently premium entertainment.
And considering he now had to wait three whole days before he could heal himself from whatever bone-shattering injuries this desperate Spider-heroine might creatively inflict on him, he would rather not continue this unnecessary dogfight.
Luke’s explosions could level city blocks. And that’s exactly why if Luke actually wanted to defeat her quickly and decisively, he would have to either permanently cripple her or kill her.
And both of those options were completely off the table. Defeating her cleanly without resorting to those extremes was exhaustingly difficult. She just kept getting back up.
To be brutally honest, Spider-Woman was no longer the perfect match for him. Sure she had her spider-sense, slightly faster reaction time, and that superior physical strength. But despite all of that... she could’ve died multiple times by now. After all, earlier if it wasn’t an explosion ball but the saber that had struck her... she’d be split in half right now.
Once he was strong enough for the next archenemy, he was going to actually defeat her brutally at that.
Well... It was nearly the time to end the stream, besides it has been exactly 4 minutes and 34 seconds since he and Spider-Woman had begun their fight. The poor French mercenary was probably running dangerously low on tricks to buy time against Captain America.
Before the mission began, Luke had told Batroc quite clearly: if he was forced to engage with another superpowered response team member, then Batroc needed to buy at least five minutes before Veritas could rejoin to help.
’Batroc seemed really confident about taking on Cap back then,’ Luke thought with a suppressed chuckle. ’Let’s go see what his condition is. He’d have called for help...’
Even though Luke had broken the walkie-talkie earlier for a show, there was still an earpiece that served as a communication link between Batroc and him.
Luke focused his attention back on the exhausted Gwen, tilting his head with a slow, dramatic sigh.
"Getting back up on your feet once again after all that, huh?" he said, his voice quieter now. Almost... appreciative. "The people of New York really lucked out getting a hero like you. You know that?"
He paused, then the painted black lips of his mask stretched into a malicious grin.
"I do wonder, though... how would they react when you stop getting back up one day?"
Gwen’s fists tightened, but she didn’t respond.
"Well, considering the news articles about you, it might not move those ungrateful people as much as one would think..." he continued, his tone dripping with dark amusement. "After all, the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, and die trying."
"But unfortunately for them, I don’t have any more time to play with you today. You see, I’m only on this boat for a dear friend. And considering who he’s fighting, he might be in desperate need of a tag-team partner right about now."
Saying so, Veritas casually took a single step forward with his right leg.
But the moment his boot made contact with the steel floor, he completely vanished from existence.
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Thanks for reading!
This is not a cliffhanger... right?
Next Chapter is the last Chapter of this arc. And yeah, I’m not writting another big arc like this from now on 7-8 chaps an arc max, its kinda exhausting... and get this... this arc even had one 5k word Chapter too... still it stretched 15 chaps.
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