Chapter 209: FIGHT

On the stage, Tony Stark leaned close to Rhodes, his voice low enough that only the War Machine’s audio sensors could pick it up.

"We have a problem," Iron Man said.

"Tony, there are civilians present," Rhodes replied through gritted teeth. "I was ordered to be here. We should not do this right now."

Tony frowned. Hammer, desperate to reclaim the audience’s attention, was waving from the edge of the stage, urging them to acknowledge the crowd.

"These people are in danger," Tony said firmly. "We need to get them out. Trust me for five minutes."

"I trusted you for five minutes at your house," Rhodes shot back, "and you ended up throwing me through a wall."

"Listen to me," Tony said, his voice dropping lower, sharp with urgency. "I think Hammer is working with Vanko."

"Vanko is still alive?" Rhodes asked incredulously.

Before he could process the information, Tony was already moving toward Hammer.

"Where is he?" Tony demanded.

"What?" Hammer stammered.

"Where is Vanko?"

"Who?" Hammer deflected with a nervous smile.

"Tell me."

"What are you doing here, mate?"

"No, no, no, no—what is happening?!" Rhodes’s voice cracked with sudden panic.

Both Hammer and Tony turned.

The War Machine suit was locking up—Rhodes’s weapons arm swiveled and aimed directly at Tony, completely independent of the pilot’s commands. Around the stage, every single Hammer Drone mimicked the movement in perfect synchronization.

"Rhodes?" Tony called, shifting into a fighting stance and pulling Hammer behind him. "What are you doing?"

"It is not me!" Rhodes shouted. "I am not in control! I cannot move! The entire system has been hijacked!"

The repulsor on Rhodes’s arm and every drone weapon locked onto Iron Man simultaneously.

The audience stopped applauding. An uneasy silence swept through the crowd.

"GET OUT!" Rhodes screamed. "Everyone get out NOW! The whole system is compromised!"

Hammer’s eyes went wide. He stumbled backward and dove behind the stage equipment.

Panic erupted instantly. The audience surged toward the exits in a stampeding wave. The drones locked into formation, stood at rigid attention beside the frozen War Machine suit, and then opened fire upward—trying to bring down Iron Man as he rocketed into the sky.

"Karen! Now!" Peter barked.

He watched Tony blast through the glass ceiling above the Expo, the drones firing after him. Enormous fragments of shattered glass began raining down on the fleeing crowd below.

"EVERYONE DOWN!" Peter roared.

He unleashed a concentrated wave of pheromones, and the crowd within earshot obeyed instantly—dropping to the ground. From the shadows, dozens of Peter’s robots emerged. Each one wore a plain dark suit, and they moved with mechanical precision—smashing the largest falling fragments to dust and shielding civilians with their own bodies.

"RUN!" Peter commanded.

The crowd surged past him toward the exits. Some paused just long enough to photograph the mysterious figures in black suits before sprinting away.

Peter grabbed Missy by the shoulders and guided her toward the nearest exit.

"Get out. I will see you at home. This just became dangerous."

Missy kissed him quickly. "Be careful," she whispered, then disappeared into the crowd.

Grievous—protect Missy at all costs. I do not want a single drone touching a hair on her head.

Understood, Chief, Grievous replied.

Peter moved against the flow of the panicked crowd, weaving through the chaos with practiced ease. He found a secluded corner, disabled every nearby security camera, and began stripping away his civilian disguise. He tossed his hat toward a random location along with his cane and the outer layers of his suit—one of his robots would retrieve them later. He pulled the web-shooters from his pockets and snapped them onto his wrists, flexing his fingers through the activation sequence.

Then he leapt.

"Activate Nano-Technology Prototype Suit," he commanded mid-air.

In a matter of seconds, the suit cascaded across his body—a shimmering wave of nanomachines that solidified into a sleek, armored Spider-Man suit in muted grey and blue tones.

He swung toward the nearest cluster of unprotected civilians. Reaching behind his back mid-swing, he decompressed a Nanocube and opened fire on the approaching drones with twin pistols.

"Spider-Man!" someone shouted, and a ragged cheer erupted from the fleeing crowd.

Peter spotted a drone pivoting its weapon toward a group of civilians. His expression hardened behind the mask. He shot a web at the drone’s torso, reeled himself in, grabbed it by its chassis, and hurled it into the ground with enough force to shatter it into scrap.

"GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!" he commanded, and the remaining civilians scattered.

Several drones identified him as a priority threat and abandoned their pursuit of the crowd. They converged on his position. Using their own momentum against them, Peter weaved between them at close range—ripping limbs off one to use as a bludgeon against another, firing web lines to tangle their joints, and smashing them into each other.

The circle of drones tightened around him. Peter growled in annoyance.

"Enough."

He took a deep breath, gathered a concentrated surge of magical energy in his throat, and released it in a devastating shockwave.

When the blast subsided, every drone in his immediate radius had been reduced to molten slag. He unclipped several cryogenic spheres from his belt and hurled them in multiple directions, extinguishing the fires that had begun spreading across the Expo grounds.

In a nearby alcove, partially hidden behind a collapsed concession stand, two women crouched—one visibly terrified, the other attempting to maintain her composure despite the trembling in her hands.

"Come out," Spider-Man said, tilting his head slightly in their direction.

Both women noticed that the vigilante’s voice—already altered by the mask—sounded deeper and hoarser than anything they had heard in news broadcasts. They cautiously emerged and approached him.

"Follow me," he ordered.

They obeyed without question. He led them through a cleared path to a secure evacuation zone, where his robots were already organizing the rescued civilians.

Just as the women began to voice their thanks, Peter felt the world decelerate around him. His spider-sense screamed. Below, on the far side of the Expo, a misfired drone missile was arcing toward a cluster of trapped civilians. In three seconds, they would be dead.

Peter sighed.

He gathered every ounce of magic and chi he possessed. He felt every fiber of his body beg him to stop—but he refused. The world slowed further. Then it nearly stopped.

He ran.

Using lightning-infused magic, chi reinforcement, and every scrap of physical speed his body could produce, Peter moved at a velocity that registered to the human eye as nothing more than a series of pale, stuttering flashes. He reached the civilians, scooped them clear, and deposited them behind a reinforced barrier in what felt like a single heartbeat.

Then his knees buckled.

He hit the ground hard, gasping. Pain radiated from every muscle. His heart hammered against his ribs with a force that felt like it might shatter them.

’Damn,’ he thought through the agony. ’Every muscle in my body has seized up, and my heart feels like it is about to explode. This would not happen if I had even a fraction of natural affinity for lightning magic. But luck is not on my side today.’

He forced himself upright, trembling. He scanned the sky and saw Tony attempting to draw the remaining drones and Rhodes away from the Expo—but in the process, his erratic flight path was endangering civilians below.

Without conscious thought, Peter’s killing intent flared outward. The civilians nearest to him stumbled, their legs going weak, tears forming involuntarily in their eyes from the sheer pressure of the aura radiating off him.

"Contact Stark," he growled.

Y-yes, Karen stammered.