For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The night was cold and damp, a thick, salty mist rolling in off the East River. The Gantry Plaza freight yards were a skeletal graveyard of forgotten industry. Skeletal cranes, dark and silent, loomed like rusted iron dinosaurs against a starless, light-polluted sky. The air smelled of decay, of river water and rust, a place where the city's vibrant energy came to die.
Spider-Man was a ghost in this graveyard. He moved with a silent, fluid grace, a shadow clinging to the highest point of a loading gantry, his suit's lenses cutting through the gloom. His spider-sense was a low, insistent hum, a thrum of anxiety that was sharper and more focused than the ambient danger of the city. This was a place of ambush. A hunter's ground.
He scanned the designated meeting point below: a small, open space of cracked concrete surrounded by towering stacks of shipping containers. It was a kill box.
He felt her presence before he saw her, a subtle shift in the air, a whisper of displaced wind that his senses registered as an anomaly. He turned. She was standing on the opposite gantry, a silent, bronze-and-gold statue against the distant glow of the Manhattan skyline. Wonder Woman. She was a figure of impossible, divine power in this place of mortal decay.
They didn't speak. There was no need. A single, sharp nod passed between them across the fifty yards of darkness. They were a team. The hunt was on.
Minutes later, a sleek, black van rolled into the yard, its headlights cutting sharp, white cones through the thick mist. A nervous-looking man in an expensive suit stepped out, carrying a heavy, metallic briefcase. He stood in the center of the kill box, his eyes darting into the shadows. The seller.
A low-humming drone descended from the sky, a single, red camera lens glowing in the dark. A tinny, synthesized voice, distorted and arrogant, emanated from it.
The man, Klaw, nervously opened the briefcase. Inside, nestled in thick, grey foam, was the Quantum Entanglement Communicator. It was a beautiful, complex device, a sphere of interlocking silver rings that spun silently around a core of softly glowing, crystalline blue.
"I don't think so," Spider-Man whispered to himself.
At that moment, the trap was sprung. From the shadows between the shipping containers, a dozen A.I.M. soldiers emerged, their yellow suits a sickly, jarring splash of color in the gloom, their advanced energy rifles raised and aimed at the terrified seller.
Wonder Woman didn't wait for a signal. She was the signal. She launched herself from the gantry, a silent, descending angel of wrath. She landed not with a thunderclap, but with the quiet, devastating force of a landslide, the concrete cracking under her boots.
The A.I.M. soldiers, startled by her sudden appearance, opened fire. A volley of bright, searing energy bolts lanced through the darkness. It was the distraction Spider-Man needed.
He was a blur, a whisper of red and blue. He web-zipped down, not into the heart of the fight, but to the periphery. Be the scalpel. He fired two quick web shots, yanking the energy rifles from the hands of the rearmost soldiers. He shot another, thicker strand at a precariously balanced stack of steel girders, pulling it down with a deafening crash that created a barrier and sowed chaos in their ranks.
Wonder Woman was the storm. She moved with a brutal, efficient grace, a whirlwind of motion. She didn't need to kill. A single, open-handed strike sent a soldier flying into a stack of containers. A powerful kick shattered the exoskeletal frame of a larger, more heavily armed enforcer. She was a force of nature, her vambraces a blur as she deflected energy blasts, sending them ricocheting harmlessly into the sky.
Spider-Man saw his opening. While all eyes were on the goddess who was systematically dismantling their firing line, he swung in low and fast. He snagged the briefcase from the terrified seller's hands with one web line, and with another, yanked the man to safety behind a stack of containers.
"Stay here!" he commanded. "And maybe rethink your career choices!"
The drone, Thorne's eyes and ears, swiveled to track him.
"I don't think so, Tinkerbell!" Spider-Man yelled. He fired a glob of his most viscous, non-conductive web fluid, gumming up the drone's rotors. It sputtered, wobbling in the air.
Wonder Woman saw the play. She broke off her engagement with the soldiers, leaped onto a shipping container, and launched herself at the flailing drone. She didn't punch it. She caught it, her hands closing around the small machine with a surprising gentleness, plucking the precious Q.E.C. from its claw a split second before the drone's self-destruct mechanism activated, vaporizing it in a harmless flash of light.
She landed, the glowing, silver-and-blue sphere held securely in her hand. The remaining A.I.M. soldiers, seeing their objective lost and their forces decimated, began a tactical retreat, vanishing back into the industrial maze.
The freight yard was quiet once more, the air thick with the smell of ozone and the lingering charge of battle. Spider-Man dropped down beside Wonder Woman, his body humming with a frenetic, post-adrenaline energy.
"Well," he quipped, his voice a little shaky. "That was fun. Team 'Science and Magic' for the win."
She looked at the glowing device in her hand, then at him. He couldn't see her face clearly, but he felt the weight of her gaze. A silent, profound acknowledgment of their perfect, terrifying synergy passed between them.
"The work is not done," she said, her voice a low, grim whisper.
The distant wail of sirens began to cut through the night. The authorities were coming. He gave the cowering seller, Klaw, a final, stern look. "You're going to give that to them," Spider-Man said, pointing to the Q.E.C., "and you're going to tell them everything you know about Daedalus."
He looked at Wonder Woman one last time. "Same time next crisis?"
She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. Without another word, she leaped, a silent, powerful ascent into the starless sky, disappearing into the clouds.
Spider-Man watched her go, a profound, aching sense of loneliness washing over him. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a deep, bone-deep exhaustion and a body that was just beginning to register the bruises and strains of the fight. The battle was won. But the war was just beginning. And all he wanted in that moment was to go home, not to the empty house in Queens, but to the true sanctuary he had found in Diana's arms. He fired a web-line into the darkness, the movement sluggish, and began the long, weary journey home.