Chapter 3: Loki
"Iron Fist."
"Power Man."
"Amadeus."
Spider-Man crouched beside his friends, checking each of them carefully.
"Strange. They don't show any symptoms, nothing out of place. It's like they just… drifted off."
He paused, then muttered, "Speaking of drifting off, there is someone out there who hates my guts enough to pull this stunt."
He scanned the icy wasteland around him. The snow swallowed every trace of life.
"Nightmare, hiding isn't exactly your style. And how'd you slip past Doctor Strange? Don't tell me the Sorcerer Supreme took a vacation break and left the doors unlocked?"
He sighed. "Even the Sorcerer Supreme gets a day off, but I, Spider-Man, the best graduate of S.H.I.E.L.D., have to work overtime every day. Director Fury really needs to review employee benefits." He raised his voice, trying to draw Nightmare out.
The wind carried his words across the empty Arctic plains.
"No… this doesn't feel like Nightmare. He wouldn't bother setting up a trap. Besides, after that incident, Doctor Strange keeps constant surveillance on the Dream Dimension. Nightmare shouldn't have the means to pull something up here. But if it isn't him… then who?" Spider-Man murmured.
He thought for a long while but found no obvious suspect. There weren't many enemies capable of both targeting him and plunging Iron Fist's team into such a state.
And right now, the priority was his companions' survival.
Spider-Man knelt beside Amadeus Cho. The genius was suffering from severe frostbite, his skin pale from the brutal cold. But despite the damage, his face held a faint, peaceful smile, as if he were lost in a pleasant dream.
Thankfully, Spider-Man arrived in time. Any later and the seventh-smartest person on the planet would've frozen to death in the Arctic.
"If Amadeus dies out here, humanity loses a national treasure. I need to find where Iron Fist and his team's plane is. Hopefully, it's not far from here. Even if I can get Amadeus into the Iron Spider Armor, the other agents won't last long in this temperature," Spider-Man muttered.
He scanned for the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft's locator signal and exhaled in relief when he found it close by.
He wrapped everyone together with layers of webbing, placing the enhanced fighters on the outside and the regular agents in the center so they'd conserve heat longer.
The Iron Spider Armor's thrusters flared to full power. Spider-Man hauled the bundled group and blasted toward the signal's direction.
Three minutes later, he landed at the plane's last recorded position.
Just like Iron Fist's team, the aircraft was untouched — not a single scratch.
Spider-Man guessed they must have landed first and moved out on foot to rescue the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Then whatever ambushed the agents had taken them all at once.
He stepped aboard the plane and released the webbing.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Everyone tumbled across the cabin floor, rolling out like a pile of bundled dumplings. Spider-Man barely found room to stand.
Fortunately, once inside, their vital signs stabilized.
"They shouldn't be in danger for now. I'll need Doctor Strange to break whatever dream spell they're under. But what's the mastermind after? If the target is me, why let me pick them up and leave so easily?"
Spider-Man pondered the mastermind's intentions while piloting the plane.
Just as Spider-Man was thinking, he suddenly felt something touching his foot.
Instantly alert, he glanced down and saw a tendril of symbiote creeping from Agent Venom's body toward him.
"Easy there, buddy. Good symbiote, sweet venom. Stay over there." Spider-Man carefully pulled his foot out.
After being possessed by Venom last time, it caused a massacre.
No way was he risking a repeat.
"Sorry, Flash," he muttered.
He shot out a web and wrapped Agent Venom from head to toe, sealing every crack so nothing could leak out.
Once the situation was contained, he returned to the cockpit. S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft were loaded with advanced systems, so it didn't take long for him to prepare for takeoff.
Just as he was about to take off, his spider-sense buzzed intensely.
"I knew it!" He knew the mastermind wouldn't let him leave the North Pole so easily.
In an instant, Spider-Man flashed to the side, and a scepter plunged directly into the plane's control panel.
"Loki." Spider-Man turned around to see Loki, clad in Asgardian armor.
"Spider-Man. We meet again," Loki greeted him, unfazed even though his ambush had failed.
He remembered well the last time they'd swapped bodies. He had sensed the spider-sense at work then, so Spider-Man dodging this strike didn't surprise him.
"This was your doing? Aren't you supposed to be locked up in Asgard?"
He hadn't dismissed the possibility of Loki's involvement, but Thor had sworn on his honor that Loki would not return to Earth after his last capture.
"A mere prison can't hold the second prince of Asgard," Loki declared, pointing his scepter at him. "I'm here to settle the score."
"Settle the score? You forgetting something? Every time we've fought, I'm the one who walked away the winner. I'm guessing today won't be any different."
"If not for my foolish brother and his so-called team backing you up, you'd have been mine long ago. But Thor and his band of idiots are in Asgard now, which means today… you have nowhere to run," Loki said with full confidence.
A mortal besting him time and again was unforgivable. This time, Loki had come fully prepared. This time, he intended to end Spider-Man for good.
"Is that so?"
Spider-Man fired instantly, the Iron Spider Armor's palm repulsor blasting Loki square in the chest.
Loki crashed to the ground with a stunned thud.
Clang.
His scepter clattered loose.
Spider-Man darted forward and snatched it before Loki could recover.
"Looks like this round is ending quickly," he said, holding the scepter upright.
"Ending? No, Spider-Man," Loki grinned from the floor. "This is only the beginning."
The weapon in Spider-Man's grasp dissolved into green smoke and vanished.
He snapped his gaze up. The scepter had reappeared in Loki's hand.
"That's a neat trick. Guess prison life taught you a few things," Spider-Man remarked.
"Oh, I learned far more."
Loki swept the scepter through the air, and a swirl of emerald smoke enveloped them both.
When it faded, Spider-Man found himself standing outside the aircraft, face-to-face with Loki on the open ice.
"Loki, parlor tricks like that aren't enough to beat me," Spider-Man warned.
"We'll see about that."
Loki clapped his hands, and Spider-Man felt the entire earth begin to tremble.