Herman Schultz and his crew stood in the predawn shadow of a Manhattan bank. They wore heavy work jackets and standard black ski masks. Strapped to their forearms were the Shocker Gauntlets.
The Chitauri rubble was drying up. Damage Control had locked down the city. Earning a living pulling scrap was over, and Herman refused to go back to turning wrenches for pennies. He had the ultimate vault-cracking tool strapped to his wrist.
He chose 6:00 AM for a reason. First, no one expected a bank robbery before the sun fully rose. Second, the bank was completely empty. Herman wasn't a murderer. He wanted the vault, not a body count. The gauntlets could rip a reinforced steel door off its hinges in seconds. He didn't need a teller with a key.
"Like I said, the ultimate skeleton key," Herman muttered, his voice muffled by the ski mask.
He leveled his arm at the bank's heavy glass double doors. He clicked the dial to level one. A concussive wave shattered the glass into a million glittering pieces.
"Move," Herman ordered. "Find the vault."
"This is too easy!" one of the younger crew members laughed. He twisted his dial to level two and aimed at the lobby's marble pillars. "We can blast through anything!"
The crew fanned out, their boots crunching over the broken glass. They cheered, completely unaware of the shadow clinging to the ceiling right above their heads.
Buzz.
Peter's spider-sense had been humming at the base of his skull since the crew stepped through the doors. He clung to the plaster, staring down at the heavy steel gauntlets. They didn't look like standard alien tech. They looked machined. Heavy. Industrial.
One of the masked men pointed his gauntlet at the main teller counter. The air warped. The heavy oak counter violently exploded into splinters.
"Sound waves?" Peter whispered to himself. "No, kinetic shockwaves. I kind of wish they shot colorful lasers. Invisible death-ripples are way harder to dodge."
Spider-Man dropped upside down on a single thread of webbing. He fired a quick line, snagging a gauntlet right out of a thug's hands.
"Hey, guys!" Spider-Man called out. "Bank doesn't open till nine! If you need cash right now, you really have to use the ATM outside!"
The crew whipped around.
"It's him!" one of the thugs yelled. "It's the bug that put the Hell's Kitchen crew in the hospital! Light him up!"
"I don't think they appreciated the neighborhood watch!" Spider-Man yelled back.
He severed his web-line and dropped to the floor. A thug raised his gauntlet. Spider-Man fired a web at the marble tiles, grabbed the line, and violently slingshot himself forward. He slammed his boots into the man's chest, launching him over a desk.
Another thug aimed at Peter's head. Spider-Man fired a glob of webbing, pasting the muzzle of the gauntlet directly to the floor. The man pulled the trigger. The kinetic wave blasted into the concrete, launching the thug violently upward. He hit the ceiling with a heavy thud and dropped to the ground, out cold.
"Sorry!" Spider-Man quipped, backflipping away from a shattered desk. "I didn't realize the ATM had a strict dress code! Whoa!"
His spider-sense flared like a siren. He threw himself into a sideways roll.
An invisible wave of force sheared the air exactly where his head had been.
Herman stepped forward. He moved differently than the others. Deliberate. Balanced. He fired again. Spider-Man shot a web at the ceiling to swing away, but Herman swept his arm. The shockwave clipped the webbing, instantly snapping the high-tensile fibers into dust. Spider-Man hit the floor and scrambled behind a marble pillar.
"Okay, I'll admit the tech is cool," Spider-Man called out. "But whoever you bought these from is definitely going to void your warranty when you end up in jail!"
Herman stopped firing. His breathing grew heavy. He reached up and violently ripped the ski mask off his face.
"Bought them?!" Herman roared. "I built these! With my own hands!"
Herman cranked the heavy rotary dial on his gauntlet all the way to level three. The safety lock clicked off. This was the vault-cutter setting. He leveled his arm at the pillar Spider-Man was hiding behind.
"Hey, wait! Don't get mad!" Spider-Man yelled. "I didn't mean to insult your craftsmanship!"
Spider-Man leaped straight up, his fingers digging into the ceiling plaster. He sprinted upside down, his spider-sense screaming. The air below him warped. The marble pillar exploded into a cloud of pulverized dust.
Peter realized dodging wasn't going to work. He fired two thick web-lines at a heavy mahogany manager's desk. He yanked backward, ripping the desk off its bolts, and hurled it straight at Herman.
Herman didn't flinch. He fired point-blank. The kinetic wave obliterated the desk. A snowstorm of shredded paperwork and splintered wood filled the lobby.
Herman lowered his gauntlet, scanning the falling paper. The bug was gone.
"Right behind you."
Herman spun. Spider-Man dropped from the ceiling, planting a perfectly measured right hook across Herman's jaw. Herman's eyes rolled back. He crumpled to the floor. The heavy gauntlet clattered against the tiles.
Spider-Man stood over him, shaking out his knuckles. "Seriously, man. If you're an engineer, just go to MIT. They have incredible grants."
Peter fired a web, pulling the discarded gauntlet into his hands. He looked over the raw steel casing and the glowing Chitauri core. He clicked the dial down to level one, aiming at the ruined teller counter, and squeezed the trigger mechanism.
A sharp ripple of force cracked the remaining wood.
Peter frowned. He looked at the shattered pillars around the room. The plaster was dusting. Deep, structural cracks were racing up the walls.
"Oh, no," Peter breathed. "The kinetic transfer. It doesn't just break what it hits. It vibrates through the foundation."
He dropped the gauntlet. "The entire load-bearing structure is failing. A few more shots and this whole building comes down."
Herman groaned, clutching his jaw as he forced himself up onto his elbows. His head was ringing, but he heard the kid's words.
"What?" Herman rasped. "The structure? Impossible. I didn't set the output that high. The gauntlets don't have that kind of yield!"
"What did you call these things?!" Peter demanded.
"The Shocker Gauntlet," Herman spit out.
"Yeah, well, consider me shocked," Peter snapped. "Your math is wrong."
Across the lobby, one of the thugs Peter had kicked earlier stumbled to his feet. His nose was bleeding. He looked at Spider-Man, panic in his eyes, and grabbed his gauntlet. He twisted the dial as far as it would go.
Spider-Man's head spiked with pain. He threw himself sideways.
The thug fired.
The concentrated shockwave missed Peter by inches. It slammed into the exterior wall. The concussive force didn't just break the brick; it sheared a massive, jagged hole perfectly through the entire structure of the bank. Morning sunlight streamed into the dusty lobby.
"Stop firing!" Herman screamed, his eyes going wide as the ceiling groaned above them. "You're going to drop the roof on us!"
The thug didn't listen. He raised the gauntlet again.
Spider-Man lunged. He fired a web, ripping the thug's hand away from the trigger. Peter landed hard, grabbed the steel barrel of the gauntlet, and flexed his shoulders. With a sharp snap, he broke the reinforced steel weapon cleanly in half. He tossed the pieces aside and webbed the man to the floor.
Herman realized the kid was right. The Chitauri battery wasn't decaying the kinetic force the way terrestrial power would. It was amplifying it.
"Frank!" Herman yelled across the room.
Another crew member was swaying on his feet. Frank looked dazed. He looked at the gauntlet on his arm. He grabbed the dial and twisted it. Something inside the casing snapped. The dial spun past level three, breaking the safety lock entirely. The Chitauri core flared blindingly bright.
"Frank, drop it!" Herman roared, scrambling backward. "The recoil is going to kill you!"
Frank blinked. He raised his arm at Spider-Man. He squeezed the trigger.
The air didn't just warp. It screamed.
Spider-Man tackled Frank at the exact second the weapon fired. His boots slammed into Frank's chest, knocking the man out of the immediate blast radius.
But the trigger was pulled. The weapon locked open.
The kinetic wave hit Spider-Man point-blank in the chest.
The impact sounded like a bomb detonating. The recoil slammed the gauntlet into the floor, instantly knocking Frank and Herman unconscious.
Spider-Man became a human bullet. The sheer force of the blast launched him upward. He smashed through the plaster ceiling. He shattered the concrete floor of the second story. He tore through the third floor. Plaster, rebar, and drywall exploded around him as he was blasted upward through the skyscraper.
He finally came to a violently abrupt halt, wedged deep into the concrete ceiling of the twelfth floor.
Silence fell over the ruined bank. Dust drifted in the morning light.
A few minutes later, the concrete on the twelfth floor shifted.
Peter peeled himself out of the crater. He dropped heavily onto the carpeted floor of an empty accounting firm.
"Oh, my back," Peter groaned, gripping his spine. "My back."
Every muscle fiber screamed in protest. He rotated his shoulders. Nothing was broken. His enhanced durability had absorbed the blunt force, leaving him with deep, throbbing bruises that his metabolism would chew through by dinner.
"I thought supervillain weapons were supposed to be laser beams," Peter muttered, dusting off his red-and-blue suit. "Kinetic energy sucks."
He walked to the jagged hole he'd been blasted through and looked down. Twelve stories below, Herman crew lay scattered and unconscious across the bank lobby.
Peter dropped down the shaft, using short bursts of webbing to control his descent. He landed lightly on the ruined marble. He moved quickly, disarming the remaining gauntlets and webbing the unconscious crew tight to the floor.
The building groaned. A shower of dust fell from the ceiling.
Peter didn't have much time. He aimed his web-shooters at the shattered load-bearing pillars. He fired continuously, weaving thick, high-tensile cables between the ceiling and the floor, creating artificial structural supports. He reinforced every cracked wall and shattered beam he could find.
Once the groaning stopped, Peter fired a massive sheet of webbing across the front doors. Using a thinner web-line, he traced large, blocky letters across the barrier:
DANGER. STRUCTURAL DAMAGE. WEBS DISSOLVE IN 2 HOURS. HURRY. — SPIDER-MAN.
Peter swung out through the hole in the wall, landed in an alley, and quickly stripped out of his suit.
"Uncle Ben! Gwen!"
Peter jogged up to the subway entrance, his backpack slung casually over one shoulder. Ben and Gwen were pressed against the railing, watching the dust settle over the street.
"I found a clear path out," Peter said, pointing down the avenue. He tapped the hood of Ben's Toyota. "Good news is, the car survived."
Gwen wasn't looking at the car. She was staring up at the bank. Thick white ropes of webbing held the crumbling facade together like surgical stitches.
"Who is that?" Gwen asked, her eyes narrowed. She had been in London all summer. This wasn't normal New York she know.
Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh, there's this guy. Calls himself Spider-Man. He's been fighting crime lately. Super-powered vigilante type."
"Oh," Gwen said flatly. "Then he has terrible taste."
Peter blinked. He looked down at himself, suddenly paranoid. "You mean his uniform?"
"No," Gwen said, pointing a finger at Peter's feet. "I mean his shoes. They're the exact same red sneakers you're wearing."