Peter knew the containment cage possessed a fail-safe capable of stunning the Molten Man's spirit. After all, Peter designed and built his own equipment, and he had specifically engineered this trap. He and Silver Sable had anticipated a breakout attempt. The device was meant to be a deterrent.
Neither Peter nor Sable expected Madame Viper next action. Instead of trying to free Molten Man, they saw Madame Viper throwing something and a green smoke came to Molten-Man.
The green gas did not incapacitate Molten Man but wiped him out for good.
And after doing that Madame Viper immediately retreated.
"Looks like I missed the finale," Felicia Hardy drawled, dropping gracefully from an overhead pipe. The Black Cat raised a delicate eyebrow at the scattered, groaning bodies of the Viper Gang mercenaries. Madame Viper's teleportation magic had distinct limits; she only managed to extract the operatives who were still conscious. The rest were abandoned on the deck.
Peter stared at the scorch marks on the steel grating. In classic comic continuity, Ophelia Sarkissian didn't wield magic. She possessed an unnaturally extended lifespan courtesy of the elder god Chthon, but she wasn't a sorceress. The universe was rewriting the rules again.
Felicia stepped closer to the empty, smoking cage. "Where is the...?"
"Emergency override," Sable stated coldly, her posture rigid. "We had to neutralize the prison break. I cleared the asset."
Felicia's eyes widened a fraction. It was textbook Russian mercenary doctrine: kill the hostage before the enemy can secure the extraction.
Sable ignored Felicia's judgment. She tapped her earpiece, listening to the tactical feed. Cindy had backed up the Wild Pack on the upper decks. They had neutralized another three Viper mercs. In total, the strike team had bagged eight hostiles. It was a lucrative haul; S.H.I.E.L.D. paid handsome bounties for living Hydra-adjacent operatives.
"The immediate threat is handled," Sable said, driving the butt of her rifle into an unconscious cyborg's skull for good measure. "We're taking on water, but the bulkheads will hold. Go do your job, Spider-Man. We needed a new prisoner for interrogation anyway. I'll get a cage ready."
Peter sighed, his shoulders dropping. "I just hope the Viper Gang and whoever is pulling their strings learned a lesson."
"I wouldn't bet on it," Sable replied, entirely devoid of optimism. "They showed zero mercy for their own asset. Half chance she was sent here specifically to silence him. Expect them to hit us again."
Peter looked up toward the ceiling, his mind racing toward the coastal city of Naples. "Then we don't just stop the Elementals," he said quietly. "We drag whoever is holding their leash out into the light."
Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, the battle for Naples was tearing the historic streets apart.
"Face me, you scoundrel!" Brian Braddock bellowed. He drove a magically-enhanced fist squarely into Jim Hammond's jaw. The World War II-era synthetic being went flying backward in a trail of flames.
Nearby, Meggan shape-shifted, her biology flaring into a being of pure, incandescent fire. She blasted Sandman with a localized inferno, generating enough raw heat to flash-melt his granular body into jagged clumps of glass.
In the shadows of a crumbling portico, Betsy Braddock pressed her fingers to her temples. She swept the battlefield with her telepathy, hunting for a mental opening. She wasn't a telepath on the scale of Emma Frost; punching through the chaotic, raging spiritual minds of the Elementals required a moment of vulnerability. And Jim Hammond was entirely off the table. The original Human Torch was an android. Hydra had heavily modernized his synthetic architecture during his captivity, rendering his artificial brain a smooth, unreadable void to telepathic intrusion.
Captain Britain surged forward, his force field shattering Hydro-Man into a burst of rain, but the fluid merely pooled and reformed. Physical force was practically useless against living weather systems.
"I have his weakness!" Whirlwind roared from the center of a raging tornado. He pointed a swirling funnel of wind directly at Captain Britain. "The brute still needs to breathe! His force field blocks impacts, but not airflow! I'll vacuum the oxygen straight out of his lungs!"
Hydro-Man practically froze, mentally berating its ally. What kind of idiot announces their strategy? The British fool can literally fly away or just hold his breath.
But Whirlwind wasn't an idiot. It was a massive, lethal misdirection.
Betsy's telepathic warning slammed into her brother's mind a second too late. Brian locked his jaw, held his breath, and charged straight at the roaring tornado.
As he crossed the plaza, thick, noxious yellow gas hissed from hidden canisters scattered across the cobblestones. It was a highly concentrated biochemical weapon, smuggled onto the docks by the Viper Gang just before their retreat.
Whirlwind's true objective wasn't suffocation. He intended to whip the toxic payload into a massive, city-wide vortex, blanketing all of Naples in lethal gas. If Excalibur tried to save the civilians, they would have to dive straight into the poison. Brian's magical force field couldn't filter chemical toxins, and Meggan's mutant physiology was completely vulnerable to it.
Whirlwind threw his head back and laughed, the sound booming from the vortex. He barked at Sandman and Hammond to pin Meggan down so she couldn't shape-shift into a wind elemental to counter him. The trap was sprung. The Elementals had won.
"Hey! Someone send out invites to this party?" a bright, painfully obnoxious voice echoed across the plaza. "Because mine definitely got lost in the mail!"
A blur dropped from the sky. Peter hit the cobblestones wearing his speed suit. Strapped to his back was a heavily modified, hermetically sealed industrial vacuum turbine.
He didn't stop to chat. Peter accelerated, his enhanced speed pushing him to the absolute limit. He dashed in a wild, blinding circle around the expanding yellow cloud. The sheer velocity created a slipstream, funneling the chemical weapon directly into his vacuum's containment rig. In less than five seconds, the lethal gas was completely sucked away.
Peter skidded to a halt, tapping the containment tank on his back. "So," he quipped, crossing his arms, "which one of you skipped the safety briefing in chemistry lab?"