"Woohoo! Wraith Spider is here too! Now the famous Spider duo is finally complete!"
Harry howled with excitement while recording everything on his phone.
As a classic gaming nerd, he naturally had zero resistance to anything involving heroes, and when it came to shipping people, there was no way he would miss out.
He was the number one fan of the duo as a pairing, with his presence all over video sites and forums.
"The Spider duo? Seriously? That name is unbelievably lame."
"What? I think it's pretty good!"
Harry rubbed his nose awkwardly, suddenly wondering if he really was terrible at naming things.
On the other side of the street, Gwen looked up at Peter, who had gone from crouching on the streetlamp to hanging upside down from it, and said helplessly, "Hey, Benjamin, why do you always show up wherever I do? Don't tell me you put some kind of tracker on me."
Every time she went out to stop crime, she ran into him.
At this point, she really had to wonder whether he was following her.
But she had already checked her suit inside and out and still had not found any tracking device.
"That joke is hilarious, Wanda. Really. But now's not the time for jokes. We should deal with the problem in front of us first."
Peter dropped to the ground, landed in a dramatic one-knee pose with one hand braced against the pavement, then clapped his hands and stood up.
Now the two Spider heroes stood side by side, facing Fangtooth in fighting stances.
"Spider-Man. Spider-Woman. I don't want to be your enemy. I just can't control myself. Some strange people turned me into this monster..."
The hoarse voice scraping out of Fangtooth's throat was even more unpleasant than nails on glass.
"Sorry, but I have no problem at all with you killing those six guys. Still, I can't ignore you wrecking public order. Even if you're not in control, I'm still going to take you down. Maybe you'll calm down once you cool off in a cell."
Peter shrugged.
Honestly, this fight did not matter much to him one way or another. Since the city already had two Spider heroes, why could it not have a fish-headed hero too?
Still, the guy clearly could not control this power yet, so it was better to make him calm down and learn to tame it first.
"But I do feel like I've seen you somewhere before. Are you a cop? Or a scientist?"
Peter was not the only one with that feeling. Gwen felt it too, but in his current state, he was just too hard to identify.
"No. I'm... a student..."
"No. I am Fangtooth Harrison! A righteous dictator who uses violence to suppress violence! Hahahahahaha!"
After a painful shift in expression, the look on Fangtooth's face changed completely, replaced by cold madness, as if he had become a different person.
"Did this guy split into multiple personalities or something?" Gwen asked.
And that was more or less true.
The trauma of childhood had left deep scars on Flash. To protect himself and his family, he had split off another self, or rather, created a version of his father within himself, one strong enough to defeat the real one.
His once-admired father had turned into a drunken abuser, so Flash had created a righteous police-officer version of that father to suppress the monster the real one had become.
That personality had not appeared again since his father died, but it had never truly disappeared. It had simply buried itself deep inside him, waiting for the moments when Flash felt the most pain, the most fear, and the strongest urge to escape.
And now, under the stimulation of the genetic experiment, that personality had awakened and become twisted.
"Alright, Mr. Dictator, listen. First, you're doing great. Second, let that other guy come back out. We just want to talk to him."
Sensing the situation turning strange, Peter tried to calm him down patiently, but Fangtooth Harrison, whose mind was extremely unstable, caught something wrong in Peter's tone. Tilting his head, he asked coldly, "What do you want with my son?"
"Wow. A split personality that gave itself a dad..."
"Yeah, first time I've ever seen that. This is getting complicated."
Peter and Gwen exchanged a look, nodded, and both muttered under their breath.
"Sir, that's... deeply weird. Look, we just want to talk to your son. Nothing else. How about that?"
"No!"
Fangtooth Harrison roared. His cheeks swelled, and then he spat out a mass of foul-smelling slime as he lunged at them.
Peter and Gwen both leaped to opposite sides to dodge. The slime hit a nearby streetlamp instead.
Ssszzzt.
The corrosive effect was even worse than acid. In just a few seconds, the streetlamp was eaten through and crashed to the ground, with even the insulated wiring inside badly damaged.
"Hey, you made him angry," Gwen said.
"I swear I didn't say anything! You were standing right next to me. You heard everything!"
Peter felt completely wronged. He had done nothing, had not even started running his mouth, so how was this somehow his fault?
"Stop making things worse. You're helping in the worst way possible."
Rolling her eyes at him, Gwen swung forward on her webbing and fired two strands in midair, sticking them directly over Fangtooth Harrison's eyes.
Blinded, Fangtooth Harrison let out a piercing subsonic shriek, a sharp destructive wave of sound, then leaped wildly forward.
At the exact same moment, Gwen came in with a flying kick, but the instant her foot hit him, it felt like kicking a slab of steel coated in oil. He was hard and slick at the same time. She did no damage at all and instead got sent flying backward.
Peter reacted without thinking and jumped up to catch Gwen.
The two of them crashed together in a full embrace.
Peter's brain went blank.
He swore that had been pure instinct. He just did not want her getting hurt, and she had flown straight into his arms. The security cameras could prove it.
That said, his hand had definitely touched somewhere it probably should not have.
And the feel of it was... not bad.
"Hey, you jerk, has no one ever told you that's unbelievably rude?!"
Gwen, whose mind had also gone blank for a second, suddenly felt Peter's hand brush somewhere very sensitive and instantly reacted like a startled wildcat. She sprang out of his arms and slapped him without hesitation.
"Sweet interaction! I'm absolutely shipping them!"
Inside the restaurant, MJ looked at Harry, whose face had turned a suspicious shade of pink, and groaned, "Why are you blushing like that?!"
"And how is that a sweet interaction? That was blatant groping!"
"Which is exactly why men can't be trusted. Hmph!"
"Who says that? I'm trustworthy! My nickname is Harry Totally Reliable!"
"I think it's more like Harry Totally Unreliable..."
(End of Chapter)
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