Free Web NovelChapter 13: Ch 13: The Daily Bugle Incident IV
"Nothing so cliché, I promise." He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace slowly around the end of the table. The floating phone followed, keeping him perfectly framed.
"We won’t talk about me, I wanted to have a conversation more about you. As you see, you are amazing, you fascinate me, and I just want to get to know you more. At least more than what I already know about you."
"Okay," she shrugged, jumping off from the table, and leaning back on the edge, resting her cute butt on the edge of the table. "Sure, but before that, why don’t you let these people go?"
Luke tilted his head, "Well, you ask too much, don’t you, sweety?"
"Anyway, before we get too deep into this little heart-to-heart... can you guess why I chose this location? And why did I pick these people as my hostages? Why the Daily Bugle?"
Gwen didn’t answer immediately. Her masked head tilted, looking at this psychopath and his demands, she knew exactly why. This was the Daily Bugle’s newest satellite office.
The people cowering behind the desks weren’t just random civilians; they were the employees who spent forty hours a week drafting headlines like ’SPIDER-MENACE STRIKES AGAIN’ and ’GHOST-SPIDER: HARBINGER OF DOOM?’
The silence stretched. Gwen’s fingers curled slightly against the table’s edge.
Luke let out a low chuckle, clearly amused.
"Even though we can’t see each other’s expressions behind the masks, your body language tells me you know what I’ll ask next." He gestured lazily at the hostages huddled on the floor.
"So tell me, Spider... why do you want to save these people? People who always criticize you, who antagonize you, even after everything you go through for this city?"
"It’s what I do," Gwen said, her voice steady but sharp. "The costume isn’t a popularity contest."
"But why save these specific people?" Luke stepped closer to the bomb, his voice dropping the playful edge for something more biting.
"They’re mentality is shittier than a gutter, they don’t have minds of their own, greed and hatred against you is their only motivation. You know how this ends. Even if you save every single one of them, tomorrow’s headline won’t be ’Spider-Woman Saves the Day.’ It’ll be ’Daily Bugle Terror Attack: Spider-Menace Brings Chaos Again.’ They’ll find a way to make it your fault."
"They’re cockroaches, Miss Spider. You don’t have the responsibility to save their lives when they spend those lives trying to ruin yours."
Gwen shifted her weight, her muscles tensing. "You’re wrong. It’s not about what they write. It’s about what I do. With power comes responsibility."
"Oh yeah? Really? How original." He stopped laughing abruptly, the mask staring her down.
"But you know what? You’re right. You are a hero. And because you’ve always saved the day, you’ve never learned what failure feels like. And neither do these people realize what your failure entails. They’ve taken you for granted, Hero. These people don’t respect your value because they’ve never lived in a world where you weren’t there to catch them."
His hand dipped into his chest pocket, pulling out a small, sleek black remote.
"Perhaps they’d truly understand your efforts if they saw what happens when you finally fail."
Gwen’s eyes widened. He was going to kill them all.
But...
That was the moment Gwen was waiting for.
She could finally see where the remote was...
Thwak!
In a blur of white and pink, she fired a strand of high-tensile webbing. It was a perfect shot, aimed right for the remote in his palm.
BOOM!
Unlike Spider-Gwen, Luke didn’t have super senses or lightning-fast reflexes. But he had expected something like this to happen. The moment she shot her web, a small explosion burst from his other palm, blasting him sideways in a quick dodge.
"Clever girl, I’ll give you that," Luke grinned under the clown mask.
Beep.
He pressed the button without hesitation. The metallic cube on the table lit up with a bright red timer.
04:59
04:58
"You have five minutes to save them all, hero," he said, tucking the remote into the inside pocket of his black suit jacket. Right over his heart. "This remote is the only way to stop not only this but all seven remaining explosions in this whole building. Let’s let these people see what happens when you finally fail."
The quest rewarded him for engaging in a fight with a superpowered individual.
All the agitation, all the buildup, all the baiting was for this moment.
Gwen didn’t waste time with a response. Words were useless now.
Fine.
She launched herself forward.
The meeting room exploded into chaos.
Gwen closed the distance in a blink, her body a white-and-pink blur of acrobatic fury. She led with a web-shot aimed at his face, not to hurt, just to blind, followed immediately by a spinning kick aimed at his chest.
Two attacks in one fluid motion, designed to overwhelm.
Luke ducked under the web and met her kick with an explosion.
BOOM!
The concussive force blasted Gwen backward, but she twisted mid-air like a cat, firing a web-line at the ceiling and using it to slingshot herself right back at him. This time she came in low, sliding across the polished conference table and sweeping for his legs.
Luke vaulted over the table, firing a series of rapid explosions from his palms that sent him airborne.
He flipped in mid-air—a move he’d practiced a hundred times in that abandoned garage—and launched a volley of explosive blasts down at her.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
She dove sideways, rolling behind an overturned cabinet as the blasts shredded the table she’d been standing on. Wood splinters and singed papers filled the air like confetti.
"Stay still!" Luke called out, half-laughing. "This would be a lot easier if you just stood still!"
"Not really my style!" Gwen shot back, already moving again.
She fired two web-lines at the ceiling and pulled, launching herself upward. Her feet hit the ceiling and she kept running—upside down, gravity be damned—before dropping directly onto Luke from above.
Her knee connected with his shoulder. Luke grunted, stumbling, but before she could follow up, he clapped his palms together and released a point-blank shockwave that sent them both flying in opposite directions.
He crashed through a rolling office chair. She hit the floor hard, rolled, and came up on one knee.
"Okay," Luke muttered, cracking his neck. "You’re fast. I’ll give you that."
"And you’re crazy," Gwen replied, her lenses narrowing. "What do you even want?"
Luke sighed dramatically. "Didn’t you listen to a word? All I want is to help them see the truth, see your importance."
He thrust both palms behind him and detonated two massive explosions. The recoil launched him forward like a human missile, fist cocked back and wreathed in orange sparks.
Gwen’s spider-sense howled. She dove right.
Luke’s punch hit the floor where she’d been standing. The explosion cratered the concrete, sending clumps of debris flying in every direction. freewebnøvel.coɱ
Through the gaping hole, Luke could see the floor below—a large, open cafeteria with long tables, a serving counter, and most importantly, floor-to-ceiling glass windows along the far wall.
’Perfect next spot for our fight. Come, spider force me down the floor.’
Gwen was already moving again, and this time her priority wasn’t him—it was the hostages. Several of them had been showered with concrete dust and splinters, coughing and screaming. Betty Brant was bleeding from a small cut on her forehead.
She didn’t wait for him to recover. She lunged, wrapping her arms around Luke’s waist and using her momentum to tackle him straight through the crater.
They crashed into the floor below, the cafeteria, slamming onto a long plastic table that snapped like a toothpick. Unlike the meeting room, this floor was a wide-open chamber surrounded by massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
Luke groaned in his mind, ’Damn! That hurt T_T!!!’
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