The moment Gwen found herself being caught by a "stranger," every muscle in her body tensed.
Without thinking, she immediately struggled free of his arms.
But she'd barely landed on her feet when she heard the stranger's lazy, mocking assessment of her abilities.
'Embarrassingly bad at this!'
Those words struck Gwen's fragile pride like a sledgehammer.
'This is humiliating!'
'So humiliating!'
Unfortunately, she couldn't even argue.
After all, her performance just now really had been terrible.
Once she'd regained her balance, Gwen turned toward Peter and demanded rather irritably, "Who... who are you supposed to be?!"
Faced with her question, Peter hesitated briefly.
Then he answered in a deep, magnetic voice.
"You can call me..."
"The Arbiter!"
It was a title he'd just come up with on the spot.
At the very least, it sounded much better than something ridiculous like the Dockside Butcher.
After introducing himself, Peter suddenly tilted his head.
An invisible shock wave swept past his cheek at precisely that moment, striking the bank wall behind him.
BOOM!
A massive crater appeared in the wall.
Peter glanced at the furious Shocker standing some distance away.
Then he turned back toward Gwen and spoke in a rather lazy tone.
"Watch carefully, rookie."
"Let me show you how a real hero gets things done!"
...
Herman Schultz, better known as Shocker, was thoroughly enraged.
First, some strange girl in a black-and-white bodysuit had appeared out of nowhere.
Now another lunatic in black-and-red armor had joined her.
Since when had New York become so crowded with cosplay enthusiasts?
Or did every idiot in the city suddenly think he was some kind of pushover?
'Do these people seriously think they can embarrass the great Shocker, the future king of bank robbers?!'
"GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!"
Shocker roared furiously.
He raised his enormous metal gauntlets toward Peter and activated their power without hesitation.
VMMMM!
Another invisible shock wave distorted the surrounding air.
Carrying tremendous destructive force, it hurtled straight toward Peter!
"Look out!"
Gwen instinctively tried to warn him.
But before she could get the words out, Peter had already shifted sideways.
With almost effortless precision, he avoided Shocker's attack.
BANG!
Another deafening explosion followed.
A reinforced concrete pillar behind Peter erupted with countless cracks, sending dust and debris billowing into the air.
'His reactions are incredible!'
Gwen couldn't help marveling inwardly.
Shocker was equally stunned.
He was an ordinary human beneath his equipment, and he hadn't even managed to see how the stranger had dodged!
"You bastard!"
Cursing furiously, Shocker raised both hands.
He began unleashing shock wave after shock wave toward Peter.
Vmmm! Vmmm! Vmmm!
Invisible ripples of destructive force tore through the bank's interior.
The marble floor shattered, and the counters were blasted apart.
Yet Peter, standing at the center of the storm, moved with the relaxed confidence of someone taking an afternoon stroll.
He wove through the dense barrage, avoiding each shock wave with perfectly timed movements.
His effortless performance stood in stark contrast to Gwen's frantic attempts to evade the same attacks earlier.
"Are you done playing around?"
After dodging another shock wave, Peter finally grew tired of the tedious game.
He abruptly pushed off the floor.
His entire body shot forward like an arrow released from a bow!
In an instant, he arrived directly in front of Shocker.
'Too fast!'
Shocker barely registered a blur of black and red before the stranger broke through his barrage!
He instinctively tried to retreat and create some distance.
But that was nothing more than wishful thinking.
Before he could move, a black-and-red-gloved hand closed around his throat like a steel vise.
The next instant, an overwhelming force lifted him off the floor.
Shocker felt his feet leave the ground.
His entire world seemed to spin.
BANG!
With a heavy impact, Peter slammed him into the floor as casually as someone throwing away a dead dog.
Shocker's body collided violently with the cold, unforgiving marble.
The impact made him feel as though his internal organs had been knocked out of position.
A metallic, bloody taste rose in his throat.
If he hadn't been wearing a suit designed to absorb kinetic energy, the attack might have killed him on the spot.
The moment he realized how close he'd come to death, his survival instincts overwhelmed everything else.
"DIE!"
Madness flashed through Shocker's eyes.
Abandoning all caution, he immediately turned both gauntlets to their maximum output.
Then he aimed them directly at Peter, who was standing almost on top of him.
He unleashed the strongest vibrational attack his weapons could produce!
During a previous test at an abandoned construction site, Shocker had discovered that the gauntlets' maximum output was powerful enough to bring down an unfinished building almost instantly.
VMMMMMMMM!
This time, the violent energy ripples were so intense that they became visible to the naked eye.
They erupted from Shocker's position, spreading outward with terrifying force!
The shock wave instantly engulfed the entire bank lobby!
In the distance, the innocent employees and customers crouching on the floor with their hands over their heads began vomiting uncontrollably as the vibrations struck them.
Blood trickled from some people's noses and mouths.
Others immediately lost consciousness.
Gwen was also forced backward by the residual force.
An uncomfortable pressure spread through her chest.
Horrified, she stared toward the center of the blast.
That man who called himself the Arbiter had taken Shocker's most powerful attack at point-blank range!
'He's dead!'
The same thought flashed through Gwen's and Shocker's minds almost simultaneously.
Unfortunately for them, reality had something very different in store.
Peter's body barely swayed beneath the force of the maximum-power shock wave.
More importantly, the hand gripping Shocker's throat didn't loosen in the slightest!
"H-how is that possible?!"
Shocker's eyes widened so far that they looked ready to pop out of their sockets.
His face was filled with disbelief.
A full-power shock wave capable of destroying an entire building had just been withstood by someone made of flesh and blood?!
'Is this guy even human?!'
What neither Gwen nor Shocker knew was that Peter possessed at least three layers of protection against Shocker's attacks.
The first was chakra.
The moment Peter noticed Shocker preparing to release his strongest attack, he'd already begun covering his body with chakra.
He then manipulated that energy into rapid fluctuations, using it to counteract the incoming vibrations.
This created the first layer of protection, reducing the force of the shock wave before it could fully affect his body.
Next came his superhuman physique, enhanced by the Lizard Serum.
In the original Spider-Man stories, the Lizard possessed physical strength and durability far greater than Spider-Man's.
In fact, during two confrontations with the Lizard, Spider-Man had managed to emerge victorious only by forcibly restoring Dr. Connors to human form with a serum.
Although Peter's version of the Lizard Serum had been purified by the Horse Talisman, eliminating his tail and the scales that would otherwise have covered his body, none of the beneficial enhancements had been lost.
If anything, those improvements were even greater than those possessed by the original Lizard.
With that kind of physique, enduring an already weakened shock wave wasn't especially difficult.
The third and most important layer of protection came from the combined healing abilities of the Horse Talisman and the Lizard Serum.
Working together, those two regenerative powers allowed Peter to recover from the damage caused by the shock wave almost immediately.
Any injury he suffered was healed in the very next instant, restoring him to full health.
The result of these three layers of protection was simple.
Peter could withstand Shocker's maximum-power attack with ease, emerging without a visible scratch!
"Well, if you're finished playing..."
Peter tightened his grip around Shocker's throat.
"Then it's my turn!"
The moment he finished speaking, Peter reached out with his free hand.
He casually squeezed Shocker's hands.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
A series of sickening snaps rang out.
Every finger on both of Shocker's hands was broken by Peter's grip.
The shock waves pouring from the metal gauntlets abruptly ceased.
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