The deafening roar of the explosion was not the end of the battle; it was the opening bell.
The shockwave rolled back, leaving the canyon painted in fire. The scent of ozone, roasted meat, and vaporized blood hung thick in the air. The vast majority of the Hulk Gang had been incinerated in the blast, but dozens of mangled, blood-soaked green figures dragged themselves out of the smoking craters. They didn't possess the god-tier regenerative abilities of Bruce Banner, but their irradiated biology made them terrifyingly stubborn.
They didn't mourn their dead brethren. They just snarled, shaking the ash from their shoulders, their eyes locking onto the three intruders who had dared to bomb their camp.
"Strip their skin and snap their tendons!" a massive Hulk roared, kicking off the dirt and launching himself directly at Peter.
Peter didn't retreat. He tapped the heavy metal backpack slung over his shoulders.
Nano-servos shrieked. A liquid wave of hot-rod red and gold plating cascaded over his body, locking into place with heavy, metallic clicks. The Iron Spider armor sealed around him. Three golden mechanical waldos snapped outward from the backplate. The metal claws tracked the leaping Hulk with perfect automated precision, snatching the beast out of the air and halting his momentum completely.
Thwip-crack. An arrow punched through the suspended Hulk's temple. The skull shattered.
Neon green blood splattered across Peter's gold-tinted visor. The lifeless body dropped to the dirt. Peter stood perfectly still, waiting for the familiar wave of guilt that usually accompanied taking a life.
It never came.
He stared through the visor at the overturned iron pot in the center of the camp, surrounded by half-eaten human ribcages. The horrific image was seared into his retinas. Anyone with a functioning moral compass had the right to put these beasts down. They weren't humans. They were rabid, flesh-eating dogs.
Three of the surviving Hulks scanned the battlefield. They locked their eyes on Clint, assuming the gray-haired man with the wooden bow was the weakest link. They charged him simultaneously.
Clint's cloudy eyes narrowed. He drew the bowstring back, his muscles operating on decades of pure muscle memory.
He let the first shaft fly. The explosive arrowhead buried itself perfectly into the lead Hulk's right eye. The monster's head detonated in a shower of gore. Without missing a beat, Clint sidestepped, firing a specialized bola-line at the ankles of the second charging beast. The high-tensile wire snapped tight, tripping the monster. As it fell forward, Clint stepped squarely onto its thick green neck, using the momentum to draw again.
The third Hulk closed the distance, reaching for Clint's throat. Clint fired a thermite-laced arrow directly into its chest. The casing cracked, spilling liquid fire over the creature's face, reducing its skull to slag before it even hit the ground.
Without looking down, Clint fluidly drew a heavy, armor-piercing arrowhead and drove it straight through the skull of the Hulk currently pinned beneath his boot.
Clint spat into the dirt. "These kids are soft. A far cry from the original. Can't even take down a blind old man with a stick."
As the battle raged, the twisted descendants of the Hulk fell one by one. The gunfire and roars finally faded into an eerie, crackling silence.
Then, a trembling, dry voice echoed from the mouth of a dark cavern at the edge of the camp.
"Who is making all that goddamn racket?"
A gaunt, withered old man stepped out of the shadows. He wore a pair of ragged trousers, his ribcage protruding sharply against his pale, liver-spotted skin. But his eyes were wide, manic, and shining with an unnatural, violent excitement.
Bruce Banner.
He stared at the carnage, then locked his gaze on Spider-Man and Deadpool. He grinned, exposing yellowing teeth. He had been starving for this. Ever since the villain uprising, Red Skull and Doctor Doom had actively avoided him, yielding the entire West Coast just to keep the Hulk pacified. Banner had spent years trying to provoke Old Man Logan into a fight, raising the rent, brutalizing his family, begging for the Wolverine to finally pop his claws. Logan had just swallowed the humiliation.
But today, actual capes had walked right into his front yard.
"Well, aren't you boys polite," Banner croaked, cracking his frail knuckles. "You came all this way to die, and you even brought me a freebie."
"Keep the change," Clint muttered.
Clint drew and fired a lethal shot straight for Banner's forehead. His eyesight was failing, but the trajectory was flawless.
Banner didn't even flinch. His frail hand snapped up with blinding speed, snatching the arrow mid-flight. He snapped the shaft in two and let the pieces drop.
Then, the old man leaped.
The sheer kinetic force of his jump shattered the bedrock beneath his bare feet, leaving a massive crater. He sailed through the air and landed in the center of the camp with a bone-rattling thud. He hadn't even transformed, but the decades of gamma radiation had permanently warped his baseline physiology. His untransformed strength far exceeded that of his green-skinned offspring.
"Come on then! Let's see what heroes look like these days!" Banner roared.
A silver canister rolled to a stop between his bare feet.
It didn't explode with shrapnel. A high-frequency ultrasonic burst shrieked through the canyon. The localized sonic wave forced the old man to his knees, clutching his bleeding ears in agony.
Deadpool casually strolled through the dissipating smoke, wearing heavy noise-canceling headphones. He drew his twin adamantium katanas, the metal gleaming in the firelight.
"You know, the studio didn't give us the CGI budget for a massive third-act monster brawl," Wade quipped, adjusting his grip. "So let's just skip to the end credits."
Wade swung hard, aiming cleanly for the neck.
The adamantium blade bit deep, slicing through skin and hitting the vertebrae. But it stopped dead halfway through.
A sickening crunch of bone and tearing flesh echoed out. Thick, pulsating green muscle rapidly expanded around the blade, locking the katana in place like a vice.
Wade's eyes went wide behind his mask. "Uh oh."
The rapidly expanding mass of the Hulk violently shoved Wade backward into the dirt.
Neither Peter nor Clint had ever seen a Hulk like this. The creature standing before them wasn't the chiseled, heroic mass of green muscle from the Avengers' glory days. It was a grotesque, morbidly obese behemoth. Standing over five meters tall, the monster was covered in sagging green fat, deep necrotic scars, and rotting flesh. The massive bald head scraped against the canyon walls, radiating heat and pure, distilled malice.
The abomination reached down, its massive, scarred hands grabbing Wade by the left arm and right leg.
"Wait! No! Time out!" Wade screamed, thrashing wildly. "The Juggernaut already did this exact gag in the sequel!"
Hulk ignored him. He ignored the three explosive arrows Clint rapidly sank into his broad back. With a wet, horrific tear, the monster ripped Deadpool completely in half, tossing the bleeding torso and legs into the dirt like discarded trash.
Hulk turned his massive, dead eyes toward Peter, who stood motionless in the Iron Spider armor.
"You call yourself Spider-Man?" Hulk rumbled, his voice shaking the earth. "You just stood there and watched your friend get torn apart."
Peter didn't move. He kept his stance loose.
"First of all, Wade is going to walk that off in about twenty minutes," Peter said, his voice completely calm over the external speakers. "Second, he wasn't fighting you. He was buying me time."
Hulk blinked his heavy, scarred eyelids. "Buying time? For what?"
"For the fire to die down."
Symbiotes possessed two fatal weaknesses: high-frequency sound, and intense heat. The truck explosion had turned the canyon into a blazing inferno. Peter couldn't risk the exposure. But now, the flames had reduced to a low, smoldering glow.
Thick, inky black sludge erupted from the seams of the Iron Spider armor.
It didn't just coat the metal. It fed on Peter's spiking adrenaline and righteous fury, violently expanding outward. The symbiote swelled, rapidly building massive, terrifying layers of black biological muscle. Within seconds, Peter was completely encased in a towering, three-meter-tall nightmare.
The creature's jaws unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, translucent fangs. A wildly thrashing, serpentine tongue lashed the air, tasting the gamma radiation.
Why don't you pick on someone your own size, you ugly bastard? Venom roared, the dual-layered voice shaking the canyon walls.
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