The second phase of the tactical operation was completely absurd, but undeniably effective: transform the fastest teenager on the planet into a human hamster, stick him in a massive dynamo wheel, and use the generated current to bait a starving god.
Inside the Baxter Building's power plant, Spider-Man held on tight.
His insulated, TRON-lined gauntlets were locked onto Max Dillon's glowing shoulders. The Anti-Electro suit's capacitors screamed, glowing a blinding, incandescent white. Peter pulled backward with his enhanced strength, violently ripping raw, living plasma straight out of Max's chest.
Max threw his head back and unleashed a horrifying, static-laced howl.
It wasn't just a loss of power. Max Dillon was electricity now. Every single volt Peter vacuumed into his suit felt like tearing a physical pound of flesh from Max's bones. The cold, suffocating void of total starvation gnawed at Max's core. His blinding blue aura flickered, dimming to a sickly, pale cyan.
Terrified by his own mortality, Max frantically ripped himself free. He lunged blindly toward the massive, jury-rigged hamster wheel, aggressively siphoning the residual kinetic charge Pietro had just generated. It barely replenished a fraction of his missing mass, but it was enough to keep him conscious.
Max hovered near the ceiling, his mind racing. He had been planning his escape the exact second Spider-Man had tackled him in that glowing new armor. But he hadn't anticipated the Baxter Building being a blatant, orchestrated trap.
A hamster wheel?! Max thought, the sheer indignity of it temporarily short-circuiting his rage. They built a giant hamster wheel to trick me?!
He didn't have time to process the insult. He needed to escape New York entirely. He needed to find a safe, isolated grid where the spider couldn't follow. With a concussive blast of displaced air, Max shattered the ceiling skylight and rocketed away at supersonic speed.
"I'm going after him! Remember to stick to the plan!" Peter yelled over the ringing in his ears. He glanced over his shoulder at Pietro, who was leaning casually against the metal wheel. "Are you going to be able to keep up?"
Pietro snorted, popping his neck. "Please. Do I look like one of you guys? You run like old ladies taking a brisk morning stroll."
Before Peter could even blink, Quicksilver vanished, leaving behind nothing but a localized sonic boom and a scattered trail of loose paperwork.
"Man, I really hate super-speed," Peter sighed helplessly, his shoulders slumping. "It completely ruins the timing on my quips. Nobody can hear me unless I'm physically holding them down."
Grumbling about ruined punchlines, Peter broke into a sprint. The stolen plasma flooded the suit's kinetic accelerators. He hit Mach 1 before he even cleared the building.
The math was firmly on Peter's side. Max's energy recovery was drastically lagging behind his massive expenditure. Just a few more successful grapples, and the living battery would be completely drained. Peter tracked the faint, blue streak tearing through the night sky and pushed his legs harder. The customized Stark-tech heads-up display inside his lenses flashed a stream of green telemetry data, clocking his current velocity.
"Perfect! Absolute perfection! I am a literal genius!"
Three thousand miles away, in a heavily shielded Malibu basement, Tony Stark was practically bouncing on his toes. He pumped his fists in the air, staring triumphantly at the live telemetry feed projecting across his laboratory.
He had just successfully engineered a localized, bio-electric supersonic suit. It was actually clocking higher atmospheric sprint speeds than his own current Iron Man propulsion systems.
"I feel obligated to remind you, Sir," JARVIS's crisp, British voice cut through the celebration. "This specific velocity threshold is entirely dependent upon Mr. Parker's superhuman physiology and enhanced arachnid reflexes. The G-forces currently being generated would instantly liquefy the internal organs of a baseline human."
"I know, I know, don't ruin the moment, J," Tony waved a hand dismissively, rubbing the dark circles under his exhausted eyes. In some ways, his AI was a chronic buzzkill. "Just let me be happy for five minutes. How is the internal scaffolding coming along on the Mark 41 prototype?"
"The 'Bones' chassis is nearing completion, Sir."
"Excellent. This is a crucial leap from zero to one," Tony muttered, rapidly pulling up glowing blue schematics on the tactical table. "If I can perfect the micro-storage compartmentalization and the remote-sensing tech Spider-Man is currently field-testing, I can probably integrate an autonomous prehensile propulsion system by... let's say, Mark 43. Maybe 44."
Tony leaned against the glass console. The outcome of the East Coast battle was essentially a mathematical certainty at this point. Peter had already managed to beat Dillon into submission wearing basic spandex. Handing the kid a multi-billion-dollar, hyper-accelerated vacuum suit practically guaranteed a flawless victory.
There was only one lingering variable.
"Hey, Jarvis," Tony said, his voice losing its manic edge. "Ping the kid's HUD. Tell him to watch out for the enemy's critical mass. If Dillon gets backed into a corner, he might just pull the pin and self-destruct."
Max Dillon wasn't considering suicide just yet. He was entirely focused on survival.
He had completely cleared the New York City limits, streaking frantically over the dark, empty highways of upstate New York. He tried to dive toward a series of massive electrical substations, but they were all completely dead. The Avengers had ruthlessly cut the regional power.
Max ground his teeth, his plasma body violently flickering. Then, he saw it.
A glowing beacon in the dark. A lonely, isolated gas station and an attached roadside motel, fully illuminated by a buzzing neon sign.
Max banked sharply, diving toward the glowing lights like a starving moth to a flame. As long as he could drain that local generator, he would have enough juice to fry the spider!
He smashed through the glass doors of the diner, landing heavily on the checkered linoleum floor.
He froze.
Sitting in one of the vinyl booths, casually sipping a milkshake, was Pietro Maximoff. The silver-haired teenager pointed a finger toward the back of the kitchen. Dominating the prep area was a massive, hastily constructed hamster wheel wired directly into the diner's backup generator.
"Look familiar, sparky?" Pietro smirked.
Max stared in sheer, unadulterated horror. How the hell did he get here first?!
Pietro took a slow sip through his straw. "Is it really that hard to figure out? I just watched your trajectory, ran ahead of you, cut the power grid to the closest settlement, hooked up a dynamo, bought a vanilla shake, and waited for you to come knocking."
Pietro pointed over Max's shoulder. "Look behind you."
Max turned around.
"Heeeeere's Spidey!" a voice yelled from the shattered doorway.
Peter Parker slammed into Max's chest at Mach 1.
The kinetic impact was deafening. Peter's glowing gauntlets locked onto Max's back. The suit's capacitors violently engaged again, ripping a massive chunk of plasma straight out of the villain's spine.
Max wailed. The agony was absolute. He violently erupted in a blind, chaotic burst of static shock, blasting Peter off his back. Max tore through the diner's ceiling, flying erratically into the sky.
He looked frantically in every direction. There were no safe grids. There were no isolated targets. The silver-haired kid was everywhere.
Nowhere is safe! Max's deteriorating mind screamed.
"To Manhattan... back to Manhattan..." Max chanted deliriously to himself. He needed leverage. He needed a shield. He banked hard, rocketing back toward the pitch-black city.
Peter landed lightly on the diner counter, watching the blue streak retreat. He looked over at Quicksilver. "He recovered from the shock faster than we modeled."
"He's panicking," Pietro noted, tossing his empty milkshake cup into a trash can. "He's going back to take hostages."
"Yeah," Peter's lenses narrowed. "Let's stick to the plan."
Max crashed down into the pitch-black, panicked streets of Manhattan.
He frantically searched the gridlocked avenues, hunting for biological leverage. Near a stalled subway entrance, he spotted a terrified mother clutching her young, seven-year-old son. Max didn't hesitate. He swooped down, violently snatching the screaming child by the collar, and rocketed directly toward the center of Times Square.
He hovered above the famous red steps of the TKTS booth, the terrified child dangling from his glowing blue hand.
Standing perfectly still in the center of the dark square was Spider-Man.
"Give me electricity!" Max roared, his voice echoing off the dead billboards. "I need electricity! Tell your billionaire boss to restore the grid right now, or the kid fries!"
"Okay, okay! We're doing it right now! Just don't get excited," the Spider-Man holding his hands up said casually. "Because..."
Before Max could even process the voice, a shadow dropped directly from the top of the nearest Jumbotron.
The real Spider-Man, wearing the glowing TRON-suit, plummeted out of the sky. Peter didn't aim for Max's core. He aimed for the limb holding the child.
Peter's hands clamped down hard on Max's glowing right forearm. The Anti-Electro suit's absorption protocol engaged at maximum capacity. The violent, localized suction was so incredibly powerful that it literally tore the arm of pure plasma completely off Max's body.
The severed arm instantly destabilized, transforming back into a harmless rush of raw electrical current that was flawlessly absorbed into Peter's chest plate.
Down on the street, the decoy Spider-Man whipped off his mask. Pietro Maximoff flashed a cocky grin, blurring forward to safely catch the falling child before he even dropped three feet.
"Ahhhh! No! My hand!" Max shrieked, floating backward.
He stared in horror at his severed shoulder. He desperately pushed his remaining energy to regenerate the limb, but the effort only caused his entire body to dim to a sickly, dying gray. He was empty.
Max looked down at Spider-Man and the silver-haired speedster safely shielding the child.
In that agonizing second, Max Dillon finally understood his fate. He had lost. He was going back to the Mutant Prison. He was going to be locked in a dark, rubber-lined cell, utterly cut off from the beautiful, euphoric current of the grid. He would spend the rest of his natural life trapped in a silent, suffocating void.
Max stopped struggling. He threw his head back.
He started to laugh.
The manic, broken sound echoed through the dark canyons of New York. Max tapped into the absolute core of his atomic structure, breaking his own containment field.
A blinding, impossible light erupted from his chest, and Times Square lit up brighter than the sun.