United as one in the face of danger, worthy of their youth.
The boy-and-girl duo moved with terrifying precision.
Before long, aside from the people still locked in cages, the only ones left standing outside were Gwen and Peter.
"Hey, why did you kill some of the hostages too?!"
Gwen stared wide-eyed at the dead hostages and asked Peter in confusion.
"This isn't some hostage rescue game where you have to save every last civilian. In all that smoke, how was I supposed to tell who was who? A superhero would let that kind of thinking tie them down. An antihero like me doesn't."
Peter replied.
"Yeah, I can tell. You were having the time of your life. You grabbed my throat a few times too. I'll settle that with you later."
The moment Gwen said that, Peter instantly lost most of his confidence.
Great.
He definitely was not getting out of that one later.
"So what are we doing with these hostages?"
"I'm going to call one of my dad's coworkers and have him deal with it."
Gwen said.
"You're pretty scheming, you know that?"
"You noticed? Good."
It had to be said, Gwen really was thoughtful. This was exactly the kind of thing her father absolutely could not be involved in. Their enemy already held a grudge, and if George stepped into this directly, who knew what Matt Murdock and Kingpin might do next?
Better to redirect the trouble toward one of George's rivals instead. That would conveniently split some of the attention and heat away from her father.
The two of them stood back to back and looked around, only to find that the people inside the cages looked even more terrified now.
These two masked figures had slaughtered more than thirty people without hesitation and had not even spared every hostage in the chaos. So would they be next?
Peter had no interest in that.
He was not some deranged butcher who lived only to kill.
If the room had not been filled with smoke, he would have tried to avoid harming the hostages as much as possible.
But some of those women had been screaming and running wildly in every direction, completely disrupting the fight. Peter had already been right on the edge of losing himself, so in the chaos, he had cut some of them down as well.
Hopefully, in another life, they would get a better chance.
Still, during the earlier confusion, someone had managed to hit Peter with an armor-piercing round. Thankfully, with Deadpool-level regeneration now in his body, it was already healing. Otherwise, that would not have been easy to recover from.
Peter picked up a torn scrap of cloth and wiped the blood off his spider arm-blade, then forced the lodged armor-piercing bullet out of his body. The wound healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, not even leaving a scar behind.
"You got shot?!"
"Yeah. No idea why everyone kept aiming at me. I dodged most of it, but a few shots still got through in the end."
Peter sounded annoyed.
From beginning to end, the fire had been focused almost entirely on him. They clearly knew something about his abilities and had been trying their hardest to bring him down.
Too bad for them, they were still too weak.
Peter knew exactly why they had gone after him so desperately.
Wasn't it obvious?
The bounty on the dark web for his head was insanely high.
Gwen's bounty was not even half of his.
As the saying went, people died for money just like birds died for food.
And if there was even the slightest chance of turning a bicycle into a motorcycle, someone was always going to take it.
"Kingpin is a fat bastard. One of these days, I'm tearing his neck off."
"Same."
"Your bounty isn't even that high. Why are you angry?"
Gwen smacked him on the shoulder and raised her little fist, glaring at him.
"That's exactly why I'm angry. We're supposed to be a duo. Why is my value lower than yours? That fat idiot is seriously underestimating me."
"If you want your bounty to go up, that's easy. Just keep killing like last time. Go after the kind of criminals even the police are too scared to touch. Your bounty will shoot up in no time."
Peter shrugged.
"Yours has definitely been climbing fast lately. Mine hasn't moved at all."
"What are you even doing on the dark web in the first place?"
"Checking to see who's taking the jobs. I registered a fake account and started collecting intel. Honestly, I was kind of hoping some idiots would actually come after me. The price is high enough, but not many people are willing to accept the contract. And since nobody knows who I really am, I still haven't run into any assassins coming for me."
"You're so weird."
Gwen rolled her eyes, then pulled out a phone with its IP already disguised through some technical trick Peter had taught her. She called one of her father's rival coworkers, briefly explained what had happened here, and deliberately left the name Spider Duo behind.
The man on the other end was thrilled.
A regular cop getting direct help from the Spider Duo?
That was enough to put him ahead of George for once.
What he didn't know, of course, was that half of the Spider Duo was George's own daughter.
And that said daughter was way more devious than she looked.
"All right, since we're already here again, let's make an even bigger mess tonight. Maybe that'll flush out some of the so-called big shots. So far we've only been stomping on nobodies, and that's getting boring."
"I used to just catch criminals and turn them over to the police. Ever since I started teaming up with you, I've realized I like killing them more and more."
Gwen clenched her fist with an excited look.
If she could do some vigilante work and blow off stress at the same time, what was the downside?
And lately, the Daily Bugle's reporting on her had even started to shift in a better direction.
Things were slowly getting better, weren't they?
So that night, Peter and Gwen took down another smuggling ring working under Kingpin. These people were clearly much less professional than the ones guarding the underground warehouse. They had not even posted anyone on watch.
Then, using intel taken from that smuggling ring, the two of them crashed two more gang exchanges and caught everyone red-handed.
The thugs tried to resist with heavy firepower, but it was useless. In the end, they still fell beneath the iron fists of justice.
Every time the duo wiped out another group, they left a message for Kingpin behind.
It was a deliberate sign of provocation.
And by now, it had become the Spider Duo's signature mark.
A spider emblem with a skull motif, black and white.
Who in the underworld would fail to recognize that as the symbol of the Spider Duo?
That night, the Spider Duo once again became the nightmare of Hell's Kitchen.
That night, they also came back with their bags full.
Peter had already lost count of how many gold bars he had stuffed into the sack he was carrying. All he knew was that it was packed.
Of course, he had no intention of keeping all of it for himself.
The neighbors around Peter's family had helped them a lot over the years. In many of those homes, the men of the house had either died in war or fallen while fighting criminals. Even with government compensation, life had never been easy for them.
Peter planned to keep some of the money, then quietly distribute the rest among those families as repayment for everything they had done for him and his family.
Because for ordinary people who had lost the wholeness of their families, the only way to keep going was often to huddle together for warmth.
Peter was still human.
He could show no mercy to criminals, sure.
But if someone had helped him, and he now had the ability to repay that kindness, then why wouldn't he?
Especially after knowing them for so many years and getting along well with them. If he could help, then he would.
As Peter and Gwen swung away from Hell's Kitchen, a middle-aged man in a red suit, wearing dark crimson glasses and holding a cane, smiled faintly.
The smile, however, was more unsettling than warm.
"The Spider Duo... interesting."
"Forget it. Let Kingpin have the headache. Since he hasn't given any orders, I'm not getting involved."
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[+500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[Thank You For Your Support!]