Chapter 192: Enter the Sinister Six
The nanotech-suited Spider-Man stood frozen on the car roof, completely lost. He'd never seen this man with the mechanical tentacles in his life — but the man clearly knew him.
He tried friendly first. "Hey — good to meet you, I guess? Have we actually met before?"
Doc Ock — Otto — glared up at him, fury radiating off every line of his face.
"What did you do to my machine?" he demanded. "Why can't I control solar energy anymore?"
"Machine?" Peter's confusion deepened. "What machine? I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about, sir."
"There was solar power in the palm of my hand," Otto snarled. "Now it's gone."
"Look — if you stop throwing cars, maybe we can sort this out together. I can help you find your machine." Peter had no idea who this guy was or why he seemed to think they had history, but de-escalation seemed like the move while a stranger with mechanical arms was actively demolishing the street.
Otto wasn't interested in cooperation.
"You want to play games?"
Two tentacles shot out and ripped a pair of parked cars off the asphalt, one in each grip, and hurled them straight at Peter.
"Catch."
Peter dodged the first. Caught the second mid-air, just long enough to get the people inside clear.
"You're okay — you're all okay, get out of here, go!" he called to the bystanders he'd just pulled free.
While he was still making sure they got clear, Otto closed the distance. A tentacle whipped around and seized him before he could react.
"You think that fancy new suit is going to save you?" Otto said, and slammed him down and flung him with both tentacles at once.
Peter went flying nearly eighty yards before eight nanotech spider-legs unfolded from his back, caught his momentum, and stabilized him mid-air. He launched straight back at Otto.
Otto watched the legs unfold and murmured to his tentacles, almost appreciative, "Looks like we've got some competition."
The fight that followed was brutal and fast.
And then, mid-exchange, something hit Peter from behind hard enough to launch him across the street.
He caught himself, pain blooming through his ribs, and turned to find something reptilian standing where nothing had been a second ago. He didn't even get a sentence out before electricity arced through his body — a blue-skinned figure standing off to the side, hands crackling, had hit him with a full discharge.
While he was still seizing through the paralysis, a massive man in primitive hunter's gear came at him with a knife, fast.
Peter twisted, dodged most of it — but the blade caught the edge of his suit and cut deep across his chest.
The hunter looked at the blood and laughed. "Guess we don't even need a trap to take this little spider down this time."
Peter's anger flared, but he kept it in check. Losing his head here would get him killed.
That's when the sky opened up — two more figures dropping in, guns already firing. He scrambled to dodge and immediately found his feet swallowed by a rising wall of sand, locking him in place. He tore free just in time to avoid the worst of the gunfire, eyes flicking up to study the two newcomers.
One looked almost exactly like a Vulture he'd already beaten once. The other wore a green demon mask, riding a glider through the air like he owned the sky.
Down on the ground, Otto looked at the chaos around him — six other people, all apparently here to gang up on the same Spider-Man — and felt something close to genuine confusion.
If Ethan were watching this, the thought would have occurred to him, this isn't how the movie went. The roster was wrong. Too big. The film had given the Sinister Six exactly five members alongside Doc Ock: Electro, Sandman, Lizard, Green Goblin. This version had picked up two extras — Kraven the Hunter and Vulture.
Otto turned, baffled, toward the nearest of them. "Who are you people? Why are you attacking Spider-Man?"
"What do you mean, 'who are we,' Otto?" The blue-skinned man crackling with electricity — Max Dillon, Electro — sounded almost offended. "We're the Sinister Six."
Otto still didn't fully follow, but extra hands willing to fight Spider-Man weren't something he was going to turn down.
Up in the air, the Green Goblin noticed something was off about Otto immediately — they'd clashed plenty of times before over who actually ran this team, and the Otto he knew would have been furious about anyone barging into his operation uninvited.
Even better, Norman Osborn thought to himself, smirking behind the mask. Without him keeping everyone in line, I can run this team myself. If Otto wasn't going to assert control, Norman had no objection to filling the vacuum.
Down below, Peter looked around at the seven people now closing in on him and felt something close to genuine dread settle in his stomach.
Only one — the Vulture overhead — looked even slightly familiar. The rest were total strangers. And yet he could feel the malice radiating off every single one of them, thick enough to taste.
These were villains from across the entire multiverse of Spider-Men — people who, individually, gave most versions of him a real fight. Seven of them, together, in a circle around him?
That math didn't work in his favor. At all.
They closed the loop, all seven pairs of eyes locked on him like he was already dinner.
Sandman spoke first, voice dripping with mockery. "No backup this time, little spider? Where're your Avenger friends? Where's the kid who shoots fire?"
In their universe, Spider-Man had a habit of calling in reinforcements every time things got serious. The original six of them had been forced into an uneasy alliance specifically because they kept losing to the Avengers and the Fantastic Four ganging up alongside him.
Peter had a hundred questions and no good answers for any of them. Why did these people look at him like they had a personal vendetta? He didn't recognize a single one of them. He talked too much sometimes, sure, but he hadn't pissed off this many costumed lunatics that he could remember.
He thought about Aunt May. About how devastated she'd be if this was how it ended.
He'd just gotten his college acceptance letter. He and MJ were supposed to start together in the fall.
I am not dying here.
Beneath the mask, his eyes hardened.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Not happening today."
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