"Do we wanna talk about the blue blood thing that just happened?" Peter questioned as we made our way outside, my metal arm around his neck to help me limp by. He had pulled his mask back on, a few small tears showing his skin through the fabric. "I'm pretty sure you didn't have that the last time I saw you."
"Yeah, I don't know either," I answered, biting my bottom lip to try and distract me from the pain still flaring from my injury. "We'll figure it out later. What's the game plan?"
"Stop Vulture from hijacking your dad's plane." I gave Peter a raised eyebrow.
"Vulture?"
"Let me pick a villain name for once. I think it's cool."
"Honestly, I kind of like it," I chuckled before my eyes landed on a figure perched on a billboard across the street. "It's never that easy. He wouldn't be so close; he can't be that stupid."
"I guess he thought he actually killed me," Peter muttered, his voice cracking a little at the end of the sentence. I couldn't blame him. One of our friends' dad just tried to murder him. "Maybe he meant to come here to get ready to attack the plane."
"You teenagers are smarter than you look." The two of us whipped around to see the man who had tried to kidnap me from the boat. A nasty looking welt had formed under his eye, colored with bruises. He didn't have anything in his hands except for a syringe and was swaying with the wind. "You should have killed me, Spider-Man."
"Yeah, I-I don't kill people, sorry to disappoint," Peter stuttered, wrapping his arm around me to pull me closer. "And we're kind of in the middle of something, so you can leave now. Okay?" The man narrowed his eyes at the two of us before getting a look at where my injury was. "Like, now would be nice."
"You don't get why your blood's looking that nasty ass color, do you, Atlantis?" the man sneered, rolling the syringe between his fingers. "Bet you don't know why you have to wear something to control your powers, either?"
"You don't know anything about me," I snarled, clenching my right hand into a fist. My heart was pounding. Why would he know that? How would he know that? "So like my buddy Spider-Man just said, leave."
"Your 'buddy' Spider-Man is gonna have to choose between you and my winged friend over there," he pointed out, jerking his head over in the Vulture's direction. "He's gonna be leaving in less than twenty seconds." The man pointed the syringe accusingly in Peter's direction. "So you, my friend, who do you wanna protect more? A criminal? Or that plane?"
"Don't you dare choose me over that plane," I whispered to Peter nervously.
"I can get you to safety and get to the plane after-"
"You will not," I hissed. The two of us turned our heads at the sound of mechanic wings turning on. "Go." Peter nodded, giving me a soft squeeze before swinging off after him.
"So you guys are a couple... interesting," the man behind me groaned. I gave him a glare, setting my weight on my left leg to stop pushing on my injured one. "I mean, Hawkes is gonna get a laugh out of this, but... no."
"I'm not here to chat with you," I stopped him, shaking slightly. If he tried to attack me, there was a high chance of me losing. "So let's get this thing over with."
"Something I can agree on with you," the man agreed, his fingers tightening around the syringe and twitching. He stared down at it for a few moments, looking like an addict about to get another high. Clenching his eyes tight, he jammed the syringe into his neck with a scream. White energy shot from his body in all directions, knocking me off my feet and throwing me on the ground. I gasped as the air was knocked out of me and I struggled to breathe. White energy seemed to be something I could always vividly remember from my recovering memories, but it only came from me... never anyone else.
I slowly pushed myself up, watching the man fall to his knees, screaming in pain. His veins lit up under his skin, making him appear like a lethal human glow stick. As he continued to scream himself hoarse, he pounded a fist on the ground. The concrete cracked under his brute strength, a long crack reaching right to my feet.
"Oh my god..." I muttered, jumping backward and sending another jolt of pain through me. He looked at me venomously with black demon eyes, blood trickling out from his ears and his nose. His fingers had flared, creating a small ball of fire that melted the broken syringe into nothing."What the hell..."
"You don't know what you've started, Atlantis," he rasped, looking down at the fireball before back at me. "But I guess we're gonna find out if you'll live to see it come to fruition."
With a demonic scream, he threw the fire at me. I fell to a crouch and it went over my head. He didn't hesitate before making two more, one for each hand, and slamming them together to create a fiery beam. I panicked, throwing my hands up in the air to create a tall wall of ice, one that came tumbling down seconds after due to the intense heat. The man seemed to chuckle as I rolled out of the way and crawled under a burning car to set something between us.
Right before he redirected the beam in my direction, I wiped my hand forward, melting the ice and sending the newly formed wave to run him over. He stumbled from the force, but he got up seconds later with his arms forming an 'x' shape against his chest. A powerful red aura grew brighter as he walked toward me. The man released his arms with his palms pointed towards me, giving me no time to duck from the powerful blast. Back on the ground I went, and this time I didn't bother trying to push myself up to fight again.
"Giving up so easily, Stark?" he laughed maniacally, his steps toward me sending a wave of heat in my direction. "Thought you had more in you after you killed Hawkes's boy. Or maybe..." He leaned over me with an evil grin, bending down and grabbing my injured calf and digging his nails through the webbing Peter had provided as a bandage. My back arched off the ground as I screamed, tears involuntarily coming from my eyes. "...maybe you're just weak and had a moment of potential."
"G-Go to hell," I choked, reaching to move his hand away from my injury. He pulled his hand away, showing blue blood coating his fingers. "You won, okay? Y-You won."
"Not yet, Atlantis," he shook his head. Using his other hand, he dug his fingernails into his forearm, cutting through his skin. When he pulled his fingers away, they too were coated in different colored blood. But not blue; a reddish black too dark to be considered normal. He wiped it on my cheek, causing me to gag. "You feel it, don't you? The strange burning sensation as it tries to sink into your skin?" As he spoke, I felt a pain in my stomach. It grew like a virus, making me gasp in agony as my body tried to fend it off.
"Stop it," I whispered, my vision going dull. Blue and red tints were changing my sight. "Stop! Stop it!" My last sentence grew into an order, and the man went rigid. His black colored eyes turned an electric blue as my powers latched on the one thing that could save me: his mind.
My powers took control of my body, pulling me up from my spot laying on the ground and up in the air, my hair floating around me as if I was underwater. The man's head followed, watching me as he waited for orders. "Tell me Hawke's plan," I heard myself say, my hand reached out and planted on his forehead.
"He's capturing the Elementals before you can," he gasped, his eyes rolling back. "He already has Inferno in his custody and is hunting down Tornado as we speak."
"Where's Inferno now?" I demanded, pushing his head backward. The man's body was growing paler while I grew stronger. "Where is Amy Gunderson?"
"I don't know!" he yelped, his knees shaking. "Hawkes and his highest agents are the only ones who do!" I moved my hand, and he fell to the ground in a coughing fit. "All... all I know is that there are three main facilities he transfers her from." I stared down at him coldly. "My only mission was to show you what they're accomplishing with her."
"Which is?" Looking at him sent a craving sensation through me. My powers weren't just holding him in place; they were draining his life force to feed my own. "Answer, now."
"Her blood can be extracted to give her power to someone else," he wheezed. "Blood, DNA, bone marrow, anything. That's what-" The man bent down and coughed up black blood. "That's what Hawkes said. But that's only for phase three; he's just scratching at phase two." I just stared at his blank expression, my powers searching for any other information in his head. There was a strange calmness in me as my powers ran through me. One part of me wanted to kill him as slow and painful as possible so he could feel everything he had made me feel. The other part seemed too forgiving.
"You're struggling." I focused back on the man kneeling to me, his eyes unfocused an unfamiliar voice came from his mouth. The voice of a young little girl. "You shouldn't be feeling sorry for him. He's tried to kill you. Capture you. Why not end it?"
"I'm not like that," I told the voice with a shake of my head. "I don't kill people because I can."
"You did it in Florida," the voice said smugly, the man's face reflecting it. "And in space. There's no difference."
"You're right, there isn't," I agreed with it. "I could have knocked those aliens out when I was escaping. I could've tried to control myself better in Florida, but I didn't. And right now I'm choosing to spare this man's life."
"Than you leave me no choice." I felt a tug, and my right hand pressed down on his chest. Both the man and I started screaming as color fled from his face, his skin sagging off his bones like it was over-stretched. The blue faded from his eyes, letting the black show for one last time before returning to normal.
"Please," he croaked, looking at my face of terror. He was dying painfully, and it was out of my control. "Please." With a final cough, he fell backward, the city lights reflecting in his eyes. My hand fell limply as I stared in horror at what had happened in front of me. It was like Colin Hawkes dying all over again, but this time worse. I heard the echo of a childish giggle.
"You can't ignore me forever, Isabel," it whispered. "I'll always be there, waiting." I strained my ears, hoping to hear it again. I could sense something, more like someone, was by me, but at the same time wasn't. I looked down at the body by my feet, guilt tearing me apart. It wasn't like I had lost control. Something else had taken over for just a brief moment, and it was pure evil. Powerful, but evil.
"I'm sorry," I apologized to the body in front of me, breathing shakily. "I really am." Knowing what had to be done, I grabbed the man's arm with my metal hand and began pulling him toward the broken building, grimacing at the sound of his body dragging against the ground. His skin ripped against the gravel, but there weren't any liquids coming out of him. I set him next to a large pile of rubble, trying to avoid looking at my mistake when I heard a plane fly above me.
I looked up just in time to see a familiar red figure clinging on to the right wing of the plane. It made a nasty turn, nearly crashing into a building before turning into Coney Island and exploding in flames. I transported myself in the middle of it seconds later, not even thinking about what I was getting myself into.
A wave of heat rushed over me, and I immediately began coughing from the smoke. My eyes were stinging and my metal arm was burning my shoulder. My feet, bare from me taking my heels off earlier, were sinking into the hot sand of the beach. I turned around to see a pair of glowing green eyes moving toward a limp body on the ground.
"Get," I tried to yell, but it came out in a hoarse croak that still managed to grab his attention. "Get away from him!"
"You shouldn't be here," he called out to me, stomping in my direction as his metal wings flared. Sparks fell to the ground as they opened, clearly showing the damage he had received from the crash. "This isn't your fight."
"You tried to kill me back on that ferry, so it kind of is," I retorted. I flared my hands to summon my powers, causing him to fly to me. Energy flickered around my hands before giving out due to the unbearable heat, causing me to widen my eyes as I got thrown violently into the ground. Vulture's eyes seemed to stare into my soul as he grabbed my shoulders with his metal taloned feet. picking me up and slamming me into the ground again. Every time I made contact, I could feel a white aura leave my body and creating a bigger indent in the ground. There was a ringing noise growing in my ears, and my eyelids were becoming heavy as my head hit the sand over and over again.
"No!" Peter's voice rang out, and he tackled the Vulture off of me. I couldn't turn my head to see what was going on, but I could hear the thwip noises from his web shooters and the punches that followed. "Your wing suit. Your wing suit's gonna explode!"
"Time to go home, Pete!"
"I'm trying to save you!" I rolled my head to the side, blood trickling from my nose, as I watched a game of tug-of-war between the two of them with a crate. The Vulture cut the webbing with his left wing and tried to fly away. He barely created distance between him and Peter before the wing suit made a final spark, causing the man to drop to the ground and be consumed in an explosion. Peter was blown backward close to me, looking at the flames in horror. "No..."
"Peter," I croaked to him, reaching my right hand out shakily to him. His mask was gone, allowing his emotions to show clearly on his face. He took my hand for a brief moment before pushing himself up and running back into the flames. He let out a scream of pain briefly, and everything went blue for me again.
Just like before, my body began to float in the air, lifting me from my horizontal position to a vertical one. The heat was no longer bothering me but gave off a chill. I could see Peter trying to pull Liz's father, now free of his mask and wings, out of the flames. He was coughing badly. I pointed a finger at the flames surrounding them.
"Stop," I ordered softly, looking up at the sky as I moved my finger up. "Stop." The faint sound of thunder came to my ears, and I couldn't help but smile as the sky grew cloudy and rain began to fall. Peter and Liz's father watched me from below as I directed the rainstorm over Coney Island, my hair floating in every direction. I closed my eyes while bringing my arm down, causing my powers to let me back on the beach.
____________________________________________________________
"So what happens now?" I asked Peter, the two of us sitting atop the Cyclone ride wearily. My head was resting on his shoulder, his head on top of mine as we watched a search party scour the beach.
"Honestly, I don't know anymore," Peter answered truthfully, the wind from my earlier storm blowing his hair. "All I wanted to do was be an Avenger and do stuff like this, but now... this kind of sucks. Maybe a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is best... once I fix the suit."
"As good as that is to hear, I kind of meant about us," I sighed. "What are we?" There was a brief silence as Peter contemplated what to say.
"Do... do you want to be my girlfriend?" he asked me. "I always thought that sentence would be a lot harder to say out loud, but now it isn't."
"Because you've almost died at least three times in the past twelve hours," I reminded him, earning a chuckle. "I always hoped you'd ask me when everything seemed perfect, but then again, that wouldn't exactly fit with the type of relationship we've had."
"Then let's fix it," Peter said. "Go on a trip that doesn't involve someone getting hurt or kidnapped or told we can't even see each other. Go on dates and call each other pet names."
"You've certainly been thinking about this a lot," I noticed, snuggling into him until I heard him hiss in pain. "Sorry."
"The only romantic stuff we've ever done seems to be that Florida trip and bandaging each other up."
"And ice skating."
"And ice skating," Peter agreed. "Isabel Stark, I'm all for going into this new adventure with you."
"Then let's get it started with our first steps," I told him, moving my head from its comfortable spot and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. Peter turned and responded with a kiss back, and we fell asleep to the soft sounds of the windy beach.