#i mean its not a chapter but hey | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

clowningaroundmars · 3 months ago

Text

previously:

It seemed like that was yet another constant through time and space; in every universe Miles Morales is in, he was always going to be annoyingly stubborn. And annoyingly self-sacrificing, too.

She relented. Leap of faith, after all.

“If you’re sure… then stick by me, and we’ll do it,” Gwen reassured him, hoping her smile under her mask was readable in any way at all.

They exchanged glances one more time, and then braced themselves for the inevitable.

well. things certainly ramp up quite a bit here in this installment. hope y'all are enjoying the show so far bc it sure does get interesting here for our fave teen vigilantes!

mind the warnings on part 1 here, for surrreee! enjoy :)

<< part 3 of 4 >>

To say that they fought like hell would be an understatement.

And to say that they ran like hell would also be an understatement as well.

That henchman down in the basement level of the compound wasn’t lying when he told the Doctor that he had the entire building on lockdown.

Even the scarce amount of still-working scientists left on the upper floors had all evacuated and now every single exit was sealed tight with emergency locks, metal panels blocking all windows.

They clawed, kicked, slipped, slid, punched and flipped their way past several armored goons, the computer tower on 42's back earning a bullet and a few scratches in the process. He tried keeping the minions away with powerful Muay Thai kicks to protect it as best he could.

It weighs him down only a little bit. Gwen kept looking over her shoulder to check on him every other second or so, but he seemed to be managing just fine with the tower on his back anyhow.

Once the two vigilantes were finally able to break away from the initial fight with what seemed like the entirety of Upstate New York’s small private army, they skittered and bolted through the high-tech facility at top speed, ducking and dodging various bullets and objects that flew through the air in their direction.

“So, uh--” Gwen panted, shooting a few webs behind her to trap some henchmen giving chase, “what was that escape plan you had in mind earlier? Could really use it right about now!”

42 slides onto his knee right underneath a table in an open-floor break room and then kicks it in order to provide cover from the rest of the hail of bullets.

Gwen leaps right over to join him, webbing up a microwave she snags off of a counter to use as a heavy projectile.

“Buy me a couple of seconds! I need to check my maps again,” 42 shouts over the sound of bullets firing and shouting, minding his back and trying his best to protect the computer as it still downloads the information he needs.

“Okay, but no promises!” Gwen replies, heaving the microwave over her shoulder and swinging it like a mace over her head.

Gwen manages to send the appliance sailing into a few henchmen, which probably knocks one out onto the ground, but she dived back behind their makeshift cover too quickly to see it.

The men start shouting loudly again, so maybe it did do some damage after all!

“... Do me a favor real quick,” 42 then says from his position on the ground, leaning on an elbow, “what color’s the wire on my pack right now?”

“Uhhh, your wire?” Gwen says quickly, still breathing hard. “The one connected to the computer? Oh, that’s… it’s not glowing anymore!”

42 bobs his head as he still works on his mask, giving it taps on the side every now and then. “Perfect, it’s done. Get this thing off of me, then! Let’s destroy it!”

Gwen laughs. “I’ve got a better idea!”

She rips her webs off of 42’s pack, separating the heavy computer tower from it and hoisting it up over her shoulder. She takes a peek over the edge of the table and promptly ducks back down to dodge another bullet.

One of the henchmen spots her with something hoisted over an arm and shouts at his peers to get out of the way.

Gwen then springs up while they’re sort of distracted, heaves the big bulky thing behind her and then she lets it swing. With the help of her super-strength, the tower sails through the air like a grenade, heading straight for a couple of goons still taking cover behind their own upturned table.

Everyone’s eyes follow it, as it seems to fly over in slow motion, heading straight for one henchman’s shocked face… when all of a sudden--

A long dark tentacle shoots out from a room off to the side and intercepts the machine, metal coming into contact with metal ringing loudly into the air and officially signaling the end of the fight between the henchmen and the vigilantes.

The computer hangs in the air in its grasp for a moment before the villain pulls it inside and promptly glides out of the room on his other tentacles.

It was of course, none other than the ever-so-charming Doctor Octopus himself.

The bullets stopped flying and most of the henchmen were already incapacitated anyways, so the silence that fell over the area wasn’t unexpected, but still very unsettling nonetheless.

“It seems my incompetent staff here hasn’t quite given you both the warm welcome that you deserve,” he announces, commanding voice echoing menacingly through the room, “a shame, really. Allow me,”

Yikes on bikes, Gwen thought, biting her lip.

He wasn’t adorned in his smart little suit that he was wearing earlier down in the compound’s basement level earlier… he was fully suited up in armor now, face partially obscured by a pair of high-tech goggles that featured two other lenses on the sides. Those smaller lenses constantly clicked and whirred, which intrigued Gwen.

42, on the other hand, didn’t seem so impressed. He jumped up suddenly from his cover as the Doctor advanced on them and extended a gauntlet out, letting several small purple sparks shoot out from the knuckles.

They looked an awful lot like the purple sparky-things he used to destroy the camera that watched over Gwen in her storage-room-slash-prison.

She picked up the table they used for cover and tossed it towards the Octopus while he was still slightly distracted from attempting to dodge them.

As expected, his tentacles took care of these pesky little distractions for him. In one graceful movement, he destroyed the table and rendered it into smithereens, the wood scattering everywhere below his feet.

“Time to go!” 42 shouts as he scrambles away from the menacing appendages striking out at them like cobras.

Gwen agrees, hot on his heels.

Geez, this sure was a lot like her encounter with earth-1610’s Dr. Octavius, down to the evil tentacle-chasing down a narrow hallway and all! Good times.

But now wasn’t the time for fond reminiscing, especially given that this particular variant of the Octopus was more than likely out for blood thanks to the two teens’ earlier escapades. They destroyed the Doc’s super collider and stole hundreds of his files straight out of his labs… they were cooked if he ever got a single tentacle on them!

They skid down halls and narrowly avoid becoming minced meat via tentacle-butchering by using their cunning and tossing any object they can get their hands on at the villain. Their every attempt is thwarted, exasperating them both.

"Get back here, you two! You won't escape!" The Doctor bellows behind them, and Gwen swears she can feel his hot breath down her neck at some points.

They leap and duck away from striking tentacles, jump off of walls to get a head start around corners, crash through walls of glass in sleek office spaces. Papers and tech fly everywhere.

“Miles--!” Gwen calls out when the two teens' momentum end up with them throwing themselves onto some railing on a mezzanine overlooking the main entrance lobby.

The lobby was huge, spacious, and obnoxiously pretentious. Big dark stone pillars stood thick and tall, holding up a vaulted ceiling that seemed to reach up into the sky. The receptionist’s area sat at the very center, round desks interconnected to form a big circle filled with computers, files, and the like.

The vigilantes looked down in dismay at the giant double-doors and the windows leading to their freedom, all sealed with the same metallic plating found in Gwen's prison-room. Which means it was also most likely held shut by whatever power source this building used. Shit, shit, shit!

Doc Ock was quickly covering ground, only a bit disgruntled from the narrow halls that slightly impeded his movement, and rapidly gaining on them.

The two looked at each other with wide eyes for a split second before swiftly turning around, sitting on the railing and then throwing themselves heels-over-head on the way down.

Gwen was thinking maybe they could hide for a split second if she stuck to the underside of the flooring and confused the Octopus long enough to web up that node on his back and attempt to rip it out, before she yelped in shock at metal claws gripping her ankle not even halfway down and yanking her back up with vicious force.

"Whooooaaa!" Gwen's voice echoes throughout the giant room.

“Gwen!!!” 42 yells, now on the floor and skidding to a stop. He whirls around in time to see Doc Ock gracefully climb down from the mezzanine as well, tossing his friend between two tentacles like she was a plush doll.

He holds both of her wrists in one vice grip, grinning like a madman in her face as she struggles against his technology, thrashing this way and that.

“Now, now. Where are you both off to in such a hurry? I told you I’d be giving you a proper welcome into the facility, and that’s just what I intend to do… after you two do me a solid, that is.”

“Screw you, Octavius! Let my friend go!” 42 roars, his mask seemingly projecting his voice much louder than it actually was. “I’ve got this whole place rigged with explosives and they’re ready to blow at any moment now!”

It's a bluff, but Gwen prays to the universe that the Doctor buys it.

Doc Ock feigns shock. “My goodness! What a couple of rowdy young kids you are! I think someone ought to teach you two some… manners,” he growls, advancing quickly in 42’s direction and keeping a tight grip on Gwen’s arms.

“Prowler, listen to me... just go!” Gwen pleads with 42, swinging and kicking uselessly in the air as Doc Ock parries 42’s own blows with his other tentacles.

“Not happening!” 42 grunts. He narrowly dodges a knife-like tentacle strike to his head.

It was no use. The two were already locked in a battle to the death, and there was nothing that she could say to possibly change their minds.

They waltzed around the area until they found themselves in the middle of the lobby, still exchanging blows.

“Well, isn’t this precious! How sweet,” the Doctor comments snidely. He swings Gwen up into the air and slams her down onto a desk, splintering it into pieces and making her shout in pain. “The girl doesn’t want to leave the boy, the boy doesn’t want to leave the girl…” He pins her down with a tentacle around her neck.

“Gross,” Gwen mutters, still working at using her strength to free herself from the Doctor’s vice-like grip, wood splinters digging into her back.

“It’s all so sentimental, it could make me weep! How about this,” he shoots out a tentacle and wraps it around 42’s torso suddenly, trapping his arms by his sides and bringing everyone closer together. “I’ll make you both a deal; you hand me my data and agree to be my useful test subjects. You’ll both be kept alive as long as you obey my every whim! Or I’ll kill you both! How’s that sound?”

42 scoffs, still struggling against his restraints. “Sounds terrible. How about you let us go and we kick your ass instead?”

The Doctor lets out a loud, long laugh. “My dear boy, that sounds even worse!”

Gwen takes the opportunity of the small distraction to hook her legs onto the tentacle steadily planning to choke the life out of her, and hangs on for dear life. The Doctor feels her using his own appendage as leverage, and whips back around to her.

“What in the world do you think you’re d-- AGH!”

She remembers what her friend Hobie Brown taught her during a riot in his dimension.

The anarchists and Hobie's own little Spider Band drove a group of cops away from a squatter's village somewhere in Southwark once on Earth-138 before, and when she was apprehended by one of the big oafs, she was quickly taught how to use an arm bar to effectively escape his grasp and continue the fight.

She attempts it here and with a bit more concentrated strength...

Success!

Gwen manages to pry the evil tentacle off of her neck and begins to tie it into knots as it flails around, taking her on a joyride of a lifetime.

She blocks strikes from the arm, as if trying to wrangle an aggravated cobra in mid-air, grabbing its snapping claw and holding on.

42 also took a page out of her playbook and quickly seized his opportunity; he managed to shoot out another one of the zappy-rockets he keeps in his gauntlets, hitting Doc Ock’s evil face and getting the villain to drop him due to the electrical shocks.

“Do that again, man! But aim at his arms next time!” Gwen calls over to 42, who’s now quickly weaving and dodging the vengeful tentacles all trying to get back at him.

They snap, gnash, and 42 even swears they hiss at him at some point while he waits for his gauntlets to cool down, buying him some time. He makes attempts at grabbing them back when he can and attempting to crush them between his claws, blocking them most other times.

The sounds of metal striking against metal ring out throughout the spacious lobby area once more.

Gwen is still stuck on the bucking bronco that is Doc Ock’s upper right tentacle and not showing any signs of letting go. She manages to finally connect her feet to a stone pillar as the Doc passes it trying to chase down his escaped captor.

She sticks to it and uses that as an opportunity to yank at Doc Ock’s tentacle with all of her might in the other direction and send the Doctor flying along with it.

“Aaagh!!” He shouts. The man is slammed onto the ground hard and rolls several feet away, moaning in pain.

Gwen looks at the severed tentacle in her grasp, now laying limp like a sad, wet noodle. She hadn't realized she even used so much of her strength to rip it out of his node like that. She drops down from the pillar and tosses the hated thing aside.

42 comes up to her, panting, nodding at her in approval.

“Goddamn, Gwendy. Nice one!” He remarks, bumping her on the shoulder before engaging something on his gauntlets that caused every nook and cranny of it to glow a bright purple. “I’m ending this now, we’ve been in here for far too long!”

He then crouches down, steadying himself. Gwen follows his lead, also equally tired and definitely just as over it as he is.

They both take a running leap into the air, 42 flying forward with his claws extended like he usually did, Gwen leaping into the air with both of her wrists extended in front of her, ready to finally let the last of her web fluid hold down the Octopus for as long as they needed to ensure their eventual escape.

They were so close to descending on the mad doctor and finishing this fight for good, or at least incapacitating him for the time being when…

42 suddenly yelped in pain and immediately crumpled onto the ground, his body skidding a little ways away from Doctor Octopus.

He didn’t get back up.

Gwen was bewildered. “Mi-- Prowler?! Oh, god!”

She recovered quickly and shot a web out to the ceiling instead, narrowly avoiding a vengeful tentacle swiping through the air at her violently. She noticed blood on one of his tentacles, the same one he used to lash out at 42!

Damn it all to hell!

Gwen swings around a pillar to put some distance between herself and her foe, but hated being out of sight to keep an eye on her friend. She opted to stick onto the side of one of these huge pillars and assess the situation from there.

The Doctor pushes himself off the ground and slowly rises to stand. He wears an evil grimace on his aging face, clutching his head. He takes his goggles off of his face and tosses them to the side, rage blazing away in the pupils of his eyes which was visible even from where Gwen was perched.

“No more games,” the Doctor grits out, gathering up his strength to pick up 42’s unconscious body up off of the ground and shake him around like a ragdoll. “You want him alive? You come to me instead. Let's see if you can manage to do that!”

And just like that, the Doctor uses his remaining tentacles to climb back up the mezzanine from the floor below and disappears around a corner, carrying a limp Prowler along with him.

Gwen panics.

“No!!” She shouts, pushing herself off the pillar and using her webs to rocket towards the entrance that Doc Ock just disappeared into.

The only things on her mind were friend, hurt, could die, have to keep up!

Every nerve inside of her body was lit up to a thousand degrees, her only focus being 42 and nothing else. It could very well have been a trap that she was falling into at that moment, but she really couldn’t have cared less.

The only things flashing through her mind as she gave chase down the long, winding corridors of the facility in her attempt to keep up with the monster kidnapping her friend were the memories of her own late best friend, Peter Parker of Earth-65.

The events of that fateful night in her school continued to pump away in her mind just as the blood pumped through her veins while she made her way back into the maze of the back halls.

Gotta take down that lizard, she remembered thinking before swinging down onto the scene to save her classmates.

She remembered every single blow she dealt to what she thought was a villain, but really turned out to be her bestest friend in the world whose science experiment had gone horribly awry.

She remembered his beat up face. She remembered…

She remembered...

She skidded around a corner and promptly halted. The sheer horror alone over what she saw smacked her like a wall of bricks.

Here, they had accessed a hallway which had a door at the end. Gwen saw the telltale sign plastered onto it: it was the door that led to the roof.

The Doctor was angrily wrenching it open with his tentacles to get past the emergency locks. If he got to the roof with her friend… there was no telling what he would do to the kid if she didn’t reach them in time…

And she just couldn’t let that happen!

Instead of following the be-tentacled evil-doer on his heels, Gwen decided to make a huge gamble and escape through a sealed window instead. From there, she could use the tiny bit of web fluid she still had in her web shooters and get to the roof faster than him.

Taking a breath, she spun on her heels and dived into the nearest room. She threw herself onto a panel, fingers digging into the scarce space between the edges and the window seals, summoning her massive strength yet again to accomplish the one feat she needed to right now.

She prayed to every single deity that ever existed out there...

And they answered.

The metal sheet was nothing more than that-- a sheet. It immediately buckled under her hands and crumpled like aluminum, and she tore it right off of its frame, green electricity fizzling and popping out from above.

She threw herself out of the window, crashing shoulder-first into the glass.

Glass shards flew everywhere, sparkling like stars in the night sky as she fell, turning in what seemed like slow-motion in the air to aim herself correctly.

She extended her arms out, took aim… and shot the very last bit of web fluid that she had in her shooters to connect to the edge of the roof.

Thanking every single god out there that ever existed, Gwen flew up to the ledge and sprinted over to the roof access door as quickly as her aching legs could manage.

The door was suddenly torn open by big menacing mechanical tentacles and out came Doc Ock and Miles-42, followed by a few of the Doctor’s own private little goon squad behind him shortly after.

Gwen realized with a start that she was standing on a helipad on top of the huge building, and that the Doctor most likely intended to lead the both of them up here to access his getaway vehicle easier.

But whatever his plan was for the teens, Gwen didn’t intend to let anyone get away now. Bruised, battered, bleeding, sweaty, tired... and with zero web fluid to her name, she still had a lot of fight left in her.

A lot.

“Doc Ock! Put him down!” She roars into the night air, the scene illuminated only by the glow of the full moon hanging overhead. Her breath clouds in front of her.

The Doctor sneers at her, and his henchmen promptly train their guns onto her. “Like there’s a chance in hell! You two have beaten my men unconscious, bombed my greatest creation yet, destroyed one of my beloved appendages, and trashed my most productive facility in the entirety of the New York state! You? I'll kill you just like I should have the second I found you! And then I'll end your little boyfriend's life, too.”

“Not my boyfriend!” Gwen throws back as she breaks into a run, dodging and weaving bullets shot at her and somersaulting over to them to put the remaining backup out of commission.

She fights them all viciously, much in the same way 42 did whenever it came time to exchange blows.

Despite the chaos of the fight, she never took an eye off of her new friend.

“How dare you ugly buffoons-- the nerve of you all-- kidnapping my friend-- after you guys kidnapped me!” She complained through gritted teeth, letting her anger and frustration out on these bumbling idiots with every punch thrown and every kick delivered.

She held nothing back, even snatching a gun out of a henchman’s hands at one point, snapping it in half and whipping him unconscious with the remaining pieces.

“I am so! Over! This!” She shouted, now dodging the snapping and hissing tentacles of their evil boss.

“Stop now and we can perhaps-- urgh! Perhaps we can come to an agreement!” The Doctor grunts, still daring to trade blows with her as she advances on him, the white lenses of her mask now glowing eerily with rage.

“I don’t want an agreement, you idiot, I want my friend back!”

“Ah!” Doc Ock backs up a bit nervously, heading directly for the roof’s edge. “Well… why didn’t you just say so? I’m sure we can come to an arrangement of some kind, perhaps…” he glances over his shoulder, now that he and his hostage are dangerously close to the edge, “perhaps you can even… get him yourself!”

Here, the Doctor leaps over to the side, narrowly avoiding a fist to the jaw and tossing 42’s still unconscious body into the air… letting him tumble right over the ledge.

"Catch!" He announces brazenly.

42 falls down...

down...

down.

Gwen watches in horror.

#spiderverse #gwen stacy #miles g morales #earth 42 #heheh yall see what i did there with the ending. do you. do you see it #goddamn the spiderman fandom has like only one joke OOF #but hey i mean. this IS gwen stacy we're talkin abt here. gravity is her worst enemy after all!#yeahhhh we're going there.#well anyways uh. hope yall enjoyed! :) i know the pacing's kinda. weird.#this might be imo one of the weaker chapters. i think it's the shortest one too lol #i'm not very good with describing action or writing chase scenes #but i hope this is sufficient enuf for you guys 👉👈 and that its not too confusing #how do you describe. fighting. esp the fighting spiderppl do LOL its... a lot #anyways yeaaa see you guys on the next one 😎#mi writing

10 notes · View notes

nihiltism · 1 year ago

Text

ok so while my ds is getting sand poured into it at alarming rates I'm thinking about how jrpgs in specific have a really weird desync with How Important Death Is. like some address it better than others but it very frequently happens where if you take a step back youll go "am I wild or is everybody just like, Really down with murder in this game". and consequences for said murder, especially in a characterization sense but even just actual physical consequences, don't really happen? unless it's a vehicle for conflict but like. when it is a vehicle for conflict it feels weird because why are These Guys actually taking the fact we killed somebody in broad daylight seriously and coming after us for it while all the other npcs and even the main party took it like it was another saturday evening

see I Think where the issue lies is in the fact that everything is in its own little world when you're in a battle? like. when you fight an enemy and you get leather out of it it's seen as something the enemy Drops and not. their hide. when you defeat a character in a battle it does just feel like you Defeated them. unless there's dialogue afterwards that says otherwise you don't even mentally assume you killed em you just wounded them enough to make them flee or dissolve or whatever. and it's Weird to just. have that assumption there because for a lot of games it really isn't clear if you're killing them or defeating them !!

that last point is extra important when you have the specific brand of Skittish Hero / Noble Hero Who Doesn't Kill People / Rational Hero In Way Over Their Head or whatever where you really don't think they Would kill a guy just to get them out of the way. in that case it's REALLY weird because it's hardly brought up. even if it Is brought up that that guy Sure Did Die the mc doesn't tend to actually have a reaction ??? and I don't know why this is ???? like Any written reaction would be more interesting than nothing even if the guy doesn't have a full on crisis about taking another life having them go "oh shit, The Consequences" would be nice. really anything except (oh cool we can advance the plot now).

I will also mention that Some deaths do matter plot wise but very frequently what makes them matter is how much of it is linked to an in game battle I think. if your mc just finishes a fight and comes back to the overworld and the guy's Disappeared or Dissolved or whatever it means they don't matter. if the guy's still around after the fight it means it's more significant, especially if they're still alive but wounded or Really Shaken Up. because this clears up the indistinguishable line between if a battle is lethal or not and if a character decides to deal a finishing blow now it's Way more telling of their character. even though this is basically the same thing that happened in the (killed In A Battle) scenario. just with more dialogue. I will also mention that the person who deals the finishing blow is Rarely Ever that good hearted protagonist and often they'll even go :0 at somebody else committing a murder despite them instigating and helping murder quite a few people. just. In Battle. so it's less bad. I guess.

this is leaving out the fact that in party deaths are often a Major Major Blow because like. ok that's fair. that's A Guy You Knew that's understandable. anyway I don't really know where I'm going with this I just think it's interesting how in these types of games death can swap from not mattering at all to mattering a Lot and if u don't think about it too hard u don't even question it. I'll probably be putting some examples in the tags idk

#i will note that in this specific instance most of my party Is actually super down with murder like vocally #so its less weird but it Is weird that the mc does. Not Seem The Type.#i mean not to say he should have tried to spare everybody i think its kinda neat that he doesnt but #if the fact that he doesnt was brought up at all thatd be interesting. have him acknowledge he killed a dude #but no hes just kind of standing there like (ok what next) no leaning one way or another #these would all be interesting reactions if they were actually Brought Up in dialogue but no its just. oversight #anyway this is about sand but ive also felt this about live a live and even bits of twewy #like specifically in lal the fact that the edo chapter Exists and killing people is just Battling Them made me look at Every Other Chapter #thru a lens of (okay am. am i killing these dudes.) and the answer is I DUNNO #like the guy exploded into a cloud of mist theres no way hes Not dead but its STRANGE #this felt most noticeable in the imperial china and present day chapters because they had mcs who decidedly did not feel down with murder #specifically present day because masaru is fighting this guy for the crime of killing a guys. and woa. he killed a guys. with his Hands #i think theres only a handful of deaths in lal that actually mean anything and you can tell which they are because they dont explode #like in You Know The Part with The Character I Cant Say that guys i think the only time defeating an enemy Leaves A Corpse #ok actually thats a lie the Other Guy I Cant Say in The Chapter Before That also died like that and that was equally important #s also worth mentioning that said first guy can ? also die without leaving a corpse? just turn to ash??#depending on where u go with him. which is weird right. thats weird right.#maybe that just means (hey youre not supposed to feel bad about him dying this tiiiime)#anyway its 5 am ill post this in the morning #veespeaks

32 notes · View notes