“Yes.”
Gwen detached herself from the ceiling, crawled under her bed, and pulled out a black sports bag.
Inside was the familiar Spider-Gwen suit.
“Do I need to submit a résumé? I have no idea how to join a superhero team.”
“You have spider powers? That’s amazing!” Penny finally snapped out of her daze.
“You can do more than just stick to walls, right? Super strength? Agility? Do you have spider-sense? Maybe some other abilities?”
“Yes, yes, yes, and no,” Gwen replied, slightly overwhelmed by Penny’s sudden enthusiasm.
Until now, Parker had been fairly reserved.
While the two girls compared their abilities, I started thinking.
Gwen having powers changed quite a lot.
Having a second Spider-Girl could make our team considerably more formidable.
And considering what we were going to be dealing with, having another capable fighter certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Part of me was still worried about her safety, but I no longer had any objective reason to refuse.
Sure, I could insist that she was inexperienced and try to force her to stay somewhere safe, but I didn’t need to be a genius to realize she would simply ignore me and go after the Lizard herself.
We might as well go together from the start.
“Ladies, I’m very happy you found each other, but we need to hurry. Giant lizards aren’t going to wait for us.”
I interrupted their discussion, although I was probably saving Stacy from being overwhelmed by Parker’s scientific enthusiasm.
It wasn’t often that Penny got this excited.
“We don’t know where she is,” Penny said, finally pulling herself away from Gwen.
“But we can make a pretty good guess where she’ll show up.”
I had been thinking about something while you two were working on the antidote.
The Lizard said her goal was to turn everyone into creatures like herself, but she’s not going to run around the city injecting every random person she finds, right?”
I picked up the laptop someone had left in the chair and turned the screen toward the girls.
“This is the Ganali device. Oscorp developed it. If the serum is loaded into it, the machine can release a cloud capable of covering the entire city.”
“They never used it because they were afraid it could be turned into a weapon. But there’s no information saying it was ever destroyed, so it probably still exists somewhere inside Oscorp.”
The girls leaned over the screen and began reading the article.
As they went through it, Gwen’s expression grew increasingly grim.
Penny’s face was probably no different.
I couldn’t blame them.
This device had practically been designed to turn an already difficult situation into an outright catastrophe.
I remembered it from the Andrew Garfield movies.
There was no guarantee it existed in this world, but I figured it was worth checking.
There was even a chance the device existed without any information about it being available online.
Fortunately, I got lucky.
Oscorp had publicly demonstrated the machine, after which various human rights groups had torn the company apart over the potential dangers of the technology.
“We need to hurry. If Dr. Connors gets that machine, the consequences will be terrible.”
Gwen already looked ready to rush straight to Oscorp Tower.
“Damn it, we wasted too much time making the antidote. What if she’s already there?”
“Slow down. We still need syringes.”
I stopped her before she could run off.
“You also need to change. And, Spider, I think we should give Gwen a pair of web-shooters.”
Parker simply nodded at my suggestion.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any with us.
I really needed to get into the habit of carrying a spare pair.
Penny had working prototypes back at her place.
“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll get the web-shooters since I can get there faster. You two go get the syringes, and Gwen can change. Do you have enough money for them?”
“Yes.”
Stacy pulled her wallet from her jeans and counted the bills inside.
After that, we moved as quickly as possible.
There was no guarantee the Lizard would even appear today, and she probably didn’t have all the ingredients needed to make the serum yet.
Still, we agreed that it was better to run around for nothing than to be careless and end up dealing with an invasion of dinosaurs.
With my powers, getting to Penny’s house for the web-shooters was trivial.
While I was gone, Gwen, still in her civilian clothes, ran to the pharmacy for syringes.
Once she had changed, I teleported the three of us out of the apartment, and Stacy received a quick lesson on how to use the web-shooters.
She picked it up surprisingly quickly.
She was still nowhere near Parker’s level, but she was doing quite well.
Gwen was clearly thrilled with her new gift.
If the situation hadn’t been so serious, I was pretty sure she would have happily spent the afternoon swinging through the city.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time for that.
A short training session would have to do.
We were still too late.
Unlike the two poor women at the university, she was now facing a much larger, professional security force that was simply better armed.
Unfortunately for them, it didn’t make much difference.
The Lizard’s regeneration nullified their attempts to shoot her, and ordinary people had little else they could use against her besides firearms.
Still, they were keeping her trapped in the lobby, which worked in our favor.
She hadn’t reached the Ganali device yet.
That made our job considerably easier and, at least somewhat, reassuring.
I tried to finish things with a single strike.
I teleported behind the Lizard and almost immediately took a tail to the face.
What the hell was that reaction speed?
Did she have spider-sense too?
“Oh, what a pleasant surprise, boy. Come back to ruin my plans again?”
Connors was clearly angry with me.
The growling undertones in her voice made that obvious.
I didn’t have time to answer.
Penny and Gwen jumped into action, trying to wrap the Lizard in webbing.
I supported their attack, but it accomplished almost nothing.
Connors tore through the webs with astonishing ease.
Abandoning the pointless attempt, I teleported behind her again.
Connors spun around with surprising speed and tried to impale me with her claws.
I was already gone.
Penny reacted immediately and slammed both feet into the side of the Lizard’s head.
Gwen wasn’t about to stand around either.
She kicked our now-dazed opponent behind the knee.
Connors roared furiously, looking more and more like an actual dinosaur as she wildly swung her claws, desperately trying to hit any one of us.
She couldn’t.
The girls were too agile to get caught, while I was perfectly capable of keeping my distance.
“Come on, good little lizard. Let us give you a tiny injection. You’ll feel much better afterward,” Penny taunted.
“Shut up!”
The Lizard roared and hurled the reception desk at her.
Penny easily dodged it.
“How can you not understand that you’re standing in the way of creating a new, better world?”
“I prefer a world where I don’t have extra scales, thanks,” Gwen replied.
“And here I thought the whole reptilian conspiracy thing was nonsense. Turns out they’re actually building a new world.”
I joined in, unable to resist.
Connors apparently realized that none of us were particularly impressed by the grandeur of her ideas.
She charged at Gwen again.
Stacy quickly jumped aside, and the reception desk came flying into the Lizard’s back.
Penny had kindly returned it.
The situation had become a complete stalemate.
The Lizard couldn’t reach us because we were fast enough to break away whenever necessary.
The girls could also easily retreat to the ceiling, putting themselves completely out of her reach.
But we didn’t really have anything that could seriously hurt Connors either.
She tore through the webs without difficulty, while my stun devices could hurt her, but weren’t powerful enough to inflict any meaningful damage.
The surviving Oscorp employees weren’t rushing to help us.
Instead, they had taken positions near the elevators and stairwells to prevent the Lizard from getting any farther if we lost.
And there was still no sign of the police.
Had they not called them?
Interesting.
At least they weren’t shooting at us.
That was something.
I took a moment to teleport the injured employees over to their colleagues.
The three of us were working surprisingly well together.
We weren’t pulling off any spectacular combinations, but we didn’t get in each other’s way, and our attacks complemented one another nicely.
I had a feeling that if we worked together for long enough, we’d become an excellent team.
This had turned into a battle of attrition, and I seriously doubted the Lizard would tire before we did.
On top of that, she wasn’t holding back at all.
She was clearly trying to kill us.
We couldn’t afford the same luxury.
Not that we had anything capable of killing her anyway.
All we had to do was keep her occupied long enough to inject the antidote.
While Connors was distracted by Gwen, I teleported over to Penny and whispered a few words to her.
She nodded, agreeing to my idea.
Everything looked like a repeat of our first combination.
I “jumped” behind Connors and drew her attention toward me.
Parker continued hammering the Lizard in the face, while Gwen, who hadn’t been told about my plan, still did her part perfectly and slammed both feet into Connors’s back.
The two impacts made the Lizard stagger noticeably, but she remained standing.
Penny didn’t hesitate.
She fired webs at both of Connors’s legs and yanked hard.
The Lizard fell.
That was exactly what we’d been waiting for.
Parker quickly crushed the web-shooters in her hands, the ones I had given her, and tossed them toward our fallen opponent’s hands.
With nothing else holding the webbing back, it expanded and firmly glued the Lizard’s hands to the floor.
Gwen apparently realized what we were doing and fired her own web-shooters at Connors’s legs.
She would break free eventually.
It was only a matter of time.
This was essentially an all-or-nothing gamble.
If the plan failed, our situation would become much worse.
But I genuinely couldn’t see another way out.
We had to take the risk.
I teleported onto Connors’s back.
I managed to inject the antidote before her tail sent me flying.
Fortunately, the blow wasn’t particularly powerful.
I’d probably have a couple of bruises and scratches, but nothing serious.
“Raven!”
Both girls shouted my name anxiously.
“I’m fine.”
I confirmed it by getting back on my feet.
The Lizard managed to break free in the meantime, even angrier than before.
But it was already over.
The antidote worked quickly.
Connors began shrinking rapidly, transforming back into a human.
I waited until she had become human enough that she was no longer a threat, but not enough for anyone to recognize her.
Then I teleported over to her and transported us to the nearest rooftop.
Just to be safe, I immediately put some distance between us.
It turned out I didn’t need to.
Almost immediately after I stepped away from her, the woman lost consciousness and collapsed onto the roof.
I let out a breath.
That had been difficult.
Very difficult.
I’d say we had come dangerously close to disaster, but we pulled it off, and that’s what mattered.
There was still a lot we needed to work on.
But for now, why not simply enjoy the victory?
From the outside, I probably looked pretty ridiculous.
I was standing on a rooftop, contemplating the finer points of superhero work, while a naked unconscious woman lay nearby.
“Dr. Connors.”
The girls finally reached the rooftop, and Gwen immediately rushed over to check on her mentor.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Penny approached me.
“Absolutely.”
I gave her a reassuring nod.
Parker was about to say something else when we were suddenly hit by a black-and-white missile.
Gwen wrapped both of us in a crushing hug.
“Thank you. Both of you.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Hey, it’s okay.”
I gently patted Stacy on the shoulder.
We still had a little work to do.
We needed to get Connors somewhere safe and find out what had happened to her partner, Roxy.
But overall, the “Lizard” mission could be considered a success.