A large bolt of electricity shone upward into the night sky before the electric man, using his electrokinesis, crashed through the billboard once again and began hovering above the hero who was now standing on the same roof with his hands in fists. The electric man raised an eyebrow before speaking confidently to the boy beneath him. "So you got electricity in you too huh?" The man then flourished his arms, making himself glow brighter with seemingly infinite energy. "Too bad yours is weak, that kick barely even tickled. Watch this."
The man extended his hand forward, discharging a bolt of electricity at light speed. Though the Phantom Spider had heightened senses, he wasn't prepared for such speed, as he'd never encountered something so fast.
The bolt hit the boy in the chest, causing him to fly backward and crash into a water tower behind him. As water poured all over his body, the electric man taunted the now drenched spider. "Awe, look at the itsy bitsy spider." He laughed. "And that was only about ten percent of my power, run along boy, this has got nothing to do with you."
The Phantom Spider, unwilling to give up, stood back up on his feet as his body and the electrified water around him reacted with one another. "Who the hell are you?" The new hero angrily muttered, still feeling the pain from the bald man's last attack.
The man, almost as if he were offended that his name wasn't known, put his hand on his chest. "Me? Well, I'm the one and only Electro, the new god of this world, and don't you forget it." The man responded in a high and mighty tone, matching perfectly with his god complex. "Once I find where they're hiding the good stuff, I'll be able to rid myself of this mortal body and truly take the form of a god!"
Eren started to laugh. Not because anything that Electro said was funny to him, or at least, not entirely, but because of how ridiculous the entire situation was. 'What kind of stupid ass name is that?' He thought to himself. The boy looked up at Electro with his hand still on his abdomen before saying his first official quip as a hero.
"Electro? What, was 'The Shocker' already taken?" The boy laughed a little, though Electro wasn't having it. Eren would rarely say jokes or laugh during a serious moment like that, but he was nervous. When he was nervous, he'd often say the first thing that came to mind or something stupid to calm himself down. It worked that time, though Electro was pissed.
Electro's face immediately scrunched up and his body began to illuminate brighter than it ever had. 'Someone has thin skin.' Eren thought to himself as Electro continued to charge up and levitate higher.
"You think I'm some kind of joke kid?" Electro's confident tone switched to a more menacing one as he spoke with malevolence. "I'll give you something to laugh at!"
He rose higher in the air and his eyes shone a bright white. He then hurled an electric bolt at Eren, though this time, he was ready. The hero dodged it at the last possible moment and shot a web toward Electro. Electro dodged the web and sent another bolt flying toward the newbie hero. One after another, Electro sent bolts of electricity toward the spider, each one barely missing him by millimeters. At the same time, Eren tried to land a web on Electro, but they all missed.
After throwing a couple of dozen bolts of electricity, Electro realized he was running low on fuel. He flew toward an electric billboard that said 'ROXXON' on it before draining the electricity from it with both hands. His body began to glow brightly once more, showing that he was close to becoming pure energy.
'So he has to recharge, huh?' The spider thought to himself before stupidly leaping at the man while he thought he was distracted.
"You bozo, you think I can't attack while I juice up?" Electro used his other hand to send a massive bolt of electricity at the hero, which then sent him flying toward the futuristic-looking laboratory known as the Roxxon building. The force of his fall caused him to break through an exterior wall and then through multiple floors in the building into a massive storage room of Nuform, a type of renewable energy that the Roxxon corporation invented, though it was still under its testing phases.
Humbled and with a piece of metal piercing through his chest, the Phantom Spider was lying on his back, looking up at the electric villain as he descended down to him. "I gave you a chance, kid. I won't let you get in my way of becoming pure!." Electro laughed as he charged an insane amount of electricity in his body by using some of the Nuform surrounding him. The veins in his body began to glow as he gathered more and more to charge his attack.
He began to become intoxicated by the energy, laughing manically before speaking to his next victim. "Since you're kinda like me, I'll add a little more juice with this one!" Eventually, his body reached as much as it could handle and he released it all onto the boy's body.
"AAAAAAAAAH!" Eren screamed in pain as every single inch of his skin began to feel as if it were ready to peel off. His costume, though newly upgraded with his symbol, was not made to withstand this much energy so it began to rip apart.
"Aa-Aa-Aa-Aa-" Eren's voice began to cut in and out as if he were a glitching computer. As the boy glitched, a glowing blue light began to form from his mouth and the veins in his skin began to glow blue as well.
"What the hell?" Electro was confused due to the odd display in front of him. His attack had caused the entire room, filled with Nuform, to react with the Phantom Spider's body, forcing an insurmountable amount of energy into his body. "Why the hell aren't you burnt to a crisp right now!?"
Eren's body vibrated faster and faster by the second. His limbs and his chest begin to glow brightly, taking on a new neon blue color momentarily. The ground beneath Eren also began to glow, as well as the machines around the room. Electro's body shivers as he can feel overwhelming amounts of energy growing around him.
'The kid is gonna explode!' He thought to himself fearfully as the boy continued to convulse beneath him. Although he sought to become pure energy, this was too much for him to handle mentally. He was overwhelmed with the fear of the unknown. As if his body had a mind of its own, Electro flew away to a safe distance before stopping to turn around and look at the Roxxon building.
As if a massive bomb went off, the entire Roxxon building erupted, destroying the nearby buildings and seemingly killing hundreds of residents and scientists who were either near the building or inside of it.
The explosion was so large, that it was visible throughout the entire city of New York as a bright blue beam shone seemingly infinitely toward the heavens. Once the explosion was done, all that was left where the Roxxon building used to be was a massive crater. "Christ..." Electro whispered to himself upon seeing the destruction he had inadvertently caused. He didn't care about the lives lost, he was just shaken up by the scale of it.
After staring at the wreckage for a few seconds, he turned around to see that the park beneath him was completely filled with people and scientists. There were hundreds of them, all standing in one large group while looking around and feeling themselves as if they had no clue where they were.
"The hell?" Electro thought to himself, unaware at the amazing feat that had happened within the span of a few seconds.
__________
(Seconds prior.)
The Phantom Spider's body exploded, ripping his costume to shreds as blue electricity expelled from his body. Though it felt like he had been unconscious for hours, the boy leaned up to see that he was still at the center of the explosion as it was going off.
Everything around him had nearly paused as if he had frozen time itself. He looked down at his body to see that he was now surrounded by a blue aura of electricity. He failed to notice for himself, but his eyes' irises had become a bright, neon blue and his hair had become white as snow.
He looked to his left, noticing a scientist frozen in time, nearly getting hit by a piece of the explosion's debris that was frozen in front of her. Without a second thought, the hero sprinted over to the woman, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her out of the building, and taking her to a park that was a safe distance away.
From the park, he could see the bright blue beam that shone up to the heavens as if he wasn't the one who had caused it literal milliseconds prior.
Still, without a single thought in his head, the boy sprinted back inside of the frozen, exploding building before searching it up and down for anyone who was inside. One by one, sometimes taking two at once, the boy carried each and every last scientist out of the building until there were none left inside.
Though it seemed like minutes had passed for him, not even a second had passed in reality. After double-checking the facility, the boy noticed that many of the nearby buildings were in danger of the possible blast radius.
Still, within the same nano-second in time, the Phantom Spider sprinted through the many apartment buildings, restaurants, and stores that surrounded the Roxxon facility and took each and every resident to the same park until everyone was safe, he even had enough time to triple check.
The energy flowing through him, though great, was not Eren's to hold just yet. His body was becoming overwhelmed by it, he needed to release it soon or else his body would explode and possibly nuke the entire area. Not knowing what else to do, he did the one thing his brain told him to do.
He ran.
Now back in real-time, the building exploded, taking all of the nearby buildings down with it The residents and scientists in the park, who the Phantom Spider had saved, all looked around at each other with various expressions of wonder. They had no clue how they got out there, all they knew was that they were in one place a moment prior, and now they were safe from the explosion that they were able to witness in front of them.
The Phantom Spider, now across the entire city, began slowing down as the new blue energy began to leave his body. Eventually, he slowed down to the point where he was nothing more than a boy, wearing tattered clothes, and running barefoot through the streets of New York.
Eventually, he had overexerted himself, though the energy within him that could have caused him to erupt had been successfully expelled. Knowing he was about to collapse, the boy passed out in a random alleyway, away from everyone else, and fell unconscious.
____________
"Paaaarkeeeer!" A deep, demonic, and gravelly voice spoke to the young man as images flashed through his mind. He was dreaming of something, yet he was fully aware of this dream as if he were watching a movie.
"Paaaarrkeeeeeer!" That same voice, filled with malice spoke to the boy as images of a destroyed New York amongst other things rapidly played through Eren's brain like film.
"Eren!" Cindy's voice called out to him. "Please, don't! You promised!"
'What? Don't what?' Eren's inner voice asked as random images flashed by, so fast that he couldn't even process them.
"Eren, I'm sorry." Harry's voice spoke solemnly. "This is how it has to be, we knew it would come to this."
'How what has to be!?' Eren called out, unable to fully comprehend a single thing he was seeing or hearing.
"It's all your fault!" A voice that sounded similar to his, though slightly older, scolded him. "It's all your fault. You're useless. You're a coward."
'Is that... Me?' Eren thought to himself before the dream showed him one final scene.
Eren was seen standing in the center of a destroyed New York as hundreds of dead bodies surrounded him. Something was off about his own appearance, though he couldn't tell what it was until the vision got closer to his body.
For just the smallest moment, he saw himself, though he was unrecognizable. He was older, maybe by about two or three years and his hair was the deepest black that he had ever seen. He had an aura around his body, though, unlike the one that covered him before, this one was white with a deep black outline around it, matching his hair. The expression on his face looked inhuman as if he were nothing more than a machine. His future self glanced up at him with a freakishly fast head turn before his future self's body was engulfed in black.
"Hah!" Eren woke up, out of breath, to find himself lying on a sofa inside of a random penthouse. It looked expensive, as there were multiple grandiloquent vases and cat statues scattered around the room. His wound from the piece of metal that impaled him had been cleaned at stitched together, though most of his clothes were nowhere to be found.
The boy sat up, looking around the room until he noticed a woman wearing an all-black, skin-tight outfit that showed off the shape of her perfect body. Her hair was silver and she wore a black mask on her face. She took a sip from a glass of milk in her hand as she sat on a chair with her legs crossed, looking over at the young man lustfully.
With the voice of a seductress, she spoke to the hero.
"Good Morning, Spider."