The Phantom Spider, sitting perched on a building beneath the moonlight, glared forward at Fisk Tower in front of him. The building, despite the truth, looked desolate and abandoned. The windows were completely tinted, so it was impossible for anyone to see inside, even if he were to crawl up to them, he'd struggle to see through them. Even if he could see through the tint, climbing on the window wouldn't be very smart when it came to the whole stealth approach.
"Okay, Spider-Drone, time to make your debut." The blue and black-wearing spider whispered as he placed his school project on the ground. "So glad Harry let me have custody... Now, let's see what's inside, buddy." As Eren spoke to his drone as if it were a pet, he navigated it across the street, using his phone as a screen to see through the drone's eyes.
Eventually, the Spider-Drone found a vent to enter through. It unscrewed it from the wall before tossing the vent cover to the side. Turning on its cloaking device, the drone entered the building, crawling through the vents until it eventually made it all the way inside the building.
What Eren saw inside through the eyes of the Spider-Drone was astonishing. Inside, it appeared as a nightclub would, beaming with neon lights, drowning in loud music, and filled to the brim with what seemed like hundreds of Underground members. "Jesus..." The hero said to himself as he watched through the drone's feed. Even for him, there were way too many of them to take on at his current power level.
"Alright, Parker. Let's use your brain this time."
"A: I have no clue how many of these guys are armed. B: I have no clue what their weapons do, nor do I know how strong they are. If that fence that got melted was anything to go by, they're probably pretty powerful." As he thought to himself out loud, he could see a Roxxon truck pulling in behind the building.
"A Nuform shipment... So they store it here?"
"What if I can get to it? Would I power up like I did at Roxxon? It's risky, but if I could somehow sneak my way into wherever they're holding it, I could try it."
"Regardless, I need to stop these guys. They almost brought down that building and killed all of those people. I wish the Richards were answering my calls, but they probably have something important going on right now. It's just me this time."
Having a plan set in his head, the hero returned home with his drone and looked through his closet for clothes that matched the Underground's aesthetic. He wore black jeans with a black leather jacket and a purple t-shirt. Wanting to hide his identity, he wore a black hockey mask, matching the theme of the other masks that the Underground members wore.
With everything set, the hero once again returned to Fisk Tower and followed a group of gang members through a hidden entrance in the back. Since he looked the part, they didn't say anything to him as he took the elevator with them toward the top of the tower. Once they exited the elevator, they were met with a metal door.
*knock knock knock*
One of the Underground members knocked and a slot opened up at the center of the door. A masked Underground member peeked through, looking at all of the members before locking eyes with Eren. "You three, come in. You with the hockey mask, don't move."
'Fuck.' Eren cursed mentally, thinking his plan had already become a bust.
The three Underground members entered the base and the door shut once more. Looking through the slot, the guard questioned the undercover hero. "Who are you? I don't recognize you. I know every person that comes in and out of this building, even with their masks."
'Of course.' Eren muttered in his head in annoyance.
"Hello, I am here to join the Underground. I believe my intellect would prove to be rather useful to your leader." Eren said politely, not playing the role of a gang member very well.
The masked thug behind the door looked at the boy in bewilderment. He thought he was a total loser and a nerd based on the way he carried himself and spoke. Closing the slot, the guard called his boss and told them about the kid at the door and what he said. Given permission to let him in, the guard opened the door and invited Eren inside.
As soon as the door opened, EDM music blasted into the boy's eardrums. 'Ugh.' Eren groaned mentally, he hated EDM and raves in general, which was basically what Fisk's tower had become at that point. As he walked into the building, he wondered how the person in charge could have even afforded to buy and maintain the place, though his thoughts were interrupted by a different guard placing his hand on Eren's chest roughly.
"Hey, pal, not too fast. We're gonna take you to meet the boss. Follow me." To Eren's surprise, he would be meeting the boss much sooner than he'd thought. 'Well, this is gonna be easy. I should still be careful though.' He thought to himself as he walked behind two massive Underground guards.
Now that he was actually close to the underground members, he could tell that they were all mostly his age. Even the two massive guards had the demeanor of high schoolers, they were just large for their age. He wondered what it was that made his peers turn to a life of crime until he remembered the kid he had run into early that night.
Many of the kids that were there had never committed a crime in their lives, they just wanted to be a part of something cool. The Underground was more than a gang, it was like a social club. The base made it obvious with the many bars, activities scattered around it, and the loud music. 'Whoever is running this place is manipulating these kids...' The undercover hero said in his head, this fact angered him. 'I'm shutting this whole operation down. Tonight.'
Eren and his escorts eventually found themselves walking past a sort of combat training area of the facility. There were many different weapon types on display, many of which caught the hero's eye. One of the trainees, holding what appeared to be the handle of a sword with no blade, swung the hilt, causing the material to expand into a sword and destroy his target.
'What... That was hard as fuck.' Eren's nerd brain muttered from within him upon bearing witness to the advanced technology. He soon caught himself, realizing that this is exactly how the people his age were drawn it. Regardless, he was still curious about the weapon. "Um, excuse me." Eren said as he tapped the shoulder of one of the guards. "What's that?" He pointed toward the person using the retractable sword, making the guard scoff slightly.
"Programmable Matter. See those wristbands they're wearing?" Eren didn't think too much of it before, but each Underground member that was using a weapon had a glowing blue wristband on, the hue was of the same color as his Godspeed energy. 'Interesting, that must be because of the Nuform they stole.' The undercover hero thought to himself.
"I do. Is that Nuform?" He asked, despite knowing the answer already.
"Yup. Nuform coming in contact with Programmable Matter allows them to mold the weapon into whatever they choose. Bats, scythes, swords..."
"What about the guns?" Eren asked, remembering the gun that nearly melted him a few moments prior. He was confident that his suit from the Richards family would protect him from it, but he still wanted to know what they were firing.
"The guns shoot pure, focused Nuform energy or something like that. That stuff's too technical for me." The escort said plainly. "Enough talking, c'mon. We're almost there."
'Pure Nuform? If that's the case, my body would just absorb it since Godspeed is seemingly just me manipulating Nuform energy. I wonder if I could manipulate Godspeed in a way where I could replicate guns' blasts... A less lethal version, of course.' Eren deduced to himself as he continued following the guards through the facility.
Within just a couple of minutes of walking, the two guards and Eren Parker found themselves in front of Fisk's old office door. Eren's heart sank as the memories of that night began to flood into his brain.
His feelings of self-regret, disgust, rage, and sorrow all began to overwhelm him momentarily. He began having flashbacks of that night, remembering the many nightmares he's had, and how he would have done things differently. However, he immediately pushed his negative thoughts to the side.
The door opened and the guards shoved him into the room as if he were a piece of meat getting fed to a lion, or in this case, a lioness.
The leader of the Underground was a woman, wearing a black leather jacket with a purple sweater beneath it and black jeans. She wore a Programmable Matter mask on her face as she sat with her feet on top of a desk where the Kingpin's used to be. Looking at Eren through the reflection of the glass window, which had been repaired, the girl spoke. "What's up kid, I'm the Tinkerer and I run this place. What do you want, you don't seem like the type to want to join a gang based on what my men told me." She sounded young, likely around Eren's age.
"You're observant." Eren said. "You're right, I have no interest in joining gangs usually but I'm interested in joining for the purpose of learning more about this Nuform and Programmable Matter stuff. I know how to make things, I'm an engineering student so I can prove myself useful to you."
The girl turned her chair around, facing the boy. He could not see her face, but he could imagine the impressed look on her face due to her body language and tone of voice. "So you wanna be my engineer?" She asked him. She felt somewhat disrespected due to the fact that he thought it was okay to walk in uninvited, but his boldness intrigued her.
"Correct." The undercover hero lied.
"Interesting..." The girl whispered, contemplating whether or not she should let the boy into the gang or not. "What's your name?"
"Peter Morales." He lied with confidence.
"So Peter, you realize this gang is invite-only, right? Do you really think I would just let some random punk kid waltz on into my headquarters unannounced and join my gang?"
"Correct." He responded boldly.
There was a brief pause as the Underground leader stared at Eren from behind her metallic mask. She didn't trust him at all. If he didn't sound young, she'd have thought he was a cop of some sort. Regardless of her doubts, or perhaps because of her doubts, she instructed the two guards to take him down to the lab. "Take the new kid down to the lab." She spoke into a walkie-talkie, summoning her guards to enter the room and lead Eren away.
And so, the Tinkerer's men and the undercover Phantom Spider walked together into the deepest depths of Fisk Tower. As they walked, his spider-sense would begin to tingle, growing in intensity as the guards spoke to the Tinkerer through their coms. He was walking into a trap, or at least, that's what the guards thought. In reality, they would be the ones trapped with him as everything was going according to plan.
Eventually, they ended up finding themselves in a massive room filled with Nuform and Programmable Matter. The Nuform, still in its blue, liquid form, glowed brightly from within the large, room-sized glass tank that it was stored in.
Unlike what Eren had run into at Roxxon before, this was Nuform at its purest form. What he had absorbed before had Electro's energy interacting with it, which was part of the reason why his body rejected most of it, giving him an incomplete form of Godspeed.
He was astonished at the amount of Nuform that these guys were able to harvest in such a short amount of time, triggering him to ask more questions. "How'd you guys get all of this stuff?" He asked the two Underground thugs.
"Stole it. Once we started running out, Tinkerer learned how to copy the formula and make more." One of the Tinkerer's men lectured as he approached a wall with many different Programmable Matter weapons and armor. "Boss doesn't trust you, kid." He told the undercover hero, looking back at him as he lightly placed his hand on the Nuform glass.
"I figured." The hero said with his hand still on the glass. He looked over at the two guards as they pointed two Nuform rifles at the boy, ready to end his life and melt him to nothingness.
"Sorry kid, be grateful I let you see what you wanted to see before your demise." The Tinkerer's voice said through an intercom in the room. "Finish him and clean him up, boys. Once you're done, find whoever he followed in here and bring them to me so I can discipline them."
Eren smiled, though this grin was hidden beneath his hockey mask. This was all going according to plan nearly perfectly. He didn't expect them to try and kill him, but he knew that even if they tried to, their guns had a high chance of not working on him due to his suit. Having spoken to them about their rifles, he was then certain they'd do nothing to him due to his Godspeed energy.
Now, all that was left of his plan was to try and absorb the Nuform. He'd hoped he would transform again when he came into contact with the liquid, but even if he didn't, the power in the building would be shut down. Even in his base form, he could take down the Underground members one by one by using the darkness to his advantage,
"No, I'm sorry. I'm shutting the place down." As those words left Eren's mouth, the liquid Nuform within the tank began to flicker, as well as the lights and the Nuform wristbands around the guards' wrists. The lights and the music within the entire facility began to cut in and out as well.
"It was pretty stupid for you guys to power the entire building with Nuform and no backup." The boy said frankly as his hair and clothes began to defy gravity and float upward as if a light breeze was blowing from beneath him.
The Underground members were spooked, looking at the boy as if he were a monster. They began firing their Nuform rifles at the boy's body, though they did nothing but melt the disguise off of his body, revealing his new black and blue costume, along with the spider symbol that he added to it on his chest. Seeing his signature symbol immediately instilled fear into the Underground members. "It's-" One of the guards tried to speak, but his fear froze his lips.
"The Phantom Spider..." The other guard spoke, in disbelief that the notorious vigilante was right before them.
The lights in the room shut off, only being illuminated by the pure Nuform in the massive tank and the Phantom Spider's glowing silver hair. From beneath his hockey mask, they could see his now deep, glowing, ocean-blue eyes glaring at them.
Soon, the Nuform had been completely drained and the room, along with the rest of the building, had become completely dark. The only things visible were the Phantom Spider's glowing silver locs, his shining blue eyes, and the bright blue aura surrounding his body.
The guards were still frozen with fear, being able to feel the heat resonating off of the boy's body due to his aura.
The Phantom Spider then removed his hockey mask, his face still being hidden by the darkness, and replaced it with his all-black Phantom Spider mask, completing his transformation.
This form, though it looked similar to the one he had achieved at Roxxon, was not the same. He couldn't tell its limitations just yet, but he could tell that he could not move as fast as he did at Roxxon. He would have to get used to the power and train it before he could achieve that, however, his body was not rejecting it this time.
Before, he felt as if his body were about to burst due to the overwhelming amount of energy that was coursing through him.
This time, however, that was not the case. He felt no pain at all.
He felt incredible, fantastic even.
He felt weightless.
He felt like pure energy.
The old version, the one that nearly made his body explode, was dubbed Volatile Godspeed by the boy in the past, but this new version is something much different.
This is Ultimate Godspeed.