Spider-Man Mayhem-Chapter 426: Against the Sentinels (8)

[Third Person Pov]

As Peter was being choked, he surrendered to his instincts. It was only natural. His instincts, his danger sense, had always kept him alive when logic failed and strength wasn’t enough. They were older than thought, older than fear, something buried deep in his spine and woven into his nerves. They did not hesitate. They did not question. They simply acted.

His fingers shot up and clamped around the Sentinel’s wrist.

The machine did not react immediately. Its grip only tightened, cold metal fingers digging deeper into his throat, compressing his airway, crushing cartilage. His vision began to tunnel, black creeping inward from the edges. The Sentinel’s other hand moved with mechanical precision, its palm glowing as internal capacitors charged for a point-blank discharge meant to end him permanently.

Peter didn’t resist the way he normally would. He didn’t thrash or claw uselessly at its arm.

Instead, he let his hand sink forward.

The Sentinel’s hand passed straight through his chest.

The sensation was indescribable. There was no pain in the traditional sense, not at first. It was pressure, intrusion, violation. Cold artificial matter phased through living flesh, occupying the same space without resistance. His lungs spasmed reflexively, and he choked, a wet, strangled sound escaping his throat. Shouts echoed around him—Gwen’s voice, others—but they sounded distant, muffled, like they were underwater.

He ignored them.

He focused inward.

He could feel it.

The Sentinel wasn’t just metal. It was alive in its own way. Beneath its armored shell ran a nervous system of circuits and current, artificial synapses firing in perfect order. Electricity surged behind his fingers, immense and violent, enough energy to power cities. He could feel its rhythm, its flow, its structure.

And instead of letting it go—

He took it.

The moment he made the decision, something inside him shifted.

The electricity didn’t explode outward.

It flowed inward.

Peter inhaled sharply as the current surged into him, pouring through his fingers, racing along pathways his body instinctively reshaped to accommodate it. It was like swallowing lightning. His muscles spasmed violently, his spine arching as power flooded his system, but he did not let go. He held tighter.

He fed.

The Sentinel reacted immediately. Its head snapped downward, its glowing optics flickering erratically. Its grip faltered. Internal systems destabilized as power was ripped from its core faster than it could regulate. Its arm twitched, servos stuttering as command signals failed.

With a heavy crash, the Sentinel dropped to one knee.

Peter tore his hand free and, without hesitation, grabbed the machine’s wrist with both hands. He twisted sharply, muscles reinforced by fresh bio-electric energy, and ripped the arm clean off. Metal screamed as it tore apart. He tossed the severed limb aside like it weighed nothing, while his wounds actively healed.

The Sentinel remained kneeling, its systems collapsing into shutdown.

Peter stood over it, chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths.

’My counterattack starts now,’ he thought. Beneath his mask, his lips curled into something unhinged. Blood coated his teeth, warm and metallic on his tongue, but he barely noticed.

The electricity he had absorbed did not remain raw energy. His body converted it instinctively, transforming it into something uniquely his own. Bio-electricity. It flowed through him like liquid fire, reinforcing muscle fibers, strengthening bones, sharpening neural signals.

But Peter didn’t stop at strengthening his body. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

He directed it.

He guided the energy deliberately, forcing it deeper, into places most people would never dare touch. He sent it into his nervous system, into the delicate lattice of neurons that governed perception and reaction. He forced it up his spine and into his brain.

The world changed instantly.

Everything slowed.

It wasn’t true time manipulation, not really. Time itself continued forward, indifferent as always. But Peter’s brain accelerated so far beyond normal limits that the world could no longer keep up.

Color dulled, sound stretched into long, distorted echoes, dust hung motionless in the air, even the flickering sparks of damaged machinery seemed frozen.

His eyes shimmered faintly with contained energy as his perception expanded. Every detail sharpened to impossible clarity. He could see the minute tremors in the Sentinel’s damaged frame. He could see MJ’s hair suspended mid-motion, individual strands perfectly visible. He could see the expansion and contraction of air as heat displaced it.

Chi, in its most basic application, enhanced the body. It strengthened muscles. Reinforced durability. Accelerated movement.

Peter had taken that principle and pushed it far beyond its intended limits.

He wasn’t just strengthening his body.

He was strengthening his perception.

Strengthening his processing.

Strengthening himself.

He forced the energy through his optic nerves, enhancing visual input. Through his auditory cortex, filtering sound. Through every neural pathway that defined his existence.

It was dangerous.

Catastrophically dangerous.

The Ancient One would have called it forbidden without hesitation. A technique that violated the natural limits of the human body. One mistake, one miscalculation, and his nervous system could burn itself out. Permanent paralysis would be the best outcome. Death would be more likely.

But Peter wasn’t like most people.

His danger sense guided him constantly, making microscopic adjustments without conscious thought. It prevented overload. Prevented imbalance. Prevented catastrophe.

It let him walk the edge safely.

His veins lit up faintly beneath his suit, bio-electric energy tracing glowing lines along his arms, his chest, his neck.

And then he moved.

To Peter, it felt like a normal step forward.

To the rest of the world, he vanished.

He crossed the distance to the kneeling Sentinel instantly. From his back, constructs of pure chi manifested—four elongated spider-legs formed from condensed energy, sharp and precise. They extended outward, moving as naturally as his real limbs.

He struck once.

The Sentinel came apart. Not shattered. Not broken.

Dismantled.

Its torso separated cleanly. Its head fell away. Its limbs detached in perfect cuts. Each strike had been placed with impossible precision, severing critical connection points.

Peter stopped, staring down at the remains.

Even he was surprised.

’This is awesome...’ His thoughts raced, faster than ever before.

’I should name this technique... Bullet Time? No... too cliché... Spider Time? That’s even worse...’

He paused briefly, ’...The Zone.’

Even as he thought it, he was already moving again.

Another Sentinel had Gwen pinned beneath it, its arm raised for a finishing blow. Peter reached it in less than a heartbeat.

His constructs struck.

The machine came apart instantly.

Gwen hadn’t even seen him move.

Peter didn’t stop.

He moved from one Sentinel to the next, dismantling each one with surgical precision. To him, their attacks were unbearably slow. He stepped around energy blasts before they fully formed. He watched mechanical limbs crawl through the air at a snail’s pace.

He was untouchable.

’Fast,’ he thought. ’I’m moving so fast.’

Then another thought intruded. ’Wait... what have I been doing wrong this whole time?’

He had always enhanced himself broadly. Increased strength. Increased speed. Increased durability. But that was inefficient.

Crude.

Now he understood.

Precision mattered.

He turned his focus inward again, he guided the energy into his heart, it responded instantly, beating faster, stronger. Each contraction pushed enriched blood through his body more efficiently.

His lungs adapted next, optimizing oxygen intake, minimizing wasted motion. His muscles followed, tightening and releasing with perfect efficiency.

He refined himself.

Optimized himself.

His speed increased again.

The air resisted him, but his aura of chi cut through it effortlessly, parting wind like a blade. He existed in constant motion, each step flowing into the next without resistance.

His heart thundered in his chest like a war drum. His muscles coiled and released like steel cables. His brain processed information faster than any human mind was ever meant to.

A laugh bubbled up from his chest.

It started small, barely audible.

But it grew.

And grew.

Until it became impossible to contain.

Everyone was rooted in place, not by fear alone, but by pure inability to comprehend what they were seeing.

Their eyes could not track him, their brains could not process him.

All they could perceive was a streak of blue light tearing through the battlefield in chaotic, impossible patterns. It curved, zigzagged, vanished, reappeared, and vanished again, leaving behind nothing but displaced air and ruined metal. It didn’t move like a person. It moved like a force of nature. Like lightning trapped in a cage of flesh.

The Sentinels were being destroyed, their bodies ruptured under forces they couldn’t measure. Limbs tore free from torsos before their systems registered the damage. Heads separated cleanly from shoulders. Armor plates split apart at their seams as if carefully unstitched by invisible hands. Internal circuitry spilled outward in showers of sparks, glowing wires hanging loose like severed nerves.

They were being hunted.

One moment they stood operational, weapons charged and scanning.

The next, they were falling apart.

All the while, laughter echoed across the battlefield. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Hahahahaha!!" The sound stretched and warped, distorted by the speed at which it traveled. It appeared beside them, then behind them, then above them, overlapping itself in layers that made it impossible to pinpoint.

"I’m going so fast!!"

Another Sentinel collapsed in pieces.

"This is amazing!!"

A second lost both arms in the same instant.

"I’m in the fucking zone right now!!" The laughter was manic. Exhilarated. Unrestrained.

Not the laughter of someone fighting to survive.

The laughter of someone enjoying it.

The Sentinels adapted. Adaptation was their purpose. Their core directive. They were not merely weapons of conquest and battle. They were machines designed to evolve in response to threats. To overcome resistance. To survive.

Their systems processed millions of calculations per second, analyzing Peter’s movements, attempting to predict trajectories, attack vectors, vulnerabilities.

Their collective processing converged on a single question: How do you survive against something that can kill you faster than you can perceive?

The answer they produced was simple: You don’t.

You escape it.

Teleportation was born from their adaptation, activating across multiple Sentinels simultaneously. Their bodies shimmered faintly as spatial displacement fields formed around them. They began to withdraw, abandoning offensive protocols in favor of survival.

They disappeared with sharp, abrupt pops, vanishing from the battlefield like ghosts pulled into nothingness.

"Hahaha!!"

Peter’s laughter continued, unbroken.

"My heart is beating so fast I can feel the blood rushing into my ears!!" He darted forward again, only to find empty space where his next target had been.

"What a thrill!!"

"I don’t think I can stop!! Hahaha!!"

His heart hammered violently against his ribs, each beat flooding his body with enriched blood and amplified sensation. His breathing was rapid but efficient, optimized by the chi reinforcing his lungs. Every nerve ending in his body burned with heightened awareness.

Behind him, Gwen slowly pushed herself upright.

Her arm, previously mangled, was already repairing itself. Threads of organic webbing tightened around the wound, pulling flesh together as her healing factor worked overtime. But her attention wasn’t on herself.

It was on him.

’Pete...?’ she thought, worry crept into her chest.

This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t just Peter fighting harder. Something was clearly wrong or at least to her.

Peter, lost in the Zone, didn’t realize the full consequences of what he was doing. By enhancing his organs directly, he wasn’t just improving performance. He was altering their fundamental operation.

His heart pumped harder, faster, increasing blood pressure beyond safe limits. His adrenal glands flooded his bloodstream with hormones, pushing him into a sustained state of extreme stimulation.

His brain, enhanced by bio-electric current, released massive quantities of dopamine, rewarding him for every action, every movement, every success.

He wasn’t just empowered.

He was becoming addicted.

Addicted to the speed.

Addicted to the clarity.

Addicted to the feeling of being untouchable.

But those same enhancements granted him something else.

His bio-electricity and his danger sense worked together, forming a feedback loop of information. He could feel electrical signals beyond his own body. Tiny impulses radiating from every living brain nearby.

Thoughts.

Intentions.

Fear.

They appeared to him as patterns. Signals. He couldn’t hear them as words, but he understood them instinctively. He knew what they were thinking before they acted.

He knew everything.

He turned his head slowly, Larry Trask stood in the distance.

Peter stepped forward. To him, it was a simple walk.

To everyone else—He vanished.

Larry blinked.

And Peter was standing directly in front of him. The sudden displacement of air created a violent gust that nearly knocked Larry off his feet. Papers flew. Dust scattered outward in a circular shockwave.

Larry froze.

Peter tilted his head slightly, studying him. Then he reached forward, his fingers poked into Larry’s torso. Once. Twice. Three times.

Each movement was precise, controlled, deliberate. His fingers pressed into specific nerve clusters, disrupting electrical signals traveling through Larry’s nervous system.

To Peter, it took less than a second.

To Larry—It felt like being stabbed repeatedly by invisible blades.

Pain exploded through his body. His muscles seized instantly, locking in place. His nervous system short-circuited, signals interrupted and scrambled.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe properly, his legs gave out beneath him.

He collapsed and Peter withdrew his hand calmly, watching him fall.

"Well," Peter said casually, looking down at the paralyzed scientist, "that was easy."

’We almost died!! That was in no way easy you monster!’ They all thought bitterly.

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