Ultra Responsibility (My Hero Academia X Spider-Man Reader)

Issue 86 - Heroes Rising Part 6

I should have stayed down.

Any sane person would have.

Abomination was already on me the second the words left his mouth, and the difference between us felt even worse this time. Before, I'd had a full body, a full tank, and the lie that maybe I could brute force my way through him.

Now?

Now I was running on spit, blood, and the world's angriest life support system.

I threw myself forward anyway.

He caught my punch with one hand.

One hand.

His grin widened. "Still trying?"

I twisted, fired a web to his shoulder, yanked myself around him and drove my knee into his side. It barely moved him. A second later his elbow came across my back and I hit the floor face first so hard my teeth clicked together.

The suit reacted instantly, black tendrils rushing over the damage, stitching, bracing, holding, but I could feel the truth under it.

It was tired.

I was tired.

We were both past tired.

I forced myself up with my one arm, breathing in ragged pulls. My missing arm was still just an ache and a phantom shape in my head, the suit clinging over the stump like it was too ashamed to show the rest of the world.

Abomination looked me over and actually sighed.

"You are not worth my time," he said. "A hero in costume. In words. In posturing. But not in action."

Then he turned his back on me.

Just like that.

Like I wasn't even worth finishing.

He started toward the factory floor where the residents were still trying to run, herd children, drag supplies, anything to get clear. The people inside saw him coming and panic spread through them in a wave. Kids started crying. Adults shouted for everyone to move.

And then I heard it.

"Spider-Man!"

A child's voice.

Small. Cracking. Desperate.

"Please!"

My knees buckled under me. I hit the floor again, hard, and my mask peeled back halfway on its own, the black suit shivering over my face like it couldn't decide whether to protect me or abandon me.

I stared through the blur at Abomination's back and whispered, "I can't..."

The sentence didn't finish.

Because I knew it was a lie.

I couldn't give up.

I hated that I couldn't give up.

With a sound that was half growl, half sob, I launched myself straight up. A webline snapped tight overhead and I shot over Abomination's head, twisting in the air. A huge tendril formed above me and came down like a hammer.

It slammed him into the ground.

The floor cracked under him.

I landed in a slide, rolled under his first swing, and came up on his blind side. Tendrils shot from my back again, this time hardening into narrow black spikes. I drove them into him with everything I had.

They grazed.

Grazed.

They scored lines across his skin and nothing more.