Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 9– Heated Environment.

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Making a giant leap from the top of the lampost, I cross across the sky and land just behind Felicia, who has crouched in front of the door so that she is at eye level with the keyhole, and she is currently busy picking it to gain access. I walk up to her, stepping around the two unconscious dudes that were knocked out in a brutal yet alluring way.

"So, uh, just remind me, Cat. What exactly is waiting for us on the other side of that door? Just so I know what to expect when we barge in and disturb a bunch of crooks, who will not be happy to see us." I ask, waiting patiently as she continues to kneel in front of the door, her rear particularly catching my eye as it is jutting out behind her.

"First of all, Spi, we are not barging in. we are slyly entering through the door. And on the other side of this door, it is very much open, with only the gun room to the left. Apart from that, many crates are stacked up around the place, but they are mainly focused on the sides and in the corners, so it is an open planned space." She speaks, not taking her eye off her work. This is taking her much longer than usual. When she was teaching me about pick locking, she could do it in around five seconds flat. These thugs must have good locks.

"So how is this slyly sneaking in then? They are going to see us as soon as we enter the room, plus there might be some more dudes guarding the door on the other side. I am all for going ham and punching some guys out, but your plan was to block them off from their weapons." The gun thing is more for her sake than mine. I would be fine even if they had guns. I do have my spider sense, after all, and can easily dodge anything they shoot at me. Her, not so much.

"Which is why I chose tonight because tonight is poker night. Every Friday, all of these scum get together and bet all of their ill-gotten cash in a game of poker. But, of course, not everyone can play. They still have to guard the place, after all. This is why the two losers from the last game who went home with the least money are the ones who have to guard the outside door, and I just took care of them. The remaining guys will be too busy playing games to see us enter." She explains. I guess she does her research before hitting a place.

"Alright, so what are we here to steal? And also, how long is it going to take you to pick that lock? I thought you were the world's best thief." I ask because I really don't know what loot we are here for or what is so valuable in this warehouse, and it really is taking her an unnatural amount of time to unlock this door.

"Well, I am here to take a few items of jewellery hidden in some crates, and you can take whatever cash is in there, take as much as you can carry and burn the rest for all I care. And for the record, I am the best thief in the world. I was done with this lock the second you touched the ground. I was just letting you get all your inane questions out before we went in. So now, let's go." She stands up and clasps the door handle. she turns her head to look at me as if asking if I am ready.

"Now, hold on a moment. Why do you get the, I am assuming, priceless jewels while I just get the cash? That doesn't seem fair. it seems like you will get the way bigger cut." I say, and of course, I know that I am just an extra pair of hands. Still, I can bet anything that those jewels will be worth a thousand times more than any cash in there will be, so I would be getting one per cent of the cut, which is way too little. My goal in all of this is to amass wealth to make my life more comfortable in the future. I want to have Donald Duck's levels of money.

"You want the jewels? You don't even have a fence. When you do, then we can talk. And you can get a bigger cut when you do all of the surveillance, when you do all the work, and you bring the job to my door, then you can get a jewel. Now, are you coming or not." She shuts me down hard, and she is correct, but that is why I am here, after all, to learn all the tricks of the trade that she knows so that I can start doing this stuff myself. I give her a nod, and she turns the handle and opens the door.

Widening the door, she sneaks in, and I follow in behind her and then slowly close the door. I looked around the inside of the warehouse and spotted around seven poker tables full of guys laughing and joking with some grumbling and shouting. None of them are paying attention to anything but their own greed. There are stacks upon stacks of crates surrounding the crooks, but there is nothing between them and us, and yet they don't see us.

Felicia signals for me to follow her. It is obvious that we are now in no speaking mode since we don't want to alert the riff-raff just yet, not until we have closed off their access to their weaponry. So I follow her to a room on the left that take up a corner of the warehouse, Felicia opens the door to it and enters, and I follow, closing the door behind me quietly.

Holy crap, this is not a gun room. This is a bloody armoury. All sorts of weaponry sit here, from pistols to machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and sniper rifles, and there is even a goddamn RPG in the corner. What kind of two-bit thugs are armed to the tooth like this?

"Jesus H Christ, there's enough weaponry here to fuel a small army. Why is there so much? And why have they left it all in here? They clearly have a whole bunch of merchandise in there, especially if you have cased the place and see it as a worthwhile target, so why have they just left all of their protection in here?" I question, and I am not being fussy or anything. I am just wary. I have just been brought to a random warehouse and asked to help rob it with no other information. For all I know, she could have some kind of ulterior motive here, and I am a gormless helping hand.

"Well, you know how guys like that are, they commit crimes over money, and some of them out there are raking it in, and the rest of them are losing it out. They have killed over cash before, and most of them are impulsive knuckleheads. in a heated environment like the one out there, well, let's say some might make a rash act in the heat of the moment, which is why it is better that they don't have any of their weapons with them. And they aren't bothered about security because they think they are untouchable, on account of their boss." She looks around at the guns and ammunition, picking up a small pocket pistol.

"Wait, their boss? And who the hell is that?" I question as she plays around with the gun, aiming it at pretend enemies and switching between them suddenly.

"Forget that. It is time to get to work. So? Go on, do your thing." She says, flippantly throwing the small pocket pistol behind her. And then she looks at me, expecting me to do something, making me wonder what the hell I am supposed to do, and with no answer, all I can do is look at her and shrug my shoulders.

"Come on, you know, do your web thing and web it all up so they can't use it. Then we can go out, and you can web up the door as well, and then we can start flattening noses." She makes the web-shooting gesture and everything, waving it at the weapons.

"Uh, yeah, cool plan and all, except I don't have my web shooters. I can't web any of this stuff up." I point out the obvious flaw in her plan, the fact that I don't have my web-shooters as she clearly expects me to for some reason.

"What the hell is a web shooter? Just use all that goo you have stored up in your wrists and web the place up."

"Goo? You mean my web fluid- Wait, is that what people think? That all that stuff is coming out of my wrists?" I say, shocked. Does no one know that I used tech to shoot the web strands?

"Yeah, which I am pretty sure gathers you all that hate because you are different like those mutants. Not many people look favourably of a guy that goes around in a spandex suit that covers everything and sprays white fluid from his wrists, but luckily for you, I am not like most people. Why, is that not how it works?"

"No, that is not how it works. I have some tech strapped to my wrists which shoot web fluid, which is a chemical concoction that I made- Which the original made. That isn't what people really think, is it?"

"Who knows? But if you can't do your job, the one reason that I brought you here, then why are you here? Find a way to keep those thugs from getting to these guns. that is your job." She says, crossing her arms and giving me an unamused look. She must really be frustrated because of all the crap I have pulled over the last few days. she is on edge, and I don't want to sink the boat.

Alright, so let's think about this. My objective here is not to render the guns unusable but to cut off the thug's access to their weaponry. This means I have to stop them from getting into this room, so I have to block the door, which is the only entrance, but if I block it from here, I won't be able to get out of the room.

I give the room another quick scan, and I spot a few small windows on the back wall, but these are just small windows to have some light let in. they don't have handles, but they are just big enough for me and Felicia to slip through. There are a bunch of metal shelves around the place on which they keep the bigger guns. I walk up to one and give it a feel. It seems to be quite tough and quite heavy, which is good.

"Hey, we are going to go out there and kick all of their asses, right? So it doesn't matter if we make a lot of noise as long they can't get in the room, right?" I ask her, to which she nods, giving me the go-ahead to go all in with my plan.

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Walking up to the door, I grasp the handle, and then I twist it in the opposite direction that it is meant to turn. Once that is done, I shove the handle further into the doorway, and then just for good measure, I give the wall on the side of the door a good kick, messing with the door mechanism inside. The last action had made a bit of noise, and I could already hear mumbling on the other side of the door, questioning the noise, so I got on with the next step.

I signal for Felicia to move over to the back of the room, which she complies with, and then I pick up the closest shelf and chuck it down in front of the door. It makes a lot of noise, but I don't care at this point. I start to pick up the other shelves and chuck them there as well, barricading the door and keeping the thugs from getting in, and they are trying. They are outside, trying to get in to find out what is making all of the noise.

With the door adequately barricaded and the thugs cut off from their guns, we can finally go and knock the living daylights out of them by going through the other entrance, the non-conventional entrance. I walk over to the back wall and motion for Felicia to back up a bit, and when she does, I leap up and stick my hands to the ceiling. Then, with them firmly attached, I kick out and smash the window. Not caring about the noise, I can hear them start to barge the door, trying to get in.

I quickly smash all the little pieces of glass left in the frame and then signal for Felicia to follow me and then slither out of the window. I land on the ground outside and then run around to the front of the warehouse, side-stepping the two unconscious guys still laid out on the floor. I go up to the door and clasp the handle, waiting for Felicia.

She turns the corner a second later and walks up to stand behind me. I give her a nod, and then I turn back towards the door and twist the handle. I pull the door towards me, opening it.

There are two guys in front of me, looking at me, stunned. one of them in front is reaching for the door, which I had just opened. Our eyes meet, and we don't say anything. the only noise is coming from the bunch of guys behind them trying to get into the barricaded room. I can see them, and if they were to just turn to the left, they would see us too.

"Hey, there. Did anybody order a pizza? Because, guess what?" The thugs look at me stunned, completely caught on the back foot, and they clearly don't know what to do either, as they just stand there like idiots. The thugs behind them looked towards me when they heard me. I did speak quite loudly. Oh well, the time for sneakiness is over. We were planning on having an all-out fistfight anyway.

"It's PIZZA TIME!" I SHout as I rush forward and throw a right hook forward, which catches the foremost thug on the cheek and throws him back into the thug behind him, and they both get blasted away. They tumble for a while before sprawling out on the floor at the feet of the other thugs inside, who look down at the two sprawled out on the floor before looking back up at me. They back away from the gun room and ready themselves. It is obvious that I am stronger than the average man, knowing not to take me lightly.

I straighten my leather jacket before stepping into the warehouse and then holding the door open, allowing Felicia to come in after me. Then I close the door, completely sealing off the only exit out of the warehouse. And then it is kind of like a Mexican stand-off, with Felicia and me by the door looking at the unarmed thugs and them standing by the barricaded gun room waiting for us to do something or demand something.

The two thugs on the floor are brought out of their daze, and they sit up. I know I sent them quite a way, but I, of course, held my punches back a little. I did decide to stop limiting myself and cowering away like Peter does, but I still don't want to kill anyone. After all, a super-powered murderer will definitely get hunted down by some superhero. Better to stay under the radar of those guys.

"What are you guys waiting for? Get those fuckers!" One of the guys I knocked back shouted as they got to their feet, helping his other compatriot up. Hearing the signal, all the thugs roar and then charge towards us, their war cry bolstering their spirits, not that it will help them. Before I can make my move, Felecia rushes past me and towards the mob of thugs, eager to let off some steam and kick some worthless crap bags.

I watch as she leaps into their midst and begins to send out a flurry of powerful kicks and lash out with a bunch of strikes with her claw-tipped fingers, not cutting deep enough to be lethal but deep enough to hurt, though she does get dangerously close to some vital parts. Her hair whips around wildly as she twists and turns, but I manage to glimpse a look at her face, upon which sits a ferocious grin. Clearly, she is enjoying her stress release, feeling all her worries float away as she breaks bones.

"What are you waiting for? Get in here and have some fun!" Felicia shouts amid all the chaos, wishing for me to join the brawl, and this reminds the thugs of my presence, them having forgotten about it while being brutalised by Felicia. The thugs on the edge of the massacre clearly think it better to pay attention to me than her, and they back away in order to face me, thinking that I am the easier target. Well, while I don't want to cause life-threatening injuries, I can still be pretty ruthless just as long as no one dies.

Four thugs break away from the moshpit and run towards me. I run forwards to meet them and show them that I am not the easiest target here. I leap upwards, my knee raised, which smashes into the face of the closest thug right into the septum of his nose. I can feel the bone and cartilage inside his nose practically disintegrate as my knee drives forward into his face, which will surely be disfigured in the future. Yet, strangely, I don't feel the least bit bad about giving him, at the very least, a deviated septum.

Not dwelling on that in the least bit, without missing a beat, I transition into my next move and sweep out with a kick that catches the two thugs on my right in the stomach and blasts them away to whence they came. They move like bowling balls and crash into the gaggle of crooks behind them, giving me a strike as more than ten are knocked down. Felicia had to quickly put her hands on the shoulders of one thug and, using him as a platform, spring up into the air to avoid my two makeshift bowling balls that knocked down their comrades.

She doesn't much care about my interruption to her fun as she simply moves in the air to drive her knee down and knee drops one of them still standing thugs on the shoulder, causing a screeching scream as the man's shoulder is definitely dislocated. Seeing that she is getting back to work, I quickly move to join her and punch the guy still near me that is still standing and send him to his ass.

With that done, I move to join the moshpit and- SPIDER SENSE- I jump upwards, getting out of the immediate danger that was threatening me from behind, but nothing was behind me-

*SMASH!"

"I LEAVE TO GET SOME FOOD, AND SOME LITTLE PISSANTS THINK THEY CAN ATTACK US! DIEEEE!" A man over two meters tall barges through the entrance, like the Kool-Aid man since he destroys the warehouse door, and he runs in at full pelt, not slowing down for anything. he must have seen the two knocked-out dudes outside. He has his arms crossed in front of him and runs like he is a battering ram. Thankfully I jumped just in time as his head just barely moved under my feet as he charged forward straight to the bunched-up thugs.

He doesn't stop his run, though. he continues his run and knocks down a few of his men as well as tramples on some of the ones I had put down just earlier before he stops in the middle of the group. Felicia had the same thought as me. She had enough time that she didn't need spider sense to avoid the man, and she once again sprung up into the air of a hapless thug that was run down a second afterwards.

All of this happened a second after the giant of a man broke through the door, and I was still high up in the air, having used too much strength in my jump. Felicia, in comparison, used the least effort required and only rose a bit into the air, and once the giant had stopped his charge, she came back to earth, and coincidently she was right above the man.

Using this opportunity, she goes to strike the man, using gravity once more to her advantage. She pulls her right knee in and readies her heel to drive into the back of the man's head, but unfortunately, some of the men on the floor that weren't trampled see her and gasp, which alerts the mountain of bricks who looks up to see the foot poised to drill into his head.

Felicia lets loose, and her foot shoots down to impale the forehead of the giant below her, except she is stopped in her track by the colossal hand of the man below her. His hand grasps her calf, and then he spins her and- oh shit.

"Ugh," I grunt as Felcias's back collides with my stomach. I quickly bring my hands up to hold onto her as we tumble through the air. I right myself just in time to land in a crouch, Felicia held in a bridal carry. Note to self, mobility in the air is poor without my web-shooters. I have to find a way to fix that in the future. Felicia quickly pushes me away and stands on her own two feet, probably reminded of the last time I carried her like this and dropped her on her ass.

"So, you wouldn't happen to have a name, would you? It's just, most people with power usually do, and you have some super strength, right?" I ask as I rise out of my crouch, preparing to face my first super-powered foe in this life. Meanwhile, the thugs are all collecting themselves and readying up though they don't make a move, deferring to the strong man.

"Yeah, that's right. I am Man Mountain Marko, I'm super fuckin' strong, and I am gonna squash your head like a watermelon." He growls, slowly walking towards me, cracking his knuckles and readying himself.

"Oh, wow. You must have an epic origin story with a name like that, right? How did you get your powers? Were you buried alive under a mountain and had to claw your way out, unlocking your super strength to do so? Come on, how did you get so strong?" I ask, I really can't help my quipping, remnants of my time as Spider-Man, but I don't care. I like it. Felicia is standing to my side, waiting for the signal to start the battle, letting me take the lead, probably because this guy is super strong.

"Steroids." He answered my question with something that confused me for a moment, and I questioned if I had heard him correctly.

"Oh, okay. I was not expecting that, but whatever. To each their own, I suppose." I suppose in a universe like Marvel, even people taking steroids can get super strong. I guess in this universe, steroids are much more potent, or the steroids unlocked something in Man Mountain Marko.

"Enough talk. I am the Man Mountain Marko, and I will smash you into the ground. SO GET READY TO FUCKIN' DIE!" Man Mountain Marko yells as he transitions from his walk into a run and barrels right towards me, screaming that he is going to murder me.

I ready myself and get myself into a fighting stance, anticipating Marko's arrival, I can feel my heart start to beat faster, pulsating in my ears, and I can feel the blood rush through my body like a shot of pure adrenaline. I don't hate the feeling, in fact, I quite like it, and I find myself smiling in anticipation of my first super-powered fight.

Man Mountain Marko finally reaches me and comes in with a straight punch. I duck out of the way and reply with my own straight that wallops him in the chin. I prepare myself for an all-out fistfight, with both of us just smacking the shit out of each other and-

Oh, Marko just collapsed to the ground, out like a light. I quickly bend down to check on him and make sure he isn't dead, but he is just unconscious. I guess he didn't actually have proper super strength, and he was just really strong from the steroids. I am glad I held back a bit, or I would have blown his head clean off.

Rising back up, I look out towards all the thugs, that look shocked that I just put their big guy down.

I guess it's time to clean out the riff-raff.