บท 180: Chapter 0180: Foolish Determination
A few minutes before the bombing. On the highest floor of a commercial skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan.
There was a knock on Cindy's office door, "Come in," She said.
She was standing and facing her window, admiring the New York Skyline as she allowed the newcomer to enter without seeing who it was. She was wearing a black suit with a hobble skirt that hugged her legs down to her knees along with high heels and stockings. She was sporting a professional yet beautiful office lady look.
"What's the brief, Hans?" Cindy asked before the newcomer could even say anything.
Seemingly used to her unusual nature, the man, now identified as Hans, answered, "The military isn't willing to relent. They want our tech along with all our research and they aren't willing to let us keep it. There is no middle ground to speak of. They will put us through twists and turns, but our patents won't be approved and they will instead claim all our research as sensitive information."
Cindy clicked her tongue, "Our foundation is still too shallow. A company like Stark Industries would have no problem negotiating a partnership with the military. We have too little leverage over them."
The man didn't say anything, but his agreement was evident.
As Cindy's monologue continued, she felt something triggering her sixth sense — formerly known as her Silk Sense, but after Alex took it for himself, she was relying on a slightly weaker version that had similar effects provided by the subtle choker on her neck. When she looked down to the streets, it was easy for her to focus on a speeding van even from the sixtieth floor of the skyscraper. That van was quickly approaching their building and didn't seem to have any other destination.
"No…" She whispered to herself as she saw the van scraping against another car while continuing its approach, "Hans, sound the emergency alarm!" Cindy shouted, "Tell everyone to take cover and escape through the back if possible!" Hans didn't even have the time to question anything as he saw Cindy place her hand on the floor-to-ceiling window that was made of bulletproof glass. In the next moment, the glass was full of cracks. Cindy further pushed her hand forward and the cracked glass fell apart as the broken shards fell to the ground.
"Quickly!!" She said with urgency before jumping out of the broken window. Her Silk suit automatically formed around her as she fell down and fired her web at the approaching van to pull herself toward it.
Just as her web attached to the van, Cindy yanked her arm, bringing herself toward it and using her entire weight to disrupt the van's motion to some extent. She shot her other web just as she pulled the van and repeated the motion with both webs as she tried to pull the van upward and stop its approach toward the building.
This time she somewhat succeded as the van was pulled up from its four wheels and its movements were slowed down. As it fell back on the ground, Cindy dropped on the hood of the van before shooting as many webs as she could to the surrounding buildings to push back the van. It was then that she had the chance to look inside. There was no one inside the van. Both seats were empty and the van seemed to be working with some kind of a remote control.
Just as the realization hit her, there was a huge explosion right in front of the huge skyscraper building. And Cindy was the first to bear the brunt of that explosion.
Not only were the first three floors essentially destroyed, killing everyone in them, but a black blur shot through the smoke and collided with one of the pillars on the ground floor. The foundation of the building had still survived, but there was no telling for how long.
Moments later, as the explosion started dying down, the faint sound of sparks was heard beside Cindy's unconscious form and a portal opened that Gwen jumped out of.
"No…" She gasped as she saw the aftermath of the explosion that Cindy tried to prevent, but she just didn't have enough time. Just as Gwen was going through the devastating thoughts of hundreds of people dying — She heard a loud crackle that made her snap out of it. She looked at the pillar that Cindy had collided with and saw that the cracks were spreading further as if the pillar was about to break.
"Alex…" Her singular word had a hundred meanings as Alex didn't say anything and conveyed a positive feeling to her.
Gwen instantly shot tens of her webs at the cracking pillar, to stabilize it as Alex did his thing and made sure that the foundations were maintained, at least temporarily. Gwen repeated the process for all of the pillars that were in her sight within seconds. But the crackling only got louder. The ceiling was about to fall as Gwen hurried to stabilize the pillars temporarily with Alex's help.
Soon enough, the ceiling collapsed and fell directly on top of Gwen, "Fuck!" She groaned and had to hold up over two thousand metric tons of debris from the collapse of the three floors that had been the most damaged by the bomb. The higher floors were also breaking down and the debris was all collapsing on top of what Gwen was already desperately holding, making things even harder for her as each moment passed, [Alex…] She groaned mentally, [I remember you telling me about a berserk ability…]
[Out of the question.] Alex instantly refused, [Your mind and body can't handle something like that.] The only reason that Alex could so freely use Berserk with Laura was that she had her innate healing factor to complement his healing. Even if he formed a blood bond with Gwen or even an organ bond, the disadvantages would still be significant and at the very least, the cooldown would still be there since it would take him time to recover her body and mind from the effects.
[My spirit can't handle seeing thousands of people die in front of me and standing still when I have a way to fix it.] Gwen said with gritted teeth.
[I'll send my clones then, dammit…] Alex said angrily, [Why do you want to go into a coma for the next week?]
[It's not enough, Alex.] She said, [I can't stay still knowing that I have a way to fix everything.]
[I swear to god, once you wake up, I'm going to deny you any pleasure for a month!] Alex shouted in her head as multiple parts of Gwen's suit extended out of her body and formed into identical copies of her. They stopped just as twenty copies formed around her. This was Alex's limit without compromising the strength of the clones. Unlike normal clones for day-to-day tasks — which Alex could create hundreds of — there was a limit to the number of clones he could have performing at their full capacity.
Gwen smiled as she saw the clones of herself camouflage themselves and disappear. She also saw Cindy's unconscious body being picked by one of the clones as she also disappeared.
[I got twenty clones with almost as much strength as the current you working to clear the building. Will you please back out…] Alex wanted her to not go through so much for something like this.
[You know me, Alex…] She said, [I can't just stand like this when I know that the people out there need me… Plus, I'm kinda looking forward to being denied orgasms for a while, it'll probably teach me to appreciate your sadistic kind of love a bit more…] She quipped as she let out a groan, feeling even more debris pressing down on her.
Her current physique grade was somewhere around three hundred metric tons at Peak Superhuman. With the five times enhancement of the level three bond, she could breach low cosmic strength easily. But it was still not enough to hold up the thousands of tons of concrete that she was currently holding up.
[Fucking moron…] Alex shook his head at her, but still decided to accept her request. He could distinctly feel just how determined she was to go through with this and if he didn't let her, it would cause her to truly resent him for a while, and he didn't want a repeat of his other Gwen happening with this one.
[But I'm your moron…] Gwen said telepathically with a cute tone as she almost staggered when the weight increased further due to even more debris falling down on top of her.
[Make that two months of edging…] Alex said in her head and before Gwen could come up with a reply, she felt her blood boiling. Since Alex wasn't actually bonded to her blood, the enhancement factor was lower than the two times boost that she would've gotten in that case. But what she got was enough to give her the strength to free herself. She quickly pushed up the rubble while webbing up as much as she could. Along with some help from Alex's tentacles and using them as makeshift pillars, she was able to temporarily hold up the rubble such that the building's imminent collapse would be delayed enough.
Just as she made sure that the building wouldn't collapse within the next few minutes, she moved out from the side and propelled herself to the fifth floor, which was still intact. Three of Alex's clones were already working on evacuating the people there, but the numbers were still too much for him. Just this single floor had almost two hundred people. Considering the sixty floors in the building, Gwen and Alex had to clear out upwards of ten thousand people from the building.
"No rest for the Spider Menace…" Gwen couldn't think very straight due to the feeling of her blood literally boiling to boost her stats, but randomly quipping seemed to be ingrained into her instincts. Even then, she didn't hesitate before diving into the building and quickly coordinating with Alex's clones to gather up the people on the fifth floor that was showing signs of cracking.
Within thirty seconds, just as Gwen pulled out the last set of survivors from the floor, it collapsed.
***
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