Top of the Food Chain
"Welcome, Spiderwoman, I have been expecting you." The man wearing a leopard print vest looked at her with a smirk.
"Then couldn't you have met me at a better place? A junkyard's no place to meet a lady." Gwen pinched her nose while shaking her head.
"My sincerest apologies, but I have to keep the best hospitality for the better prey." He jumped down from the pile that was about three floors high, landing on the ground without a sound. "My name is Kraven, and I was hired to hunt you down. And I found you interesting to say the least."
"I am… flattered?" She tilted her head.
This Kraven guy, he was taller and much more muscular than the average bodybuilder. Well, it didn't look that good, though; it was just more mass anyway.
"Don't be, because you don't interest me anymore. I have found someone worth hunting, the only one worth hunting." Kraven cackled, trembling with excitement.
"Good for you, I guess."
"No, no, you don't understand. None of you will." Kraven had pure glee on his face. "I had thought I had hunted everything, every apex predator on this planet, but there was one above it. I have finally found the one standing at the top of the food chain!"
"I hate to stop your high school crush story, but I came here to stop you. So, sorry not sorry?" Gwen crouched low, getting ready to fight, but Kraven just stood there.
"You see, in exchange for letting me complete my life's purpose, I was asked to do another task to make up for abandoning my task." He pointed at her with his sharp knife. "And that was bringing in Spiderwoman."
Gwen's back felt hot, almost like someone had pressed a steaming iron on her. She rolled to the left. And soon after, a metal tentacle struck the ground. Cracking the concrete where she stood before.
"Spiderwoman, do not resist." Doc Ock came out of the shadow, his round glasses gleaming under the yellow lamp. "I do not want to hurt my test subject, if possible."
"You sure? That did look like a fatal attack to me." Gwen looked at the pointy spike in the middle of the open tentacle, something green oozing from it.
"I know that much won't hurt you."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." She glanced at Kraven. He was calmly walking away from there.
'I need to get him first.' She shot forward like a bullet, using her webs, but as she was about to reach out to him. A chill went through her spine.
A web line shot backwards. Sticking to the ground, stopping her in place as she pulled herself to the right to dodge a cybernetic tail by a hairsbreadth.
"Long time no see, spider." Scorpion came out of the shadows.
Gwen noticed Vulture at the tower of cars too, watching her.
"Seems like I have stepped into the wrong party. Any chance you'd let me go? Pretty please?" She glanced at the silent villains she had faced before.
"No? Well, ok then. Don't let me hit y'all with a I told you so later." Gwen stretched her arms and cracked her neck. She had grown stiff from swinging around all this time.
"Let's see if you keep joking after this." Scorpion's tail struck the concrete where she was, sending shards everywhere.
"I don't know, buddy, I've laughed through worse." Gwen was already above him. She shot out two webs towards his face.
But he ripped them up with the rotating blade on his tail as she flipped over him.
A metallic whistle screamed behind her. She twisted midair.
One of Doc Ock's tentacles stabbed straight through the wrecked car she'd just vaulted over. The green toxin dripping from its needle-like tip hissed against the metal.
"Why does it always have to be green and fizzy?" She landed sideways on a rusted truck. "Not very doctor-esque. Is that a word?"
"It minimizes unnecessary struggle." Two more tentacles shot toward her.
"So does anaesthesia." Gwen sprang forward before they reached the truck.
The entire vehicle folded in half behind her with a deafening crunch.
Then a shriek echoed overhead.
Vulture dove. His steel wings sliced through the air.
Gwen's spider-sense screamed. She ducked. The wing carved through three stacked cars instead, sending twisted metal across the junkyard.
"Oh? You weren't bird watching?" Gwen looked up.
But Vulture remained silent, and so did the other two.
"…Tough crowd." If she wanted to stop Kraven and get her answers, she'd have to do this quick.
Kraven, on the other hand, had his mind on how he should reach this new, never-before-seen predator. The moment he had seen John, after he left the Bank, he had been entranced.
He had a habit of categorizing people with the creatures of the wild. Some were like elephants, some like cheetahs, some like hyenas, and rarely someone resembled a lion.
However, he couldn't fit John into any of those categories. No, he was a creature beyond that.
Kraven had watched him look around, his eyes constantly keeping a map of the surroundings. It wasn't to detect threats. That's what a layman would think when they saw him.
John kept track of his surroundings to see who dared to step into his territory. It was like placing your hand in the open jaws of a crocodile, just much worse.
To think that such a creature existed on this planet. This was the last test for him as a hunter. A test given to him by the world to prove himself.
'How should I hunt this creature?' There was a girl with him the last time he went to watch him; maybe he could go after the girl?
There were endless possibilities and ways; his mind had never been so engrossed in a hunt before.
"Hunting is so much fun." Kraven leaned against a wall, looking at the half-moon.
"I have to agree with you." That's when a voice came from beyond the wall.
Kraven looked back. There wasn't anyone there aside from the wall. A simple, old wall covered in dull graffiti and worn pamphlets. A single drop of sweat dripped down his temple.
But before he could move back, the cracked plaster and bricks exploded. A fist shot through, opening midway. The fingers gripped his shoulder. They dug into his collarbone hard enough to make him wince. The hand pulled him through the wall like it was made of styrofoam.
As Kraven rolled on the ground and got to his feet, grabbing his shoulder, he saw the creature in front of him. Light poured in from the hole in the wall, illuminating the dark alley as his shadow grew enough to cover him whole.
"But hunting isn't limited to the Hunter." John adjusted his hood, looking at the Hunter before him with only one thing on his mind.
...
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Change the @ to 'a' first, though.