The Phantom's Shadow II

Eren Parker, the Phantom Spider, stood standing face to face with the shadow that had been following him since the night of his mother's death. Though the room was dim, only being illuminated by the moonlight behind the girl, he was certain it was her. Her face had barely changed at all, the only real difference was her now mature appearance and broken gaze.

There she was, all grown up, the girl who invaded his nightmares almost every single night. The picture, the one in Fisk's office, led him to believe that the girl was just a little kid, a small girl in elementary school. Unbeknownst to him, that picture was taken eight years prior when the girl was only ten years old.

Fisk's young adult daughter, the Phantom's shadow, flicked her wrist downward, transforming the Programmable Matter into a shortsword. "Do you know how much I've longed for this day..." The girl spoke in her now frail voice, no longer being veiled by her mask's voice changer. She wanted to continue the facade, she wanted to act strong in front of her father's killer, but she could not.

"I'm sorry..." The so-called hero spoke solemnly, he couldn't even bring himself to look at the girl as his head hung low. "I understand what it's like to-"

"Shut up! You don't understand a thing!" The girl screamed in a fit, slashing the ground with her weapon. The self-proclaimed hero did as she asked, silencing himself.

"He's gone! I couldn't even see his body after what you did to him... they said he was unrecognizable." Her emotional voice was quivering as she spoke with her hand gripping her chest tightly. "Every single day for five months, I had to watch people praise you. Calling you a hero, ignoring the fact that you killed my father! All because there was no proof... but I know there were webs in his office."

The hero looked down at his wrist, at the same ones that held the webs that he used to murder her father. She was right, those webs were his, they could only be his. They likely had already dissolved by the time investigators arrived, but his men surely noticed them.

"So I took my father's money and I started the Underground. We steal tech and make weapons so that one day I could kill you myself. Once that was done, I'd end it all."

"Tell me, why did you do it? Why was his life so meaningless to you?"

The so-called hero, still looking at the ground, hesitated for a moment. He wasn't sure if this girl knew about her father's atrocities. The public didn't know and the police didn't care, in fact, many of them were in on it. If anyone were to be kept away from his secret, it would be his own daughter.

Regardless, the truth had to come out.

The boy opened his mouth and slowly lifted his head to face the shadow that followed him ever since that night.

"He killed my mother." As those words left his lips, the girl's expression immediately shifted to that of bewilderment. Those words struck her like a blow to the chest, she couldn't believe it. The boy had to be lying to her, her father was a good man. He'd never take a life.

At least, that's what she thought to herself.

The girl shook her head, staring forward blankly as if she were looking through the boy.

"No, that's not true."

"It's is true." said Fisk's killer. "I'm sorry you had to find out the truth about your father like this."

"You liar!" Using her Programmable Matter boots, the girl stepped forward at a speed that was reminiscent of Eren's while in his normal form. With intent to kill, the broken girl slashed at the hero's neck with her blade, but his agility would deny her the easy kill. Still, regardless of her attack missing her target, she continued a mixture of horizontal and vertical slashes with her chrome sword that gleamed with purple light. The boy continued to dodge as he was much too fast for her, despite holding back and staying in his normal form.

Transforming her Programmable Matter weapon into a massive fist that nearly outgrew her entire body, the Tinkerer drew her arm back. With everything she had, the girl unleashed a powerful strike as she released a mighty roar from within her. With both hands, her father's assassin stopped the punch as he looked at her in the eyes through his buggy, white lenses. Though the girl was straining, the boy was calm and he began to speak as such.

"I was sitting at home and I heard the police saying my name at the front door." Though the boy spoke from his heart, the girl did not cease her attack. Using her other fist, she embiggened it using her Programmable Matter to make yet another gargantuan, chrome fist. With every ounce of her being, she released yet another powerful strike. With a single hand, the boy caught her other fist, not breaking eye contact with her through his mask for even a moment.

With his calm voice, the boy spoke once more. "I opened it, they came inside, and they told me that my mother's body was found in a landfill..." The boy's masked face became damp with tears as he relived that night in his head. Though his face was hidden, the girl was able to feel his emotions. It was as if his pain was being transferred onto her.

"... A landfill." He repeated, this time he was clearly choking up. "Like garbage..." He added. "I later found out that her body was completely chopped up into pieces and thrown into a garbage bag. We couldn't even bury a body-" The masked boy started to choke up, almost losing his ability to speak as his mother's funeral replayed in his mind. "We felt that leaving her in that state was just..." The boy took yet another pause as the images of his mother's mutilated body began to flash in his head again. By this point, the Tinkerer had stopped attacking him and took a few steps back as she listened to him with her chrome fists reduced to normal size.

"Usually, you don't bury a person's ashes, but her one wish was that she'd be buried next to my father. And so, that's what we did. We cremated her and buried her right next to my dad." As the hero said this, the girl thought of her father's funeral. They were nearly identical, mirror images of each other.

Both kids, only seventeen at the time, experienced losing the only parent they had left. Both stood watching as what was left of the only guardian, the only protector they had left was slowly dropped into the ground beside their spouse that had departed the world before them. Both teens stood in the same spot, unmoving for hours, vowing to enact revenge on the one who caused their pain.

"How do you know my father was the one that did it?" The Tinkerer asked, still refusing to believe that her father would even imagine doing such a thing to another person.

"My mother was a reporter." the boy said. "She knew about something going on in New York, something horrific. I went through the hundreds of files on her computer and it all led to Fisk and another man who I could not identify. So, I came to your father for answers."

"When I got there..." The boy paused his recollection, clenching his fist as his entire body tensed up before continuing. He exhaled. "When I got here, to this very place we're standing right now, I lost it." From beneath his mask, the boy's face continued to be soaked with tears as anger, self-hatred, regret, guilt, and grief began to overwhelm him. Just like when he fought Electro and relived the memory of his mother, feeling as if he were actually there, he began reliving his night at Fisk Tower.

Down to every single fine detail, down to every punch, every blood splatter, every broken bone, every scream... The so-called hero relived it. Though for him, in his head, minutes had passed as he relived the memory, only a second had passed in reality. Once his mind came back to the present, the boy continued to tell her about his mistake. "Filled with rage, I attacked him and interrogated him, but he didn't give me the answers that I wanted. Just like you are now, I was bitter. I thought killing him would make me feel better, so I did it. Those webs that you found were mine. I killed Wilson Fisk..."

The girl's body was trembling due to her own rage and feelings of grief. In her mind, the hero still hadn't given a good reason for why he killed her father. It sounded as if he killed the man without any hard proof or evidence that he was his mother's killer. "You just killed him in a fit of anger! You didn't have any proof that it was him!" The girl's chrome gloves began to glow once again as they transformed into massive fists. Before she could even start an attack, she was halted by familiar words.

"March 11th." As the boy said this, the girl stood frozen in her tracks. That date meant something to her, but she couldn't understand how he knew that or what it meant to him. "That's your birthday, right?" the boy asked her. She said nothing in response. Him knowing her birthday meant nothing, though the boy continued. "That was the password for his phone. Still is."

"I saw dozens of messages, all having photos attached to them. That's when I saw my mother... What was left of her. The message said 'Job's done boss' as if he were working an office job and turning in his work to a supervisor..."

"Where's the phone now, then? I won't believe you until I see it for myself."

The boy reached into the pocket of his suit, pulling out the same cellphone that he found that night. "I've been using it as a burner for a while... I didn't want to give the cops my real number so I used a texting app on this phone for that." The boy held up the phone, showing the all but too familiar device to the girl. He tossed it to her, and she immediately recognized the unchanged lock screen.

Just as the hero told her, the phone's password was still the same: 0311.

Just as the phone unlocked, the hero instructed her on what to do. "Go to the messages, you'll see it all in there." he told her. Doing as he said, she went through the messages, finding the endless sea of assassination confirmations.

She was speechless. Up until then, she took everything he said with a hint of doubt in her mind, but the hard evidence was right there.

"No..." she said. "I don't know how or why you did this but it's not true." The girl continued to lie to herself as a trauma response, but Eren kept going.

"I'll never forgive your father, not after what he did to me. I don't expect you to forgive me, but you need to stop this. What you're doing, killing people just to get to me-"

"I never killed anyone. The Underground simply steals the gear we need and that's it. We don't kill" she told him. It was true, to her knowledge, no one had died from the Underground's antics, but there were two massive holes in her logic.

"You were ready to kill an innocent kid earlier today. If it wasn't me playing the role, a harmless kid would have been killed."

"He would have left me no choice."

"What about that office building that nearly collapsed because of the helicopter your men attacked? You nearly killed dozens of innocent people, all because of revenge. Would it have been worth it? Would those lives have been worth taking just to get to me?"

"..." The Tinkerer said nothing. He was right, she knew it, but she refused to admit it. She took things too far, if they hadn't met any sooner, she may have crossed that line just to get to him.

"I don't want you to make the same mistake that I did. Please, just stop all of this before it's too late." The spider begged her.

"I will stop after you're dead. I came this far, and I've come this close, I won't stop now." She was far too stubborn to give up. By this point, she knew she was in the wrong. She knew she was the villain in this scenario, they both were, but it didn't matter to her.

"You can't kill me, Tinkerer."

"I can try."

"I don't want to have to fight you. I'm giving you a choice. You made some mistakes, we both did. I don't want you to get sent to Rikers for this." Eren pleaded to her one more time, but his pleas were on deaf ears.

"I don't care. I'm not stopping until I get what I want."

The so-called hero took a deep breath, standing with his arms bent and his fists clenched as the aura of Godspeed energy began to surround his body. Once again, he entered his Ultimate Godspeed form before speaking to the girl in his now static-like voice. "I'm sorry. I truly am, but I can't give you what you want. I have a city to protect and you're in the way of that. This is your last chance."

Without saying a word, the Tinkerer covered her entire body with Programmable Matter, turning her entire silhouette into a chrome version of herself. She didn't plan on giving up, not now, not after all she'd gone through.

Forming a Programmable Matter greatsword in her right hand, the Tinkerer stood in a ready stance, cementing her decision to her father's killer.

This was it.

The fated battle between the Phantom Spider and the shadow that had been haunting him ever since his greatest mistake.

The fated battle between the Tinkerer and the phantom that destroyed her family.