"And who th' hell are you supposed to be?"
Flash tries to squirm out from underneath Sandmans grasp, but the villain just adds more pressure, making the teen gasp in pain. I need to get him away from Flash quick before he's actually injured for real.
"I just told you, Mr. Marko. I'm Mr. Sunshine. I know focus isn't your strong suit but do try to keep up. Now, I'm going to ask you nicely to let the kid go, and turn yourself over to the police. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to use force, and trust me, you won't enjoy that."
Marko just laughs at me "Ya gotta be kidding me, you even know who I am, ya bum? I'm The Sandman, if the damn cops couldn't stop me, what makes you think a random beatnik right off the street can?"
"Because this!" I make a sudden chopping motion, releasing an arc of light that slices right through Marko's arm, severing it from his elbow. Marko yelps in shock as the sand construct crumbles, releasing Flash who quickly scrambles away. Marko whirls around, trying to get his hostage back, but I step ahead of him in a flash of light, blocking him. "Last chance, Marko. Otherwise you'll be going to jail in chunks!"
Marko steps back, putting his foot down on the remains of his arm, allowing him to reabsorb the mass, and quickly regrow the lost limb. "Th' hell kind of a freak are you?!"
"Says the man who's just a bunch of radioactive glass shards pretending to be a person."
Marko snarls, raising his arms and sends out a flood of sand, trying to crush me underneath it, but I simply allow my light form to weave between the blasts, shooting right through his torso and rematerializing on the other side. Marko swings around, an arm shaping into a hammer that he swings at me, but a flashstep backwards avoids it, leaving him to smash it into the lockers lining the walls, sending books and papers flying.
"Hey, I know you high school dropouts have a grudge against the educational system, but there's more constructive ways to deal with your anger, you know!"
"SHADDAP!!" The hole in his torso quickly reseals itself, and he morphs into a wave of sand as he tries simply smothering me under his mass, forcing me to continually move backwards as he rolls through the hallway towards me. I'm starting to realize the fight is at a bit of a standstill, since I'm too fast for him to be able to actually hit me, but my own attacks can't do much more than inconvenience him, since even chopping him apart with lasers will just allow him to reform again. The most reliable way of defeating him has always been to trap or immobilizine him somehow, and while I could use solid light to constrict him, I don't have any way of completely sealing him up.
And I absolutely refuse to believe that even Marko is actually dumb enough to be trapped in a vacuum cleaner like in the original comic book.
My best option is to use my light to flash-heat him enough to turn him into solid glass, but while I wasn't the best at physics in school, I AM fairly certain that setting off a blast like that inside a school, especially one full of hostages, isn't a very good idea. But maybe if I lure him outside...
There's a loud spraying sound that interupts my thoughts, and Marko yells in surprise as he suddenly finds himself covered with white powder. Whirling around in a rage, he spots Flash Thompson standing there with a half-empty fire extinguisher in his hands, his face frozen in with a terrified expression.
"Aw man, it didn't work!"
I can't help but cover my eyes in frustration "Jesus kid, what was the plan there, exactly?"
"YER DEAD, KID!!" Marko snarls as he launches himself as a column of sand towards Flash, who yelps in fear, and... tries taking a swing at Marko with the extinguisher.
Only to find himself yanked backwards by a strand of grey webbing snatching him by the scruff of his jersey, leaving Marko to smash into the spot Flash had occupied the second before. A familiar red-and-blue figure hanging from the wall drags Flash to the end of the hallway by the rope, and Flash's face lights up in recognition.
"SPIDER-MAN!"
Spider-Man uncermouniously drops his self-proclaimed biggest fan and turns his attention towards us "Aren't you guys a bit too old to still be in high school?"
.....
Seeing Spider-Man, one of my personal favorite superheroes, in person for the first time is a rather strange experience, and not just because I know I'm 15 years older than the version in front of me. The first thing that pops into my head is that there is no damn way anyone who has seen the guy up close can actually think he's an adult under the mask, because the scrawny physique showing under the red spandex practically screams teenager. The embarassingly fake baritone he just tried putting on when he spoke doesn't help.
Well, Spider-Boy or not, he's someone you want on your side "Ah, hey, Spider-Man, right? Great to see you, we got kind of a situation here, so let's save the introductions until after we've put this literal dirt bag away, yes?"
"Why you- STOP IGNORING ME!" Marko lashes out with both his arms, trying to take both of us down with two sand columns, but even with the limited space we have in the hallway, we're both far too fast for him, Spidey simply leaping out of the way and landing on the roof above him where he shoots a blast of webbing into his eyes. "AHH! DAMNIT!!"
"Hey, quick thinking! Listen, I got an idea for how to put him down for good, but we need to get outside, you know any way out of this place except the front doors?"
"H-how should I kno-" Marko rips off the webs clinging to his eyes and turns back towards us with a murderous look on his face "Roof access, this way!" Spidey changes his tune rather quickly and leaps towards a door that opens to reveal a staircase leading up into the building. Now, to make sure Marko follows...
"Aw hell no, you ain't getting away after all that! GET BACK HERE!"
Okay, maybe it won't be that hard after all. I quickly morph into my light form before following Spidey up the stairs, Sandman flooding after us in a rush of sand, snarling with rage as he slams into the wall of the second landing before following us up.
....
Three flights of stairs later, the staircase ends abruptly at a door with the word "EMERGENCY EXIT" on it. With a quick leap from the wall he'd been clinging to, Spidey smashes it open, revealing a flat area of roof surrounded by sloping sides of roof tiles, with the school grounds visible far beneath, the crowd of onlookers I had seen on the way in having only grown bigger in the time I had been dealing with Marko. As I move outside, I can hear Marko just behind us, crashing his way up the stairs.
"It ain't no use runnin', ya ain't getting away from The Sandman!!"
"Jeez, who do bad guys always like to hear themselves talk so much?" Spidey says as he crouches on the roof access hatch, waiting for our mutual foe to to stick his head out.
"As I understand it, it's a combination of narcissistic sociopathy and low self-esteem. Now, remember what I told you on the way up?" He nods "Good, just do what I told you, then jump as far away from him as you can, I don't want to risk any friendly fire with this, or you're going to end up with a hell of a sunburn."
Spidey looks like he's about to say something, but he's interrupted as Sandman suddenly floods out of the entance, reforming himself back into his humanoid shape as he spots me standing on the roof.
"Oh, you ain't got nowhere left to run now, beatnik! I'm gonna sandblast you so hard, you'll be lucky to have any skin left- GRAK!!" Marko is cut off as Spidey suddenly unloads a mass of webbing on top of him, enough to stick him to the roof, before he leaps to the side of the building, putting himself out of harms way. The web won't hold Sandman for more than a few moments, but they don't need to last longer than that.
I raise both my hands towards him, both palms open "And let there be LIGHT!!" I push all my focus into the energy building inside my arms, and with one push, send a massive torrent of light shooting out in a blinding flash, no finesse, just as much physical force I can safely press into one attack. Marko screams for a second, before he's abruptly cut off, and as the light fades, where he was standing, there's now a perfect glass replica, it's arms raised in a futile attempt at defending itself against the attack. Below us, I can hear the screams and gasps of the crowd, and the yells of the police.
Spider-Man crawls back onto the roof and whistles as he sees what happened to Marko "Wow, you Avengers really don't pull your punches, do you? Is he..."
"Dead? I doubt it, if he survived being turned into sand in the first place, I can't imagine this being much worse. I mean, other than being turned into an immovable statue with your mind intact, a state which I'm guessing is far worse than actual death, buuut..." I shrug "Can't make an omelette without fusing a guy solid."
Spider-Man doesn't seem to have a response to that one "...r-right. Well, we should probably get out of here and let the police handle the rest, so-"
He turns away and prepares to swing off, but I put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him "Actually, I think there's something long overdue someone needs to have a chat with you about... Peter."
Even with his mask on, I swear I can see his eyes widen.761