"Damn it!"
Chameleon's curse was drowned out by the rustling tide. Countless spiders crawled out from the cracks in the ruins, their jointed limbs scraping against the ground like a vicious drizzle. He staggered backward, dragging the leg pierced by shrapnel. Muzzle flashes carved brief arcs through the darkness—every bullet blasted a spider into sticky green pulp, but more black shapes were already climbing up his ankles.
"McDonald? Quentin? Damn it, my earpiece is broken! Fuck!"
Chameleon fired as much as he could, but it was useless. Countless spiders had already crawled over his body, still disguised as Spider-Man. They opened their mouths and tried to bite, only to discover that the adaptive armor Chameleon wore was quite sturdy. Under the swarm's chewing, it merely made the scraping sound of tearing polymer.
But the creatures quickly found the bullet hole ripped open by the armor-piercing round. They scrambled to crawl inside. The first spider through opened its jaws and bit down hard. The tearing of flesh made Chameleon howl.
"Don't be in such a hurry."
The Punisher's arm barred Spider-Man's chest like an iron gate. He stared at the figure below, drowned beneath the spider swarm, his fingers rubbing against the trigger. "Chameleon's going to die anyway. What's the difference between shooting him and letting the spiders bite him to death?"
"Just so we're clear, I can't control spiders."
Peter shook off his restraint. Silk had already stuck to the edge of the rooftop. The Punisher, watching from above, merely shook his head. He took out a bottle of pills from his pocket, swallowed some, then picked up his weapon and headed downstairs as well.
Spider-Man swung into the ruins and immediately fired Silk onto Chameleon. Then a high-voltage current surged from his Web Shooter into Chameleon's body. As Chameleon screamed, blue-white electricity burst forth. The stench of scorched protein rose with the cries, and the spider swarm popped away like popcorn.
Perhaps it was an illusion, but the large mass of spiders that had not been struck by the current all turned to look at Spider-Man. Peter was a little bewildered. "Uh, hey, everyone?"
The swarm suddenly collapsed inward into a writhing black pyramid, followed by a sticky sound like skin being torn apart. Secretions seeped from their bodies and wove themselves into pale skin, clothes made of Silk—and finally, faces emerged one after another from that nightmarish mass, their mouths split all the way to their ears. A bastard Peter knew all too well appeared before him.
"Not 'everyone,' but 'me'!" Carl Jin burst into loud laughter and provocatively called out to Spider-Man. "Did you ever imagine this day, Peter Parker?!"
"Carl? So you thought that was me? So you killed him?"
Peter finally pieced everything together. Carl Jin had somehow obtained this bizarre ability, then found Chameleon disguised as Spider-Man and intended to kill him. Chameleon had detonated the bomb. Did that mean Carl had also disguised himself as Spider-Man?
Two fake Spider-Men had fought, each believing the other was real. If Chameleon had done this to help his boss get rid of Spider-Man, then why had Carl Jin done it? To... replace Spider-Man?
"I thought you were already disgusting enough, Carl. I never expected you to go this far. Tell me, how did you get your powers?"
"That spider! I put that spider on your neck! I made you Spider-Man! Now I ate it and took back what belongs to me!"
Carl Jin's fingertips suddenly split open. A segment of finger bone burst out like a shell casing, replaced by jets of Silk—not synthetic fibers, but "ropes" woven together by hundreds of tiny spiders. Peter twisted aside to avoid the disgusting attack. But Carl Jin's screaming was not so easy to dodge.
"But you actually used the powers I gave you against me?"
"First, you need to relearn logic. Second, I'm not Harry Potter."
Spider-Man leaped aside, hooked a slab of concrete with Silk, and hurled it at Carl Jin. To his surprise, Carl Jin's flesh was extraordinarily fragile. He was smashed directly into two pieces—only for countless spiders to pour out from within and gather him back together.
"You have no idea what I can do, Parker." Reformed, Carl Jin let out laughter he had not felt in a long time. When was the last time he had laughed like this? Right, when he had put that spider on Peter Parker's neck.
"I am immortal!"
Carl Jin tore open his own chest with his hands. The spider swarm poured out from beneath his skin and pieced him back together. His skin slid off like an ill-fitting costume, revealing the churning swarm within, then wove an entirely new set.
"I can become everyone I eat!"
The new skin condensed, and Carl Jin became another person—someone Peter had never seen before. But what was even more shocking was what he said.
"The people you eat?"
As though that question had struck something, Carl Jin, now wearing new skin and a new appearance, froze for a long while. He seemed to finally understand something, then broke into a grin.
"That's right. Not only can I become them, I can get all their memories and everything they learned—I know it all! I can get the compensation I deserve! I'm going to eat you, Parker! I'm the one who should have become Spider-Man! I got that spider! Once I eat you, I'll be the only Spider-Man!"
"I have to say, you're seriously sick, Carl!"
Finally realizing that Carl Jin had gone mad, Spider-Man decisively began fighting. Silk shot from both his hands, each sticking to a concrete slab, and he began viciously smashing the bastard in front of him. After all, when dealing with spiders, there were few methods more cost-effective than stomping them flat.
Peter Parker? That was Spider-Man's real name?
Having remembered that, Chameleon struggled to crawl across the ground. His luck was not bad. He was not dead yet. As long as he could escape somewhere safe, he could find Spider-Man and get Kingpin's money.
Taking advantage of Carl Jin's fight with Spider-Man, Chameleon endured the piercing pain and crawled bit by bit out of the combat zone. He knew he still had a chance. He only had to crawl to that place, only had to reach that place...
A pair of combat boots appeared in front of him.
He looked up and saw a pair of tired yet profound eyes, filled with unquenchable rage; an untrimmed beard; and a striking white skull on a black T-shirt.
That man had come. No, he had never left.
The Punisher raised a submachine gun and aimed at Chameleon's legs, arms, and palms. After firing repeatedly and making Chameleon howl again and again, he put another round through his heart, then emptied the rest of the magazine into his head.
"Too easy for you, asshole."
Having finished all that, The Punisher looked toward the battlefield. After repeatedly smashing down, Spider-Man took a breath and lifted the two slabs of concrete. Beneath them lay countless spider corpses. He paused in surprise, but soon, large numbers of moving spiders emerged from the bodies. In an instant, they devoured their dead companions, then exploded one after another, turning into countless spiders.
This time, the spiders did not form Carl Jin's shape. Instead, they became a gigantic fist made of countless spiders. It clenched and slammed toward Spider-Man. That enormous fist actually overturned the huge stone, sending Spider-Man tumbling onto the ground beside it—though it did not hurt him much.
"This was originally for Mysterio, but now I have to use it on you, Carl. Try this!"
Silk instantly stuck to the giant fist, followed by the release of high-voltage current that fried countless spiders to a crisp. Then a grenade landed perfectly atop that disgusting giant hand. A violent explosion instantly shattered it to pieces.
The Punisher pulled out two more incendiary grenades, setting fire to all the spider swarms blasted onto the ground, then looked at Spider-Man.
"I don't really understand what this monster is, but he shouldn't be able to survive this, right?"
"Probably... if every spider is dead..."
Peter spoke while catching his breath, but soon both men heard a strange sound. It did not come from the burning swarm, but from Chameleon's already-dead corpse. The body began to twitch grotesquely. Spider-Man was the first to realize what had happened. He tried to use Silk to yank the corpse over, but the adaptive armor, weakened by repeated gunfire, was extremely fragile. Peter did not pull it over—he tore it apart.
Inside were Chameleon's bones, stripped completely bare of flesh, along with a large swarm of spiders. They moved in perfect unison, fleeing toward the nearest sewer entrance. Even though The Punisher threw the grenade in his hand as quickly as he could, a small group of spiders still slipped into the sewer.
Spider-Man immediately lifted the manhole cover and jumped down, but just as he had expected, there was no sign of any spiders left.
"What do you think are the odds that spiders will die naturally in New York's sewers?"
He asked The Punisher dejectedly, then climbed back up.
"We need to come up with a new plan."
I originally wrote a version where Carl Jin was killed off in this chapter, but no matter how I looked at it, both the emotions and the plot felt too rushed. So I decided to let him live a couple more days.
The Spider Swarm (Thousand Spider Swarm), Carl Jin, first appeared in issue one of "Spider-Man's Tangled Web" (2001). He was Peter Parker's high school classmate. After eating the radioactive spider that bit Parker, he became a conscious swarm of spiders. After devouring his parents, girlfriend, and more than a dozen passersby, he challenged Spider-Man. In the end, he was accidentally electrocuted to death by high-voltage electricity, and the last spider was crushed by a passerby. His abilities allowed him to regenerate infinitely as long as even one spider remained, devour and disguise himself as others, and increase his strength by consuming other living beings.
A pure animal.
Before you continue