And I suddenly felt like an arrogant high school basketball prodigy, too young and foolish to realize that no one can do everything alone.
That realization sparked another idea—a way to minimize the risk the Rhino's undisciplined strength presented, and to further use the Ancients' own natures, their confidence and their arrogance, against them.
"Okay," I said, feeling newly confident, and raised my voice. "You're on the team, Aleksei."
His expression grew pained. "Please," he called back. "Rhino. From you, Rhino."
I grinned, heading for the living room, beckoning MJ and Felicia to follow me. "Okay, Rhino. We're short on time, so huddle up. Here's the plan."
Chapter 24
The murky light of predawn fell on the auto yard. Colors were washed out to various shades of blue, darkening to perfect black. The streetlights nearby were mostly broken, but where they were on, they added the occasional shaft of yellowish light. The low light softened edges and deepened shadows. It made the stacks of crushed cars and mounds of discarded parts look positively alien, and the mounds and mounds of deceased vehicles created an oxidized labyrinth. The place smelled like rust and rot and old motor oil. Pools of liquid rippled under a ghostly wind, and the light reflecting from them danced through too many colors for them to be puddles of water.
The whole place was on a long lot, behind a high fence. It was maybe a hundred yards in length, maybe half as wide. About the size of a football field, in fact. Maybe that was just a coincidence. But then again, maybe Mortia picked it for that exact reason—to tell me that I was simply a game to her.
If so, that was all right. I can play games, too.
Two features in the yard stood out: first, an enormous industrial machine, one of those dinosaursized hydraulic car-crushing gadgets. The other, not far from the entry gate, was a small and run-down building with the word "Office" painted on the door. A small and dilapidated mechanics' garage was attached to the building.
My spider sense started twitching when I was a block away from the junkyard. By the time I actually swung over the fence to land high atop the car crusher, it was screaming at maximum volume. The Ancients were there ahead of me.
I remained in place for another two minutes, just to be punctual, and then called out, "Mortia! Thanis! Malos! It's on!"
The three of them appeared from the interior of the run-down garage, their pale faces visible first, so that they gave the appearance of three skulls drifting toward me. Eventually, they came out enough for me to see that once again, they had all come in pseudo-formal attire. It made sense, I supposed. MJ and I dress up a little when we plan on a nice dinner, too.
Mortia stopped a step ahead of her brothers, smiling up at me. "Ah. I am glad that you saw reason."
"I'm a reasonable guy," I said. "Which is why I have a proposal for you."
She tilted her head to one side. "Oh?"
"A trade," I said. "I looked it up and it turns out that Spider-Men my size only make a decent meal for two, not three, and that I'm full of carbs and bad cholesterol. I thought I might be able to arrange something healthier and more profitable."
And with that, I pulled the Rhino, once again bound limply into a cocoon of webbing, off of the papoose-style carry on my back, and began lowering him to the ground. "I figure this ought to stick to your ribs better than me. I'm all string and gristle."
Mortia touched a forefinger to her chin, a pensive gesture. "And why would you offer such a thing?" she asked.
"Because I'm not an idiot," I said. "What happened with Morlun was a fluke. I'm never going to be able to survive the three of you."
Mortia gestured at the Rhino. "Yet it is a poor gift you offer. We can take him at will."
"Think of him as a down payment," I said. "I can set you up with all kinds of totemistic super folk. I can point you to a Lizard, an Octopus, a Vulture, a Scorpion, a Sabretooth—oh, and Serpents. There's so many of them that they formed their own society."
"You would doom others of your ilk to preserve your own life? It seems uncharacteristic of your behavior."
"They're all enemies," I said. "Criminals, thugs, and good riddance to them. I can't beat you, but I
do want to survive. It's an acceptable compromise from which both of us profit."
Mortia turned and looked at each of her brothers in silence. They returned an equally placid, in-human gaze. Then she turned back to me and said, "Lower the brute."
My mouth felt a little bit dry. "Here we go," I whispered. "All set?"
"Da," the Rhino whispered.
I lowered him slowly, steadily to the ground. Mortia and her brothers walked over and stood there in their little formation as the Rhino sank to the ground at Mortia's feet.
She regarded the Rhino with hooded eyes, then looked up at me.
"Do we have a deal?" I called.
Mortia's sharklike smile returned, and she murmured, "Arrogant worm. Kill them both."
Let the games begin.
"You're going to wish you hadn't said that," I predicted.
She regarded me with scorn. "Why?"
"Because even a blind man can find you when you yammer on like that."
The Rhino ripped out of the cocoon as if it had been made of tissue paper—and parts of it were— and seized Mortia by the ankle. Then he grunted, rolled, and threw her.
Here's a business secret not everyone knows: Super strength, after you get to a certain point, suffers from a case of diminishing returns, especially in combat. That's just physics, old Sir Isaac rearing his oversized melon. When you lift something heavy, you're pushing up at it, but it's pushing down at you, and through you to the earth. That downward force eventually gets to the point where it starts forcing your feet into the ground.
Sure, the Hulk can free-lift better than a hundred tons, but when that much weight is pushing down on a relatively small area—like his feet—it tends to drive them down like tent stakes. (Not to mention that there just aren't all that many hundred-ton objects that won't fall apart under the stress of their own weight when lifted.) Similarly, the Thing can throw a big punch at a brick wall, but if he uses too much of his strength, the impact of the blow will shove against him, pushing his feet across the floor or even throwing him backward. He has to brace himself if he's really going all-out.
(Which is one reason I've done pretty well in slugfests against guys a lot bigger and stronger than me, by the way—my feet always hold on to the ground, or wall, or whatever, allowing my punches to be delivered far more efficiently than those of most of the powerhouses.)
Anyway, once you get into the heavyweight division of super strength, the differences are kind of academic, and they only really stand out in a couple of different areas.
Ripping an object apart between your hands is one of them. It's isometric.
Throwing things is another.
The Rhino can trade punches with the Hulk. He can flip an Abrams main battle tank with one hand. And, apparently, he can throw gothed-out brunettes halfway to Jersey.
Mortia shrieked and flew out of the junkyard like a cruise missile in a red cravat. She clipped the edge of a ten-story building a block away, sending up a cloud of dust and a spray of shattered bits of masonry. The impact didn't even slow her flight down. She just kept on going, tumbling end over end, over the nearest buildings and out of sight, screaming in feral rage all the way. The scream faded into the distance.
For a second, the remaining Ancients were stonestill in surprise, and it was time enough for the Rhino to come to his feet in a fighting crouch, arms spread. He might have looked intimidating if he hadn't been facing approximately ninety degrees to the left of his foes.