C248 Spider-Man (Patreon)

“Oh, sh*t...” Peter muttered as he knew what Zola was trying to do.

In the movie, Zola locked the Avengers that found him inside the room and called in an air strike, hoping to kill his enemies alongside himself.

Of course, he did that in order to stop them from revealing what they knew about Project Insight, though that wasn’t the only reason.

As a living supercomputer, Zola is a literal databank of everything related to Hydra going all the back to World War 2.

He was one of the main people who spearheaded the rebuilding of Hydra after being recruited into the United States during Operation Paperclip.

If he were to be captured, then every bit of information he knew would be in the hands of his captors.

Names, addresses, plans, and so much more were locked up inside his metal brain, waiting to be harvested.

On top of that, unlike a normal human, Zola is unable to forget anything, making him a treasure trove of information.

He isn’t even human anymore, making the information readily available to anyone who could hack into his mind.

‘He wants to commit suicide...’ Peter thought as soon as the provoking words started flying.

After all, without the ability to call in an air strike, since Peter's barriers were blocking all communications, Zola was left extremely vulnerable.

Before Peter could reveal what was happening, Tony launched forward, propelled by the thrusters on his hands and feet.

*Crash!*

Smashing his metal fist into the monitor that showed Zola’s face, Tony watched in satisfaction as the glass fell to the floor with small clinks.

“You really should be thanking me, Mr. Stark.” Zola says as his smiling image appears on every other monitor around the room. “Didn’t you hate your father? I thought you’d be happy that I had him killed. After all, you inherited his kingdom, did you not?”

“F*ck my dad. He was almost as smart as me, so he could take care of himself.” Tony says as his palm thrusters start pulsing dangerously. “You had that piece of sh•t strangle my innocent mother to death.”

*Boom!*

Tony held up both hands and fired his thrusters, simultaneously destroying two other monitors.

“Ahh, yes.” Zola says in amusement as his remaining images smirk toward Tony. “Sweet Maria Stark... You know, I once bumped into her before changing bodies to this machine. I instantly knew why Howard was so infatuated. After all, anyone would be smitten with an a*s like that-”

*Boom boom boom...*

Unable to listen any further, Tony starts repeatedly firing his palm thrusters, destroying every monitor in the room but one.

“Alright, Tony.” Peter says as he snaps his fingers. “That’s enough.”

With the snap of Peter's fingers, Tony’s suit turned into LEGO’s, which fell off of his body and created a pile on the floor.

“What?!” Tony turns to his friend in extreme irritation. “Are you going to tell me that this one is a mind-controlled puppet as well?”

“No, in fact, you can kill him in a moment.” Peter says as he walks up to Zola’s remaining monitor. “Nice try, but you have a lot of information to hand over before dying.”

“Then I better start erasing everything, shouldn’t I?” Zola said as his image disappears and a progress bar with a trash can icon took his place, filling at a snail's pace.

“I don’t think so.” Peter says as he gets to work.

Not bothering with the outdated control panel, which was probably a decoy that didn’t actually connect to Zola whatsoever, Peter studied the room for a moment.

“This should be it...” Peter muttered as he tore a panel off a wall and found tons of wires and old-school processors on the other side.

“Have you given up?” Zola asks mockingly. “Go ahead. Tear me apart!”

“No, I’m just going to rip out your processors until your about as smart as a baby with Down Syndrome.” Peter says as he turns to Tony. “You want to do the honors?”

“...” Tony smirked as he walked up and grasped the first processor.

“No! Don’t touch that!” Zola yelled as Tony ripped it out and tossed it over his shoulder before grabbing another and another and another. “S-Stop!”

One by one, Tony ripped them out over and over, as Peter tore the walls down and revealed even more processors.

“P-Please, stop...” Zola stuttered and started talking slower, showing the immense impact that their actions were having on his mind. “I... I... I can’t... think...”

As if Zola forgot or didn’t have enough processing power to continue, the deletion bar, which was slowly filling up to 2% only a moment ago had completely disappeared.

“Isn’t this better than simply killing him?” Peter says as he turns to Tony. “After all, for a genius like Zola, the only thing he fears more than death is losing his brilliant mind.”

Tony silently agreed as he took great pleasure in scrambling the brains of the man who ordered the deaths of his parents.

“This is kind of sad...” Peggy muttered as she watch Zola whimper and beg, growing stupider and stupider with every second that passes.

Steve nodded in agreement, though his body refused to move, unwilling to help the man that hurt his best friend.

...

“I think that’s enough...” Peter muttered as he looked at the image of Zola, which stared forward with a blank look.

“Armin, can you hear me?” Peter calls out as if he were talking to a young child.

“Y-Yes...” He replied meekly, sounding like a stuttering idiot. “Do... Do you know where my... mommy is?”

Although he spoke like a child, his voice hadn’t changed, creating a weird atmosphere in the room.

“We may have taken out one too many processors...” Peter muttered as he walked up to the remaining monitor. “Yeah, she just needs you to do something before she gets here.”

“O-Okay...” Zola replied readily.

“Good, where do you keep your memories?” Peter asked.

“In my head, idiot.” Zola answered with a stupid laugh.

“And where is that?” Peter asks, ignoring his childlike response.

...

This form of questioning continued until Peter got a good enough answer.

“Found it!” Peter called out as he crawled through a vented panel and found a hidden room filled with giant old-school hard drives, which looked to have been upgraded to a certain extent. ‘Let’s see...’

Getting to work, Peter hard-wired his ghost laptop in and started downloading every bit of information.

Of course, he made sure to isolate everything that was being downloaded, leaving it in a heavily secured portion of his laptop, which didn’t have any access to the internet, just in case Zola tried anything funny.

‘I’ll have to be careful later on.’ Peter thought as he finished the download.

Before leaving the secret room, Peter used the Aether to create countless bricks of C-4 explosives, as well as a detonator.

Leaving the bricks behind, Peter crawled back out and handed Tony the detonator.

“Come on. Let’s leave the room so you can blow it up.” Peter says as he walks toward the door.

“Are you leaving?” Zola asks like a lonely child.

“...” A wavering look appeared on Tony’s face. “I don’t think that I can do it with him like this...”

“Hmm...” Peter turns to look over his shoulder and snaps his fingers.

Instantly, the processors that were on the floor flew back into place, fixing themselves in a matter of seconds.

“There, better now?” Peter asks as the screeching voice of Zola fills the room.

“You won’t get away with this!” He screams angrily, sounding just like before the processors were removed. “Cut off one head and two more shall rise to take its place!”

“Yeah yeah, whatever.” Peter muttered as he left the room, followed by everyone else.

“Go ahead.” Peter nods toward Tony as a barrier appears, which surrounded the room in order to contain the coming explosion.

“...” Staring down at the detonator, Tony took a deep breath before giving it a squeeze.

“Hail Hydra!” Zola fanatically yelled his last words.

*BOOM!*

Instantly, everything on the other side of the barrier was covered in fire and smoke, turning the entire room into nothing but rubble.

“Today marks the end of the brilliant Armin Zola.” Peter said uncaringly.

‘I’m sorry that it took me this long to avenge you...’ Tony thought of his parents as he turned his head away from the destruction.

“Hands in the air, now!” Marching footsteps were heard as a group of armed ‘Shield’ agents came rushing down the hall.

“Okay, you guys deal with capturing this base.” Peter says as he opens a portal and steps through. “I have to go and shuttle the others around.”

“Wait!” Steve called out, ignoring the armed gunmen. “Did you get any information on what he did to Bucky?”

“I don’t know yet.” Peter turns and shrugs. “Deal with what’s in front of you for now. We’ll fix up Bucky soon enough.”

A/N: 1510 words :)