To respect Tony's emotions, Captain America ultimately refrained from saying much to the Winter Soldier.
Though the two old friends hadn't seen each other in seventy years, with the control chip removed, they only needed a single glance to reach a silent understanding:
Whatever needs to be said can wait until these damn Hydra parasites are dealt with!
Using the Omnitrix to briefly interface with Tide inside Felicia and exchange intel, Peter turned to face Tony and Steve.
"According to the memories extracted from Crossbones, there are seven similar strongholds across the US.
Four of them are low-staffed, temporary hideouts. The real core bases are only two: one in Seattle, and the other at the Woodlawn S.H.I.E.L.D. founding site in New Jersey."
"The former is Alexander Pierce's secret hub, responsible for political infiltration and external communications."
"The latter is Dr. Arnim Zola's archive—the birthplace of his digital consciousness system."
Hearing this, Steve and Tony shared a grim look. These two locations—one near the heart of Washington D.C. and the other the very cradle of S.H.I.E.L.D.—showed just how deeply the "snake" had coiled around the nation.
Particularly the name Alexander Pierce. The realization that the Secretary of the World Security Council was a Hydra leader made them shudder.
Without Peter's intervention, Pierce could have easily branded them as global threats with a few phone calls, turning the entire world against them before they even knew they were at war.
Steve's fury burned white-hot, reaching a breaking point. "Is this S.H.I.E.L.D. or Snake-H.I.E.L.D.?! I'm starting to wonder if Nick himself is one of them!"
Tony, leaning against his armor, added with dripping sarcasm, "He'd better be Hydra. Because if he's not, then I have to seriously question that guy's IQ.
The 'King of Spies' getting played like a fiddle in his own house? Pathetic."
Peter cut through the debate. "We'll deal with the Nick fury later. Right now, we need to strike both core bases simultaneously. If we hit one, the other will go into lockdown or purge its data.
"Here's the plan: I'll take Felicia to New Jersey to destroy Zola's archive and prevent him from uploading his consciousness to Europe.
You three—Tony, Cap, and Bucky—will hit Pierce's base in Seattle to prevent them from doing anything desperate against D.C. Once I'm done, I'll teleport to back you up. Any objections?"
The plan was solid. The team split up and went into action.
Since Peter had lent his hoverboards to the "Soldier Duo," he carried Felicia in his arms as he flew toward Woodlawn.
Even without the boards, the hundred-kilometer trip from New York to New Jersey took him barely fifteen minutes.
However, Zola's digital surveillance was no joke. The moment they entered the airspace, satellite arrays locked onto them.
Before Peter could even land, three high-yield missiles streaked toward them from the base's hidden silos.
Against normal targets, this was a death sentence. But Peter wasn't normal.
He set Felicia down—her "Tide" suit already shimmering into place—and let her breach the facility to trap Zola's data. He then turned back to face the incoming missiles.
He could have simply punched them out of the sky, but to avoid collateral damage to the nearby residents of New Jersey, he opted for a "cleaner" approach.
Peter slapped the Omnitrix, shifting his physiology to a specialized Spider-DNA variant to maximize his Spider-Sense.
Then, he toggled his Wizard Driver to Land/Thunder Style, activating the Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Wrapped in a crackling cloak of electricity, Peter's speed eclipsed the missiles. He flickered through the air, appearing atop the first missile in a blur.
He pressed his hand against the casing; his elementally-charged palms seeped into the electronic guidance system, using a precise electromagnetic pulse to fry the fuses in milliseconds.
He repeated the process twice more, turning the deadly warheads into "duds" before they could touch the ground.
The missiles slammed into the earth with a heavy thud, vibrating the soil but failing to detonate.
Inside the base, the digital avatar of Dr. Zola flickered wildly. His screen was a chaotic mess of error codes.
His electronic brain had practically "blue-screened" watching a human being treat long-range missiles like playground toys.
What did Hydra do to deserve being hunted by this living ancestor?!
As Zola frantically tried to upload his core data to a backup server, a female voice echoed through his audio receptors:
"Trying to run?"
BOOM!
Felicia's fist, reinforced by Tide, smashed through the central CPU and the hardened data drives.
"NOOO—!!!"
With a final, distorted electronic shriek, the near-immortal digital lifeform met its permanent deletion.
Peter walked in just as the screens went black. Seeing the silence of the facility, he let out a relaxed whistle.
Another batch of sacrifice points for the system, coming right up.
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