Fan Fiction: Crossovers
Why Wasn't I There?
Part 7
The timer read 8 minutes, 52 seconds.
And counting.
"This is bad isn't it?" Asked Spider-Man.
"Not for another eight minutes." Answered the Shadow confidently.
"So, you can fix this right?"
"Yep. It's easy." Assured the Shadow. "Just hope I don't cut the wrong wire."
Spider-Man gulped. "I don't want to hear that."
The Shadow was unscrewing the small screws in the bomb's wire housing. "Go make sure that Tular and his final goon are out cold still okay? I have to concentrate"
Spider-Man went out of the van and checked while his partner worked. They were both still unconscious. As he headed back to the van, he heard a massive clanging noise. With a quiet yelp, he ran back in, to see the Shadow holding one of his automatics by the barrel, using it to repeatedly club the bomb housing.
"Please stop pounding the NUCLEAR warhead!" shouted Spider-Man in terror.
"I can't get the casing off. It's stuck." The Shadow answered, pounding it again.
"Please stop that! It is not a padlock on a door, it's a NUCLEAR bomb!" yelled Spider-Man again. "Let me." With that, he ripped the casing off with immense Spider-strength.
"Thank you." Said the Shadow. "I'll remember that next time I need to get through a padlock." He started to pull the wires loose.
"So you can do this right?" asked Spider-Man again.
"Two wires. One is green, one's red. We need the green wire." He grinned beneath his mask and whispered something to himself. "This is green. That's red." He chuckled.
Spider-Man was not put at ease. "What?"
"There's a story behind that." The Shadow told him. "Remind me to tell you sometime."
"Okay. Now if I can pull you off memory lane for the next five minutes?"
The Shadow checked the timer. "Four minutes."
"I don't want to hear that."
"Uh oh." Said The shadow.
Spider-Man nearly fainted. "And I REALLY do not want to hear that."
"There is no green wire. No red wire either."
Spider-Man looked at The Shadow in disbelief. "Surely your knowledge of bomb disarmament goes beyond 'red wire, green wire.'"
The Shadow did not answer right away; when he did it was in a morbid whisper.
"We can't cut the timer cable." He said. "If we do then we will lose the signal between the clock and the plutonium core, and the bomb will go off."
"I really don't want to hear that."
"We can't touch the clock, but we can remove the electrical wires from the core so that the charge will not start the reaction. No BOOM."
"That sounds better." Spider-Man remembered to breathe.
"Unfortunately…" started The Shadow.
"I am NOT hearing this." Spider-Man practically shrieked.
"If we cant touch the clock, then the countdown on the clock will continue. The only way we will know for sure if the reaction will or will not start, is to let the timer go to zero, and see if it blows."
"Now you're just doing this to be mean aren't you?" pouted Spider-Man.
The Shadow slowly, gently, fearfully, started to pull the bomb from the crate.
"PLEASE! Be careful!" Spider-Man begged quietly.
"Hold the base." The Shadow directed quietly.
Spider-Man held it, almost afraid to touch the cool metal. The Shadow held the top half, and started to turn it.
Spider-Man started praying quickly and repeatedly. "We are pulling apart a NUCLEAR weapon."
"Yes we are." The Shadow said with his usual cool understatement. For the first time Spider-Man noticed that his partner was sweating. This was more terrifying than the bomb.
Slowly the top of the bomb unscrewed, and The Shadow lifted it off. Laying it carefully on its side, he reached into the top half of the cylinder. Withdrawing his hand from the cylinder, he opened his hand and displayed a small silver sphere with two wires extending back into the top half.
"Hey! A red and green wire! WE'RE SAVED!" He cheered.
"Marvelous!" Shouted Spider-Man. "TICK TOCK!"
The Shadow looked back at the timer, only thirty seconds left.
Without a word, he grabbed the green wire and yanked for all he was worth.
The wire came loose, the timer kept ticking.
|
