Baki Hanma vs Spider-Man

The Arena

Peter Parker was in Japan for a science conference, not a fight. But a news clip of a masked man swinging between Yokohama’s cranes reached the one person in the country who collects strong opponents the way other people collect stamps.

Baki Hanma found him on top of a stack of shipping containers at two in the morning, stretching his neck like a sprinter before a race. Spider-Man tried the polite version first. “Look, I’m sure you’re very nice, but I don’t really do exhibition matches.” Baki bowed, said “Please,” and kicked the container out from under his feet.

Round One

For the first minute Baki could not touch him. Every strike he threw, his spider-sense felt it coming before the muscle fired, and Spider-Man flowed around it as if they had rehearsed the whole thing. Low kick, he hopped it. Jab and cross, he bent backwards under both. A feint into an elbow, he caught the elbow and used it to vault over Baki’s head.

Baki laughed out loud. He had fought men who could not be hurt and men who could not be caught, but never a man who knew what he was going to do before he did. So he stopped thinking. He went into the empty, wordless state his father reaches without trying, and his next kick clipped Spider-Man’s jaw.

The Turn

Baki dropped flat and launched himself from a dead stop into full speed in a single instant, the explosive start he copied from watching a cockroach. The spider-sense warned Peter the way it always did, but there was no gap between the warning and the impact.

The shoulder caught him in the chest and drove him through the side of a container. Before he could stand, Baki’s open hand cracked across his ribs: the whip strike, a slap thrown so loose and fast that it skips muscle and talks directly to the nerves. Peter had been hit by men who could lift buses. Nothing had ever hurt like that.

He rolled away gasping, and understood something important. This man was not a villain. He was also not going to stop.

The Finish

So Spider-Man stopped pulling every punch to the edge of nothing and let himself be as strong as he really is. When Baki came in again, Peter caught his wrist mid-strike and did not let go. Baki twisted into a joint lock that would have broken any human arm. Peter’s arm did not break. He lifted the champion of the underground arena off the ground one-handed and set him down hard enough to dent the steel.

Baki was up instantly, smiling through a bloody lip, and charged again. This time a web line caught his ankle in mid-stride, a second pinned his arms, and a third wrapped him to the side of a crane leg like a fly on a window. He strained until the veins stood out in his neck. The webbing held.

“Sorry,” Peter said, sitting down on a container to breathe. “If it helps, that slap thing is going to give me nightmares.” Baki laughed until the webbing dissolved an hour later, then asked whether they could do it again tomorrow.