The Roderick Kingsley sitting inside that office was a Goblin thrall, and the cackling maniac hovering in front of Peter was just another copy.
Both of them were nothing more than meat-puppets dancing on the Goblin King's strings.
"Not a fan of one-on-one combat?" Peter yelled over the roar of the glider's exhaust. "Hiding behind cheap knock-offs doesn't exactly scream 'King' to me!"
"There's no royal decree stating a King must dirty his hands, Spider-Man," the Goblin King's voice rasped through the thrall's masked speakers. "Why the hesitation? What's holding you back? Are you paralyzed by the thought that I might actually be Norman Osborn?"
The masked rider tilted his head, hovering just out of reach. "Go ahead, take a guess! Don't forget, Osborn doesn't need the future tech. He's always had the tech to turn himself into the Green Goblin right here at home!"
The thrall wasn't entirely wrong. Until the Goblin King unmasked, Norman Osborn remained the prime suspect. The heavy-handed emphasis on the color green was practically a neon sign pointing straight to Oscorp.
"I wasn't hesitating," Peter deadpanned, his muscles coiling. "I was just waiting for you to finish monologuing."
Peter fired a web-line. He didn't aim for the glider. He hit the concrete wall beside him and pulled hard, slingshotting his body directly into the Goblin's airspace.
The thrall tried to pull up. He was too slow.
Peter slammed into him mid-air. He grappled the Goblin's neck, twisting his own body weight to invert their momentum. He brought them both crashing down onto the adjacent rooftop in a brutal, bone-rattling arc.
They hit the roof simultaneously. Peter rolled and sprang into a crouch. The Goblin bounced on the concrete.
Before the thrall could twitch, Peter pinned his wrists to the floor with twin bursts of webbing. He reached down and ripped the bandolier of pumpkin bombs from the Goblin's chest. He hurled them skyward. They detonated in a cluster of harmless, high-altitude orange fireballs. Peter fired another heavy volley of silk, anchoring the thrall completely to the roof. The microscopic Pym-particle drones had already severed the internal bomb's fuse. No self-destruction today.
"I'll find you," Peter growled, looking down at the pinned thrall. "Roderick, you, whoever else is wearing these masks. I'll find the King."
Peter dragged the fallen glider closer. He tapped into its onboard computer via his suit's tactical eyepiece. He initiated a trace on the broadcast signal. The location pinged. Then it jumped. It kept jumping, cycling through dozens of nodes every second.
"Oscorp built the criminal communications network for the NYPD," the pinned Goblin laughed, the King's voice still pouring from the mask. "I can hijack it whenever I please. Every single police comm tower is my personal megaphone. Tell me, doesn't that sound exactly like something Norman Osborn would do?"
The voice shifted into a cruel, teasing lilt. "Is it me? Is it not me? If I'm not Norman, who else has this kind of clearance? If I am Norman... oh, poor little Harry. He doesn't even realize his father has a psychotic serial-killer alter ego! Hahahaha!"
Peter ignored the voice. He knelt beside the thrall. His drones had confirmed explosives inside the body, but no biological mind-control chips. Peter grabbed the edge of the rubber mask. He yanked it off.
A middle-aged man stared up at him. His eyes were bloodshot and darting.
"Don't kill me!" the man shrieked, his chest heaving. "Please, don't kill me!"
Peter didn't answer. He inspected the interior of the discarded mask. Complex neural electrodes lined the forehead and temples. It was identical to the neural interface Quentin Beck used to amplify his Mysterio illusions. It fed commands directly into the wearer's brain.
"So..." the Goblin King's voice crackled from the mask's discarded earpiece. "Am I really not Norman Osborn?"
Peter crushed the mask in his fist. His HUD scanned the man's face. Match: Daniel Kingsley. Brother of Roderick Kingsley.
"I'm a dead man!" Daniel thrashed against the webbing, his voice cracking. "I didn't escape! The plan—I didn't escape on time! I'm doomed!"
"Escape from what?" Peter demanded.
"Peter," JARVIS's voice cut through Peter's earpiece. "I am detecting multiple hostiles ascending from Manhattan's waterways."
Camera feeds from the tactical eyepiece flickered to life. Dozens of gliders burst from the East River and the Hudson. The riders wore mismatched nightmares. Some wore tattered yellow cloaks. Some wore gray. Others had literal flaming jack-o'-lanterns for heads. Leading them was a massive figure draped in heavy green exoskeleton armor.
"Total enemy force: twenty-three," JARVIS reported. "They are advancing on your position."
Before Peter could open a channel to the Avengers, every massive television screen in Times Square switched feeds. A cartoon goblin wearing a jagged crown danced across the displays.
The Goblin King's voice boomed across the city streets.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening! You might not recognize the beauties flying across your screens, but this is my lovely Goblin Legion! And I am your new best friend, the Goblin King!"
The voice paused for dramatic effect. "Today is my official debut. And to celebrate, I've decided to kill a superhero! Naturally, Spider-Man gets the honors!"
Laughter echoed off the skyscrapers. The Goblin King took a deep, exaggerated breath. "The rules are simple. Spider-Man must eliminate every single Goblin I've sent, or he dies! But I know the spider has high-flying friends. So, rule number two: If a second superhero intervenes? The Avengers, the Defenders, the Fantastic Four, S.H.I.E.L.D.... if anyone touches my board, my army will carpet-bomb the streets. Every civilian casualty will be on your conscience, web-head."
"If you kill them all today, I'll just send a new army next week! Maybe we'll target Captain America next! It's a game we can play all year! Hahahaha!"
The Goblin King sighed theatrically. "You might be wondering, where do I find the volunteers for my serum? Oh, it's easy! Runaways. Illegal immigrants. The homeless. Victims of human trafficking. You should be thanking me, NYPD! I'm clearing out all your cold cases!"
PS: Marvel Fun Fact!
The yellow-cloaked riders represent the Hobgoblin, the gray variants are a shoutout to the Demogoblin, and the pumpkin-headed freaks are straight out of the Jack O'Lantern playbook. In the comics, Roderick Kingsley (the original Hobgoblin) eventually franchised out his villainous identities to other criminals, effectively running a supervillain corporate empire!