The symbiote amplifies its host's emotions. It feeds on them. Furthermore, a host's underlying personality deeply influences the alien's own developing consciousness. Venom had grown comfortable with Peter because the teenager usually maintained a rigid, over-controlled grip on his physical and emotional output.
But the Goblin King wasn't a standard bank robber. He was pure, unadulterated evil. He treated human lives as disposable punchlines. Peter's core fear wasn't injury or death; it was the specific, haunting image of innocent people dying because he hadn't done enough to save them. Now, that fear had curdled into unbridled rage. And Venom was gorging on it.
A Gray Goblin plummeted toward the asphalt, only to be snatched mid-air by a thick webline. Peter didn't stop there. Capitalizing on his superhuman strength, which exceeded Captain America's benchmarks, he whipped a heavy, steel telephone pole thirty meters into the air and swung it like a baseball bat. The resounding crack echoed over the sirens. The Goblin launched across the skyline, crashing into a tangled cocoon of webbing strung between two office buildings.
Even Venom hadn't considered using municipal infrastructure as sporting equipment.
When Venom had tried to offer a comforting This isn't your fault moments earlier, Peter's snarled Of course I know! had shut the alien up entirely.
A Jack O'Lantern variant zeroed in on the cocooned Goblin, raising a glowing explosive to finish off the failure. Peter intercepted him in a blur of enhanced speed and agility. He grabbed the thrall's wrist. Before the pumpkin bomb could fully detonate, Peter crushed it inside the Goblin's fist. Searing heat washed over them. Simultaneously, a dozen black tendrils erupted from Peter's back, whipping around the Goblin's waist to pulverize the rest of his payload.
Fire engulfed Peter's forearms. The alien bio-matter burned away, but Peter ignored the blistering pain. He drove a fist into the flaming pumpkin helmet, shattering the fiberglass casing. Peter hurled the unconscious thrall onto a rooftop and plastered him in a foot of industrial-grade webbing.
Down below, terrified New Yorkers scrambled for cover, casting panicked glances skyward. The sprawling black mass undulating across Peter's suit reminded them entirely too much of the symbiote frenzy that had gripped the city two months prior.
High above the intersection, thick, tar-like tendrils lashed out from Peter's spine. They anchored to the brick and mortar of the adjacent high-rises, weaving a massive, sticky web of black bio-material straight across the gap. Peter crouched at the center. Waiting for the flies.
"Hahaha! You're using a fire-averse space-goop to stop me?" The Goblin King's voice blared from a hijacked PA system, sounding utterly delighted.
The remaining gliders converged on the giant black web, hurling incendiaries. The symbiote tentacles acted as a layered shield, intercepting the explosives before they could reach Peter's underlying suit.
But Peter wasn't playing defense. The black suit shifted, flowing over him in a liquid sheen. He materialized from the smoke. His right arm morphed into a jagged, hardened blade. He drove it straight through a Gray Goblin's shoulder—deliberately avoiding vitals—and slammed the man onto the pavement. Three spiked tendrils shot from Peter's back, skewering three more diving Goblins through their armor plating. He ripped them off their gliders and tossed their bodies through the shattered window of an abandoned restaurant.
Civilians huddled under the restaurant booths screamed at the sight of the bloodied, unmoving bodies.
"What are you crying about?!" Peter roared, his voice distorted by a dual-layered, alien timbre. "I didn't kill anyone!"
The terrified onlookers peeked over the tables. The puncture wounds on the Goblins were sealed with pulsing patches of black bio-material. The men were bruised and groaning, but breathing.
Above them, the giant black web took a concentrated volley of bombs. The explosion incinerated the anchoring tentacles. The severed bio-matter fell to the street as ash.
Are you alright, Venom? Peter asked, his chest heaving.
Hurts a little. But I'll live. I should be asking you.
"Never better," Peter growled, cracking his knuckles. "Ten down. Thirteen left."
Peter launched himself back into the fiery sky. He snatched a Jack O'Lantern mid-dive. His symbiote-enlarged claws wrapped entirely around the flaming helmet. He smothered the fire with alien mass and pile-drived the rider into a parked sedan. The flames seared Peter's arm, forcing the symbiote to retract, leaving his red-and-blue fabric exposed. He didn't miss a beat. He backhanded another Goblin, tore off the rubber mask, and lashed the man's belt to his own rogue glider, sending him spinning wildly out of the combat zone.
The thralls adapted. They targeted a massive J. Jonah Jameson billboard on a nearby rooftop, obliterating the steel supports. The flaming structure plummeted toward Peter. He countered by catching an abandoned taxi cab with a webline and hurling it upward to intercept the debris.
He couldn't worry about hitting the thralls too hard; the Goblin serum running through their veins kept them alive through catastrophic impacts. His only concern was keeping their bombs away from civilians. It was a nightmare. The Goblin King didn't care about his pawns. The thralls repeatedly initiated suicide dives, trying to lock Peter in a death grip while arming their explosives.
Peter fought like a machine. His precognitive spider-sense guided him through the chaotic barrage of shrapnel and fire. His rage burned white-hot until the final thrall plummeted to the asphalt, webbed and unconscious.
"And our Spider-Man takes the gold!" The Goblin King's voice echoed through the smoke-filled canyon. "Hooray! A flawless victory surrounded by broken bodies! The good news is, it looks like you kept civilian casualties to a minimum. How lucky. I'll just have to tweak my formula next time to leave fewer survivors."
Peter stood amidst the wreckage. The black mask shifted, the white lenses narrowing into dangerous slits.
"Alright, alright, watching my pawns get stomped is getting boring," the Goblin King sighed. "So, I've prepared a little parting gift. You've beaten twenty-two Goblins, Spider-Man! But there's still one left on the board!"
The voice didn't explain what the final piece was, but Peter already knew. The smoke parted.
A massive figure stepped through the wall of flames.
It was the Green Goblin.
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