Almost the exact second Peter dispatched the twenty-second Goblin, Norman Osborn stepped off the elevator onto the top floor of Avengers Tower. The steel doors slid shut behind him. He met the icy glares of the assembled Avengers without flinching.
"I know exactly what you're thinking," Norman said, adjusting his expensive cuffs. "But I'm right here. That proves I'm not remote-controlling that army out there. My blood are completely normal. You can run the tests yourselves."
Tony Stark didn't lower his guard. "Great. So how exactly do we stop this so-called Green Goblin?"
Norman frowned, his engineered warmth faltering. "I don't know. I never injected myself with the Goblin serum. But I know its exact chemical makeup."
Anyone who had seen the temporal footage inside Kang the Conqueror's metal sphere knew the formula. It was a volatile cocktail of Erskine's Super Soldier Serum, raw gamma radiation, and the twisted psychological mapping of Norman's own latent Green Goblin persona.
"There's only one logical conclusion," Norman continued, pacing the polished floor. "In the timeline where you Avengers didn't interfere, a Green Goblin existed. That means another Goblin is running around our timeline right now. And it isn't Harry."
Tony and Hank Pym exchanged a grim look. The science didn't lie. As the source of the serum, Norman Osborn was genetically unique. If this new Goblin wasn't a cheap knock-off, his genetic sequence had to be highly compatible with Norman's original framework.
"We need a DNA sample to run a cross-match," Hank said, adjusting his glasses.
"Useless," Norman countered. "You can't filter the entire city based on a genetic anomaly you haven't even caught yet. But I can give you a name. My personal psychiatrist, Dr. Barton Hamilton."
Steve Rogers crossed his arms, his vibranium shield strapped to his back. "Your shrink?"
"I vetted him," Norman said smoothly. "He accessed Kang's temporal orb. More importantly, he's the only one who has had direct, extended psychological contact with the actual Green Goblin persona inside my head. He could mimic it perfectly."
It made a sick kind of sense. Hamilton had the clinical insight to replicate the Goblin's madness. Furthermore, as a high-society psychiatrist, his blackmail network dwarfed Roderick Kingsley's. He was the perfect candidate for the Goblin King.
"I'll bring him in," Steve said, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous register.
Tony and Hank shared another look. They remembered the Goblin King's broadcast.
"The King said Peter only had one target left," Tony noted. "As long as Cap makes the arrest after the kid drops this last Goblin, we aren't breaking the psychopath's rules."
Peter Parker was running on fumes.
The black symbiote suit rippled sluggishly across his shoulders. Venom was exhausted. The alien had absorbed too much extreme heat from the relentless barrage of explosions. Peter wasn't doing much better. His left arm throbbed with second-degree burns. The alien bio-matter had shielded him from the worst of the blasts, but it was reaching its breaking point.
He stared through the smoke. The final Green Goblin stood before him.
The man was massive. He towered at six-foot-three, his physique bulked out by heavy, military-grade green exoskeleton armor. Unlike the cackling thralls, this Goblin didn't laugh. He stood perfectly still, his posture rigid and dead-eyed.
It couldn't be Norman. Norman was currently standing inside Avengers Tower. It couldn't be Harry.
Peter didn't care. He retracted the damaged symbiote back into his suit. He reeled his right arm back and launched himself forward.
The Green Goblin didn't dodge. He simply raised a gauntlet. He caught Peter's fist mid-strike. His fingers clamped down like a vice, attempting to shatter Peter's wrist. The Goblin's boot thrusters ignited. He rocketed them both into the air.
Peter used the Goblin's own grip against him. He twisted his hips. He leveraged his superhuman strength—an output functionally exceeding Captain America's benchmarks. He hurled the Goblin overhead in a brutal arc.
The armored giant slammed onto the asphalt. The pavement cracked. Peter didn't let up. He drove his left fist directly into the Goblin's faceplate. The fiberglass shattered. Peter ripped the ruined mask away.
His breath caught in his throat.
Norman Osborn's face stared back at him.
Peter froze. The Goblin grinned.
Peter kicked him squarely in the chest. The blow launched the Goblin backward just as a pumpkin bomb rolled from his gauntlet. The explosive detonated at point-blank range. Peter threw his arms up. The symbiote surged to form a desperate thermal shield.
When the smoke cleared, the Green Goblin stepped out of the crater. He was holding a torn, synthetic human skin mask in his hand.
"Hahaha! I knew you'd buy it, Spider-Man!" The Goblin King's voice boomed through the armor's speakers. "Nearly had a heart attack seeing dear old Norman, didn't you?"
The Goblin King cackled. The point-blank explosion hadn't dented the exoskeleton. The sheer heat, however, had scorched the thrall's exposed head down to a blistering, cherry-red skull. He looked like a nightmare. He didn't seem to feel the pain.
"Behold the true power of the Green Goblin!" the voice mocked. "Fire can't stop him! And his strength? Off the charts!"
The burning Goblin lunged. He threw a devastating right hook. Peter caught the punch with his left hand. His boots skidded back three inches. Peter retaliated. He drove a right cross directly into the Goblin's scorched jaw. The monster staggered back, but the manic laughter never stopped.
"Okay, fine," the Goblin King mused through the comms. "Even a highly compatible candidate isn't quite as strong as the original Norman. He hits hard, but you've got that alien goop helping you out. Fair fight."
The King didn't care. He was just gathering data. He had an endless talent pool of runaways and nobodies. He could send twenty-three Goblins this week, and twenty-three more the next. They would wear Spider-Man down eventually.
Peter didn't stop swinging. He dodged a desperate grapple. He swept the Goblin's legs. He hammered him into the concrete.
The thrall convulsed once. The flames licking his skull finally took their toll. The burning Green Goblin went limp, his life extinguished.
Peter dropped to his knees. His chest heaved. The black suit retracted from his face, exposing his sweat-drenched skin to the cold air.
It wasn't over.
Inside the sleek, glass-walled conference room of the Fantasy World costume studio, Roderick Kingsley paced nervously. The TV blared news footage of the Manhattan warzone. J. Jonah Jameson stood by the window, watching the smoke rise.
Roderick chewed his thumb. His brother Daniel was out there. If the plan failed...
Glass shattered.
Spider-Man erupted through the window. He was a blur of black, shifting bio-matter. He landed in a heavy crouch, scattering shards across the carpet.
Jonah and Mary Jane Watson flinched back.
Peter didn't look at them. He crossed the room in a fraction of a second. He grabbed Roderick Kingsley by the lapels. He hoisted him two feet off the floor.
"Roderick Kingsley," Peter snarled, his voice a vibrating, alien threat. "You've got a Goblin bomb wired directly into your chest. Start talking. Why?!"