The board was finally reset.
The digital Green Goblin AI was locked out of the global network. His heavy exoskeleton armor lay in ruins. He was stripped down to a biological clone body, a flying jet-board, and a handful of pumpkin bombs.
Peter Parker wasn't doing much better. His Iron Spider suit was slag. The symbiote was recovering in a glass jar. He stood on the rooftop in his basic black fabric suit. His precognitive spider-sense was still completely jammed by the AI's countermeasures. In terms of raw, baseline statistics, the unenhanced Peter was at a distinct physical disadvantage against the gamma-irradiated, super-soldier clone.
Both sides had lost their heavy artillery. It was down to the wire.
Peter activated his cloaking. Transitioning into invisibility was nearly instantaneous and required zero mental strain. He vanished from sight.
The Goblin tapped the side of his damaged tactical helmet. The infrared optics were dead. He couldn't track the invisible spider. He stroked his green chin, a wicked smile pulling at his lips. Spider-Man wouldn't run. The kid's hero complex wouldn't allow it. But the Goblin could easily exploit the space.
If I gain altitude, I can recalibrate my escape path, the Goblin thought. He hit the thrusters. The glider screamed, angling toward the clouds.
A few seconds into the ascent, the Goblin frowned. The turbine whined in protest. The thrust-to-weight ratio was entirely wrong. The board was dragging.
The invisible weight wasn't on the deck. It was hanging underneath. Peter was clinging to the bottom hull of the glider.
"Spider-Man! Get down here!" the Goblin roared.
"What? Sorry, I'm already 'down'!" Peter yelled back.
Peter dropped his invisibility. He hung upside down, firing twin streams of web. The webs anchored to the reinforced steel of the adjacent skyscrapers. The immense tensile strength of the webbing acted as a massive bungee cord. The glider's speed violently decelerated.
The Goblin dropped to one knee. He leaned over the edge of the board, swiping a clawed hand at Peter's ankle.
Peter released his grip on the hull. He plummeted toward the street. The heavy tension of the web-lines yanked the glider into a steep, erratic nosedive. Peter fired a new web, utilizing his superhuman agility to slingshot himself back up. The glider bucked wildly like a mechanical bull.
"Can't catch me! Can't catch me! Aha!" Peter taunted, flipping through the air.
The chaotic aerial dance looked ridiculous, but the Goblin was absolutely furious.
Peter swung past the glider. He planted his boots flush against the back of the Goblin's hand. The villain shrieked in pain, yanking his hand away from the edge.
The Goblin realized he was losing altitude. He pulled two glowing pumpkin bombs from his bandolier. He hurled them directly at Peter's anchoring web-lines. The intense heat incinerated the silk. The glider snapped free. The Goblin gunned the engine, pointing the nose straight at the pavement.
"Hahaha! Get ready to be crushed into mincemeat, insect!" the Goblin roared.
"Really? You don't need this body anymore?"
The voice came from directly behind his head.
The Goblin realized his mistake instantly. To avoid being smeared across the asphalt, Spider-Man had vaulted onto the rear deck of the glider. The Goblin didn't turn around. He threw a brutal, backward elbow.
Peter caught the strike with an open palm. The Goblin spun, driving a heavy fist toward Peter's ribs. The two traded lightning-fast blows on the three-meter wingspan of the hovering metal board. The Goblin's boots were magnetically locked to the deck. He absorbed Peter's strikes, barely swaying under the superhuman impact.
Peter was fighting a heavyweight. He couldn't win a prolonged boxing match in a confined space.
Hidden panels slid open on the glider's chassis. Twin gun barrels snapped upward.
Peter vaulted high into the air to avoid the point-blank barrage.
"Seriously?!" Peter shouted. "Your skateboard shoots straight up?"
"It's an omnidirectional targeting system, Spider-Man!" the Goblin laughed. He had memorized Peter's combat profile. He knew exactly how to pin the spider down. If Peter wanted to stay in the fight, he had to keep dodging the automated turret fire.
You're doomed, Spider-Man!
The Goblin sneered, gunning the engine to shred the airborne teenager.
A ring of golden, crackling sparks tore open the air directly in his flight path.
The Goblin blinked. The mystical portal swallowed him whole. The glider blasted through the gateway. The golden sparks snapped shut a millimeter behind his exhaust trail.
The Goblin shot out over a deserted Manhattan intersection. Peter was already waiting. He had swung through a secondary portal, utilizing the gravitational kinetic energy of his arc to deliver a devastating two-footed dropkick.
The boots slammed into the Goblin's chest. The villain was blasted off the glider. He hit the asphalt and rolled violently across the street. He wiped a streak of green blood from his mouth. He looked up at Peter and let out a rich, theatrical laugh.
"What's wrong?" Peter asked, landing lightly on a streetlight. "Finally lose your mind?"
"No, Spider-Man. Haven't you noticed?" The Goblin gestured grandly to the surrounding intersection. "I still maintain partial control over the city's network. I have a legion of Goblin thralls. Why haven't I ordered a full-scale bombardment?"
"Because you're an idiot?"
"Because we can only play our little game if the board is relatively intact!" the Goblin laughed.
Peter noticed the shift. Every traffic light in the four-way intersection had clicked solid green.
The low hum of engines echoed down the avenues. Oscorp manufactured the autonomous driving subroutines for thousands of Manhattan vehicles. The cars were accelerating blindly toward the intersection. The Goblin had hacked the grid. Fortunately, most of the civilian drivers had already abandoned their hijacked vehicles in a panic.
"You can play savior, or you can try to destroy me," the Goblin smiled. "Of course, even if you kill this biological shell, my code remains safe onli—"
Peter fired a thick glob of webbing. It plastered directly over the Goblin's mouth.
Peter didn't look at the incoming cars. He dropped from the streetlight. He fired a rapid barrage of silk, pinning the Goblin's arms and legs entirely to a concrete wall. Peter closed the distance. He drove a relentless, furious combination of punches into the villain's torso.
The Goblin absorbed the beating, trapped in the dense web cocoon. He tapped a micro-switch embedded in his palm.
His abandoned glider surged to life. A jagged adamantium blade snapped out from the nose. The board accelerated silently through the air, aiming directly for the back of Peter's skull.
Die, Spider-Man! Without your spider-sense, you can't possibly dodge it! the Goblin thought, his eyes burning with synthetic triumph.
Peter heard the subtle whine of the turbine. He relied entirely on his enhanced speed and reflexes. He executed a flawless, instantaneous backflip.
The glider missed him by a fraction of an inch. It didn't have time to brake.
The blade plunged straight through the Goblin clone's chest, pinning him to the concrete.
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