December 31, 2012. New York, Manhattan, late night.
"On the final day of the last year, J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle still stand with you. Let us recap the events of this year, starting naturally with the large number of superhuman crime incidents that began at the start of the year."
Even with only a few hours left until the New Year, J.J.J. was still reporting various superhuman crime incidents on the Bugle's television channel, as always, and trying his best to link them to Spider-Man. However, it couldn't be said that there was no connection at all, as Spider-Man did fight the most supervillains and was involved in the most action.
Arnold Donovan was an ordinary New York worker. He was unimportant, so unimportant that he wasn't even listed on the roster held by the Avengers. In another world, he bore a not-so-famous name:
The second Hobgoblin.
Of course, in this current timeline, he shouldn't have become the Hobgoblin.
Until he returned home and saw a small, spherical object placed on his coffee table. Donovan was confused; he didn't recall buying anything like it. He was a single man, and no one else could have entered his apartment.
Who could it be?
Curiously, Donovan placed his hand on the sphere. The image of a man in purple armor appeared on it. The man looked at Donovan and spoke.
"Arnold Donovan, your destiny has been rewritten. In the original timeline, you were supposed to become the Hobgoblin, a supervillain with super strength and high-tech gear who clashed with Spider-Man. But the Avengers prevented your destiny, and you became completely unremarkable."
"If you want to change your fate, accept this. It will grant you your original power."
Arnold Donovan looked at the sphere, shrugged helplessly, then picked up his phone and dialed 911.
"Hello, 911? I've received some, uh, supernatural items. Could you please send someone to collect them? Yes, someone wants me to become some kind of supervillain or something. What? You'll be right over? Okay, I'll just stay home then."
Donovan said this while sitting on the sofa, waiting for the NYPD to arrive. Regardless of whether the purple-suited pervert was telling the truth, he had no intention of touching that damned sphere.
His life was going perfectly well, with no sudden turns. Why would he become a supervillain and fight Spider-Man? Was he out of his mind? He decided to just hand the thing over to the NYPD.
About ten minutes later, Donovan, who was fiddling with his phone, heard a knock. He got up, opened the door, and said, "The item is right there on my coffee table..."
"Thank you, Donovan. You refused the destiny you should have accepted."
Donovan stared at the man standing at his door, who was definitely not a police officer. The man wore a hoodie, the brim covering most of his face, but it couldn't hide his inhuman gray skin.
The man grinned, revealing sharp, pointed teeth.
"As a reward, I will ensure that you become the Hobgoblin, just as you were meant to!"
About half an hour later, Detective Inspector George Stacy specifically rushed over from the 12th Precinct office in Manhattan. The police officers under him had already secured the scene, but they looked around indecisively.
"What happened?"
"As we reported on the phone earlier, a citizen named Arnold Donovan called, saying someone had given him a supernatural item and asked him to become a supervillain, which he wished to hand over. So we sent a few officers to check it out."
Chief Stacy walked toward Donovan's apartment, listening to the officer's report: "But the problem is, when we arrived, we found the door was locked, and there was no response to knocking. In desperation, one of the officers kicked the door in—which is, of course, against procedure."
"We'll worry about procedure later. Tell me what happened first."
"You... You'll see for yourself, sir."
George Stacy stepped inside Donovan's apartment. The living room had been reduced to a scorched ruin. An explosion had ripped through the entire space, leaving it utterly unrecognizable. However, oddly enough, there were no bodies, not even a trace of blood.
"If that officer hadn't kicked the door open, we might never have discovered that something like this happened. And you should know..."
"This isn't the first similar incident."
"We can't confirm it's a crime yet, sir. We have indeed received similar calls during this period, but shortly after, the caller would inform the officers that everything was fine, or the officers simply didn't take such a risky action. Besides, no one dared to take responsibility, sir. What if someone was inside?"
In fact, the opposite was more likely: What if no one was inside? If the police simply assumed there was no answer and forgot about these matters, then to those above, they would just be categorized as false alarms. But upon closer inspection, those calls to surrender items that later went unanswered concealed dozens of consecutive missing persons cases.
Even worse, if what those people said was true, and someone really did give them supernatural items with the intention of turning them into supervillains, then dozens of cases meant that dozens of devices capable of turning people into superpowered criminals had been taken. Could someone be deliberately collecting these devices?
...
If so, there was only one way to obtain this information and find these people faster than the police.
Someone was listening to the NYPD communication channels.
At this point, he could only ask Peter for help. Chief George Stacy rubbed his temples resignedly, then decided it was best not to alert the enemy: "First, clean this up, make a record, and file a case."
"A missing persons case?"
"An explosion case. Get some demolition experts and veteran officers. Since there's no body, the person must have been taken away. We need to find Donovan."
Almost simultaneously, Arnold Donovan woke up from the pain. He only remembered one thing: the strange man choking his neck.
When he woke up, he found himself strapped to an operating table, with infusion tubes inserted into several veins.
"Originally, this was created after Norman Osborn was injected with something by a guy named Doctor Octopus. But unfortunately, that Doctor Octopus is dead due to a timeline change, so people from the future delivered this directly to us."
He saw a hunched, gray-skinned, pointed-eared man walk up to him, injecting the serum he had originally rejected.
"This stuff has a drawback: it drives people insane."
"But it doesn't matter, Hobgoblin, you're supposed to be insane anyway!"
At this moment, the clock bells chimed outside. Amidst the ringing bells, the man—the Hobgoblin—let out a piercing shriek, watching Donovan twist in agony from the injected Hobgoblin serum.
"Happy New Year! Welcome to the Hobgoblin Corps!"
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