The flames set off a chain reaction.
The entire factory interior was covered in the slime Bant had sprayed everywhere.
The instant the pumpkin bomb exploded, it was like tossing a spark into a keg of gunpowder.
In a flash,
Boom!!!
The whole factory was blasted into the sky!
Everything was swallowed by fire and searing heat.
Even Rhino, who had originally been outside Harry's attack range, failed to escape. He vanished directly into the sea of flames.
The towering fire surged dozens of meters high, twisting like a tornado.
This time, the confused New York cops finally knew where they were supposed to respond.
A few kilometers away from the factory, Bant beat his wings and set Peter and Harry down.
If it had been ten-year-old Ben transforming into Stinkfly, carrying two people would not have been impossible, but he definitely would not have been able to fly fast.
But for Bant, whose strength had fused with Spider-Man's power, the weight of two people was practically nothing.
"Stinkfly, requesting landing."
His rapidly vibrating wings gradually folded in, and the dead leaves in the forest below were swept aside, forming a ring around them.
At that moment, the Omnitrix on his head began flashing as well.
A burst of green light followed, and Bant transformed back.
As a result, Peter and Harry both stumbled and fell.
"Little Bant, it really is you!"
Even now, Harry still found it hard to believe that Bant could actually turn into some giant bug.
He quickly got to his feet, eager to get to the bottom of everything.
"What the hell is going on?"
"And you too, Peter. You're actually Spider-Man! You've kept it from me for this long, that's way too unfair!"
Harry was furious.
He had built a Green Goblin armor for both of his friends, yet the two of them had hidden something this important from him.
Truth be told, Harry could understand Bant.
After all, if his own superpower was turning into some stinking, disgusting giant bug, then he would probably be too embarrassed to talk about it as well.
But Peter keeping it from him was a bit too much.
What?
Did you turn into some kind of spider monster too?
Right now, Harry urgently needed an explanation.
"Sorry, Harry. We didn't mean to keep it from you," Peter said at once.
The deaths of those villains were already a done deal. Though he felt Bant and Harry should not have done it, he was hardly going to grieve over the deaths of scum like that.
"Peter's right. We really weren't trying to hide it from you on purpose."
Bant spoke too.
To be honest, the Osborn family had always treated both Bant and Peter very well.
As Peter's childhood friend, Harry's bond with him had held up across countless universes.
The reason they had not told Harry about Spider-Man was because they were worried it would bring trouble to him.
Besides that, both Bant and Peter now had superpowers, and they were also a little afraid Harry might feel unbalanced because of it.
After all, because Norman had ignored him so much in the past, what Harry feared most was becoming ordinary.
In Tobey's version of Spider-Man, Harry had even felt some jealousy toward Peter because Peter was smarter than him and more favored by Norman.
But now, Harry had chosen to become Green Goblin himself. With armor on his body, he at least had some combat ability, so the two of them no longer needed to hide it.
Bant had just opened his mouth to continue, only for Harry to suddenly reach out, press his lips together with a solemn look, and pat Bant on the shoulder in comfort.
"I understand, brother!"
Bant: ???
"What?"
"I get it. Isn't it just because your superpower is a little... lame, so you didn't want to make it public?" Harry racked his brains before finally coming up with a word that was not too offensive.
"I totally understand!"
"Really!"
"And honestly, I don't think you need to be too upset. Turning into a giant bug can still be cool. At least you can fly without a glider, and you can shoot stuff without any special device, and the quantity is insane..."
"Most importantly," he said, "you can turn back. That's way better than that poor bastard Storm. I heard he stayed green till the day he died."
In Harry's eyes, that really was the most important part.
If Bant turned into that giant bug and could not turn back, then that would have been truly tragic.
Hearing this, Peter nodded as well, agreeing with the logic.
"If you couldn't turn back, the girls at Midtown High would be absolutely heartbroken."
Still, both he and Bant had clearly realized that Harry seemed to have seriously misunderstood Bant's powers.
But neither of them was in a hurry.
Because this was exactly the right moment to explain everything to Harry from the beginning.
"Actually, I mutated after getting bitten by an Oscorp spider, and that's how I got spider powers."
Peter kept it brief.
Harry's mind immediately came alive.
"Oscorp's irradiated spiders? I remember there were still a lot of them! Doesn't that mean I could get spider powers too?"
He jumped to his feet at once, looking like he wanted nothing more than to rush back to Oscorp and let those spiders bite him ten or twenty times.
Fortunately, Peter stopped him.
"Wait. That won't work."
"Those mutated spiders can only alter my genes."
Peter then told Harry about the genetic tampering his parents had done in the past.
To be honest, what Richard and Mary had done was not exactly moral.
Sure, the decay formula had been their own research product, but their success had depended heavily on Oscorp's funding, and Connors, as a fellow researcher, had also contributed a lot.
In truth, Connors had switched tracks halfway through.
He had originally been a military doctor before moving into lizard research later on.
But Harry did not blame Peter for this, nor did he speak ill of Peter's parents.
He only felt it was a little unfortunate.
At the same time, he now understood why Connors' Lizard serum had failed.
"Wait."
A sudden guess came to Harry.
"Little Bant, don't tell me your power is what happened when you tried to research the decay formula and ended up with a failed result?"
"Oh man, what were you thinking? How could you experiment on yourself?"
With Connors as a living example of someone who had used himself as a test subject, Harry felt Bant had gone way too far.
"Look at you now. The experiment failed, and you turned yourself into this. Sure, you can change back, but you completely missed out on real spider powers!"
Harry felt genuinely sorry for Bant.
Then it was as if he had suddenly thought of something.
"Right. If Peter's dad used Peter's genes for compatibility, then who is the other Spider-Man?"
At last, Harry remembered that there was not only one Spider-Man.
Other than Peter, there was also that other Hacker Spider-Man.
"You're not completely hopeless after all."
Seeing this, Bant was just about to explain, but Harry suddenly raised a hand to stop him.
"Wait, let me guess."
He pinched his chin and lowered his head.
"The two Spider-Men know each other, right?"
Peter glanced at Bant, then nodded.
"Yeah."
"Then what's your relationship like?" Harry asked again.
"What do you think? We're family!" Peter rolled his eyes. "Not just a spider family. We're actual family."
He was basically slapping the answer right into Harry's face.
"I know now."
Harry had found his answer too.
Peter nodded and said, "That's right. Actually, the other Spider-Man is..."
"It's Uncle Ben!"
Harry cut him off loudly.
"What?"
Both Bant and Peter were stunned.
Neither of them had expected Harry to reach that conclusion.
The two exchanged a look, and the same message flashed through both their eyes.
Could he actually be a genius?
"Did I guess wrong?" Harry asked in return.
Seeing that both Peter and Bant looked strange, he immediately started backing up his logic with examples.
"Look. The two Spider-Men know each other, Peter knows Uncle Ben, and you're family. The irradiated spiders can only adapt to your genes, but Uncle Ben is part of the Parker family too, so his genes should be very similar to yours."
"Therefore, Uncle Ben is the other Spider-Man."
Inside Harry's mind, Hacker Spider-Man pulled off his mask, revealing Uncle Ben's face, older but still sharp and full of spirit.
"Spider-Grandpa. Awesome!"
He clapped his hands and said excitedly, "So do you think I should let my dad become Old Green Goblin too? Otherwise people are going to think I'm Storm's son."
To be fair, Harry's line of reasoning actually made a lot of sense.
"But have you considered Uncle Ben's build?" Peter said tactfully.
At once, the image of Uncle Ben as Spider-Man shattered in Harry's imagination, replaced by a short, out-of-shape, middle-aged man in a skintight suit, the sort with all the classic health problems packed in...
He shivered and hurriedly wiped that horrifying image out of his head.
"But if the other Spider-Man isn't Uncle Ben, then who could it be? Don't tell me it's Bant. He's already a giant bug."
Bant: My fists are itching!
"Why can't it be me?" Bant asked back.
"It really is you?"
That only made Harry more confused.
"But why? Don't tell me you're Peter's dad's illegitimate son. Are you two actually brothers?"
"That has to do with my other superpower," Bant said.
He had decided to tell Harry about his ability to transform into alien heroes as well. After all, once someone had seen the transformation happen even once, there was no hiding it anymore. Harry counted as one of their own.
As for the fact that this power really came from a watch, there was no need to mention that part.
Up until now, the only people who knew that secret were Peter, who had helped Bant crack the watch back then, and Connors, who had been watching from the side.
As for those two, Peter went without saying. Bant trusted him deeply. And Connors had nerve toxin left in his body by Bant, while Eunice was also secretly monitoring him.
"So you can turn into aliens too?"
After hearing that, Harry wore an expression that plainly said this was way too unfair.
"Forget it. Every time, you somehow make it impossible for me to even feel jealous."
He shook his head. Once he thought about the enormous gap between himself and Bant, even the urge to envy him vanished.
Still, after hearing Bant say he had solved the genetic lock problem behind the decay formula, Harry naturally wanted to ask whether Bant had managed to create some kind of perfect spider serum.
"I probably could, but that's the kind of thing you're better off never touching."
Bant killed that thought right away.
"Let's go back and talk there."
After sending word to Mary Jane and Felicia that they were safe, and asking them to contact the police and tell them that he and Peter had already been rescued by Norman Osborn's son, Harry, Bant headed back to Plymouth with the others.
The current Plymouth was already very different from before.
Massive skyscrapers had risen into the air.
But Bant did not take Harry to the top floor. Instead, he took the elevator downward, all the way to the underground level.
"I built this basement recently. The security level is extremely high. In the future, it can serve as our base."
As he spoke, he snapped his fingers.
In an instant, the entire underground space lit up. Rows of tubular chambers rose from the floor, and when they opened, they revealed all kinds of Spider suits.
"When the time comes, I'll make you a batch of new suits too. The one you're wearing right now is way too low-tech."
Bant looked thoroughly disgusted.
But while the armor was undeniably cool, superpowers were what really interested Harry.
"The spider serum..."
"I told you already, the less you touch that thing, the better."
Bant shook his head.
"You two think Spider-Man's powers come from genetic mutation, but that's not actually true. It's a kind of mystical power."
"Mystical power? You mean magic?" Peter tilted his head.
"Does that mean in future battles I can cast spells or yell Shazam?"
"No. I'm talking about the Spider Totem."
Bant thought it over and realized that trying to explain this clearly to them would not be easy.
So he simply went around the topic.
"This kind of unknown power source ultimately comes with hidden dangers. Peter and I can't change that anymore. But you don't need to feel too disappointed. There are still other ways to gain superpowers, like the Super-Soldier Serum."
With a wave of his hand, countless breakdown formulas instantly appeared on the computer screen.
Peter and Harry walked closer in shock.
"You're researching the Super-Soldier Serum too?"
The Super-Soldier Serum was a kind of formula that, in this era, looked as if it had already fallen behind the times.
But in reality, its true effect had never just been enhancing strength. It also slowed aging.
And from what they knew so far, it was possible to produce a version of the Super-Soldier Serum without side effects.
Wasn't that far better than some Lizard serum?
In Harry's mind, Bant's behavior looked incredibly cool.
But Peter was full of worry.
"Little Bant, what are you trying to do?"
To be honest, secretly researching the Super-Soldier Serum was exactly the kind of thing the U.S. military would do.
Peter was genuinely afraid Bant might go astray and end up walking the path of a villain.
"What am I trying to do?"
Bant was caught off guard for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and shamelessly borrowed a certain black braised egg's famous words:
"I have an idea. Bring together a group of remarkable people and see if we can become something more. So when people need us... we can fight the battles they never could."
"When Doctor Dong Wu took over Stark Tower with his mutation device, I realized that having just one superhero like Iron Man wasn't nearly enough for us."
"And if superheroes all fight on their own, that won't work either. We need to gather those forces together, like clenching five fingers into a fist. Only then can we fight evil more effectively."
"So..."
Bant turned around, and a giant hourglass-shaped symbol lit up behind him.
"I founded the Tenkai Society."
/-\
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