"What... what are you?" the chairman stammered, collapsing to the floor in terror.
It wasn't the plane he had imagined crashing into the building.
It was the Green Goblin.
And he had come to kill them.
The chairman was so frightened he lost control of himself. The richer a man was, it seemed, the more desperately he clung to life.
"A monster?" The Green Goblin hovered above the floor on his glider, tilting his head. "No, no. I'm not a monster. I'm your dear friend."
He pulled two orange spherical bombs from his belt.
Pumpkin bombs.
"You know, gentlemen, tomorrow you were planning to fire me. Unfortunately for you, I've never enjoyed being dismissed."
The Green Goblin began to giggle, a sharp, unnatural sound that made every person in the room go cold.
Only then did they realize who he was.
The chairman, strangely, became a little less afraid. So it was Norman. Norman Osborn, the man they thought they had cornered.
He struggled up from the floor and straightened his clothes.
"Norman, this is no time for jokes. If you leave quietly, we can still reconsider certain arrangements."
"Hahahahahaha!"
The Green Goblin burst into wild laughter.
He hadn't expected to hear such a wonderful joke at a time like this.
Then he tossed the two pumpkin bombs.
"You've amused me. So I've decided I'm going to fire you instead. Literally."
The chairman realized Norman wasn't responding to pressure anymore, and the room exploded into panic. Everyone scrambled toward the exit, trampling each other in their desperation to escape.
But these were pumpkin bombs.
The instant they hit the floor, they unleashed terrifying heat and a violent shockwave.
With a thunderous blast, the entire top floor was swallowed by fire. The directors who had clustered together were carbonized almost instantly. Only the chairman, who had been shoved to the outside of the group, was left barely alive.
The Green Goblin stepped off his glider.
He grabbed the chairman by the throat and lifted him off the floor as the old man tried to crawl away.
"Look into my eyes, old man," the Goblin whispered, leaning close to the chairman's terror-twisted face. "Tell me. Who owns Oscorp now?"
"You do! You do! Oscorp belongs to you!" the chairman screamed with the last of his strength.
"Too late."
The Goblin tightened his grip.
The chairman's neck snapped instantly.
The Green Goblin tossed the body into the flames like garbage.
Then he stepped back onto his glider and circled the ruined private room, looking down at his former colleagues as they burned. A deeply satisfied laugh burst from his throat.
"Hahahahahaha! Step one complete. The obstacles have been cleared. And now..."
He looked out toward the city.
Toward the Daily Bugle building.
Toward Fisk Tower.
Toward Stark Industries, whose owner had returned and stolen the entire world's attention.
When he looked at it that way, all of New York was his enemy.
One had ruined his reputation with the press.
One had betrayed him in public and abandoned him.
And the most hateful of all was Tony Stark. The man had done almost nothing, yet he had seized the biggest headlines and helped push Oscorp into this crisis.
Norman hated him.
Tony Stark had disappeared into whatever hole he'd been hiding in since his return.
Wilson Fisk, that damned fat rat, had scurried off somewhere no one could find him.
But the Daily Bugle remained.
And the reporter named Ben Parker was still in this city.
Right under his nose.
Ben Parker was also Richard Parker's brother, and Peter Parker's uncle.
If not for that damned report about black-market weapons, Oscorp's stock would never have collapsed so badly. Those greedy old dogs on the board would never have found an excuse to issue their ultimatum.
The spark that had lit this whole fire was that meddling reporter.
"If I can't find those two hiding cowards, then I'll start with you, Mr. Parker."
The Green Goblin shot straight toward the Daily Bugle.
At the same time, in the assistant editor's office, Ben was rubbing his tired eyes while going over stacks of files.
The office door opened.
Eddie stepped in, still wrapped in medical bandages, with a camera hanging around his neck. He was already starting to look like a real reporter.
"Uncle Ben, we just got word from the police! There was a major explosion at a high-end private club on the Upper East Side. Supposedly, six core members of Oscorp's board were meeting there. We don't know what it looks like inside yet, but I think this is huge!"
Eddie's eyes were bright.
Ben agreed.
His instincts as a former soldier and veteran journalist immediately linked the recent events together.
Stark shutting down his weapons division, causing military stocks to plunge.
The Oscorp black-market weapons scandal.
The board moving against Norman Osborn.
And now, the entire board might have been killed in an explosion.
"This wasn't an accident. This is an internal purge at Oscorp." Ben grabbed his coat and car keys from the desk. "Someone is erasing the company's leadership. Eddie, can your body handle this?"
"Absolutely! I feel like I could punch out a bull right now!"
Eddie slapped his chest, winced from the pain, then raised his camera with a grin.
"I promise I'll get the clearest first-hand shots of the scene."
"Come on. Underground garage. We'll take the armored news van."
The two quickly took the elevator down to the garage and climbed into a black SUV marked with the Daily Bugle logo.
Ben Parker started the engine, shifted gears, and pulled out onto the streets of Manhattan.
But just after they passed two blocks and stopped at a red light—
A strange laugh echoed from above.
Every hair on Ben's body stood on end.
The battlefield instincts he had built during his service with the 101st Airborne screamed a warning at him.
Without hesitation, he slammed the accelerator to the floor.
Almost at that exact moment, a pumpkin bomb struck the pavement where they had just been stopped.
The terrifying shockwave threw an empty taxi behind them into the air, and the SUV's rear window shattered instantly.
"Damn it! What was that?!" Eddie clutched the door handle and twisted around to look behind them. "What the hell happened to New York? Why is it suddenly full of monsters?"
He felt like the city had changed while he was unconscious.
Everything that had never existed before was now crawling out of the woodwork.
Looking back, Eddie saw a freak in green armor riding a flying machine, pursuing them at low altitude.
"Good evening, Mr. Ben Parker!" the Green Goblin's amplified voice rang across the entire street. "Your words have power, but I'd like to see if your bones are as tough as your pen!"
"Hold on, Eddie!"
Ben prepared to show off his driving.
Back in the army, they hadn't called him the wheelman of the 101st Airborne for nothing.